The Stanbroke Girls Read online

  “Difficult,” murmured Weld.

  “I can tell you, it was damned awkward to explain,” she went on, then appended hastily, “I beg your pardon! My language is not what it ought to be. There’s scarcely a soul within twenty miles of Six Stones that I can converse with, save Jemmy.”

  “I’ve offered to hire her a companion any number of times—” the earl began.

  “Hired companions,” she spat back at once. “Nonsense! Hired companions are for young girls and old ladies, and I have neither the misfortune to be the former nor the honour to be the latter. What could I want a companion for? I still have wit enough, thank God, to amuse myself.”

  “But she has never received the idea well,” Marchmont continued mildly, as if Emilia had said nothing.

  Lord Weld laughed. “What’s needed here,” said he, “if I understand the circumstances correctly, is a treaty of sorts. A compromise. An Accord in the Matter of Invitations. Shall I continue?”

  “Pray do,” said Emilia, with a nod of her dark head. “A compromise is a good deal more than I’ve ever gained before.”

  Lord Weld looked to Marchmont.

  “Oh, do go on,” said he. “I am all curiosity.”

  “Very well then,” said Warrington, rising at last from his sofa and sauntering up to where he could stand facing both of them. “The solution is simple. Lord Marchmont wishes to ignore all invitations. Lady Emilia wishes him to avail himself of all. Therefore, Lord Marchmont will attend exactly half of the functions to which he is invited. Simple,” he concluded with a pleased wave of his arms, “and fair.” He lay down again on the velvet couch.

  “Dear God, not a soul in London goes to half the parties he’s asked to,” objected Marchmont immediately. “A person would go mad. You don’t know what you’re suggesting, Weld. It’s beyond reason.”

  “I rather liked it,” Emilia remarked. “It put me in mind of Solomon.”

  “Solomon, indeed,” snorted his lordship. “A child of six could have managed something better. If you don’t mind my saying so, old fellow,” he added.

  “Of course it is only the initial proposal,” Weld answered imperturbably. “There is always bartering over any treaty.”

  “Very well,” Emilia took up, “in that case I am willing to go as low as one third of the invitations we receive.”

  “An eighth would be more humane,” said her brother.

  “I’m terribly sorry, but a third is as low as I can contrive.”

  “What about a fifth?”

  “Not even close.”

  “Then I’ll tell you what,” said Marchmont, his hands clutching the arms of his chair as if seeking strength in the polished wood, “if you’ll let me choose the occasions at my own discretion, I’ll go up to a quarter of the total received. But that is my final offer.”

  “I’m sorry, that would never do. You would go to a series of bachelor breakfasts, and a couple of hopelessly crowded routs—where you’d stay ten minutes and bow to a dozen people. No, my dear, I will settle for a quarter of the total, but you must go at my discretion.”

  “I’m sorry, Emilia. If that is how you feel, we are at an impasse.” The earl settled back in his chair and reminded himself that no one could force him to go anywhere, if worse came to worst.

  “I see it is time for me to intervene again,” Warrington Weld spoke up in his gentle rasp. “The quarter of engagements to be attended,” he pronounced, “will be drawn by lot. Strictly. And by my hand only. To insure impartiality,” he closed.

  Lord Marchmont said nothing, but Emilia looked satisfied. “I only hope the Stanbroke girls’ come-out is among the chosen. Elizabeth Stanbroke would be perfect for you, Jemmy, I know she would. She was in town last year, while you were across the channel, and we spent the most delightful afternoons together. An extraordinary mind, I assure you. Of course she was not out then—so you’ll have first crack at her, all the better! I’ll ring for Searle immediately, and have him bring the week’s cards in here,” she went on smoothly, pulling the bell-rope. “I tell you, Jemmy, you ought to go to that come-out whether the card comes up or not. You’ll regret it if you don’t,” she added, while her brother groaned and rubbed discontentedly at his forehead.

  “How I got into this…” he began, but did not finish.

  “I haven’t met Lady Isabella—her sister, that is—but she is certain to be beautiful, if nothing else. It’s her come-out, too. She was too young last year, I suppose, so they waited…In any case, I should think you might know their brother, Lord Halcot. He’s a good ten years younger than you, I daresay, but he’s spent a little time in the metropolis. Charlie Halcot, don’t you know him? High-spirited fellow, with yellow hair.”

  Lord Marchmont raised his head. “Yes, I think I do remember him. Emilia, do you think you could stop prattling for a moment? It’s giving me the headache.”

