Amanda Scott (21 page)

Adriana explained what Chalford had said about Christmas, and after her tea had been served, she revealed her more pressing needs. “I must have some clothes, Sarah. I brought little with me, as you might guess, and though I do have some money, it will not be enough, so I hope you have not outrun the constable, for I mean to borrow whatever I must.”

“We can have the carriage out this afternoon, if you like,” Sarah said. “My dressmaker here is a most obliging woman who does not shut her doors until after six o’clock. Do you have something suitable to wear to the theater tonight? Prinny has ordered a comedy,
Speed the Plow,
and Mortimer wishes to attend. We have been rather dull since the crowds moved on to Lewes, and nothing has occurred to enliven or awaken us, save donkey races and a storm the whole of Saturday night. The Steyne has been deserted these past two days, and there has been little noise save the occasional braying of an ass or of a solitary cracked French horn from the petit orchestra at Donaldson’s Library.”

“The fact is,” Miranda said, “that the regular summer residents hardly ever muster strong until the races are over and the mobocracy, as Sally Villiers calls the bourgeois element, are quite dispersed. Alston comes here for the races, of course, and cares little for crowds or anything else, including plays, I fear, but Sophie, thank heaven, convinced him that the Monday-night balls at the Castle are not to be despised.”

“Did Alston win any money at the races?” Adriana asked.

“Not so much as he lost,” Miranda said with a grimace. “There has been no living with him, believe me, since the outcome of the Somerset stakes was announced. Consider his elation when Houghton Lass came in the winner. Mr. Mellish’s Lady Brough, I must tell you, was the favorite in that race, so Alston thought himself very clever to have backed Houghton Lass.”

“But you said he didn’t do well,” Adriana protested.

Miranda and Sarah exchanged wise looks, and Miranda said, “It was reported that Houghton Lass and the horse coming in second had both run on the wrong side of the post. Controversy raged until the following day, when it was decided by the Jockey Club that his highness’s Orville had won. Only conceive of Alston’s fury when the results were announced. He fared no better with the other races, and I fear I may have made matters worse by trying his temper more than once.”

“Particularly,” said Sarah, grinning, “when you went to the races after he had absolutely forbidden you to do so.”

“That settles it,” Adriana said flatly. “I must avoid Alston at all costs.”

Miranda chuckled. “Well, I cannot say I blame you, but you won’t do it. Some well-meaning tabby will inform him of your presence here within half an hour of your setting foot outside. For that matter, someone may well have seen you when you arrived, or the servants will have passed the word. Your best hope is to meet him publicly, somewhere where he may be counted upon to hold his nose in the air and not take you to task.”

“That will only postpone the reckoning,” Sarah pointed out.

Adriana sighed. “I will not stay hidden away like some cowardy cat. Let us visit your modiste, Sarah. I do have a gown I can wear to the theater tonight, even one that would suffice for a concert or a ball if you will lend me some jewelry, but I do not have much of anything else to speak of. I did feel I ought not to trust the free traders near my jewels.”

Accordingly, they set out to visit the shops, and Adriana was able to order several gowns, bonnets, and other necessary articles. Lady Clifford’s modiste, Madame LaPlant, a thin, flat-bosomed Frenchwoman with a bubbling personality and an air of practicality, promised faithfully to deliver the first of these within two days’ time, and Adriana was well-satisfied.

They dined at home, and Sarah told her husband that Adriana had accepted an impromptu invitation from friends to carry her from Thunderhill to Brighton, and that Chalford might or might not find himself free to follow her in a day or two. The amiable Lord Clifford, a tall, lanky gentleman with bony shoulders, narrow hips, and a lean face nearly always enlivened by a broad smile, took no exception to this glib explanation, saying only that he was always glad to see Adriana.

The fact that Brighton was temporarily almost devoid of entertainment made it less surprising, despite Miranda’s assurance that Alston never went to plays, that practically the first persons they saw at the theater in the New Road were Alston, his Sophie, Sophie’s brother, Claude, and Miranda herself, seated in a box opposite the Cliffords’. There was no hope of avoiding Alston’s eye. Indeed, that he had seen them the moment they entered was only too apparent.

“Is that not your brother opposite?” asked Clifford. “Why’s the fellow glowering so?”

“Dyspepsia,” replied Adriana promptly.

