Chapter 13 #2
Arch tossed the reins to the tiger, jumped to the ground and handed Francesca down from the stylish vehicle.
At once, he understood that Lady Upton had engineered the afternoon with infernal skill.
Before they had advanced ten paces, three ladies of his mother’s acquaintance claimed her on one side and two gentlemen on the other.
Lady Upton was visible just beyond, perfectly placed beneath a line of bare-branched trees.
His mother greeted them with a look that inspected first his coat and then Miss Vale’s gown and found both satisfactory.
“You troubled yourself to dress properly, I see,” she murmured as he kissed her cheek.
“I shall cherish the praise.”
“Miss Vale,” Lady Upton continued, taking Francesca’s hand, “you look exactly as you ought. Fresh, composed, and not at all as though you had spent the morning resisting excellent advice.”
Francesca’s expression did not alter. “I did not resist so much as ask for justification,” she clarified to Arch.
His mother smiled the smile of a woman who had heard defiance before and preferred it tidily spoken. “Too much resistance ill becomes perfection.”
Arch, having previously witnessed his mother in warfare, stepped back half a pace, knowing resistance was futile. It was not long before the admirers arrived.
They did not descend all at once in comic formation, as Baines would no doubt later describe them, but they came quickly enough to produce the same effect.
Mr. Harcourt arrived first, handsome and polished and carrying his reforming sympathies like a perfectly cut coat.
Lord Ashbourne appeared next, his manner stiff with the sort of superiority that took centuries to cultivate.
He was followed by two or three younger men who mattered less in themselves than in number, though each plainly believed his own attentions of consequence.
They praised the weather, the drive, the theatre, the colour of the sky, the crush in the Park, and, the lady at the centre of it all.
Miss Vale seemed either oblivious to the male attention she was garnering or entirely unaffected by it.
Arch suspected the latter, although now and then she said something with such perfect unconcern that he wondered if perhaps she truly had not been trained by vanity to register admiration as power.
She listened, answered, and occasionally redirected an entire conversation by the simple force of asking a more intelligent question than the one put to her. If anything, she seemed amused.
He stood a little apart at first, not because he wished to, but because to thrust himself at once into the ring would have been to acknowledge he was part of her court. Instead, he watched.
Harcourt distinguished himself by saying exactly what ought to please without ever sounding as though he had rehearsed it.
He had a gift for making agreement appear like insight.
If Miss Vale remarked upon the Park’s absurdity, he granted that public display was often mistaken for social necessity.
If she mentioned the discomfort of being observed, he agreed that London transformed private character into public entertainment with tiresome efficiency.
Arch could not decide whether the man was genuinely congenial or merely infernally practised at toad-eating.
Either way, at that moment Arch would not have minded facing him in the ring at Jackson’s.
Ashbourne, by contrast, displayed no such congeniality.
His compliments had weight rather than wit.
They carried implication. He did not merely admire Miss Vale’s turnout; he approved it.
He did not merely express pleasure at finding her well; he seemed to place health itself under his patronage.
There were women, no doubt, who found such attention a compliment.
Miss Vale did not appear to be among them.
“You were much discussed after Lady Stratton’s ball,” Harcourt said at one point, with just enough ease to make the remark seem accidental.
“Was I, indeed?” she asked. “How tiresome.”
“It was in an admiring manner, I assure you.”
“I had hoped to be inconspicuous.”
“You could never be that, my dear.”
Arch saw Ashbourne’s mouth alter at the presumption. While not enough to call it irritation, it was just enough to suggest that Harcourt had trespassed upon a tone he preferred to reserve for himself.
“Attention,” said Ashbourne, “is one of the natural taxes upon consequence.”
Miss Vale looked at him with grave curiosity. “Then consequence is overtaxed.”
Harcourt laughed. Ashbourne smiled, though he looked as if he had not entirely decided whether the remark had been wit or insult.
Arch, aware he had been silent too long, said, “That depends upon who is collecting.”
Francesca glanced towards him then, and the look was brief but unmistakably appreciative. It ought not to have pleased him but it did.
