The Hemingford Scandal. Mary Nichols

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СКАЧАТЬ shall be free to talk.’ She drew Jane forward. ‘Do you know everyone? Lady Grant, Lady Cowper, Mrs Archibald and her daughter, Fanny?’

      ‘Indeed, yes.’ Jane bent her knee to each of them and asked them how they did, but though they were polite and asked after her father, they had no real interest in her doings and the conversation ground to a halt. Not long after that, they gathered up parasols, gloves and reticules and departed.

      ‘Now,’ Anne said, as soon as the door had closed on them. ‘I shall order more tea and we may sit down for a comfortable coze.’ She turned to ring the bell for the maid, then took Jane’s hand and drew her to sit beside her on the sofa. ‘You look a trifle agitated, my dear, has something happened to upset you?’

      ‘Not upset exactly. I have received an offer of marriage.’

      ‘Oh.’ There was a little silence after that, as if Anne was cogitating how to answer her. ‘Who is the lucky man?’

      ‘Mr Donald Allworthy.’

      ‘Goodness, not that sti—’ She stopped suddenly.

      Jane laughed. ‘That stiff-rump, is that what you were going to say?’

      ‘Well, he is a little pompous.’

      ‘Only if you count good manners and courtesy as pomposity. And I am sure he is very sincere when he says he has a high regard for me.’

      ‘Oh, Jane, you are never thinking of accepting him?’

      ‘I have said I will consider it.’

      ‘But, my dear, you can’t, you simply cannot.’

      ‘Why not? I should like very much to be married.’

      ‘But not to Donald Allworthy.’

      ‘No one else has offered.’

      ‘You know that is not true. You would have been married by now, if—’

      ‘Please, Anne, do not speak of the past. It is dead and buried, along with my dreams. I must be practical. Papa is becoming tired and increasingly frail and I know I must be a great burden to him. Besides, Aunt Lane has taken so much trouble.’

      ‘You surely would not agree to marry someone you do not love simply not to disappoint your aunt. That is the very worst reason I can think of for marrying anyone.’

      ‘Of course it is not that, or not only that. I do not want to be an old maid, Anne.’

      ‘You are four years younger than me, there is still time for you.’

      ‘Oh, I am sorry, I did not mean—’ Jane broke off in confusion.

      Anne laughed. ‘No, I know you did not, but it is true, isn’t it? I am past my last prayers and resigned to it—more than resigned, I am happy. I do not think I would make anyone a good wife, I am too independent and outspoken and I value my freedom.’

      ‘You think I should be like you?’ They had had this conversation before, but then she had not just had a proposal and that made the argument so much more cogent.

      ‘Not at all. I have never said that. You were born to be a wife and mother. I am only sorry—’

      ‘Do not be,’ Jane put in sharply. ‘We are not talking of that, but what I should do about Donald Allworthy.’

      ‘What do you want to do about him?’

      ‘I do not know. I have asked him for time to think about it, but I cannot keep him waiting, can I? It would not be fair.’

      If Anne was tempted to say Jane had not been fair to her brother, she resisted it. ‘I cannot help you make up your mind, Jane. It is your decision. I wish you happy, whatever you decide.’

      ‘Then I shall tell him to expect an answer at the end of the Season.’

      ‘You might have a better offer by then.’

      Jane laughed. ‘And pigs might fly.’

      ‘Jane, it is not the end, you know. It is not a case of Mr Allworthy or nobody.’

      ‘Anne, if you are nursing the hope that you can bring Harry and me back together, you are wasting your time.’

      The maid brought in the tea tray and Anne busied herself with the teapot and cups before speaking again. ‘They have forgiven the Duke of York, you know. He has been restored as Commander-in-Chief of the Army. It was in the newspaper today.’

      ‘What does that signify? The Prince of Wales was always close to him, closer than to any others of his family, so it is only natural that when he was made Regent, he would reinstate his brother. They are as bad as one another with their infidelities and their mistresses.’

      ‘Harry wasn’t like that, you know he wasn’t.’

      As she sipped the tea Anne had given her, the memories were crowding back, memories she had been pushing away from her for more than two years, memories resurrected by the day’s events. The newly commissioned Lieutenant Harry Hemingford in the magnificent blue-and-gold uniform of the 10th Hussars was proud as a peacock, grateful to his grandfather for buying him the commission, sure that he would make his mark on history.

      ‘Of course a lieutenant’s pay is little enough,’ he had told her. ‘But I shall soon make my way. In wartime, promotion comes fast. We shall not have so long to wait and then, my darling Jane, you will be my wife.’ And he had whirled her round and round until she was dizzy and begged him to stop.

      But she had been so proud of him. He swore he had put his wild youth behind him and had eschewed the excesses of drinking and gambling that had led him into trouble and was the reason his grandfather had packed him off into the army. ‘I have turned over a new leaf, Jane.’ For a time it seemed he had; he worked hard and waited for the call to arms. The 10th Hussars, the Prince of Wales’s Own Regiment, had been in the Peninsula at the time and he was expecting hourly to be sent out to join them.

      ‘There will be no time to arrange a wedding before I go,’ he had told her. ‘And to tell the truth, I cannot afford it. You don’t mind waiting, do you? When I come back I shall be a colonel.’ He had laughed his boyish laugh and made her smile. ‘Or even a general. Then you shall be able to lord it over all the other officers’ wives.’

      She had agreed it would be better to delay. Her father still needed her to help him with his work and she could start collecting her trousseau and thinking of her future home. But Harry’s plans had been thwarted when, in 1809, the regiment was brought back to England after a series of setbacks that resulted in the army being withdrawn from Spain and, instead of seeing action, he was left kicking his heels. It was then that everything went wrong. Jane shuddered with shame even now.

      Harry could not afford to marry her on a lieutenant’s pay and his grandfather, who had stood buff for his previous debts, would not increase his allowance. He needed promotion and in London the chances of that were slim. It was one of his fellow officers who told him that preferment could be gained through Mrs Mary Anne Clarke, the Duke of York’s mistress, and suggested he try that avenue to promotion, offering to take him to one of the many social gatherings that Mrs Clarke liked to organise. As СКАЧАТЬ