CHAPTER THIRTEEN #2
208‘Well, I daresay a pin would come in rather useful in here today, in assisting one’s passage through such a … a throng.’
‘I think those who might have entertained themselves looking in shop windows have found the weather too cold and come here for the warmth, sir,’ offered Caroline. ‘Oh dear.’
‘Oh dear, Miss Brailes?’ Mr Gilmorton looked a little surprised.
‘My apologies. We have been spotted by my brother and a gentleman with him, so we are going to be interrupted. It also means, Louisa, that I am going to have to return home with Frederick and Mama, who must be somewhere about.’ She sighed. ‘And I had such a nice morning.’
‘Is your brother so much the ogre, ma’am?’ queried Mr Gilmorton.
‘Frederick an ogre? Goodness no, not an ogre, more a … blight.’
Mr Gilmorton laughed, and was still grinning when Frederick Brailes made his bow and introduced his new acquaintance, Lord Orlando Hurstwood.
Louisa disliked the man from the moment he opened his mouth.
He was not patronising like Frederick, but he was so smooth that she felt he ought to slither rather than walk.
He was handsome, in a too perfect way, with not a glossy pale gold hair out of place, excellent tailoring, and shapely calves encased in gleaming hessians.
‘My dear Lady Dembleby,’ he drawled, making ‘dear’ sound like ‘dee-aah’, ‘charmed, utterly charmed. And, of course, Miss Brailes,’ he added, clearly dismissing Caroline 209in one glance and two words. ‘Brailes has been talking of little else besides you all morning.’
‘How terribly impertinent of him,’ replied Louisa, with a bright, if brittle, smile. Frederick Brailes assumed she spoke in jest, but Lord Orlando’s eyes narrowed for a fraction of a second. ‘Are you acquainted with Mr Gilmorton?’
‘No, I cannot say that I am.’ Lord Orlando looked at Mr Gilmorton without any sign of enthusiasm.
‘Gilmorton.’ Rather formal bows were exchanged, and Mr Gilmorton looked far less jolly and decidedly more serious all of a sudden, and most certainly much more aristocratic, which seemed to place him on a par with Lord Orlando, and above Mr Brailes.
Without actually moving his feet he seemed to stand a little closer to the ladies, and Louisa stiffened a fraction.
She would not have thought Mr Gilmorton capable of the sin of being ‘proprietorial’ and treating them as a dog would treat his bone.
Lord Orlando noted the body language of both and drew an obvious, if incorrect, conclusion.
He was staying in Bath because his presence in Town was currently unwelcome, at least with certain gentlemen, but he was already bored.
Brailes, with whom he had struck up a conversation only because there was nobody interesting to entertain him, he had put down as a provincial with aspirations, and quickly realised that he was likely to attach himself like a limpet forthwith.
Lady Dembleby looked a more interesting proposition, since young widows were often very willing to flirt, if no more, with so charming a gentleman as himself.
It was clear, however, 210that Gilmorton was making a play for the lady himself, but had not won her as yet.
Not quite in the common style, Lady Dembleby.
His sojourn in Bath might be less tedious than he had anticipated.
‘Was your visit to the dressmaker successful, ma’am?’ enquired Frederick Brailes, with an ingratiating smile.
‘Successful? Well, the gown fits, with some minor adjustments, if that is what you mean, Mr Brailes. I had not considered that it would not, since I was measured for it.’ Louisa looked at him coldly, but he blundered on.
‘Excellent, and no doubt it enabled you and my sister … one of those terribly interesting female conversations that mere men would not comprehend.’
‘Oh no, sir. Any man of sense would have comprehended our conversation perfectly well. Mr Gilmorton, were you confounded when you encountered us in Green Street?’ She smiled sweetly at Mr Gilmorton, who noted the glitter in her eyes.
‘Not at all, ma’am. Our interchange was perfectly clear to even one of my humble intellect.’ He managed to keep a straight face, but only just.
‘And did you find the book that the Duchess requested, sir?’ asked Caroline, as her brother opened his mouth to speak.
‘Thankfully I did. I fear I would have been sent round all the circulating libraries had I failed. I am actually convinced she only reads them in order to dislike them and criticise, for I have not heard her speak well of a single one as yet, so we shall see how the latest fares. It is another written by a woman, but not one of those things with mad monks and clanking chains. I doubt my grandmama will 211think much of “Sensibility”, but she might find merit in “Sense”, for those form the title.’
