CHAPTER ELEVEN #2
‘Indeed I do.’ She curtseyed politely and extended her hand. ‘I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr Disley.’
Mr Disley bent over her hand and murmured something, clearly ill at ease in feminine company, and when he straightened was pink in the cheeks.
‘Is Lady Chalford not with you, Miss Ashling?’ Sir Lucius asked.
‘No, Sir Lucius, and it has given my cousin an opportunity to purchase a present for her birthday next week. At least, she says it is for my aunt’s birthday. I sincerely hope she is not buying a volume of poetry for mine! By coincidence, her birthday falls only two days before my own.’
148Amelia, who had wandered a little to the left, and had been lost in some verse, looked up. Sir Lucius bowed again, and repeated his introduction. Amelia regarded him with a wary eye, as if any innocuous comment might have deeper meaning, but his words were perfectly innocent.
‘I hope that you have found something that you think Lady Chalford will like,’ Sir Lucius commented politely. ‘On which day does your mama’s anniversary fall, ma’am?’
‘On Tuesday, sir, and,’ Amelia added in a sudden burst of confidence, ‘I have been desperate to find an excuse to come here without her.’ She paused, and then frowned slightly. ‘Do you like books, Sir Lucius?’
His eyebrows flew up involuntarily. ‘Why, yes, Miss Ashling, but surely since you find me within a bookshop …’
‘Oh no, sir.’ Amelia coloured. ‘I meant to say novels, not books. You have a novel in your hand.’
He had almost forgotten The Rescue of Lucrezia, which he had found just as he had been hailed by Mr Disley, still in his hand.
‘Ah.’ He smiled again. ‘I have a mama who enjoys lurid romances. Though to be fair, she also enjoys more serious material.’
Amelia had been reduced to blushing silence, and, taking pity upon her, he spoke instead to Elizabeth again. ‘Have you come in Lady Chalford’s carriage, Miss Ashling?’
‘No, sir, for we decided to walk. After all, a little exercise is good for one, and the air is less stuffy after the rain. We have a footman in attendance, I assure you, so you can be sure we do not flout the proprieties.’ A defensive note had 149crept into her voice, as if she anticipated his censure, and resented it.
‘No such thought crossed my mind, ma’am, I promise you,’ he assured her swiftly. ‘It is simply that it has come on to rain again.’
He indicated towards the front of the emporium, as Elizabeth turned her head. Rivulets of water were chasing hurriedly down the windowpanes.
‘Oh no! How depressing, and inconvenient.’
‘I regret I am without a conveyance, but permit me to hail you a hack when Miss Ashling, Miss Amelia Ashling, has selected her purchase.’
He sounded both solicitous and in an unusually good humour, and Elizabeth could not but smile and accept his offer prettily.
When he handed her into a vehicle some minutes later, he did so with a cheerful farewell and, impulsively, lifted her gloved hand to his lips.
Elizabeth blushed, and murmured embarrassed thanks.
Amelia cast her a sidelong glance but said nothing.
Sir Lucius carried on to his club with a certain spring in his step, which forced Mr Disley to almost trot along to keep up with the long strides. When he arrived, a trifle damp, he cheerfully announced to Lord Foxton, who hoped he would not catch cold, that the rain was in fact very refreshing.
Lady Rendlesham had been busy. Upon reflection, she had decided not to warn Lord Easby of his rival directly, thinking he would put it down to mere spite on her part.
150Far more enjoyable would be to stand back and watch him discover it through the web of rumour, the first threads of which she set humming during several morning calls that took up her afternoon, enabling her to return to her house in eager anticipation of the results.
The rumour was easy to start by simply giving the truth of what she had seen and heard but with a particular emphasis.
After all, Sir Lucius Radstock had been in the jeweller’s, and Mr Rundell himself had been overheard to say that the item, clearly of family significance, would be ready shortly in as good a condition as when presented to the first bride for whom it had been purchased.
It needed but the additional information, supplied sotto voce, that Sir Lucius had appeared in a very good humour and had purchased, significantly, another item of ladies’ jewellery, to intimate that he was clearly about to make some lady an offer, and that he had every expectation of being accepted.
