Friday's Child Read online

  The reflection that he was the second of her suitors to be filched from her by Hero could not but cross her mind. It was all very well to say that Sherry had married poor little Hero in a fit of pique: possibly he had done so, but anyone who believed that Sherry was eating his heart out for his first love would have had to have had less than common sense or a greater degree of conceit than Miss Milborne. The dreadful suspicion that the passion her admirers declared themselves to feel for her was nothing more than an evanescent emotion, soon recovered from, could not be stifled, and made Miss Milborne wretched indeed. She waited for George to come across the room to her side, which he would surely do as soon as another man relieved him of the charge of Hero. Hero was led on to the floor by Marmaduke Fakenham to dance the waltz: George strolled away to exchange greetings with a group of his friends. Miss Milborne, too mortified to remember that she had refused to receive him when he had called to pay her a morning visit, could only suppose that his passion for her had burnt itself out, and immediately began to flirt with the dashing Sir Barnabas. Later in the evening she found herself partaking of lemonade in the refreshment saloon beside Hero, and she was excessively affectionate to Hero, even, with the utmost nobility of character, telling her that her dress with the prettiest in the room, and the new way she had of doing her hair quite ravishing.

  ‘I observe,’ said Mrs Milborne on the way home, ‘that our little friend has lost no time in acquiring a cicisbeo! Well! I wish her joy of young Wrotham! He seemed to me to be quite épris in that direction. It is all of a piece: I dare say if I have said once that he is incurably volatile I have said it a dozen times. But I did not quite like to see you dancing twice with Sir Barnabas Crawley, my love. I am sure a most elegant creature, but not a man of substance. To flirt a little – but always in a ladylike way, remember! – can do no harm, but I fancy Severn did not quite like to see Crawley make you the object of such persistent gallantry. I just mention the matter,my dear, and no more, for I am sure I need have no fear for your good sense.’

  ‘None, Mama,’ said Miss Milborne in a colourless tone.

  She was seated in her Mama’s barouche next day outside a shop in Bond Street, waiting for Mrs Milborne to accomplish the purchase of a bottle of Distilled Water of Pineapples (to discourage wrinkles), when Sherry came sauntering down the street, looking rather rakish, with his curly-brimmed beaver set at an angle on his fair head, and the drab Benjamin he wore (for the autumn morning was chilly) hanging negligently open to allow the interested a glimpse of a tightly fitting coat of superfine, a very sporting waistcoat, and a natty pair of yellow buckskins. He stopped beside the barouche, and stayed chatting to Miss Milborne with his usual good humour, and a complete absence of the sort of constraint that might have been expected in a young gentleman finding himself vis-à-vis the lady who had so lately rejected his proffered suit. He had been at Jackson’s Saloon, attempting like every other young blood of the Fancy to pop in a hit over the ex-champion’s guard, and was now on his way to White’s, where he had an assignation with Mr Ringwood. He paid Miss Milborne an extravagant compliment or two, but as he followed these up by saying that now he came to think of it he had not seen her very lately, she was in no danger of taking his gallantry seriously.

  ‘You were not at Almack’s last night, or you might have seen me,’ she remarked.

  His brow darkened, for although he bore his wife no grudge for the events of the previous evening, he still felt unaccountably aggrieved whenever he thought of George’s share in them. ‘No,’ he said shortly.

  Miss Milborne, quick to catch the note of dissatisfaction in his voice,would have been less than human had she forborne to probe farther. She cast down her eyes to the lavender kid gloves she wore and said, smoothing them over her wrists: ‘I was glad to see Lady Sheringham, however, and in such spirits.’

  The Viscount’s blue gaze became fixed on her face. ‘Oh!’ he said. ‘In spirits, was she? Ha!’

  ‘She was much admired,’ said Miss Milborne calmly.‘Indeed, I wish you had been there, for she looked delightfully!’

  ‘I’ll take precious good care I’m there the next time she goes to that dam – dashed place!’ promised his lordship.

  ‘I am sure Lord Wrotham took excellent care of her.’

  ‘Well, I’ll thank him to take care of someone else’s wife!’ said his lordship irascibly.

  Miss Milborne began to feel alarmed. She abandoned her formal manners and asked directly: ‘Sherry, you are not jealous of George, are you?’

  ‘Who said anything about being jealous of George?’ retorted the Viscount.‘I suppose I need not care to have him walking off with my wife, without so much as a by your leave, or – However, that’s neither here nor there! But what the devil he wants with my Kitten when he’s been making a cake of himself over you for the past six months is more than I can fathom!’

  Miss Milborne passed over this unflattering description of Lord Wrotham’s devotion, and said: ‘I am persuaded you have not the least cause to feel uneasy. There was nothing in his manner last night to warrant any jealousy on your part, upon my honour!’

  ‘There had better not be, by Jove!’ said his lordship, his eye kindling.

  There was no opportunity for further discussion. A widow’s lozenge-coach had drawn up alongside the Milbornes’ barouche, and the Dowager Lady Sheringham was already leaning out of the window to bestow a greeting upon her dear Isabella. She acknowledged her son with a sigh and a sad smile, but appeared to derive some comfort from the spectacle of him conversing with Miss Milborne. Her manner, if not her actual words, held so strong a flavour of the might-have-been that Miss Milborne felt her colour rising, and the Viscount, recalling his engagements, sheered off in a hurry.

  ‘Ah, my love!’ murmured Lady Sheringham. ‘If only things had been otherwise! I live in dread of his bitterly regretting his rash marriage. When I saw him beside your carriage, I could not suppress the thought that –’

  ‘I am persuaded, ma’am, that you need harbour no fears for his happiness!’ Miss Milborne said quickly, conscious of the ears of the box of her carriage.

  ‘I wish I might believe you are right,’ sighed the dowager, who had a sublime disregard for servants.‘I own I was dismayed to learn from Mrs Burrell that my daughter-in-law, as I suppose I must call her, elected to appear at Almack’s last night with that dreadful young Wrotham as her cavalier. But I knew how it would be from the outset! I believe he is for ever in her company.’

  Miss Milborne was spared the necessity of answering by the somewhat acid and over-loud comments of a hackney-carriage driver whose progress was being impeded by the lozenge-coach. Lady Sheringham was obliged to desire her coachman to drive on, leaving her young friend to digest at her leisure her sinister remarks.

  Lord Wrotham, meanwhile, by a superhuman effort of will, continued to hold aloof from the Beauty, not, indeed, as his well-wishers hoped, from a resolve to be done with her, but in the hope that this change of treatment might induce her to look more kindly upon his suit. One of his married sisters, who desired nothing so much as to see him married to an heiress, had given him a great deal of worldly advice, and however poor an opinion he might hold of his sisters’ advice in general, he thought that Augusta very likely knew what she was talking about when the subject under discussion was the capriciousness of the female sex. So far, events seemed to have borne out Augusta’s dictum: Wrotham had not failed to perceive the effect his escorting Hero to Almack’s had had upon Miss Milborne. It had gone to his heart to respond only with a bow to the most welcoming smile he had received from the Beauty for many weeks, but he had done it; and if it gave him a good deal of pain to see her subsequent passages with Sir Barnabas Crawley, at least he was shrewd enough to suspect that these were designed to make him jealous. He determined to make no sign for several days, and spent a happy hour in devising a romantic gesture which must melt a heart already thawing towards him. Miss Milborne had told him once that violets were her favourite flow