Kitabı oku: «A Kind And Decent Man», sayfa 4
Victoria started awake from her snooze as the carriage jolted. As it slowed a small exclamation of dismay escaped her. But mercifully it picked up speed. If they had halted once again and she had had to endure George Prescott pacing to and fro mumbling and grumbling that he was in a bit of a quandary, she was sure she would have resorted to hysteria.
Her tapered fingers whitened on the battered upholstery of Hartfield’s travelling coach as she leaned forward to blink sleepy eyes at the passing shadowy scenery.
The cottages were getting closer together and there were fewer intervals of wooded countryside—a sure sign that they were approaching the outskirts of the city. They had already lost several hours while Samuel’s uncle had dithered about going this way or that.
As Samuel could not be spared from managing Hartfield or caring for her papa in her absence to drive them to London, he had suggested that an uncle of his, now retired, would be happy to take on the job for a small consideration. A reciprocal small consideration from Samuel’s uncle would have been very welcome: to wit, an admission that the man had not travelled this route either as coachman or passenger for more than sixteen years and that his sight and his memory were useless.
Twice they had turned into narrow lanes leading nowhere. Manoeuvring their small carriage and two elderly greys about had proved arduous and almost impossible.
Twice Victoria had suggested cancelling the trip and returning to Hartfield. Then later in the week they could catch the stage from St Albans and travel to town in a sane and relaxed manner.
Beryl, for her own reasons, had heartily concurred with this. Her aunt had told Beryl to mind her business before impressing on Victoria, with a cautionary wag of the head, that they bear in mind the importance of this trip. Also, that Margaret Worthington was expecting them and would be horrified should they not arrive, suspecting all sorts of devilry had befallen them on the journey. This genuinely concerned Victoria. There was no way a message could speedily be sent to their hostess, who was kind enough to be putting them up for a week at Rosemary House in Cheapside. She was probably even now preparing for their arrival.
When George Prescott had then insisted that he was out of his quandary and into his stride, Victoria had relented. So they persevered towards London but were several hours behind schedule.
She glanced across at her two female companions, one propped in either corner of the creaking carriage, both sleeping soundly. Neither had spoken a word to the other since the clash of opinion about continuing to London. Thereafter, simmering resentment was limited to ostentatiously shifting as far apart as the small travelling coach allowed.
Beryl had sulked from the moment she had learned she would be acting as maid to Victoria and Matilda on this trip. Victoria knew it was not the thought of dressing a head of hair, which she did remarkably well, but the thought of Sally exerting influence over Samuel in her absence. But it would have been impossible to leave the two women together, sharpening their claws on each other while vying for Samuel’s favours. Separating the housemaids was the only option in her absence from Hartfield.
The carriage juddered and slowed. Victoria immediately pulled herself towards the window and peered out. There were two conveyances in front of them now and, on the right-hand side, a row of grimy building tenements.
London! At last! A few hawkers’ shouts were audible amongst the rattling of carriage wheels and as they proceeded they merged into a thrum of sound. Victoria inhaled carefully, sure she could detect tar and brine in amongst the pungent whiffs assaulting her nostrils. She squinted into the gloom and in the distance made out rigging and masts rising like grey skeletons against a velvet night sky. They were obviously near the Thames.
A young boy, perhaps seven years old, caught her attention by waving a hand; he then held it out, calling for coins. Even in the twilight, Victoria could discern his ragged, emaciated body and it tweaked her heartstrings.
The babble and stench of the city increased, permeating the coach. A mouth-watering aroma of savoury pies became submerged beneath the stomach-churning stink of ordure. Victoria drew the leather curtain over the draughty window. She glanced at her female companions; neither was in the least disturbed by the city hullaballoo and both gently snored on.
The thought of Rosemary House—warm refreshment and a soft bed close at hand—made Victoria simultaneously contented and conscience-stricken as she thought of the filthy urchin she’d just spied. As she shifted to find a comfortable spot on the cracked hide seat, her weary head lolled back into the squabs and her eyelids drooped.
They flicked up within a few minutes. The coach had stopped. She waited tensely, then felt the vehicle rock on its axle as George Prescott descended from his perch. Victoria fought to budge the coach window to speak to him; he was now conversing with someone by the greys’ heads.
George looked searchingly about in the manner of someone locating their bearings and Victoria groaned despairingly. He scratched his head thoughtfully, then, urged by his rough-looking companion, walked towards a crowd of people.
