Frederica Read online

  When Lady Buxted remembered impertinent little Sally Fane, a wretched schoolroom miss to whom she had administered a number of well deserved set-downs, the delicacies her brother’s French cook had prepared for the refreshment of his guests turned to ashes in her mouth. At that moment, nothing would have afforded her more pleasure than to have given Sally yet another set-down. But, whatever rage might possess her soul, at no time did Lady Buxted lose sight of the main chance. No mother with a daughter to dispose of eligibly could afford to disdain the patronage of Lady Jersey, the acknowledged Queen of London’s most exclusive club, known to the irreverent as the Marriage Mart. So Lady Buxted, her appetite destroyed, had felt herself obliged to accept Sally’s offer with a smile as false and as sweet as the one lilting on Sally’s mouth.

  Only one annoyance was spared her on that night of mingled triumph and chagrin: Alverstoke invited neither of his wards to stand up with him. Other eyes than Lady Buxted’s were watching curiously to see what he would do; but their owners were relieved or disappointed, according to their dispositions, to see that the only ladies he led on to the floor were those of rank or seniority. He did, indeed, pause to exchange a few words with Frederica, but there was nothing to be made of that, for he managed, in spite of his indolence, to speak to every one of his guests.

  ‘Satisfied, Frederica?’ he enquired.

  She replied impulsively: ‘I don’t know how to thank you! Indeed I am satisfied!’ Her sudden smile dawned. ‘It’s my night of triumph, don’t you think? I knew Charis had only to be seen to be appreciated!’ She added anxiously, as he said nothing: ‘It isn’t just my partiality, is it? She has made a hit, hasn’t she?’

  ‘Decidedly. Do you ever spare a thought for anyone but Charis?’

  ‘Why, of course I do!’ she exclaimed, rather shocked. ‘I think about all of them, only at this present time, you know, I do think about her more than about the others, because she is my most pressing concern.’

  He looked curiously at her. ‘Have you no concern for yourself, Frederica?’

  ‘For myself?’ she said, wrinkling her brow. ‘Well, if there were any need for me to be concerned I should be – naturally! As it is –’

  ‘I should have said, any thought for yourself,’ he interrupted. ‘You’ve called this your night of triumph merely because Charis has made a hit; but it appears to me that you have been solicited to dance quite as often as Charis.’

  She laughed. ‘Yes – isn’t it diverting? I’ve been positively overwhelmed: my partners hoping that if they are very civil and attentive I may be moved to present them to my sister!’

  ‘You are a strange creature,’ he commented.

  He passed on, with a nod, and a slight smile, as Buxted came up to lead Frederica into a set of quadrilles.

  She was puzzled by his lordship’s last remark, but wasted very little time in considering what its implication might be, and none at all in wondering whether the various gentlemen who had begged her to stand up with them a second time really did so with a view to becoming acquainted with her sister. She would have been incredulous had she been told that amongst the many who were demonstrably lost in admiration of Charis there were several persons who found her the more attractive of the two sisters.

  Amongst these was Mr Moreton, who cocked a quizzical eyebrow at Alverstoke, and demanded to know what sort of a rig he was running.

  ‘None at all,’ responded Alverstoke coolly.

  Mr Moreton sighed. ‘Dear boy, you can’t think – no, damn it, you really can’t think to ride on my back! Neither of the explanations offered me for your sponsorship of Merriville’s daughters is at all acceptable to me. On the one hand I learn that you are under an obligation to Merriville; on the other, that you have fallen a victim to the divine Charis’s beauty. Doing it rather too brown, Ver!’

  ‘Oh, why?’ countered his lordship. ‘Think of the beauties to whom I’ve fallen a victim, Darcy!’

  ‘I am thinking of ’em. Ripe ’uns, every one!’ said Mr Moreton.

  ‘Ah, but did you ever see such perfection of features and figure?’

  ‘No, I’ve seldom met with a lovelier widgeon,’ replied Mr Moreton ruthlessly. ‘The thing is, my taste don’t run to sweet simpletons – and nor, dear boy, does yours! The elder sister’s the filly for my money. She don’t want for sense, and she ain’t just in the ordinary style. Not your style, however, so why have you taken the pair of ’em under your protection?’

