Chapter Two #2
The Viscount was a good-natured young man, and whenever he thought of Miss Wantage, which was not often, it was with mild affection.
In his graceless teens he had made use of her willing services, had taught her to play cricket, and to toil after him with the game-bag when he went out for a little hedgerow shooting.
He had bullied her, and tyrannised over her, lost his temper with her, boxed her ears, and forced her to engage in various sports and pastimes which terrified her; but he had permitted her to trot at his heels, and he had allowed no one else to tease or ill-treat her.
Her situation was not a happy one. She was an orphan, taken out of charity when only eight years old to live in her cousin’s house, and to be brought up with her three daughters, Cassandra, Eudora, and Sophronia.
She had shared their lessons, and had worn their outgrown dresses, and had run their numerous errands – such services being, her Cousin Jane informed her, a very small return for all the generosity shown her.
The Viscount, who disliked Cassandra, Eudora, and Sophronia only one degree less than he disliked their Mama, gave it as his considered opinion, when he was fifteen years old, that they were brutes, and treated their poor little cousin like a dog.
He had therefore no difficulty now, as he looked at Miss Wantage, in interpreting correctly her somewhat sweeping statement.
‘Those cats been bullying you?’ he said.
Miss Wantage blew her nose. ‘I’m going to be a governess, Sherry,’ she informed him dolefully.
‘Going to be a what?’ demanded his lordship.
‘A governess. Cousin Jane says so.’
‘Never heard such nonsense in my life!’ said the Viscount, slightly irritated. ‘You aren’t old enough!’
‘Cousin Jane says I am. I shall be seventeen in a fortnight’s time, you know.’
‘Well, you don’t look it,’ said Sherry, disposing of the matter. ‘You always were a silly little chit, Hero. Shouldn’t believe everything people say. Ten to one she didn’t mean it.’
‘Oh yes!’ said Miss Wantage sadly. ‘You see, I always knew I should have to be one day, because that’s why I learned to play that horrid pianoforte, and to paint in water-colours, so that I could be a governess when I was grown-up.
Only I don’t want to be, Sherry! Not yet!
Not before I have enjoyed myself just for a little while. ’
The Viscount cast off the rug which covered his shapely legs. ‘Jason, get down and walk the horses!’ he ordered, and sprang down from the curricle and advanced to the low wall. ‘Is that mossy?’ he asked suspiciously. ‘I’m damned if I’ll spoil these breeches for you or anyone else, Hero!’
‘No, no, truly it’s not!’ Miss Wantage assured him. ‘You can sit on my cloak, Sherry, can’t you?’
‘Well, I can’t stay for long,’ the Viscount warned her.
He hoisted himself up beside her and put a brotherly arm round her shoulders.
‘Now, don’t go on crying, brat; it makes you look devilish ugly!
’ he said. ‘Besides, I don’t like it. Why has that old cat suddenly taken it into her head to send you off?
I suppose you’ve been doing something you shouldn’t. ’
‘No, it isn’t that, though I did break one of the best tea-cups,’ said Hero, leaning gratefully against him. ‘It’s partly because Edwin kissed me, I think.’
‘You’re bamming me!’ said his lordship incredulously. ‘Your wretched little cousin Edwin hasn’t got enough bottom to kiss a chamber-maid!’
‘Well, I don’t know about that, Sherry, but he did kiss me, and it was the horridest thing imaginable. And Cousin Jane found out about it, and she said it was my fault, and I was a designing hussy, and that she had nourished a snake in her bosom. But I am not a snake, Sherry!’
‘Never mind about that!’ said Sherry. ‘I can’t get over Edwin! If it don’t beat all! He must have been foxed, and that’s all there is to it.’
‘No, indeed he wasn’t,’ said Hero earnestly.
‘Then it just shows how you can be mistaken in a man. All the same, Hero, you shouldn’t let a miserable, snivelling fellow like that kiss you. It’s not the thing at all.’
‘But how could I prevent him, Sherry, when he caught me, and squeezed me so tightly that I could scarcely breathe?’
The Viscount gave a crow of laughter. ‘Lord, only to think of Edwin turning into such an out-and-outer! It seems to me I had best teach you a trick or two to counter that kind of thing. Wonder I didn’t do it before.’
‘Thank you, Sherry,’ said Hero, with real gratitude. ‘Only now that I am being sent to be a governess in a horrid school in Bath, I don’t suppose I shall need any tricks.’
‘It’s my belief that it’s all a hum,’ declared Sherry. ‘You don’t look like any governess I’ve ever seen, and I’ll lay you odds no school would hire you. Do you know anything, Hero?’
‘Well, I didn’t think I did,’ replied Hero. ‘Only Miss Mundesley says I shall do very well, and it is her sister who has the school, so I dare say it has all been arranged between them. She is our governess, you know. At least, she used to be.’
