Lady John (18 page)

“Your plaguey friend,” Menwin whispered in Olivia’s ear, “seems
to be doing his possible to keep Tylmath from speaking with my equally plaguey fiancée.”

“I do believe Tylmath would speak with her if he had the
chance, if only to escape from Lady W.,” Olivia agreed.

From time to time Tylmath endeavored to add some note to the
conversation at his right, but his opinion of his own worth was fully as great
as Lady Whelke’s, and as he was unable to enter with real sympathy into the
plight of London’s strawberry girls and chimney sweeps, he was not much
regarded. Once or twice Mr. Haikestill seemed on the verge of admonishing the
Duke with one of his egalitarian speeches, but fortunately he recalled whose
dinner he was eating and readdressed himself to the issue of the morality of
bootblacks.

After what seemed to be the longest meal in history, Olivia
was pleased when the Duchess guided the ladies into the drawing room and left
the men to their wine and cigars. She was less pleased, but much surprised,
when Miss Casserley sought her out with the aim of making conversation.
Apprehensively Olivia followed the other woman to a chair and they sat,
chatting of idle things. Miss Casserley noted that Mr. Haikestill seemed to
hold the highest regard for Lady John.

“Oh. Oh yes, well, we are old friends from Brussels is all.
Mr. Haikestill has at times been very kind to me and my mother.” There was
something about Jane Casserley’s clear-eyed severity of manner that both
depressed Olivia and gave rise to a most militant determination that Menwin—
her
Menwin—should not be forced to spend the rest
of his life with this humorless woman. So, she raised the subject of Tylmath.

“He is well enough spoken,” Miss Casserley agreed
critically. “But he is ill informed upon the subject of reforms, and made
several very odd statements regarding the condition of the poor.”

I can imagine! Olivia thought. Aloud she suggested that it
was perhaps difficult for a man in Tylmath’s position to know much of the
condition of the poor.

“It is his
duty
to know,”
Miss Casserley exclaimed. “When he could do much good by the proper use of his
authority—”

“But do you not think that some gentlemen must
learn
to think of the poor? If they have not been
raised to consider it their duty—” Olivia made a private prayer for forgiveness
to the Duchess. “They learn to consider their own position first, and the
responsibilities of their position, but rarely, I suppose, do they think much
of those of the lower classes who are not their tenants or—”

“They should know. It is their duty. It is the first principle
of all properly religious men—” Miss Casserley began definitely.

“But if they have not learnt, perhaps they need someone to
tutor them?” Olivia pursued. Privately the image of Miss Casserley tutoring the
Duke of Tylmath in consideration for the poor of London was so amusing that it significantly
endangered Olivia’s composure, and while Olivia had been relishing it Miss
Casserley had gone on to cite figures and theories, and to explain her own plan
for the alleviation of spiritual starvation among the poor. The plan included
books but no teachers, and biblical study but no food or clothing. The more she
listened the more Olivia suspected that Tylmath and Miss Casserley deserved
each other.

“And what sort of stand does Lord Menwin take in the matter?”
she asked once.

“Menwin?” Miss Casserley dismissed her fiancé airily. “I
think him a man of some sense, but hopelessly given over to frivolity. He
cannot know of privation—”

This was too much for Olivia. “Can he not? I beg your
pardon, Miss Casserley. I was acquainted with Lord Menwin when he and my
husband served under Wellington. He and many others who had been raised without
a thought of privation, of hunger or pain or cruel exhaustion, very bravely put
up with all those things in the service of their country. I think you mistake a
naturally even and cheerful disposition for a frivolous one, and perhaps your priorities
upon the subject are different.”

“I was not speaking of mere bodily privation,” Miss
Casserley explained with an air of superior understanding. “I spoke of the
great privation of the
soul
—”

Disgusted with herself for flying to Menwin’s defense, and
even more disgusted with Miss Casserley’s opinions upon the subject, Olivia
nodded dumbly as Miss Casserley went on in her explanations.

“I do not regard levity as a virtue, Lady John. It is not
productive, nor is it the attribute of a well-regulated mind. A gentleman such
as your friend Mr. Haikestill, for example, who is so properly informed upon
such a number of subjects, is my idea of a man of pleasing manner. However,
Menwin has agreed that I shall pursue my charities, which is as much, I
suppose, as I may expect from such a family as the Polrys.”

