Frederica (9 page)

“Really, Charles, what extraordinary things you do ask me!” said his lordship. “My dear boy,
is
it likely that I should feel the smallest desire to do so?”

“No, sir,” responded Mr Trevor frankly. “Indeed, I didn’t know you were interested in such matter!”

The Marquis sighed, and shook his head. “Alas, I have frequently suspected that you believe me to be a very frippery fellow!”

“Yes, but—I mean, no, of course I don’t, sir!” said Mr Trevor, correcting himself in a hurry.

“You He, Charles: you do! And you are perfectly right,” said his lordship mournfully. “I have no interest in foundries. However, it is never too late to mend, and I am now about to cultivate an interest in them. Or am I? Now I come to think of it, it isn’t foundries, but pneumatic lifts. Do you know anything about pneumatic lifts?”

“No, sir, I don’t. But I
do
know when you are roasting me!”

“You wrong me, Charles. Somewhere in Soho there is a foundry which contains a pneumatic lift. I wish to see it. Tear yourself away from all these deplorable documents, and arrange it for me, dear boy!”

“Yes, sir—certainly!” said Mr Trevor mechanically. “I was persuaded I might rely upon you. I own, it disappoints me a trifle to find you ignorant on the subject of pneumatic lifts, but perhaps you have instead made a study of boilers and propellers?”

Mr Trevor, eyeing him in speechless astonishment, shook his head.

“Come, come, Charles!” said his lordship reprovingly. “This must be set right! How can you expect to make your mark in the world if you make no attempt to keep abreast of the times? You shall take a trip down river on a steamboat, to learn about these things.” His much-tried secretary said roundly: “Much obliged to you, sir, but I’m not an engineer, and I don’t wish to learn about boilers! And as for going on a steamboat, I’ll be da—I’d as lief not!”

“Well, I’m not an engineer either,” said his lordship. “And, like you, I’ll be damned if I go on a steamboat. But I do hope
you
won’t be, for something tells me that it will shortly be one of your duties.”

Half-laughing and wholly bewildered, Charles said: “But why, sir? I know you’re funning, but—”

“No such thing! When you have met my latest acquaintance—ah, a young cousin of mine!—you will perceive that this is no matter for idle joking.”

“Latest—a
cousin
?”
stammered Charles. “Sir, I beg pardon, but what
can
you mean?”

The Marquis, pausing in the doorway, looked back, to say, with one of his quizzical smiles: “You should know, my dear boy: it was you who edged me on to visit his sisters. So, if you find yourself accompanying my cousin Felix on a steamboat cruise, you will have come by your just deserts. But you were quite right about Charis: a pearl past price!”

The door closed behind him, and Mr Trevor was left to make what he could of this. It was not very much, for while he could readily believe that the Marquis, struck by the younger Miss Merriville’s beauty, had formed the intention of making her the object of one of his fits of gallantry, he could not, by any stretch of his imagination, believe that he would go to the length of providing for her brother’s entertainment merely to fix his interest with her. He seldom found it necessary to exert particular pains to attach an attractive female, since most of them, thought Charles disapprovingly, were on the scramble for him. If he did receive a rebuff he shrugged, and passed on, for he flirted for the sake of amusement, and any tendre that he might feel was neither lasting nor profound. As for putting himself out, as he now seemed to be doing, that was so very unlike him that Charles, who believed himself to be pretty well acquainted with his lordship, had to own that he was baffled to account for it. It did not occur to him that his lordship had yielded to the blandishments of a persistent urchin; and if such a notion had crossed his mind he would have dismissed it as an absurdity.

Meanwhile, the Marquis, driving himself in his curricle, was on his way to Grosvenor Place. He arrived there to find his sister’s landaulet drawn up outside her house, and his sister, accompanied by her two elder daughters, on the point of stepping into it. “In the nick of time, I perceive!” he remarked. “Delay your departure for five minutes, Louisa!”

Lady Buxted, in whose breast her defeat at his hands still rankled, bade him a cold good-morning, and added that she had not the least guess what could have brought him to visit her.

