Читать книгу The Society Catch - Louise Allen - Страница 9

Three days after Joanna’s disastrous masquerade party, Giles Gregory turned his match greys neatly into Half Moon Street, sensing his spirits lift perceptibly as he saw the smart black front door of the Tasboroughs’ town house in front of him.

He felt heartsore, anxious and hurt, and the thought of Hebe’s warm common sense and Alex’s astringent comradeship had seemed like a beacon on the journey from his family home in the Vale of Aylesbury. He had crossed with them journeying up to town from their Hertfordshire estate when he had made his painfully short visit to his parents and, instead of finding refuge at Tasborough, had had to drive back to London to seek out his friends.

He handed the reins to his groom and jumped down. ‘Take them ’round to the mews, Mellors, and tell his lordship’s man that I am expecting to stay for a day or two. If that is not convenient, come back and let me know and you can take them to the livery stables, but I do not expect the earl has brought more than his carriage horses and one hack up for a short stay.’

The man drove competently away down the street and Giles took the front steps in two long strides. The door was opened by Starling, the family butler, who permitted himself a small smile on seeing who was there.

‘Colonel Gregory. It is a pleasure to see you again, sir, if I may be so bold. His lordship is out, but her ladyship is in the Blue Room. She is not generally receiving, but I will venture to say she will be at home to you, sir, if you would care to go up. Will you be staying? Your usual room is free.’

‘Thank you, Starling.’ Giles handed him his hat and gloves. ‘I hope Lady Tasborough will not object to a house guest for a night or two.’

He made his way up to the elegant room on the first floor which was Hebe’s favourite retiring room, and opened the door. ‘May I come in?’

‘Giles!’ She was lying propped up against a pile of cushions on a chaise longue, a wide smile of delighted welcome on her face.

He strode across to her side, warmed by her delight. There were times when he wondered if he would ever find someone like his friend’s wife, someone whom he could love as Alex loved Hebe, someone who would love him back with such passionate devotion.

‘Good grief, Lady Tasborough!’ He stopped in front of her, his mouth curving into a warm, teasing, smile. ‘Just when is this child due? I give you fair warning, I have delivered one baby in my time, and it is not an experience I am willing to repeat.’

Hebe held out her arms to him, giggling as he attempted to kiss her across the bump. Sheets of notepaper scattered unregarded to the carpet. ‘It isn’t due for six weeks, Giles, so you need not be alarmed. Have you truly delivered a baby? Whose was it?’

‘The wife of one of the men. The father fainted, the doctor was away cutting some poor man’s leg off, there was not another woman in sight, so it was down to me.’ He grinned at her affectionately. This felt like coming home. ‘Six weeks? Are you sure it isn’t twins?’

‘Oh!’ Hebe stared at him wide-eyed. ‘Surely not? There are none in either family as far as I know, and it does follow, does it not?’

‘I think so. I’m only teasing you. How are you, Hebe? I am surprised to find you in town just now.’

‘I am well, only so tired of feeling like a whale. I cannot recall when I last saw my feet. But never mind me, what are you doing here? Can you stay until we go back to Tasborough? Please do, we would love that so much.’

‘Are you sure? It won’t be difficult at the moment?’

‘Not at all, and you will distract Alex and stop him fretting about me. I am in disgrace because I will not see any of the fashionable accoucheurs, which is the excuse I gave for coming up the other day. Alex says if all I want to do is shop, then I must go straight back to the country and rest. But we are here for another two days at any rate.’ She settled herself against her cushions and watched him with her wide grey eyes steady on his face. ‘The decanters are over there. Pour yourself a drink, then come and sit down beside me.’

Giles did as he was bid, dropping on to a footstool beside the chaise and settling himself comfortably. ‘Now, tell me what is wrong, Giles,’ she commanded.

‘Wrong?’ He shifted so that he was sitting with his back against the side of the chaise, his face turned from her.

‘Yes, wrong.’ Hebe rested her hand lightly on his shoulder. ‘You look as though someone has been kicking you—spiritually, I mean.’

Giles put up his own hand and covered hers. ‘Clever Hebe. That is exactly how I feel. I went home to Buckinghamshire two days ago because Mother has been writing to say that she is worried about Father. The doctor thinks he had some kind of seizure last month, now one side of his face is stiff and he is limping. Denies there is anything wrong, of course.’

‘How old is the General?’

‘Only sixty, but he’s had a tough life. Wounded at least six times, broken bones, yellow fever. He was never the kind of officer who stayed back at headquarters in comfort. Now he’s getting tired, but he will not admit it, and that’s a big estate for one man to manage. If I had a younger brother…’

‘So you came home to see him?’ Hebe curled her fingers within his and gave an encouraging squeeze.

