April Lady Read online

  Nell’s voice, would-be cheerful, but decidedly nervous, intruded on these ruminations. ‘You are very silent!’ she said.

  ‘I beg pardon!’ he said. ‘I was thinking.’

  ‘About – about this?’ she asked anxiously.

  ‘No,’ he said unblushingly. ‘Thinking we should take a look-in at Gunter’s. You’d like an ice, I daresay. Just the thing!’

  She thanked him, but declined the treat. She would have declined the offer of a chair to carry her home, too, but on this point Mr Hethersett was firm, knowing well what was due to her consequence. To be strolling through the streets of London with only himself as escort would not do for Lady Cardross. So he beckoned to a couple of chairmen before suggesting to her that he should do so, handed her into the chair, and completed his politeness by walking beside it to Grosvenor Square, and engaging her in a commonplace conversation that gave her to understand that he had dismissed the episode in Clarges Street from his mind.

  Six

  Rescued from the perils of Clarges Street, and restored to the shelter of her own house, Nell hardly knew whether to be grateful to Mr Hethersett for having thrust a spoke in her wheel, or resentful. When the moment had come for knocking on Mr King’s door she had certainly been extremely reluctant to do so, and had suffered very much the same sensations as if she had been about to have a tooth drawn; but her dependence now was all on Dysart, whom she had not seen since the night of the masquerade, and who might, for anything she knew, have taken a pet at having his ingenious plot frustrated, or (which was even more likely) have forgotten all about her troubles. She and Letty were going to the Opera that evening, where it was extremely improbable that she would meet him; so she wrote a letter to him, telling him how urgent her need had become, and begging him he would call in Grosvenor Square.

  She had hardly dispatched this missive, by the hand of her footman, when Letty came in. In general, when Letty went shopping, she returned laden with parcels, and eager to display to her sister-in-law a collection of expensive frivolities which had happened to catch her eye; but on this occasion she had nothing to show but a disconsolate face. She said she had had a stupid morning, but when Nell asked if she had been able to find a muslin she liked, she replied: ‘Oh, yes! Martha has it. I met my cousins, and went with them to Grafton House, all amongst the quizzy people. Selina would have me go, because she said there were amazing bargains to be had there. I must say, they had a great many muslins. I chose a checked one, but I daresay I shan’t like it above half when it is made up. It cost seven shillings the yard, too, and I don’t consider that a bargain, do you?’

  ‘No, but checked muslin is always dearer than the plain colours. I hope the Miss Thornes are quite well?’ Nell said politely.

  ‘Yes – at least, I didn’t enquire. Selina seemed pretty stout. Fanny was gone with my aunt to Mrs Mee, to arrange to have her likeness taken. They are persuaded Humby means to come to the point, and Selina says my aunt and uncle are in transports, though I can’t think why they should be, for he presents a very off appearance, don’t you think? besides having some odd humours.’

  ‘I don’t know that. I believe he is very respectable,’ Nell responded, wondering whether her cousin’s approaching betrothal was accountable for the clouded look on Letty’s vivid little face. ‘I collect it was Mrs Thistleton, then, who was with Miss Selina Thorne?’

  ‘Yes, and I can tell you I was soon wishing her at the deuce!’ said Letty, with a disgusted pout. ‘She is increasing, and bent on telling the whole of London! You would suppose no one had ever before been in her situation, for she can talk of nothing else! And then what must we do but walk into Lady Eastwell! She expects to be confined next month, and nothing could be like her simperings and sighings and affectations! Sir Godfrey is aux anges over the petit paquet she means to present to him. Petit paquet! Un très grand paquet, I should think, for I never saw anyone so large! I was vexed to death, dawdling along in her company, and being obliged to listen to such insipid stuff! And Maria at least was used to be the most entertaining creature! I do hope you won’t turn into a bothersome bore when you start increasing, Nell!’

  The colour rushed up into Nell’s cheeks; she said: ‘I hope not, indeed!’ but in a constricted voice, for Letty’s careless words had touched her on the raw. It was some months since Lady Pevensey, tearing herself away from her stricken lord to visit her daughter, had soothed an anxiety which was even then teasing Nell. ‘Think nothing of it, dearest!’ she had said, adding, with simple pride: ‘You are like me, and you know I had been married for three years before dear Dysart was born.’