Without sensible thought, Victoria was out of the coach and running to apprehend him. ‘Mr Prescott!’ she called loudly, holding her skirts as she skipped and dodged the debris in the street. ‘What is happening? Where do you think you are off to? Are we arrived at Cheapside? Why have we stopped here?’ Her queries and accusations came tumbling out.
‘I’m in a bit of a quandary, you see, Mrs Hart…’ he began sheepishly. ‘Now you get yourself back in the coach while I finds out from these folks jest where we are. This kind gent reckons Rosemary Lane be up there and a turn back towards the Ratcliffe Highway where I believe we jest came through. Er…we’ve been around in a circle, like…’
‘We’re lost again?’ Victoria demanded incredulously, and then, horrified, corrected, ‘We require Rosemary House, in Cheapside, Mr Prescott. Not Rosemary Lane.’ She glanced warily at the scruffy, stocky man with George Prescott. His features were virtually lost beneath a tangle of beard that seemed almost attached to scraggy brows. His sharp black eyes were distinguishable: they slipped assessingly over her fine clothes before sliding sideways to the unattended carriage behind her.
Victoria stiffened. Two sleeping women were left there alone and unprotected. She attempted to divert the man’s astute stare. ‘Are there street entertainers?’ She was sure her voice sounded squeakily unnatural and quickly indicated a crowd of people forming a circle. Raucous shouts and laughter crescendoed as people began spilling onto the cobbles from brightly lit inns and gin shops situated on either side of the narrow street. Flares formed moving pools of glowing gold amid flickering patches of darkness. She watched in increasing alarm as drunkards linked arms, holding each other up, yet still up-ended tankards and tots. Two blowsy, rouged women passed close by and subjected Victoria to a spiteful-eyed stare.
‘Look at ‘er…proper Miss ‘Oity-Toity, ain’t she?’ one spat coarsely. They both screeched with laughter as the scruffy man gave them a playful shove and told them to mind their manners. Before weaving on, they swore and gesticulated good-naturedly at him.
‘Why not look, my lady?’ her unkempt champion challenged her. ‘We gets people o’ quality about here on cock-fighting night. Lords ‘n all sorts. They comes to wager and partake o’ the sport. Jugglers in the market there. Plenty to see ‘n buy. Yer’ll judge us proper decent folk compared to the Ratcliffe Highway scum. Come, yer’ll not be alone wi’ ruffians. I’ll look out fer yer and finds out direkshuns to…What was that address agin? Rosemary sumthink?’ He solicitously lowered his head for her response but his intention was closer inspection of what delightful promise Victoria’s cloak concealed.
Cautiously stepping back, Victoria glanced appealingly at old George Prescott. Her driver was scratching at his head again. ‘As I recall, Cheapside is…’ He rotated on the spot with a searching finger in the air.
‘Cock-fighting, you say?’ Victoria gulped, feigning interest in the barbaric pastime. Their carriage was still intermittently drawing this rough stranger’s acquisitive attention, and, hoping to distance him from it, Victoria said breathlessly, ‘I’ve never before seen such a spectacle…’
The man obstructed her as she made to speed past him. ‘Nor never likely to see agin, I reckons. What you doin’ ‘ere? Sweet little lady like you? Come fer the sport, did yer? Bored little lady, is yer?’ he breathed close to her face with a foxy smile. ‘Well, I’ll shows yer some better sport than yer’ll get off them cocks…’ He howled with laughter, painfully tightening dirty fingers about an evasive arm.
‘Unhand me at once,’ Victoria demanded, her alarm now backed by anger, her grey eyes sparking jet-black in her white face.
‘Unhand you…is it?’ he mimicked. ‘You ain’t in Mayfair now, duckie. Yer on my manor and yer’ll…’
Victoria was no longer listening. She was staring wide-eyed past her tormentor and at that precise moment the focus of her amazement turned, laughing, from his male companion and saw her.
‘David…’ Victoria whispered in shock and stupendous relief.
‘Victoria?’
She was too far away from him to hear her name, but she saw it on his lips, just as she saw her own disbelief and astonishment mirrored in his face. His blond companion took money from his unresisting fingers then wandered off towards some stalls set up.
