Angel's Touch (5 page)

‘
Oh,
no, ma’am, how uncharitable,’ exclaimed Verity, startled out of her
preoccupation.

‘
Oh, yes, Emilia,’ echoed Mrs Polegate.
‘
Poor
Mrs
Montagu! Not but what the coach did not in fact overturn. But she
was very much shaken.’

‘
Poor Mrs Montagu indeed,’ said her ladyship impenitently.
‘You had as well say poor Miss Chudleigh.’

‘
If
I had not forgotten her,’ shrieked Mrs Polegate. ‘Scandalous,
shameless woman!’

‘
Why, what did she do?’ asked Verity, glad of something
sufficiently diverting to keep at bay the intrusive memories of a
certain gentleman.

‘
What did she not do?’ countered Lady Crossens.

‘
Well, my dear,’ began Mrs Polegate, with an
air of unfolding a great mystery, ‘Elizabeth Chudleigh was an
extremely beautiful lady and the gentlemen were mad for her, but in
the end she married the Duke of Kingston. And
then
it transpired that she was
already married.’

‘
And
so it all came out,’ put in Lady Crossens. ‘She was tried for
bigamy by the House of Lords.’

‘
And
convicted?’ asked Verity, quite shocked.

‘
Oh, yes,’ said Mrs Polegate. ‘But they
could do nothing about it, for she
was
a peeress. She was ruined,
naturally. But she went abroad—’

‘
Taking, so it was said, the Duke’s money with
her.’

‘
Yes but, Emilia, he
was
dead.’

Verity was betrayed into a choke of laughter. ‘Gracious, I
had no idea Tunbridge Wells was such a den of vice.’

‘
Oh, but all
that
occurred in London, you know,’
said Mrs Polegate excusingly. ‘She behaved
quite
respectably here. And she was
very beautiful.’

‘
Does that make it any better?’

‘
Beauty and wit may generally excuse a good deal,’ said Lady
Crossens shrewdly. ‘Not that there has been much of the latter in
evidence at the Wells.’

‘
But, Emilia, only think of the water poets,’ protested the
widow. ‘Some of the verses were very witty. And so elegant and
pretty.’

‘
Who
in the world are the water poets?’ demanded Verity.

‘
Anyone who could turn a verse. Or, indeed,
who
thought
they
could,’ her ladyship explained.

‘
They were used to write verses in a book kept at the
bookseller’s on the Walks. We—I mean the ladies, for they were
nearly always written in compliment to one of us—were used to go
daily to read them.’

‘
Yes, and afterwards scratch out the eyes of those so
honoured, or, if one should be oneself chosen, peacock about the
place well set up in one’s own conceit.’

Verity smiled. ‘Now I understand why you return here year
after year, dear ma’am. Tell me, did Lord Crossens address such
verses to you?’

Her
ladyship’s lips twitched, for anyone less romantic than her bucolic
lord would be hard to imagine. ‘Oh, I was no subject for such
fripperies. Too tall, too skinny. Always was. But Maria had many an
admirer pen his ardour thus.’

‘
Oh,
Emilia,’ protested the good lady, blushing.

‘
Well, you were an uncommonly pretty girl,
Maria, I will say that for you. But Mr Polegate—God rest his
soul!—who was
not
the handsomest of men, nevertheless carried her off in the
teeth of them all.’

‘
Oh,
yes,’ sighed Mrs Polegate. ‘Dear William. What days they were!’ Her
smiling face reached Verity’s and fell suddenly. ‘But how dull it
must be for you, poor Miss Lambourn. Alas, we have no water poets
now.’ She shook her head sadly so that the frill of her ridiculous
mob-cap rippled. ‘Scarcely any young persons at all, let alone
eligible gentlemen of rank and fortune. I am afraid you must find
it sadly flat.’

‘
Oh,
no,’ Verity disclaimed at once. ‘Though I must say it seems sadly
expensive. Why, there is a fee and a gratuity to be dropped at
every hand.’