Olivia gaped. She was saved from a reply by the entrance of
the gentlemen. Tylmath, espying Lady Whelke as she bore down upon him
relentlessly, took refuge in the company of her daughter; Miss Casserley, apparently
mindful of Lady John’s hints at the education of Dukes, began to lecture him on
the poor and their needs. While Tylmath, regarding her, saw a well-shaped
figure, a handsomely cut face, and a mass of golden curls, he heard only a
collection of statistics on the virtue of innkeepers’ daughters. But Lady
Whelke, chattering vivaciously to Mr. Haikestill nearby, was all too evident a
threat, and he remained at Miss Casserley’s side.

Olivia had escaped their tête-a-tête and gone to join Lady
Susannah.

“Do you think our plan is working?” Susannah murmured.

“I cannot be certain, but I think not,” Olivia returned
unhappily. “But I have made up my mind to one thing, Sue: that Female shall not
have Matthew. She would kill him with coldness within a week. Even if my
reputation is blown to flinders for it, I shall not permit him to marry her.”
Her eyes glittered angrily.

“The whole family has its
sujets
à fou!
Even Whelke, who seems such a pleasant old man, is willing to
bore the ears off you with his stories of snuffboxes and dog-breeding! What
subjects for the dinner table! In any case,” she encouraged, “we shall not let
her have him, and I doubt Mamma will let it come to a scene in the church,
either.”

Despite these assurances, Olivia had the dismal feeling that
the whole evening was a failure. The Duchess seemed undismayed by the evening’s
course, and had been busily plotting all along.

“I have been telling Menwin that I urged Kit to propose an
outing for you young folk,” she told Olivia a few minutes later. “There, you
see, he is talking with Tylmath and Miss Casserley now, and—drat, that horrid
Haikestill person has joined them, which means Kit will have to invite him as
well. Oh dear. Well, I told Kit to contrive to take Miss Casserley and Sue and
Bette and Menwin and Julian, and you of course, out to Richmond or some nice
place for a picnic day.”

“Richmond, ma’am? I grant it is very pretty, but every
picnic outing takes one there.”

“So said Menwin. I vow, you two are perfect for each other,
if irritating to
me.
If you can find a
better destination for our purposes, excellent. But endeavor to remember that
it is not for your pleasure but for the purpose of convincing Julian and Miss
Casserley that they cannot live without each other that you go.”

“I shall endeavor to recall it, ma’am. But I confess I do
not see our plan going ahead very smoothly.”

“No, it does not, does it?” the Duchess agreed absently. “Now
look, Miss Casserley has lost Julian and he is gone off to his library. What a
wretch that boy is. Matthew?” she raised an eyebrow and summoned Menwin to her.
“Go after my idiot son and sing praises of your Miss Jane in his ear. Perhaps
her gold hair will have catched him after all.”

But Menwin, when the subject of Miss Casserley came up over
cheroots and late brandy in the library, was depressed by Tylmath’s comments.

“Handsome woman, aye, a very pretty female. But what a
jaw-me-dead! And that mother. Tell you the truth, Menwin, I don’t envy you at
all.”

Since Menwin was completely in accord with him on the subject
it was difficult for him to disagree. He reflected dourly over his brandy that
the Duchess’s plans, which had sounded improbable but possible, were going
along pretty badly. He sighed, lit a second cheroot, and settled in to listen
to Tylmath expound upon the virtues of silent women, with special praise of his
reluctant flirt, Mrs. Anne Martingale.

No better destination for an outing than Richmond Park was
put forth by anyone, and the party was arranged to leave from Portman Square on
a morning three days after the dinner. The Duke, in a rare fit of
agreeableness, had volunteered to drive one other person in his high-perch
phaeton, a handsome vehicle painted black and picked out in yellow. The obvious
choice of a companion for him, according to the conspirators, was Miss
Casserley. However, Miss Casserley contrived to thwart them all by announcing
that as she did not travel well by carriage, and disapproved on principle of
sporting vehicles, she would ride in the barouche. The Duke, with a transparent
look of relief, offered to take his sister Bette up with him, spoiling the
offer somewhat by adding in a superior tone that it would be a treat for the
child. The child, nudged by her older sister, wisely held her tongue and agreed
to drive with Tylmath.