  Nell had been comforted; and although the prospect of being obliged to wait for three years before she gave Cardross an heir was dismal, it was permissible to indulge the hope that she might find herself in an interesting situation considerably earlier than had Mama. And since Cardross, neither by word nor by look, gave the least sign of disappointment, and her mind was pleasantly occupied with the manifold gaieties of fashionable life, she had not thought very much about it. But Letty’s petulant remark was ill-timed: her quite uninteresting situation now seemed to Nell of a piece with all the rest of her iniquities. She was proving herself to be in every way a deplorable wife: foolish, deceitful, spendthrift, and barren!

  Fortunately, since her deep blush betrayed her, Letty had picked up the latest number of the Ladies’ Magazine, and was contemptuously flicking over the pages, and commenting disparagingly on the fashions depicted in this valuable periodical, so that Nell had time in which to recover her countenance.

  ‘Good heavens, I never saw anything so dowdy!… Slate-coloured twilled sarsnet, lined with white – what a figure to make of oneself!… Do these new Bishop-sleeves hit your fancy? I don’t think them pretty at all, and as for this evening gown, with French braces over the bodice – !’

  ‘I liked the picture of the pelisse, with the round cape,’ Nell said, trying to infuse her voice with interest.

  ‘For my part, I think it no more than tolerable. Unless one is a regular Long Meg, those capes make one appear positively squat! Hair-brown merino, too! Horridly drab!’ Letty cast the Ladies’ Magazine aside, and, after hesitating for a moment, said, in a voice whose carelessness was a little studied: ‘By the by, I shall have to cry off going with you to Somerset House tomorrow, Nell. Selina has been telling me that my aunt is hipped because I have not been to visit her quite lately, and is saying she had not thought I could show such a want of affection, or have my head turned so utterly that I don’t any longer care to be with her. You know how it is with her! She is cast into raptures, or down in a minute. So, if you do not very particularly wish to look at pictures tomorrow – I daresay they will be a dead bore, too! – I think I should go to my aunt’s, and make her comfortable again.’

  Nell agreed to it, though she might, had she been less preoccupied, have wondered at Letty’s sudden concern for Mrs Thorne’s comfort. That Mrs Thorne might be piqued by a lack of proper observance could surprise no one who knew Letty, for without having the least ill-nature, or want of disposition to render attention where it was due, she had never been taught to consider the feelings of others, or to consult any convenience but her own. Having so easily won Nell’s acquiescence, she took herself off to her own bedchamber, there to peruse for the third time the very disturbing letter she had received from Mr Allandale.

  Nell waited in vain for Dysart to put in an appearance that afternoon. Her footman brought back no answer to her note, his lordship having gone out. No, his lordship’s man had not been able to say when he expected him to return.

  His lordship did not return to his rooms, in fact, until an advanced hour of the day; and since he was engaged to dine at Watier’s, with a select company of his intimates, and afterwards to try his luck at that most exclusive of gaming-clubs, it was rather too much to expect him to keep the best dinner in town waiting while he danced attendance in
Grosvenor Square. A fortunate bet had (as he phrased it) brought the dibs into tune again, and encouraged him to think that a long run of bad luck had come to an end. With a little ready to sport on the table there was no saying but what he might by the end of the evening be in a position to settle any number of damned dressmakers’ bills, and through no more exertion than was required to cast, instead of the worst chances in the game, a few winning nicks. Inured by custom to all the stratagems known to creditors, he considered that Madame Lavalle’s story of being about to put herself out of the way of collecting the monies due to her was a piece of gammon. In his experience, no creditor ever put himself out of the way of collecting money. Having pursued a precarious course for some years, he was not at all alarmed by duns, and thought that Nell was being more than commonly gooseish. However, he was fond of her, and if she was as sick with apprehension as her letter seemed to indicate he would not, on the following morning, grudge an hour spent in soothing her alarms. Moreover, the morning might find him out of ebb-water, and hosed and shod again, for it was nothing for a man enjoying a run of luck to win three or four thousand pounds in one night’s sitting at the Great Go.