  “Stop prattling? Oh dear, I don’t know. I’m feeling so enormously braced, you see. What a cheerful prospect! Even if you don’t go to the Stanbroke debut, you’re sure to meet them somewhere. And then the Lemon girls will be in town again—real élégantes they are, every one of them. Not in your style perhaps, but then, one never knows. Lord Weld, you might enjoy meeting Augusta Lemon. She sings like a bird. And then there’s Lady Juliana, Lord Grandison’s daughter you know…and Amabel Pye, she never did marry that Freddie person—what’s his name?—portly fellow, with a dreadful lisp. As a matter of fact, I’m pretty sure Miss Partridge is back on the market again—but I suppose after that business with Jeffery you’ll do just as well to stay away from her.”

  “Emilia, in the name of mercy,” Lord Marchmont began to plead, meaning to quell this terrifying gush of prospects, but he was cut off by the entrance of Searle. Within moments the invitations had been delivered, and Lord Weld appropriated them.

  “Hat, please,” he said. “Or basket. I need something to put them in.”

  “Will this do?” asked Lady Emilia, upending a bowl of fruits which had stood on the Pembroke table behind her and offering it to him.

  “Perfect.” Lord Weld dropped the cards and envelopes inside.

  “I don’t even recognise that one,” said Emilia peeking in as he stirred them about and spying an unopened missive. “It must have arrived this morning.”

  “Well, let’s have done with it,” urged Marchmont, ever more miserable. “How many were there in the first place?”

  “Twelve,” said Weld, still mixing them. “I counted. Isn’t that lucky? Just divisible by four.”

  “Get on with it, get on with it!”

  Lord Weld dramatically covered his eyes with his left hand and plunged his right into the bowl. He drew out the first card. “‘Lady Mufftow requests the pleasure…rout at ten o’clock evening of the—’ oh my, that’s tonight,” he read out. “Very good, that’s number one.”

  Lord Marchmont sent a pleased glance over to his sister. “Lady Mufftow’s start-of-the-season rout,” he said triumphantly. “Not my fault if it’s a hopeless crush! You see—perfectly blameless. Warrington chose it.”

  Emilia, looking annoyed, murmured, “We’ll go early.”

  “Second one,” Lord Weld announced, reading, “‘Supper, Mr. Henry Luttrell, nine o’clock, Tuesday.’ Oh dear, I’m afraid this one doesn’t even include you, Lady Emilia.”

  “I should think not!” cried she, despairing. “Bachelor suppers! And any lady you meet there…” She shuddered, feeling suddenly defeated.

  “Never mind, I’ll escort you wherever you like to go that night,” comforted Weld; but she was not consolable.

  “My my, this is turning out a good deal better than I’d expected,” remarked Marchmont jauntily. “Henry Luttrell! I shall be very happy to see him again.”

  “Dear Lord,” said Emilia faintly.

  “Number three,” Weld called out. He held in his hands a sheet of cream-coloured vellum, ornately lettered. “‘The Earl of Trevor and Lady Trevor…request the presence et cetera…their two daughters�
��!’ Oh my goodness, it’s the Stanbroke girls after all,” he exclaimed, looking excitedly at Emilia. “It’s true what Pangloss said, then,” he continued. “All is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.”

  “Well, at least,” said Emilia, with a relieved, if rather wicked, smile at her brother, “it is something.”

  But Marchmont, though he knew he had miraculously escaped horrors beyond imagination, nevertheless could not repress a final, hollow groan.

  2

  The oriental saloon in Haddon House, Grosvenor Square, was as a rule a very attractive room, well-proportioned and fitted up in a style of restrained but unmistakable elegance. At the moment of our entering it, however, it showed signs of deep fatigue. If walls could speak, the silk-hung walls of the Oriental saloon would cry (as Macbeth puts it) “Hold, enough!” For they had had sufficient indeed for months to come. “No more fashionably-frizzed, well-pomatumed heads to lean up against us, please!” the walls might say. “We pray you, no more pale, almond-shaped fingernails to drum slowly upon us to the solemn one-two-three of a minuet! If you must drum, let it be a waltz next time. We are not to be annoyed again for such a tedious crush as this has been!”