‘
Very true, they are shocking robbers,’ agreed Mrs Polegate in
a hushed voice, casting glances about as if she expected to be set
upon there and then.

‘
Don’t be ridiculous, Maria,’ scolded Lady Crossens in a
lowered tone. ‘You know very well all the servitors depend upon
gratuities for their livelihood.’

‘
So
they do,’ Mrs Polegate said, apparently struck, although in fact
she regularly tipped lavishly without giving the matter a
thought.

‘
And
you need not concern yourself with such matters, Verity,’ added her
ladyship. ‘I will take care of all that.’

Miss
Lambourn could only be thankful. The vicar was not a poor man, but
his small personal fortune and the stipend of his profession had
been very much dissipated by the exigencies of keeping a large
family, and all the girls had been bred in habits of the strictest
economy. To have been obliged to defray the innumerable little
impositions of such persons as water-dippers, waiters, sweepers and
even the minister who attended the King Charles Chapel, not to
mention the master of ceremonies himself, would have seriously
embarrassed her slender purse.

It
seemed, a day later, that she might embarrass herself in quite
another matter. She was idling in one of the toy shops that
abounded under the colonnade. These places provided all the little
knick-knacks, both useful and merely decorative, that anyone might
require: snuffboxes, ivory notecases, thimble-holders or
pincushions; metal buckles or brooches, candlesnuffers and
scissors, corkscrews, needle and bodkin cases; and little pieces of
gilt jewellery. Any sort of oddment, in fact, that might be
fashioned in a pretty way to delight or amuse. But they also sold
the wooden goods that had come to be known as Tunbridge Ware, and
which Verity so much liked that she had already whiled away a good
many moments examining them.

Having been greeted by
the friendly proprietor, she spent some time looking with great
interest at a number of writing-cases and boxes of one sort and
another, all beautifully made with designs of inlaid wood in a
variety of colours.

She
had just picked up a large box and, on opening it, had found it to
contain another, smaller version, when the shop door opened.
Turning her head, Verity saw first a cane, and then the neatly
garbed figure of a young man limping through the
doorway.

It
was
he
again!

She
gasped with shock, and the box fell from her agitated fingers,
breaking open on the floor and scattering its inner secrets in
every direction. To Verity’s horrified eyes, it appeared as if
there were broken boxes everywhere she looked in the confined space
of the shop, although in fact the nest was composed only of
four.

‘
Oh,
gracious heaven!’ she uttered distractedly, bounding forward and
stooping to retrieve them.

The proprietor,
tutting distressfully, came out from behind his little counter to
assist.

‘
No,
no, madam. Allow me.’

‘
So
stupid,’ Verity muttered, aware of burning cheeks. ‘I am so very
sorry.’

‘
No
matter, no matter.’

The
unwitting cause of the commotion stood quite still, one hand
resting on the doorknob, the other grasping his cane as he watched
the two of them scramble for the boxes. As they began to fit them
back together, he let go the handle of the door and gently reached
out to touch Verity’s arm. Her clear gaze came up to meet his in an
enquiring look, though her heightened colour demonstrated her
intense embarrassment.

‘
I
beg your pardon,’ he said quietly, ‘but this last little errant
knave appears to have escaped your notice.’

So
saying, he poked with his cane at a very small box which had stayed
intact and had come to rest by the door. Easing it into the room,
he added, ‘I regret that I am unable to perform the correctly
gallant action and pick it up for you.’

But
the proprietor was already seizing the box from the floor as the
spontaneous smile sprang to Verity’s lips.

‘
Oh,
pray don’t trouble yourself on that account. Indeed, it was
shockingly careless of me.’

‘
I
had rather have said it was careless of me—to have so unkindly
startled you, I mean.’

‘
You
didn’t—it wasn’t—’ Verity stammered, flushing again.

