April Lady Read online

  ‘But, Nell, it’s of no consequence!’ Letty urged. ‘I am sure quite fifty of our friends are going to it, and even if we found ourselves amongst strangers it still wouldn’t signify, because Mrs Beading is your cousin! I own, it would be more comfortable to take some gentleman along with us, but you may easily invite Westbury, or Sir George Marlow, or –’

  ‘No!’ said Nell emphatically. ‘Not to a masquerade!’

  Letty uttered a tiny spurt of laughter. ‘Are you afraid they wouldn’t keep the line? For my part, I think it would be very good fun if they did flirt outrageously with us! But you are the oddest creature! Not up to snuff at all, in spite of having come out a whole year before I did. Why, at my very first ball –’ She broke off, as Nell nipped her arm, directing her eyes to the servants on the box of the carriage. ‘Oh, stuff! No, don’t be cross: I won’t say a word, I promise! How would it be if we took Jeremy with us? I daresay he would be very glad to go, and you may be sure he would conduct himself with all the propriety in the world, because even Giles owns that he is perfectly the gentleman!’

  ‘Don’t be so absurd!’ begged Nell. ‘He told you himself that he hadn’t received an invitation, and I can readily believe that he has too much propriety to go to the party without one. Besides, you know very well I wouldn’t invite him when it is what Giles would particularly dislike.’

  Letty accepted this rebuff philosophically, saying in a resigned tone: ‘No, I didn’t think you would. Well, what is to be done! Pray don’t say you cannot go if Giles does not, for of all the dowdy notions – !’

  Nell flushed. ‘No such thing! I mean, I haven’t the remotest intention of saying such a thing! Only I can’t immediately think of any gentleman whom I –’ She stopped, as her troubled gaze alighted on two horsemen, riding easily towards them. Her eyes brightened; she exclaimed: ‘Dysart!’

  ‘The very man!’ declared Letty enthusiastically. ‘Now you may be easy!’

  This optimism, however, seemed for several minutes to have been ill-founded. The Viscount, who was bestriding a nervous young blood-chestnut few men would have cared to exercise in the Park at an hour when it was thronged with traffic, responded readily enough to his sister’s signal, bringing his reluctant mount up to the barouche, and holding it there with all the apparent ease of an accomplished horseman; but when she asked him if he had received an invitation to the Beadings’ masquerade, he replied: ‘Ay, but I don’t mean to go.’

  ‘Oh, Dy, you didn’t refuse?’ Nell said anxiously.

  ‘No, I didn’t refuse precisely,’ admitted Dysart, whose careless practice it was to leave all but a few favoured invitations unanswered. ‘Here, Corny! Don’t have to introduce you to my sister, do I? Or to Lady Letitia?’

  His companion, who had been holding coyly aloof, edged his horse forward, raising the low-crowned beaver from his head, and bowing slightly to both ladies. Mr Cornelius Fancot was a chubby-faced young gentleman, slightly junior to the Viscount, whose devoted follower he had been ever since the pair had met at Harrow. There, he had been privileged to lend his aid to his dazzling friend in various hare-brained exploits; later, he had been of invaluable assistance in disposing suitably of the statue of Mercury in the Quad at Christ Church; and if he had never, either when up at Oxford or since both had come down from that seat of learning, contrived to rival Dysart’s more celebrated feats, which included putting a donkey to bed with a complete stranger in an inn, and leaping one of his hunters over a dining-table equipped with a full complement of plate, silver, glasses, and chandeliers, he had won for himself, besides the reputation of being one who never refused a wager, considerable fame for having walked the length of Piccadilly on a pair of stilts; and for having won a bet that he would journey to Dover and back again to London before his too-hopeful challenger had made a million dots on sheet after sheet of paper. Unlike his noble friend, he was possessed of a handsome fortune, and was unencumbered by any kin more nearly related to him than several aunts, to whose admonitions he paid no heed at all; and various cousins whom he had no hesitation in condemning as a parcel of slow-tops. His habit proclaimed the sporting man, but a hankering after dandyism was betrayed by buckram-wadded shoulders to his lavishly corded and tasselled Polish coat, and a Brummell tie round his rather short neck. The life and soul of a convivial party at Long’s Hotel, or Limmer’s, he was apt to be tongue-tied in the presence of ladies, and might be looked for in vain at Almack’s Assembly Rooms. He was sufficiently well-acquainted with Nell to feel no particular alarm when she addressed him; but a quizzing glance from Letty’s mischievous eyes threw him at once into stuttering disorder. Observing this, the Viscount, with his customary lack of ceremony, recommended that enterprising damsel to pay no heed to him. ‘Not in the petticoat-line,’ he explained. ‘Are you going to this precious masquerade, Nell?’

