The Determined Bachelor (22 page)

“A most remarkable young woman.”

It was spoken like an appraisal more than a compliment, and Anne, bridling with the feeling that she was being remarked upon as if she were a child, or a horse, or absent from the room, cannot be much blamed for taking offense. She could not reply, and hardly knew where to look. Therefore, she kept her gaze fastened upon her hands. Sir Basil did not seem to mind.

“You have family in Devonshire, do you not?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“And your father is a clergyman. No doubt it is owing to that that you seem incapable of dissimulation. And yet you have not a very high opinion of the clergy, as I recall.”

“Only of those clergymen who have taken up their profession to satisfy their own pockets, or vanity, or because they suppose they shall not be required to make any exertion.”

“And your father, I suppose, is not one of those?”

“No, Sir, he is not. My father has always exceeded what was required of him in every way.”

“Certainly in the way of children,” responded Sir Basil with a little smile. “You have eight brothers and sisters?”

Anne nodded.

“Five brothers and three sisters.”

“Good God! And are they all like you?”

Now Anne could not suppress her smiles. “No—at least, that is what my mother tells me. I am the only undutiful one.”

Anne would have been glad to leave off the conversation here, for having so recently been praised for her honesty, she thought she might very soon be forced to lie. But Sir Basil's curiosity had only been whetted, or so it would seem.

“Undutiful!” exclaimed he. “But are you not doing your duty
now?
”

“I am doing what I must do to keep myself,” replied Anne carefully, silently offering up a prayer for mercy for any untruths she might utter.

“Ah! To keep yourself. Well, well. I suppose no living would suffice to keep nine children. Are your brothers employed?”

“I have a brother in the Navy, and another who is himself studying for the ministry. The youngest is still in school, and the eldest is unwell.”

“I am sorry to hear that,” said the Baronet with real kindness. “I know what havoc illness can cause in a family. My own mother was unwell during most of my childhood, until she died. I do not remember much about her, of course—for I was very young—but I recollect a perpetual gloom about the house, and my father was made miserable by her suffering.”

Anne was grateful for his sympathy, for indeed, Ben's illness had been a great weight upon the family happiness for several years. They were forever living in hopes that some
one of the doctors called in to see him would offer up some cure, but the disease was an obscure one, and no treatment seemed to avail.

“And your sisters? Are they all like you?”

Anne could not help smiling at the idea.

“Hardly, Sir!”

Again, those keen gray eyes peered at her, as if trying to see quite into her mind.

“No—no, I suppose they are not.”

Sir Basil seemed at last to have satified himself upon every point of his governess's background and family. The conversation continued a little longer, having shifted to more general subjects, and after twenty minutes, Anne rose to leave. It seemed a suitable time to go, for they had done with their coffee and Sir Basil had drunk his glass of port. She did not rise willingly, however, for it had been among the most enjoyable half hours she had known in some time, and Sir Basil's look, as she did so, mirrored his own feelings of reluctance at seeing the interview ended.

If there was some resentment in her mind that night, however, that so congenial a friendship should have been struck up between people whose stations and lives prevented it ever being advanced, that resentment was only increased the following evening.

