Angel's Touch (3 page)

‘
And
now, miss, if I might trespass upon your valuable time, perhaps you
would be so obliging as to tell me the meaning of this
extraordinary conduct?’

It
took some time to persuade Lady Crossens of the justice of her
actions. But although Miss Lambourn patiently explained the
circumstances, she could by no means subscribe to her ladyship’s
freely expressed view that she ought to learn to mind her own
business.

‘
You
would not have had me drive on and leave those poor little mites to
their fate?’ she exclaimed, shocked.

‘
If
this is not precisely of what your dear mama warned me,’ complained
Lady Crossens, ignoring this home question. ‘Impulsive, that’s what
she said of you. Impetuous and impulsive.’

‘
I
dare say I am, ma’am,’ Verity admitted, in her honest way, ‘but
even Mama would not, I am persuaded, denounce my having interfered
in the matter. And Papa—’

‘
Oh, you need not tell me what
Papa
would say,’ uttered
her ladyship crossly. ‘I am well able to imagine it for myself. If
he had his way, he would doubtless clutter up the vicarage with a
score of waifs and strays. As if there were not enough of you as it
is.’

This
was undeniable. The Reverend Harry Lambourn might count himself
blessed in the possession of his seven surviving daughters, and in
particular of his last-born and most treasured only son, but his
adored and adoring wife was at her wit’s end to know how to dispose
suitably of this bevy of maidens.

Faith at twenty-eight was a matron with children of her own,
having snaffled the most eligible of the local gentlemen to become
the village doctor’s wife. Prudence, already on the shelf at
twenty-four, had been sent to Kingsclere to stay with her mother’s
brother, in the hope of contracting a suitable alliance. For
Patience, just a year younger, had achieved a respectable
engagement on a visit to her more prominent Lambourn cousins in
Winchester. Lady Lambourn, however, with two daughters of her own
to be suitably established, was hardly likely to saddle herself
with any more of the sisters at present.

Mrs
Lambourn had greeted with heartfelt thanks, therefore, Lady
Crossens’ kind suggestion that Verity, now eighteen, should
accompany her to Tunbridge Wells when she went, as had long been
her custom, to take the waters during that no longer fashionable
six-week season in the summer. True, when both Prudence and
Patience, in their turn, had gone there with her ladyship a few
years earlier, Mrs Lambourn’s high hopes had not been rewarded. But
with three more girls already in their adolescence, a needy
parson’s wife ought never to look a gift horse in the mouth. So she
had argued with her spouse when the reverend gentleman had
demurred.

‘
You
would not have it thought, Mr Lambourn, that we are ungrateful for
her ladyship’s kind offices on our daughter’s behalf.’

‘
My
dear,’ protested the gentleman, ‘we are already so much beholden to
Lady Crossens for so many kindnesses that I hesitate, I do indeed,
to add to the burden of indebtedness.’

‘
Good gracious me, Mr Lambourn, there will be nothing of that
sort, I do assure you! Why, how in the world do you suppose poor
Lady Crossens could manage without some young attendant to run her
little errands, and perform those offices so very arduous to a
woman in her declining years?’

Mr
Lambourn suggested that Lady Crossens’ servants, her maid in
particular, might be employed upon such work. But this foolish idea
was summarily disposed of.

‘
As
to that, her ladyship’s woman is always permitted to take a holiday
at this season. And well does she deserve it. I never knew a female
so cantankersome as our kind patroness.’

‘
I
hope you are not suggesting that Verity should go to Tunbridge
Wells in the capacity of lady’s maid,’ objected her husband in
accents of disgust.

His
fond helpmeet cast him a look of scorn. ‘Nothing of the sort. Lady
Crossens will employ a local girl. But apart from her coachman and
groom, she will have none of her own people about her. Verity’s
assistance will therefore be invaluable to her and in such a cause
I should not care to refuse to allow our daughter to go. Prudence
and Patience did so well by her that it is not to be wondered at
that she should be anxious to secure Verity’s company. Indeed, I do
not know how she will go on otherwise. I may add, you made no
objection to
our elder girls
going.’

