A Civil Contract Read online

  He turned his head quickly to discover that she was engaged in studying the accounts he had left on the desk. Before he could intervene she had betrayed an embarrassing gap in her store of worldly knowledge. ‘Papa never gave you a necklace of emeralds and diamonds, did he, Mama? But here are Rundell & Bridge demanding the most outrageous sum for one! Of all the wicked cheats!’

  The effect of this disclosure on the Dowager was galvanic. Reduced to a moribund state by the efforts of her two elder children to portray in attractive colours her future existence, she sat bolt upright, demanding sharply: ‘What?’

  ‘Lydia, put those papers back on my desk!’ commanded Adam, a look of vexation on his face.

  ‘But, Adam –’

  ‘Flaunting it under my very nose!’ said Lady Lynton. ‘I might have known it! At the Opera, and very vulgar I thought it! Exactly what one would have expected of such a Creature! Oh, it’s all of a piece! We might go in rags, but he would offer a carte blanche to any Cyprian that took his fancy!’

  ‘Good gracious!’ exclaimed Lydia, round-eyed with surprise. ‘You can’t mean that Papa – Papa! – had a –’

  ‘Hold your tongue!’ said Adam briefly, taking the bill out of her hand, and thrusting it into one of the drawers in the desk.

  Perceiving that he was seriously displeased she at once begged pardon, but she was obviously so much less concerned with her own indiscretion than with the problem of how any female could welcome the attentions of a gentleman so stricken in years as her father, who had had no fewer than two-and-fifty in his dish, that Charlotte, amongst whose excellencies a sense of humour was absent, later felt obliged to point out to Adam that dear Lydia’s impenitence argued innocence rather than depravity.

  Lady Lynton had accepted her lord’s vagaries with well-bred indifference for years, but the emerald necklace, for some cause which her children never discovered, exercised a powerful effect upon her. Indignation brought a flush to her cheeks, and she so far forgot herself as to recall several of his lordship’s previous lapses, declaring, however, that those she had been able to condone. The emerald necklace, which she described as bread snatched from his children’s mouths to hang round the neck of an abandoned female, was, she asserted, Too Much. It was certainly too much for Lydia, who uttered a choked giggle, and thus reclaimed her afflicted parent to a sense of her company. She was, she said, grieved that any child of hers could be so totally devoid of delicacy, or proper feeling. She seemed to derive some slight comfort from the reflection that Lydia had always been just like her father; but that damsel’s imperfections naturally challenged comparison with the infant Maria’s virtues, and led the widow to bemoan the cruelty of Fate, which had reft from her the two children who would have supported and consoled her in her hour of need. One thing leading to another, it was not long before Adam found himself convicted of gross insensibility; while as for Charlotte, who was doing her best to soothe her mama, Lady Lynton wondered that she could hold up her head after her wilful refusal to avail herself of the opportunity offered her to restore the fallen fortunes of her family.

  ‘No word of censure will ever pass my lips,’ she said magnanimously. ‘I merely marvel at you, dearest, for anything in the nature of selfishness is wholly foreign to me. Poor child! I wish you may not live to regret that day’s work, but, alas, I fear you will find a sad falling-off in young Ryde’s attentions now that we are beggared.’

  But in this she was wrong. Not twenty-four hours after she had uttered the dismal prophecy Mr Ryde was wringing Adam’s hand, and saying: ‘By Jove, it’s good to see you again, Adam, and looking pretty stout too! But you know how sorry I am for the cause of your being here! What a fellow you must have been thinking me! But I daresay Charlotte told you how it was: I’ve been away from home – one of my old aunts cut her stick, and I was obliged to post up to Scotland in a hurry. What with the other two clinging to my coat-tails, and all the lawyers’ nonsense, I thought I never should be able to break free! But no use to run off before the business was settled: I must have gone back, you know, and that I don’t mean to do, unless I take Charlotte there on our honeymoon!’ He grinned, and added: ‘You don’t mean to forbid our marriage, do you? You’d better not, I can tell you, old chap!’

  Adam laughed, and shook his head. ‘I shouldn’t dare! But I think you should know that matters are in very bad shape here, Lambert. I shall do what I can to provide Charlotte with some part at least of her dowry, but it won’t be what she’s entitled to receive, and what you might reasonably expect.’

  ‘No?’ retorted Lambert. ‘Giving me a chance to cry off? Handsome of you – just like you, indeed! But come now! no more funning! I’m as sorry as I could be, but it’s no surprise to me. I don’t scruple to own that when Charlotte sent me the news the first thought that entered my head was that now at last we could be riveted! Membury Place don’t compare with Fontley, but though my fortune’s not handsome it enables me to be sufficiently beforehand with the world to support a wife in comfort – ay, and Lydia too, if she should choose to make her home with us!’

  He asked Adam if he would be obliged to sell Fontley; and when Adam replied that he feared so he looked grave, and said that it was a bad business, and that Charlotte would feel it excessively. ‘Living so close, you know, and seeing strangers here. I wish I might help you, but it’s out of my power. Except,’ he added, with his ready laugh, ‘by taking Charlotte off your hands!’

  It was not to be expected that Lady Lynton would readily allow herself to be reconciled to her daughter’s marriage to a mere country squire; but the alternative, which was to provide for Charlotte out of her jointure, won from her a reluctant consent. While reserving to herself the right to deplore the connection she was forced to own that it was not disgraceful: Lambert’s birth was not noble, but it was respectable; and his fortune, which had previously seemed paltry, had been changed, in the light of her own miserable circumstances, into a considerable independence. She could never like the match, but she told her son that she must acknowledge that Lambert had behaved with generosity and kindness.

  Lydia acknowledged Lambert’s kindness too, but told Adam that nothing would prevail upon her to take up residence in his house.

  ‘Well, of course you won’t do that,’ he replied. ‘You will live with Mama.’

  ‘Yes, and though it may seem strange to you I had liefer do so,’ she said disconcertingly. ‘I hope I value Lambert as I ought, but it would be anguish to be obliged to live in the same house with someone who is always jolly, and laughs so frequently! Depend upon it, if an earthquake engulfed us all he would discover a bright side to the disaster! Doesn’t he sometimes set your teeth on edge?’

  He could not deny it. He had known Lambert since they had been boys together, and liked him well enough; but he was quite as much irritated as Lydia by his unflagging cheerfulness. However, he recognized the worth of his character; and when he saw Charlotte going about in a glow of happiness he was able to look forward to the marriage, if not with enthusiasm, at least with relief. That her future was assured was the one alleviating thought he carried to London with him at the beginning of the following week.

  Two

  The Lynton town house was situated in Grosvenor Street, and was a spacious mansion, considerably enlarged by its late owner, in the days of his affluence, by the addition of a ballroom, with several handsome apartments over it. It was furnished with old-fashioned elegance; but when Adam visited it he found holland covers on all the chairs, and the mantelpieces swept bare of their ornaments. Almost the only economy the late Viscount had practised had been the closing of his town residence during the winter months. When he had not been invited to stay at Carlton House, he preferred to put up, in the most expensive comfort, at the Clarendon.

  Adam put up at an hotel too, but not at the Clarendon. When he was escorted all over his house by the retainer who acted as caretaker he knew that he could dispose of this one of his possessions without a pang. It was associated in his