Black Sheep Read online

  He was not listening. The delicacy of Fanny's constitution was a matter of secondary importance. What was of the first importance was the apparent likelihood that her recovery from her present disorder would be too slow to admit of her being able, or even willing, to undertake the long journey to the Scottish Border for several weeks.

  He maintained his smile, and his air of courteous concern, but when he took his leave of Miss Wendover, consigning to her care the tasteful bouquet he had ventured to bring with him for the invalid, he was as near to despair as it was possible for anyone of his temperament to be. He walked slowly back to the centre of the town, trying in vain to think of some other means of recruiting his fortunes than marriage. A run of luck might save him from immediate ruin, but a prolonged run of damnable ill-luck had made it impossible for him to continue punting on tick. If his vowels were still accepted in certain circles, it was with reluctance; and he had been refused admittance – in the politest way – to two of the exclusive hells which had for several years enjoyed his patronage. For the first time in his life he knew himself to be at a stand, and without any hope of deliverance.

  But Providence, in whom he had for so long reposed his careless trust, had not forgotten him. Providence, in the guise of Mrs Clapham, was at that very moment entering the portals of the White Hart, preceded by her courier, accompanied by her female companion, and followed by her maid, and her footman.

  He did not immediately realise that Providence had intervened on his behalf. By the time he had reached the White Hart, Mrs Clapham had been reverently escorted to the suite of rooms bespoken by her courier, and the only signs of her presence which were observable were the elegant travellingchariot which had brought her to Bath, and was still standing in the yard, and the unusual state of bustle prevailing amongst the various servants employed at the hotel.

  There were those who considered the situation of the White Hart to be too noisy for comfort, but it was patronised by so many persons of rank and consequence that the stir created by the arrival of Mrs Clapham was remarkable enough to arouse Stacy's interest. He enquired of the waiter who brought a bottle of brandy to his room who the devil was Mrs Clapham, and why were they all tumbling over themselves to administer to her comfort? The waiter replied, with strict civility, but repressively, that she was the lady who had engaged the largest and most luxurious set of apartments in the house. The boots was more informative, and from him Stacy gathered that Mrs Clapham was a widow-lady, full of juice, and flashing the rags all over. Everything of the best she had to have, and ready to pay through the nose for it. Very affable and pleasant-spoken, too, which was more than could be said of her companion. Top-lofty she was, giving her orders as if she was a duchess, and saying that first this and then that would not do for her mistress, and her own sheets and pillows must be put on her bed, and her own tea served to her, and dear knows what more besides!

  Stacy's curiosity was only mildly tickled by this description. It was not until he encountered Mrs Clapham on the following morning that the thought that Providence might once more have come to his rescue darted through his brain. A widow, travelling with a large entourage, and bringing with her her own bedlinen, suggested to him a turbaned dowager, the relict of a bygone generation. Mrs Clapham might be a widow, but she was no dowager. She was quite a young woman: past her girlhood, but not a day older than thirty, if as old. She was remarkably pretty, too, with an inviting mouth, and a pair of brown eyes which were as innocent as they were enormous, until she dropped demure eyelids over them, and looked sidelong from under the screen of her curling lashes. Then they became unmistakably provocative. She was dressed with great elegance, but in a subdued shade of lavender, which seemed to indicate that, while she had cast off her weeds, her bereavement was of fairly recent date. When Stacy saw her first, she was tripping down the stairs, trying to button one of her gloves, without dropping the prayer-book she was holding. As Stacy looked up at her, it slipped from her imperfect grasp, and fell almost at his feet.

  'Oh – !' she exclaimed distressfully. Then, as he picked it up, and straightened its crumpled leaves: 'Oh, how very obliging of you! Thank you! So stupid of me! It is all the fault of these tiresome gloves, which will come unbuttoned!'

  Her companion, following her down the stairs, clicked her tongue, and said; 'Pray allow me, Mrs Clapham!'

