Charles touched his hat to the ladies and smiled at Matilda. Her lips grew even primmer. Even her kid gloves, he noticed, were pale blue. Had she dressed with as much care as he had this morning? Had she remembered what he had told her about the color? Or had she discovered for herself over the years that it suited her?
“If the horses are not to stage a rebellion at being kept waiting so long,” she said,notspecifically addressing Charles, “we should perhaps think of being on our way.”
“Oh yes, indeed,” Lady Estelle cried. “You will sit on the seat facing the horses, Aunt Matilda. We are all agreed upon that. The rest of us drew spills, and Jessica won the seat next to you, the lucky thing. Charlotte, Dorothea, and I will squeeze onto the other seat, our backs to the horses.”
“How fortunate the gentlemen are,” Miss Keithley said, “being able to ride the whole way in the fresh air. We ought to have drawn also for the middle seat. Now we will have to squabble over it.”
“Not in my hearing,” Matilda said. “You may occupy it on the way there, Miss Keithley, and Estelle on the way back.”
“Bravo, Aunt Matilda,” young Boris Wayne said. “You keep them in line.”
Miss Keithley laughed and climbed into the carriage. The other three young ladies lost no time in following her, all talking and laughing at once.
“Matilda,” Charles heard the dowager duchess say to her sister, “I hope you know what you have taken on. I doubt they will stop giggling all the rest of the day.”
“I expect to survive the ordeal, Louise. I was once young myself,” Matilda replied before looking, obviously startled, at Charles, who had dismounted in order to hand her into the carriage. “Thank you, Lord Dirkson.”
She rested her hand lightly upon his outstretched one and he closed his fingers about it. It was a slim, long-fingered hand and warm through her glove. And then she was inside the carriage and turning to sit beside Lady Jessica, and the coachman was putting up the steps and closing the door before climbing to the perch and gathering the ribbons in his hands.
Charles mounted his horse again, and the whole cavalcade set off on its merry way to Kew. Adrian was already laughing with the other young men, perfectly at his ease.
Nowthis, Charles thought, was a new experience. The rake turned chaperon.
Bertrand had thought overnight of a friend of his who would be sure to want to join them. Perhaps more significant, Matilda had understood from the studied carelessness with which he had made the explanation, the friend had a sister who was very pretty and vivacious and had danced a set with Bertrand at her come-out ball a month or so ago in addition to several since then. So the carriage was more crowded than originally planned, and three of the young ladies were forced to sit squashed together on the seat opposite the one she shared with Jessica. Their spirits did not seem to be in any way dampened by discomfort, however.
It was a merry group indeed. Matilda had half forgotten how the very young behaved when they far outnumbered any older persons. She might have tried impressing a more sober decorum upon them and thus securing some peace for herself, but why should she? She was actually pleased to discover that her presence seemed not to have any inhibiting effect upon the spirits of her charges.
“Mama was not at all inclined to permit me to come,” Miss Keithley said when the carriage was nicely under way, “even though Ambrose was to come too. I almostdied.But then she was told thatyouwere to chaperon us, Lady Matilda.”
“Oh dear,” Matilda said, twinkling back at the girl. “Does that mean I have a reputation as something of a dragon?”
It was a quite unwitty remark, but it nevertheless set off a renewed gust of giggles from all four of her fellow travelers.
“Not at all,” Miss Keithley assured her. “Mama said you wereeminently respectable—her exact words.”
“Ah, a dragon, then,” Matilda said. “I shall try not to breathe fire over any of you, however. Provided, that is, you all display your most sedate conduct from this moment on.”
For some reason that suggestion called for another burst of merry laughter, and Matilda felt happy for no reason she could explain. She had not felt at all happy all through a night of disturbed sleep. She had never been a chaperon. More to the point, she had never been a chaperonwith Charles Sawyer.Whatever had possessed him to offer her name when Viola had been about to suggest going with the young people and Louise had been about to make a martyr of herself by agreeing to go herself? Mama had not been at all pleased. She had told Matilda on the way home last night that she ought to have put that man in his place with a very firm refusal. Since he was going too on this ramshackle excursion to Kew, who was going to chaperon Matilda?
Mama, Matilda had protested.I am fifty-six years old.
And Viscount Dirkson is a rake, her mother had retorted.
Was a rake, Matilda had said.His own son is to be of the party, Mama.
She had lain awake wondering why he had suggested her name and why she had agreed with such alacrity and what she would do if any of the young people misbehaved. Surely that would not happen, though. They were all properly brought up young persons. And she had wondered what she and Charles would talk about if they happened to be paired together, as was surely very likely since the young people would want to be with one another. She had wondered if he would offer his arm and if she would take it. The very thought had interfered with her breathing and she had wondered if she could develop a head cold or smallpox or something similarly dire overnight so that she could send her excuses and beg Viola to go in her stead. But there was her notoriously healthy constitution. No one would believe her.
But now she felt happy and carefree, almost as though she were one of these youngsters herself. Almost as though she had suddenly shed thirty-six years and might start giggling too at any moment. Goodness, they would all look at her as if she had sprouted another head.
“One thought bothered me last evening,” she said. “The excursion was planned to include six young persons. But it was going to be impossible, I thought, for the six to be sorted out in such a way thattwowere not going to be paired with either a sibling or a cousin. What a dreadful waste of an outing and lovely weatherthatwould have been.”
Again the delighted, trilling laughter.
“But now that the number has increased to eight,” Matilda continued, “you may each walk with a gentleman who is not related to you in any way at all.”
The laughter this time was mingled with a few blushes.
“And that includes you, Lady Matilda,” Miss Rigg said. “For there are ten of us in all, are there not?”