‘Yes. I did not want to rush straight there as soon as I arrived in the country or he would suspect why I came home. My idea was to see for myself how he did, and, if he really looked bad, to sell out. I thought I’d try horse breeding and at the same time take over some of the estate management. Nothing too much at first, just the bits that really bore and tire him.’

‘And gradually he would let you do more and more and he would never have to admit he couldn’t cope?’

‘Yes. At least, that was my plan.’ He fell silent. The pain of his father’s reaction was almost too raw to speak about yet. ‘Where’s Alex?’

Hebe laughed. ‘At his club, taking refuge because I will not let him fuss over me, and if he stays at home he fidgets himself to death.’ Hebe paused, then, ‘How did your father react?’

‘Badly.’

‘Tell me,’ she persisted gently.

‘He demanded to know what had happened to make me lose my nerve and to want to sell out, like some coward of a Hyde-Park soldier,’ Giles said harshly. Hebe gasped.

‘He doesn’t mean it.’ Giles continued more easily now the shaming words had been said. ‘He expects me to be a general too—and even younger than he had been. I think in his heart he knows why I am talking of selling out and he is railing against his own weakness, not mine.’

‘I shouldn’t think that makes it hurt any less,’ Hebe said, lifting her hand to touch it softly to his face. Giles turned his cheek against her knuckles, comforted. Lucky, lucky Alex.

‘No. And of course he knows he has been unjust and doesn’t know how to put it right. So he managed to find yet another sin to throw at my head to justify his anger.’

‘What else?’

‘He wants to know what I think I’m about, flirting with Lady Suzanne Hall and not making her an offer. Damn good catch, the old boy says with considerable understatement, and he isn’t going to stand by hearing stories about me trifling with her affections.’

‘Are you?’ Hebe asked.

‘Flirting or trifling?’

‘Intending to marry her,’ Hebe said tartly.

‘None of those things. I’ve known Suzy since I was ten and she was toddling. She’s the sister I never had and I’d as soon marry a cage full of monkeys. I feel nothing but the deepest sympathy for whichever poor idiot marries her. That girl is the most outrageous minx I have ever come across.’

‘So you are not in love with her?’ Hebe persisted.

‘I love the girl—but just as a sister—and she and her parents know it. She has been practising flirting and wheedling on me since she was eleven because she knows I’m safe and her mother likes me to squire her about when I’m in town because she knows I’m safe. I scare off the bucks and the fortune hunters and Suzy can play the little madam to her heart’s content.

‘But she’s probably the best catch of the Season, as my father is all too aware. Some old pussy has been telling him I was seen with her driving in the park and dancing with her rather too often and that’s enough for him. And that’s another thing,’ he added bitterly. ‘Her father didn’t want her to learn to drive because his own sister was hurt in a bad accident, so what must she do but wheedle me into persuading the poor man that I can teach her.’

‘Well, you are a very good whip, Giles,’ Hebe pointed out.

‘Yes, and I’m well known for not letting ladies drive my teams, so Father puts two and two together, gets six and then finds no sign of me doing the right thing. And, of course, as he points out, it’s about time I was getting married and setting up my nursery and look at Lord Tasborough with one heir to his name already and that pretty little wife of his increasing again…’

‘Oh, poor Giles,’ Hebe said with indignant sympathy. ‘You have been giving your head for a washing, haven’t you? What are you going to do? Oh, listen, I think that’s Alex.’

The door opened to reveal the Earl, his face breaking into a grin when he saw who was with his wife.

‘Giles! No, don’t get up, stay there.’ He bent down and gave his friend a powerful buffet on the shoulder, wrung the hand that was held out to him, and dropped to the carpet by his side. ‘Are you here to stay? Is that why I find you here flirting with my wife?’

‘He isn’t flirting,’ Hebe said, half-anxious, half-laughing. ‘He thinks I’m expecting twins.’

‘Good God!’ The Earl twisted round to regard both his wife and friend. ‘Are you serious? And what do you know about it, might I ask?’

‘He says he’s delivered a baby.’

‘But not twins,’ Giles hastened to say. ‘No, don’t hit me! It is merely that kissing your delightful wife is like trying to reach her over a pile of sofa cushions and either someone’s mathematics are out, or it’s twins. Or triplets…’ he added wickedly, ducking away from Alex’s punch.

‘Oh, stop it!’ Hebe cried, slapping at black and blond heads impartially. ‘I might as well have two more small boys on my hands as you men. Giles is staying until we go back to Tasborough: he is having a perfectly horrible time at home. Giles, tell him.’