  It might have been thought that a club where the minimum stake was double the sum fixed at any other gaming establishment, and the play was known to be tremendous, was scarcely the place for a young blood, living on an inadequate allowance and a grossly encumbered expectation. The Viscount’s well-wishers shook their head over it, but they could scarcely blame him for playing there, since he had become a member of the club under the auspices of his own father. In general an indifferent parent, Lord Pevensey every now and then awoke to a sense of his responsibilities. Finding that his heir, after an adventurous period at Oxford, had established himself in London and was about to make his début in fashionable circles, he had felt that it behoved him to do what lay within his power to launch him into society. He introduced him to White’s and to Watier’s; franked him into the subscription-room at Tattersall’s; pointed out to him certain individuals whose business in life it was to diddle the dupes; recommended him to let none but Weston make his coats; advised him to purchase his hats at Baxter’s, and to have his boots made by Hoby; and warned him of the dangers of offering a carte blanche to too high-flying an Incognita. He was obliging enough to instruct his son in some of the signs by which he might recognize, amongst the muslin company, those prime articles who might be depended on to ease a protector of all his available blunt; and to counsel him strongly not to visit any but the highest class Academies. After that, and feeling that he had left nothing undone to ensure for the Viscount a prosperous career, he cast off his parental responsibilities, which had by that time begun to bore him very much, and left his son to his own devices.

  Watier’s, which was situated on the corner of Bolton Street and Piccadilly, in an unpretentious house which had once been a gaming establishment of quite a different order, was generally supposed to owe its existence to the Prince Regent. Watier had been one of his cooks, but the Prince, upon learning from some of his friends that a good dinner was not to be had at any of the London clubs, had conceived the benevolent notion of providing gentlemen of high ton with a dining-club not just in the common style, and had suggested to Watier that he was the very man to carry out this pleasing design. The idea took; in partnership with two other of the royal servants Mr Watier embarked on the venture, and prospered so well that within a very few years he was able to retire from active participation in the business of running the club. By that time what had begun as a dining-club, with excellent cooking, carefully chosen wines, and harmonic assemblies as its attractions, had blossomed into the most exclusive as well as the most ruinous of all London’s gaming clubs. The dinners, under the surveillance of Mr Augustus Labourie, continued to be the best that could be had in town; it had a bank of ten thousand pounds; Mr Brummell was its perpetual president; and to be admitted to membership was the object of every aspirant to fashion. Play began at nine o’clock, and continued all night, the principal games being hazard, and macao: a form of vingt-un introduced into England by the emigrés from France, and still enjoying a considerable vogue.

  The Viscount, after an evening devoted to faro, had not found that this alteration in his habits answered as well as he had hoped it might; and when he rose from a very convivial dinner he resisted all attempts to lure him into the macao-room. He would give the bones another chance, he said, for he had a strong presentiment that fortune was at last about to favour him. So, indeed, it seemed. Being set twenty pounds, and naming seven as the main, he threw eleven, nicking it, which promised well for the night’s session. Even Mr Fancot, who had been trying to lose money to him for months and had begun to despair of achieving his ambition, felt hopeful.

  From the circumstance of the Prince Regent’s holding one of his bachelor parties at Carlton House that evening, the club was rather thin of company. Mr Hethersett, strolling in at midnight, found the macao-room deserted by all but a collection of persons who figured in his estimation either as prosy old stagers or tippies on the strut. He took a look-in at those intent on hazard, but here again the company failed to attract him, and he was just about to leave the premises when he was suddenly smitten by an idea. It was not a very welcome idea, nor did he look forward with the least degree of pleasure to the putting of it into action, but it was the best that had occurred to him during the course of a day largely devoted to wrestling with the problem of Lady Cardross’s financial difficulties.

  The more he considered this matter the greater had grown his uneasiness, for the mild tendre he felt for Nell did not lead him to place any very firm trust in her promise to keep away from usurers. A just man, he was obliged to own that if she dared not confess her debts to Cardross no other solution than to borrow upon interest suggested itself. In his opinion, she was magnifying Cardross’s wrath rather absurdly. It was unlikely that he would hear the confession with complaisance, but he was not only a man very much in love; he was also a man of generous temper, and a good deal more than common sense. No one would be quicker to make allowance for youth and inexperience; and although there could be little doubt that he had forbidden Nell to keep her brother in funds Mr Hethersett had still less doubt that he would understand, and even sympathize with, the very natural feelings which had led her to disobey him. He would know how to put a stop to such practices, too; and that was something that ought to be done immediately, if Nell was not to founder at the last in a morass of debt and deception. Cardross would pardon her now with no loss of tenderness, but if he discovered in the future that she had been playing an undergame with him, perhaps for years, the very openness of his disposition would cause him to regard her with revulsion.