  ‘What else could I do, when Merriville had – er – commended them to my care?’

  ‘Having put you under an obligation! No, Ver!’ protested Mr Moreton. ‘Of all the brummish stories I ever heard – ! You were never on more than common civility terms with him!’

  ‘Perhaps,’ murmured his lordship, ‘I yielded to a compassionate impulse.’

  ‘A what?’ gasped his best friend.

  ‘Oh, did you think I never did so?’ said his lordship, the satirical glint in his eyes extremely pronounced. ‘You wrong me! I do, sometimes – not frequently, of course, but every now and then!’

  ‘Oh, no, I don’t wrong you!’ retorted Mr Moreton grimly. ‘I daresay there’s very little you wouldn’t do for anyone that was a friend of yours – well, good God, don’t I know it? If you think I don’t know that it was you who pulled poor Ashbury out of ebb-water –’

  ‘I must suppose that you believe you know what you are talking about,’ interrupted Alverstoke, with considerable acerbity, ‘but I do not! What’s more, Darcy, you’re becoming a dead bore! If you must have the truth, I’m shouldering Merriville’s daughters into the ton to annoy Louisa!’

  ‘Well, that’s what I thought,’ said Mr Moreton, unmoved. ‘Only it don’t explain why you took a schoolboy to visit some foundry or other!’

  That surprised a crack of laughter out of Alverstoke. ‘Felix! Well, if ever you should meet him, Darcy, you’ll know why I took him over that foundry!’

  Another who had formed a very good opinion of the elder Miss Merriville was Lord Buxted: a circumstance which his mother regarded with mixed feelings. She was naturally relieved to know that he had not (like his doltish cousin) fallen instantly under the spell of Charis’s beauty; but she had viewed with disfavour the unusual animation with which he had conversed with Frederica during dinner, and with definite hostility his subsequent behaviour. Not content with standing up with her for a full hour, during two country dances, he had shown a disposition to gravitate towards her between dances, which would have alarmed Lady Buxted very much, had he not later described Frederica to her as a conversable female with a good deal of commonsense. As he added that he thought her by no means a bad-looking young woman, Lady Buxted was able to allay her alarm with the reflection that such temperate praise scarcely argued any very marked degree of admiration.

  She would have been less complacent had she known that he made it his business to call in Upper Wimpole Street on the following day, to see how the ladies went on after what he termed, with slightly ponderous humour, their night’s raking. He was by no means their only visitor, several other gentlemen having presented themselves on the slimmest of pretexts, and Endymion Dauntry on no pretext at all; but he was generally felt to have scored a point by stressing his relationship to the Merrivilles, and by adopting towards them an air of kindness which verged on the avuncular, and would have aroused feelings of strong resentment in the breasts of the three gentlemen he found in possession had he not made it plain that it was Frederica, and not Charis, who was the object of his solicitude.

  During the week after the Alverstoke ball, the Misses Merriville received a number of invitations; and Miss Winsham was honoured by a visit from Lady Jersey, who brought with her the promised vouchers for Almack’s. She came partly because she was curious, partly because she wished to oblige Alverstoke, and to disoblige his sister Louisa; and by the time she was treading up the stairs in Buddle’s wake she was regretting her condescension. She was capricious, but she placed herself on a high form, and
had never yet been known to tolerate mushrooms, still less to lend them consequence. She thought the house shabby-genteel; and remembered that Fred Merriville was said to have married a provincial nobody. It was too late to draw back, but she entered the drawing-room with every intention of keeping Miss Winsham at a proper distance. Two minutes were enough, however, to make her abandon her high and imposing manners: Miss Winsham’s dress might be old-fashioned, and she was certainly eccentric, but she was not shabby-genteel, and she set as little store by a visit from the Queen of the Ton as she had set by Lady Buxted’s previous call. In one of her top-lofty moods, Lady Jersey might have got on to her high ropes; she chose instead to be diverted; and by the time Miss Winsham had favoured her with her opinion of London houses in general, and furnished ones in particular; of marriage, of coxcombs, and of the groundless self-satisfaction of the male sex, she was in a ripple of laughter, and went away to spread a report amongst her friends that Miss Winsham was the drollest creature – very blue – full of dry humour – and without an ounce of flummery about her.

