Friday's Child Read online

  Hero obeyed her. She paused in the middle of her task to look up, and say:‘After all, if Sherry may amuse himself, I do not know why I should not too!’

  ‘Excellent!’ said her ladyship, laughing. ‘Do you mean to break Mr Tarleton’s heart? I wish you may do it!’

  Hero gave a chuckle.‘Why, he is quite old, ma’am!’

  ‘Quite old! If he is a day more than thirty-five I will never wear my new wig again!’

  ‘Well, too old to break his heart,’ amended Hero. ‘I like him extremely, for he is always so very kind and civil, and he makes me laugh.’

  Lady Saltash, who was deriving considerable entertainment from watching her old friend, Jasper Tarleton, succumb to her protégée’s innocent charm, cast her a thoughtful look, but refrained from saying anything more. She had a certain fondness for Mr Tarleton, but having attempted a great many times to interest him in some eligible damsel and having seen her efforts on his behalf quite wasted, she acknowledged that it would afford her a certain degree of satisfaction to know that he had lost his heart to a lady as unattainable as she was uninterested. Mr Tarleton, thought her ladyship, was a great deal too sure of himself, and a little tumble would do him no harm at all.

  Mr Jasper Tarleton was a bachelor, the owner of a comfortable little property situated a few miles outside Bath. He was known to be bookish, a circumstance which possibly accounted for his not having felt the lure of London; and it was generally supposed that he had suffered a disappointment in youth, which had given him a distaste for matrimony. However that might have been, without betraying any of the signs of the confirmed misogynist, he had certainly contrived to remain single, and was held to be a hard chase indeed. Numerous females had set their caps at him, for besides being possessed of a handsome competence, he was good-looking, his air distinguished, and his manners very pleasing. But while he was happy to oblige any lady by flirting with her in an elegant and quite unexceptionable fashion, he never left the favoured fair in any doubt of his total lack of serious intention.

  He first met Hero at a whist-party at Lady Saltash’s house. Something in her which made her different from the carefully drilled young ladies of his acquaintance instantly caught his attention, but he remained largely impervious to her charm until one evening at the theatre, when he walked with her between the acts in the foyer, and she delighted him by asking in the most innocent way if this was where the bits of muslin promenaded, just as they did at Covent Garden? He was enchanted, answered her without betraying the smallest sign of surprise, and only permitted himself to laugh when she exclaimed in dismay:‘Oh, dear, I should not have said that! I am in a scrape again!’

  He assured her she might say what she chose to him, and they had a very interesting conversation, which would certainly have horrified even Lady Saltash, who was known to be broadminded to a fault. Mr Tarleton supposed that Hero must have culled her knowledge from a brother, but when he tried tactfully to discover what her antecedents were, she flushed and returned such evasive answers that good-breeding forbade him to press his enquiries. But from that day onward it was noticeable that Mr Tarleton was spending more of his time in Bath than ever before; and when he actually appeared at the Lower Assembly Rooms, and stood up with Hero for the minuet as well as for one of the country dances, his numerous friends and acquaintances could scarcely believe their eyes, and told one another that poor dear Jasper was in a fair way to being caught at last.

  As might have been expected, no such idea crossed Hero’s mind. She thought her new acquaintance past the age of falling in love, and treated him very much as she had been in the habit of treating Sherry’s bachelor friends. From having associated largely with them during the past months, she found herself at home in male company; and from having, since the first moment of her appearance in society, enjoyed all the license of a married woman, she was not at all missish, and neither put on airs to be interesting, nor affected the maidenly shrinking in vogue amongst certain of her contemporaries.

  Mr Tarleton found this delightful, and when Hero caught herself up guiltily on a cant expression culled from Sherry’s vocabulary, or committed some other small solecism of a like nature, he begged her not to correct herself, but to continue as she was, without attempting to school either her speech or her actions.

  ‘For you must permit me to tell you, Miss Wantage,’ he said, his gravity belied by the twinkle in his eye, ‘that you are the most refreshing young female who has yet come in my path! Tell me more about the Brixham Pet!’

  She said seriously: ‘I am sure I ought not, for now I come to think of it, the – the person who told me about him said it was not at all the sort of thing I should talk about. He is a Black, you know, and a great many people fancy that he will perhaps become Champion. Have you been to a prize-fight, Mr Tarleton?’

  ‘Do you know, I fear I have not? Have you, Miss Wantage?’

  She laughed.‘Now you are smoking me! – Oh, I don’t mean that! Making jest of me! Of course I have not! Females do not!’

  ‘But you are so unlike any other female I have met that that is no guide!’

  ‘No, indeed I am not! At least, if I am, I do not wish to be, I assure you! It is very uncomfortable to behave as other people do not: you can have no notion!’

  ‘I should not care a button for that. If I had any say in the matter, I should insist on your behaving just as you chose.’

  She shook her head. ‘No, not when you saw what scrapes I fell into. You would be quite shocked, I dare say. I am myself.’

  ‘You wrong me: I have never been shocked in my life.’

  ‘Not even by a lady’s going to the Peerless Pool?’ asked Hero, regarding him as though he had been a rare specimen.

  ‘Certainly not! What is the Peerless Pool?’

  ‘Well, I never went there, for it – it was not liked. But I did go to Bartholomew’s Fair, and the Royal Saloon, and to tell you the truth, I was excessively amused. But it was very bad ton, you know, and I should not have done it.’

  He threw back his head and laughed.‘I perceive, Miss Wantage, that you are what is commonly known as a handful! Let me be very impertinent, and beseech you earnestly, when you come to marry, to choose a man, like myself, who cannot be shocked!’

  She coloured and looked down at her fan.‘Yes, well – well, I shall not come to marry.’

  ‘Why, how is this?’ he rallied her. ‘I prophesy that the day is not far distant when you will be surrounded by your bridesmaids, and going to Church in a cloud of lace veil and orange-blossom, with all your rejected admirers gnashing their teeth in the background, and every female relative you possess weeping in the way female relatives have, and –’

  ‘Oh no, indeed, you are wrong!’ she interrupted. ‘Good gracious, how extremely I should dislike it, to be sure!’

  He raised his brows in mock astonishment. ‘Dislike a wedding? No, no, you cannot be as different from the rest of your sex as that!’

  ‘I am not different from the rest of my sex! I only meant that I should not at all care for such a wedding as you describe. I went to one once, in London, and oh, dear! it was so shockingly unromantic!’

  He smiled.‘I collect that you would prefer a runaway match, with a fast team of post-horses, and Scottish border for your goal, and an angry Papa in hot pursuit?’

  She replied seriously:‘Well, I scarcely remember my Papa, for he died when I was a child, but I think runaway weddings are the best, for to elope suddenly with someone you – you have a decided partiality for, and to become his wife without the least contrivance, or ceremony, or preparation, is – would be – the most beautiful adventure imaginable! Like finding yourself all at once in heaven, or fairyland, at least, when you had never thought but that you would continue in the same humdrum fashion all your life.’

  His eyes wrinkled a little at the corners, but he said solemnly: ‘Miss Wantage, do you read novels?’

  ‘Why, yes!’ she answered, looking enquiringly at him.

  ‘From