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  'What a dog in the manger you are, Ashley!' she exclaimed, between indignation and amusement. 'You don't want me yourself, but you can't endure the thought that I might marry another man!'

  'Nothing of the sort!' said the Viscount. 'I may not wish to marry you – and don't try to hoax me into believing that you've been wearing the willow for me these nine years, because there's nothing amiss with my memory, and I remember as clearly as if it was yesterday how you begged me not to offer for you, when that abominable plot was hatched between your father and mine! – but I'm devilish fond of you, and I'd be happy to see you married to a man who was up to your weight. The thing is that Nethercott ain't! You'd be bored with him before the end of your honeymoon, Hetta!'

  'You can't think how much obliged to you I am, Des, for having my interests so much at heart!' she said, with immense, if spurious, earnestness. 'But it is possible, you know just faintly possible! – that I am a better judge of what will suit me than you are! Since your memory is so good there can be no need to remind you that I am not a silly schoolgirl, but in my twenty-sixth year – '

  'No need at all,' he interrupted, with one of his disarming smiles. 'You will be twenty-six on the 15th of January next, and I know already what I mean to give you on that occasion. How could you think I would forget your birthday, best of my friends?'

  'You are quite atrocious, you know,' she informed him, in a resigned voice. 'However I should miss you very much if we ceased to be the best of friends, for there's no denying that it is a great comfort to be able to turn to you for advice whenever I find myself in a hobble – which, to do you justice, you've never failed to give me. So do, pray, let us leave this nonsensical argument about poor Mr Nethercott before we find ourselves at outs! You said it was filial piety which brought you home: I do hope this doesn't mean that Lord Wroxton is ill?'

  'Not unless rage has caused him to fall into an apoplectic fit,' he responded. 'We parted on the worst of bad terms last night – in fact, he said he never wanted to see my face again – but Mama and Pedmore have assured me that he didn't mean it, and I believe them. Provided I don't make the mistake of intruding my phiz upon him too soon, I daresay he will be quite pleased to see it again. Of course, it was quite cockleheaded of me to have let him see it twice in less than two months!'

  She laughed. 'From which I collect that he is in the gout again! Poor Lord Wroxton! But what made him rip up at you? Has some tattle-box been carrying tales about you to him?'

  'Certainly not!' he replied austerely. 'There are no tales to carry!'

  'What, have you cast off the dasher I saw you with at Vauxhall a month ago?' enquired Miss Silverdale, artlessly surprised.

  'No, she cast me off !' he retorted. 'A lovely little barque of frailty, wasn't she? But much too expensive, unfortunately!'

  'Oh, that's too bad!' she said sympathetically. 'And haven't you found another to take her place? But you will, Des, you will!'

  'One of these days you will be found strangled – very likely by me!' the Viscount warned her. 'Pray, what business has a delicately nurtured female to know anything about such things?'

  'Ah, that's one of the advantages of having outgrown one's girlhood!' she said. 'One need no longer pretend to be an innocent!'

  The Viscount had been lounging beside her on a rustic seat, but this utterance startled him into straightening himself with a jerk, and exclaiming: 'For God's sake, Hetta – ! Is that how you talk to people?'

  Her eyes twinkled mischievously; she said, on a choke of laughter: 'No, no, only to you, Des! That's another of the ways in which you are a comfort to me! Of course, I do talk pretty freely to Charlie, but he's only my younger brother, not my elder brother! Does Griselda never talk frankly to you?'

  'I can't remember that she ever did, but I had only just come down from Oxford when she got herself hitched to Broxbourne, and I don't see much of her nowadays.' He gave a sudden chuckle. 'Would you believe it, Hetta? My father suddenly ripped up an old grievance which I had thought dead and buried years ago, and raked me down in thundering style for not having coaxed you to marry me!'

  'Oh, good God!' she cried. 'Still? Why didn't you tell him that we didn't wish to marry one another?'

  'I did, but he didn't believe me. To be sure, I didn't tell him that we knew all about the plot he and your father had so inexpertly hatched, and had decided what we must do about it. Believe me, my dear, that would never do!'

  'No,' she agreed. 'And it wouldn't do for Mama either! I did tell Papa, and he perfectly understood our feelings, and never once reproached me. But Mama never ceases to do so! I do wish you would do something to give her a disgust of you, instead of making yourself agreeable to her! Every time she meets you she complains of my ingratitude until I could scream, and begs me not to blame her when I find myself at my last prayers. According to her, you are everything that is most desirable, and I must be all about in my head! What she might say of you if you were not heir to an Earldom I haven't asked her!' Her little spurt of temper subsided; she gave a rueful laugh, and said: 'Oh, dear, how very improper of me to talk like that about her! Let me assure you that I do not do so to anyone but you! And how shocking it is that I should be glad she is feeling not quite the thing today, and doesn't mean to leave her room! I do hope Grimshaw can be trusted not to tell her you have been here!'

  'Well, it may be shocking, but I don't scruple to tell you that I was even more glad to learn that she wasn't receiving visitors!' said the Viscount candidly. 'She makes me feel I'm some sort of a heartless loose-screw, for she's got a way of sighing, and smiling sadly and reproachfully at me when I accord her the common decencies of civility.' He drew out his watch, and said: 'I must be off, Hetta. I'm on my way to Hazelfield, and my aunt won't like it if I arrive at midnight.'

  Henrietta rose from the seat, and accompanied him towards the house. 'Oh, are you going to visit your Aunt Emborough? Pray give her my kind regards!'

  'I will,' he promised. 'And do you – if Grimshaw should have disclosed my presence here! – say all that is proper to your mama! My compliments, and my – er – regret that I should have paid her a morning visit when she was indisposed!' He bestowed a fraternal hug upon her, kissed her cheek, and said: 'Goodbye, my dear! Don't do anything gooseish, will you?'

  'No, and don't you do anything gooseish either!' she retorted.

  'What, under my Aunt Sophronia's eye? I shouldn't dare!' he tossed at her over his shoulder, as he strode off towards the stableyard.

  Three

  Lady Emborough was Lord Wroxton's sole surviving sister. In appearance they were much alike, but although persons of nervous disposition thought that the resemblance was very much more than skin-deep they were misled by her loud voice and downright manners. She was certainly inclined to manage the affairs of anyone weak-minded enough to submit to her auto cracy, but she was inspired quite as much by a conviction that such persons were incapable of managing their own affairs as by her belief in her own infallibility, and she never bore anyone the least malice for withstanding her. She was thought by some to be odiously overbearing, but not by those who had sought her help in a moment of need. Under her rough manners she had a warm heart, and an inexhaustible store of kindness. Her husband was a quiet man of few words who for the most part allowed her to rule the household as she chose, a circumstance which frequently led the uninitiated to think that he was henpecked. But those more intimately acquainted with her knew that her lord could check her with no more than a look, and an almost imperceptible shake of his head. She took these silent reproofs in perfectly good part, often saying, with a goodnatured laugh: 'Oh, there is Emborough frowning me down, so not another word will I utter on the subject!'

  She greeted her nephew characteristically, saying: 'So here you are at last, Desford! You're late – and don't tell me one of your horses lost a shoe, or you broke a trace, because I shan't believe any of your farradiddles!'

  'Now, don't bullock poor Des, Mama!' her eldest son, a stalwart young man who