  But of course these were walls that had seen some gay times. One must expect them to be critical. Moreover, they were irritable after their long winter’s hibernation. Indeed, I should not be surprised to learn the whole of Haddon House resented the use it was routinely put to; for every spring it was invaded by a noisy, cheerful bunch of visitors, every spring aired out and refurbished here and there—brightened, its windows flung open and its chandeliers shined—only to be cruelly jilted just as routinely each summer. No wonder, then, that the remarks of the walls were a little dry and acid. One cannot blame them.

  The three young ladies who sat in (or rather, had draped themselves in various weary attitudes round) the Oriental saloon were by contrast not at all annoyed. They were tired, it is true, but each of them was contented in her own drowsy way. The last of the guests had gone home a few moments before; Lord Trevor had already retired to bed; Lady Trevor had gone down to the kitchens for a moment to survey the evening’s aftermath—and the girls, a little to their surprise, found themselves officially and irreversibly “launched.” They were two sisters—the Stanbroke girls (the reader will not be astonished to learn) and their lifelong friend, the Honble. Miss Lewis. Conversation among them was desultory but satisfying, for this was the moment (perhaps the best in any evening among society) when the intimates at the core of the party assemble at its finish to praise, review, and—most delicious—dissect the guests. Lady Elizabeth Stanbroke, whose scalpel was much the sharpest among those present, had just laid the good name of Miss Amabel Pye upon her table and was beginning to wield her delicate knife.

  “It isn’t so much that one dislikes that sort of girl,” she was saying calmly, from the depths of a green velvet sofa in which she reclined, “as that one wishes to throttle her. For her own sake, of course! Quite for her own sake. A near brush with a gangrene of the head almost always does such girls a world of good, don’t you know. One fondly figures to oneself one’s thumbs upon her throat—”

  “What was she like, exactly?” interrupted Lady Isabella, Lady Elizabeth’s sister. “I did not speak with her, I think.”

  “Certainly you did,” Elizabeth contradicted. “She was the one who told you all about Mamma.”

  “Mamma? Our Mamma?”

  “No dear, indeed not. Her Mamma. Mamma, don’t you know! ‘Mamma is so clever, really so terribly clever. Why, hordes of other ladies ask her for her opinion of the Paris fashions. And even Papa—you know Papa,’” she went on, imitating Miss Pye’s mincing whine with mortal accuracy, “‘Why, even Papa asks Mamma her opinion about—well, you know, political issues and so forth. Parliament, I mean, and…oh, legislation, après tout. Perhaps some ladies think it is not quite nice to know about such issues—why, Mamma has even been called a blue-stocking! by—well, but I won’t tell you by whom; I shouldn’t. The point is, and Mamma herself has said so, if a woman does not educate herself about…er, about issues and so on, then she is utterly at the mercy of…’ Oh come, Isabella, surely you remember her,” she broke off. “She was wearing a little pink shawl of Norwich silk.”

  “Oh!” said Isabella suddenly. “And little pink sandals? I think I do remember. A pink gown?”

  “With little pink rosebuds round the hem, and little pink puffed sleeves, and a little pink coronet of little pink—”

  “Roses in her hair,” finished Isabella, laughing. “I do recall her, only I thought she was one of the Lindsey girls.”

  “Oh no, the Lindsey girls are the ones with the horsey faces. I remember them from last year; we used to have them to tea.”

  “Indeed?” said her sister, who had been too young last year to be taken to London. Elizabeth was three years older, though her come-out had been delayed till tonight so that the sisters could be presented together.

  From a far corner of the room the third voice was now heard. “Lizzie,” it said, sweetly but firmly, “I do think you are being a little hard on poor Miss Pye. After all, it may well be that her mother is an extraordinary woman. And if she is, it is only natural for her daughter to be a little…overwhelmed by her,” she finished.

  “A little overwhelmed!” exclaimed Elizabeth, briefly peering over the back of the settee. “Why, the girl hasn’t got a thought to call her own! A little overwhelmed indeed.” She subsided, with an exasperated growl, back into the depths of the sofa.

  “Why don’t you come and sit with us, Amy?” invited Isabella. “You’re so far away.”

  But they were all too tired to move. “Did you speak to Mr. Stickney at all?” Miss Amy Lewis (for it was she in the corner) inquired at last of her companions. “I thought him extremely agreeable.”

  “Oh, extremely,” agreed Isabella. “He’s one of Charlie’s friends. We’ve met him before at the Abbey. Didn’t you meet him when he visited us?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Oh. Well, he is a jolly fellow. If you like jolly fellows,” added Isabella, who did not. “Not much for looks, I must say.”