Sarah chuckled.

“Daresay he’s offended by the fact that you’ve chosen to stay with us rather than with him,” Clifford said comfortably. “Can’t say I like the fellow much, Adriana. Hope that don’t distress you. Oughtn’t to say such stuff, I suppose.”

“Nonsense, sir, you may abuse Alston with my goodwill. I daresay he intends to make himself unpleasant.” She did not let her brother’s glowers overset her, however, and settled back to enjoy the play and the farce that would follow. When Miranda, on the arm of an admirer, visited their box at the second interval, she informed Adriana in an undertone that Alston had no intention of seeking her out that evening.

“Well, the Fates be praised for that,” said Adriana.

“He will call at Clifford House tomorrow morning instead,” said Miranda sweetly, “when he trusts he will find you at home.”

P
ORSON’S VOICE WAS CAREFULLY
devoid of expression the following day when he entered the morning room to announce Viscount Alston’s arrival, but his countenance, when his gaze met Adriana’s, spoke volumes. She was sitting upon the French seat in the window embrasure, the latest issue of the
Lady’s Monthly Museum
spread open upon her lap. Sarah, at a nearby table, was writing a reply to one of her many letters.

Alston brushed past the butler into the room, dismissing with a gesture the suggestion that he might care for refreshment. “Sarah,” he said abruptly, looking down his nose at her, “I stand upon no ceremony with you. I wish to be private with my sister.”

“Do you, indeed, sir?” Sarah inquired with a lifted eyebrow. “This is still my house, I believe.”

Adriana shook her head. “Don’t expose yourself to his ridiculous temper, dearest. He can scarcely eat me, after all.”

“Very well,” Sarah said, rising to her feet. The skirt of her blue muslin gown swirled about her legs as, moving toward the door, she turned just before she reached it to speak again. “Porson will be just outside if you need him, my dear.”

“I have never been more shocked in my life, Adriana,” Alston announced before the door had clicked shut behind Sarah and the butler. “Whatever are you about?”

“Do sit down, Alston,” she said calmly. “I’ve no wish to strain my neck looking up at you.”

“Your wishes, dear sister, are of the supremest indifference to me,” he said, moving several steps nearer. “You are behaving badly, and I mean to see that you cease to do so at once. Where is your husband?” When she did not speak, he snapped, “A home thrust, is it not? But I will have answers, my girl, and I will have them now. Then you will return to your home. First, I wish to know who was so misguided as to assist you in this latest start of yours. Tell me that, if you please.”

“No, I will not,” she replied, her temper rising to meet his, as it had always done. “That information is of no concern to you. And as to where Chalford is, I presume at Thunderhill, unless he has begun his journey to Brighton. As Miranda no doubt informed you, I do not know precisely when he will join me here.”

“I should be most surprised to learn that he even knows you
are
here,” Alston said. “Does he?”

“Yes, of course he does.”

“Then, pray inform me as to when he changed his mind about allowing you to visit Brighton. It is not so long since he apologized to me for denying you this pleasure, my dear. I told him not to distress himself, that forgoing a pleasure would do you good. How do you like that, eh? I’ll wager you did not know he had confided in me, did you?”

He was so near now that he loomed above her, and Adriana knew that if she did not move, she would lose her temper altogether. Flinging her magazine aside and getting to her feet, she said, “You seem to forget, sir, that you no longer have the right to call me to account for my actions. Only Chalford has that right, and what he does or doesn’t do is no business of yours.” She turned away, her demeanor as haughty as his own.

Alston’s hand shot out before she took a step. Grasping her hard by the shoulder, he spun her around to face him. “You’d like me to ignore your starts, wouldn’t you? But things are not always what we like. I am still your brother, and I still have every right to force you to behave in a manner that does not disgrace our family. When you offend me and mine, when you hold us up to public ridicule, then you may well believe that I will hold you to account. Indeed, you deserve to be beaten for your folly in showing yourself here at this house without Chalford.”

“Take your hand off me, Alston. I haven’t the least notion what you are talking about.”

“Oh, don’t you? Well, that’s all of a piece with the other, I suppose. How do you think it looks for my sister to show herself, alone, in Brighton without my so much as knowing she meant to come here? Answer me that. You came to Clifford’s house, avoiding mine. How do you think the tabbies will respond?”

