Frederica Read online

  When Lady Buxted remembered impertinent little Sally Fane, a wretched schoolroom miss to whom she had administered a number of well deserved set-downs, the delicacies her brother’s French cook had prepared for the refreshment of his guests turned to ashes in her mouth. At that moment, nothing would have afforded her more pleasure than to have given Sally yet another set-down. But, whatever rage might possess her soul, at no time did Lady Buxted lose sight of the main chance. No mother with a daughter to dispose of eligibly could afford to disdain the patronage of Lady Jersey, the acknowledged Queen of London’s most exclusive club, known to the irreverent as the Marriage Mart. So Lady Buxted, her appetite destroyed, had felt herself obliged to accept Sally’s offer with a smile as false and as sweet as the one lilting on Sally’s mouth.

  Only one annoyance was spared her on that night of mingled triumph and chagrin: Alverstoke invited neither of his wards to stand up with him. Other eyes than Lady Buxted’s were watching curiously to see what he would do; but their owners were relieved or disappointed, according to their dispositions, to see that the only ladies he led on to the floor were those of rank or seniority. He did, indeed, pause to exchange a few words with Frederica, but there was nothing to be made of that, for he managed, in spite of his indolence, to speak to every one of his guests.

  ‘Satisfied, Frederica?’ he enquired.

  She replied impulsively: ‘I don’t know how to thank you! Indeed I am satisfied!’ Her sudden smile dawned. ‘It’s my night of triumph, don’t you think? I knew Charis had only to be seen to be appreciated!’ She added anxiously, as he said nothing: ‘It isn’t just my partiality, is it? She has made a hit, hasn’t she?’

  ‘Decidedly. Do you ever spare a thought for anyone but Charis?’

  ‘Why, of course I do!’ she exclaimed, rather shocked. ‘I think about all of them, only at this present time, you know, I do think about her more than about the others, because she is my most pressing concern.’

  He looked curiously at her. ‘Have you no concern for yourself, Frederica?’

  ‘For myself?’ she said, wrinkling her brow. ‘Well, if there were any need for me to be concerned I should be – naturally! As it is –’

  ‘I should have said, any thought for yourself,’ he interrupted. ‘You’ve called this your night of triumph merely because Charis has made a hit; but it appears to me that you have been solicited to dance quite as often as Charis.’

  She laughed. ‘Yes – isn’t it diverting? I’ve been positively overwhelmed: my partners hoping that if they are very civil and attentive I may be moved to present them to my sister!’

  ‘You are a strange creature,’ he commented.

  He passed on, with a nod, and a slight smile, as Buxted came up to lead Frederica into a set of quadrilles.

  She was puzzled by his lordship’s last remark, but wasted very little time in considering what its implication might be, and none at all in wondering whether the various gentlemen who had begged her to stand up with them a second time really did so with a view to becoming acquainted with her sister. She would have been incredulous had she been told that amongst the many who were demonstrably lost in admiration of Charis there were several persons who found her the more attractive of the two sisters.

  Amongst these was Mr Moreton, who cocked a quizzical eyebrow at Alverstoke, and demanded to know what sort of a rig he was running.

  ‘None at all,’ responded Alverstoke coolly.

  Mr Moreton sighed. ‘Dear boy, you can’t think – no, damn it, you really can’t think to ride on my back! Neither of the explanations offered me for your sponsorship of Merriville’s daughters is at all acceptable to me. On the one hand I learn that you are under an obligation to Merriville; on the other, that you have fallen a victim to the divine Charis’s beauty. Doing it rather too brown, Ver!’

  ‘Oh, why?’ countered his lordship. ‘Think of the beauties to whom I’ve fallen a victim, Darcy!’

  ‘I am thinking of ’em. Ripe ’uns, every one!’ said Mr Moreton.

  ‘Ah, but did you ever see such perfection of features and figure?’

  ‘No, I’ve seldom met with a lovelier widgeon,’ replied Mr Moreton ruthlessly. ‘The thing is, my taste don’t run to sweet simpletons – and nor, dear boy, does yours! The elder sister’s the filly for my money. She don’t want for sense, and she ain’t just in the ordinary style. Not your style, however, so why have you taken the pair of ’em under your protection?’

  ‘What else could I do, when Merriville had – er – commended them to my care?’

  ‘Having put you under an obligation! No, Ver!’ protested Mr Moreton. ‘Of all the brummish stories I ever heard – ! You were never on more than common civility terms with him!’

  ‘Perhaps,’ murmured his lordship, ‘I yielded to a compassionate impulse.’

  ‘A what?’ gasped his best friend.

  ‘Oh, did you think I never did so?’ said his lordship, the satirical glint in his eyes extremely pronounced. ‘You wrong me! I do, sometimes – not frequently, of course, but every now and then!’

  ‘Oh, no, I don’t wrong you!’ retorted Mr Moreton grimly. ‘I daresay there’s very little you wouldn’t do for anyone that was a friend of yours – well, good God, don’t I know it? If you think I don’t know that it was you who pulled poor Ashbury out of ebb-water –’

  ‘I must suppose that you believe you know what you are talking about,’ interrupted Alverstoke, with considerable acerbity, ‘but I do not! What’s more, Darcy, you’re becoming a dead bore! If you must have the truth, I’m shouldering Merriville’s daughters into the ton to annoy Louisa!’

  ‘Well, that’s what I thought,’ said Mr Moreton, unmoved. ‘Only it don’t explain why you took a schoolboy to visit some foundry or other!’

  That surprised a crack of laughter out of Alverstoke. ‘Felix! Well, if ever you should meet him, Darcy, you’ll know why I took him over that foundry!’

  Another who had formed a very good opinion of the elder Miss Merriville was Lord Buxted: a circumstance which his mother regarded with mixed feelings. She was naturally relieved to know that he had not (like his doltish cousin) fallen instantly under the spell of Charis’s beauty; but she had viewed with disfavour the unusual animation with which he had conversed with Frederica during dinner, and with definite hostility his subsequent behaviour. Not content with standing up with her for a full hour, during two country dances, he had shown a disposition to gravitate towards her between dances, which would have alarmed Lady Buxted very much, had he not later described Frederica to her as a conversable female with a good deal of commonsense. As he added that he thought her by no means a bad-looking young woman, Lady Buxted was able to allay her alarm with the reflection that such temperate praise scarcely argued any very marked degree of admiration.

  She would have been less complacent had she known that he made it his business to call in Upper Wimpole Street on the following day, to see how the ladies went on after what he termed, with slightly ponderous humour, their night’s raking. He was by no means their only visitor, several other gentlemen having presented themselves on the slimmest of pretexts, and Endymion Dauntry on no pretext at all; but he was generally felt to have scored a point by stressing his relationship to the Merrivilles, and by adopting towards them an air of kindness which verged on the avuncular, and would have aroused feelings of strong resentment in the breasts of the three gentlemen he found in possession had he not made it plain that it was Frederica, and not Charis, who was the object of his solicitude.

  During the week after the Alverstoke ball, the Misses Merriville received a number of invitations; and Miss Winsham was honoured by a visit from Lady Jersey, who brought with her the promised vouchers for Almack’s. She came partly because she was curious, partly because she wished to oblige Alverstoke, and to disoblige his sister Louisa; and by the time she was treading up the stairs in Buddle’s wake she was regretting her condescension. She was capricious, but she placed herself on a high form, and