The Grand Sophy Read online

  ‘The very worst!’ he said, laughing. ‘God knows why such a fellow should have taken it into his head to fall in love with Sophy! You may imagine how Cecilia and Hubert roast her over it! As for the tales they make up of his adventures in the West Indies, even my mother has been thrown into whoops! He is the most absurd oddity!’

  ‘I cannot agree with you,’ she said. ‘And even though I did, I could not listen with anything but pain to a man’s sensibility being made a mock of.’

  This reproof had the effect of making Mr Rivenhall recollect an engagement in the neighbourhood which necessitated his instant departure. He had never before found himself so little in accord with his betrothed.

  On the other hand, never before had he been in such charity with his cousin, a happy state of affairs which lasted for very nearly a week. It inspired him to gratify an expressed wish of hers to see Kemble act. While making no secret of the fact that he found the great player’s affections insupportable, his odd mispronunciations ruining his most brilliant histrionic flights, he took a box at Covent Garden, and escorted Sophy there, with Cecilia and Mr Wychbold. Sophy was a trifle disappointed in an actor of whom she had heard so much praise, but the evening passed very agreeably, ending at the fashionable hotel in Henrietta Street, known as the Star. Here, Mr Rivenhall, proving himself to be an excellent host, had ordered a private dining-room, and a most elegant supper. His mood was so amiable as even to preclude his making a slighting remark about Kemble’s acting. Mr Wychbold was chatty and obliging; Cecilia in her best looks; and Sophy lively enough to set the ball of conversation rolling gaily at the outset. In fact, Cecilia said, when she later bade her brother good-night, that she had not been so much diverted for months.

  ‘Nor I,’ he responded. ‘I cannot think why we do not go out more often together, Cilly. Do you suppose our cousin would care to see Kean? I believe he is appearing in a new play at the Lane.’

  Cecilia could feel no doubts on this head, but before Mr Rivenhall had had time to put a half-formulated plan into execution he had been forestalled, and the better understanding set up between him and Sophy had begun noticeably to wane. Lord Charlbury, obedient to the commands of his instructress, begged Lady Ombersley to honour him by bringing her daughter and her niece to a little theatre-party of his making. Mr Rivenhall bore up perfectly well under this, but when it leaked out, later, that Mr Fawnhope had made one of the party, his equanimity suffered a severe set-back. Nothing, it seemed, could have excelled the evening’s delights! Even Lady Ombersley, who had been decidedly disturbed by the unexpected presence of Mr Fawnhope, succumbed to the combined attentions of her host, and of her old friend, General Retford, who had certainly been invited to entertain her. The play, Bertram, was pronounced to have been most affecting; Kean’s acting was beyond praise; and quite the most delightful supper-party at the Piazza had wound up the evening. Much of this Mr Rivenhall gathered from his mother, but some of it he had from Cecilia, who was at immense pains to tell him how much she had enjoyed herself. She said that Sophy had been in high spirits, but failed to mention that Sophy’s spirits had taken the form of flirtation with her host. Cecilia was naturally glad to find that her rejected suitor was not nursing a broken heart, and almost equally glad to think that she herself had no turn for a form of amusement that showed her otherwise charming cousin in a very poor light. As for Lord Charlbury’s volunteering to show Sophy how his father, a sad rake, had been used to take snuff from a lady’s wrist, and Sophy’s instantly holding out her hand, that, thought Cecilia, was the outside of enough! She was happy to reflect that Augustus would never behave in such an audacious fashion. He had certainly no notion of doing so that evening. The tragedy he had witnessed had fired him with an ambition to write a lyrical drama, and although it would have been impossible to have found fault with his manners as a guest, Cecilia had a strong suspicion that his thoughts were otherwhere.

  Bad as this evening had been, there was worse, in Mr Rivenhall’s estimation, to follow. Until Lord Charlbury’s emergence from a sick-room, Sophy’s most frequent cavalier (or, as Mr Rivenhall preferred savagely to dub him, her cicisbeo) had been Sir Vincent Talgarth. But Lord Charlbury was soon seen to have supplanted Sir Vincent. He met her on horseback in the Park in the mornings; he was to be observed seated in her phaeton at the hour of the promenade; he stood up with her for two dances at Almack’s; took her in his own curricle to a military review; and even acted as her escort on a visit to Merton. His lordship made no secret of the fact that he had enjoyed his expedition enormously, his sense of humour being much tickled by the Marquesa’s rich and languorous personality. He told Sophy that he would have been happy to have remained for twice as long in her company. Any lady, he declared, who, overcome by the fatigue of entertaining morning-callers, closed her eyes, and went to sleep under their startled gaze, was something quite out of the ordinary, and worthy of being cultivated. She smiled, and agreed to it, but she was secretly a little dismayed. It had been a shock to her to find Sir Vincent seated with the Marquesa. He had not been her only visitor: the Marquesa’s brief sojourn at the Pulteney had drawn to her several gentlemen who had enjoyed her hospitality in Madrid: but he was all too plainly her most assiduous visitor. Major Quinton had been there too, as well as Lord Francis Wolvey, and Mr Fawnhope. Mr Fawnhope’s presence was easily explained: he rather thought of writing a tragedy about Don John of Austria, whose brief but glorious career seemed to him eminently suited to lyric drama. He had already composed some moving lines for his hero to utter upon his fevered deathbed, and he thought that the Marquesa might reasonably be expected to be in a position to divulge to him many details of Spanish life and customs that would prove invaluable to him in the writing of his masterpiece. In the event, the Marquesa’s knowledge of the customs obtaining in her country in the sixteenth century was considerably less than his own, but she was not to discourage a handsome young man from visiting her, so she smiled sleepily upon him, and invited him to come again, when she had no other company to engage her attention.

  Sophy, who had never connected Mr Fawnhope with any manly attribute, was quite surprised to discover that he had ridden out to visit the Marquesa on a pure-bred mare she would not herself have disdained to possess. He rode back to London, behind her phaeton, and handled the pretty, playful creature well, she noticed. She confided to Lord Charlbury that she thought it would be to his advantage if Cecilia were never to see her poet upon a horse.

  He sighed. ‘Do not think, dear Sophy, that I have not a great deal of pleasure in your society, but where is all this leading me? Do you know, for I do not?’

  ‘I depend upon its leading you just where you would wish to be,’ she replied seriously. ‘Pray trust me! Cecilia by no means likes to see you dancing attendance on me, I can assure you!’

  Cecilia was not the only one to derive no pleasure from this spectacle. Mr Rivenhall, possibly because he still cherished hopes that a match might be made up between Charlbury and his sister, regarded it with the greatest dislike; and Lord Bromford, finding himself quite cut out, developed such a degree of hostility towards his rival as made it almost impossible for him to meet him even with the appearance of complaisance.

  ‘It seems to me a very extraordinary circumstance,’ he told his chief sympathizer, ‘that a man who has been dangling after one female – as the common phrase runs! – for more weeks than I care to enumerate should be so fickle as to transfer his attentions to another in so short a time! I confess, I have no comprehension of such conduct. Had I, dear Miss Wraxton, not been about the world a little, and learnt something of the frailty of mankind, I must have been totally at a loss! But I do not scruple to tell you that I never liked Charlbury above half. His conduct does not astonish me. I am only grieved, and I may add, surprised, to see Miss Stanton-Lacy so taken-in!’

  ‘No doubt,’ said Miss Wraxton pleasantly, ‘a lady who had been used to live upon the Continent must be expected to regard these matters in rather a different light from that