His groom having run to the horses’ heads, Alverstoke flung off the rug that covered his legs, and descended lightly from the curricle, saying: “How should you?” He looked her over critically. “Accept my compliments! that’s a good rig, and I like your neck-ruff.”

Lady Buxted might deplore her frivolous brother’s a la modality, but she could not help preening herself a little. It was not often that her taste won his approbation. She touched the little ruff of goffered lawn which supported her chin, and said: “My
fraise,
do you mean? I’m indeed flattered to meet with
your
approval, Alverstoke!”

He nodded, as though he took this for granted, but addressed himself to his nieces. “You two—Jane, and—Maria, is it?—wait for your mother in the carriage! I shan’t keep her many minutes.”

Lady Buxted, by no means relishing this cavalier treatment of her daughters, was torn between a desire to send her brother about his business, and a rampant curiosity. Curiosity won; and she turned to go back into the house, saying, however, that five minutes were all she could spare. He vouchsafed no response, but followed her up the steps, and into the dining-room. Lady Buxted did not invite him to sit down. “Well, what is it?” she asked. “I have a great deal of shopping to do, and—”

“More, even, than you bargained for, I daresay,” he interrupted. “Take that eldest girl of yours to your dressmaker, and tell her to make a ball-dress for her! And, for the lord’s sake, Louisa, don’t let it be white, or pale blue, or pink! She’s as bran-faced as ever she was, and the only thing for it is to rig her out in amber, or jonquil, or straw!”

The unexpected hope which this command rekindled in Lady Buxted’s breast made it easy for her to overlook the animadversion on Miss Buxted’s freckles. Surprise almost took her breath away, but she managed to utter: “Alverstoke! Do you mean—
can
you mean—that you
will
give a ball for her?”

“Yes, that’s what I mean,” he replied. He added: “Upon terms, dear Louisa!”

She scarcely heeded this rider, but exclaimed: “Oh, my dear Vernon, I was positive I could depend on you! I knew you were bantering me! What a wicked freakish wretch you are! But I shan’t scold you, for I know it is just your way! Oh, Jane will be cast into transports!”

“Oblige me, then, by telling her nothing about it until I’m out of reach!” said his lordship acidly. “And do, for God’s sake, abate your own ecstasies! I prefer your jobations to your raptures! Sit down, and I’ll tell you what I want you to do!”

She looked for a moment as though she was on the brink of answering him in kind, but only for a moment. The prospect of bringing Jane out at a magnificent ball for which she would not be called upon to disburse as much as a halfpenny made it easy for her to ignore his lordship’s incivility. She sat down, throwing open her olive-brown pelisse. “To be sure! How much we have to discuss! Now, when shall it be? I am inclined to think that it would be best to fix on a date at the beginning of the season.”

“That’s fortunate: it will be next month. Three weeks from now, let us say.”

“April! But you cannot have considered! May is the month for the really tonnish parties!”

“No, is it indeed?” he mocked. “And does it occur to you that May is already overcrowded with balls, routs, and assemblies of every description?”

“There is that, of course,” she agreed, frowning over it. “But in only three weeks the season will barely have begun!”

“It will begin, then, at Alverstoke House,” he replied coolly. “And if you imagine, Louisa, that we shall find ourselves thin of company, let me reassure you!”

She was well aware that he was one of the leaders of fashion, but the top-loftiness of this remark made her long to give him a set-down. She refrained, saying instead: “I hardly know how I shall contrive! All the arrangements—”

“Don’t give them a thought! They won’t fall on you. Let Charles Trevor have a list of those you wish to be invited: that is all you have to do.”

She said, with a touch of asperity: “Since the ball is for my daughter, I assume I shall be the hostess!”

He regarded her thoughtfully. “Why, yes! You may be the hostess, but the ball won’t be wholly for Jane’s benefit. Lucretia will bring her elder girl to it, and—”

“Chloë!” she ejaculated, stiffening. “Do you dare to tell me, Alverstoke, that I owe this—this change in your sentiments to That Woman’s cajolery?”

“No, you owe it to an unforeseen and damnably troublesome circumstance. Do you recall Fred Merriville?”