There was a small group of gentlemen present, clearly distinguishable by their arrogant bearing and expensive dress. And they were, indeed, wagering, she obliquely realised. This local ruffian hadn’t lied on that score. As though sensing he was favourably considered, the man fumbled two large hands inside her cloak.
For little more than a second Victoria desperately fended him off, then he was savagely spun away from her and sent tottering back on his heels.
David Hardinge stood facing the giddy Lothario with his back to her. ‘Not your type, Toby,’ he stated, in an odd mix of lazy drawl and steely threat.
The man regained his balance, simultaneously shaking his shaggy head and whipping up ham-like fists in aggression. But, instead of charging, grimy fingers scraped across his bristly, bashful face. ‘Sorry, milord. Didn’t know she was yours, honest.’ He shifted uncomfortably then executed an incongruous sort of bow-cum-curtsey before sloping off, muttering, ‘Some looka.’
Before Victoria could draw breath to thank him, she was propelled backwards, fast up against the licheny brickwork of a building. Two rigid, barring arms slammed at either side of her, shielding her face from view.
Everything once dear and familiar about him bombarded her senses: his warmth and muscular strength, his fresh cologne, so welcome a fragrance in the hotchpotch of odours. Instinctively she swayed closer then started back.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ David Hardinge bit out so ferociously through his teeth, his thin lips barely parted.
Victoria winced as though he’d hit her. His intense, almost tangible fury dried her mouth and her head throbbed with tension.
The shabby stranger had alarmed her; this elegantly dressed man she believed she knew terrified her. Yet, paradoxically, a serene sense of safety let her rest back against the brickwork and raise languid eyes to his. Flickering torchlight threw into stark relief his fierce, anxious expression. Fear for her safety had prompted his anger. The instinct to protect radiated from him. It was in his rigid stance, in the way he used his body to shield her as people pressed close by them.
Hard, unsteady fingers lifted to her cheek before sliding across her jaw.
Mesmerised by the soothing caress, Victoria simply stared up at him. She had thought this all forgotten, banished from her life for ever. This touch…this man inclined towards her, his mouth close to hers.
Long sooty lashes parted to reveal tortured relief in his sapphire eyes. ‘What in damnation do you think you’re doing here?’ he gritted out.
‘Looking for you,’ Victoria answered with rash honesty.
Chapter Four
‘Looking for me?’ he repeated.
Victoria dipped her head, feeling her face heating at her unguarded confession. But it was honest, she remotely realised. It was the absolute truth. She now accepted in this noxious London marketplace what she had refused to acknowledge in the quiet sanctuary of Hertfordshire: the only reason she had agreed to leave her papa and Hartfield in the servants’ care was to come to London with her aunt, seek out this man and ask him to marry her. To save them all from destitution, she needed him to want her again.
‘Looking for me?’ David persisted, a light finger sliding beneath her oval chin to try to make her meet his eyes.
Victoria subtly shielded her chagrin by turning her face into his shoulder. Everything had gone so awfully wrong! And so soon! He would naturally expect some explanation for such an outrageous declaration. She had seen this man but once in seven years. That reunion had hardly been auspicious, yet, despite it, she had just freely implied searching an insalubrious London district for him on a chilly spring night.
Subconsciously she had planned a far more favourable meeting. Perhaps when she was finely dressed in her beautiful lilac silk gown, when she could attempt to charm him as she once had. As it was, she knew she looked fatigued and dishevelled. Her grey velvet bonnet had been discarded in the carriage and dusky tresses wisped untidily about her face in the biting night breeze. Her dark woollen travelling cloak had been chosen for warmth rather than fashion. Oh, there couldn’t have been a worse time for her to have let slip such vital information!
‘I’m flattered, Mrs Hart, that you wanted me so desperately you tracked me to one of London’s most notorious rookeries. Nevertheless, a visiting card delivered to Beauchamp Place would definitely have been wiser.’
His bored irony and the way he formally addressed her both froze and fired Victoria. So she was ‘Mrs Hart’, and no doubt a tiresome nuisance who was ruining his evening’s entertainment.
Her cool, dignified expression clashed with one of sardonic intensity. ‘I intended to do exactly that, Mr Hardinge. I have certainly not sought you out specifically this evening. How could I possibly have known of your whereabouts?’ she demanded on a derisive little laugh. ‘I had no idea you would be here…I had no idea I would be here, for that matter. We are lost and…’ Her scornful defence faltered. ‘We are lost’ ran back through her mind. Oh, God! She had completely forgotten about her aunt and Beryl, still in the coach. Oh, she hoped they were still in the coach. They could have been abducted or robbed or murdered because she had been foolish enough to abandon them defenceless and sleeping.
