Friday's Child (23 page)

Miss Milborne passed over this unflattering description of Lord Wrotham’s devotion, and said: “I am persuaded you have not the least cause to feel uneasy. There was nothing in his manner last night to warrant any jealousy on your part, upon my honour!”

“There had better not be, by Jove!” said his lordship, his eye kindling.

There was no opportunity for further discussion. A widow’s lozenge-coach had drawn up alongside the Milbornes’ barouche, and the Dowager Lady Sheringham was already leaning out of the window to bestow a greeting upon her dear Isabella. She acknowledged her son with a sigh and a sad smile, but appeared to derive some comfort from the spectacle of him conversing with Miss Milborne. Her manner, if not her actual words, held so strong a flavour of the might-have-been that Miss Milborne felt her colour rising, and the Viscount, recalling his engagements, sheered off in a hurry.

“Ah, my love!” murmured Lady Sheringham. “If only things had been otherwise! I live in dread of his bitterly regretting his rash marriage. When I saw him beside your carriage, I could not suppress the thought that—”

“I am persuaded, ma’am, that you need harbour no fears for his happiness!” Miss Milborne said quickly, conscious of the ears on the box of her carriage.

“I wish I might believe you are right,” sighed the dowager, who had a sublime disregard for servants. “I own I was dismayed to learn from Mrs Burrell that my daughter-in-law, as I suppose I must call her, elected to appear at Almack’s last night with that dreadful young Wrotham as her cavalier. But I knew how it would be from the outset! I believe he is for ever in her company.”

Miss Milborne was spared the necessity of answering by the somewhat acid and overloud comments of a hackney carriage driver whose progress was being impeded by the lozenge-coach. Lady Sheringham was obliged to desire her coachman to drive on, leaving her young friend to digest at her leisure her sinister remarks.

Lord Wrotham, meanwhile, by a superhuman effort of will, continued to hold aloof from the Beauty, not, indeed, as his well-wishers hoped, from a resolve to be done with her, but in the hope that this change of treatment might induce her to look more kindly upon his suit. One of his married sisters, who desired nothing so much as to see him married to an heiress, had given him a great deal of worldly advice, and however poor an opinion he might hold of his sisters’ advice in general, he thought that Augusta very likely knew what she was talking about when the subject under discussion was the capriciousness of the female sex. So far, events seemed to have borne out Augusta’s dictum: Wrotham had not failed to perceive the effect his escorting Hero to Almack’s had had upon Miss Milborne. It had gone to his heart to respond only with a bow to the most welcoming smile he had received from the Beauty for many weeks, but he had done it; and if it gave him a good deal of pain to see her subsequent passages with Sir Barnabas Crawley, at least he was shrewd enough to suspect that these were designed to make him jealous. He determined to make no sign for several days, and spent a happy hour in devising a romantic gesture which must melt a heart already thawing towards him. Miss Milborne had told him once that violets were her favourite flowers. The fact that she had chosen to present him with this information at a moment when he had laid an enormous bouquet of roses at her feet was a little daunting, but he had treasured up the knowledge against a future occasion, and he now perceived how to put it to excellent account. It was not perhaps the easiest task in the world to obtain violets at this season of the year, but to a forceful young man in love all things were possible. Miss Milborne should receive a posy of violets in an elegant holder upon the evening of Lady Fakenham’s ball. She would surely know who must have sent them, but just in case there should be any mistake he would enclose his card with the flowers, with a brief message written upon it. He was unable to decide between
Wear these for my sake,
and
If you wear these tonight I shall know what to think,
and he ended by carrying this problem to Hero.

Hero naturally thought the whole notion very pretty, and could not conceive how any female could resist wearing flowers which had cost so much time and trouble to procure. But as she had a very practical mind she felt herself obliged to point out to George that Isabella could hardly wear a posy of violets in a filigree holder. George saw the force of this argument, but when he had written out another card, with the words
Carry these for my sake,
he could not like the alteration.

“Well, I know what I should write if I were you, George,” said Hero. “I should just write
With my love
.”

"With my homage!"
corrected George reverently.

“Yes, if you choose, but for my part, I think it would be more touching to put
love
.”

“How if I wrote,
Carry these and you carry my heart?"
said George, attacked by sudden inspiration.

