The Grand Sophy Read online

  ‘Well, on that point we have always differed, have we not?’ she said pleasantly. ‘But I have no wish to argue with you on such a subject! I only hope that Hubert continues to go on well.’

  ‘Very well. I might almost say too well, for what must the ridiculous fellow do but think himself in honour bound to make up some lost study during this vacation! He is gone off on a reading-party!’ He laughed suddenly. ‘If he does not fall into a melancholy through all this virtue, I must surely expect to hear that he is in some shocking scrape soon!’

  ‘I’m afraid you are right,’ she agreed seriously. ‘There is an instability of purpose that must continuously distress you.’

  He stared at her incredulously, but before he could speak, Dassett had ushered Lord Bromford into the room. He at once went forward to shake hands, greeting this new guest with more amiability than was usual, but saying: ‘I fear you are out of luck: my cousin has gone out driving.’

  ‘I was informed of it at the door – How do you do, ma’am? – but I considered it proper to step upstairs to felicitate you upon your sister’s happy recovery,’ replied his lordship. ‘I have had occasion to call in our good Baillie – excellent man! – and he swore upon his honour there was not the least lingering danger of infection.’

  Judging from the curl of Mr Rivenhall’s lip that he was about to make a sardonic rejoinder, Miss Wraxton intervened rather hastily. ‘Have you been indisposed, dear Lord Bromford? This is sad hearing! No serious disorder, I must hope?’

  ‘Baillie does not consider it so. He thinks the season has been uncommonly sickly: such inclement weather, you know, and very likely to produce affections of the throat, to which I am peculiarly susceptible. My mother has been, you may imagine, quite in a worry, for my constitution is delicate – it would be idle to deny that it is delicate! I was obliged to keep to my room above a week.’

  Mr Rivenhall, leaning his broad shoulders against the mantelpiece, drove his hands into the pockets of his breeches, and presented all the appearance of a man willing to be amused. Lord Bromford did not recognize the signs, but Miss Wraxton did, and was cast into an agony of apprehension. She once more hurried into speech. ‘Sore throats have been very prevalent, I believe. I do not wonder that Lady Bromford was anxious. You were well-nursed, I know!’

  ‘Yes,’ he concurred. ‘Not that my complaint was of such a nature as to – In short, even Mama owns herself to have been moved by the devotion of Miss Stanton-Lacy to her little cousin!’ He bowed to Mr Rivenhall, who graciously inclined his head in acknowledgement of the courtesy, only spoiling the effect by a peculiarly saturnine grin. ‘I have been put in mind of certain lines from Marmion, in this connection.’

  Miss Wraxton, who had heard enough of Sophy’s perfections in a sickroom, could only be grateful to Mr Rivenhall for interpolating: ‘Yes, we know them well!’

  Lord Bromford, who had started to repeat O woman, in our hours of ease! was thrown a little out of his stride by this, but recovered directly, and pronounced: ‘Any doubts that might have been nourished of the true womanliness of Miss Stanton-Lacy’s character, must, I venture to say, have been lulled to rest.’

  At this moment, Dassett reappeared to announce that Lady Brinklow’s carriage was at the door. Miss Wraxton, who had only been set down in Berkeley Square while her parent executed a commission in Bond Street, was obliged to take her leave. Lord Bromford said that since neither Lady Ombersley nor her niece was at home he would not trespass longer upon the premises, and within a very few minutes Mr Rivenhall was able to have his laugh out in comfort. Lord Bromford, who was a favourite with Lady Brinklow, was offered a seat in the landaulet, and beguiled the short drive to Brook Street with an exact account of the symptoms of his late indisposition.

  Mr Rivenhall, for all his resolve to hold his cousin at arm’s length, could not resist the temptation of recounting this passage to her. She enjoyed the joke just as he had known she would, but put an abrupt end to his amusement by exclaiming involuntarily: ‘How well he and Miss Wraxton would suit! Now, why did I never think of that before?’

  ‘Possibly,’ said Mr Rivenhall frostily, ‘you may have recalled that Miss Wraxton is betrothed to me!’

  ‘I don’t think that was the reason,’ said Sophy, considering it. She lifted an eyebrow at him. ‘Offended, Charles?’

  ‘Yes!’ said Mr Rivenhall.

  ‘Oh, Charles, I wonder at you!’ she said, with her irrepressible gurgle of mirth. ‘So untruthful!’

  As she beat a strategic retreat upon the words, he was left to glare at the unresponsive door.

  He told his mother roundly that Sophy’s conduct went from bad to worse, but the full measure of her iniquity did not burst upon him until two days later, when, upon ordering his groom to harness his latest acquisition to his tilbury, he was staggered to learn that Miss Stanton-Lacy had driven out in this equipage not half an hour earlier.

  ‘Taken my tilbury out?’ he repeated. His voice sharpened. ‘Which horse?’ he demanded.

  The groom shook visibly. ‘The – the young horse, sir!’

  ‘You – harnessed – the young horse for Miss Stanton-Lacy to drive?’ said Mr Rivenhall, giving his words such awful weight as almost to deprive his henchman of all power of speech.

  ‘Miss said – miss was sure – you would have no objection, sir!’ stammered this unfortunate. ‘And seeing as how she has twice driven the grays, sir, and me not having no orders contrary – and her saying as all was right – I thought she had your permission, sir!’

  Mr Rivenhall, in a few pungent words, swept this illusion from his mind, adding a rider which summarily disposed of any pretensions his groom might have cherished of being able to think at all. The groom, not daring to venture on an explanation of the circumstances, waited in miserable silence for his dismissal. It did not come. Mr Rivenhall was a stern master, but also a just one, and even in his wrath he had a very fair notion of the means his unprincipled cousin must have employed to gain her ends. He checked himself suddenly, and rapped out: ‘Where has she gone? To Richmond? Answer!’

  Seeing the culprit quite unable to collect his wits, Lord Ombersley’s own groom intervened, saying obsequiously: ‘Oh no, sir! No, indeed! My lady and Miss Cecilia set out in the barouche an hour ago for Richmond! And Miss Amabel with them, sir!’

  Mr Rivenhall, who knew that a visit had been arranged to a cousin who lived at Richmond, stared at him with knit brows. It had certainly been agreed that Sophy was to have accompanied her aunt and cousins, and he was at a loss to imagine what could have caused her to change her mind. But this was a minor problem. The young chestnut she had had the temerity to drive out was a headstrong animal, quite unaccustomed to town-traffic, and certainly unfit for a lady to handle. Mr Rivenhall could control him, but even so notable a whip as Mr Wychbold had handsomely acknowledged that the brute was a rare handful. Mr Rivenhall, thinking of some of the chestnut’s least engaging tricks, felt himself growing cold with apprehension. It was this fear that lent the edge to his anger. A certain degree of anger he must always have felt at having his horse taken out without his permission, but nothing to compare with the murderous rage that now consumed him. Sophy had behaved unpardonably – and that her conduct was strangely unlike her he was in no mood to consider – and might even now be lying upon the cobbles with a broken neck.

  ‘Saddle Thunderer, and the brown hack!’ he commanded suddenly. ‘Quick!’

  Both grooms flew to carry out this order, exchanging glances that spoke volumes. No ostlers, trained to change coach-horses in fifty seconds, could have worked faster; and while a couple of stable-hands still stood gaping at such unaccustomed doings, Mr Rivenhall, followed at a discreet distance by his groom, was riding swiftly in the direction of Hyde Park.

  He had judged correctly, but it was perhaps unfortunate that he should have come up with his cousin just as the young chestnut, first trying to rear up between the shafts at the sight of a small boy flying a kite, made a spirited attempt to ki