‘I own, I did wonder how I should do so, but I find that the whole family is in a sad tangle, poor dears, and I do hope I may be able to make them more comfortable!’
‘I have no particular liking for your uncle, who is one of my esteemed Chief’s cronies; on the only occasion when I solicited your beautiful cousin Cecilia to dance with me at Almack’s, her forbidding brother forestalled me in a fashion as swift as it was crude – someone ought to tell him that I am only interested in heiresses; and yet my withers are strangely wrung! Almost my heart goes out to the family. Do they tread blindly towards their doom, Sophy, or did they willingly receive a firebrand into their midst?’
She gave a chuckle. ‘They tread blindly – but I amnota firebrand!’
‘No, I used the wrong word. You are like poor Whinyates’s rockets: no one knows what you will do next!’
SIX
‘IS THE KNOCKERnever still?’ demanded Charles of his mother, after the departure of the fourth morning-caller in one day.
‘Never!’ she replied proudly. ‘Since that day when you took dear Sophy riding in the Park, I have received seven gentlemen – no, eight, counting Augustus Fawnhope. Princess Esterhazy, the Countess Lieven, Lady Jersey, and Lady Castlereagh have all left cards; and –’
‘Was Talgarth amongst those who called, ma’am?’
She wrinkled her brow. ‘Talgarth? Oh, yes! A most amiable man, with side-whiskers! To be sure he was!’
‘Take care!’ he warned her. ‘Thatconnection will not do!’
She was startled. ‘Charles, what can you mean? He seems to be on terms of great friendship with Sophy, and she told me Sir Horace had been acquainted with him for years!’
‘I daresay, but if my uncle means to bestow Sophy upon him he is not the man I take him for! He is said to be a gazetted fortune-hunter; and is, besides, a gamester, with more debts than expectations, and such libertine propensities as scarcely render him a desirable catch in the marriage mart!’
‘Oh, dear!’ said Lady Ombersley, dismayed. She wondered whether she ought to tell her son that his cousin had gone out driving with Sir Vincent only a day earlier, and decided that no purpose could be served in dwelling on what was past. ‘Perhaps I should drop a hint in Sophy’s ear.’
‘I doubt of its being well-received, ma’am. Eugenia hasalready spoken with her on this subject. All that my cousin saw fit to reply was that she was quite up to snuff, and would engage not to allow herself to be seduced by Sir Vincent, or anyone else.’
‘Oh,dear!’ said Lady Ombersley again. ‘She really should not say such things!’
‘Just so, ma’am!’
‘But, though I do not wish to offend you, Charles, I cannot help feeling that perhaps it was not quite wise of Eugenia to have spoken to her on such a subject. You know, my dear, she is not in any way related to Sophy!’
‘Only Eugenia’s strong sense of duty,’ he said stiffly, ‘and, I may add, Mama, her earnest desire to spare you anxiety, induced her to undertake a task which she felt to be excessively unpleasant.’
‘It is very kind of her, I am sure,’ said his mother, in a depressed voice.
‘Where is my cousin?’ he asked abruptly.
She brightened, for to this question she was able to return an unexceptionable answer. ‘She has gone for a drive in the barouche with Cecilia and your brother.’
‘Well, that should be harmless enough,’ he said.
He would have been less satisfied on this point had he known that, having taken up Mr Fawnhope, whom they encountered in Bond Street, the occupants of the barouche were at that moment in Longacre, critically inspecting sporting vehicles. There were a great many of these, together with almost every variety of carriage, on view at the warehouse to which Hubert had conducted his cousin, and although Sophy remained firm in her preference for a phaeton, Cecilia was much taken with a caned whiskey, and Hubert, having fallen in love with a curricle, forcibly urged his cousin to buy it. Mr Fawnhope, appealed to for his opinion, was found to be missing, and was presently discovered seated in rapt contemplation of a state berlin, which looked rather like a very large breakfast-cup, poised upon elongated springs. It was covered with a domed roof, bore a great deal of gilding, and had a coachman’s seat, perched over thefront wheels which was covered in blue velvet with a gold fringe. ‘Cinderella!’ said Mr Fawnhope simply.
The manager of the warehouse said that he did not think the berlin – which he kept for show purposes – was quite what the lady was looking for.
‘A coach for a princess,’ said Mr Fawnhope, unheeding. ‘This, Cecilia, is what you must drive in. You shall have six white horses to draw it, with plumes on their heads, and blue harness.’
Cecilia had no fault to find with this programme, but reminded him that they had come to help Sophy to choose a sporting carriage. He allowed himself to be dragged away from the berlin, but when asked to cast his vote between the curricle and the phaeton, would only murmur: ‘What can little T.O. do? Why, drive a phaeton and two! Can little T. O. do no more? Yes, drive a phaeton and four!’
‘That’s all very well,’ said Hubert impatiently, ‘but my cousin ain’t Tommy Onslow, and for my part I think she will do better with this curricle!’
‘You cannot scan the lines, yet they have a great deal of merit,’ said Mr Fawnhope. ‘How beautiful is the curricle! How swift! How splendid! Yet Apollo chose a phaeton. These carriages bewilder me: let us go away!’
‘Who is Tommy Onslow? Does he indeed drive a phaeton and four?’ asked Sophy, her eyes kindling. ‘Now, that would be something indeed! What a bore that I have just bought a pair! I could never match them, I fear.’
‘You could borrow Charles’s grays,’ suggested Hubert, grinning wickedly. ‘By Jupiter, what a kick-up there would be!’
