Frederica Read online

  It contained only one occupant: a lady, writing at a small desk, placed at right-angles to the window. She looked round quickly, directing at Alverstoke a gaze that was at once surprised and appraising. He saw that she was quite young: probably some three- or four-and-twenty years of age: her person well-formed; and her countenance distinguished by a pair of candid gray eyes, a somewhat masterful little nose, and a very firm mouth and chin. Her hair, which was of a light brown, was becomingly braided à la Didon; and her gown, which she wore under a striped dress-spencer, was of fine cambric, made high to the throat, and ornamented round the hem with double trimming. Alverstoke, no stranger to the niceties of feminine apparel, saw at a glance that while this toilette was in the established mode it was neither dashing nor expensive. No one would describe it as up to the nines; but, on the other hand, no one would stigmatise the lady as a dowd. She wore her simple dress with an air; and she was as neat as wax.

  She was also perfectly composed: a circumstance which made Alverstoke wonder whether she was older than he had at first supposed. Since young, unmarried ladies did not commonly receive male visitors, it would have been natural for her to have been a trifle flustered by the entrance of a strange gentleman, but she seemed to be as unperturbed by this as by his cool scrutiny. So far from blushing, or lowering her eyes, she betrayed not the smallest sign of maidenly confusion, but looked him over thoughtfully, and (as he realised, with amusement) extremely critically.

  He moved forward, in his graceful, unhurried way. ‘Have I the honour of addressing Miss Merriville?’ he enquired.

  She got up, and came to meet him, holding out her hand. ‘Yes, I’m Miss Merriville. How do you do? Pray forgive me! – I wasn’t expecting this visit, you see.’

  ‘Then pray forgive me! I was under the impression that you desired me to visit you.’

  ‘Yes, but I had quite given up expecting you to call. Which didn’t surprise me, because I daresay you thought it a tiresome imposition, besides being, perhaps, much too coming!’

  ‘Not at all,’ he murmured, at his most languid.

  ‘Well, I’m afraid it was. The thing is that from having lived all my life in Herefordshire I am not yet perfectly acquainted with London customs.’ An engaging twinkle lit her eyes; she added confidingly: ‘You can have no notion of how very hard it is to conform to propriety, when one has been – you may say – the mistress of the house for years and years!’

  ‘On the contrary!’ he responded promptly. ‘I’ve every notion of it!’

  She laughed. ‘No, have you? Then perhaps it won’t be so difficult to explain to you why I – why I solicited the favour of your visit!’

  ‘What an admirable phrase!’ he commented. ‘Did you commit it to memory? I thought that your – solicitation – was, rather, a summons!’

  ‘Oh, dear!’ said Miss Merriville, stricken. ‘And I took such pains not to appear to be a managing female!’

  ‘Are you one?’

  ‘Yes, but how could I help it? I must tell you how it comes about that – But, pray, won’t you be seated?’

  He bowed slightly, and moved towards a chair on one side of the fireplace. She sat down opposite him, and, after surveying him for a moment, rather doubtfully, said: ‘I did mean to explain it all to you in my letter, but I made such a bumble-bath of it – as my brother, Harry, would say – that in the end I thought it would be better if I could contrive to meet you, and talk to you! At the outset, I hadn’t any intention of applying to any of Papa’s relations, thinking that my Aunt Scrabster would be able to do all that I wanted. Which just shows how ignorant I was, to be so taken-in! She is the eldest of my mother’s sisters, and she never wrote to us but what she prated of the modish life she led, and how much she wished she could present my sister and me into polite circles.’

  ‘Secure in the belief that she would never be called upon to make good her words?’

  ‘Exactly so!’ said Miss Merriville, bestowing a warm smile upon him. ‘Not that I think she could have done so, because my uncle’s fortune derives from Trade. He is an East India merchant, and, although perfectly respectable, not tonnish. That is why, finding myself quite beside the bridge, I was obliged to overcome my scruples, and to cast about in my mind for the one of Papa’s family who would best answer the purpose.’

  ‘And what was it that led your fancy to alight on me?’ asked his lordship, a cynical curl to his lips.

  She replied readily: ‘Oh, it wasn’t my fancy! It was just commonsense! One reason was that Papa was used to say that you were the best of his relations. Though, from anything I ever heard,’ she added, ‘that wasn’t praising you to the skies! I’ve never met any of the Merriville cousins, or my two Merriville aunts, for Papa, you must know, was cast off by his whole family when he was so disobliging as to marry my mother instead of the great heiress they had found for him. So I sincerely trust I shall never meet them. And as to applying to them for any assistance whatsoever, no!’ She paused, considering the matter with a darkling look, before adding: ‘Besides, they could none of them render me the assistance I need, because they seem to be a very dull, dowdy set of people who almost never come to London, on account of not approving of modern manners. Which was another reason for choosing you.’

  He raised his brows. ‘What made you think I don’t disapprove of modern manners?’

  ‘Nothing. I mean, I didn’t know anything about you, but that wasn’t it! Not but what I can see for myself that you are very fashionable – or so it seems to me?’ she said, on a note of interrogation.

  ‘Thank you! I – er – contrive to pass myself off with credit, I hope.’

  ‘Yes, and, what is more important, you move in the first circles. That was my other reason for choosing you,’ she disclosed, with another of her friendly smiles.

  ‘Was it indeed! To what end? Or can I guess?’

  ‘Well, I should think you might, for you don’t look to be at all stupid – though I own I had expected you to be older. It’s a great pity that you aren’t. However, it can’t be helped, and I daresay you are old enough to be of use.’

  ‘I am seven-and-thirty, ma’am,’ said Alverstoke, somewhat acidly, ‘and I should perhaps inform you that I am never of use to anyone!’

  She gazed at him in astonishment. ‘Never? But why not?’

  He shrugged. ‘Pure selfishness, ma’am, coupled with a dislike of being bored.’

  She looked a little anxiously at him. ‘Would it bore you very much to present me to Lady Alverstoke? And to ask her if she would be so obliging as to lend me her aid?’

  ‘Possibly not, but the question doesn’t arise: my mother died many years ago.’

  ‘No, no, I meant your wife!’

  ‘I am not married.’

  ‘Not?’ she exclaimed. ‘Oh, how vexatious!’

  ‘Disobliging of me, isn’t it?’ he said sympathetically.

  ‘Well, no, not disobliging, precisely, because you couldn’t know that I wished you had been,’ she said, very kindly exonerating him.

  He replied sardonically: ‘I collect that if I had known it you would have expected me to rectify the matter?’

  She coloured, fixing her eyes anxiously on his face. ‘Oh, pray don’t take an affront into your head!’ she begged. ‘I didn’t mean to be brassy, and I daresay we can contrive well enough without your wife, if we set our minds to it.’

  ‘We?’

  He spoke with quelling hauteur, but his mouth twitched in spite of himself, and under their lazy lids his eyes glinted. These signs were not lost on Miss Merriville. She heaved a sigh of relief, and said disarmingly: ‘Thank goodness! I thought I had put you out of temper! And I must own that I can’t blame you for being provoked, for I am making a shocking mull of it. And I quite thought it would be easy to explain the circumstances to you, if only I could meet you face to face!’

  ‘Well, what are the circumstances, ma’am?’

  She was silent for a moment or two, not, as was evident from her thoughtful