‘Thank you for your aid, sir. I apologise for detaining you,’ tumbled from her lips as she attempted dodging past him.
It was impossible to go anywhere. His arms remained stationed at either side of her. Her small hands rose, yanking desperately at his forearms to remove them. Iron muscle flexed within the fine wool of his coat as he thwarted her attempts to shift him.
‘Do you really want to roam unescorted through this drunken rabble, Mrs Hart?’ he quietly asked. ‘You’ve met Toby and should deem yourself fortunate: in comparison to some of the stevedores around here, he’s a reasonably decent chap. He, and many others about here tonight, are also in my employ. Were they not, both you and I and my companions would now be fighting to keep our valuables…and our lives. You haven’t the vaguest idea where you are, have you? This isn’t a charming Hertfordshire village, Mrs Hart. There’s a deplorable lack of chivalrous squires in these parts.’
‘I am being made perfectly aware of that, Mr Hardinge,’ Victoria tartly retaliated, incensed by his ironic allusion to her dear, late husband. ‘Please allow me to pass. I have to return to my companions and I have no wish to detain you from rejoining yours.’
‘Companions? There are more of you?’ David demanded on an incredulous laugh.
‘Indeed. And I am anxious for their welfare after what you have told me…’ Her voice quavered as her fragile composure finally cracked. She heard him curse beneath his breath and frantically blinked away the betraying, humiliated tears glossing her eyes.
She had been such a stupid fool! In every single way! She railed at herself. She should never have voiced her intention to approach him while in London. She should never have clung to her idiotic hope that he might treat her with respect and kindness. If he could abandon her to seek diversion abroad merely weeks after proposing and declaring undying love, then there could be no chance of courteous indulgence now, after seven years. He had forgotten their youthful friendship and had made that much perfectly clear two months ago at Hartfield. She almost laughed hysterically; it had been her intention to come and appeal to his good nature!
She knew bored, wealthy gentlemen mixed with all levels of society in their quest for diversion, but for this viscount to mingle with these vagabonds…And, worse still, to seem quite at ease and accepted by them. She recalled the painted-faced vulgar women who had verbally abused her. She also recalled her aunt’s genuine shock and disgust when recounting details of his debauchery. Surely not with such as were hereabouts…? It was too much! With a choked, woeful sob, she shoved fists against his solid torso, desperate to escape.
Firm, gentle fingers slid into her hair, holding her close, as he wordlessly allayed her alarm and anger. And, despite all her misgivings, her face instinctively sought the familiar muscled nook below his shoulder as though it were only yesterday when last she’d found comfort there.
‘I have to go back to my aunt. Please let me go back. I’m worried some ill might have befallen her and my maid…’
Shielding her slender body with the solid strength of his, David began shouldering a path through the throng. Even in her agitated state she realised people were deferentially clearing a path for him to move through. One woman bobbed a curtsey and several men dipped heads or tugged forelocks as he approached.
A press of people milling on all sides forced them to a halt and David’s arms circled her protectively. Victoria darted anxious glances this way and that and spied Toby; with him was a woman whose neat, fashionable attire made her seem oddly out of place. At that precise moment the woman’s blonde head turned and almond eyes glanced idly about then swept back to her. They narrowed to slits and Victoria was horrified to read not only recognition but cold hatred there too. Those feline eyes shifted to David, lingering covetously on him.
Victoria stared, mesmerised, as the woman spoke to Toby. He looked startled and stared over at them before dropping his dark, wiry head close to his companion’s elegant coiffure. The woman began hurriedly moving away from him. They were arguing, Victoria realised, and quite violently, judging by the way people close by were turning to laughingly watch. Then the couple were disappearing into the bobbing, seething throng.
Feeling unaccountably alarmed, Victoria nestled instinctively into David. Her disquiet took on a keener edge as long, controlling fingers urged her body into even closer contact with his. Her senses were chafed raw by the heat of him warming her, a muscled thigh melding against her hip, a hypnotic gaze drawing grey eyes to blue. Slowly, inexorably, her ebony head was angling back. She sensed him inclining towards her, his mouth a mere sigh away.
