False Colours (8 page)

‘A want of nerve!’

‘No, no, that wasn’t it! The old lady don’t take a particle of interest in me. Fact is, I wanted a word with you. You haven’t forgotten that little matter I broached to you, have you?’

‘No, but to own the truth I’ve been too busy to think about it.’

‘What a fellow you are!’ said Mr Lucton. ‘No wish to press you, but you said you’d give me an answer within a day!’

‘Oh, lord, did I?’ said Kit, thankful for the first time in his life for his twin’s well-known forgetfulness. ‘I was called away suddenly, and it went out of my mind.’

‘Ay, I guessed as much, so I’ve done nothing about it. Don’t want to press you, Den, but I wish you will tell me one way or the other!’

‘Yes, but not at this moment!’ protested Kit. ‘It’s neither the place nor the occasion.’

‘Oh, very well!’ said Mr Lucton discontentedly. ‘I’ll give you a look-in tomorrow, then. Though I must say—’

He was interrupted by the sound of the dinner-gong, and, as Lady Stavely came up at that instant to take possession of Kit, the rest of the sentence remained unuttered.

Kit found himself placed between his hostess and Miss Cressida Stavely at the dinner-table. He was relieved to see that the length of the table separated him from the Dowager; had it separated him from Cressida he would have been profoundly thankful.

For the first ten minutes his attention was fully engaged by Lady Stavely, who regaled him with a flow of vivacious small-talk. This presented him with no difficulty, since she allowed him little opportunity to speak, and asked him only such commonplace questions as anyone would have been able to answer. She was, mercifully, more anxious to show herself off than to draw out her guests, but he found her empty, incessant titter of laughter irritating, and was not altogether sorry when she turned from him to converse with Mr Charles Stavely. Sooner or later he would be obliged to talk to Cressida; he thought that to do so at the dinner-table might be the best way of avoiding a tête-à-tête. He glanced at her. Her head was turned a little away, as she listened to what her other neighbour was saying to her. It struck Kit that she had all the unconscious assurance lacking in her stepmother. Lady Stavely was overacting the part of Society hostess; she had been for too long the daughter who had failed to catch a husband to slip easily into her new position. It was not difficult to understand why she should be jealous of Cressida, so quietly poised, so well-accustomed to the management of her father’s establishment, and to the entertainment of his guests. She appeared to be absorbed in her conversation with her neighbour, but she must have noticed that Lady Stavely had transferred her attention to her brother-in-law, for she brought her conversation to a natural conclusion and turned towards Kit, saying, with a faint smile: ‘I wish this were not such a dull party: you must be dreadfully bored!’

‘Not at all!’ he replied.

She looked quizzically at him. ‘A high treat, in fact!’

‘Well, I shouldn’t describe it in quite those words,’ he owned, ‘but the truly boring parties, you know, are the formal squeezes, when one is obliged to do the polite to all the people one would least wish to talk to.’

She was surprised. ‘But I thought you never attended such parties!’

‘Not when I can avoid them,’ he said, retrieving the slip.

‘Which, in general, you find yourself able to do! And when you are not so able,’ she added thoughtfully, ‘you take care not to become bored by arriving late, and leaving early, don’t you?’

‘A gross aspersion upon my character!’

She laughed. ‘Did you think that because I am not very much in the habit of attending such squeezes that I don’t know your reputation? You are the despair of hostesses!’

‘You have been listening to slanderous reports.’

She smiled, but shook her head. ‘You will be able to leave this party early, at all events. My grandmother doesn’t keep late hours. I am afraid, however, that she will wish to hold further conversation with you. Can you bear that?’

‘Easily! I consider she has been much maligned. I will allow her to be disconcerting, but by no means the petrifying Gorgon I was led to expect.’

‘Not by me!’ she said quickly. ‘I never said that of Grandmama!’

Mr Fancot, whose courage had been strengthened by the excellent food and drink offered him, replied coolly: ‘Oh, yes! If not in actual words, by inference! Can you deny it?’

