Джорджетт Хейер - Arabella

“London? Yes, indeed!” she responded. “I am sure I was never so happy in my life!”

“I am glad,” he said.

Arabella remembered that Lady Bridlington had warned her against betraying too much enthusiasm: it was unfashionable to appear pleased. She remembered, also that she had promised not to make a bad impression on Mr. Beaumaris, so she added in a languid tone: “It is a shocking squeeze, of course, but it is always diverting to meet new people.”

He looked amused, and said with a laugh in his voice: “No, don’t spoil it! Your first answer was charming.”

She eyed him doubtfully for a moment; then her irrepressible dimples peeped out “But it is only rustics who own to enjoyment, sir!”

“Is it?” he returned.

“You, I am persuaded, do not enjoy such an Assembly as this!”

“You are mistaken: my enjoyment depends on the company in which I find myself.”

“That,” said Arabella naively, having thought it over, “is quite the prettiest thing that has been said to me tonight!”

“Then I can only suppose, Miss Tallant, that Fleetwood and Warkworth were unable to find words to express their appreciation of the exquisite picture you present. Strange! I formed the opinion that they were paying you all manner of compliments.”

She laughed out at that. “Yes, but it was nonsense! I did not believe a word they said!”

“I hope you believe what I say,however, for I am very much in earnest.”

The light tone he used seemed to belie his words. Arabella found him baffling, and directed another of her speculative glances at him. She decided that he must be answered in kind, and said daringly: “Are you being so obliging as to bring me into fashion, Mr. Beaumaris?”

He let his eyes travel round the crowded room, his brows a little raised. “You do not appear to me to stand in any need of my assistance, ma’am.” He perceived that Lord Fleetwood was edging his way past a knot of people, a glass in his hand, and waited for him to reach the sofa. “Thank you, Charles,” he said coolly, taking the glass from his lordship, and presenting it to Arabella.

“You,” said Lord Fleetwood, with deep feeling, “will receive a message from me in the morning, Robert! This is the most barefaced piracy I ever beheld in my life! Miss Tallant, I wish you will send this fellow about his business: his effrontery goes beyond what is allowable!”

“You must learn not to act on impulse,” said Mr. Beaumaris kindly. “A moment’s reflection, the least touch of adroitness, and it would have been I who fetched the lemonade and you who had the privilege of sitting beside Miss Tallant on this sofa!”

“But it is Lord Fleetwood who earns my gratitude, for he was the more chivalrous!” said Arabella,

“Miss Tallant, I thank you!”

“You have certainly been amply rewarded, and have now nothing to do but to take yourself off,” said Mr. Beaumaris.

“Not for the world!” declared his lordship.

Mr. Beaumaris sighed. “How often I have had to deplore your lack of tact!” he said.

Arabella, sparkling under the influence of all this exciting banter, raised her posy to her nose, and said, with a grateful look cast up at Fleetwood: “I stand doubly in Lord Fleetwood’s debt!”

“No, no, it is I who stand in yours, ma’am, since you deigned to accept my poor tribute!”

Mr. Beaumaris glanced at the posy, and smiled slightly, but said nothing. Arabella, catching sight of Mr. Epworth, who was hovering hopefully in the vicinity, suddenly said: “Mr. Beaumaris, who is that oddly dressed man?”

He looked round, but said: “There are so many oddly dressed men present, Miss Tallant, that I fear I am at a loss. You do not mean poor Fleetwood here?”

“Of course I do not!” exclaimed Arabella indignantly.

“Well, I am sure it would be difficult to find anything odder than that waistcoat he wears. It is very disheartening, for I have really expended a great deal of time in trying to reform his taste. Ah, I think I see whom you must mean! That, Miss Tallant, is Horace Epworth. In his own estimation, he undoubtedly personifies a set of creatures whom I have reason to believe you despise.”

Blushing hotly, Arabella asked: “Is he a—a dandy?”

“He would certainly like you to think so.”

“Well, if he is,” said Arabella frankly, “I am sure you are no such thing, and I beg your pardon for saying it that evening!”

“Don’t apologize to him, ma’am!” said Lord Fleetwood gaily. “It is time someone gave him a set-down, and that, I assure you, smote him with stunning effect! You must know that he thinks himself a notable Corinthian!”

“What is that, pray?” enquired Arabella.

“A Corinthian, ma’am, besides being a very Tulip of Fashion, is an amateur of sport, a master of sword-play, a deadly fellow with a pistol, a Nonpareil amongst whips, a—”

Mr. Beaumaris interrupted this mock-solemn catalogue. “If you will be such a dead bore, Charles, you will provoke me to explain to Miss Tallant what the world means when it calls you a sad rattle.”