Giles recounted his story again. When he reached his father’s reaction to his plan to sell out, Alex went quite still, then simply reached out and gripped his arm. Giles found his vision suddenly blurred and rapidly finished the rest of his tale.

‘Just how angry is the General?’ Alex asked. No one ever referred to Lord Gregory by his title.

‘Angry enough to disinherit me.’

‘Can he?’ Alex enquired.

Giles shook his head with a rueful grin. The morning’s final, painful, interview was beginning to seem less painful and more farcelike now he could talk about it. ‘There’s the entail, and the money I inherited from Grandmama Ingham—he can’t do a thing about either of those. If he really puts his mind to it he can find about sixty acres and a couple of farms—and the furniture, of course—to leave elsewhere. But he doesn’t mean it.’

‘What will you do?’ Hebe was still not reassured.

‘I am under orders from Mama to come up to town and embark upon a life of reckless dissipation.’ He twisted round to smile at Hebe. ‘I’d already taken rooms at Albany as a pied-à-terre, but they aren’t fitted out yet, which is why I had hoped you’d take me in.’

‘Dissipation? But why?’

‘She says he will soon hear all about it and order me back home to be lectured. At which point he will decide that the best thing for me is to rusticate on the estate for a while.’

Hebe laughed. ‘How clever of your mama! Of course, if he thinks you don’t want to do it and would rather be in London, then helping with the estate will be just the thing to punish the prodigal, and after a few weeks he’ll be so used to it, and will enjoy having you there so much, that you will get exactly the result you want.’

‘Has it ever occurred to you that your mother is a better strategist than your father?’ Alex enquired.

‘Frequently. She always outflanks him and the poor man can never understand how she has done it.’ He shifted his position and one hand flattened a sheet of paper, which crackled. ‘Sorry, I appear to be crushing the letter you were reading.’

‘Oh, goodness!’ Hebe exclaimed, taking the crumpled pages. ‘I had quite forgotten in the excitement of Giles arriving. It is from Aunt Emily,’ she explained to the two men. ‘She sent a footman with it this morning, just after you had left, Alex. It is the most incredible thing. She says she is to send Joanna to stay with her great-aunt in Bath because she is in disgrace.’

‘I will go into the library.’ Giles started to get up. ‘You will want to discuss this in private.’

‘No, stay, please. You are one of the family, Giles, and besides, you are staying here and will have to know what is going on.’ She started to re-read. ‘And it is not as though it is anything actually, er, indelicate.’

‘What, not an elopement with the apothecary or the unfortunate results of an amorous encounter with the footman?’ Alex enquired, earning a look of burning reproach from his wife.

‘I still think I had better leave,’ Giles persisted. ‘I can go to an hotel until my rooms are ready at Albany. Your aunt will want to call and discuss the problem, that is obvious, and she will not feel at ease if she knows I am staying here.’

‘Nonsense, Giles. We need you to help us get to the bottom of this puzzle. Aunt Emily says it all began at the Duchess of Bridlington’s ball. Joanna got drunk on champagne, flirted outrageously and then went on to commit just about every act in the list of things she could do to be labelled fast. And, to cap it all, she is wilfully refusing an offer from a highly eligible nobleman—discreetly unnamed.’

‘Joanna? Drunk on champagne?’ Alex looked incredulous. ‘That girl is a pattern-book of respectability and correct behaviour.’

‘The Duchess of Bridlington’s ball?’ Giles sat down again. ‘Oh, lord.’ His friends looked at him incredulously. ‘Don’t look at me like that! I haven’t been seducing the girl! But I think I may have started her off on the wine—’ He broke off, his eyes unfocussed, looking back into the past. ‘You know, she had had a bad shock of some kind: that’s why I gave her a couple of glasses of champagne.’

He had forgotten about his encounters with Joanna in the face of his estrangement with his father, but, looking back in the light of Mrs Fulgrave’s letter, things began to make sense. ‘At the ball I found her sitting outside one of the retiring rooms looking shocked,’ he began.

‘You mean someone might have said something risqué or unkind to her?’ Hebe ventured.

‘No, not that kind of shock.’ He remembered the blank look in those wide hazel eyes and suddenly realised what it reminded him of. ‘Alex, you know the effect their first battle had on some of the very young, very idealistic officers who came out to the Peninsula without any experience? The ones who thought that war was all glory and chivalry, bugles blowing and flags flying?’

‘And found it was blood and mud and slaughter. Men dying in something that resembled a butcher’s shambles, chaos and noise—’ Alex broke off and Hebe could see they were both somewhere else, somewhere she could never follow. ‘Yes, I remember. What are you saying?’