She stared at him. “Fred Merriville? Pray, what has he to say to anything?”

“The poor fellow has nothing to say: he’s dead, alas!”

Her colour was rising ominously. “I beg you won’t try to play off your tricks on me, Alverstoke! I’m sure it’s nothing to me whether he’s dead or alive!”

“Unfortunately it has a great deal to do with me. He consigned his family to my—er—protection. When I tell you that there are no fewer than five of them—”

“Do you mean that he made you their guardian?” she interrupted.

“No, thank God! it’s not as bad as that. He commended them to my care. Two of them are of age, but—”

“For heaven’s sake!” she exclaimed. “He must have been out of his senses! You, of all persons! What in the world made him do so?”

“Well,” said his lordship, succumbing to the promptings of his particular devil, “he thought I was the best of my family.”

“Oh,
did
he?” snapped Lady Buxted. “No doubt! It is precisely what he
would
think, for a more rackety, ramshackle, care-for-nobody I hope I may never see!
I
remember him! A handsome ne’er-do-well! What he must have cost his parents I shudder to think! And, to crown all, when they had contrived to arrange an advantageous marriage for him, what must he do but run off with the daughter of some paltry provincial! They washed their hands of him, and I don’t wonder at it. Not that I was ever acquainted with them, but it was one of the on-dits of the town. I believe he came into the property later, and I don’t doubt he gamed that away too. As for leaving his family to your guardianship, it’s of a piece with the rest! I strongly advise you to repudiate them!”

“Nothing would give me greater pleasure, but I can’t, in honour, do that,” he answered smoothly. “I owed him a debt, you see, which I never found the opportunity to repay.”

“
You
owed
Merriville
money? Fiddle! He never had sixpence to bless himself with, while as for
you
—”

He interposed, and in accents of distaste. “You should have married a merchant, Louisa. I feel sure he would have admired you: I do not! Do you never think of anything but money? Is it quite beyond your power to understand that there are more important obligations than monetary ones?”

Her eyes shifted under the contempt in his, but she said angrily: “Yes, it’s all very well for you to talk in that imposing style, as rich as you are! If you stood in my shoes, you would sing a different tune!”

“Don’t pitch that gammon to me!” he said. “You forget that I was one of Buxted’s executors! He left you very well to pass, my dear sister. No, don’t fly into one of your pelters! Really, I didn’t come to break a straw with you! Indeed, I’m willing—if you lend me your aid in the matter of the Merrivilles—to grease the wheels of Jane’s come-out for you. I imagine you mean to present her at one of the Drawing-rooms?”

These beautiful words checked Lady Buxted on the brink of giving free expression to her wrath. They could only mean that Alverstoke was prepared to defray the shocking expense of a Court dress for his niece. If he gave at all, he would give handsomely; and her ladyship, doing some rapid calculations in her head, realized that the cost of such a Court dress as she had herself worn at her presentation could be made to cover the additional expense of several crape and muslin dresses, suitable for a maiden to wear at Almack’s, in her first season. This reflection, though it did not slay her resentment, made it possible for her to swallow the unwise words hovering on her tongue, and to say, with mere pettishness: “I can’t conceive what Merriville can have done to put you in his debt!”

“That, Louisa, is something I prefer not to divulge,” said the Marquis. Mindful of his instructions, and with a demon of mischief lurking in his eyes, he added: “Particularly not to my sisters!”

She was not perceptive, but it was perhaps fortunate that she was not looking at him. All she said was: “I collect he helped you out of some disgraceful scrape. So now you feel obliged to further his children’s interests! It must be the first time in your life you have recognized
any
obligation! To be sure, one might have supposed that there were others, nearer to you, and with greater claims upon you, who would have excited your benevolence—
How
many children did you say he had?”

“Five. Three sons and two daughters—orphans, residing at the moment in Upper Wimpole Street, in the care of their aunt, who, I understand, assumed this charge upon the death of Merriville’s wife, some ten years ago. The eldest son is of age, and at Oxford; but it is his sister who—unless I very much mistake the matter!—rules the roost! I think she is some four-and-twenty years of age, and—”