‘I read that at Christmas, Mr Gilmorton. The style is rather good, to my mind, but I did find the sister given to “sensibility” rather trying. I kept wanting to shake her.’
‘But I will lay odds it is not a patch on Marmion. I read that aloud to everyone the other winter. It was very dramatic.’ Mr Brailes spoke with assurance.
‘You certainly read it in a dramatic manner, Frederick. Why, Mama spilt her tea over her gown one evening when the stressing of one word was a positive explosion of sound.’ She paused for a moment.
‘I have never heard the word “dull” given such power.’ She smiled innocently, but Louisa suffered an inexplicable spasm of coughing, and Mr Gilmorton cleared his throat.
‘Ah yes, in the sixth canto. I recall it well.’ To Caroline’s acute embarrassment, her brother took a deep breath, put out his hand in a theatrical gesture, and declaimed,
‘“For the good countess ceaseless prayed
To Heaven and saints, her sons to aid,
And with short interval did pass
From prayer to book, from book to mass,
And all in high baronial pride—
A life both dull and dignified”’
with the stress upon the fourth and last syllables of each line. Several people halted mid-sentence and stared at them. Caroline’s pink cheeks grew scarlet.
‘Please, not now, Frederick,’ she said in an urgent undervoice.
212‘You are right, my dear sister,’ agreed Mr Brailes, in a tone that implied this was a rarity.
‘It is much more suited to a small gathering. Lady Dembleby, since your socialising is still somewhat … your mourning state precluding many activities, perhaps I could come, with Mama and Caroline of course, and read to you tomorrow evening.’
‘It so happens that I am engaged tomorrow evening,’ responded Louisa rather desperately.
‘Yes, Lady Dembleby and Mrs Goodworth, with Miss Newent, and your sister,’ lied Mr Gilmorton, without so much as a flicker of an eyelid, ‘are forming a small party at her grace’s invitation attending, er, the Wednesday concert at the Upper Rooms.’ He hoped he could persuade his redoubtable relative that she wanted to listen to an evening of music, and leave her own residence after her dinner.
Thankfully, the Upper Rooms were very conveniently situated for those in The Circus.
‘Oh. Well, another time then.’ Mr Brailes looked for one moment as though he had expected Louisa to say that she would forego the concert to hear him read.
‘Perhaps, Mr Brailes.’
Lord Orlando observed all this with silent amusement.
Brailes was clearly a fool, since he could not, or would not, see that the lady found him objectionable.
All in all, Lord Orlando thought that attending the concert himself might be remarkably entertaining, and not for the music.
He would first of all improve his own standing with Lady Dembleby by removing Brailes from her vicinity.
He did so with a glance at her that intimated that he performed this service for her benefit.
213‘I am mortified,’ murmured Caroline. ‘Read to you indeed! I promise you it is funny for five minutes and then unbelievably boring. Even Mama thought so. Mr Gilmorton, you have rescued us.’
‘I would like to say that it was nothing, but behold me in a quake, for I now have to persuade my grandmama that she wants to attend a concert when she termed the last one “abominable scraping and warbling”. I can only suggest that if she refuses, then the “party” goes without her, upon the excuse of a headache. Will Lady Brailes be happy to let you attend, Miss Brailes?’ He looked directly at Caroline, and she was struck by the contrast with Lord Orlando, who had glanced, dismissed and ignored her.
‘Oh, if the invitation comes from so illustrious a source as the Dowager Duchess of Furness, sir, she will accept most eagerly.’
‘Nor Mrs Newent, unless they have a prior engagement. Litter the conversation with frequent use of “her grace” and it is amazing how smooth one’s path becomes.’
‘Do you think you might come with me to make my request?’ suggested Mr Gilmorton. ‘One ought never to face the enemy with insufficient forces.’
‘Your grandmother cannot be your enemy, surely, Mr Gilmorton?’ Louisa raised an eyebrow.
‘No, but on occasion an enemy would be easier to handle, ma’am. I left her talking to Lady Bramley.’
He led them across the room, to where the Duchess was holding forth to another elderly lady. She looked Mr Gilmorton up and down.
‘Abandon me when you see fit, do you?’
214‘No, ma’am. I had intended to bring Lady Dembleby and Miss Brailes to you, but we were waylaid, so to speak. May I present to you Miss Brailes, who is a friend of Lady Dembleby and a neighbour of her family in Berkshire.’
Caroline made her curtsey, and found herself under the scrutiny of a pair of bright eyes in a lined face.
‘Hmm,’ said her grace, which might, Caroline thought, mean almost anything.