VI
“Mama told me about that,” Rory admitted. “He read aloud some love letters a lady wrote to him. Mama said the whole town was angry with him. She had that from Cousin Selina in Bath after she wrote to tell her I’d be making my come-out here.”
“No doubt. I had the tale from Selina myself some years ago. We were both quite young at the time it all happened, of course.”
“They say the housemaids in Bath were too indignant even to make his bed,” Nell put in with a smile. “And I must confess, Mama, I have always thought him a disgusting little man myself.”
Lady Agnes agreed that Mr. Wade had never been what one might call truly popular in Brighton. “Your papa was used to say he neglected his duties for the gaming tables. I know nothing of such matters myself, however.”
“Well, he still enjoyed a good deal of power the year I came out,” Nell said. “Why, even theatrical performances were allowed only on evenings convenient to his plans. They were certainly never allowed on Monday or Thursday evenings as they are now.”
“There have been other changes, too, however,” Lady Agnes said with a sigh.
“To be sure, there are a good many more private parties now, but Mrs. Calvert was telling me only the other day that the public ball at the Old Ship on Thursday last—the first of the Season, don’t you know—was quite deplorable.
She would have it that all the rabble was there.
City beaux and cits’ wives, she said, dared to mingle with true gentry and the nobility.
I make no doubt the assemblies there will soon become mauvais ton, and I am not at all certain, Nell, that you would be well advised to take Aurora.
I have heard nothing against the assemblies at the Castle, for of course, Monday’s is the first. But in these modern times, with so many foreign elements about, one never knows what to expect next. ”
“Never mind, Mama. I shall endeavor to take good care of her.” It was an opportunity for that conversation, Nell thought then.
But she could not bring herself to take Rory away to the privacy of her own bedchamber.
Lady Agnes would surely demand to know the reason, which would prove awkward to explain, and it was possible that more people would come to call upon them, too.
Indeed, Lord Huntley was shown into the drawing room not ten minutes later.
Rory greeted him politely but seemed to have little to say to him, so it fell to Nell and Lady Agnes to maintain the flow of conversation.
This task proved simple enough, however, once Lady Agnes thought to ask his lordship how he had been occupying the years since she had last clapped eyes upon him.
“For as I recall it, my lord, you went out of town not three days before my poor husband’s collapse, did you not?”
“As to that, my lady, I cannot say, as I was unaware of your tragedy until some months later. I was, however, called away very suddenly.”
“Not a death in your own family, I trust, sir.”
“Unfortunately, ma’am. My father, as it happens, passed to his reward quite as unexpectedly as Mr. Lindale passed to his. He was—again like Mr. Lindale—quite a young man.”
“Mr. Lindale was only forty-six,” she replied, reaching for her vinaigrette.
His lordship eyed that gesture with undisguised alarm and said hastily that he had subsequently joined the Army. The vinaigrette hovered as her ladyship paused, replying that she had not taken him for a military man.
“Nor I, sir,” Nell put in, watching his rapidly changing expressions with amusement.
He glanced at her briefly, then rather pointedly gave his full attention to Lady Agnes.
“A military career seemed better than hanging on my brother’s sleeve,” he said, “but I stayed only six years. I wasn’t much cut out for campaigning, though I served in a Hussar regiment on the Continent for several years before a bayonet thrust to the shoulder got me sent home just before Amiens.
Subsequently, I transferred to the Tenth, which by then had been ordered to Manchester, supposedly for training.
By the time hostilities resumed, my brother had died and I’d sold out.
I confess, I am not precisely sorry to have done so. ”
“Your brother, as well,” said Lady Agnes weakly, waving the vinaigrette under her dainty nose. “Poor, wretched lad. You have suffered exactly as my dearest Nell has suffered, have you not?”
Huntley was certainly looking rather wretched, and although he glanced helplessly at Nell, he managed to keep a wary eye on the vinaigrette. “Have you suffered so much then, Miss Lindale?”
“Indeed, oh, indeed she has,” replied Lady Agnes in lachrymose tones. “You’ll scarce credit it, sir, and I could not have been more sorely provoked, I promise you. But we suffered six of them in as many years.”