‘
If
that is your recollection, my dear, I can only say that it is not
mine,’ said her spouse with an ironic look. ‘Be that as it may, and
indeed taking the case of Prudence and Patience into consideration,
I am doubly reluctant—’

But
Mrs Lambourn had all her ammunition at her fingertips and loosed a
shaft that silenced the enemy once and for all. ‘Do you tell me
that you would put a bar in the way of your daughter’s pleasure?
Why should not poor Verity also see something of the world? And
that she deserves this treat, you will scarcely deny.’

Mr
Lambourn was far from denying anything of the kind. He was well
aware that to Verity’s lot had fallen the care and entertainment,
and to some extent the education, of her three younger sisters for
the last few years, for Mrs Lambourn’s attention had been almost
entirely taken up with anxious solicitude over her one and only son
in his infant days. For it was in these early years that she had
lost several of those seemingly endless baby girls, as they
succumbed to various ailments that proved beyond the power to mend
even of the zealous practitioner who had at length become her
son-in-law.

That
she was assisted in this delicate task by every one of her
daughters, all of whom adored their baby brother, in no way
mitigated the good lady’s conviction that young Master Lambourn was
the child most in need of maternal devotion.

The
reverend could not acquit himself of an almost equal devotion to
his only son, and consequently went through periodic torments of
remorse at the neglect from which he imagined his girls to be
suffering. If he suspected his wife’s chief motive in packing her
fourth daughter off to Tunbridge Wells, he said nothing of it,
merely agreeing that Verity deserved her good fortune and taking
care to thank Lady Crossens in suitable style.

Her
ladyship’s manner of receiving these thanks, however, left him in
no doubt that the whole scheme had been concerted between the two
ladies for one purpose only.

‘
I’ll do my best to get her off your hands, Harry, but, as I
told Grace to her face, I don’t hold out much hope. Tunbridge ain’t
what it was, but if any eligibles under sixty come within hailing
distance I’ll spread my net, never fear.’

It
was on the tip of Harry Lambourn’s tongue to withdraw his consent,
his sense of what was fitting revolting against the idea of any of
his daughters being given in matrimony to a man his own age or
older. But he knew her ladyship to affect an exaggerated form of
speech and so held his peace.

In
truth, for all her crochets and complaints of Harry Lambourn’s
boundless and reckless charity, for he could ill afford it, Lady
Crossens was very fond of the vicar of Tetheridge parish, which
came largely under her patronage as the major landowner of the
area. She had early become an ally of poor Grace Lambourn in the
formidable task confronting her with so many female offspring, and
had often enough lamented to her that she had no son or grandson
who might take one of them to wife and so provide for the
rest.

Whether in fact she would have permitted such an unequal
alliance had such been the case, Mrs Lambourn privately doubted.
But in fact Lady Crossens had ever been childless and had no
suitable nephews or near connections whom she might have offered up
on the altar of matrimony to succour one of the Lambourn sisters.
And her husband’s heir was already a family man. Nor, since she had
been invalidish for many years, was she part of the fashionable
social whirl, and could not therefore take a stray Lambourn under
her wing for the season in London.

What she could do,
however, she did with a good heart, and, if some little return for
her generosity was to be made out by services in kind, who could
cavil at it? So Prudence and Patience had both had their chance in
the admittedly limited opportunities of Tunbridge Wells.

And
now there was Verity, who had most fortunately reached an
appropriate age just when Lady Crossens should feel well enough
once more to attempt the journey after some four years’ absence
from that favourite haunt of her golden youth.

For
to Lady Crossens, as to others of her generation, Tunbridge Wells
was steeped in nostalgia, and she could derive almost as much
pleasure in the early nineties in talking with her cronies of the
dear old days as she had enjoyed in the reality of its heyday in
the forties and fifties when Beau Nash reigned supreme.