She managed to pull away at last, her eyes sparkling with greater wrath than ever. “I don’t care what they say. I came where I knew I would be welcome and where no one would question my motives. And what, may I ask, is so dreadful about my being here without Chalford? I am sure I am not the first wife to live outside her husband’s pocket.”

“What you do after you have produced an heir for him is one thing, but having developed a reputation as an unconscionable flirt, despite my attempts to curb you, you dare not compound matters by behaving loosely so soon after your wedding.”

“Oh, not an ‘unconscionable’ flirt, surely,” Adriana said, her voice now dangerously calm.

The note of warning impressed the viscount not a whit, however, its only effect being to inflame his already lacerated temper. He was an articulate man, and he did not spare her, but she merely bowed to the storm, knowing from experience that his fury would blow itself out. His description of her actions and her character might have reduced a weaker woman to tears, but Adriana would have scorned to cry. Nonetheless, by the time he finished his diatribe and took his leave of her, her hands were clenched into tight fists and her face was drained of color.

It was thus that Sarah found her. “My dearest,” she exclaimed, “what has he done? I ought never to have left you.”

Adriana drew a long breath. “Your presence would not have deterred him,” she said, her voice perfectly normal. “If I look a trifle pulled about, ’tis from no more than the effort to restrain my own temper. Sarah, I have never seen him so angry, though God knows I have infuriated him time and time again.”

“But he has no right to come the master over you anymore, Dree, so whatever he said, you need not heed him. No doubt that is why he seemed angrier than usual. He recognizes his impotence, his lack of authority.”

“You may be right about that,” Adriana said with a rueful look, “but I own there was a deal of truth in the things he said, and he does not know the whole. Chalford will know.” She grimaced. “I may get that whipping yet, Sarah. Alston said I deserved one, just as you predicted he would, and I have just rather uncomfortably recollected Chalford’s once suggesting that George ought to beat Sally frequently. He said he—George, that is—was a fool if he didn’t take a firm hand to her.”

“Well,” said her friend with a look of fond amusement, “Chalford will not beat you. I daresay he will not be best pleased over the way you got here, but you have said yourself that he never even raises his voice to you. And you have given him cause before, have you not? More than once, I’ll be bound.”

“You know I have.” Adriana bit her lower lip. “The fact is that he wants a nice submissive wife, willing to bow to his every wish—indeed, willing to throw herself heart and soul into his precious castle. I cannot. I spent too many years confined at Wryde with responsibilities that … well, that …”

“That were too great a burden for any young girl to carry,” Sarah finished for her when she hesitated. “You tried to become mistress of Wryde and mother to Miranda, all at once.”

“Well, Papa was grief-stricken—”

“Port-stricken, more like,” Sarah interrupted acidly.

“And Alston,” Adriana continued as though there had not been an interruption, “could scarcely have been expected to come down from Oxford just to take us in hand. He did what he could during his holidays, of—”

“I remember how it used to be when he came home,” Sarah interrupted, “so you needn’t try to make me think him a pattern card imposed upon by circumstances. You used to flee to us almost the moment you heard his horses’ hoofbeats on the drive. Mama was used to say you and Miranda would have been better to have lived with us or with some relative rather than at Wryde.”

“Papa would never hear of any other plan, and indeed, I felt it my duty to stay, particularly after he gave himself up to his gout and began to remain at home. Even so, the place nearly went to rack and ruin before Alston married Sophie and finally was able to take charge. You know,” she added thoughtfully, “I never before thought about how kind it was of him to take us to London. Perhaps, like Joshua, he would liefer have stayed at Wryde.”

“Stop it, Adriana, you are becoming maudlin.” Sarah’s voice was sharp. “If you think for one minute that Sophie would prefer ruralizing in Wiltshire to puffing off her consequence in London or Brighton, then you must be all about in your head.”

Adriana gave herself a shake. “Forgive me, Sarah, I am talking pure nonsense. I know it as well as you do. The fact of the matter is that I will babble about anything and everything rather than consider what is really on my mind. Since Alston took his leave, all I can think about is that Joshua may soon be here, perhaps in as much of a fury as Alston was, which I confess has me in something of a quake, since I don’t know what form his fury takes. Or, worse than that, he might not come at all.”