Venetia Read online

  Her sole companion on this expedition was an amiable if vacuous spaniel, bestowed on her by Aubrey, when he had discovered that besides being of an excitable disposition the pup was incurably gun-shy. As escort to a lady on her solitary walks he was by no means ideal, for, his unfortunate weakness notwithstanding, he was much addicted to sport, and after impeding her progress for a few hundred yards by gambolling round her, jumping up at her with hysterical yelps, and in general enacting the rôle of a dog rarely released from his chain, he would dash off, deaf to all remonstrance, and reappear only at intervals, with his tongue hanging out, and an air of having snatched a moment from urgent private affairs to assure himself that all was well with her.

  Like most country-bred girls of her generation Venetia was an energetic walker; unlike most of her gently-born contemporaries she never scrupled to walk alone. It was a custom developed in her schoolroom days, when her object was to escape from her governess. An hour spent in strolling about the paths in the shrubbery was thought by Miss Poddemore to be sufficient exercise for any lady; and on the rare occasions when circumstance or persuasion induced her to set forth on the mile-long walk to the nearest village her decorous pace was as exasperating to her pupil as was her habit of beguiling the way with instructive discourse. Although not so highly accomplished as Miss Selina Trimmer, whom she had once met and ever afterwards venerated, she was well-educated. Unfortunately she possessed neither Miss Trimmer’s force of character nor her ability to inspire her pupils with affection. By the time she was seventeen Venetia was so heartily bored by her that she marked her emergence from the schoolroom into young ladyhood by informing her father that since she was now grown-up and perfectly able to manage the household they could dispense with Miss Poddemore’s services. From that date she had had no other chaperon than Nurse, but, as she pointed out to Lady Denny, since she neither went into society nor received guests at Undershaw it was hard to see what use a chaperon would be to her. Unable to say that there was any impropriety in a girl’s living unchaperoned in her father’s house, Lady Denny was obliged to abandon that argument, and to implore Venetia instead not to roam about the countryside unattended even by a maid. But Venetia had only laughed, and told her playfully that she was as bad as Miss Poddemore, who had never wearied of citing the example of Lady Harriet Cavendish (one of the pupils of the distinguished Miss Trimmer), who, when staying at Castle Douglas before her marriage, had never ventured beyond the gardens without her footman to attend her. Not being a duke’s daughter she did not feel it incumbent on her to take Lady Harriet for her model. ‘Besides, ma’am, that must have been ten years ago at least! And to drag one of the maids with me, when she would rather be doing anything else in the world, I daresay, would destroy all my pleasure. No, no, I didn’t rid myself of Miss Poddemore for that! Why, what should happen to me here, where everyone knows who I am?’

  Lady Denny, sighing, had had to be content with a promise that her independent young protégée would never go unescorted into York, or Thirsk. When Sir Francis had died she had renewed her entreaties, but without much hope of being attended to. It distressed her that Venetia should say she had outgrown her girlhood, but she could not deny it: Venetia was then twenty-two, perilously near to being on the shelf.

  ‘Without ever having been off it, Sir John – though that’s not precisely what I mean, only that it is a wicked shame, so beautiful as she is, and so full of liveliness, besides having the best disposition imaginable! For my part, I hold that aunt of hers pretty cheap! She never made a real push to persuade Sir Francis to let Venetia go to London for a season when the poor child first came out, and if she has urged her to go now that he’s dead I have heard nothing of it! I believe her to be as selfish as her brother was, and if it were not for the expense, and our own girls to bring out – for even if anything should come of that attachment between Clara and Conway, which I don’t at all reckon on, I am determined that all five must and shall be presented at Court! – well, as I say, if it were not for that I should be strongly tempted to take her to London myself, and I shouldn’t wonder at it if she made a very respectable marriage, even though she isn’t in the first blush of youth! Only, you may depend upon it she would refuse to leave Aubrey,’ she added in a despondent tone. ‘And soon it will be too late, if only she knew it!’

  Venetia did know it, but since she could see no remedy while Conway remained obstinately abroad she continued to make the best of things. Lady Denny would have been astonished had she been allowed to know with what misgiving Venetia regarded the future.

  For any female in her position it was bleak indeed, and seemed to offer her no choice between marriage with Edward Yardley or the life of an ageing, and probably unwanted, spinster in her brother’s household. Mistress of an easy competence, it was convention and not dependence that would force her to remain at Undershaw. Single ladies did not live alone. Sisters, past the marriageable age, might do it; years and years ago the Lady Eleanor Butler and her dear friend, Miss Sarah Ponsonby, had done it, but in the teeth of parental opposition. They had fled to a cottage somewhere in Wales, renouncing the world just as if they had been nuns; and since they were still living there and had never, so far as anyone knew, stirred from their retreat, it was to be inferred that they were content. But Venetia was no eccentric, and even had she possessed a bosom friend she would not for an instant have entertained the thought of setting up house with her: marriage to Edward would be preferable to such a ménage. And without indulging her fancy with girlish dreams of a noble and handsome suitor Venetia felt that marriage with another than Edward would be the most agreeable solution to her difficulties.

  She had never been in love; and at five-and-twenty her expectations were not high. Her only acquaintance with romance lay between the covers of the books she had read; and if she had once awaited with confidence the arrival on her scene of a Sir Charles Grandison it had not been long before commonsense banished such optimism. In the days when she had now and then attended the Assemblies in York she had attracted a great deal of admiration, and more than one promising young gentleman, first struck by her beauty and then captivated by her frank manners and the charm of her smiling eyes, would have been very happy to have followed up a mere ballroom acquaintanceship. Unfortunately there was no possibility of following it up in the accepted mode, and although several susceptible gentleman inveighed bitterly against the barbarity of a parent who would permit no visitor to enter his house none of them was so deeply heart-smitten after standing up with the lovely Miss Lanyon for one country-dance as to cast aside every canon of propriety (as well as to the horrid dread of making a great cake of himself) and ride out of York to Undershaw, either to hang about the gates of the Manor in the hope of achieving a clandestine meeting with Venetia, or to force his way into the house.

  Only Edward Yardley, Sir Francis’s godson, had been accorded tacit permission to cross his threshold. He was not made welcome, Sir Francis rarely emerging from his book-room during his visits, but since he was permitted to walk, talk, and ride with Venetia it was generally believed that an offer from him for her hand would be accepted by her morose parent.

  No one could have described him as an impatient lover. Venetia was the magnet which drew him to Undershaw, but it was four years before he declared himself, and she could almost have believed then that he did it against his better judgment. She had no hesitation in declining his offer, for however much she might value his good qualities, and however grateful she might be for the various services he performed for her, she could not love him. She would have been glad to have continued on the old terms of friendship with him, but Edward, having at last made up his mind, was apparently as determined as he was confident. He was not at all cast down by her refusal; he ascribed it variously to shyness, maiden modesty, surprise, and even to devotion to her widowed father; assured her kindly that he perfectly understood such sentiments and was content to wait until she knew her own heart; and began from