April Lady

Neither was surprised that he should be late in keeping his engagement, for his habits were known to be erratic; and for a full half-hour only the wizard belowstairs, with two capons roasted to a turn on the spits, fat livers in cases in imminent danger of becoming over-baked in the oven, and the caramel sugar spun over a dish of peu d’amours rapidly hardening, saw any cause for agitation. Letty, who had been in low spirits for days past, was wearing a new and extremely dashing ball-dress of white crape so profusely embroidered with silver spangles that when she stood in the light of the great chandelier in the drawing-room the effect was quite dazzling. Nell, less strikingly attired in satin and blonde lace, knew that if Lady Chudleigh should be at the masquerade she would unhesitatingly condemn this toilette as being totally unsuited to a young lady in her first season, for it was cut indecorously low, besides being worn over the most diaphanous of petticoats. Cardross would probably have insisted on its being changed for something more demure. He might even have considered that in his absence his wife should have done so, but Nell felt herself to be unequal to an exhausting and almost certainly losing battle; and assuaged her conscience with the reflection that the dress would be largely hidden by the domino of shimmering rose silk, which Letty had tossed across the back of a chair. Besides, Letty was so pleased with her appearance that it had put her into the sunniest of humours, which Nell, having endured a week of sulks and repinings, would not willingly upset.

‘The worst of brothers is that they never think it is of the least consequence to keep one waiting,’ remarked Letty, spreading open a fan spangled to match her gown. ‘I only hope he may not be foxed when he does arrive! Look, do you think this is pretty?’

‘Foxed! Why should he be?’ demanded Nell rather indignantly.

‘Oh! You know what men are, when they go off to watch a cock-fight!’ said the worldly wise Letty. ‘There was one at Epsom today, I fancy.’

‘Good heavens, did he tell you he meant to go there?’

‘No, but I heard Hardwick talking to Mr Bottisham about it, and he said something about Dysart’s taking him up in his curricle.’

‘Oh, dear!’ said Nell, considerably dismayed by this most unwelcome intelligence. ‘If that is so – Oh, I do hope he may not have forgotten he is to take us to Chiswick tonight!’

‘What, you don’t mean to say that you think he might?’ exclaimed Letty, allowing her fan to drop into her lap. ‘Oh, it would be too infamous!’

Certain sinister memories flitted through Nell’s mind. ‘Well, I trust he has not, but he – he does sometimes forget his engagements – particularly when he doesn’t like them excessively!’ she said.

Letty controlled herself with a strong effort, but when, at the end of another ten minutes, there was still no sign of the Viscount, she could contain herself no longer, but said bitterly: ‘Even if he is your brother, Nell, I don’t believe he ever meant to go with us, and he just said he would so that you shouldn’t tease him!’

‘No, no, he did mean to, for he said he would see me tonight when we met him in the Park that day! Besides, although I own he is shockingly careless, he wouldn’t serve me such an unhandsome trick as that! I was wondering if I should perhaps send a note round to his lodging, to remind him. Only I daresay it would take my footman at least twenty minutes to reach Duke Street –’

‘Yes, and ten to one he wouldn’t find him at home when he did reach his lodging!’ interrupted Letty. ‘For my part, I don’t care a button whether he comes or not, for I am persuaded we shall do very well without him!’ She looked at Nell with sharp suspicion. ‘You are not going to say we can’t go to the masquerade unless he escorts us? Oh, Nell, you couldn’t be so shabby!’

‘No – that is, I know I need not scruple to go, when it is to my cousin’s party, but I cannot like it! I wish you were not so set on it – and, to own the truth, I can’t think why you should be, unless you have cajoled Mr Allandale to go, and mean to spend the evening in his pocket! And mask or no mask, Letty, I can’t and I won’t permit it!’

‘I did try to make him go,’ admitted Letty, quite unabashed, ‘but he holds to it that it would be improper, even if he slipped away before the unmasking, so you needn’t be in a fidget! The thing is that I have never attended a masquerade, and if I don’t go to this one I may not have the chance to go to one for years, for there’s no saying that they have them in Brazil, after all.’

Nell looked at her in concern. ‘No, but – Dearest Letty, don’t indulge your fancy with that thought! Cardross won’t give his consent: it is useless to think he might!’

‘I shall compel him!’ Letty said, looking mulish.

‘How could you possibly do that?’

‘Well, I don’t know that yet, but you may depend upon it that I shall do it! Recollect that he said I shouldn’t be presented till I was eighteen, or act in the theatricals at Roxwell, at Christmas, or drive his bays, or – oh, a hundred things! I can always get Giles to let me have my own way, in the end!’