Lady Upton, having circulated sufficiently to ensure that all the right people had seen the right grouping of persons, now returned and attached herself once more to the little party.
“Mr. Harcourt, Lord Ashbourne,” she said smoothly, “how fortunate to find you here. I was just telling Lady Darnley that Miss Vale does not yet have many acquaintances in Town.”
“Then I am honoured to serve as one,” said Harcourt.
Ashbourne inclined his head. “As am I, your ladyship.”
“It is hardly in your style, I would have thought, to be fawning over females in the Park.” Arch turned to see his brother, Lord Dandridge, grinning at him.
“I never fawn.”
“One of Mama’s protégés?” Dandridge was looking at Miss Vale a bit too keenly as she spoke with her admirers.
“Sir Percival’s god-daughter. Do you not recall Miss Vale?”
His brother furrowed his brow. “I think I recall hearing the name. Will you introduce me?”
“Presently.” Miss Vale was still conversing and they stopped to listen.
“What else might be wanted?” she asked.
“Sense,” said Ashbourne.
“Opinion,” said Harcourt at the same moment.
“Silence,” said Arch under his breath.
Miss Vale heard him. He knew she had by the faint movement at the corner of her mouth.
Lady Upton, who may or may not have heard him and would certainly ignore it if she had, continued talking serenely, “Miss Vale has a particular interest in improvement,” she said.
“She owns several mills, you know. Mr. Harcourt, you must tell her of your speech on the matter. Lord Ashbourne, you must not for I hear it was too long.”
Ashbourne actually laughed. It was a sign of either good breeding or robust self-preservation under her ladyship’s fire.
Harcourt accepted the opening at once. “If Miss Vale has an interest in improvement,” he said, turning to her, “then I am at her service.”
“As am I in anything short of defending the present state of manufacturing law, which I cannot do with a clear conscience,” Ashbourne pronounced.
Francesca’s attention visibly honed. “Indeed, sir?”
“I begin to think that gentlemen who call every regulation dangerous to trade are often merely anxious that decency should prove expensive,” Harcourt retorted.
Arch watched the effect of that with a displeasure at once ridiculous and entirely real. Harcourt had found the right note—not flattery alone, though there was enough of that, but conviction, or something artfully close to it.
“What do you believe should be done?” she asked.
Ashbourne shifted, plainly disinclined to leave the field unchallenged. “Done?” he repeated. “One must proceed carefully where commerce is concerned. Sentiment does not run mills.”
“Nor does neglect improve them,” Harcourt returned.
“Meanwhile legislation may ruin what bad management has merely inconvenienced,” Ashbourne retorted.
There followed the sort of polished skirmish London prized: no raised voice, no open offence, only the exchange of positions with enough steel beneath the civility to make the encounter worth hearing.
Francesca listened closely. Arch listened more closely still—not to the politics, though those were of interest, but to Miss Vale herself.
He observed the way her attention settled when she was genuinely engaged, and he absorbed the fact that while Harcourt’s agreement seemed to interest her, Ashbourne’s condescension merely roused her resistance.
“Surely the lady cannot wish to hear this?” Ashbourne objected.
“Nothing could interest me more, my lord. The welfare of my tenants and workers is always at the forefront of my thoughts.”
“How peculiar. Perhaps a husband could take on the weight of those matters for you,” he suggested.
“I do not think Miss Vale to be one ever fully to relinquish such matters,” Harcourt argued in a manner to please Miss Vale.
“Indeed, sir, you are correct.”
Lady Upton intervened at that point as they were drawing a crowd. It was hardly the sort of exchange to find favour with Society’s high sticklers.
“While this discussion is, ah, enlightening, Francesca my dear, I wish to introduce you to an old friend of mine.” Very neatly, she took Miss Vale’s arm and led her away.
Frankly, Arch was surprised his mother had allowed the discussion to go on as long as it had.
However, he appreciated his mother’s cunning in dealing with Miss Vale.
She was not a typical Society miss. She was of age; she owned and ran an estate, not to mention several factories, and was thus fiercely independent.
Were his mother to ignore that fact, she would meet with resistance.
Arch was impressed that Miss Vale had managed his mother so well in return.