Lady John (2 page)

Lady Susannah gave the matter some thought. “Faugh, Mamma,”
she said at length. “How can she object? After all, whatever Kit says, I doubt
the girl can have enough backbone to stand against your determination and mine
both. Not to mention Bette’s. I cannot picture John marrying a woman of
character, can you? And a shy Miss, however pretty, is likely to be overwhelmed
by you, and me, and Bette. Not to mention Julian in his Ducal mood.”

“Pray do
not
mention
him,” the Duchess urged, retrieving the book she had laid aside at her son’s
entrance. “I hope you do not mean to recruit all the Temperers to the girl’s
aid, dear. Beside the shocking squeeze it would mean here, you know that Sophy
and Bette cannot be in the same room together without coming to blows, and that
would probably scare our poor little widow away completely.”

“Not to mention her mother. But I think Kate is safe enough,
don’t you? And Uncle David, of course. He’s harmless enough, for he can’t hear
anything at all, and he does lend such a distinguished touch to the dining room
with those incredibly outdated evening clothes of his.” Lady Susannah beamed at
her mother and lapsed into a void of daydreams consisting about equally of
Court dresses and confrontations with her odious brother. Half an hour later
the Duchess heard her daughter sigh: “If only John married a woman of
character, what fun we would have.”

Wisely, the Duchess did not ask for elaboration.

The Duke, having retraced the many steps back to his
bookroom, sat and stared dourly into space. Some time later, with great
misgivings, he went so far as to request his secretary to fair-copy the letter
to Lady John Temperer for him, but when the missive was placed in front of him,
it put him in such a temper that it was immediately crumpled up and tossed into
the fire. The draft of the letter was retained by Mr. Garifeather, who was a
cautious soul, and although his Grace contrived to forget for several days that
it had not been sent, finally he requested that the regrettable thing be resurrected.
This time he did not bother to have it fair-copied, but surveyed the thing,
admired his own elegant phrasing, and tossed it aside, forgetting to frank it
for another week altogether. Only a chance remark by the Duchess (actually a
highly pointed remark, but his Grace was not much given to picking up
subtleties) reminded him of the invitation. Mr. Garifeather, producing the
letter yet again, finally succeeded in acquiring the Duke’s frank upon it, and
at last, a mere four months delayed, it went on its way. The letter was not to
find its destination easily, however. To the delay already incurred was added
the delays of weather, a broken axle on a French postal chaise, and, finally,
the inability of the Belgian postal clerks to decipher his Grace of Tylmath’s idiosyncratic
hand. At last, on a particularly sunny and hot morning at the beginning of
August, the letter was delivered, together with several other letters, a few
bills, and a few invitations to such affaires as were permitted to a lady in mourning,
into the hand of Lady John Temperer.

“Do you not think,” Mrs. Martingale asked for the third time
that afternoon, “that Tylmath’s invitation might have been couched in more
sympathetic terms? After all, dearest, you
were
Poor
John’s wife. It shows very little sensibility, I must say, as does the
unconscionable delay he made in sending it. But I suppose
you
will not feel so.”

“Since I have so little sensibility myself, Mamma?” Olivia
Temperer raised her eyes from the letter she had received that morning from the
Duke of Tylmath. “John was also Tylmath’s brother; perhaps he was feeling the
loss himself when he wrote. At least, as you see, he did not have his secretary
pen it for him.” She allowed her mother a glimpse of the splotched and
twice-crossed missive she held. “As for delaying in his reply, who can say? It
was dated in June, and must have been held up in the post. There was another
bereavement in the Temperers’ family, you know, which must have set them all on
end.” Mrs. Martingale drew breath to dispute this highly logical viewpoint, but
was forestalled. “No, Mamma, I will grant it is not a particularly conciliatory
sort of letter, but John was used to imply that Tylmath was not a particularly
conciliatory sort of man.”

Mrs. Martingale remained unimpressed by her daughter’s
reasoning. “Your besetting sin, Livvy my love,” she pronounced severely, “has
always been your willingness to see the other person’s side of the matter.”

“Really, Mamma?” Olivia raised one brow. “John was used to
tell me that my besetting sins were a love of chocolates and the inability to
get Cook to make a ragout without garlic in it.” She smiled wistfully. “Poor
idiotic man: to come all the way through Waterloo without so much as a scratch,
only to fall victim to that miserable influenza!”