  Mrs Clapham held out her wrist helplessly, repeating, with a rueful smile cast at Stacy: 'So stupid of me! Oh, thank you, dear Mrs Winkworth! I don't know how I should go on without you!'

  Stacy, presenting her prayer-book to her, bowed with his exquisite grace, and said: 'One or two of the pages a little crumpled, ma'am, but no irreparable damage, I fancy! May I beg leave to make myself known to you? – Stacy Calverleigh, wholly at your service!'

  She gave him her tightly gloved hand. 'Oh, yes! And I am Mrs Clapham, sir. This is Mrs Winkworth, who takes such good care of me. We are on our way to Church, in the Abbey. The feel it gives me! I have never attended a service in an abbey before: isn't it absurd?'

  'Your first visit to Bath, ma'am?' he enquired, bestowing a modified bow upon her companion.

  'Oh, yes! I was never here before in my life, though I have been to Tunbridge Wells. But I have been living retired lately, in the country, only it was so very melancholy that I was quite moped. So the doctor advised me to come to Bath, and take the Hot Bath, and perhaps drink the waters.'

  'They are very nasty!'

  'Mrs Clapham, the bell has stopped ringing,' interposed Mrs Winkworth.

  'So it has! We must make haste!'

  She smiled, bowed, and hurried away. Mrs Winkworth also bowed, very slightly, but she did not smile.

  His spirits much improved, Stacy retired to his own room to consider the possibilities of this new and unexpected event. Mrs Clapham was obviously wealthy, but the presence of Mrs Winkworth argued that a careful watch was being kept over her. Mrs Winkworth was a middle-aged woman, who must have been handsome in her youth, for she had good features, and fine, if rather hard, grey eyes. Stacy thought, from her forbidding mien and the somewhat authoritative manner she used towards Mrs Clapham, that she had been hired rather as a chaperon than as a companion, and this indicated that the widow's relations were jealously guarding her from gentlemen hanging out for rich wives. Neither lady, he was quick to realise, was of the first stare. Mrs Winkworth was plainly of Cockney origin: her refined accents were superimposed on that unmistakable twang; Mrs Clapham he wrote down as a provincial, whose husband had almost certainly made his fortune in trade.

  If there was a fortune, which was not yet certain. It was not unknown for a pretty widow, desirous of contracting a second, and more genteel, marriage, to invest a modest competence as Mrs Clapham might be doing: rigging herself out in style, and visiting a fashionable watering-place in the hope of attracting, and ensnaring, an eligible suitor. Not that Bath was any longer a resort of high fashion, but very likely she did not know that its visitors nowadays were rarely smart bachelors, but for the most part elderly persons, who wintered there for the sake of its mild climate; or invalids who came to drink the waters, or to take a course of Vapour Baths. On the other hand, the employment of a courier and a footman, not to mention her insistence on having her bed furnished with her own linen, seemed excessive; and the presence of a dragon-like companion lent no colour to the suspicion that she might be an ambitious female on the catch. Nor did her dress, which was costly but unostentatious. He recalled that she had been wearing large pearl drops in her ears, and round her throat a necklace of pearls which, if they were indeed pearls, must have cost the late Mr Clapham a pretty penny. But in these days one never knew: the most convincing pearls could be made out of glass and fish-scales. He had purchased one of these sham necklaces himself once, to gratify the lightskirt at that time living in his keeping, and the sheen on those trumpery beads would have deceived anyone but a jeweller.

  He decided, coldly considering Mrs Clapham, that he must make it his business to ingrat
iate himself with her companion, and did not doubt his ability to do so: elderly females – witness Miss Wendover! – could easily be bamboozled. It would do no harm to bring Mrs Winkworth round his thumb; and, if he could be satisfied that Mrs Clapham was as wealthy as she appeared to be, it would be of the first importance to do so.

