Hubert, Lord Baxforth looked to be less than twenty-years but already over-fond of his drink. The Duke of Westall noticed the butler’s enquiring glance to Lord Scovell before refilling the youth’s empty wine glass for the third time already. Would there be an incident tonight, Ambrose wondered? If so, he guessed that Lord Scovell and his butler would be equal to it.
“I shall certainly miss my Frances,” agreed Lady Scovell without reservation, smiling towards the subject of this conversation, seated beside her husband-to-be. “But I shall have Beatrice still to keep me company for a few years yet. You will miss Frances too, won’t you, Edmund?”
“I shall,” admitted Lord Scovell with as little hesitation as his wife but a vulnerability of expression that suggested he well-expected the scornful glance that his eldest daughter threw towards him in reaction to these words.
“Edmund and Frances were always the best of friends when she was a little girl,” said Helen Harcourt, ignoring or perhaps ignorant of the cool current flowing between her husband and daughter. “After Beatrice was born, I was unwell for a long time, and very wrapped up in the new baby. I suppose they had to keep company.”
“That does sometimes happen after a baby,” sympathized Lady Appleton. “I recall that Lady Hollingford did not leave her home for a full two years after her first son was born. The physicians were coming and going every week but nothing could be done until the unbalanced humors had run their course.”
“I was not quite that bad, was I, dear?” asked Lady Scovell of her husband, who took her hand and kissed it with a fond smile.
“You were never bad. I only wished you well again, with all my heart,” he said, eliciting little murmurs of praise and sympathy from the ladies around the table.
“When I was ill, Edmund used to take Frances tramping all over the countryside,” Lady Scovell continued to reminisce. “They were always calling at your house for tea, weren't they, Lady Orville?”
“Indeed, they were, and always very welcome too,” replied Lady Orville, smiling as she recalled pleasant memories. “Sometimes Frances would stay and play with Hubert’s older sisters. Of course, more often, Lord Scovell would take her over to Mulford Manor to play with Oswald.”
“Ah, yes, young Lord Mulford. Have you seen him recently? He seems to spend most of his time in Mayfair nowadays and I have lost track. It was such a tragedy about his parents, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, poor Penelope, and poor Maurice too,” murmured Lady Scoville with an expression of real pity. “Mulford Manor was never a peaceful home for Oswald, was it? Then, after Maurice…departed for the continent, and Oswald went away to school, Penelope was never the same. Of course, I had been ill and did not know the family as well as Frances and Edmund.”
Beside him at the table, the Duke of Weston became aware of a growing tension in the body of Lady Frances as her mother and neighbor talked. Glancing at her face unobtrusively, Ambrose saw a tightly set jaw and angry eyes. What on earth had been said to upset her so? Perhaps she disapproved of gossip, but the conversation appeared very mild to his ears.
“Ah yes, you were fast friends with the Keetons for a time, weren’t you, Lord Scovell?” remarked Lady Orville.
At this innocent comment, and before the suddenly red-faced Lord Scovell could answer, Lady Frances, seemingly involuntarily, set down her cutlery with a clatter that drew eyes from around the room. She recovered herself quickly.
“I will miss Scovell Hall and the whole neighborhood but I am also looking forward to my new home at Westall Park,” she pronounced, to general approval.
“That is very much how I felt when I married Lord Appleton,” said old Lady Appleton. “I wept to leave my mother, but at the same time, I could not wait to be in my own home with dear Jasper. Then there was all the excitement of the wedding night to look forward to…”
The Duke of Westall repressed a chuckle at the look of alarm that passed between Lady Scovell and Lady Orville at the dowager countess’s shift towards inappropriate dinner table subjects.
“Frances is to be a stepmother, Aunt Caroline,” Helen Harcourt firmly attempted to turn the ship of conversation into safer waters. “Did you know that? His Grace has a dear little girl of only nine years, Lady Winifred.”
“A fine stepmother my great-niece will make, I’m sure,” agreed Lady Appleton, “and a fine mother too when the time comes. I remember when I was first married…”
Lady Scovell cleared her throat loudly and looked to her husband for assistance with an expression that told Ambrose that Lady Appleton was likely Edmund Harcourt’s relative rather than his wife’s. Ambrose decided that he would step in, if necessary. Why not raise a toast to his future wife’s family and thank them for welcoming him? Yes, that would work.
Before he could carry through his plan, a less civil disturbance distracted the garrulous old lady from her path and prevented further immediate disclosures about intimate matters in the early days of her marriage.
“Hubert!” reprimanded Lord Orville sharply as a full glass of claret went pouring across the pristine white table cloth, knocked by the young man’s exaggerated drunken movements with his knife and fork.
“I am so sorry!” exclaimed Lady Orville, looking mortified.
“We will deal with it,” said Lord Scovell quickly, gesturing to the servants one of whom flung a napkin into the liquid while the other conferred with the butler and then went racing away to fetch something. “These things happen, Lady Orville.”
“…can’t take you anywhere…terrible behavior,” Ambrose heard Lord Orville muttering to his son, “…you are a disgrace…”
Beside him, Lady Frances sighed, oddly less bothered by this incident than the innocent earlier conversation.
“If they had left Hubert alone at Orville House tonight, they would have had to lock up all the decanters and hide the key to wine cellar,” Lady Frances leaned across and whispered in Ambrose’s ear. “He was thrown out of Oxford for drinking and now they don’t know what to do with him.”
The Duke of Westall exhaled slowly, untouched by the story of the dipsomaniac young Lord Baxworth, but rather stirred by the tickle of Lady Frances’ warm breath on his ear and the faint scent of violets and lily-of-the-valley that wafted from her skin.
When he looked up again, Lord Orville had hauled up his recalcitrant son from his seat and was speaking to Lord Scovell, as two maids worked quickly to remove and replace the linen and tableware for that section of the long table.
“He must sit in the library until we are finished,” said Lord Orville crossly. “He is not fit for civilized company.”
