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“Aunt Verity?”
Her niece’s voice snapped Verity back to the present, her face falling once again into lines of carefully learned placidity, her blue eyes focusing on the here and now with a slightly startled expression. “Yes, Lisbet?”
The younger Miss Morrison watched in amazement as the unconsciously animated stranger vanished, leaving only her sedate and vaguely dull aunt behind. “I am sure I cannot imagine you and Pappa and Uncle John being rowdy. And Aunt Catherine is such a grand lady.”
Verity’s fingers tightened convulsively, as if straightening a carelessly set stitch suddenly demanding all of her attention. Her bowed head hid how her lips, no less pink nor well-shaped than her niece’s, trembled. “It is not long until you leave for London, is it?”
“Ten days. I have been counting them off on a calendar I made just for the purpose. Ten days and then it is off to London I go to become the Belle of the Ball, a Toast of the Ton, an Incomparable—”
“And a young lady, I hope.”
Lisbet stared at her aunt with something akin to vexation. Verity had always been the first to indulge Lisbet’s childish fantasies, but ever since the question of Lisbet’s London Season had come up, Verity knew it must seem she had gone all over peculiar.
“You sound just like Mamma.”
“Your mamma is a woman with a great sense of propriety.”
“Well, she is sending me to Aunt Catherine’s, and certainly she would never let me do anything out of the way.”
The elder Miss Morrison said nothing, but her hands gripped the canvas so hard her knuckles stood out white. Lisbet had always known there existed some unnamed and ancient enmity between her dear Aunt Verity and exciting Aunt Catherine, but now it was obvious the child had never realized just exactly how deeply it went. Doubtless seeing glorious visions of being hailed as the family peacemaker, Lisbet flung herself into a kneeling position before her startled relative, gripping those tight white hands in her own.
“Come with me, Aunt Verity. You have never been to London. I can think of no one I would rather have with me when I make my curtsy, and I am sure Aunt Catherine would be delighted to have you.”
Gently Verity disengaged herself, careful to keep her face lowered so the varied parade of emotions which alternately saddened and hardened her eyes could not be seen.
“I went to London for my own Season, Lisbet, and I have no desire to return. Now I must go find your mother, as we have to decide the final details on your going-away dinner. If you want to go on talking about your coming Season, I suggest Charlie would be glad to bear your chatter, since he is now coming this way.”
“Oh, pooh, Charlie.” Lisbet made a charming moue, dismissing as inconsequential the boy who had been her boon companion and playfellow since his arrival at Bittermere a dozen years before.
Though for a while after Bradford’s departure, relations had been cool between the two great houses, the proximity of the estates had made Lisbet and Charlie inseparable chums until Lisbet’s sudden and rather startling metamorphosis into an aspirant Young Lady of Fashion. Now some of the old childhood closeness was dissolving, but the forms were preserved as much for sentiment’s sake as for affection.
To someone whose eyes were undulled by years of day-to-day contact, Mr. Charles James Pemberton was an extremely handsome young man. The perfect pattern card for a young country gentleman, he was lean and muscular in his riding clothes, with curly brown hair falling naturally around his handsome face in a way the Town Beaux paid their hairdressers well to emulate. To Lisbet, though, he was and always had been simply Charlie.
A full head taller than the object of his attention, Charlie Pemberton strode into the room with the same assurance of welcome he had known all his life. He made the proper greetings to the departing Miss Morrison as would have been expected from one of his rank and breeding, but obviously his attention was fully focused on the younger lady, an homage so commonplace it was expected. It always had been since he first had helped her over a troublesome stile when she was but four and he a manly six.
“Well, Lisbet, how many days?” he asked, settling in the newly vacant chair with the ease of familiarity.
“Ten. Just ten.” Lisbet had been well taught in the social graces, but there seemed to be no use worrying about them with one she had known almost from the cradle; she might as well curtsey to her little brothers! “You seem extraordinarily pleased with yourself, Charlie.”
An impish grin split the handsome young face. “I am. You see, I am going to London with you,” he announced baldly. Doubtless he had intended to spin out the story, to play with Lisbet and make her beg him to tell her his secret, but as usual lately when talking with her, he blurted out all the wrong things and stumbled over his words.
Whatever reaction—joy, elation, curiosity—he had been expecting, the look of blank shock on her pretty face obviously took him by surprise. Although ecstatic rapture would probably have been more to his liking, Charlie would have been satisfied by pleased curiosity. Lisbet’s quiet stare unnerved him, and he squirmed.
“What do you think? Are you not pleased?”
Had she been anything but a well-brought-up young lady Lisbet would have told him exactly what she thought in no uncertain terms. Breeding told, however, and she kept both face and voice under control.
For weeks now, ever since the news of Aunt Catherine’s generous invitation to come to London, she had been dreaming of what a success she would make in Town, of all the Beaux and Dandies and Pinks of the Ton and Corinthians who would be striving to make her acquaintance. Now all she would see was Charlie, dear friendly old Charlie whom she had known all her life, hanging on her everywhere, acting as a deterrent against all the men of her dreams merely by being there. She would probably have to end up having to marry him simply because he was there. It was almost unbearably depressing.
“I think it is wonderful for you, Charlie,” she answered in a manner both honest and pretty. “What brought this turn about? I thought you were to go back to school.”
“Well, you, in a way. My father’s been in sort of a state since I was sent down from Oxford last time.” Here he had the grace to look a little shamefaced, for everyone knew his lack of scholarship was almost as profound as his love and husbandry of the Bittermere lands. “I had been talking about wanting to go up to Town for a while, but Father was against it. Said if I had to leave the land I might as well go back to Oxford instead of going to London where I might be tempted to follow the family taste for gaming.”
“Gaming?” Lisbet said hotly. “Your father never gambled in his life. He even used to look askance at our playing spillikins or snakes and ladders.”
“No, not Father, but my Uncle Bradford.…”
“Bradford!” It was a name of mystery; Lisbet had heard it but rarely during her short life, so rarely she was certain something disgraceful had to be connected to it.
