‘Theo, I do think you should have rushed in, and thrown yourself between us!’ Gervase complained.

‘Yes, and so I would have done had I wished to startle you into dropping your guard!’ Theo retorted, laughing. ‘What I might have felt myself impelled to do had you appeared to me to be hard-pressed I know not! Something heroic, no doubt! But stop bamming, Gervase! What have you been doing to make Martin ready to murder you?’

‘Why, I have been flaunting my title and my dandified airs in the eyes of his inamorata, and he fears she may be dazzled!’

‘Oh! I collect that you have somehow contrived to meet Miss Bolderwood?’

‘Yes, and I wish you will tell me why no one has ever told me of her existence! She is the sweetest sight my eyes have alighted upon since I came into Lincolnshire!’

Theo smiled, but perfunctorily, and turned a little aside, to lay the foils in their case. ‘She is very beautiful,’ he agreed, in a colourless tone.

‘An heiress too, if I have understood her father! Shall I try my fortune?’

‘By all means.’

Gervase glanced quickly at his averted profile. ‘Theo! You too?’

Theo uttered a short laugh. ‘Don’t disturb yourself! I might as well aspire to the hand of a Royal Princess!’ He shut the sword-case, and turned. ‘Come! If General Hawkhurst has honoured you with a visit, you had better make yourself a little more presentable.’

‘Very true: I will do so at once!’ Gervase said, rather glad to be relieved of the necessity of answering his cousin’s embittered words. From the little he had seen of both, he could not but feel that the staid Drusilla would make a more suitable bride for Theo than the livelier and by far more frivolous Marianne; he must, moreover, have been obliged to agree that there could be little hope that Sir Thomas would bestow his only child on a man in Theo’s circumstances.

He did not again see Martin until they met at the dinner-table. There was then a little constraint in Martin’s manner, but since he was so much a creature of moods this caused his mother no concern. Her mind was, in fact, preoccupied with the startling request made to her by her stepson, that she should send out cards of invitation for a ball at Stanyon. Since her disposition generally led her to dislike any scheme not of her own making, her first reaction was to announce with an air of majestic finality that it was not to be thought of; but when the Earl said apologetically that he was afraid some thought would have to be spent on the project, unless a party quite unworthy of the traditions of Stanyon were to be the result, she began to perceive that his mind was made up. An uneasy suspicion, which had every now and then flitted through her head since the episode of the Indian epergne, again made itself felt: her stepson, for all his gentle voice and sweet smile, was not easily to be intimidated. From her first flat veto, she passed to the enumeration of all the difficulties in the way of holding a ball at Stanyon at that season of the year. She was still expatiating on the subject when she took her place at the foot of the dinner-table. ‘Had it been Christmas, it might have been proper for us to have done something of that nature,’ she said.

‘Hardly, ma’am!’ said Gervase, in a deprecating tone. ‘You had not then, I am persuaded, put off your blacks.’

This was unanswerable; and while she was thinking of some further objection, Martin, who had not been present when the scheme was first mooted, demanded to be told what was going forward. When it was made known to him, he could not dislike the project. His eyes brightened; he turned them towards Gervase, exclaiming: ‘I call that a famous notion! We have not had such an affair at Stanyon since I don’t know when! When is it to be?’

‘I have been explaining to your brother,’ said the Dowager, ‘that a ball held in the country at this season cannot be thought to be eligible.’

‘Oh, fudge, Mama! No one removes to town until April – no one we need care for, at least! I daresay we could muster as many as fifty couples – well, twenty-five, at all events! and that don’t include all the old frights who will come only to play whist!’

‘I fear that my state of health would be quite unequal to entertaining so many persons,’ said the Dowager, making a determined bid for mastery.

As she had never been known to suffer even the most trifling indisposition, this announcement not unnaturally staggered her son. Before he could expostulate, however, Gervase said solicitously: ‘I would not for the world prejudice your health, ma’am! To be sure, to expect you to receive and to contrive for so many people would be an infamous thing for me to do! But I have been considering, you know, whether, if I sent my own chaise to convey her, my Aunt Dorothea might not be prevailed upon to drive over from Studham, to relieve you of those duties which might prove too much for your strength. I daresay, if we invited her to stay at Stanyon for a week or so, she would not altogether object to it.’

There was a pregnant silence. Theo’s firm lips twitched; the Chaplain gazed in deep absorption at the bowl of spring flowers which had replaced the epergne in the centre of the table; and Martin directed a glance of awe, not untinged with respect, at the Earl. Only Miss Morville continued to eat her dinner in complete unconcern.

‘Lady Cinderford,’ said the Dowager, referring to her widowed sister-in-law in accents of loathing, ‘will act as hostess at Stanyon over my dead body!’

‘That would be something quite out of the ordinary way,’ murmured the Earl.

Miss Morville raised her eyes from the portion of fricandeau of beef on her plate, and directed a quelling look at him. She then turned her attention to her hostess, saying: ‘Should you find it too much for you, ma’am, if I were to write all the invitations for you, and, in general, undertake the arrangements?’

The Dowager, snatching at this straw, bestowed one of her most gracious smiles upon her, and gave the assembled company to understand that under these conditions she might be induced to sink her personal inclinations in a benevolent desire to oblige her stepson. After that, she entered in a very exhaustive way, which lent no colour to her previous assertion that she was in failing health, into all the preparations it would be necessary to make for the ball. Long before dinner was at an end, she had talked herself into good-humour; and by the time she rose from the table she had reached the felicitous stage of saying how happy she would be to welcome the dear Duchess of Rutland to Stanyon, and how happy a number of persons of quite inferior rank would be to find themselves at Stanyon.

While the inevitable card-table was being set up in the Italian Saloon, the Earl found himself standing beside Miss Morville, a little withdrawn from the rest of the party. He could not resist saying to her, with an arch lift of his brows: ‘I have incurred your censure, ma’am?’

She seemed surprised. ‘No, how should you? Oh, you mean that most ill-advised remark you made! Well, I must say, it was the outside of enough! However, it is not my business to be censuring you, my lord, and if I seemed to do so I have only to beg pardon.’

‘Don’t, I entreat! I will own my fault. Shall you dislike my ball?’

‘Dislike it! No, indeed! I daresay I shall enjoy it excessively.’

‘I am afraid you will be put to a great deal of trouble over it.’

He expected a polite disclaimer, but she replied, candidly: ‘I shall, of course, because whatever I suggest Lady St Erth will not like, until she has been brought to believe that she thought of it herself. I wish very much that she would let me contrive the whole, for there is nothing I should like better. But that would be rather too much to expect her to do, and one should never be unreasonable!’

‘You would like nothing better than to order all the arrangements for a large party? I can conceive of nothing more tiresome!’

Tags: Georgette Heyer Historical
Source: readsnovelonline.net