Lady Cardovan had come to dine, as she had promised to do for some time, breaking, as she said, her general rule of never dining abroad. She was as eager as Sir Basil to discover the events of the tea party at Carlton House, and once more Nicole and Anne recited them. But now the governess had more cause for restraint than in either of her previous recitations. The intervening night and day had seen her opinion changed a dozen times upon the subject of Nicole's parentage. The little girl, oblivious to the scrutiny she had been under during her morning's lessons—to find what the Princess Lieven had called “this striking familial resemblance”—had in her own way helped to increase Annie's suspicions, and with them her fears, uneasiness, and pity. In no way did she resemble, by any outward feature, either of the supposed parents. There was, perhaps, some trace of Sir Basil about the mouth, though the eyes, contrary to the Princess's assessment, were nothing like his. But the more Anne looked, with less of disinterest than she would admit to herself, the more she thought she could detect a something of Lady Cardovan in her. It was not so easy as the shape of the nose,
the colour of flesh or hair; it amounted at the most to a certain quickness, an inner animation, and above all, a kind of inbred elegance of mind. That elegance could not be ascribed, Anne thought at first, to the heritage of a country solicitor. What was known of the child's background, once more, was so slight, amounting really only to what Nicole herself had been able to impart and the summary description offered by Lady Cardovan at that first interview. Was not it altogether likely, was not it, in fact, highly probable, that the offspring of such a forbidden alliance should have been hidden away in a remote part of Lincolnshire? She would have been found the most auspicious guardian—a distant cousin, unknown about the Capital, perhaps in need of money, and willing to exchange his service as a father, and his wife's as a mother, for the guarantee of a decent living. That the surrogate father should have turned out to be so open-hearted and kind a man, must have come as a blessed surprise.

What an ironic twist this new view put upon the subject of Sir Basil's charity in taking her in! All at once, Anne was forced to view the events of the last weeks in an altogether new light, and with that improved vision, how she smiled ruefully at her own innocence! To be sure, it explained everything. Sir Basil's first awkwardness with the child, his pretended indifference to her, Lady Cardovan's extraordinary kindness, her unwillingness to be seen with Nicole in public, and finally, that extreme change which came over Sir Basil on that fateful Sunday, when his open, easy manner with Nicole had changed abruptly into icy formality upon coming into the house again, and knowing himself observed. Imagine what he must have thought of
her
when she had dared to suggest he behave more kindly to the little girl! He must have seen then how well his scheme had worked, and perhaps at the same moment understood how he might use the governess to further the dissimulation. And with that thought, Anne could scarcely control her anger and hurt. Fancy thinking, as she had begun to do, that he really depended upon her advice and sought her approval! Far from it—he must every moment have been laughing inwardly at her, for being so close to the truth and never noticing it. Anne's rage was only heightened by the thought of her own weakness in having begun to really admire him. She would not for a moment admit there was anything more than that in her opinion of him.

The evening of Lady Cardovan's visit with them, then, was the cause for extreme anguish on the part of our heroine.
The greater the amusement of the others, the happier they seemed, the more they laughed, the more miserable she grew. Lady Cardovan positively glowed, and looked more beautiful than ever. Sir Basil was as charming as Anne had ever seen him, and Nicole, encouraged by these two, bloomed beneath their combined attentions. Only Anne, suffering in silence, would not take part in the general levity. She forced herself to respond when she was directly addressed, but more than that, she would not do. If anyone noticed her silence, it must have been of little interest; or else, it was only the expected manner of a governess in the company of her betters.

Dinner was over at last—for Anne it had seemed an interminable interlude between the partridge and the hot-house grapes—and at length everyone rose from the table. Sir Basil would not take his port alone, and invited them all into the drawing room that they might take their coffee together. Lady Cardovan excused herself to go upstairs and look at Nicole's bedchamber with the child. Anne contrived, in the general commotion, to slip away unnoticed.

“Why, what is the matter?” inquired Lady Diana of her as she was beginning to mount the stairs to her own apartment. “I hope you are not going away, Miss Calder?”

“I have a headache, your ladyship. I hope you will not mind if I do not come downstairs again.”

Lady Cardovan looked concerned. “Of course not, my dear. Go and lie down. I shall send a poultice up to you.”

“Oh, no! I am perfectly all right. I shall be very well if only I am able to lie down.”

“I hope it is not a migraine, my dear. I have been cursed with them all my life. Run along, then, and let us know if you need anything.”

