Friday's Child Read online

  ‘Isabella!’ pronounced Lord Sheringham, in boding accents, ‘don’t try me too far! If you love Another – You know, Bella, if it’s Severn you mean to have, I can tell you now you won’t get him. You don’t know the Duchess! Can’t call his soul his own, poor old Severn, and she’ll never let him marry you, take my word for it!’

  Miss Milborne rose from her chair abruptly. ‘I think you are the most odious, abominable creature in the world!’ she said angrily. ‘I never – Oh, I wish you will go away!’

  ‘If you send me away, I shall go straight to the devil!’ threatened his lordship.

  Miss Milborne tittered. ‘I dare say you will find yourself mightily at home, my lord!’

  The Viscount ground his teeth. ‘You will be sorry for your cruelty, ma’am, when it is too late!’

  ‘Really, my lord, if we are to talk of play-acting – !’

  ‘Who’s talking of play-acting?’ demanded the Viscount.

  ‘You did.’

  ‘Never talked of any such thing! You’re enough to drive a man out of his senses, Isabella!’

  She shrugged and turned away from him. The Viscount, feeling that he had perhaps not shown that lover-like ardour which, he was persuaded, consumed him, took two strides towards her and tried to take her in his arms. He received a box on the ear which made his eyes water, and for an instant was in danger of forgetting that he was no longer a schoolboy confronting a tiresome little girl. Miss Milborne, reading retaliation in his face, strategically retired behind a small table, and said tragically:‘Go!’

  The Viscount regarded her with a measuring eye.‘By God, if I could get my hands on you, Bella, I’d –’ He broke off as his incensed gaze absorbed her undeniable beauty. His face softened. ‘No, I wouldn’t,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t hurt a hair of your head! Now, Bella, won’t you –’

  ‘No!’ almost shrieked Miss Milborne. ‘And I wish you will not call me Bella!’

  ‘Oh, very well, Isabella, then!’ said his lordship, willing to make concessions.‘But won’t you –’

  ‘No!’ reiterated Miss Milborne.‘Go away! I hate you!’

  ‘No, you don’t,’ said his lordship. ‘At least, you never did, and damme if I can see why you should suddenly change your mind!’

  ‘Yes, I do! You are a gamester, and a libertine, and a –’

  ‘If you say another word, I will box your ears!’ said the Viscount furiously. ‘Libertine be damned! You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Bella!’

  Miss Milborne, aware of having been betrayed into unmaidenly behaviour, burst into tears. Before the greatly discomposed Viscount could take appropriate action the door opened and Mrs Milborne came into the room.

  Mrs Milborne’s eye took in the situation at a glance, and she lost no time in hustling the discomfited young man out of the house. His protestations fell on inattentive ears. She said: ‘Yes, yes,Anthony, but you must go away, indeed you must! Isabella is not well enough to receive guests! I cannot imagine who can have let you into the house! It is most obliging in you to have called, and pray convey my respects to your dear Mama, but at this present we are not receiving visitors!’

  She put his hat and his gloves into his hands and inexorably showed him out of the front door. By the time she had returned to the drawing-room, Isabella had dried her eyes and recovered her composure. Her mother looked at her with raised brows. ‘Did he make you an offer, my love?’

  ‘Yes, he did,’ replied Isabella, sniffing into her handkerchief.

  ‘Well, I see nothing to cry about in that,’ said Mrs Milborne briskly.‘You should bear in mind, my love, that the shedding of tears has the very disagreeable effect of reddening a female’s eyes. I suppose that you refused him?’

  Her daughter nodded, sniffing rather more convulsively.‘Yes, of course I did, Mama. And I said I could never marry anyone with so little d-delicacy of principle, or –’

  ‘Quite unnecessary,’ said Mrs Milborne.‘I wonder you should show so little delicacy yourself, Isabella, as to refer to those aspects of a gentleman’s life which no well-bred female should know anything about.’

  ‘Well, but, Mama, I don’t see how one is to help knowing about Sherry’s excesses, when all the town is talking of them!’

  ‘Nonsense! In any event, there is not the least need for you to mention such matters. Not that I blame you for refusing Sherry. At least, I own that in some ways it would be an ideal match, for he is extremely wealthy, and we have always been particular friends of – But if Severn were to offer for you, of course there could be no comparison between them!’

  Miss Milborne flushed. ‘Mama! How can you talk so? I am not so mercenary! It is just that I do not love Sherry, and I am persuaded he does not love me either, for all his protestations!’

  ‘Well, I dare say it will do him no harm to have had a setdown,’ replied Mrs Milborne comfortably.‘Ten to one, it will bring him to a sense of his position. But if you are thinking of George Wrotham,my love, I hope you will consider carefully before you cast yourself away upon a mere baron, and one whose estates, from all I can discover, are much encumbered. Besides, there is a lack of stability about Wrotham which I cannot like.’

  In the face of the marked lack of stability which characterised Viscount Sheringham, this remark seemed unjust to Miss Milborne, and she said so, adding that poor Wrotham had not committed the half of Sherry’s follies.

  Mrs Milborne did not deny it. She said that there was no need for Isabella to be in a hurry to make her choice, and recommended her to take a turn in the garden with a view to calming her spirits and cooling her reddened cheeks.

  The Viscount, meanwhile, was riding back to Sheringham Place in high dudgeon. His self-esteem smarted intolerably; and, since he had been in the habit, during the past twelve-month, of considering himself to be desperately enamoured of the Incomparable Isabella, and was not a young gentleman who was given to soul-searching, it was not long before he was in a fair way to thinking that his life had been blighted past curing. He entered the portals of his ancestral home in anything but a conciliatory mood, therefore, and was not in the least soothed by being informed by the butler that her ladyship, who was in the Blue Saloon, was desirous of seeing him. He felt strongly inclined to tell old Romsey to go to perdition, but as he supposed he would be obliged to visit his mother before returning to London, he refrained from uttering this natural retort, contenting himself with throwing the butler a darkling glance before striding off in the direction of the Blue Saloon.

  Here he discovered not only his parent, a valetudinarian of quite amazing stamina, but also his uncle, Horace Paulett.

  Since Mr Paulett had taken up his residence at Sheringham Place some years previously, upon the death of the late Lord Sheringham, there was nothing in this circumstance to astonish the Viscount. He had, in fact, expected to find his uncle there, but this did not prevent his ejaculating in a goaded voice:‘Good God, you here, uncle?’

  Mr Paulett, who was a plump gentleman with an invincible smile and very soft white hands, never permitted himself to be annoyed by his nephew’s patent dislike and frequent incivility.He merely smiled more broadly than ever, and replied:‘Yes, my boy, yes! As you see, I am here, at my post beside your dear mother.’

  Lady Sheringham, having provided herself with a smelling-bottle to fortify her nerves during an interview with her only child, removed the stopper and inhaled feebly. ‘I am sure I do not know what would become of me if I had not my good brother to support me in my lonely state,’ she said, in the faint, complaining tone which so admirably concealed a constitution of iron and a strong determination to have her own way.

  Her son, who was quite as obstinate as his parent, and a good deal more forthright, replied with paralysing candour:‘From what I know of you,ma’am,you would have done excellent well. What’s more, I might have stayed at home every now and then. I don’t say I would have, because I don’t like the place, but I might have.’

  So far from evincing any gratification at