  Lady Jersey was not universally popular, her airs and graces leading ill-disposed persons to liken her to a Tragedy Jill, and her frequent gross incivilities to those unfortunate enough to have incurred her displeasure shocking even such haughty dames as Mrs Burrell and the Countess Lieven, but where she led few ladies refused to follow. Miss Winsham, therefore, received a number of visits which should have gratified her very much more than they did; and when (under strong protest) she escorted her nieces to Almack’s, she found herself so much sought-after, and her lightest pronouncements greeted with so much appreciation, that she might have begun to have thought herself a wit of the first water had she been susceptible to flattery. As it was, she was obliged to transform a twinge of rheumatism into a severe attack of sciatica, and on this score to refuse all the invitations showered upon her, delegating the task of chaperoning her nieces to Lady Buxted, or to Mrs Dauntry.

  Which of these two ladies was the more reluctant to perform this office would have been hard to decide; but each was constrained by much the same considerations to do so with the appearance, at least, of goodwill, Lady Buxted having the liveliest fear that her unnatural brother would not hesitate to repudiate the steadily rising pile of bills from the modistes supplying Jane (and, indeed, herself) with gowns, shawls, hats, gloves, and all the embellishments indispensable to those wishing to make a creditable appearance in tonnish circles; and Mrs Dauntry, while not grudging one of the guineas she lavished upon her elder daughter’s raiment, foreseeing that unless she could depend upon Alverstoke for rescue she would be obliged to practise a number of extremely disagreeable economies. Of the two, however, she was the more to be pitied, for whereas Lady Buxted knew that Carlton was not attracted by Charis, and believed that he had too much commonsense even to consider contracting an engagement to Frederica, Mrs Dauntry had no such consolations. Endymion, dazzled at the outset by Charis, had fallen violently in love with her, and was behaving, as even his doting parent was obliged to own, like a mooncalf, bestowing every degree of attention upon Charis, gazing adoringly at her, positively sitting in her pocket, and showing alarming signs of trying to fix his interest with her. Mrs Dauntry could only hope that his passion would wane as swiftly as it had waxed, for on his commonsense she had no dependence at all. To make matters worse, Chloë had struck up an ardent friendship with Charis: a circumstance which provided Endymion with an excellent excuse for haunting Upper Wimpole Street. Always, in his indolent way, a kind brother, he became overnight a paragon, devoting himself (as much as his not very arduous military duties allowed) to her entertainment. He squired her to parties, and even to Almack’s, which he had previously avoided, thinking the select assemblies very poor sport; he promenaded with her in the park; and whenever she visited Charis she could be pretty sure of his escort. From their earliest days she and her sister, Diana, had adored and admired him, but as he was some years their senior they had regarded him more in the light of a magnificent personage who bestowed sugar-plums upon them, and occasionally took them to Astley’s Royal Amphitheatre, or to the pantomime at Sadler’s Wells, than as their contemporary. Chloë had not expected him to bestir himself on her behalf, even though she was no longer a schoolgirl, but a young lady launched into her first season, and she was touchingly grateful, telling her mother, in a burst of confidence, that to possess a big brother as handsome and as goodnatured as Endymion was the most charming thing in the world. ‘It gives me such a wonderful feel, Mama, when he accompanies us to parties! And you can’t think how delightful it is to go out walking with him, and not with Diana and Miss Nunny! I’m sure no one ever had such a splendid brother!’

  Only Mrs Dauntry’s sincere fondness for her children enabled her to respond, after a short struggle with herself: ‘Very true, dearest!’ To her devoted cousin Harriet, however, she later expressed herself with great freedom, bewailing Endymion’s infatuation, and saying that it went to her heart to see her poor, innocent Chloë so much deluded. ‘Well do I know that he only escorts us to parties because he wants an excuse for dangling after that wretched Charis Merriville! Oh, my dear Harriet, she has positively bewitched him – yes, and Chloë too! Oh, what a designing creature she is!’

