CHAPTER EIGHT #2
“He did, but the servant bade him enter, and a few minutes later Lord Exton came out to speak to me. He said he had caught sight of me the day we brought Henry home, and recognised me from my resemblance to you. He questioned Aubrey and confirmed my identity.” Laura paused, but when no questions or comments ensued, she rushed into speech again, uncomfortable with her mother’s silence.
“He would like to call on you, but not if it would distress you.” Again an inviting pause drew no immediate response.
“Lord Exton is an attractive man, Mama, and, I am persuaded, a very kind and agreeable person.” Laura’s eyes and voice pleaded with her parent, whose manner suddenly became brisk.
“Naturally Lord Exton may call,” she said, rising and putting an arm around her daughter’s shoulders.
Realising that her mother’s intention was to escort her to the door, Laura took a couple of reluctant steps and stopped, turning to face her. “Mama, does my uncle know who Lord Exton is, his connection — former connection to you?”
“Oswald was aware that my father had refused an offer for my hand. We never had any conversation on the subject, so I cannot answer that question, but it does not signify in any event. I’ll see you at dinner, dearest.”
Under her mother’s gentle propulsion, Laura found herself out in the corridor. She heard the soft click of the latch. as she stared at the door in helpless rebellion.
She’d been too busy sorting out her impressions of the scene with Lord Exton during the ride home to anticipate her mother’s reaction to her momentous news, but she’d never have predicted what she could only term the absence of reaction that had just taken place.
Perhaps she should not have been so astounded at the blankness of her parent’s countenance and the neutrality of her speech, she told herself, moving slowly away from that firmly closed door.
For someone with no very high regard for the entire masculine population, she seemed to have been cherishing some wildly romantical notions about thwarted young love as it pertained to her mother and Stephen Wright.
A lot had happened in the intervening years to dim the memories of this first love for her mother, which did not necessarily imply that she would be slow to welcome an old friend into their limited circle this spring.
Certainly she had raised no objection to having Lord Exton call at Mount Street.
Laura headed up the stairs to the schoolroom while a niggling little voice at the back of her mind whispered that Lord Exton’s manner had not hinted at tepid friendship.
She might be in the dark regarding her mother’s present feelings, if any, for the memory of the man she had once desired to marry, but Lord Exton’s thinly veiled excitement at the prospect of meeting his former love again had been as transparent as crystal.
Laura nibbled her lower lip as she reminded herself that it was not the province of a child, even an adult child, to concern herself with a widowed parent’s personal attachments.
Her interest might well be construed as unbecoming presumption by either or both parties.
Although it would be idle to deny the existence of such presumption, she could at least disguise it, she vowed, entering the schoolroom and summoning up a carefree smile for Aubrey, who was leafing through Ackermann’s Microcosm of London, the chess board on the table in readiness for the proposed game.
She was delighted with the illustrations he showed her from the book, which featured coloured depictions of many of London’s best known edifices, the result of an inspired collaboration between Messrs.
Pugin and Rowlandson. “Now I can see what I missed the other day,” she said, gazing at a sketch of the interior of the House of Commons peopled by Rowlandson’s clever caricatures surrounding a bewigged Speaker on his raised seat.
“There are three volumes of illustrations in all,” Aubrey informed her, indicating the others on the table.
“They belong to my father, but I have permission to keep them here at present. You may borrow them whenever you wish,” he added magnanimously.
“They contain pictures of all the theatres and societies and places you might like to visit while you are here.”
“And some I certainly would not enjoy visiting, like prisons, hospitals and workhouses, I see,” she replied, thumbing quickly through the pages, “as well as Brooks’ gaming room and Tattersalls, which is most intriguing of all in view of the prohibition of females in such masculine preserves.
Thank you, Aubrey, I’d love to study these volumes at leisure.
There must be a number of interesting places within walking distance, though I am most desirous of seeing St. Paul’s and the Tower before I leave.
