Friday's Child Read online

  The Viscount was visibly lost in wonder at such ready address in one whom he had not been used to think quick-witted; Hero, still covered in confusion, slid a grateful hand into one of Mr Ringwood’s and clutched it eloquently, saying in a subdued tone:‘Yes, that is what I meant, Gil!’

  During the interval, when they repaired to the saloon for refreshments, the Viscount bore Mrs Hoby off without so much as glancing at his wife. Mr Ringwood procured her a glass of lemonade, and would have struggled to make polite conversation had she not interrupted him, saying with the devastating candour which characterised her:‘Gil, I don’t know how I came to say it! He is very angry with me, isn’t he?’

  ‘No need to refine too much upon it,’ said Mr Ringwood kindly.‘Dare say he’ll have forgotten about it by the end of the evening. Never one to take a miff, Sherry!’

  ‘I forgot that we were not alone,’ said Hero unhappily. ‘My wretched tongue! If only my cousin had not been present!’

  ‘Yes, but Kitten!’ expostulated Mr Ringwood,‘you ought not to know anything about Sherry’s – well, what I mean is –’

  ‘I know,’ Hero said. ‘Bit of muslin.’

  Mr Ringwood choked over his lemonade. ‘No, I don’t! No, really, Kitten, you must not say such things!’

  ‘Love-bird,’ Hero corrected herself docilely.

  Mr Ringwood regarded her in considerable perturbation. ‘You know what it is, Kitten: if you use expressions like that in company you’ll set up the backs of people, and find yourself all to pieces. You will indeed! Sherry has no business to talk as he must in front of you!’

  ‘It isn’t Sherry’s fault!’ Hero said, firing up in defence of her free-spoken husband.‘He is for ever telling me what I must not say! The thing is that I don’t perfectly remember what I may say, and what I may not. I dare say I ought not to call that dancer a fancy-piece either?’

  ‘Upon no account in the world!’ Mr Ringwood said emphatically.

  ‘Well, I must say I think it is very hard. What may I call her, Gil?’

  ‘Nothing at all! Ladies know nothing of such things.’

  ‘Yes, they do. Why, it was my cousin Cassy who first told me about Sherry’s opera-dancer, so that just shows how mistaken you are!’

  ‘Well, they pretend they do not, at all events!’ said Mr Ringwood desperately.

  ‘Oh, do they? But Sherry told me himself that everyone has an opera-dancer, or something of the sort, and there is nothing in it. Gil, have you –’

  ‘No!’ said Mr Ringwood, with more haste than civility.

  ‘Oh!’ said Hero, digesting this. She raised her eyes to his face and heaved a tiny sigh. ‘I am not a prude, Gil.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Mr Ringwood feelingly.

  ‘And I am not going to be missish, for my cousin says there is nothing gentlemen dislike more. But I cannot help wishing – a very little – that Sherry had not an opera-dancer either.’

  Mr Ringwood made an inarticulate sound in his throat and took his embarrassingly outspoken charge back to her box. Here they were joined in a few moments by the Viscount and Mrs Hoby, and as the curtain went up almost immediately, there was no opportunity for any further confidences.

  The whole party left the Opera House in the Sheringhams’ barouche, Mrs Hoby maintaining a sprightly flow of small-talk until she was set down at her own door. Mr Ringwood went on to Half Moon Street with the Sheringhams, and cravenly refusing an invitation to enter the house with them, parted from them on the doorstep and walked the remainder of the way to his lodging. It went to his heart to ignore the pleading tug Hero gave his sleeve, but he was of the decided opinion that he would make a very uncomfortable third in the quarrel that was obviously brewing.

  The door being opened to the returning couple by the butler, Hero, after one surreptitious glance at his lordship’s ominous face, said:‘I am so tired! I think I will go straight up to my room.’

  ‘Send your abigail to bed!’ returned his lordship. ‘I want a word with you in private.’

  The agitating prospect of a word alone with a husband who was looking like a thunder-cloud made Hero feel quite sickx with apprehension. She would have liked to have kept the abigail at her side, but as it seemed more than probable that Sherry would order the woman out of the room if he found her there when he came up, she dared not do it.

  He entered without ceremony not five minutes after the door had closed behind the abigail. Hero had just locked the pearl set away in her jewel-case, and without these gauds she looked much younger, in fact, so like the tiresome little girl the Viscount had bullied in his schooldays, that he straightaway forgot the dignified speech he had been preparing all the way home from the Opera House, and strode across the room to her, seized her by the shoulders, and shook her unmercifully. ‘You abominable little wretch, how dared you?’ he demanded wrathfully. ‘Didn’t I tell you – didn’t I warn you to guard that damned, indiscreet tongue of yours? “Oh, Sherry, is that your opera-dancer?”No, it was not my opera-dancer, and you may take that with my compliments!’

  Tears started to Hero’s eyes. Released, she pressed a hand to one tingling cheek, and quavered: ‘Oh, Sherry, don’t! I didn’t mean to say it! I forgot we were not alone!’

  ‘If you had the smallest elegance of mind,’ said his lordship furiously, ‘it would not have entered your head to have said it!’

  ‘Well, but, Sherry, she did so look at you, and smile, that I could not but wonder. . . . But I quite see that I should not have said a word about it, and I am very sorry, and I will never do so again.’

  ‘It will be better for you if you do not!’ retorted her implacable spouse.‘If I know anything of females, that cousin of yours will spread it all over town in a week – or she would if she moved in the first circles, which she don’t! And that’s another thing! I do not know how you come to have a cousin of such bad ton, but I can tell you that if you mean to be seen for ever in her company it will not do!’

  Stung by the injustice of this, Hero retorted:‘It was you who said that I was fortunate in having a relative in town! You said that there could not be the least objection to my visiting her!’

  ‘I had not spent an evening in her company when I said that – if I said that!’ replied Sherry grimly.

  ‘It seemed to me that you were very well amused by her!’ Hero flung at him.‘I am sure you laughed enough at the things she was saying to you!’

  ‘Well, I won’t have you jauntering about with her any more!’ said Sherry, in a very imperious style. ‘Mind that!’

  ‘I shan’t!’ promptly replied Hero, losing her temper. ‘I shall make a friend of anyone I choose, and I shall go where I choose, and I shall do what I choose, and I shall –’

  ‘Will you, by God!’ interrupted his lordship, descending purposefully upon her.

  Hero retired strategically behind a small table.‘Yes, I shall, and it is of no use to say Will I, by God! because it was you who said we would not interfere with one another, you know it was!’

  The Viscount halted and stared at her suspiciously.‘I said that? I’ll swear I never in my life said anything so damned silly!’

  ‘Yes, you did! You said I should not find you the sort of husband for ever kicking up a dust over trifles! You said that as long as I was discreet –’

  ‘Well, you ain’t!’ said his lordship, pouncing on this. ‘In fact, there was never anyone less discreet! And as for letting you do precisely as you choose, yes, a pretty piece of business you would make of that, my girl! With no more sense than that damned canary Gil was fool enough to give you, and no more notion of how to behave in society than Jason has!’

  ‘I don’t steal!’ hotly exclaimed his wife.

  ‘I never said you did!’

  ‘Yes, you did, because you said I was like Jason, and of all the odious things to say –’

  ‘I did not say you were like Jason! All I said was that you had no more idea –’

  ‘It is just the same, and it is just like you, Sherry, to