Lady of Quality Read online

  'I am wholly uninterested in Ninian, or in any other young cub!' said Mr Carleton trenchantly. 'I accept – on your assurance! – that the pressure brought to bear on Lucilla was hard to withstand. What I do not accept, ma'am, is that her only remedy lay in flight! Why the devil didn't the little nod-cock write to me?'

  She fairly gasped at this question, and it was a full minute before she was able to command her voice sufficiently to answer it with composure. 'I fancy, sir, that her previous experiences of writing to you for support had not led her to suppose that any other reply to an appeal to you for help would be forthcoming than that she must do as her aunt thought best,' she said.

  She observed, with satisfaction, that she had at last succeeded in discomfiting him. He reddened, and said, in a voice of smouldering annoyance: 'Since the only appeals I've received from Lucilla have been concerned with matters quite outside my province –'

  'Even an appeal for a horse of her own?' she interjected swiftly. 'Was that also outside your province, Mr Carleton?'

  A frown entered his eyes. 'Did she ask me for one? I have no recollection of it.'

  It was now her turn to be disconcerted, for she found that she could not remember whether a refusal to permit her to have a horse of her own had been one of Lucilla's accusations against him, or merely one of Mrs Amber's prohibitions against which she had not thought it worth her while to protest to her uncle. Fortunately, she was not obliged either to retract or to prevaricate, for, without waiting for a reply, he said: 'If she did, I daresay I did refuse to let her set up her own stable. I can conceive of few more foolish notions than to be keeping a horse and groom in a town – both, I have little doubt, eating their heads off !'

  Having discovered the truth of this herself, she was unable to deny it, so she prudently abandoned the question, and cast back to her original accusation, saying: 'But am I not right in believing that your custom is to refer every request Lucilla has addressed to you to Mrs Amber's judgment?'

  'Yes, of course you are,' he replied impatiently. 'What the devil do I know about the upbringing of schoolgirls?'

  'What a miserable sop to offer your conscience!' she said.

  'My conscience doesn't need a sop, ma'am!' he said harshly. 'I may be Lucilla's legal guardian, but it was never expected of me that I should be concerned in the niceties of her upbringing! Had it been suggested to me I should have had no hesitation in refusing such a charge. I've no turn for the infantry!'

  'Not even for your brother's only child?' she asked. 'Don't you feel any affection for her?'

  'No, none,' he replied. 'How should I? I scarcely know her. It's useless to expect me to become sentimental because she's my brother's child: I knew almost as little about him as I know about Lucilla, and what I did know I didn't much like. I don't mean to say that there was any harm in him: no doubt there was a great deal of good, but he had less than commonsense, and too much sensibility for my tastes. I found him a dead bore.'

  'Well, I find my brother a dead bore too,' she said candidly, 'but however much we rub against each other there is a bond of affection between us. I had thought that that must always exist between brothers and sisters.'

  'Possibly you know him better than I ever knew my brother. There were only three years between us, but although that's a mere nothing between adults, it constitutes a wide gulf between schoolboys. At Harrow, he formed a close, and, to my mind, a pretty mawkish friendship with young Elmore. They were both army-mad, and joined the same regiment when they left Harrow. From then on I only saw him by scraps. He married a pretty little widgeon, too: she wasn't as foolish as her sister, but she had more hair than wit, and a mouth full of the sort of pap I can't stomach. I knew, of course, when he bought Chartley Manor that the bosom-bow friendship between him and Elmore was as strong as ever, and I suppose I should have guessed that such a pair of air-dreamers would have hatched a scheme to achieve a closer relationship by marrying Elmore's heir to Charles's daughter. Though why Elmore – or Iverley, as by that time he was – should have persisted in this precious scheme after Charles's death is a matter beyond my comprehension! Unless he thinks that Lucilla's property is just the thing to round off his own estate?'

  'Well, that is what I suspect,' nodded Miss Wychwood, 'but it is only right that I should tell you that Ninian says it is no such thing. He says his father has never had a mercenary thought in his head.'

  'On the whole,' said Mr Carleton, with considerable acerbity, 'I should think the better of him if his motive had been merce nary! This mawkish reason for trying to marry Lucilla to his son merely because he and my brother were as thick as inkle-weavers fairly turns my stomach! I never liked the fellow, you know.'

  Her eyes were alive with laughter. She said perfectly gravely, however: 'For some reason or other I had suspected as much! Is there anyone whom you do like, Mr Carleton?'

  'Yes, you!' he answered bluntly.

  'M-me?' she gasped, wholly taken aback.

  He nodded. 'Yes – but much against my will!' he said.

  That made her burst out laughing. Still gurgling, she said: 'You are quite outrageous, you know! What in the world have I said or done to make you like me? Of all the farradiddles I ever heard that bears off the palm!'

  'Oh, no! I never flummery people. I do like you, but I'm damned if I know why! It isn't your beauty, though that is remarkable; and it certainly isn't anything you have said or done. I think it must be your quality – that certain sort of something about you!'

  'It's my belief,' said Miss Wychwood, with conviction, 'that you are all about in your head!'

  He laughed. 'On the contrary! But don't delude yourself into thinking that my liking for you makes me think that you are a fit person to have charge of my niece.'

  'How mortifying!' she retaliated. 'What do you propose to do about that, sir?'

  'Give her back into her aunt's care, of course!'

  'What, take her back to Chartley Place? What an addlebrained notion to take into your head! You had as well bestow your blessing on her marriage to Ninian without more ado!'

  'No, not to Chartley Place! To Cheltenham, of course!'

  She shook her head. 'Oh, I don't think you'll be able to do that! The last intelligence we had of poor Mrs Amber was that she was prostrate, with Lady Iverley's doctor in attendance on her, and since Lucilla tells me that it takes her weeks to recover from these – these hysterical seizures I should very much doubt if she will be able to return to her own home for some time to come. Now I come to think of it, she has announced that she never wants to set eyes on Lucilla again, and although I don't set much store by that I do feel that it would be unreasonable to expect her to change her mind before she is perfectly restored to health.'

  'I'll soon restore her to health!' he said savagely.

  'Nonsense! You'd be more likely to terrify her into strong convulsions. And even if you did succeed you could still have Lucilla to contend with.'

  'There will be no difficulty about that, I promise you!'

  'Oh, I don't doubt you could bully her into going with you to Cheltenham!' she said, with maddening affability. 'What I do doubt is your ability to prevail upon her to remain there.'

  He regarded her with kindling eyes. 'I should not bully her, ma'am!'

  'Well, do you know, I think that's very wise of you,' she said, in an approving tone. 'She has a great deal of spirit, and any attempt on your part to coerce her would be bound to set up her bristles. She would run away again, and it really won't do for her to spend the next four years running away! No harm has come from her first flight, but if she were to make a habit of it –'

  'Oh, be quiet!' he interrupted, between exasperation and amusement. 'What did you call me? Outrageous, wasn't it? What's sauce for the gander, ma'am, is also sauce for the goose!'

  'That's given me my own again, hasn't it?' she said, with unabated cordiality.

  A tell-tale muscle quivered at the corner of his mouth; he met her quizzing look, and quite suddenly laughed. 'M