  Another possibility suggested itself to him: all too frequently the wealth inherited by widows was so tightly tied up that they might as well have been paupers. Not so long since, he had himself been as near as a toucher to being completely taken-in. Within ames-ace of offering for the hand of a widow in affluent circumstances, he had discovered that the better part of her very handsome independence would be lost to her if she embarked upon a second marriage. A very near-run thing that had been, and he meant to take good care he did not again court such a risk.

  In these calculations Fanny was not forgotten. If Fanny had been of full age, he would not have considered for a moment Mrs Clapham's claims to his attention, for although (had it been possible for him to consult only his inclination) he would not have chosen such a high-spirited and self-willed bride as Fanny, she was a lovely little creature, and marriage to her would do much to rehabilitate him in the eyes of society. The Wendovers did not figure amongst the members of the haut ton, but they might have done so, had they so wished. The family, though not of such ancient lineage as the Calverleighs, was of undoubted gentility, and had been for long established in the county of Bedfordshire. It was also extremely well-connected. When Mr James Wend over, who had no taste for town-life, was constrained by his equally well-connected spouse to hire a house in London for his eldest daughter's come-out, it would require no effort on his part to introduce Miss Albinia into the first circles. Everyone knew the Wendovers, and a surprising number of distinguished persons acknowledged some sort of relationship with the family. Frivolous people might make game of Mr James Wendover's prejudices, but marriage to his niece, the heiress to Amberfield, could be depended on to restore the bridegroom to respectability.

  But Fanny was not of full age; and while Stacy knew enough of her uncle to be tolerably sure that he would be obliged, by his dread of scandal, to condone her runaway marriage, and, at the least, put her in possession of the income derived from her estates, – if not immediately, certainly when she became seized with the effects of matrimony – it had been rudely borne in upon him that there was no time to be wasted in extricating himself from his embarrassments. He had hoped to have carried Fanny off within a day of her aunts' curst rout-party, but she had contracted influenza, and it might now be weeks before she was well enough even to contemplate an elopement. Nor could he be sure that he could bring her to the sticking-point when she was restored to health. It had taken much coaxing to overcome her unexpected recoil from a Gretna Green marriage – if he had overcome it, which was doubtful. He had thought that he had done so, but she had almost repulsed him at the routparty. It seemed all too probable that still more precious time would be wasted in bringing her under his spell again.

  But if Mrs Clapham was indeed in untrammelled possession of a handsome fortune; if she could be swept off her feet by the attentions of a personable man of birth and fashion – and one, moreover, who owned a seat which was mentioned, if not minutely described, in any Guide Book to Berkshire – Badbury, his man of business, would not find it impossible to persuade his mortgagees to grant him a few more weeks' grace before instituting forfeiture proceedings. There would be no question of an expensive elopement – and that, when the proprietors of the old-established house with whom one's family had banked since time out of mind were indicating, sorrowfully but implacably, that unless one's debt to them was substantially reduced they would be forced to dishonour any further drafts upon their resources, would be an advantage. Mrs Clapham was not a minor, and the notice of his engagement to her, coupled with a disclosure to Badbury of her circumstances, would be enough to fob off his creditors.

  There was very little doubt in his mind that the conquest of Mrs Clapham would not be difficult. He had instantly recognised the invitation in her eyes, and the widening look which betrayed admiration; and what, in her ingenuous way, she had already divulged, informed him that she was heartily bored by the decorous conduct imposed upon her by her widowhood. She might be the daughter and the relict of respectable trades men, but experience made it easy for Mr Stacy Calverleigh to detect in her the signs of the Approachable.

  It was possible that she had come to Bath merely in search of diversion, and that when she threw him that tantalising glance from under her sweeping lashes she had nothing more serious in mind than flirtation; but he thought it unlikely. She might have the instincts of a straw damsel, but he judged her to be sprung from middle-class parents, and to be too much imbued with the boring, shabby-genteel notions obtaining amongst the depressing and regrettably increasing members of this class to encourage the advances of any gentleman unable, or unwilling, to offer her the security of marriage.

