Black Sheep Read online

  'Alas, there's nothing to tell! I've done nothing, and have been nowhere. You don't know how much I envy you – how often I have wished I were a man!'

  'Have you, indeed? You must be alone in that wish!'

  'Thank you! But you are wrong: my father wished it too! He wanted another son.'

  'What, with Rowland and James as grim examples? Or because he hoped that a third son might be less of a slowtop?'

  'Certainly not! And although I didn't like him I must in common justice say that Rowland, at least, was not a slow-top.

  He was hunting-mad, you know, and a very hard goer.'

  'I wasn't talking about that. Intellectually a slow-top!'

  'Oh, yes, but so was my father! Naturally he didn't count his stupidity a fault in Rowland. In fact, he had the greatest dislike of clever people.'

  He chuckled appreciatively, which made her say, in a conscience-stricken voice: 'I ought not to have said that. My wretched tongue! I do try to mind it!'

  'Then don't! I like the way you have of saying just what comes into your head.'

  She smiled, but shook her head. 'No, it is my besetting sin, and I ought long since to have overcome it.'

  'From what I recall of your father, I should suppose that he made every effort to help you to do so. Did he dislike you as much as you disliked him?'

  'Yes, he – Oh, how dare you? You are quite abominable! You know very well that it would be the height of impropriety for me to say that I disliked my father! Every feeling must be offended!'

  'Well, none of mine are,' he responded imperturbably. 'You did, didn't you?'

  'Yes, but it is one of the things which must never be said. And if he disliked me I am bound to own that it was quite my own fault. I was a sad trial to him, I fear.'

  'Yes, of course: too clever by half !'

  'I'm not clever – or only if you compare me with the rest of my family,' she said reflectively. 'I love them dearly, but Selina and Mary are perfect widgeons, and although my sister Jane has a good deal of commonsense she never thinks of anything but her children, and the failings of her servants. My father merely thought I was bookish, which was the worst he could say of anyone! He ascribed all my undutiful conduct to it.'

  'Now, I should have said that you had an all too lively sense

  of your duty,' he remarked.

  'Not when I was a girl. I was for ever rebelling against the restrictions imposed upon me, and oh, how much I detested that hateful word, propriety! That's why I was used to wish I were a man: so that I could have escaped from it! Girls can't, you know. We are always shackled – hedged about –'

  'Cabin'd, cribb'd, confined,' he supplied, adding grandiloquently: 'I'm bookish too.'

  A ripple of laughter broke from her. 'So I perceive! And that is just how it was in my family.'

  'Was? Still is!'

  She turned her head, startled. 'No! Why, what can you mean?'

  He nodded towards the four younger members of the party, riding ahead. 'Fanny, of course. Don't you cabin, crib, and confine her?'

  'Indeed I don't!' she said warmly. 'She enjoys far, far more liberty than ever I did!' A quizzically raised eyebrow brought the blood rushing to her cheeks. She stammered: 'It's true! You – you are thinking that I don't permit her to go anywhere without me, but that is not true! I have never, until your odious nephew came to Bath, accompanied her on such expeditions as this and if he had not been in question, and young Grayshott had invited her to go with him, she might have done so with my goodwill!' She paused, and, after considering for a moment, said frankly: 'No. Not alone. I should have no qualms, but where she is concerned I must take care that she does nothing to provide all the Bath quizzes with food for gossip! You see, my brother entrusted her to my guardianship, and however nonsensical I may think many of the conventions which hedge us about I must, for her own sake, compel her to abide by them. Pray try to understand! What I, at my age, might choose to disregard, she, on the verge of her come-out, must not!'

  'Poor girl!' he said lightly. 'How many nonsensical conventions are you ready to flout?'

  'Oh, a great many, if I had only myself to consider!'

  'We'll put that to the test. Will you go with me to the play on Saturday?'

  She hesitated, in equal surprise and doubt. After a moment, she said: 'Are you inviting me to form one of your party, sir?'

  'Good God, no! I haven't a party.'

  'Oh!' She relapsed again into silence. 'I collect you mean to invite Fanny as well?' she hazarded at last.

  'Oh, no, you don't!' he retorted. 'You know very well that Fanny is engaged to go with the Grayshotts to Mrs Faversham's waltzing-party! I wonder you will let her!'

  'Do you, indeed? Well, if you think me so – so stuffy, I wonder that you should suppose I would go to the theatre with you alone! The waltz is not danced in the Rooms, but Bath is a very old-fashioned place, and, in London, waltzes, and quadrilles too, are extensively danced. I am very happy that Fanny should be given the opportunity of – of getting into the way of it, before her come-out in the spring! But when it comes to going to the theatre –' She paused, frowning over it.

  He waited, regarding her profile with a derisive smile, until she said, struck by a sudden inspiration: 'If you were to invite my sister as well! That would make it perfectly unexceptionable!'

  'No doubt!'

  She could not help laughing. 'Yes, I know, but – Well, it is quite absurd, but there is a difference – or there is thought to be – between escorting a lady to – oh, to a concert, in the Assembly Rooms, and to the theatre! I think it is because the concerts, being held by subscription, are more private. Then, too, one doesn't sit apart, and one mingles with –'

  'Oh, if that's all, we can sit in the pit!'

  ' – with one's friends!' finished Abby severely.

  'And at the end of the first act, when your escort hopes to enjoy your company, some impudent fellow snabbles you from under his nose, and takes you off to tea – just as I did, when that mooncalf who paid you slip-slop compliments thought you were his own!'

  'Well! At least you have the grace to own your impudence!' she retaliated. 'However gracelessly you may do so! But Mr Dunston is not a mooncalf, and the compliments he paid me were very pretty.'

  'Any man who could tell you that you shone down every other woman present, and said you were as fair as a rose in May can't help but be a mooncalf. Trying it on much too rare and thick!'

  Piqued, she said: 'I am not a beauty, and I never was, but I am not an antidote, I hope!'

  He smiled. 'No, you are neither the one nor the other. What that dunderheaded admirer of yours hasn't the wit to perceive is that you've something of more worth than mere beauty.'

  Miss Wendover was well aware that it behoved her to give the audacious Mr Calverleigh a cold set-down, or, at the very least, to ignore this remark; but instead of doing either of these things she directed a look of shy enquiry at him. 'Have I? Pray tell me what it may be!'

  He looked her over critically, the amusement lingering in his eyes. 'Well, you have a great deal of countenance, and an elegant figure. I like your eyes too, particularly when they laugh. But that's not it. What you have in abundance is charm!'

  She blushed rosily, and stammered: 'I am afraid, sir, that it is now you who are offering me Spanish coin!'

  'Oh, no! Your nose is indifferent, and your mouth a trifle too large, and your hair, though it grows prettily, is an unremarkable brown.'

  She broke into laughter. 'I acquit you!'

  'So I should hope! I might have added that you had also courage, but I doubt it.'

  She fired up at that. 'Then you are mistaken! I collect that's a jibe, because I hesitated to accept your invitation! Very well, I will go to the play with you!'

  'Good girl!' he said approvingly. 'Pluck to the backbone! But I won't take you if you really feel that it would damage your reputation.'

  'No,' she said, in a resolute tone. 'Not at my age!'

  'Just what I was th