“Well, my dear, a very pleasant party!” said Mrs Mandeville. “I congratulate you!”
“Thank you, ma’am!” Annis said gratefully. “From you that is praise of a high order! May I also thank you for having been kind enough to honour me with your presence tonight? I assure you I appreciate it, and can only hope you haven’t been bored to death!”
“On the contrary, I’ve been vastly amused!” replied the old lady, with a chuckle. “What made Carleton take himself off in a rage?”
Annis coloured faintly. “Was he in a rage? I thought him merely bored.”
“No, no, he wasn’t bored,my dear! It looked to me as though he and you were at outs!”
“Oh, we come to cuffs whenever we meet!” Annis said lightly.
“Yes, he makes a lot of enemies with that bitter tongue of his,” nodded Mrs Mandeville. “Spoilt, of course! Too many caps have been set at him! My second son is a friend of his, and he told me years ago that it was no wonder he’d been soured, with half the mamas and their daughters on the scramble for him. That’s the worst of coming into the world as rich as a Nabob: it ain’t good for young men to be too full of juice. However, I don’t despair of him, for there’s nothing much amiss with him that marriage to the woman he falls in love with won’t cure.”
“I haven’t understood that love was lacking in his life, ma’am!”
“Lord, child, I’m not talking of his bits of muslin,” said Mrs Mandeville scornfully. “It ain’t love a man feels for the lightskirts he entertains! Myself, I’d always a soft corner for a rake, and it’s my belief most women have! Mind you, I don’t mean the sort of rabshackle who gives some gal a slip on the shoulder, for them I can’t abide! Carleton ain’t one of those sneaking rascals. Has he put you in charge of that pretty little niece of his?”
“No, no! She is merely staying with me for a short time, before going to live with one of her aunts, or cousins—I am not perfectly sure which!”
“I’m glad to hear it. You’re a deal too young to be burdened with a gal of her age, my dear!”
“So Mr Carleton thinks! Only he goes further than you, ma’am, and doesn’t scruple to inform me that he considers me to be quite unfit to take care of Lucilla.”
“Yes, I’m told he can be very uncivil,” nodded Mrs Mandeville.
“Uncivil! He is the rudest man I have ever met in my life!” declared Miss Wychwood roundly.
Chapter 9
By the time Miss Wychwood had said goodbye to the last, lingering guests she was feeling more weary than ever before at the end of a party. Everyone except herself (and, presumably, Mr Carleton) seemed to have enjoyed it, which was, she supposed some slight consolation to her for having spent a most disagreeable evening. Lucilla was in what she considered to be exaggerated raptures over it: she wished it might have gone on for ever! Miss Wychwood, barely repressing a shudder, sent her off to bed, and was about to follow her when she found Limbury in the way, obviously awaiting an opportunity to speak to her. She paused, looking an enquiry, and he all unwittingly set the seal on a horrid evening by disclosing, with the smile of one bearing welcome tidings, that Sir Geoffrey had arrived in Bath, and wished her to give him a look-in before she retired to bed.
“Sir Geoffrey?” she repeated blankly. “Here? Good God, what can have happened to bring him to Bath at this hour of the night?”
“Now, don’t you fret yourself, Miss Annis!” Limbury said, in a fatherly way. “It’s no worse than the toothache which Master Tom has, and which my lady thinks may be an abscess, so she wishes to take him instantly to Mr Westcott. Sir Geoffrey arrived twenty minutes before you went down to supper, but when he saw you was holding a rout-party he charged me not on any account to say a word to you about it until the party was over, him being dressed in his riding-habit, and not having brought with him his evening attire, and not wishing to attend the rout in all his dirt. Which is very understandable, of course. So I directed Jane to make up the bed in the Blue bedchamber, miss, and myself carried up supper to him, which is what I knew you would wish me to do.”
Miss Farlow, who had paused in her rather ineffective attempts to restore the drawing-room to order, to listen to this interchange, exclaimed: “Oh, poor Sir Geoffrey! If only I had known! I would have run up immediately to make sure that he was comfortable—not that I mean to say Jane is not to be trusted, for she is a very dependable girl, but still—! Dear little Tom, too! His papa must be in agonies,for nothing is worse than the pain one undergoes with the toothache, particularly when an abscess forms, as well I know, for never shall I forget the torture I suffered when I—”
“It is Tom who has the toothache, not Geoffrey!” snapped Miss Wychwood, interrupting this monologue without ceremony.
“Well, I know, dearest, but the sight of one’s child’s suffering cannot but cast a fond parent into agonies!” said Miss Farlow.
“Oh, fiddle!” said Annis, and went upstairs to rap on the door of the Blue bedchamber.
She found her brother flicking over the pages of the various periodicals with which Limbury had thoughtfully provided him. A decanter of brandy stood on a small table at his elbow, and he held a glass in his hand, which, on his sister’s entrance, he drained, before setting it down on the table, and rising to greet her. “Well, Annis!” he said, planting a chaste salute upon her cheek. “I seem to have come to visit you at an awkward moment, don’t I?”
“I certainly wish you had warned me of it, so that I might have had time to prepare for your visit.”
“Oh, no need to worry about that!” he said. “Limbury has looked after me very well. The thing was there was no time to warn you, because I was obliged to leave Twynham in a bang. I daresay Limbury will have told you what has brought me here?”
“Yes, I understand Tom has the toothache,” she replied.
“That’s it,” he nodded. “It became suddenly worse this afternoon, and we fear there may be an abscess forming at the root. Ten to one, it’s no more than a gumboil, but nothing will do for Amabel but to bring him to Bath so that Westcott may see it, and judge what is best to be done.”
Something in his manner, which was much that of a man airily reciting a rehearsed speech, made her instantly suspicious. She said: “It seems an unnecessarily long way to bring a child to have a tooth drawn. Surely you would be better advised to take him to Frome?”
“Ah, you are thinking of old Melling, but Amabel has no faith in him. We have been strongly recommended to take Tom to Westcott. It doesn’t do, you know, to ignore advice from a trustworthy source. So I have ridden over ahead of Amabel, to arrange for Westcott to do whatever he thinks should be done tomorrow, and to ask you, my dear sister, if they may come to stay with you for a day or two.”
“They?” said Annis, filled with foreboding.
“Amabel and Tom,” he explained. “And Nurse, of course, to look after the children.”
“Is Amabel bringing the baby too?” asked Miss Wychwood, in a voice of careful control.
“Yes—oh, yes! Well, Amabel cannot manage Tom by herself, and she can’t be expected to leave Baby without Nurse to take care of her, you know. But they won’t be the least trouble to you, Annis! In this great house of yours there must be room for two small children and their nurse!”
“Very true! Equally true that they won’t be any trouble to me! But they will make a great deal of trouble for my servants, who are none of them accustomed to working in a house which contains a nursery to be waited on! So, if you mean to saddle me with your family, I beg you will also include the maid who waits on Nurse in the party!”
“Of course if it is inconvenient for you to receive my family—”
“It is extremely inconvenient!” she interrupted. “You know very well that I have Lucilla Carleton staying with me, Geoffrey! I am astonished that you should expect me to entertain Amabel and your children at such a moment!”