  He would have preferred, of course, to have become legshackled to a female of his own order, but the exigencies of his position made it impossible for him to be too nice in his choice. She seemed, at all events, to be a simple creature, who could be groomed into the semblance of a woman of quality. Her simplicity had led her to Bath, which was at once fortunate, and a trifle ticklish. Passing under review the numerous acquaintances he had made in Bath, he could discover no rival amongst them. But for weeks past the eyes of the residents had been interestedly watching his courtship of Fanny, and however little he might regard the censure of such as Mrs Ancrum, or Lady Weaverham, he would find himself in the suds if that determined pursuit came to the ears of Mrs Clapham. If he decided that it would be worth his while to transfer his attentions to her, he would be obliged to seek a way out of an obviously awkward situation. Well, it would be time enough to think how best to deal with trouble when he was brought face to face with it: that had always been his rule, and, on the whole, it had answered pretty well. Meanwhile, his first and most pressing need was to enquire more precisely into Mrs Clapham's circumstances.

  From his window, he was able to observe her return to the White Hart; and thus it came about that just as she had begun to mount the stairs he rounded the turn in the first pair, and came running lightly down. At sight of her, he checked, and, with a startled apology, retreated to the half-landing.

  'Oh, pray don't – why, if it isn't you, Mr Calverleigh!' she exclaimed. 'Don't tell me you're putting up here too!'

  He laughed. 'Must I not? I'm afraid I am! I'm sorry if you should object to it, but I was here before you, you know! What is to be done?'

  She went into a trill of mirth. 'As though I meant anything so uncivil! You're bantering me, sir! No, indeed, I'm sure I'm glad you are putting up here, for I've no other acquaintance in Bath. I was only saying to Mrs Winkworth, a couple of minutes past, how much I wished I knew someone here who could tell me how to find my way about, or where to go to purchase an umbrella, which I can see is what I shall be needing!'

  'What, have you come to Bath without an umbrella, ma'am? Oh, that will never do! I will certainly direct you to the nearest shop which sells them! You will be wishing to write your name in Mr King's subscription book too, I daresay.'

  'Ought I to do so? You'll think me a regular zany, but I don't perfectly understand. Who – who is Mr King?'

  'He is the Master of Ceremonies at the New Assembly Rooms – the Upper Rooms, as they are often called. They hold balls and concerts there, and card-parties.'

  'Balls! Oh, no, I don't think I ought! Not yet! You see, it is not quite a year since Mr Clapham died, and although I have put off my blacks, because he never liked me to wear black, I shouldn't care to show disrespect. I'm sure it wouldn't be seemly for me to go to balls. Not but what I will become a subscriber, if it is the thing, which is what Mr Clapham would have wished, for never did he behave scaly, even when there was no good to be got by paying down his dust! So you must tell me – oh, dear, there are so many thi
ngs I want to know!' She paused, and then said shyly: 'I wonder – Would you care to drink tea with us in my private parlour? We should be very happy – shouldn't we, Mrs Winkworth?' A thought seemed to occur to her; she added: 'Unless, of course – no, I don't mean that! I mean – I mean, you might, perhaps be engaged with your own party? Or – if you should chance to be a married man, we should be honoured to receive Mrs Calverleigh too!'

  'No, I'm not married,' he replied. 'I shall be delighted to drink tea with you, ma'am!'

  Her face brightening, she said: 'Oh, then, pray come whenever you choose! This evening?'

  Far too astute to jump at an invitation, he excused himself, but, after a little hesitation, allowed her to persuade him to accept one for the following evening. He fancied that he read a certain measure of approval in Mrs Winkworth's expression, and took his leave of both ladies, feeling that a promising start had been made in his new venture.

  The tea-drinking was very successful. He found her seated on one side of a small fire, dressed all in grey, with no ornaments but her pearls, and one fine diamond ring, which he judged to have sentimental associations, since she gazed at it, from time to time, with wistful fondness.