By
the time the coach rumbled into the town, and fetched up outside
the coach office, the questionable behaviour of Lady Crossens’
protégée had given way to a discussion over the identity of the man
who had incurred Verity’s wrath.

‘
From what you have said,’ offered her ladyship, ‘I should
guess this boy Braxted has come into his inheritance a minor, and
this person is his guardian.’

‘
Yes, that is quite possible,’ Verity agreed. ‘I suppose he is
an uncle or cousin. He certainly exhibited the sort of breeding
that would suggest a genteel background.’

‘
But
that would not preclude his taking a post of tutor or secretary,’
argued Lady Crossens. ‘Indeed, one would employ none but a
gentleman born on such work.’

Verity thought about this. ‘I must say I should be glad to
know him for something insignificant of that sort, for his conduct
towards those poor children was quite abominable, and I am still
very much out of charity with him. But I must confess that the
other men treated him with a deference that argued against it. I am
inclined to think you are right, Lady Crossens. Let us suppose him
a guardian—and a remarkably bad one at that.’

‘
Pish! What should he do? Fawn all over them and indulge them
to death like another I could—’ Her ladyship broke off, belatedly
recognising the infelicity of this retort.

But
Verity was not in the least offended and she knew very well what
the old lady had intended to say. ‘Like Papa, you mean. Yes, I know
he indulges us. He is the best and kindest of fathers.’

And
the most sentimental, her ladyship might have added. But she did
not. There was a degree of intimacy in the Lambourn family that in
truth she envied a little, in spite of her strictures, and she
could readily appreciate Verity’s disgust at the quite different
circumstances that apparently prevailed in this boy Braxted’s
household.

But
Miss Lambourn, having settled to her satisfaction the probable
station in life of her late antagonist, had moved on to indulge her
ready imagination in a fantastic flight of fancy. In her mind’s eye
she was turning the limping, angry young man into a hideously
deformed and ravening monster, who coveted his young ward’s title
and lands and was even now plotting to eliminate him and bury his
bones in the dried-up moat surrounding his sinister
castle.

Lady
Crossens’ voice recalled her from a scene of terror in the young
lord’s bedchamber, where the grotesque figure of the murdering
guardian leaned over the angelic sleeping child, dagger raised
ready to strike.

‘
Here we are,’ trilled the old lady excitedly. ‘Oh, do but
look about you, child. Isn’t it heaven? I can hardly believe it. I
am back at last. Back at the Wells!’

Chapter
Two

‘
May
I say what an inestimable pleasure it is to welcome your ladyship
back among us? You have been sorely missed these last
years.’

The
speaker, a dapper, middle-aged gentleman with a manner that nicely
blended respect with an air of self-importance, nevertheless spoke
in all sincerity. Mr Richard Tyson, the present master of
ceremonies for Tunbridge Wells, had a healthy fondness for any and
all of the wealthy and high-ranking patrons who still chose to
grace his domain in the summer. Especially those like Lady Crossens
who, although holding fast to old customs, still cared enough to
dress with the times and so keep the Wells a little in
fashion.

Her ladyship had put
off her travelling dress and arrayed herself for the evening in an
open robe of figured French lawn over a muslin petticoat with a
large cross-over handkerchief that effectively concealed her scanty
bosom, and was sporting a dashing feathered turban over powdered
hair which was suspiciously lush for her years.

It was not perhaps a
costume that would have made fashionable London stare, but it was
quite good enough for this watering place and had evoked lavish
compliments from Mr Tyson. For he, and many like him, depended on
this custom for their livelihood, although the increasing number of
new residents was beginning to boost the hitherto meagre pickings
during the rest of the year.

‘
You will find us very little changed,’ Mr
Tyson said comfortably, ‘though we have done what we may to improve
the amenities. The Walks have been repaved this year, you know.’ He
coughed and, with a sly sideways glance at Lady Crossens, corrected
himself. ‘The
Parade,
I should say, for so it has now been decided to designate
it.’