“What? Not deaths!” Huntley sat up straighter in his chair, then looked more directly at Nell, who was having difficulty retaining her composure. Thankfully, he addressed his next words to her mother. “You are quite right, my lady. “’Tis a difficult fact to credit.”
“Nevertheless, ’tis the very truth, sir. Six of them, and very inconsiderate I thought them at the time, I can tell you. For what was my poor Nell to do when she must positively live in black crape? ’Twas monstrous unfair. As though Fate herself thrust my poor darling onto the shelf.”
“On the shelf? How absurd! Why, Miss Lindale is quite as beautiful as ever and seems to have developed a good deal of character into the bargain. She is scarcely at her last prayers.”
Nell turned quite pink at these unexpected compliments, but fortunately there was no need for her to reply to them.
“Oh, but she is! Or, at least, if she is not at her last prayers, no one can deny that she is beyond her first youth.” The vinaigrette paused directly under the little nose, and to Huntley’s all too evident discomfort, a lacy handkerchief appeared in her ladyship’s delicate hand.
“What else,” she demanded mournfully, “could one expect, my lord, when she is all of five-and-twenty and insists upon behaving like a spinster woman? Besides, the eligible men hereabouts are not seeking mature young women of character. They are looking about for youthful beauties whose character they might mold to suit themselves.”
This statement being clearly unanswerable, Nell took pity on his lordship and spoke up in her own defense.
“Pray, Mama, do not speak as if you expect poor Huntley to mend matters. You will at the very least unman him. What’s done is done and cannot be mended, and ’tis just as well, I’m thinking.
For if I was not so clearly upon the shelf, who, pray tell, would take dear Rory out and about?
We are already agreed, are we not, that it would not suit your delicate constitution to do so. ”
“Oh my, no!” Lady Agnes replied hastily before turning melting eyes toward Huntley. “For you must know, my lord, that the least little exertion oversets me. ’Tis my poor nerves. Ever since my dearest Lindale passed on, God rest him, I have not seemed to have the energies of my earlier days.
Why, the smallest activity—even a mere afternoon spent playing at silver loo—sends me to my bed prostrated for quite three days’ time.”
“Amazing, ma’am. And you still so young and beautiful.”
“Indeed, sir,” she returned, smiling without a blush, as both vinaigrette and handkerchief came to rest in her lap. “I am still quite young enough to enjoy life, I suppose, if it were not for the dreadful burden of my weakened constitution.”
“I understand your plight, ma’am. My own dear mother suffers from much the same malady, but she has suffered,” he added with the wry twist of lips that was rapidly becoming so familiar to Nell, “for many, many years—even before my father’s untimely death.”
“Poor creature. How very sad for her. Although,” she added thoughtfully, “I daresay her form of the malady, while longer-lived, is not quite so acute as my own. Doctor Penworthy, after grievous expense, I might add—Nell, do you know his last bill came to more than three guineas? Well, at any rate,” she continued rapidly as though she feared Nell might actually trouble herself to respond, “he told me mine is quite a unique case. And you must know he has treated a good many nerves, sir. But he gave me to understand that mine was quite the worst case he has ever seen.”
“Indeed,” Huntley responded, coloring the one word with a well feigned display of deep interest. Nell was pleased to note that he did not make the fatal error of attempting to defend the relative severity of his mama’s ailments against those of Lady Agnes.
From what she had seen so far, he could not hope to win such a debate.
She glanced over at Rory, who was seated quite at her ease in a chair slightly removed from the others.
She appeared to be gazing intently out the window, as if concentrating upon some fascinating view.
But since Nell’s own experience gave her to know that there could be nothing out there worthy of such rapt attention, she deduced that her niece was daydreaming.
Deciding not to disturb her, she turned her attention once more to the others.
Lady Agnes had taken the opportunity to expand upon the various disadvantages of being cursed with a delicate constitution, and Huntley bore with it for some minutes longer before making deft excuses and taking his departure.
The three ladies sat quietly for a moment or two before Rory stirred in her chair, thus drawing her grandmother’s notice.
“You were very quiet during his lordship’s visit, dearest,” that lady observed. “I hope you did not take a chill during your visit to the esplanade.”
“Oh, no, I’m perfectly well, thank you, Grandmama. I was merely thinking about Ulysses. Did you notice that Huntley did not so much as inquire after the state of his health?”