Nell could not help smiling at the naïveté with which Letty classed these trivialities with her marriage, but before she could make any attempt to show her sister-in-law how the very fondness which led Cardross to indulge her in small matters would stiffen his resolve not to permit her (as he thought) to throw herself away in a marriage doomed to failure, Farley, her butler, had en

tered the room, bearing on a salver a sealed billet, and on his countenance the expression of one who not only brought evil tidings but had foreseen from the outset that this was precisely how it would be.

‘My Lord Dysart’s groom, my lady, has desired me to give this instantly into your ladyship’s hands,’ he announced, proffering the salver.

‘Only wait until I next see Dysart!’ uttered Letty direfully.

Feeling as conscience-stricken as though she and not Dysart had been the culprit, Nell broke the wafer that sealed his note, and hastily unfolded the scrawled message. A sigh of relief escaped her, for although the news the message contained was bad, it was not as bad as it might have been. Dysart must certainly have lingered overlong at Epsom, but he had not forgotten that he was engaged to escort his sister to a masquerade. He begged her pardon for being unable to dine with her, but promised faithfully to pick her and Letty up in Grosvenor Square not a moment later than ten o’clock, unless (in a postscript) he should be unavoidably detained, in which case they were to set forward for Chiswick, and might be sure that he would meet them there, his mask in his hand.

‘Ten o’clock! And we are invited for half-past nine!’ said Letty wrathfully, when this was read to her.

A gleam of mischief shone in Nell’s angelic eyes. ‘My dear, surely you would not be so gothic as to arrive at the very start of the party?’

‘I daresay he won’t come here at all!’ said Letty crossly.

This seemed more than likely to Dysart’s experienced sister, but loyalty as much as disinclination to drive out to Chiswick without male escort hardened her resolution not to order her landau to come round to the house a moment earlier than ten o’clock. The hour was by this time so far advanced that they had not very long to wait after dinner before Farley announced that the carriage waited for their ladyships. Dysart had put in no appearance, and although a loving sister would have given him a few more moments’ grace she dared not, in face of Letty’s kindling glance, suggest this. The dominoes, one rose-pink and the other sapphire-blue, were assumed; long gloves of French kid drawn on; loo-masks tucked into reticules; and evening mantles carefully donned over the silken dominoes. A final prinking, on tiptoe before the gilded looking-glass over the mantelpiece, and the ladies were ready to be escorted down the staircase, and handed up into the waiting carriage. Their respective women were in attendance, jealously arranging their delicate skirts, and laying shawls across their knees, Letty’s Martha presuming on long service to warn her young mistress against adding any more Bloom of Ninon to an already perfect complexion; and Nell’s lofty dresser reminding her to take care that her train of ivory satin did not brush the steps of the landau when she alighted from it.

Those steps were at last let up, and the door shut; the footmen nimbly mounted up behind; the coachman set his horses in motion; and the landau swayed forward over the cobbles.

It had not occurred to Nell, or, indeed, to any of her servants, that a drive to Chiswick could be attended by danger, so no one had thought it necessary to provide the equipage with outriders to protect her from possible highwaymen. But no one had foreseen that the Cardross carriage, instead of joining a procession of vehicles bound for Brent House, would be the last to arrive there by more than half an hour. There was hardly any traffic beyond the first pike off the stones. Kensington village seemed to be sleeping in the bright moonlight; only a post-chaise and an Accommodation coach were met in Hammersmith, coming in from the west; no other vehicle was seen except one of the mails, which swept past the Cardross carriage, its four fresh horses going along at a spanking pace, and its guard blowing a very loud blast of warning on his yard of tin. Shortly after this, the carriage turned off the high road towards Chiswick Mall; and then, just as Letty was saying: ‘Well, at all events it hasn’t been nearly as tedious a drive as if we had been obliged to dawdle behind some rumbling coach!’ both ladies were unpleasantly startled by a sudden pistol-shot, followed by a medley of alarming noises, in which the equal of a frightened horse mingled with various rough voices upraised either in command or expostulation, and the trampling of hooves.

Letty uttered a whimper of fright, and clutched her sister-in-law, saying on a rising note of panic: ‘What must we do? What will happen to us? Oh, Nell, we are being held up! Why don’t those cowards of footmen do something? This is all Dysart’s fault! Will they murder us? Oh, I wish we hadn’t come!’