  ‘Yes, indeed we are, only we find ourselves in a little fix. Cardross has been obliged to cry off, you see, and it is so disagreeable to go to such affairs with no gentleman to escort one! And Felix cannot go with us either, so, if you please, Dy, will you be so obliging as to –’

  ‘No, dash it, Nell!’ interrupted the Viscount hastily. ‘Not to a masquerade out at Chiswick! Ask Marlow, or Westbury, or another of your flirts! The lord knows you’ve plenty of ’em! Why choose me?’

  ‘She is afraid they wouldn’t keep the line,’ said Letty demurely.

  Before the Viscount could reply Mr Fancot rather unexpectedly entered into the discussion. ‘Shouldn’t wonder at it if she was right,’ he said. ‘Masquerades, you know! Ramshackle! Ought to go with her la’ship!’

  ‘What the deuce do you know about masquerades, Corny?’ demanded Dysart. ‘You never went to one in your life!’

  ‘Yes, I did,’ asserted Mr Fancot. ‘I went with you, Dy! Well, I wouldn’t let my sister go to one alone. What I mean is, I wouldn’t if I had one. Had a sister, I mean,’ he added, becoming a little flustered, as Letty giggled.

  ‘Covent Garden!’ exclaimed Dysart scornfully. ‘I should think not indeed! But this affair will be quite another thing. Pretty insipid, I should think. Why do you go to it?’

  ‘You see, it is the first masquerade Letty has attended, and so she wishes particularly to go,’ Nell explained.

  ‘Yes, and, what is more, I am quite determined to go,’ corroborated Letty. ‘I collect you don’t mean to be so obliging as to escort us, which doesn’t surprise me above a very little, because of all imaginable persons I think brothers to be by far the most disagreeable!’

  ‘Letty, that is not just!’ exclaimed Nell. ‘You have no cause to say so, and I assure you I have none either!’ She smiled lovingly up at the Viscount. ‘Don’t come, if you had rather not! At my cousin’s party I can’t need an escort, after all.’

  However, the Viscount, either from perversity, or from a sense of obligation, said, with a darkling look at Letty, that if his sister was set on attending the masquerade he would certainly accompany her. He added, with an austerity which accorded ill with his rakish appearance, that if it suited Cardross’s notions of propriety to allow Nell to go alone to such parties that was where he must join issue with his lordship. He then, most unhandsomely, rode off before either lady could counter this charge. Nell was merely distressed that he should think her husband neglectful, but Letty, who reserved to herself the right to criticize Cardross, was extremely incensed, and charged Mr Fancot, lingering to make his adieux in form, with a rude message to him.

  ‘Though, to be sure, I don’t know why I should put myself to the trouble of fighting Giles’s battles,’ she observed, as Mr Fancot left them, and Nell told her coachman to drive on. ‘I am persuaded he would never fight mine!’

  She encountered a very direct look from Nell’s soft blue eyes. Nell said quietly: ‘You must not say so. It is quite untrue, and you know it!’

  Letty sighed. ‘Well, I didn’t mean precisely that, but you m