So easily dismissed, Anne sought the solitude of her own chamber with a feeling of relief. But half an hour passed, and the sounds of laughter wafting up from the drawing room prevented her thinking of anything else. “What are they saying now?” she wondered, and thought, ironically, that she could not be much missed. Lady Cardovan and Sir Basil must welcome the opportunity to be alone with the child—their child. A sort of secret reunion of the family, prevented by circumstance and time from being reconciled for all these years. A little while later she heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs leading to Nicole's bedchamber, and presumed, from hearing the low voice of Lady Cardovan and the high-pitched one of Nicole, that the orphan was being put to bed
at last by her own mother. A moment later the door closed again, retreating footsteps sounded down the stairs, and Anne knew that the lady and gentleman were closeted alone. How seldom they must have the opportunity to meet like this! The Princess Lieven had said to her, with that significant little smile which seemed to encompass the frailties and eccentricities of all mankind, “Ah! The wonderful Lady Cardovan. Sir Basil is devoted to her. You know, her own husband deserted her years ago. I wonder why she never has remarried? In England, of course, there is nothing to prevent it. You wonderful English! You have devised so many ways to make life more enjoyable! In Russia, there is no such liberty.”

Anne could not bear to let her mind run on any further. She rose from her bed and very deliberately took out paper and writing instruments from her desk. She then sat down to compose the letter to Ben we have already seen, so different in tone and subject from the real burden in her heart and mind.

Chapter XVI

For a decade, Lady Cardovan's soirees had been a regular tradition amongst the literati of the
ton
. What the Duchess of Devonshire's Wednesday nights had done for the cream of London Society, Diana Cardovan's Thursdays had done for the intelligentsia of the Capital. Through the years the membership of her little club—for if it was not one in name, it was more exclusive than any of the gaming establishments on St. James's Street would ever be—had been narrowed down by default as much as taste, to about two dozen of the finest minds in England. Some of these were very prominent, some known only in the spheres in which they moved. Fox had come regularly until he died, and the Regent, when he was fed up with being a Prince, had once or twice put in his head to listen to what he called the “snobbish prattle of the bookey-minded.” There was George Gordon, Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelly, and the bastion of the Utilitarians Jeremy Bentham, and Walter Scott, when he could condescend to come out of hiding, and some, like the young Disraeli, who though he was barely nineteen and a Semite to boot, amused Her Ladyship and was therefore suffered by the others. There was, besides, a smattering of the nobility who either cherished the idea of being thought fashionable amongst this odd group, or had nothing better to do. The evenings were as famous for those who would
not
come as for those who would: Georgina Devonshire claimed she would not set one of her dainty feet in the place, Wellington, who might really have enjoyed it, disliked going anywhere he was not the only star in the heavens. Still, the soirees survived without them, and if Lady Cardovan had rather gained the
reputation of being eccentrically disposed, preferring the wit of journalists and poets to that of earls and dukes, she was rather held in awe by those who pretended to scorn her. Amongst these, it might as well be admitted, were the Princess Lieven and her neighbour (though hardly her intimate in any other matter), Lady Hargate.

Neither of these ladies would have been tempted to visit Grove House on a Thursday even if they had been amused by the idea, for that was the evening upon which the vast doors of Almack's regularly swung open to admit the less serious-minded members of the
ton
, where champagne was drunk by the gallon, and the conversation did not stray much beyond the personages within its own hallowed walls. Never before had either of these ladies been absent from the festivities. Imagine, therefore, if you will, the astonishment of Lady Cardovan upon seeing them, together with Miss Newsome and the Earl of Hargate, appear in her drawing room on the evening following her dinner with Sir Basil.

It was evident from the first that the little party had arrived at once, their carriages having swung into the drive at exactly the same moment and, despite the exertions of the Princess Lieven to make her coachman slow down, together they had arrived beneath the portico. They came in, therefore, as a little cluster, were announced all at once, and caused a communal eyebrow to be raised by the party already assembled about the room. For a moment there was absolute silence, so intense that Bentham's laugh, having caused him to choke upon his biscuit, sounded as loud as a thunderclap. No one knew what to say or do, for the appearance of these socially incandescent figures amongst this plainly clad and distinctly intellectual assemblage was about as amazing as the appearance of a flock of geese.