Devil-May-Dare. Mary Nichols

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СКАЧАТЬ isn’t that,’ she assured him. ‘You look bang-up. I was wondering if you might enter the marriage stakes instead of me. After all, you are the one who has to produce Wenthorpe heirs, not I.’

      ‘But you are the one Papa has fixed his mind on and you ought not to disappoint him. The whole thing must be costing him a prodigious amount.’

      ‘And I wish that it did not,’ she said. ‘I do not like being groomed like some thoroughbred to be paraded in the selling ring.’

      ‘Oh, my dear, it is not at all like that,’ protested Aunt Aggie. ‘You will enjoy it and I am persuaded you will be the belle of the Season and have any number of offers to choose from. It is the young gentlemen who are being paraded, not you.’ She rose from the table and smiled at them both. ‘Now, as I have not spent such a fatiguing morning in years, I shall go and lie down. Tom, you will look after your sister.’

      ‘But Aunt, I am going to choose a new carriage.’

      ‘I’ll come too,’ Lydia said, rising quickly. ‘It won’t take above a minute to fetch a bonnet and mantle.’

      Since her aunt did not object to this, a footman was sent to bring a hackney to the door and brother and sister set off for Mount Street, where the coach-builders, Robinson and Cook, had their premises.

      Tom was torn between ordering a barouche which would have been suitable for Lydia and her aunt, and a high-perch phaeton, a showy vehicle which had enormous wheels and high seating which was known to be unstable in inexpert hands. He wanted to show off his driving skill and Lydia, who considered herself a good whip, was also tempted, but she knew her aunt would disapprove on the grounds that young ladies who drove high-perch phaetons were considered fast. While they were thus debating, the Marquis of Longham arrived on the same errand.

      He was wearing splendid riding breeches of soft buckskin and well-cut riding boots which emphasised his long, muscular legs. His corded coat with its high collar covered a yellow brocade waistcoat and a neckcloth of moderate dimensions; the whole effect was discreetly modish. Greeting them cheerfully, he bowed over Lydia’s hand and then, with those hazel eyes twinkling with mischief, looked about him at the vehicles on display, some of which were only half complete, and enquired if it had not been possible to repair their carriage after all.

      ‘Not at all, my lord,’ Lydia said, affecting a haughtiness which was so unlike her that Tom turned to her in surprise. ‘A travelling chaise is hardly the thing for town; even you must admit to that. We have come to bespeak a light carriage.’

      ‘Surely not this one?’ his lordship said, pointing at the high-perch phaeton Tom had been admiring.

      ‘What is wrong with it?’ Lydia demanded, annoyed that he should question their judgement. ‘It looks a very handsome carriage to me.’

      ‘Oh, no doubt of it,’ he said calmly. ‘But surely you were not intending to buy it for yourself, Miss Wenthorpe?’ He looked her up and down as if measuring her up for the vehicle in question, though, in truth, he was thinking how attractive she looked and how the colour of her costume set off the deep colour of her eyes.

      ‘Why not?’ She was so stung by his attitude, she forgot her attempt at hauteur. ‘I’ll have you know I’m considered to have a sound pair of hands on the ribbons.’

      ‘That I do not doubt,’ he said, appraising her with one eyebrow lifted higher than the other, which made her think he was laughing at her. ‘But have you considered your aunt’s feelings? She will have to accompany you when you go out and I hardly think someone of her years would find it to her liking.’ He did not add that he thought the worthy matron would find it extremely difficult even to climb into its seat without an undignified push from behind, nor what the gossips would say if Lydia were seen driving it.

      ‘And I’ll wager the truth is that you are determined to have the vehicle for yourself in order to cut a dash in Hyde Park,’ she said, knowing he was right about her aunt and annoyed that he should have the effrontery to point it out to her. ‘Let us not disappoint you. I dare say we can manage with a barouche.’

      ‘Why not a park phaeton?’ he suggested, without denying her accusation. ‘It is light enough for you to drive, if that is what you have in mind, and not too dangerous if handled sensibly. If you wish, I’ll undertake to teach you to drive it.’

      If this was an effort to placate her, it had the opposite effect; she could drive as well as most men and not even Tom would presume to suggest she needed lessons. ‘I am sure your lordship has more pressing business,’ she murmured, stifling her inclination to tell him so. ‘We would not wish to impose on you.’

      Anyone but the Marquis of Longham, she told herself, would have recognised the put-down for what it was, but he simply smiled and said, ‘Not at all.’ Then, deciding he would get nowhere with her, he turned to Tom. ‘How say you, Wenthorpe; will you consider this one? It is wide enough to seat three at a pinch and low enough slung not to turn over in a tight corner.’

      Tom accepted the offer of help with alacrity and the two men began a long discussion about the merits of the carriage in question and the colours in which it should be finished, and, the deal being done, arrangements were made to collect it two days later.

      ‘In the meantime,’ his lordship said, ‘may I offer to convey you home?’

      Tom agreed at once without consulting Lydia, who had been silently watching the Marquis’s handling of the transaction and secretly admitting to herself that Tom, left alone, would not have done half so well. Not until they were once more on the street did she realise that the conveyance was the self-same coach which had brought them to London. She had already been ungracious and could not compound that by refusing to get into it, and thus they arrived at Wenthorpe House in the same ramshackle way they had the day before.

      The arrival of Tom and Lydia with the Marquis in attendance had not gone unnoticed the first time it had happened. It seemed incomprehensible to the ladies of Society that Miss Wenthorpe, who was so obviously in London looking for a husband, should turn up in that skimble-skamble state and should have for an escort a man whom no one knew. That he was handsome and dressed in the pink of fashion none disputed, but his mount! Did one ever see such a broken-backed mule? And as for the carriage, it was twenty years old if it was a day. Surely Wenthorpe was not that pinched in the pocket? If he was, the tattlers did not see how his daughter could be safely brought out. And to compound everything by driving about town in that self-same vehicle was enough to set the neighbourhood tongues wagging even more furiously.

      Servants, tradesmen, not to mention candlestick-makers and chimney-sweeps, were sent far and wide to find out what they could. They returned with the intelligence that the horses had been hired and the carriage belonged to the Marquis of Longham, the only surviving son of the Duke of Sutton, who, like their present monarch, was as mad as a hatter. As for Lord Wenthorpe, as far as could be ascertained, there was nothing wrong with his credit and Miss Wenthorpe stood to come into a considerable portion on her marriage.

      ‘That, of course, would account for Longham dancing attendance on her,’ they said over the teacups, having heard accounts of the profligate ways of the Duke of Sutton and his elder son and assuming the younger was cast in the same mould. It was their duty to rescue her from this mountebank. And if their informants should be wrong and the Marquis was not a spongeing toadeater but a man of consequence, then all the more reason to detach him from Miss Wenthorpe and speedily attach him to their own daughters. They were prepared to expend any amount of time and energy on the project. And thus it was that so many invitations poured into Wenthorpe House, Lydia and her aunt were hard put to it to decide which to accept.

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