“Well?” demanded Arabella mischievously.

“A fribble, ma’am, not worth your attention!” he replied, rising to his feet. “I see my cousin over there, and must pay my respects to her.” He smiled, bowed, and moved away; stayed for a minute or two, talking to Lady Wainfleet; drank a glass of wine with Mr. Warkworth; complimented his hostess on the success of her party; and departed, having done precisely what he had set out to do, which was to place Miss Tallant’s feet securely on the ladder of fashion. The news would be all over town within twenty-four hours that the rich Miss Tallant was the Nonpareil’s latest flirt.

“Did you see Beaumaris paving court to that dashed pretty girl?” asked Lord Wainfleet of his wife, as they drove away from Lady Bridlington’s house.

“Of course I did!” replied his wife.

“Seemed very taken with her, didn’t he? Not in his usual style, was she? I wonder if lie means anything?”

“Robert?” said his wife, with something very like a snort. “If you knew him as well as I do, Wainfleet, you would have seen at one glance that he was amusing himself! I know how he looks in just that humour! Someone ought to warn the child to have nothing to do with him! It is too bad of him, for she is nothing but a baby, I’ll swear!”

“They’re saying in the clubs that she’s as rich as a Nabob.”

“So I have heard, but what that has to say to anything I don’t know! Robert is quite odiously wealthy, and if ever he marries, which I begin to doubt, it will not be for a fortune, I can assure you!”

“No, I don’t suppose it will,” agreed his lordship. “Why did we go there tonight, Louisa? Devilish flat, that kind of an affair.”

“Oh, shocking! Robert asked me to go. I own I was curious to see his heiress. He said he was going to make her the most sought-after female in London.”

“Sounds like a hum to me,” said his lordship. “Why should he do so?”

“Exactly what I asked him! He said it might be amusing. There are times, Wainfleet, when I would like to box Robert’s ears!” ‘

Not only in his cousin’s bosom were vengeful thoughts nourished against Mr. Beaumaris. Lady Somercote, not so doting a mother that she supposed any of her sons would be likely to prove more attractive to the heiress than the Nonpareil, could with pleasure have driven the long diamond pin she wore in her hair between his ribs; Mrs. Kirkmichael thought bitterly that he might, considering the number of times she had gone out of her way to be agreeable to him, have bestowed a little of his attention upon her lanky daughter, a gesture which would have cost him nothing, and might have given poor Maria a start in the world; Mr. Epworth, uneasily aware that for some inscrutable reason he was consistently cast in the shade by the Nonpareil, went the round of the clubs, saying that he had a very good mind to give Beaumaris a set-down at no very distant date; his aunt recalled that she had once quarrelled violently with Lady Mary Beaumaris, and said that it was from his mother Beaumaris had inherited his flirtatious disposition, adding that she was sorry for the woman he eventually married. Even Mr. Warkworth and Lord Fleetwood said that it was rather too bad of the Nonpareil to trifle with the season’s biggest catch; while several gentlemen who slavishly copied every detail of Mr. Beaumaris’s attire wished him safely underground.

There was one voice which was not raised to swell this chorus of disapprobation: Lady Bridlington was in raptures over Mr. Beaumaris. She could talk of nothing else throughout the following day. While he sat beside Arabella, not a smile, not a gesture had escaped the good lady’s anxious eye. He had paid no heed to any other girl in the room; he had plainly advertised to his world that he found Miss Tallant charming: there was no one in London more amiable, more truly polite, more condescending, or more in her ladyship’s good graces! Over and over again she told Arabella that her success was now assured; it was not until her first transports had somewhat abated that she could be rational enough to drop a word of warning in Arabella’s ear. But the more she thought of Mr. Beaumaris’s pronounced attentions to the girl, the more she remembered how many innocent maidens had fallen victims to his spear, the more she became convinced that it was necessary to put Arabella on her guard. So she said in an earnest voice, and with a slightly anxious look in her eye: “I am persuaded, my love, that you are too sensible a girl to be taken-in! But, you know, I stand to you in place of your Mama, and I think I should tell you that Mr. Beaumaris is a most accomplished flirt! No one could be more delighted than I am that he should have singled you out, but it will never do, my dear, if you were to develop a tendre in that direction! I know I have only to drop a word in your ear, and you will not be offended by it! He is a confirmed bachelor. I could not tell you the number of hearts he has broken! Poor Theresa Howden—she married Lord Congleton some years later—went into a decline, and was the despair of her afflicted parents! They did think—and I am sure that nothing could have been more pronounced for all one season than—But no! Nothing came of it!”