She was, she hoped, a realist. Life must be taken for what it was, even should that prove to be one’s present unaccountable misery. One did not bay for the moon.
“Well, let us not go over all that again, Mama,” she said with an air of calm that she was far from feeling. “Besides, I have been thinking lately that it may well be in our best interests to remove from here.”
“Remove from Tunbridge Wells?” cried Mrs Peverill, releasing her daughter’s hands. “Oh, Verena, must we?”
Verena eyed her, her attention caught. “Why, Mama? Are you so fond of the place?”
“No, no, but —”
“But you wish to keep me where I may yet fall victim to some eligible gentleman, is that it?”
Mrs Peverill fidgeted with the petticoats of her gown of French lawn in her favoured lilac shade, looking conscious. “Not only that, dearest. Adam —”
Verena pressed the hand she still held. “I know, Mama. But that is just my reason. I love Adam dearly, as I know you do, andI don’t wish to part you from him. But I am sorry to be obliged to confess that I don’t trust him.”
“That is a horrid thing to say, Verena,” protested Mrs Peverill, snatching her hand away.
“Yes, I know. But it is the truth.”
Angry colour suffused the elder lady’s cheeks. “I don’t know how you can be so unkind about your own brother. He would not dream of betraying me.”
“Not when he is sober, no,” agreed Verena.
Her mother gasped. “How can you, Verena?”
“Very easily, Mama. In that respect, Adam is proving altogether too much like his father.”
Mrs Peverill burst into tears.
In the midst of an entertainment that should have gladdened even his jaded senses, Denzell was brooding.
An impromptu ball had replaced the usual Friday night assembly. It was being held on the dry clean grass of Potter’s Green, beside Burlington House below the Grove, and had been greeted with enthusiasm by the Wellsians. Flaring torches were placed about the green, and ringing the area marked out for dancing. Although in the bright summer evening they were hardly needed, they gave a pleasant glow to the scene as dusk began to fall around nine o’clock.
But Denzell, attired for the occasion in the russet coat and embroidered apricot waistcoat on a cream ground that he had acquired for Teresa’s wedding, but worn over satin breeches of his usual black, watched with a jaundiced eye the gay abandon with which the dancers executed the various figures. He found himself unable to enter into the spirit of the event.
“Not dancing, Mr Hawkeridge?” enquired a now familiar voice.
Stupid woman, Obviously he was not dancing. “Later, perhaps.”
Mrs Felpham sighed. “So difficult to attach dear Miss Chaceley for a dance, is it not?”
Touched on the raw, Denzell could have hit her. He forced a smile to his lips. “Miss Chaceley is always much sought after.”
He was rescued by Sir John Frinton, who came up behind them and surprised Mrs Felpham by slipping his arm through hers. “My dear lady, I protest you have neglected me shamefully this night. Come along and tell me all the gossip. You will excuse us, Hawkeridge?”
Denzell threw him a grateful look. There was nothing he wished less at this moment than to discuss his lack of that particular partner. Not that it was merely his inability to secure a dance with Verena which was driving him into unaccustomed ill temper, though that was bad enough. The formality of engaging beforehand for the country dances which constituted the evening’s programme had been dispensed with, but every time Denzell thought to make an approach, he had been forestalled by others. Whether this was by Verena’s design, he could not tell.
It was all of a piece with the rest of it. Yet why had she taken against him? She did not dislike him, of that he was certain. She could not have spoken so easily with him that first day if such had been the case. Since then, however, for the best part of the week since his arrival here, she had not allowed him near her.
Every time he had approached her, whether it be in the Upper Rooms, on the Pantiles, or at the theatre where Mrs Baker’s company were now to be seen, so Unice had told him, two or three times each week, he had been permitted a bare exchange of greetings and that was all. She would make some excuse — and the devil take his wits if they were not excuses — and move away.
She was avoiding him, he could not doubt it. Deuce take it, he could feel her poker up on his approach. The mask was always there, but against Denzell himself it positively iced over.
Had she been more normal with him, more as she was with other men, he might have been discouraged. Indifference was an impregnable defence. But she was not indifferent. That he would swear to on his life.
What did dishearten him was his growing conviction that she feared him. If that was the way of it, he might as well go home this moment. How the devil was he to overcome a fear of which he understood nothing, and which she would not by any means permit him to understand?
This evening there was something more. She looked achingly beautiful, in a gown of lemon tiffany under a short over-gown of gold net that shimmered in the torchlight so that she seemed to glow. Yet she was under severe strain. He could see it. Oh, she was making every effort to appear normal. But only look!
