Lady of Quality Read online

  'Bit fresh, ma'am!' warned the groom.

  'Yes, because she hasn't been out for three days, poor darling! She'll settle down when the saddle has had time to get warm to her back. Stand away, if you please! Now, steady, Bess! Steady! You can't gallop through the town!'

  'By Jupiter, you're a regular out-and-outer, ma'am!' exclaimed Ninian, watching the mare's playful and unavailing attempts to unseat her. 'I'll go bail you set a splitting pace in the huntingfield!'

  'That sounds as though you take me for a thruster!' she retorted. 'Have you decided which way we are to go?'

  'Yes, up on to Lansdown – unless you had liefer go somewhere else, ma'am?'

  'No, not at all: Lansdown let it be! Well, Lucilla? How do you like her?'

  'Oh, beyond anything great!' Lucilla said ecstatically. The groom had mounted her, and she was groping for her stirrupleather under her skirt. 'Oh, botheration!'

  'Here, I'll do that for you!' Ninian said. 'Do you want it shortened or lengthened?'

  'Shortened, please. Just one hole, I think. Yes, that is exactly right! Thank you!'

  He tested the girths, tightened them, told her sternly to remember that her hand was strange to the mare, and to be careful what she was about, and swung himself into his own saddle. They then set forward, Lucilla and Ninian leading the way, and Mr Carleton, following close on their heels with Miss Wychwood beside him, keeping a critical eye on his ward. He seemed soon to be satisfied that a perfect understanding between the gray mare and her rider was in a fair way to becoming established, for he withdrew his gaze from them, and turned his head to speak to Miss Wychwood, saying: 'No need to follow so closely: she seems to know how to handle strange horses.'

  'Yes,' she agreed. 'Ninian assured me that I had no need to worry about her for she was a capital horsewoman.'

  'She should be,' he responded. 'My brother threw her into the saddle when she was hardly out of leading-strings.'

  'Yes,' she said again. 'She told me that.'

  Silence fell between them. It was not broken until they had drawn clear of the town, and Ninian and Lucilla, once off the stones, were trotting some way ahead. Mr Carleton said then, in his direct fashion: 'Are you still angry with me?'

  She started a little, for she had been lost in her own thoughts, and replied, with an uncertain laugh: 'Oh, no! I'm afraid I was wool-gathering!'

  'If you are no longer angry with me, who, or what, has put you all on end?'

  'I – I'm not all on end!' she stammered. 'Why – why should you think I am, merely because I let my thoughts wander for a minute or two?'

  He appeared to give this question consideration. A slight frown drew his brows together, and a searching look between narrowed eyes, staring between his horse's ears into the middle distance, failed to provide him with an answer, for, after a short pause, he smiled wryly, and said: 'I don't know. But I do know that something has happened to put you in a passion, which you are trying to bottle up.'

  'Oh, dear!' she sighed. 'Is it so obvious?'

  'To me, yes,' he replied curtly. 'I wish you will tell me what has destroyed your tranquillity, but if you don't choose to do so I won't press you. What would you wish to talk about?'

  She turned her head to look at him wonderingly, a smile wavering on her lips, and in her mind the thought that he was strangely incalculable. At one moment, he could be brusque, and unfeeling; and then, when he had made her blazingly angry, his mood seemed to change, and her resentment was dispelled by the sympathy, however roughly expressed, which she heard in his voice, and detected in the softened look in his eyes. Now, as she met those penetrating eyes, she saw the hint of a smile in them, and was conscious of an impulse to admit him, at least a little way, into her confidence. There was no one else to whom she could unburden herself, and she badly needed a safe confidant, for the more she kept her rancour to herself the greater it grew. Why she should consider Mr Carleton a safe confidant was a question it never occurred to her to ask herself: she felt it, and that was enough.

  She hesitated, and after a moment he said in a matter-of-fact way: 'You had better open the budget, you know, before all that seething wrath in you forces off the lid you've clamped down on it, and scalds everything within sight.'

  That made her laugh. She said: 'Like a pot of boiling water? That would be very shocking! It's true that I am out of temper, but it's no great matter. My brother arrived in Camden Place last night, to inform me that he was planting his wife, his two children, their nurse, and – I conjecture! – my sister-in-law's abigail, upon me today, for – according to himself ! – a few days! Without warning, if you please! I am very fond of my sister-in-law, but it vexed me very much!'

  'I imagine it might. Why are you to be subjected to this invasion?'

  Her eyes kindled. 'Because he –' She stopped, realizing suddenly that it was impossible to disclose to Mr Carleton, of all people, Sir Geoffrey's true reason. 'Because Tom – my small nephew – has the toothache!' she said.

  'You must think of something better than that!' he objected. 'I daresay you believe me to be a cabbage-head, but you are mistaken: I'm not! And swallow that clanker I can't!'

  'I don't think anything of the sort,' she retorted. 'If you want the truth, I believe you to be a most complete hand, awake upon every suit!'

  'Then you should know better than to try to tip me the double,' he said. 'Bring his entire family to Bath because Tom has the toothache? What a Banbury story!'

  'Well, I must own it does sound like one, but it isn't. My sister-in-law is – is set on taking Tom to the best dentist possible, and has had Westcott recommended to her. If you think that ridiculous, so do I!'

  'I think it is a damned imposition!' he said roundly. 'Oh, you are not accustomed to the language I use, are you? Accept my apologies, ma'am!'

  'Willingly! You have exactly expressed my feelings! To overset all my arrangements without so much as a by your leave makes me so out of reason cross that I want to rip and tear! You need not tell me that I am building a mountain out of a molehill, for I know I am!'

  'Oh, no, I shan't! You are far too well-bred to vent your wrath on Wychwood, so rip and tear at me instead!'

  'Don't be so absurd! You are not – in this instance – the cause of my vexation!'

  'Oh, don't let that weigh with you! I will confidently engage myself to offer you enough provocation to rattle me off in fine style! Don't hesitate to make use of me!'

  'Mr Carleton,' she said, with a quivering lip, 'I have already requested you not to be absurd!'

  'But didn't I promise to offer you provocation?'

  'One of the things I most dislike in you, sir, is your disagreeable habit of always having an answer!' she told him, with considerable acerbity. 'And, in general,' she added, 'a rude one!'

  'Come, this is much better!' he said encouragingly. 'You have already rid yourself of some of your spleen! Now tell me exactly what you think of me for having said an unjust thing to you last night, and for having, with such abominable rudeness, left your rout-party! If that doesn't rid you of the rest of your spleen, you can animadvert, more forcefully than you did in the Pump Room that day, on the obliquity of my life and character! And if that doesn't take the trick –'

  She interrupted him, the colour flaming into her cheeks. 'I beg you to say no more! I should not have said – what I did say – and I regretted it as soon as the words were out of my mouth, and – and have wished to beg your pardon ever since. But somehow the opportunity to do so never arose. It has arisen now, and – and I do beg your pardon!'

  He did not immediately answer her, and, stealing a glance at his face, she saw that that queer smile had twisted his mouth. He said: 'One of the things I most dislike in you, my entrancing hornet, is your unfailing ability to put me at Point Non Plus! I'm damned if I know why I like you so much!'

  She was powerfully affected by these words, but made a gallant attempt to pass them off lightly. 'Indeed, I can't think why you should like me, for we have come to points