When Nora has fully recovered from having her tooth drawn, perhaps we might hire a hackney to take us to the city one day. ”
“Yes,” Aubrey assented eagerly. “Did you know that the horse-armoury at the Tower has life-sized effigies of every king since William the Conqueror, all seated on their horses, some in their original armour?”
“That is a treat I must on no account miss,” Laura replied with convincing enthusiasm, handing him back the volume she held at the moment, thus signifying her readiness for their chess game.
Never having had to consider the feelings of a sibling, Laura debated within herself whether she should allow Aubrey to win their contest, but that question was moot, for it soon became evident that she would need all her wits and concentration to give the child a fair battle.
Aubrey’s lively mind and precocious interests, not to mention his sound grasp of the principles of chess, engaged virtually all of her attention.
She prevailed in the end, but did not make the mistake of assuming she could easily repeat the feat in future.
There was more to Aubrey than youthful charm.
He really was a most promising lad, she decided later with a little glow of pride in kinship as she got ready for dinner.
Sir Oswald graced the family board with his presence that evening.
Laura, observing him discreetly as was her wont, thought he had never appeared so mellow and uncritical since their arrival.
Her father, though physically present every.
evening, had usually seemed mentally distant, uninterested — she was tempted to say contemptuous, even — of the small domestic matters or neighbourhood events that generated the main part of his wife’s and daughter’s dinner conversation.
In contrast, Sir Oswald’s notice — and control, Laura suspected — extended to every aspect of life under his roof.
This was brought home to her forcibly when, after briefly describing a dinner among like-minded politically active acquaintances, he turned with what Laura could only term an arch smile toward his sister.
“I understand from Jimson that you entertained a distinguished caller the other day, my dear Annabelle.”
Laura concealed a smile at her mother’s initial look of confusion and responded to the beseeching glance she sent her daughter. “I believe my uncle must be referring to Lord Hastings, Mama.”
“Oh! Oh yes, to be sure. Actually Lord Hastings has been our only caller of late.”
“I don’t know about distinguished, but he certainly is the most handsome visitor we’ve ever entertained in this house,” Sophia piped up. “And with the most charming manners, would you not agree, Laura?” she added with a gleam of mischief.
“Certainly I found Lord Hastings’ manners and address to be everything one would expect from a gentleman calling upon ladies of his acquaintance,” Laura said in judicious tones.
“I was not aware that you possessed any London acquaintance save Lady Bentley.” Sir Oswald ignored these irrelevancies and directed his remark to his sister.
“I don’t — at least, I did not know that Lord Hastings was in London,” Mrs. Marsh replied.
Sir Oswald seemed to find this answer insufficient. “He is an old friend from Hertfordshire, then?” he probed delicately, pausing in the motions of slicing the veal collop on his plate to examine his sister’s face.
“Actually, Lord Hastings is a rather recent acquaintance; he is Lady Crofton’s godson. You might recall passing by Belfort, the Crofton estate, when you came for James’ funeral. It has a distinctive Jacobean gatehouse.”
Sipping from her water glass, Laura watched her mother return placidly to her dinner and awarded her full marks for a seemingly artless and confiding reply that divulged nothing of the circumstances of their acquaintance with Lord Hastings.
In fact, from anyone but her patently honest parent, that reply might have defined the word “smokescreen.”
Laura’s private amusement did not survive the inevitable reflection that any acquaintance she or her mother formed in London could not exist solely as the result of their personal choice, but depended on her uncle’s sufferance in the end.
Suppose, for instance, that Sir Oswald chose to take against the resumption of friendship between his sister and the man his father had rebuffed long ago.
They would have no recourse but to obey his autocratic dictates while under his roof, a terrifying prospect under the circumstances.
All her former reasons for not wishing to come to town began to bubble up to the surface of Laura’s mind, destroying her appetite for what was the best meal yet served in this house.
She almost missed her mother’s casual remark to her brother.
“By the way, Oswald, Aubrey left a card at Lord Exton’s house this afternoon and actually met Henry’s father, who was rather pathetically pleased to find a friend for his son.”
“That’s settled, then. It will be good for Aubrey to see someone his own age occasionally.”