“Not the same Lord Hargate, of course. Another one,” remarked Rutgers after a moment. “The late Lord Hargate’s younger brother. A very different sort of gentleman, however. One could scarce imagine how they belonged to the same family. This one, lad, was once called Sir Basil Ives. You will have heard of him, of course?”
The footman looked blank.
“Sir Basil Ives, later Lord Ives, our Ambassador to France, and, more recently, Chancellor of the Exchequer. Now retired to private life.”
The footman looked illuminated.
“Well, his elder brother, that is to say the one who was Lord Hargate last, departed this life a few years ago. Long before his time, of course, but then he was so much given to eating and drinking that one would not have expected him to live half so long as he did. Monstrous fat fellow. Don’t you go about eating and drinking too much, young man,” warned the butler with a suspicious look. “A young man of your age ought not to drink at all, and scarcely to eat anything. Healthier that way.”
The footman looked a little shocked at this advice, but nodded his head fervently nevertheless.
“Anyhow, as I was saying, the late Lord Hargate died, and now Sir Basil has come into the family title and family mansion at once. It is a great improvement, not only for him—which it no doubt is—but for all of us. Lord, how I used to grow nervous, watching the goings-on in that household!”
The footman looked curious. “Was it so very bad, Sir?”
Rutgers snorted. “Eh? Bad! You never saw such a place! Butler always asleep, coat unpressed, marketing at all hours! And the nurse! You ought to have seen the nurse!”
“But now it is much better? The new Lady Hargate runs things more—er—smoothly?”
Rutgers had drifted into a reverie, and did not hear the question. After a second he let out a chortle, and declared, “What a comical thing it was, to be sure!”
“What, Sir?”
“Very comical,” repeated the butler sternly. “It was very comical. Are you deaf, lad?”
Rutgers regarded the footman severely. “No, Sir. I don’t think so, Sir. But what,” inquired he timidly, “if I may be so bold, Sir, was comical?”
“Why, the manner of their marriage, lad! The marriage of Lord and Lady Hargate! The present Lord and Lady Hargate. She was his governess, you know.”
The footman puckered up his brow at this idea.
“Why, is she so much older than he, Sir?” inquired he mildly. He had seen the elegant Lady Hargate once or twice, driving about the Square in her fashionable curricle, with her two little sons beside her. She certainly did not look old enough to have been Lord Hargate’s governess. If she was, indeed, it would be a minor miracle of nature, for she was certainly very comely, and did not appear to be so very ancient.
“No, no, no!” exclaimed Rutgers impatiently. He eyed the footman with some suspicion. Had he inadvertently employed a dimwit? “She was not his governess, lad! She was governess to his—to his—well, adopted daughter. An orphan, actually. She is now Lady Ormsby-Thwaite. But, anyhow—that can be of no concern to you, young man. As it turned out, in any case, she was not a governess at all—not a governess as you would commonly think of one, at any rate—but a young lady of good family, and an authoress besides. You will perhaps have heard of her—Miss Anne Calder, who wrote The Determined Bachelor and some other distinguished volumes. A most erudite young woman. Of course, some will say that Sir Basil married beneath him, but I always felt that though she was only a clergyman’s daughter, she possessed more hactual refinement than many of your so-called haristocrats. But we must not question the ways of the haristocracy, lad,” continued Rutgers with a sudden shift of tone. “It is not our business to judge them, but to serve them. They are our betters, and so, of course, their ways are different from our own.”
Rutgers regarded the footman sternly, having delivered what was, after all, a rather curious finale to his little lecture, which had successfully destroyed half the reputations of that very class.
The footman, shifting nervously from one foot to the other, and still endeavouring in his mind to untangle the knot of relationships which had just been laid out before him, nodded humbly.
“Yes, Sir. I see what you mean, Sir.”
About the Author
Judith Harkness is the author of five classic Regency Romances: The Montague Scandal, The Admiral’s Daughter, The Determined Bachelor, Contrary Cousins, and Lady Charlotte’s Ruse, all originally published by Signet. She is the co-author of a screenplay, EMMA in New York, an updated version of the classic Jane Austen novel set in contemporary Manhattan. As J.H. Richardson, she writes non-fiction on subjects ranging from children with learning and developmental issues to profiles of notable creative artists. She lives in Rhode Island with her husband, Will Taft.
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