“Well, for a little perhaps, my lord, but her ladyship —”
“Oh, Wimby, don’t keep on her ladyshipping,” pleaded Lucille, jumping up and going across to give her preceptress a hug. She pushed her into the chair. “Sit, sit, sit, or I shall never get to ask Raoul all the questions in my head.”
“Heaven help me! If you are going to ask me again to let you come out next year, the answer is no.”
Lucille flitted back to the sofa, plonking down and seizing her brother’s hand between both her own. “Dearest Raoul, I shall be nearly seventeen by then, and you know very well you want me off your hands as soon as possible; you are always saying so. If I have to wait for years and years, I shall be on the shelf before I come out at all.”
Amused, Felicity watched Raoul roll his eyes as he looked across at her.
“You see what I am obliged to endure?”
“Well, when I am married, you won’t have to endure it,” Lucille pointed out.
Miss Wimbush tutted. “Really, my dear, you should not speak to his lordship in that impertinent fashion.”
Lucille twinkled. “How else am I to speak to him when he insists on being so obstinate?”
Raoul wagged a finger at her. “He’ll be more than obstinate if you don’t behave, you little wretch.”
His sister giggled. “No you won’t, when you’ve neglected me for weeks and I haven’t uttered a word of complaint.”
“Yet.”
“Well, I won’t, but —”
“Be quiet, you little monkey! I won’t yield. In the first place, you won’t be seventeen until next summer, and in the second, Angelica won’t bring you out until you can behave properly. Furthermore,” he added, ignoring a squeak of protest, “I’ve a very good mind to send you to school instead of allowing you to drive poor Miss Wimbush into her grave. From what I’ve learned from Miss Temple here, a spell in a strict academy would do you a great deal of good.”
Lucille turned horrified eyes upon Felicity, who entered at once into the spirit of this.
“Yes, indeed. A few days on bread and water in the naughty attic will do wonders, what with the cold and the rats. If that doesn’t do it,” she went on as Lucille’s eyes grew rounder, “there is always the dungeon. We were used to keep a number of persuasive instruments down there to —”
She broke off as the girl broke into peals of hiccupping laughter. “Oh, you are f-funning! I thought you m-meant it about the attic at least.”
Felicity smiled. “Well, no, though we did have a naughty room where there was nothing but an improving book or two to read. But no one was sent there for more than an hour at a time. Usually our pupils got so bored, they were begging to be allowed out within ten minutes.”
Raoul pounced on this. “Now that is an excellent idea. Miss Wimbush, we should certainly find somewhere to put a naughty Lucille, don’t you think?”
“Raoul! How can you be so cruel to me? In any event, it is far too late to change me now. You should have thought of it when I was too little to object.”
Raoul pinched her chin. “As far as I can recollect, you were never too little to object.” He looked across at Felicity. “She’s been a handful from the hour of her birth. I can’t imagine how the devil I’m to find a man competent to control her.”
“I shall find one myself. I refuse to marry anyone unless they are just like you and let me do just as I wish.”
“And there, in a nutshell, you have the utter failure of my guardianship, Felicity. Five years of subjugation. God help society when I do unleash her at last!”
Lucille evidently found this hilarious, protesting however that she knew very well how to behave and would become a pattern-card of virtue when the time came. Abandoning the subject, she then turned a bright smile upon Felicity. “I do like you, Miss Temple! Have you come to stay?”
Watching Felicity coping easily with his little sister’s inconsequent chatter, Raoul was conscious of a measure of relief. He had not bargained for the deleterious effect upon her of Ruscoe Hall. He ought to have anticipated some such reaction from one who had lived in a very different style. It was natural to him to live as he did and he had been eager to show her his home, hoping, if he was honest, for a very different response.
He must be grateful to Lucille for breaking the ice. Felicity, relaxing with the child, was much more the woman he had come to know and appreciate, as she had not been since the visit to her father’s lawyer.
Raoul blamed himself. His candour was ill-timed. Not that he had the slightest intention of allowing Felicity to do anything other than fall in with his scheme, but it might be politic to let her see for herself the utter ineligibility of any plans she might be revolving in her head. When she found herself atpointnonplus, when nothing could compare with what he had to offer, she would, he was certain, capitulate.
When Lucille conceived the notion of showing Felicity around the house, he rose at once.
“An excellent idea. I must see my steward and attend to a trifle of business. I will leave you in my sister’s capable hands, my dear. Don’t let her deafen you.”
“Of course I won’t, horrid creature!”