Cherished, buried memories surfaced immediately. She had loved it when he kissed her. Leisurely, drugging assaults inflicted with narrow, sensual lips that looked so selfish, so savage…yet had often been unbearably attentive and kind. Her thick, lush lashes unmeshed; she glimpsed what she yearned to touch her as her eyes swept upwards to his face…and through a break in the crowd she spied her coach.
Drenching guilt that she had momentarily forgotten it and relief that it hadn’t, after all, been misappropriated vied for supremacy. She prayed her aunt and Beryl were still safely within.
They weren’t! Victoria ripped free of David’s grip. Dodging the last few folk weaving about, she skipped over the filth on the cobbles and ran lightly to her travelling companions.
‘You are a most stupid man!’ met Victoria’s ears as she came close to her indomitable aunt. ‘Anyone knows this is not Cheapside. Look about you! Gin houses—flash houses too, I’ll warrant. Rogues and doxies everywhere…’ Matilda halted midflow, catching sight of Victoria and then of David walking behind her.
‘We’ll all be murdered in our beds…deaded by morn…’ Beryl wailed, enfolding herself tightly into her cloak and jamming her bonnet hard down over her pretty fair hair to conceal it.
‘Foolish girl! We’ll be lucky to get to our beds tonight, let alone be murdered in them. Cease that shrieking and moaning. You’ll draw every wretch’s attention to us with your caterwauling.’
Victoria wrapped her arms about her rigid-backed aunt and then drew Beryl’s shivering form into her embrace. ‘Quick…get back into the coach…please. Don’t fret…I’m sure these people will let us leave unchallenged. They are far too busy with their entertainment to bother with us,’ she encouraged. She addressed George Prescott sharply. ‘Let us be moving on immediately…’
He nodded his sparse grey head knowledgeably at her. ‘Well, I reckons, if we keep the Thames to the left and the moon to the right…’
‘You’ll end up back here in about ten minutes,’ David Hardinge remarked drily, nonchalantly leaning his immaculate figure against the battered coach.
Matilda beamed at him then sent her niece such a look of explicit congratulation that Victoria felt mortification and anger heat her face. She glanced at the focus of her aunt’s appreciation, hoping he had not noticed the woman’s tacit approval. A cynical smile told her he had, as did the very blue eyes watching her. And all at once an awful realisation struck her: he had not seemed as surprised as he ought to on learning that she was seeking him!
‘Mr Hardinge was by lucky chance here with some friends.’ Victoria quickly put both of them right, sure he quite believed she had somehow managed to engineer the whole incident to waylay him.
‘How fortunate,’ her aunt said in a tone which only served to endorse this theory.
‘Get in the coach now, Aunt, and you, Beryl. We must leave here immediately.’ Beryl needed no further prompting. She scrambled aboard with Aunt Matilda quickly following.
‘No doubt you’ll want to thank and take your leave of the Viscount.’ Matilda reminded Victoria of his status through the window she had forced open then jammed shut again.
Her aunt was, of course, right. He was most certainly owed her gratitude. She didn’t dare guess what might have befallen her at these scoundrels’ hands. ‘Thank you for your protection, my lord…’ she dutifully said.
‘You’re very welcome to it, Mrs Hart.’
The insinuation in his immediate, husky reply made Victoria blush although she was unsure why such innocuous words should make her feel so uncomfortable. Or why he should look at her in that sleepy yet intent way.
‘If you’re hoping to arrive at your destination some time this evening, Mrs Hart, perhaps I ought to accompany you. Your coachman still seems confused.’ David indicatively raised his eyes to George Prescott, now perched on the driver’s seat but swivelling about on his posterior muttering to himself about left and right and moon and stars.
It was a sensible and welcome offer. Victoria was aware that they could indeed end up returning to this unsavoury stew, or find a worse London slum, should George Prescott again come upon his quandary. ‘You’re very kind,’ she said, inclining her head in acceptance and allowing him to hand her into the coach.
Ten minutes later, almost at the same minute that their tired greys clopped into Cheapside, Margaret Worthington appeared silhouetted in her open doorway with a glow of honey light at her elegant back. The elderly mares whinnied to a grateful halt by black railings fronting a neat, red-brick mansion.
David Hardinge alighted nimbly from the seat he had shared with George Prescott. Ensuring the man stayed alert and travelling west as they negotiated the maze of dim city streets had necessitated him sitting close by his side to give explicit instructions. So exasperated had he become with his colleague’s failing faculties at one point that he’d nearly snatched the reins to drive himself.
