Regency High Society Vol 1: A Hasty Betrothal / A Scandalous Marriage / The Count's Charade / The Rake and the Rebel. Mary Brendan
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‘Very amusing!’ Sandford said with a grin, striding forward to present his compliments to Lady Butler. ‘Evening, ma’am, I trust I find you in good health?’
Her ladyship gave him a pale smile.
‘Glad to see that you, in any event, are in such good spirits,’ she said, fanning herself ostentatiously. ‘I myself find this warm weather quite overpowering—I believe your Miss Cordell suffers from a similar weakness—if we are to believe what we hear?’
She looked towards Harriet, who appeared to be involved in some sort of amusing wordplay with Ridgeway. An expression of contempt came into Lady Butler’s eyes as she continued, ‘I cannot think what possessed Judith to invite her bailiff to eat his dinner with us. Although, I am obliged to point out that it is all of a piece with her conduct since you brought your—young lady back with you to Beldale. A certain laxity of standards, you might say—I must suppose that she has been filling my daughter’s head with some sort of foreign egalitarian nonsense!’
‘Surely Judith has been far too well brought up by your own good self to be influenced by the word of a mere soldier’s girl?’ returned Sandford, who was, as usual, intensely irritated at Lady Butler’s appalling rudeness but, at the same time, fiendishly interested to see how far on to her own cleft stick he could pinion her. He was gradually beginning to understand how Philip had handled the old harridan and why his father found her so amusing.
She glowered at him in silence for a moment or two, fidgeting with her fan. ‘How very like your brother you are,’ she said diffidently. ‘That he should perish on his own doorstep in a carriage accident, while you escaped unscathed after ten years of war in some foreign land, strikes me as being grossly unfair—but life is so, as I am constantly reminded!’
Sandford, staggered at her outrageous insensitivity, was momentarily lost for words. ‘I’m afraid that I cannot find it in me to apologise for my survival, ma’am, he managed eventually. ‘As to unscathed, I can assure you that I have a fine scar on my leg …’ He gently patted his right thigh.
‘Really, sir!’ she protested. ‘I have told you before that I will not have such unsavoury topics in my house!’
‘My brother’s house, I believe, madam,’ he corrected her with stiff politeness, ‘Or, in any event, Judith’s, to hold in trust for his son!’
As this rejoinder seemed to have the effect of reducing her ladyship to an affronted silence, he decided that he had done more than his share of duty insofar as she was concerned, especially as the uneasy pause allowed him to become increasingly conscious of the sounds of merriment that were emanating from the group at the pianoforte.
‘May I bring you a drink?’ he forced himself to ask Lady Butler, his natural good manners once more to the fore. ‘I see Pinter hovering with a tray and our Cousin Charles is always so reluctant to push himself forward—unlike myself. Lemonade, perhaps?’
She shook her head ungraciously, unfurling her fan and fluttering it affectedly to and fro across her fleshy cheeks—looking for all the world like some giant puce porpoise floundering on a rock, he thought ungallantly as he made his way across the room.
Harriet and Ridgeway were seated together at the pianoforte, attempting to construct a duet, the former never having had a lesson in her life and the latter unable to recall many of his. That they were managing to produce anything resembling a tune was due partly to Harriet’s excellent ear and, mainly, to Judith’s hastily mouthed instructions to Ridgeway. Much laughter ensued and Sandford pessimistically predicted that his appearance would be certain to create a damper.
To his astonishment, however, Harriet leapt at once to her feet as he approached and, taking him by the hand, pulled him over to the instrument, begging Ridgeway to relinquish his seat.
‘—for I now have a much more proficient partner in Robert!’ she cried gaily, apparently oblivious to the look in his eyes as he sat down beside her. ‘Come now, dearest. Show how it is perfectly possible for two to devise a tune between them. I shall choose the chords and you must add all the terribly clever trills and runs that you are so good at! We have done this on many occasions so I know that it is not beyond your capabilities!’
Not quite out of his depth, for he was a competent pianist,
Sandford waited until she struck her first chord, a C major and, thinking swiftly, he tentatively executed a few notes of a popular tune, hoping that the expected G would follow. It came on the beat without hesitation and so, between the two of them, the little ditty was rendered almost perfectly, to the delight of the two spectators, who clapped most heartily at its conclusion.
‘Now that you see how it is done,’ Harriet said to Judith, ‘you and Charles should do far better than we did, for you both have the benefit of a musical education and you, I know, play beautifully.’
So Judith and Ridgeway took their places and their little piece was performed with more zest than skill, due to the laughter that accompanied its execution, but they jubilantly managed to finish at one and the same time, just as Finchley entered to announce that dinner was served.
Judith insisted that, as their number was odd, formalities would be dispensed with and that they must all go directly to the dining-room without further ado; she herself would accompany Lady Butler. Several of the leaves had been removed from the large mahogany table, which enabled the small group to disport themselves within comfortable speaking distance of one another, and still allowed for the prodigious number of side dishes to be positioned within reach.
Judith took the head of the table with the two men seated, one on each side of their hostess, at the top, Lady Butler to Ridgeway’s left and Harriet to the viscount’s right.
Harriet, true to her word, gave a dedicated impersonation of a loving bride-to-be in addition to keeping up her cheerful bonhomie. She was momentarily disconcerted, at various intervals throughout the splendid meal, to find Lady Butler’s disapproving eyes upon her. However, all through the soup, fish, meat and game courses she continued with her amusing repartee, occasioning Judith to upset her wine glass because
she was laughing so much, and her friend’s mother to tuttut even more vigorously at everyone’s unseemly behaviour! Ridgeway, alternately grinning at Harriet’s witticisms and smiling into Judith’s shining eyes, was happy simply to be at his goddess’s table.
Sandford, on the other hand, was in a perpetual state of nervous tension. One minute he was laughing along with the others and the next finding himself contemplating Lady Butler’s rigid disapproval of the merriment at the dinner table. Most of all, however, he was acutely conscious of Harriet’s vivacious and captivating nearness, her deliberate and pointed use of his given name and the constant flashing of her smile in his direction. For which dedicated attentions, he reflected gloomily, he would surely be paying dearly before the day ended so he decided he might as well make the most of them and set about entering into her pantomime with gusto.
At last the desserts were brought in. The lively exchanges had continued through a widely ranging number of light-hearted topics, everyone carefully avoiding the more contentious issues of corn prices, royal scandals and the like, any of which could be guaranteed to depress the spirits. The latest novels were touched upon briefly and, when local matters arose, Sandford, catching the flicker of concern in Harriet’s eyes, was quick to steer the conversation away from her woodland escapade, in spite of Lady Butler’s prurient curiosity in that event. Instead, he regaled them with the story of his own confrontation with Josh Potter when the old man heard that Bottom Meadow cottages were about to be pulled down.
‘Such ripe language as he used is not for repetition in mixed company, of course,’ he concluded teasingly. ‘But I feel sure that, could he but walk the distance, he would do his utmost to disrupt the entire proceedings.’
Ridgeway and Judith joined in his laughter, but Harriet’s face became suddenly serious and she stared at them reproachfully.
‘Oh, but I can readily sympathise with his feelings!’