Hero gave a gasp, and said in a shaken tone: “I don’t at all know why it should be so, dear George, but—but I
think
that would make me want to laugh, if I were Isabella.”

“It would?” he exclaimed, shocked.

She nodded.

“Well, I do not understand how it could possibly do so. However, I dare say you may be right. I should like to mention my heart, though. Would it make you laugh if I wrote,
Hold these tonight, my heart is in them
—or
with them,
or perhaps
goes with them
?”

“Yes, it would,” replied Hero frankly.

“I should not like to run such a risk,” he said, looking very much put out. “I think I will write
Wear these for my sake,
after all. Dash it, she will know what I mean!”

Having settled this to his moderate satisfaction, he soon took his leave of Hero, and went off in tolerably good spirits. He met Sherry on the doorstep, but he was too intent on pursuing his quest for violets to do more than exchange a brief greeting with him. Sherry regarded his retreating figure with dark suspicion, and went straight upstairs to the drawing-room to demand of his wife if George lived in Half Moon Street?

She said innocently: “I thought he lived in Ryder Street? Has he removed from there, Sherry? He said nothing of it to me, and he was with me not five minutes ago.”

“I’m well aware of that!” said his lordship tartly. “And I should like to know what he was doing here! I suppose you will say he called to see me!”

“Oh no, I don’t think he wanted to see you, Sherry! He came to ask my advice about something. You won’t mention it, will you? He is going to send a bouquet of violets to Isabella for the Fakenhams’ ball. He says they are her favourite flowers.”

“Oh!” said his lordship. “Well, I don’t see what he wants with your advice!”

“He did want my advice, but I think I ought not to tell you what it was about, because I dare say he would not like it known,” confided Hero.

“It seems to me,” said Sherry severely, “that Bella Milborne ain’t the only female George has an eye to!”

“Oh no, Sherry!” Hero said earnestly. “Indeed, you are quite wrong! Why, you cannot mean that you suspect George of having an eye to me? Oh, Sherry, how nonsensical! I assure you, he does nothing but talk of Isabella!”

“Well, I don’t know,” said Sherry, looking her over critically. “The fact of the matter is you seem to have grown so devilish pretty since I married you that there’s no knowing what will happen next.”

She blushed rosily. “Have I, Sherry? Have I really? I expect it is just the new way I have of dressing my hair, and all my grand gowns.”

“Yes, very likely,” he agreed. “I must say, I never thought you above the ordinary myself, but if you go on like this the lord only knows where it will end!”

“But, Sherry, you do not mind my growing to be pretty, do you?”

“Oh, I don’t
mind
it!” replied his lordship. “The thing is, I didn’t bargain for it, that’s all, and if you are to have fellows like George for ever haunting the house, I can see it will be a dashed nuisance. And now I come to think of it, George ain’t the only one! There’s Gil! Hardest case I ever met in my life, and what must he do but take you out driving to Salt Hill, just as though he were in the habit of driving females, which he ain’t. Yes, and who was that curst rum touch I found with you last week?”

“Mr Kilby, do you mean, Sherry?”

“I dare say. Not that it signifies, for I fancy he won’t come here to make sheep’s eyes at you again!”

She gave a little giggle. “I must say, I think you were very uncivil and disobliging to him, Sherry. I don’t know what he can have thought!”

“Oh, don’t you?” retorted Sherry grimly. “Well, he knew dashed well what to think, let me tell you!” He returned unexpectedly to the original bone of contention. “But that’s neither here nor there. Whoever heard of a fellow’s wanting the advice of a chit like you, I should like to know? Rather too brown, Kitten! In fact, a dashed sight too brown!”

“But indeed he did, Sherry! The case is that he has great hopes that Isabella may relent towards him, and he wished to know my opinion of a—well, a little billet that he means to send her, with the flowers for Lady Fakenham’s ball. But you must not mention the matter, for indeed I think he would not wish me to have spoken of it!”

As he really knew very well that he had not the least cause to regard Lord Wrotham with suspicion, Sherry consented to be satisfied with this explanation, and the matter was allowed to drop.