‘I know,’ nodded Sherry. ‘Sour-faced old maid she was, too! I’ll tell you what, brat: if you go to this precious school they’ll make you a damned drudge, and so I warn you! Come to think of it, what the devil are they about, turning a chit like you upon the world?’
‘Miss Mundesley says I shall be very strictly taken care of,’ said Hero. ‘They are not turning me upon the world, exactly.’
‘That’s not the point. Damme, the more I come to think of it the worse it is! You’re not a pauper-brat!’
Miss Wantage raised her innocent eyes to his face. ‘But that is what I am, Sherry. I haven’t any money at all.’
‘That don’t signify,’ said the Viscount impatiently.
‘What I mean is, females of your breeding aren’t governesses!
Never knew your father myself, but I know all about him.
Very good family – a curst sight better than the Bagshots!
What’s more, you’ve got a lot of damned starchy relations.
Norfolk, or some such place. Heard my mother speak of them.
Sounded to me like a very dull set of gudgeons, but that’s neither here nor there. You’d better write to them.’
‘It won’t be of any use,’ sighed Hero. ‘I think my father quarrelled with them, because they wouldn’t do anything for me when he died. So I dare say they wouldn’t object to my becoming a governess at all.’
‘Well, I do,’ said the Viscount. ‘In fact, I won’t have it. You’ll have to think of something else.’
Miss Wantage saw nothing either arbitrary or unreasonable in this speech. She agreed to it, but a little doubtfully. ‘Marry the curate, do you mean, Sherry?’ she asked, slightly wrinkling her short nose.
The Viscount stared at her in the liveliest astonishment. ‘Why the devil should I mean anything of the sort? Of course I don’t! Of all the nonsensical girls, you’re the worst, Hero!’
Miss Wantage accepted this rebuke meekly enough, but said: ‘Well, I think it’s a nonsensical notion too, but Cousin Jane says it must be the curate, or that horrid school.’
‘You don’t mean to tell me that the curate wants to marry you?’ demanded Sherry.
Miss Wantage nodded. ‘He has offered for me,’ she said, not without pride.
‘It seems to me,’ said his lordship severely, ‘that you have been getting devilish flighty since I saw you last! Marry the curate, indeed! I dare say he kissed you behind the door too?’
‘Oh, no, Sherry!’ Miss Wantage assured him. ‘He has behaved with the greatest propriety, Cousin Jane says!’
‘So I should hope!’ said his lordship, rather spoiling the austerity of this remark, however, by adding reflectively, a moment later: ‘Sounds to me like another dull dog.’
‘Yes, he is,’ agreed Hero. ‘I quite think he may be very kind, but oh, Sherry, if you won’t be offended with me, indeed I would rather be a governess, for I don’t at all want to marry him!’
‘What beats me,’ said his lordship, ‘is why he should want to marry you! He must be a curst rum touch, Hero. You’d never do for a parson’s wife! You can’t have told him how you glued the Bassenthwaites’ pew that time everyone was in such a pucker.’
‘Well, no, I didn’t,’ admitted Hero. ‘But it was you who did the glueing really, Sherry.’
‘If that isn’t a female all over!’ exclaimed Sherry. ‘Next you’ll say you had nothing to do with it!’
Miss Wantage tucked a small, confiding hand into his arm. ‘I did help, didn’t I, Anthony?’
‘Yes, and spilled the glue over my new smalls because you thought you heard someone coming, silly chit!’ said the Viscount, recalling this incident with a darkling look in his eye.
Miss Wantage gave a little chuckle. ‘Oh, how you did slap my cheek! It was red for hours and hours, and I had to make up such a tale to account for it!’
‘No, did I really?’ said the Viscount, rather conscience-stricken, and giving the cheek a friendly rub. ‘What a deuced young brute I was! Not but what you’d have tried the patience of a saint, brat, often and often!’
‘Yes, that is what my cousins say, and I can’t but feel that I should try the curate’s patience even more, Sherry, because I do seem always to be getting into a scrape, though indeed I don’t mean to. At least, not every time.’
‘Don’t keep on harping on the curate!’ ordered the Viscount.
‘The whole idea of your marrying him is the greatest piece of nonsense I ever heard! In fact, it’s a very good thing I chanced to come down here, for the lord knows what silly trick you’d have tried to play off if I hadn’t caught you in time! ’
‘No, and I am so glad to see you again, Anthony,’ she replied. ‘I thought perhaps you would come.’
‘Good God, did you? Why?’
‘To wait on Isabella,’ she replied innocently.
‘Ha!’ uttered his lordship, with a harsh and bitter laugh.
Miss Wantage looked wonderingly up at him. ‘You don’t sound very pleased, Sherry. Would she not see you?’
‘Pleased!’ ejaculated his lordship. ‘Much I have to be pleased about!’