Rumour, like flame, had tongues that spread quickly, and by the evening’s end there were a number of ladies who could be said to have looked with interest to see if Sir Lucius Radstock was singling out any young lady in particular, and some had clearly already come to the correct conclusion that Miss Ashling might be the object of his gallantry.
However, they were disappointed if they had hoped to see them together that evening, since Sir Lucius was engaged with the Duke of Grafton and several other members of the Jockey Club, and was not present at Mrs Goodison-Thorpe’s party.
Elizabeth was conscious of being observed, but at a loss 151to think of any possible reason, until old Lady Killingholme placed a gnarled hand upon her arm and fixed her beady eye upon her.
‘’Bout time too, I say, my dear. Don’t be missish and say you need time to think, for gentlemen do not, whatever some ninnies may say, like to be kept dangling.’
‘Ma’am? You mistake, surely.’ Elizabeth frowned in perplexity.
‘If you are intimating that I am about to be made an offer, I can only assure you that I am entirely unaware of it. I think, perhaps, you might have heard something concerning my cousin, who is, confusingly, also Miss Ashling, though I would hasten to add that I do not think—’
‘I may be old, but I am not senile, my girl, and I know the difference between you and Maria Chalford’s chit. I can also vouch that the girl would not be the sort to trap Lucius Radstock. Never saw him as much as glance at a child of her stamp.’
Elizabeth felt the room reel about her.
‘I repeat, ma’am, I am unaware of any,’ and she stressed the ‘any’, ‘gentleman with an intention of making me an offer.’
‘Well, I don’t know about that. Seems to me to be a whole parcel of ’em keen to fix their interest with you.
None of them a patch on Lucius Radstock, however more elevated their titles.
I knew his father, a good, fair man.’ The old lady’s eyes twinkled for a moment and her mouth pursed in a myriad of lines.
‘Not half as well as I knew his grandfather, mind you, before he was wed. He was one of the bucks who came to watch me dress.’
152Elizabeth was momentarily diverted from her shock. ‘Dress, ma’am? Goodness.’
‘Oh yes, mind you we did not go about in the flimsy rags you have clinging to you today. We had petticoats and panniers and stiff brocades and … Once the underdress was on, it was permitted for gentlemen to see the toilette, hair powdering and rouge and …’ She sighed reminiscently, then jerked herself back to the present.
‘But that was nigh on forty years ago. What I am saying is you are a lucky chit.’
‘I am sure Sir Lucius has no intention—’
‘Rubbish. Why else have bride jewels refurbished or buy a ring, and go about looking like the cat that got the cream?’
The rumour had already begun to take on a life of its own.
Elizabeth felt sick. Was that the reason he had been so engaging today?
She had felt happy in his company, but was his happiness based upon the arrogant assumption that all he had to do was make her an offer and she would fall upon his manly bosom in relief and say yes?
Indignation rose in her. What cause had she given him to believe such a thing?
Lady Killingholme watched her as her eyes grew angry, and spoke more gently.
‘My dear, I am an old woman, so I can give you advice. Sometimes a man don’t see that his intentions have been understood, and acts hasty.
Don’t cut up rough with him for it, and don’t put him off until you are sure you do not care for the idea.
Many a good marriage has been based on far less than the namby-pamby languishing that girls 153call love nowadays.
Men of his ilk do not make pretty speeches, but words are just words when all is said and done.
He’s a real man, not like that milksop poet who has been dangling after you. ’
‘Mr Escott,’ replied Elizabeth, through almost clenched teeth, ‘is only interested in me in as much as he finds me inspirational to his poetry, ma’am.’
‘Nodcock. His mother is a die-away female full of silly notions. You take my advice and think hard before you refuse a good man, and one whose interest in you is far more red-blooded than a milksop who thinks you his poetic muse.’
Elizabeth blushed, and nodded rather mechanically, but was a prey to so many conflicting emotions that no further response was forthcoming.