She was rescued by the
proprietor, requesting her to hand him the remaining box she still
held.

‘
I
hope they are not damaged,’ she said anxiously. ‘Such a beautiful
piece of workmanship.’

The shopkeeper was
examining the boxes with a sharp eye for any scratches, but at
length he somewhat grudgingly professed himself satisfied that no
harm had been done.

‘
Thank goodness,’ Verity said, with a sigh of relief. She
could not but have offered to buy the boxes had they been spoiled,
and she knew the price of them to be well beyond her means, and was
thankful to be spared the necessity of making such an
offer.

But
it was plain from the proprietor’s expression that he thought she
should have done so in any event. Before he could say anything,
however, the young stranger intervened.

‘
I
have no doubt that the boxes are as good as ever,’ he said in the
quiet well-bred tone that seemed habitual to him. ‘Wood, you know,
can stand a great deal of wear and tear.’

It
crossed Verity’s mind fleetingly that he looked rather meaningfully
at the proprietor as he spoke, but as she was only too anxious to
encourage this point of view, the thought quickly passed
away.

‘
That is very true. Though perhaps, as it is inlay work, it
might be a trifle more delicate?’

‘
Not
at all,’ said the gentleman instantly, responding to the note of
appeal in her voice. ‘I have known whole tables and armoires of
inlay that have lasted a good century and more. The wood is no less
durable for being put together in small pieces.’

‘
I
devoutly hope you may be right,’ Verity said frankly

‘
Unlike the other day,’ he returned smoothly, ‘when you very
definitely felt me to be wrong.’

The
betraying colour rushed into Verity’s cheeks and she stared up at
him in mingled dismay and indignation. How could he bring that up
now? Just when she was beginning to warm to him. And there was that
gleam again in the depths of his black eyes. He was laughing at
her! She drew herself up.

‘
You
must excuse me,’ she said stiffly. ‘I have an errand to
perform.’

‘
No,
pray—’ he began, putting out a hand.

But Verity had already
stepped past him to the door. She wrenched it open and saw his hand
drop. Next instant, she had left the shop and was hurrying away
down the colonnade.

Until this moment, she had thought of her actions that day as
perfectly justified. Now, suddenly, she saw them as they must
appear in the eyes of this man. A strange young woman, escorted
only by a groom, accosting him in the middle of his legitimate
business and taking him to task in front of a number of servants.
By rights he should have been either angry or ashamed. Or both. But
it was evident that the episode was to him merely amusing. He must
take her for a very odd sort of a female, she supposed. Indeed,
considered from his point of view, she imagined her conduct must
have seemed positively eccentric. How mortifying it was to reflect
that the man she had been busy despising had been enjoying a laugh
at her expense all this while. Had she righted a wrong about which
the perpetrator remained quite undisturbed?

These worrying thoughts occupied her, all that day and into
the next morning, almost to the exclusion of all else, so that it
was perhaps fortunate that she was obliged dutifully to escort Lady
Crossens from one place to the next. It seemed in her preoccupation
that the same conversations took place over and over again, only
with different persons. There were few young people about, those in
evidence mostly, like herself, in attendance on their elders
unless, as with a few, a slow carriage or wan features dictated an
obvious reason for their presence.

But
Verity had not lacked company, for although she could not believe
that Lady Crossens’ acquaintance were particularly anxious to meet
her, for she was no beauty, the master of ceremonies took his
duties seriously, and made it his business to perform
introductions.

On
this particular morning, after they had gravitated to the Assembly
Rooms, she had just seen her ladyship settled and was moving away,
when she was accosted by a gentleman whom her patroness always
stigmatised an old bore, for all that he had been presented as the
resident Wellsian playwright. It appeared that he had seen her
reading the playbill for Mrs Baker’s forthcoming
productions.

‘
Are
you a lover of the theatre, Miss Lambourn?’ demanded Richard
Cumberland.