Frederica Read online

  ‘On the contrary! I shall enjoy it excessively – and in particular the spectacle of my brother being brought round a small and probably grubby thumb!’

  ‘Certainly grubby!’ said Frederica ruefully. ‘Isn’t it odd that you may send a little boy out as neat as wax, and within half-an-hour he will be a perfect shag-rag?’

  ‘Yes, and in that respect they are all exactly alike. I have three sons, you know, Miss Merri – Oh, no, why should we peel eggs? Frederica! We are cousins, are we not?’

  ‘Well, I think we are,’ said Frederica. ‘Only – only rather remote, I’m afraid!’ She hesitated, and then said candidly: ‘It must seem very odd to you that I should have asked Lord Alverstoke to befriend us. The thing was he was the only relation whose name I knew. My father had several times spoken of him, so – so I was so bold-faced as to apply to him. I was very anxious, you see, that my sister should have a London season.’

  ‘I can readily understand that,’ Eliza said, looking towards Charis, who made one of a group of young people on the opposite side of the room. ‘I see she has Endymion Dauntry on a string: if he were not so handsome one would take him for a mooncalf! Is that his sister, Chloë, talking to young Wrenthorpe? How monstrous that he should be so much the better-looking!’ She withdrew her gaze, and smiled at Frederica: ‘Alverstoke tells me that you are under the chaperonage of an aunt, but that she is not here tonight: I should like to make her acquaintance, so I shall pay her a morning visit, if you think she would not dislike it?’

  ‘She could not do so, but I fear you would not be very likely to find her at home,’ said Frederica. Her brow was creased, and she sighed. ‘It is a most unfortunate circumstance – well, a very sad circumstance! – that my uncle, who lives in Harley Street, is dangerously ill, not expected to recover, which, indeed, one would not wish him to do, for he has been a sufferer from a painful and incurable disease for a long time. My Aunt Seraphina feels it to be her duty to support her sister, and spends almost the whole of every day in Harley Street. My Aunt Amelia is in great affliction, which seems to suspend her every faculty. She is – er – all sensibility, and the least thing overpowers her.’ She added hastily: ‘Not that I mean to say this is a little thing!’

  ‘I know just what you mean,’ interposed Eliza. ‘Poor soul! I sincerely pity her, but I shall spare you any flowery commonplaces. I fancy we are alike in preferring the word with the bark on it: it is in the highest degree unfortunate that this should have happened just now! You must be most awkwardly placed, without your chaperon. Well, I mean to stay in London for a few weeks, so perhaps I may be able to come to your rescue.’

  ‘Oh no, no! It is most kind of you, but that doesn’t signify! My aunt dislikes ton-parties, and rarely accompanies us to them. Indeed, she only consented to come to Upper Wimpole Street on the understanding that she need not do so. I thought that perhaps it would present a – a more correct appearance if she were known to be with us. But, in point of fact, I’ve always been Charis’s chaperon. You see, by the time she was seventeen I was quite beyond the age of needing a chaperon myself – whatever Cousin Alverstoke may say!’

  ‘What does he say?’ enquired Eliza.

  ‘Everything that is disagreeable!’ replied Frederica, laughing. ‘He thinks me sunk beneath reproach – positively a hurly-burly woman! – because I don’t take my maid with me when I go out! It is too absurd! As though I were a green girl, which anyone can see I am not!’

  ‘No: but not, if I may say so, at your last prayers!’

  Frederica smiled. ‘I daresay no female ever reaches her last prayers. But that doesn’t signify: the thing is that if my uncle were to die now it would be most improper, wouldn’t it? for Charis to attend any such parties as this.’ The laughter sprang into her eyes again; she said comically: ‘Oh, dear! How odious that sounds! But when one has schemed and contrived, as I have, to bring a very beautiful and very dear sister to London for at least one season – it – it does seem hard to be obliged to forgo it all because an uncle, whom we scarcely know, and who is not a blood-relation – though a kind, worthy man! – should die at such an ill-chosen moment!’

  A responsive twinkle came into Lady Elizabeth’s eyes, but she replied quite seriously: ‘Yes, I see. Awkward! But if he is only related to you by marriage I am much inclined to think that you need do no more than go into black gloves.’

  ‘But not dance in black gloves!’ objected Frederica.

  Lady Elizabeth thought this over. ‘Perhaps not. I am not perfectly sure about dancing, but I do know that we were in black gloves for one of my great-aunts when my mother presented Louisa, and I seem to remember that she went to parties every night. I don’t care a rush for proper modes myself, and should have supposed that you do not either.’

  ‘I’m obliged to care, for my sister’s sake. What might be thought eccentricity in Lady Elizabeth Dauntry would be condemned in Miss Merriville as very unbecoming conduct,’ said Frederica dryly.

  Eliza wrinkled up her nose distastefully. ‘I suppose that’s true. How detestable! Well, the only thing to be done is to –’

  But at that moment she was interrupted by Lady Jersey, who came up to her with her hands outstretched, exclaiming: ‘Eliza! Oh, goodness me, I hadn’t the least notion – My dearest wretch, how dared you come to London without one word to me?’

  So Frederica, moving away, did not learn what, in her ladyship’s opinion, was the best thing to be done. She could only hope that Mr Navenby, who had punctiliously asked her leave to address himself to Charis, might succeed in winning that soft heart. Since Charis showed a tendency to burst into tears whenever his name was mentioned, the hope was not strong; but when Frederica compared him to Endymion she found it hard to believe that Charis, ninnyhammer though she was, could really prefer a handsome block to so admirable a young man. Indeed, she had been so much exasperated by the sight of Charis gazing worshipfully up into Endymion’s face, at Almack’s, two days previously, that she had quite tartly requested her not to make such a figure of herself at the Seftons’ party.

  ‘You cast just such sheep’s eyes at young Fraddon, when you fancied yourself in love with him,’ she reminded her wilting sister. ‘But then you were only seventeen. You are past nineteen now, and indeed, my dear, it is time that you showed a little commonsense! Instead, you show less! Will Fraddon had more than his handsome face to recommend him, and, had your tendre for him endured, neither I nor his parents would have raised any objection to the match. It didn’t, however, and now you choose to make a goose of yourself over another, and far less eligible, handsome face! Charis, surely you must know that I am not more opposed to such a match than is Mrs Dauntry – or, I don’t doubt, Lord Alverstoke? No, no, don’t cry! I don’t mean to be unkind, and I promise you I perfectly understand how you came to be dazzled by so magnificent a – a clodpole! Only try to give your thoughts a more rational direction! How could you be happy with a man whom his own relations think a block?’

  The effect of this practical homily was to cast Charis into a fever of apprehension, which she communicated to Endymion at the first opportunity that offered. No sooner had he succeeded, at the Seftons’ assembly, in drawing her apart from the throng of her suitors than the story was poured into his ears, and his beloved was entreating him not to come near her for the rest of the evening. ‘I have the most dreadful feel that Frederica has divulged the secret of our attachment to Alverstoke!’ she said tragically. ‘You cannot have failed to notice the way he watched us, when you first came up to me! I declare, I was ready to sink, when I looked up, and found his piercing gaze upon me!’

  Endymion had not, in fact, noticed this unnerving circumstance, but he agreed that it was sinister. After painful cogitation, he said: ‘There’s only one thing for it: I must sell out!’

  ‘Oh, no, no!’ Charis breathed. ‘Never would I let you do so for my miserable sake!’

  ‘Well, to own the truth, I’ve never cared for military life above half,’ confided Endymion.