‘Joanna had the same look in her eyes as those lads had after their first battle, as though an ideal had disintegrated before her and her world was in ruins. She was white, her hands were shaking. I asked her what was wrong, but she would not tell me. I assumed it was a man. We talked of neutral subjects for a while. After two glasses of champagne she was well enough to waltz, which helped, I think. Movement often does in cases of shock—’ He broke off, remembering the supple, yielding figure in his arms, those wide hazel eyes that seemed to look trustingly into his soul, his instinct to find and hurt the man who had so obviously hurt her.

They discussed the matter a little more, speculating on the spurned suitor to no purpose and, after a while, left Hebe to rest.

Giles went up to his usual room. While Alex’s valet unpacked for him he paced restlessly, fighting the urge to drive straight back home to see how his father was. To distract himself from his cantankerous parent, he thought about Joanna Fulgrave. To his surprise he found he was dwelling pleasurably on the memory. He frowned, trying to convince himself that he was merely intrigued by what had turned a previously biddable débutante into a fast young lady. But there was more than that, something that lay behind the desperate hurt in those lovely eyes, something which seemed to speak directly to him.

He shifted in the comfortable wing chair where he had finally come to rest. His body was responding to thoughts of Miss Fulgrave in a quite inappropriate way.

It was two months since he had parted from his Portuguese mistress. There were, of course, the ladies of negotiable virtue who flourished in town. They had not featured on his mother’s list of dissipated activities that she had suggested to him. ‘Cards, dearest, drink—I know you have a hard head for both, so they are safe. Be seen in all the most notorious places. Perhaps buy a racehorse? Flirt, of course, but no young débutantes, that goes without saying… Do you know any fast matrons?’

‘Only you, Mama,’ he had retorted, smiling into her amused grey eyes.

After an hour, Hebe, thoroughly bored with resting, summoned both men back to her salon, announcing that she had not the slightest idea what she could do to assist her aunt.

‘Send Giles to listen sympathetically,’ Alex was suggesting idly when there was the sound of the knocker. ‘Who can that be?’

Starling appeared in the doorway. ‘Mrs Fulgrave, my lady.’ He flattened himself against the door frame as Emily Fulgrave almost ran into the room, ‘Oh, Hebe, my dear, Alex… Oh!’ Both her niece and the Earl regarded her with consternation from the chaise where Alex was sitting beside Hebe who, he had insisted, was to stay lying down for at least another hour. Mrs Fulgrave burst into tears.

It took quite five minutes and a dose of sal volatile before she could command herself again. Giles, his escape cut off by a flurry of hastily summoned maid-servants and general feminine bustle, retreated to the far side of the room, hoping that his presence would not be marked. Hysterical matrons, he felt, were even less his style than fast ones.

Finally Hebe managed to ask what was wrong. Her aunt regarded her over her handkerchief and managed to gasp, ‘Joanna has run away.’

Eventually the whole story was extracted. Joanna had vanished from her room, but was not missed until it was time for luncheon because she was assumed to be hiding herself away until her unwanted suitor was due that afternoon and Mr Fulgrave was not in a mood to be conciliatory and seek to encourage her to emerge.

When her mama had finally opened her bedchamber door she was gone, with only a brief note to say she was going ‘where she could think.’

After several hours of sending carefully worded messages to her friends in town, all of which drew a blank, her parents were at their wits’ end. Mr Fulgrave was prostrate with gout, dear Alex had seemed their only resort.

Alex shot one look at Hebe’s white, shocked face and said firmly, ‘I am sorry, Aunt Fulgrave, but I simply cannot leave Hebe now.’

‘I know, of course, you cannot,’ Emily Fulgrave said despairingly. ‘I should have thought. It will have to be the Bow Street Runners, but we will have lost a day…’

‘I will find her,’ Giles said, standing up and causing all of them to start in surprise.

‘Oh, Giles, thank you,’ Hebe said warmly. ‘I had quite forgot you were there. Aunt Emily, Giles is staying with us. What could be more fortunate?’

Giles wondered if Mrs Fulgrave would consider that the family scandal coming to the ears of someone else, however close a friend, to be a fortunate matter. ‘You may trust my absolute discretion, ma’am, but you must tell me everything you know about what is wrong and where she may have gone,’ he began briskly, only to stagger back as the distraught matron cast herself upon his chest and began to sob on his shoulder. ‘Ma’am…’

Eventually Mrs Fulgrave was calm, sitting looking at him with desperate faith in his ability to find her daughter. Giles was already bitterly regretting his offer.

Damn it, what else can I do? he thought grimly. Alex and Hebe would fret themselves into flinders otherwise, and the Fulgraves had welcomed him into their family. And the thought of the girl with the pain in her hazel eyes tugged at him, awakening echoes of his own hurt.