This was old ground; ignoring her daughter’s highly
unorthodox reference to her late husband, Mrs. Martingale permitted herself to
remonstrate with Olivia. “I told you at the time not to admit Bagshot to the
house when he was sneezing and coughing in that fashion.”

“And what would you have had me do? Send him out into the
rain rather than give him space in the house? And he
would
valet John, and John
would
let him. Even had I refused to permit him
in the house, I doubt there was an inn in all of Brussels that would willingly
have taken someone with so much as a sniffle last winter.”

“Well.” Mrs. Martingale had no reply to this, and applied
herself all the more assiduously to her darning.

“In any case, Mamma, we must decide what we are to answer
Tylmath: yes or no.”

Mrs. Martingale fixed her child with a look of sincerest
astonishment. “Livvy, dearest, is there any question? What else can we do?
Except, of course, go to your uncle at Kelleshall.” The strong tones of dislike
which flavored this suggestion made it difficult for Lady John to maintain her
composure.

“What an enticing prospect you make of it, to be sure.
Within the week you and my Aunt Cuppentrice would be come to blows, and my
uncle would be favoring me with well-meant suggestions on how to set up my own
establishment. Good God, Mamma! All the same, Tylmath—” she studied the letter
again. “It would be different if things had been, well, different. If John and
I had married in London, with all his family there, and they knew me. Or if I
were, well, increasing ...”

“O-
livia
!” Mrs.
Martingale reproved in hearty tones of shock.

“Mamma!” the younger woman mimicked. “You know perfectly
well what I mean. It would be a different matter entirely if I were returning
to London with John’s heir. Or if—no, that’s no concern of anyone but myself.”

Mrs. Martingale regarded her daughter irritably. “Livvy,
dearest, I wish you would not speak in riddles. I may not be particularly
clever at understanding some of the things you say, but—”

“’Twas nothing, Mamma. I was just wandering in my mind, is
all.” Olivia substantiated this statement by staring fixedly out of her window
for some moments.

For the thousandth time, Mother regarded Daughter with the
unhappy feeling that fate had been quite unjust to her child. It was bad enough
that her Livvy, the pride of her heart, had been married in a quick,
hole-in-the-corner fashion in Brussels, although there were many such marriages
took place in Brussels once news of Napoleon’s escape from Elba had been
received, even in the best families. But it had been an advantageous marriage,
and Mrs. Martingale, sincerely desirous of her daughter’s happiness, had great
hopes. The young bridegroom, a Captain in Sir Vivian Hussey’s 18th Hussars,
survived all engagements and returned to them sound and whole. And then, barely
a sixmonth later, the disobliging man had contracted the influenza and died
within a matter of days.

The only consolation, Mrs. Martingale reflected unhappily,
was that Olivia did not look ill in her mourning clothes; if anything, the
blacks and grays she wore only accentuated her delicate, fair complexion and
deepened the dark softness of her clear brown eyes. Grief had not stolen the
smiling curve from her full lips, and even the hardships of the last year had
left no visible mark on her elegantly formed countenance. And nothing, as
Olivia herself was wont to remark ruefully, could diminish the remarkable color
of her hair: it was a deep, heavy, and unmistakable red that had nothing to do with
either carrot or copper. Her daughter’s beauty made Mrs. Martingale, ordinarily
the most easygoing of women, rail bitterly against a fortune which had fated
her girl to be a widow at twenty, who only a year before had been feted as a
rising beauty in Bruxellois society.

“It is absolutely imperative that we go to the Temperers at
Catenhaugh, Livvy,” Mrs. Martingale announced into the silence.

Olivia turned from the window to regard her mother with
surprise. “Imperative? Such a word to use, Mamma! Certainly I think we ought to
visit a little while there. I should like to meet John’s family, particularly
the Duchess. We liked Lord Christopher, and the only one of his brothers and
sisters whom I heard John seriously disparage was Julian, the new Duke.”

“What about Lady Sophia Temperer?” Mrs. Martingale argued. “John
could not speak very flatteringly of her.”

