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He climbed into his seat again as he spoke, and took the reins from her. She relinquished them unheedingly. ‘If that is indeed so, I can’t deny that it is a great deal better than a flight to the Border, but a marriage performed in such circumstances must give rise to the most odious gossip! I cannot allow it!’
‘There’s no need to fly into high fidgets,’ said his lordship, possibly to soothe alarm, but with a sad lack of sensibility. ‘Caroline is a pretty ninnyhammer, but Windlesham is a man of excellent good sense, and can be depended on to put his foot down on such a scheme.’
‘Yes, but –’
‘Oh, for God’s sake – !’ he exclaimed. ‘Can’t you think of anything but that addle-brained pair? For my part, they may go to the devil! I’m sick and tired of both, and have been thinking them a dead bore for the last three hours!’
Jerked by this sudden violence from her preoccupation, she realized that the horses had been set in motion. ‘Pray, where are we off to?’ she demanded. ‘If Arthur has taken Lucy to his sister’s house we have no need to proceed farther north! How can you be so idiotish, Iver?’
‘I’m not idiotish,’ he replied, with an odd laugh. ‘We set out for Gretna Green, and to Gretna Green we’ll go! Our immediate destination, however, is Coltersworth. We shall spend the night at the Angel, and tomorrow, unless you should very much dislike it, we will resume our journey to the Border.’
‘I should dislike it excessively,’ said Miss Tresilian, after a little pause.
He halted his team and turned, laying his hand on one of hers, and strongly grasping it. ‘Nell!’ he said, in quite another voice. ‘So many years wasted – so much bitterness – ! Nell, my dear love, don’t say it’s too late! You must marry me – you shall!’
Her fingers clung to his, and there was the sparkle of tears in her smiling eyes, but she replied with great dignity: ‘I have every intention of marrying you, but not, I promise you, in such a clandestine fashion as that! Iver, for heaven’s sake – ! There’s an Accommodation coach coming towards us – George!’
But as his lordship, with his usual top-lofty disregard of appearances, paid no heed whatsoever to this warning, and Miss Tresilian was powerless (even had she made the attempt) to free herself from his embrace, the roof passengers on the coach were afforded a shocking example of the decay of modern manners, one moralist going so far as to express his desire to see such shameless persons set in the stocks. ‘Kissing and hugging on the public highway!’ he said, craning his neck to obtain the last possible glimpse of the disgusting spectacle. ‘Calling themselves Quality, too!’
But in this he was wrong. With her cheek against his lordship’s, Miss Tresilian said, on a choke of laughter: ‘What a vulgar couple we are, love!’
‘Well, who cares a rush for that?’ he demanded. ‘Oh, my darling, what fools we have been!’
Bath Miss
1
Papa,’ said Miss Massingham, ‘is persuaded you would have not the least objection, or you may be sure I should not have ventured to ask you, dear Charles, for perhaps you might not quite wish to oblige him in this way.’
She paused, and glanced doubtfully up at dear Charles. It could not have been said that his handsome countenance bore the expression of one delighted to oblige his Mama’s old friend, but he bowed politely. Miss Massingham reminded herself that this elegant gentleman, with his great shoulders setting off a coat of blue superfine, and his shapely leg encased in a skin-tight pantaloon and a Hessian boot of dazzling gloss, was the bouncing baby on whom, thirty years before, she had bestowed a coral rattle. She said archly: ‘You are grown so grand that I declare I stand quite in awe of you!’
The expression of boredom on Sir Charles Wainfleet’s countenance became more pronounced.
‘I am sure, a most notable dandy!’ said Miss Massingham, hopeful of giving pleasure.
‘Believe me, ma’am, you flatter me!’ said Sir Charles.
The third person present here came, as her duty was, to his rescue. ‘No, Louisa!’ she said. ‘Not a dandy! They only care for their clothes, and Charles cares for a great deal besides, such as prize-fighting, and cocking, and all the horridest things! He is a Corinthian!’
‘Thank you, Mama, but shall we leave this subject, and discover instead just what it is that the General feels I shall have not the least objection to doing?’
Encouraged by this speech, Miss Massingham plunged into a tan
gle of words. ‘It is so very obliging of you! The notion came into Papa’s head when I mentioned the circumstance of your Mama’s going to Bath next week, and that you mean to escort her! “Well, then,” he said, “if that is so, Charles may bring Anne home!” I instantly demurred, but, “Balderdash!” exclaimed Papa – you know his soldierly way! – “If he fancies himself to have become too great a man to escort my granddaughter home from school, let him come and tell me so!” Which, however, I do beg you will not do, Charles, for Papa’s gout has been very troublesome lately!’
‘Have no fear, ma’am! I should not dare!’ said Sir Charles, his weary boredom suddenly dissipated by a smile of singular charm.
‘Oh, Charles, you are so very – ! The thing is, you see, that ever since the Mail was held up in that shocking way at Hounslow last month we have not known how to bring Nan home in safety! You must know that she has been a parlour boarder this year past at the Misses Titterstone’s seminary in Queen’s Square, and we have promised that she shall come home at Christmas. But for the circumstance of Papa’s illness last winter, we had intended – but it was not to be! And now we find ourselves at a stand, and how we may entrust my poor brother’s only child, left to our care when he was killed in that dreadful Peninsula – how we may entrust her, as I say, to the perils of the road, without some gentleman to escort her, we know not! And I am confident,’ added Miss Massingham earnestly, ‘that she would not tease you, Charles, for we shall send her old nurse down to Bath, and you need do no more than drive your curricle within sight of the chaise, and so we may be easy!’
If Sir Charles wondered why General Sir James Massingham should consider that his presence, within sight of his granddaughter’s chaise, would afford a better protection against highwaymen than an armed escort, he did not betray this. Nor did he betray the reluctance of a Nonpareil to assume charge of a Bath miss. It was Lady Wainfleet who raised an objection. ‘Oh, but I depend on having Charles with me for Christmas!’ she said. ‘Dearest Almeria has been to visit me today, expressly to tell me that she will be in Bath herself for several weeks. She is to stay with her aunt, in Camden Place, and her brother, Stourbridge, is to bring her to town only a few days after we ourselves shall have left.’
Miss Massingham’s face fell. The notice that Sir Charles Wainfleet, wealthiest of baronets, had at last fulfilled the expectations of the impoverished Earl of Alford, by offering for the hand of the Lady Almeria Spalding, eldest daughter of this improvident peer, had appeared some weeks previously in the Gazette, and she recognized that Lady Almeria’s claims must take precedence of her niece’s.
It was at this point that Sir Charles shook off his air of detachment. ‘Almeria is going to Bath?’ he said.
‘Yes, is it not a happy chance? I was about to tell you of it when Louisa was announced.’
‘On the contrary!’ he returned. ‘It is unfortunate that I should not have been apprized of this circumstance earlier. It so happens that I have engagements in town which I must not break. It will not be in my power, ma’am, to remain in Bath above a couple of nights.’