  “I thought him quite pleasant-appearing,” defended Amy.

  “He’s married, you know,” Elizabeth interposed. “Dorothea Frane that was, the tired-looking woman—tall, with auburn hair. Not much of a match on her side, but they seem happy. I daresay Stickney will be happier still when she’s borne him an heir. Three daughters already; think of it!”

  Miss Lewis had coloured immediately at the thought that she might herself be interested in Mr. Stickney, and though no one could have seen the blush (for Elizabeth had shut her weary eyes and was stroking them gently, while Isabella was staring abstractedly at a chandelier), she hastened to disclaim, “Good heavens, Elizabeth, you don’t suppose I could entertain—oh dear, what an imagination you have!”

  “Oh yes,” said Lizzy languidly, “I’m a perfect Byron. Fancy you taking an interest in—! Oh, what a thought!” she laughed.

  “Elizabeth,” intoned Miss Lewis, a trifle shocked, “please stop.” It was as it always had been for her when she was in the company of the Stanbroke girls: as dearly as she loved and admired them (and she did, very dearly), she could not help but be just a little scandalized by some of the things they said. Elizabeth was so abrupt! And Isabella—well, though Isabella was her own bosom-bow, and always had been—none the less it sometimes seemed to Amy that Isabella was even worse than her sharp-tongued sister. She was so fantastical, so dreamy! To her, everything hinted at secrets and mysteries. A box was not a box: it was a casket. A glass was a goblet, a letter a missive, a shadow a shade. It was exciting! But it was unwise. Amy Lewis would have passed but a drab and quotidian childhood had it not been for her friend Isabella; but Isabella was destined for a disastrous collision with the real things of this world, Amy feared, if she did not learn more sense.

  And then both Stanbroke girls were so emphatically beautiful!
Not the least of the pleasures of the come-out had been, for Amy, the opportunity of learning that most other girls were no prettier than she—in fact, that some were a good deal less so. She had grown up with Lizzie and Bella. They were the only girls in the neighbourhood to whom she could compare herself (excepting the servants), and she always came off, after these inevitable comparisons, a lamentable third. Naturally she had been pretty sure that the Stanbrokes were extraordinary beauties—but it was a relief to make certain of it at last. If the truth be known, Amy Lewis had a particular reason to hope she was—well, at least attractive, if not stunning. The name of the particular reason was Charles Stanbroke, his title Viscount Halcot at the present moment and someday (if things took their natural course) the Earl of Trevor. Just as Miss Lewis had grown up with no one to compare herself to but the Stanbroke girls, so had she found no object on which to exercise the growing scope of her affections but their brother Charlie. Amy’s parents were aware of their daughter’s sentiments but did not encourage them. For one thing, it did not seem to them as if Lord Halcot returned Miss Lewis’s regard. Moreover, even if he had done so, Lord Lewis was not at all sure the boy’s father would smile upon the match. Not only was the Lewis’s income moderate, it was also a fact that, for the son and heir of an earl, a marriage with the daughter of a minor baron (even one of very ancient lineage, as was the case here) was less than brilliant.

  Lastly, Lord and Lady Lewis were not entirely persuaded that Amy and Halcot would be happy together. The Lewis’s estate adjoined the county seat of the earl in Warwickshire, and as the two families were the only nobility for miles around their children had naturally seen a great deal of one another as they grew up. It concerned Lady Lewis, however, that her daughter had seen very little of anyone else. Outside of a few cousins and men of business, Amy had met no young gentlemen at all save Charlie Halcot; small wonder then that she fastened her hopes to him. Not but what they might be right for one another after all—only before one could know, Amy must have a little more experience of the world. So it was that, when Lady Trevor offered to present Miss Lewis along with her own daughters this season, Lady Lewis had been very grateful indeed. Lady Trevor, despite her spending ten months of each twelve in the country, still had a large and excellent acquaintance among the ton; whereas Lady Lewis knew hardly anyone. It was the perfect solution to a difficult problem—especially since it spared the Lewises the burdensome expense of a season in London. Miss Lewis was consequently equipped with all manner of fashionable clothing, laden with very superior advice, and packed off to London in the company of her dear friends. That the Stanbroke girls might, with their extraordinary talents and beauty, disastrously outshine little Amy had never occurred to her doting Mamma. She did not like to say so, of course, but in her estimation Amy’s steady heart and unfailing goodness was worth ten of the Stanbroke girls. Though naturally they were very nice girls as well, in their fashion.