She exclaimed instead: ‘What an odd, unexpected creature you are, my lord! Can you deny that you looked forward to this party with the gravest misgivings? You told me that the very thought of running the gauntlet of my family put you into a quake!’

‘That was because I had been misled,’ said Kit brazenly.

She looked at him, amused, yet with a puzzled crease between her brows.. ‘But you weren’t in a quake—even before you decided that you had been misled. I own, I thought Grandmama would have put you out of countenance, but she didn’t.’

‘To be honest with you, she did, but I thought it would be fatal to betray my embarrassment.’

‘Yes, very true: she despises the people she can bully. You gave her a homestall, and she may very likely have taken a fancy to you.’

‘Can she bully you?’ he asked.

‘Oh, no! That is, I shouldn’t let her do so, but the occasion hasn’t arisen: she is always very kind to me.’ She fell silent for a few moments; and when she spoke again it was in a more formal tone, and as though she were carefully picking her words. ‘Lord Denville, when you did me the honour of asking me to marry you, we discussed the matter—we
began
to discuss the matter quite frankly. But we were interrupted, as I expect you will recall, and there has been no opportunity since that day to resume our discussion.’ She raised her eyes to his face. ‘I should like to be able to do so before coming to an irrevocable decision.’

He had been regarding her over the rim of his wineglass, but he set the glass down at this, saying involuntarily: ‘I thought you
had
come to a decision! How is this?’

She answered apologetically: ‘I’m afraid I gave you reason to think so. And indeed, at that moment, I believed I
had
done so. I can’t explain it to you tonight. I had hoped to have seen you again before this party, but you had gone into the country, and Albinia—Lady Stavely—sent out the invitations without telling me.’

He cast a swift glance towards his hostess, to assure himself that her attention was still being claimed by her brother-in-law, before asking bluntly: ‘Do you wish to cry off, Miss Stavely?’

She considered the question, frowning. ‘You will think me a perfect wet-goose, Denville, but the truth is that I don’t know! If Albinia had not come into the room when she did—’

‘Unfortunate!’ he agreed.

‘Yes, and so stupid, if she but knew it, poor thing! To be sure, there was some awkwardness attached to our discussion, but we were on the way to an understanding—or, so I believed. I have felt ever since that a great deal was left unsaid. You too, I dare say. When Albinia came in you had just said there was one stipulation you must make—but you weren’t granted the opportunity to tell me what that may be.’

‘Good God, did I really say anything so uncivil?’ he asked, startled.

‘No, no, you were not uncivil! Remember that I begged you to be plain with me—not to stand on points!’

‘I seem to have taken the fullest advantage of that request, if I did indeed talk about stipulations!’

‘I thought that was the word you used, but I might be mistaken, perhaps. Yet—’

‘I fancy you must have been, for I haven’t the smallest recollection of it.’

‘But you can’t have forgotten that you said
something
of that nature!’ she objected, considerably surprised.

He laughed. ‘But I have forgotten, which proves that it can’t have been a matter of much consequence. If only we had not suffered that untimely interruption—!’

‘Exactly so! You must feel as I do that it left us uncomfortably situated. Would it be possible for you to visit me tomorrow, a little after eleven o’clock? We may be secure against another such interruption, for Albinia means to go shopping with her mother directly after breakfast, and my grandmother never leaves her room until noon.’ She thought he hesitated, and added, colouring slightly: ‘I ought not to suggest it, perhaps, but my situation is a trifle difficult. Surely it can’t be thought improper in me—at my age, and in such circumstances—to receive you alone?’

‘Improper! Of course not!’ he said immediately. ‘I shall present myself at—a quarter past eleven? Unless I find a carriage waiting at the door to take up Lady Stavely, when I shall conceal myself behind a lamp-post until I see her drive away.’

‘Thus investing a morning-call with the trappings of an intrigue!’ she said, laughing.

Her attention was then claimed by the cousin who sat on her other hand; and in a very few moments Kit was once more engaged by his hostess.