The rest of the party, after diplomatic negotiations that
would have done credit to a Metternich, was disposed of neatly. Lady Susannah
insisted that she was too old to gad about in a phaeton, high perch or no, and
would accompany Miss Casserley in the barouche, together with Mr. Haikestill,
who admitted that he shared both his dislike of sporting carriages and his ill
health as a passenger with Miss Casserley. Lady Susannah found it difficult to
be gratified by her companions. The fourth seat in the barouche was to be taken
by Lord Kit, under protest. When it was explained to him that only by taking
that seat could he arrange for Olivia to ride to Richmond in Menwin’s carriage,
he acquiesced, but made it clear he was none too happy. The only members of the
party who were happy, it seemed, were Olivia and Menwin, promised the entire
trip together, Mr. Haikestill and Miss Casserley, whose serenity defied
machinations, and the Duke, who was happily rid of Miss Casserley.

“Thank God for my fiancée’s carriage sickness,” Menwin
smiled as he tooled the phaeton sedately out of Portman Square that morning. “She
has done us a kindness, love.”

“Perhaps, but even the kindness does not atone for her
calling me “The Widow’ in that odious tone, as if I were an antidote, and
saying that you might take me up in your carriage as a kindness. I collect the
fresh air will restore my fading bloom! I would like to strangle her, Matthew.”

“Say that again.”

“What?”

“Matthew. You have called me Colonel Polry and Lord Menwin
and—I am certain—some less complimentary things, which I am grateful I never heard.”
They shared a glance of understanding. “But I find it particularly sweet to
hear my Christian name on your lips.”

Wishing that she dared kiss him, touch him, do something to
express how very happy she was in his company, Olivia was only able to oblige
him by repeating his name so many times that, at last, it made no sense to
either of them.

“Matthew?” a little later on, as they caught sight of the
barouche ahead of them. “Do you think that the Duchess’s plan is going to work?”

Menwin coughed uncomfortably.

“No more do I,” Olivia agreed. “I thought at first it might,
but once I saw Tylmath talking with Miss Casserley I knew that it was all up
with us.”

“I know, Livvy. But I cannot go canvassing for a husband for
the woman I am betrothed to, can I?” Menwin flicked the reins irritably and his
horses shot forward obediently.

Olivia acknowledged the truth of this.

“Now, if I thought it would serve,” Menwin added, peering
forward to the barouche, where Mr. Haikestill’s sugarloaf hat was inclined
toward Miss Casserley’s chip bonnet, “there is the match I would promote.”

“Where?” Following his gaze Olivia said, “Poor Mr.
Haikestill! I don’t know that it would serve, Matthew. The man has been
following me about for months, since Brussels, speaking as though our marriage
is only a matter of time and place.”

“Well, even if he did develop a
tendre
for Jane Casserley—I believe he has just
the sort of ‘informed mind’ she values—I misdoubt it would serve. Your Mr.
Haikestill is not great enough to suit Lady Whelke’s consequence.”

“It’s hopeless. And if Tylmath don’t attract her, Matthew, I
don’t see what we can do.” Olivia studied her gloves. “Miss Casserley doesn’t
seem to care for you, but she seems accustomed to the idea of marrying you
despite your flaws.”

“O, I think she finds me tolerable enough, for a
loose-screw. In my case, my advantages outweigh my faults.” Flicking the thong
neatly round his whip Menwin cast a side-glance at his passenger. “Do you know,
I have you to myself for the space of half an hour, and we are talking about
Jane Casserley?”

Olivia smiled. “What would you rather talk about?”

Menwin told her.

A little time later, when she had thrown caution to the
winds and tucked one hand into the crook of his arm and Menwin was finishing a
catalogue of virtues which must have done credit to Mr. Pope’s poetry,
inspiration came to Lady John.

She sat bolt upright, causing the whole carriage to shudder,
and withdrew her hand from Menwin’s arm.

“We have been going about this in the wrong fashion!” she
declared urgently. “Or half the wrong fashion, anyway.”

“What do you mean?” Without a chance to trace the logic
which had illuminated his love’s mind, Menwin was taken aback by her vehemence.