Page 31 of Lady of Quality

'Uncivil! He is the rudest man I have ever met in my life!' declared Miss Wychwood roundly.

Nine

By the time Miss Wychwood had said goodbye to the last, lingering guests she was feeling more weary than ever before at the end of a party. Everyone except herself (and, presumably, Mr Carleton) seemed to have enjoyed it, which was, she supposed some slight consolation to her for having spent a most disagreeable evening. Lucilla was in what she considered to be exaggerated raptures over it: she wished it might have gone on for ever! Miss Wychwood, barely repressing a shudder, sent her off to bed, and was about to follow her when she found Limbury in the way, obviously awaiting an opportunity to speak to her. She paused, looking an enquiry, and he all unwittingly set the seal on a horrid evening by disclosing, with the smile of one bearing welcome tidings, that Sir Geoffrey had arrived in Bath, and wished her to give him a look-in before she retired to bed.

'Sir Geoffrey?' she repeated blankly. 'Here? Good God, what can have happpened to bring him to Bath at this hour of the night?'

'Now, don't you fret yourself, Miss Annis!' Limbury said, in a fatherly way. 'It's no worse than the toothache which Master Tom has, and which my lady thinks may be an abscess, so she wishes to take him instantly to Mr Westcott. Sir Geoffrey arrived twenty minutes before you went down to supper, but when he saw you was holding a rout-party he charged me not on any account to say a word to you about it until the party was over, him being dressed in his riding-habit, and not having brought with him his evening attire, and not wishing to attend the rout in all his dirt. Which is very understandable, of course. So I directed Jane to make up the bed in the Blue bedchamber, miss, and myself carried up supper to him, which is what I knew you would wish me to do.'

Miss Farlow, who had paused in her rather ineffective attempts to restore the drawing-room to order, to listen to this interchange, exclaimed: 'Oh, poor Sir Geoffrey! If only I had known! I would have run up immediately to make sure that he was comfortable – not that I mean to say Jane is not to be trusted, for she is a very dependable girl, but still – ! Dear little Tom, too! His papa must be in agonies, for nothing is worse than the pain one undergoes with the toothache, particularly when an abscess forms, as well I know, for never shall I forget the torture I suffered when I –'

'It is Tom who has the toothache, not Geoffrey!' snapped Miss Wychwood, interrupting this monologue without ceremony.

'Well, I know, dearest, but the sight of one's child's suffering cannot but cast a fond parent into agonies!' said Miss Farlow.

'Oh, fiddle!' said Annis, and went upstairs to rap on the door of the Blue bedchamber.

She found her brother flicking over the pages of the various periodicals with which Limbury had thoughtfully provided him. A decanter of brandy stood on a small table at his elbow, and he held a glass in his hand, which, on his sister's entrance, he drained, before setting it down on the table, and rising to greet her. 'Well, Annis!' he said, planting a chaste salute upon her cheek. 'I seem to have come to visit you at an awkward moment, don't I?'

'I certainly wish you had warned me of it, so that I might have had time to prepare for your visit.'

'Oh, no need to worry about that!' he said. 'Limbury has looked after me very well. The thing was there was no time to warn you, because I was obliged to leave Twynham in a bang. I daresay Limbury will have told you what has brought me here?'

'Yes, I understand Tom has the toothache,' she replied.

'That's it,' he nodded. 'It became suddenly worse this afternoon, and we fear there may be an abscess forming at the root. Ten to one, it's no more than a gumboil, but nothing will do for Amabel but to bring him to Bath so that Westcott may see it, and judge what is best to be done.'

Something in his manner, which was much that of a man airily reciting a rehearsed speech, made her instantly suspicious. She said: 'It seems an unnecessarily long way to bring a child to have a tooth drawn. Surely you would be better advised to take him to Frome?'

'Ah, you are thinking of old Melling, but Amabel has no faith in him. We have been strongly recommended to take Tom to Westcott. It doesn't do, you know, to ignore advice from a trustworthy source. So I have ridden over ahead of Amabel, to arrange for Westcott to do whatever he thinks should be done tomorrow, and to ask you, my dear sister, if they may come to stay wit

h you for a day or two.'

'They?' said Annis, filled with foreboding.

'Amabel and Tom,' he explained. 'And Nurse, of course, to look after the children.'

'Is Amabel bringing the baby too?' asked Miss Wychwood, in a voice of careful control.

'Yes – oh, yes! Well, Amabel cannot manage Tom by herself and she can't be expected to leave Baby without Nurse to take care of her, you know. But they won't be the least trouble to you Annis! In this great house of yours there must be room for two small children and their nurse!'

'Very true! Equally true that they won't be any trouble to me! But they will make a great deal of trouble for my servants, who are none of them accustomed to working in a house which contains a nursery to be waited on! So, if you mean to saddle me with your family, I beg you will also include the maid who waits on Nurse in the party!'

'Of course if it is inconvenient for you to receive my family – '

'It is extremely inconvenient!' she interrupted. 'You know very well that I have Lucilla Carleton staying with me, Geoffrey! I am astonished that you should expect me to entertain Amabel and your children at such a moment!'

'I must say I should have thought your own family had a greater claim on you than Miss Carleton,' he said, in an offended voice.

'You haven't any claim on me at all!' she flashed. 'Nor has Lucilla! Nor anyone! That's why I left Twynham, and came to Bath, to be my own mistress, not to be accountable to you or to anyone, for what I choose to do, and not to grow into a spinster aunt! Particularly not that! Like Miss Vernham, who is only valued for the help she gives her sister, can be depended on to look after the children whenever Mr and Mrs Vernham wish to go junketing to London! but at other times is very much in the way. She can't escape, because she hasn't a penny to fly with. But I have a great many pennies, and I did escape!'

'You are talking wildly!' he said. 'I should like to know what demands have ever been made of you when you lived with us!'

'Oh, none! But if one lives in another person's house one is bound to share in the tasks which arise, and who can tell how long it would have been before you and Amabel fell into the way of saying: "Oh, Annis will look after it! She has nothing else to do!" '

'I really believe your senses are disordered!' he exclaimed. 'All this scolding merely because I have ventured to ask you to shelter my wife and children for a few days! Upon my word, Annis –'

'You didn't ask me, Geoffrey! You made it impossible for me to refuse by arranging for Amabel to set out for Bath tomorrow morning, knowing that I should be forced to let them stay here.'