  To these remarks, and to a great many others of the same nature, Miss Plumley responded with soothing cluckings, and a number of contradictory statements which appeared to exercise a beneficial effect on the widow. She was sure that Endymion was not bewitched; and in the same rambling sentence recalled to his mother’s mind the various damsels with whom he had previously fallen madly in love. She could not think that Charis was a designing girl, but she suspected her of setting her cap at Lord Wrenthorpe, or Sir Digby Meeth. Nor could she think that Endymion – such an excellent brother! – had any ulterior motive in squiring dear Chloë to balls; although she could not help feeling how fortunate it was that the hope of meeting Charis at them made him so willing to escort his sister to a form of entertainment to which he was not, in general, much addicted. Such a comfort it must be to dearest Lucretia, in her indifferent state of health, to be able to entrust Chloë to his care!

  These amiable meanderings, if they did not entirely banish Mrs Dauntry’s apprehensions, did at least alleviate them; and when Miss Plumley spoke admiringly of her truly saintly kindness to the Merrivilles, comparing it to Lady Buxted’s very different behaviour, she became much less lachrymose, saying: ‘Harriet! Would you believe it? – That odious woman speaks of them as poor girls, and tells everyone that they have no fortune! All under pretence of holding them in affection, which I know very well is sham! She is afraid that Carlton will be drawn in, of course! Well, for my part I detest such Canterbury tricks, and I hope I am too good a Christian to copy them!’

  Miss Plumley said that she was sure of it; and, possibly, since she was as uncritical as she was amiable, it did not occur to her that Mrs Dauntry might have said, with more truth, that she was not such a fool as to copy those Canterbury tricks.

  Mrs Dauntry, in fact, was exerting herself in a most unusual way to introduce to Charis every unattached gentleman who might, in her opinion, be relied upon either to captivate her by his address, or to dazzle her by his rank. Convinced that Charis was on the catch for a title, she not only promoted the interests of Lord Wrenthorpe (well-known to have been born without a shirt), but went quite out of her way to present to Charis any scion of a noble house whom she did not at all wish to welcome as a son-in-law. To do her justice, she was not, at the moment, angling for an eligible parti for Chloë, who had only just emerged from the schoolroom, and was rather too young to form any serious attachment; and but for her determination not to allow Louisa Buxted to steal a march on her she would not have presented her for another year. Mrs Dauntry thought of her as a mere child, and devoted herself so thoroughly to the task of detaching Endymion from Charis Merriville that the growing intimacy between Chloë and Mr Charles Trevor escaped her notice.

  As for the Merrivil
les, their relationship to Alverstoke, the éclat with which he launched them into the ton, the patronage of Lady Jersey and Lady Sefton, and their indefinable air of good breeding, brought them a great many agreeable invitations, very few persons lending credence to Lady Buxted’s smiling hints of their lack of fortune, and only the most jealous parents resenting Charis’s beauty. It was generally agreed that she was a very sweet, unaffected girl, and that it was just like Louisa Buxted to try to spoil her chances, because her own daughter was so sadly unprepossessing. If Mrs Dauntry, also with a daughter to dispose of creditably, dropped no such hints, it seemed safe to assume that there was not a shred of truth in them. They had certainly hired a house in an unfashionable quarter of the town, but that was probably due to Miss Winsham’s eccentricity. No other signs of poverty were to be discerned: they were always elegantly attired; their excellent butler had grown old in the service of the family; and they employed a very respectable footman. Further, it was known (on the authority of Mrs Dauntry) that their brother’s estates in Herefordshire were considerable. This made several people remember, rather vaguely, that Fred Merriville, after pursuing an expensive course calculated to bring his parents’ gray hairs down in sorrow to the grave, had unexpectedly come into the Merriville property. Since neither Fred’s father nor his elder brother had been at all well-known in London no one had any very exact information about the size of this property, even his Dauntry connections never having visited Graynard. So Mrs Dauntry was able, in the most delicate manner possible, to convey, without fear of contradiction, the impression that the present owner was a young man of fortune, and his sisters handsomely dowered.