Black Sheep

'Now, I should have said that you had an all too lively sense

of your duty,' he remarked.

'Not when I was a girl. I was for ever rebelling against the restrictions imposed upon me, and oh, how much I detested that hateful word, propriety! That's why I was used to wish I were a man: so that I could have escaped from it! Girls can't, you know. We are always shackled – hedged about –'

'Cabin'd, cribb'd, confined,' he supplied, adding grandiloquently: 'I'm bookish too.'

A ripple of laughter broke from her. 'So I perceive! And that is just how it was in my family.'

'Was? Still is!'

She turned her head, startled. 'No! Why, what can you mean?'

He nodded towards the four younger members of the party, riding ahead. 'Fanny, of course. Don't you cabin, crib, and confine her?'

'Indeed I don't!' she said warmly. 'She enjoys far, far more liberty than ever I did!' A quizzically raised eyebrow brought the blood rushing to her cheeks. She stammered: 'It's true! You – you are thinking that I don't permit her to go anywhere without me, but that is not true! I have never, until your odious nephew came to Bath, accompanied her on such expeditions as this and if he had not been in question, and young Grayshott had invited her to go with him, she might have done so with my goodwill!' She paused, and, after considering for a moment, said frankly: 'No. Not alone. I should have no qualms, but where she is concerned I must take care that she does nothing to provide all the Bath quizzes with food for gossip! You see, my brother entrusted her to my guardianship, and however nonsensical I may think many of the conventions which hedge us about I must, for her own sake, compel her to abide by them. Pray try to understand! What I, at my age, might choose to disregard, she, on the verge of her come-out, must not!'

'Poor girl!' he said lightly. 'How many nonsensical conventions are you ready to flout?'

'Oh, a great many, if I had only myself to consider!'

'We'll put that to the test. Will you go with me to the play on Saturday?'

She hesitated, in equal surprise and doubt. After a moment, she said: 'Are you inviting me to form one of your party, sir?'

'Good God, no! I haven't a party.'

'Oh!' She relapsed again into silence. 'I collect you mean to invite Fanny as well?' she hazarded at last.

'Oh, no, you don't!' he retorted. 'You know very well that Fanny is engaged to go with the Grayshotts to Mrs Faversham's waltzing-party! I wonder you will let her!'

'Do you, indeed? Well, if you think me so – so stuffy, I wonder that you should suppose I would go to the theatre with you alone! The waltz is not danced in the Rooms, but Bath is a very old-fashioned place, and, in London, waltzes, and quadrilles too, are extensively danced. I am very happy that Fanny should be given the opportunity of – of getting into the way of it, before her come-out in the spring! But when it comes to going to the theatre –' She paused, frowning over it.

He waited, regarding her profile with a derisive smile, until she said, struck by a sudden inspiration: 'If you were to invite my sister as well! That would make it perfectly unexceptionable!'

'No doubt!'

She could not help laughing. 'Yes, I know, but – Well, it is quite absurd, but there is a difference – or there is thought to be – between escorting a lady to – oh, to a concert, in the Assembly Rooms, and to the theatre! I think it is because the concerts, being held by subscription, are more private. Then, too, one doesn't sit apart, and one mingles with –'

'Oh, if that's all, we can sit in the pit!'

' – with one's friends!' finished Abby severely.

'And at the end of the first act, when your escort hopes to enjoy your company, some impudent fellow snabbles you from under his nose, and takes you off to tea – just as I did, when that mooncalf who paid you slip-slop compliments thought you were his own!'

'Well! At least you have the grace to own your impudence!' she retaliated. 'However gracelessly you may do so! But Mr Dunston is not a mooncalf, and the compliments he paid me were very pretty.'

'Any man who could tell you that you shone down every other woman present, and said you were as fair as a rose in May can't help but be a mooncalf. Trying it on much too rare and thick!'

Piqued, she said: 'I am not a beauty, and I never was, but I am not an antidote, I hope!'

He smiled. 'No, you are neither the one nor the other. What that dunderheaded admirer of yours hasn't the wit to perceive is that you've something of more worth than mere beauty.'

Miss Wendover was well aware that it behoved her to give the audacious Mr Calverleigh a cold set-down, or, at the very least, to ignore this remark; but instead of doing either of these things she directed a look of shy enquiry at him. 'Have I? Pray tell me what it may be!'

He looked her over critically, the amusement lingering in his eyes. 'Well, you have a great deal of countenance, and an elegant figure. I like your eyes too, particularly when they laugh. But that's not it. What you have in abundance is charm!'

She blushed rosily, and stammered: 'I am afraid, sir, that it is now you who are offering me Spanish coin!'