He held the carriage door and had helped each of the three women alight before old George Prescott’s rickety joints had allowed him to gain the cobbles.
‘So kind of you…’ Matilda beamed up at David, reluctant to relinquish his long fingers. She turned triumphantly to her old friend, to find her squinting through the dusk at her.
Margaret Worthington shook her greying ringlets. No…it couldn’t be. It was a trick of the light…or rather the lack of it. She had seen Lord Courtenay before, several times at a distance, and it did indeed look like him. But then it was almost nine of the clock. Apart from milky moonbeams and the flickering coach lamps there was only the muted glow spilling from her open front door. All was patchy and shadowy.
But then again, she had heard that he and his friends indulged in some quite outrageous pranks. But to act as a footman…No, it couldn’t be. But then she also knew that young men today wagered on the most bizarre events and dares. And, to top it all, she had never seen a groom quite so sartorially splendid…or handsome…
‘Lord Courtenay has been kind enough to show our man directions to Cheapside…’ Matilda gladly put the woman’s confusion to rest, with every intention of making her seethe with envy.
She did not need to wait long. Margaret Worthington grasped at a speared railing and her crushed handkerchief went to her mouth. She almost ate it in sheer frustration.
More than a dozen times she had invited this viscount to her soirées; never had he once deigned to grace her doorstep. Now he did…late in the evening, unexpectedly, and with Emma’s hair needing a wash and curl to it. It was beyond bearing.
‘How wonderful to see you, Matilda,’ Margaret Worthington enthused. ‘I was so worried when you didn’t arrive by six of the clock. I have been stationed by my windows these past three hours. Please…let us all remove inside for warmth and refreshment.’ This was directed to the party as a whole yet her sugary smile was for his lordship. She daintily tripped down the steps and got behind him somehow, cutting off his retreat.
Once they had reached the drawing room and Matilda and Victoria were seated, David announced his intention to leave. Mrs Worthington immediately demurred. ‘Oh, come, my lord, you must at least take a sip of wine with us. I know gentlemen are not great tea drinkers. Indeed, my own Mr Worthington is not. He is a port and brandy man. Had he known you were to visit he would never have retired so early. He is usually up and about till well past midnight. I’ll just send Rawlings to fetch him. I know you gentlemen like another such to talk to. No interest in ladies’ chatter, naturally.’ Margaret Worthington paused for breath and started for the door.
David immediately put out a hand to detain her and insist she did not needlessly disturb her sleeping husband; he was most definitely ready to depart. Margaret, spying a chance, grabbed it, in the shape of an empty crystal goblet on a side table. She immediately stuck it in his hand. ‘There. Just hold that while Rawlings fetches some wine.’ The middle-aged woman sped to the door and began hissing something to someone outside with much flapping of the chewed handkerchief in her hand.
Victoria avoided her aunt’s eye. She knew that the harder Margaret Worthington endeavoured to detain David, the better Matilda liked it and was not above showing it. He had so far declined beverages, cinnamon cake, alcohol, a male companion, a tour of the conservatory stocked with exotic blooms—which Emma would be delighted to show him, Margaret had sweetly assured him, ignoring her daughter’s whiplash look.
As she sipped at her weak, warm tea, Victoria’s grey gaze roved the over-furnished drawing room of Rosemary House. She replaced her wafer-thin cup and saucer on a table close by the comfortable fireside chair she sat in and glanced across at Emma. The young woman’s honey-brown head was inclined towards the book she read as though for all the world she had little interest in any guest who had joined them this evening.
Despite the fact that Emma seemed a little meek and unassuming, Victoria now knew she was not. On their arrival, Margaret Worthington had attempted to shut her daughter away in a side room as they entered the house. It had looked almost comical. Emma had been about to emerge into the hallway and had just avoided having herself squashed in the door.
But Emma had refused to be pushed out of sight until primped in readiness to receive their unexpected, but exceedingly welcome, male guest. Angrily side-stepping her mother, she had snapped shut the book she held in her hand, serenely walked into the drawing room and welcomed everyone with an odd detached warmth. Having dutifully taken care of the expected niceties, she had then sat quietly reading. She now appeared oblivious to her mother’s staring, glaring and hissing words through the lacy scrap she clutched.
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