An interview with his man of business, a few days later, provided his lordship with other, and more serious, affairs for thought. Mr Stoke felt it to be his duty to bring certain disagreeable facts to his lordship’s notice. Since this interview followed on a more than ordinarily Black Monday at Tattersall’s, the Viscount escorted his wife to the Fakenhams’ ball in a mood of considerable dissatisfaction. His friend, Revesby, in whom he had confided, had done his best to raise his spirits by asserting his conviction that the luck would shortly turn, and had even introduced him to the newest gaming hell, which was located in Pickering Place, and conducted on such discreet lines that the Viscount would not have been surprised to have been asked to give a password before being admitted by the individual who conversed with him through an iron grille in the door. He had played macao into the small hours of the morning, but with indifferent success; and although Sir Montagu was of the opinion that initial losses were to be regarded as auspicious, it was an undeniable fact that his lordship was not in his usual sunny spirits when he arrived at the Fakenham mansion in Cavendish Square.

“Scorched, dear old boy?” asked Mr Fakenham, who had also visited Tattersall’s on settling day. Sherry grimaced at him.

“You’ll come about,” said Ferdy encouragingly. “Thought I was aground myself, until Brock gave me the office to back Sweeter When Clothed last Wednesday.”

“I laid my blunt on First Time of Asking,” said his lordship gloomily.

Ferdy shook his head. “Mistake,” he said. “Ought to have listened to Brock. Very knowing one, Brock. Come and have a glass!”

This advice seemed good to Sherry, and he went off with his cousin to try whether champagne punch would recruit his spirits. They would have taken Lord Wrotham along with them, but his lordship, whose expressive dark eyes were glowing with mingled anticipation and excitement, declined to leave the ballroom. But the evening was not destined to come up to Wrotham’s expectations. Miss Milborne, receiving the bouquet of violets by the hand of her Mama’s black page, was torn by conflicting emotions. She could not but be touched by Wrotham’s having taken such pains to obtain for her flowers which he believed to be her favourites. She recalled, with a twinge of her conscience, having bestowed this mendacious piece of information on him, and her more compassionate feelings prompted her to carry his offering to the ball, instead of the yellow roses left at the door earlier in the day with his Grace of Severn’s compliments. But several circumstances militated against this impulse. In the first place, Wrotham had been inspired at the eleventh hour to send the flowers with the second of his messages in place of the first.
Wear these, and I shall know what to think,
ran the inscription on his lordship’s card. This was going too fast for Miss Milborne, who felt that until she herself knew what to think it would be better for his lordship to remain in his present uninformed state. She was ready to indulge herself and her numerous suitors with a little harmless flirtation, but she was a good-hearted girl, and unless she was prepared to accept Wrotham’s hand in marriage she did not feel that she should carry to the ball flowers which came to her with so pointed a message attached to them. As she thought the matter over, a slight indignation mingled with her compassion for one so stricken. Really, it was the outside of enough, she thought, that George should neglect her for nearly a fortnight, and then toss a posy of violets to her with an ultimatum attached to it! There was yet another consideration—and not the least of them—that led to George’s violets being rejected. Miss Milborne, whose striking beauty could well support the trying colour, was wearing a new gown of pale puce satin and net to the ball, and with this George’s violets could not be said to agree. Miss Milborne laid the violets aside, and pinned a spray of Severn’s roses to her corsage, determining, as she did so, to soften the blow to George by treating him with more than ordinary kindness.

Alas for such good intentions! No sooner did George, on the watch for her arrival, clap eyes on those yellow roses than he turned pale, and abruptly left the ballroom. In his disordered state he would undoubtedly have rushed from the house had he not encountered his hostess in the ante-chamber. Lady Fakenham, who had known him from his cradle, asked him severely where he was going, and without giving him time to reply bore him inexorably back into the ballroom, and presented him to a young lady who gratefully accepted his reluctant hand for the quadrille which was forming. By the time he had performed his part in this, all the impropriety of fleeing from the house had been recollected, and he retired to prop the wall by the door, his arms folded, and his stormy gaze following Miss Milborne’s progress down a country dance. Since Severn was her partner, he was unable to support this spectacle for long, and soon sought refuge in a small chamber adjoining the ballroom. This had been designed to accommodate any persons who preferred a quiet rubber of whist to the more fatiguing exercise of dancing, but George’s aspect was so forbidding that a timid-looking man, who peeped into the room, withdrew in haste to inform his companions that he rather thought they had better find another room for their projected game.