When the ladies withdrew, and the cloth was removed from the table, Lord Stavely came to sit beside Kit, unconsciously rescuing him from Mr Lucton, who had formed the same intention. Conversation became general; and as Lucton was too shy to raise his voice amongst so many seniors, and Mr Charles Stavely, in his late forties, had only a casual acquaintance with young Lord Denville, no pitfalls awaited Kit. He would have been happy to have remained in the dining-room for the next hour, but Lord Stavely was under orders not to allow the gentlemen to linger over their wine, and he very soon declared it to be time to join the ladies.

In the drawing-room, the supposed Lord Denville had inevitably been the subject of animated discussion. Opinions were varied, one party, led by Lady Stavely, extolling his air and address; another warning Cressy that she would be very unwise to marry a man so notoriously volatile; and a third, headed by Lady Ebchester, stating that it was a very good match, and that Cressy, at the age of twenty, and with a dowry of only £25,000, would be a fool to draw back from it.

This brought Lady Ebchester under the Dowager’s fire. Sitting forward in her chair, and leaning on her ebony cane, the old lady looked like the popular conception of a witch. She fixed her daughter with a gleaming eye, and snapped: ‘Besides what I may leave her!’

Lady Ebchester was rather taken aback by this, but she said: ‘Oh, well, Mama, that is a matter for you, of course, but you will hardly leave any great sum to Cressy when you have sons who have nearer claims on you. Not to speak of your daughters—though, for my part, I expect nothing, and nor, I dare say, does Eliza. As for Caroline, however, and poor Clara—’

‘Oh, pray don’t, Augusta!’ begged Miss Clara Stavely, tears starting to her eyes. ‘So very improper—so disagreeable for dear Cressy!’

‘Don’t cry, Aunt!’ said Cressy cheerfully. ‘If Grandmama leaves her fortune to me, I’ll engage to give it back to the family immediately.’

The Dowager uttered a cackle of mirth. ‘Do you want to start a civil war, girl?’

‘Not in the least, ma’am—and if Aunt Augusta doesn’t know that there won’t be any occasion for me to do so, I do!’ retorted Cressy, twinkling at her.

At this point, the deaf cousin, who had formed a very imperfect impression of what had been said, nodded at Cressy, and stated in the voice of one prepared to go to the stake in defence of her beliefs: ‘Well, dear, I said it before, and I’ll say it again: he’s
very
handsome!’

As this declaration coincided with the arrival of the gentlemen, Kit, ushered first into the room by his host, was once more privileged to hear this tribute. He managed to preserve his countenance, but his eyes met Cressy’s across the room, and he was obliged to grip his lips tightly together. Cressy retreated to the end of the room, her shoulders shaking; and the Dowager, having informed the deaf cousin that she was a fool, commanded Kit to come and sit beside her.

He obeyed her, drawing up a chair. The Dowager tartly adjured Clara not to hang about her, and told the rest of the company that they were at liberty to indulge in their usual bibble-babble. Correctly interpreting this as a prohibition on any attempt to intrude into her conversation with the principal guest, her relations meekly drifted away, to form small groups in various parts of the room.

‘Gabblemongers, all of ’em!’ said the Dowager, sardonically observing their efforts to maintain a flow of small talk. She brought her piercing gaze to bear on Kit’s face, and said ‘Well, young man? What have you to say for yourself?’

‘I don’t think I have anything to say for myself, ma’am, and I stand in too much dread of being thought a gabble-monger to say it if I had,’ he replied.

‘Balderdash!’ she said. ‘You’ve a mighty ready tongue in your head, sir!’

He smiled at her. ‘Well, what do you wish me to say, ma’am? You can’t expect me to recite a catalogue of my vices, and as for my virtues, would you really think better of me if I puffed them off to you?’

‘Have you any?’ she demanded.

‘Yes, a few, and quite a number of good intentions,’ he replied.

‘So your Uncle Brumby seems to have told my son. But I have a very good memory, and I recall that he once told
me
that your brother was worth a dozen of you!’

This speech, had it been shot at him before dinner, would have shaken him badly, but he was now sufficiently fortified to be able to answer it with smiling ease. ‘Yes, my uncle has a great kindness for my brother. Kit is his protégé, you know, ma’am.’