Olivia looked down her nose at her mother. “Gudgeon,” she
teased. “You really must make up your mind who it is you’re arguing for.”

“You know who I am arguing for, and it isn’t one of the
Temperers. Except by marriage. Will you go, Livvy? And promise,” the older
woman’s voice was fervent with pleading, “you won’t make a turnup with Tylmath,
will you? When I think upon it, I see more and more that he is essential to us.”

“Essential, Mamma? Are you refining upon his consequence,
love?”

Mrs. Martingale fixed her daughter with a remarkably sage
glance. “I wish you will not talk foolishness, child. Tylmath and his family
would be invaluable in fixing you in the
ton
when
we return to England. And if you place no importance upon
that,
I had as well tell you that I do.”

“Mamma, are you proposing that we visit the Temperers solely
to insure that they will lend me their countenance—not to mention their
townhouse, their horses, and very likely their stables, too—in London?”

“Not precisely or solely for those reasons, dearest,” Mrs.
Martingale replied reasonably, but there was a considering look in her eye. “I
am certain the poor Duchess must wish to have some news of Poor John’s last
year. It is only proper for you to make a visit with them. You might even
like
them, although I will say that Tylmath
himself sounds dreadfully disagreeable. But Livvy—” the pleading note returned
again. “You are too young to be a widow all your life, and I don’t wish to see
you make some sort of ineligible match here in Brussels, nor yet return to
Kelleshall to wed some obscure country squire whose only virtue is that his
estate marches with your uncle’s property. I am trying to be practical, which
is what you are forever saying I must be. If you take to the Temperers, and
they to you—most particularly the Duchess—there is no telling how much they
might do for you. Think of Almacks. And perhaps a presentation at the Queen’s
Drawing Room, and—”

“Where are we to acquire the funds for such a Season, Mamma?
I grant you I’ve my jointure and you yours, and there’s John’s pension, which I
imagine will be paid someday. But they don’t admit of purchasing a Court dress,
any number of modish day and evening dresses, and suitable fal-lals. To say
nothing of the expense of maintaining an establishment in London. The cost
would be quite prohibitive. A voucher for Almacks, when one can persuade a
patroness to issue one, costs twenty guineas! Better that we go to Bath or
somewhere else with some society that will be less expensive than the
Metropolis.”

Mrs. Martingale assumed a pretty, martyrish air and stabbed
ruinously at the linen under her needle. In her own time she had been acclaimed
a very handsome woman, nearly a beauty (possession of a larger fortune might
have eradicated this distinction), and she was still handsome, with many of the
endearingly girlish airs of her youth. “My dearest, I would happily spend
all
of my jointure to assure your success.”

Unfortunately Lady John, who entertained a deep affection
for her Mamma, had heard this sort of declamation before. “Quite so, Mamma
love. It is the most fortunate thing that you cannot disrupt the Trust and do
so, is it not? No,” she cut off her mother’s protestations. “I am perfectly
happy to make a visit at Catenhaugh, and if by some chance we were to be
invited to make a visit in London during the Season as well, it would be a very
nice thing. But I will not sue for the privilege, and I don’t wish to think you
are setting all your hopes upon it.”

With this Mrs. Martingale had to content herself, and her
daughter turned the topic to the arrangements that must be made for their
voyage, and for the closing of their establishment in Brussels.

“We must take Bliss and Melber with us, of course,” Mrs.
Martingale began. “I should like to take Jean-Gabriel as well, for it seems
such a waste to lose him after I had trained him to a nicety in the roasting of
fowl. But I suppose—”

Olivia, who had spent some hours soothing the sensibilities
of this same Jean-Gabriel after her mother’s tutoring sessions, only replied
that since they had no establishment to which they could direct their cook it
would be senseless to transplant him there.

“Well,” Mrs. Martingale said happily, “that, at least, is
determined. All we need do, Livvy, is write to Tylmath and tell him when they
may expect us, and make our arrangements accordingly.”

Olivia was spared the necessity of a reply to this blithe
assurance by the arrival of the maid announcing dinner. She privately
suspected, however, that she and her mother were in for considerably less
comfort and more trouble than Mrs. Martingale expected, and it was with a
certain amount of apprehension that she sat down that evening to reply to the
Duke’s letter.