Джорджетт Хейер - Black Sheep

She was reasonably docile with her aunt, but constant attendance on her, coupled as it was with a certain degree of anxiety, were beginning to take their toll. Selina, bemoaning the fragility of her own constitution, which prevented her from sharing the task of nursing Fanny, told Abby that she was looking positively hagged, and begged her, at all the most unseasonable moments, to lie down on the sofa, if only for an hour.

It might have been supposed that Abby would have had no time or thought to spare for her own troubles, but they seemed always to be at the back of her mind until she retired to bed, when they immediately leaped to the fore, and kept her awake, tossing and turning almost as restlessly as Fanny. She might tell herself that it was a very good thing that Miles Calverleigh had left Bath, but the melancholy truth was that she missed him so much that it was like a physical ache. No word had come from him; he had been absent for longer than she had anticipated; and the fear that perhaps he did not mean to return to Bath at all was a heavy weight on her spirits. She found herself continually wondering where he was, and what he was doing, and wishing that she could at least know that no accident had befallen him.

None had. He was in London, but while Abby would have considered a visit to his aunt, several to the City, and some prolonged conferences with his lawyer unexceptionable it was as well that one at least of his activities was unknown to her.

Lady Lenham greeted him with a tart demand to be told when he meant to furbish himself up.

“I don’t know. Must I?” he replied, lightly kissing her cheek.

“It’s no use expecting me to bring you back into fashion if you don’t adonize yourself a trifle.”

“Then I won’t expect it,” he said amiably. “I never was one of your dapper-dogs, and it’s too late to change my habits, and if you’re thinking I should look well in a wasp-waisted coat, and with the points of my collars reaching half-way up my checks, you are letting your imagination run off with you, Letty—take my word for it!”

“There’s reason in all things,” she retorted. “Where have you been all these weeks? Don’t tell me you’ve been getting into mischief again!”

“No, no, I’ve been behaving very decorously!” he assured her. “You have to, in Bath. A devilish place!”

She stared at him. “You’ve been in Bath?”

“That’s it. I took Leonard Balking’s nephew there, you know.”

“Yes, you told me you were going to do that, but what in the world kept you there?” she asked suspiciously.

“Just circumstances!”

“Oh! Philandering, I collect! Well, what do you mean to do now?”

“Become a tenant-for-life. You told me it was what I ought to do: remember?”

“What!” she exclaimed. “Are you trying to play off your tricks on me? Who is she?”

“Abigail Wendover,” he replied coolly.

She gave a gasp. “You’re not serious? One of the Wendovers? Miles, she’s never accepted an offer from you?”

“No, but she will.”

“Well, either you’ve windmills in the head, or she’s very very different from the rest of her family!”

“Of course she is! You don’t suppose I’d have fallen in love with her if she hadn’t been, do you?”

“No, and I don’t suppose her family would countenance it for an instant!”

“Lord, Letty, what’s that got to say to anything?”

She laughed. “You don’t change much, Miles! You always were a care-for-nobody, and you always will be! I wish you may succeed with your Abigail. She’s the youngest sister, isn’t she? I never met her, but I’m acquainted with Mary Brede, and have been avoiding James Wendover and his odious wife for years.”

“Yes, that’s what I mean to do,” he said.

His next visit was to a slightly portly gentleman, residing in Mount Street, who stared unbelievingly at him for a moment, before ejaculating: “Calverleigh!” and starting forward to wring his hand. “Well, well, well. After all these years! I hardly recognized you, you old devil!”

“No, I had to look twice at you, too. You’re as fat as a flawn, Naffy!”

“Well, at least no one would take me for a dashed blackamoor!” retorted Mr Nafferton.

After this exchange of compliments, the two middle-aged gentlemen settled down, with a bottle between them, to indulge in reminiscences which, had they been privileged to hear them, would have startled Mr Nafferton’s wife, and considerably diminished his credit with his heir.

“Lord how it takes me back, seeing you again!” said Mr Nafferton, a trifle wistfully. “Those were the days!”

“Nights, mostly,” said Mr Calverleigh. “ How many times did you end in a lighthouse? I lost count! What became of the Dasher, by the way?

“Dolly!” uttered Mr Nafferton. “To think I should have forgotten she was used to be your peculiar!” He chuckled. “You’d never recognize her! She set up a fancy-house a dozen more years ago! Drives in the park in a smart barouche, with one or two of her prime articles, and looks like a duchess! Behaves like one, too! No Haymarket ware in her house: all regular Incognitas! Or so I’m told!” he added hastily.

Mr Calverleigh grinned, but merely said: “Became an Abbess, did she? Yes, she always was as shrewd as she could hold together. Where’s this fancy-house of hers?”

Armed with this information, his next visit was to a house in Bloomsbury, where he sent in his card. Miss Abigail Wendover would certainly not have approved of this excursion.

Mr Calverleigh, ushered into a saloon, was still inspecting the elegance of its furnishings with deep appreciation when the lady upon whom he had come to call entered the room, his card in her hand, and exclaimed: “It is you! Good God! I couldn’t believe it!”

Mr Calverleigh, laughter in his eyes, took two long strides towards her, caught her in his arms, and heartily embraced her.

She returned the embrace, but said: “Now, that’s quite enough! I’ll have you know I’m a respectable woman now!”

Mr Calverleigh, most reprehensibly, gave a shout of mirth.

“Well, you know what I mean!” said the lady, bridling a little.

“Yes, to be sure, I do. Who gave you the gingerbread, Dolly?”

“Oh, he was a regular rabshackle!” she disclosed. “You wouldn’t have known him, for he was long after your time. I never liked him above half, but he was full of juice, and I’m bound to say he bled very freely. What I mean is, he was very generous to me,” she amended, suddenly attacked by a fit of alarming primness.

Mr Calverleigh was unimpressed. “No, is that what you mean? Come down from your high ropes! Do you remember the night a party of us went on a spree to Tothill Fields, and you broke a bottle of Stark Naked over the head of the fellow that was trying to gouge my eyes out?”

“No, I don’t!” she said sharply. “And if you hadn’t got into a mill with a bruiser and a couple of draymen because you was as drunk as Davy’s sow I wouldn’t have had to demean myself! If I did do anything of the sort, which I don’t at all remember!”

“I must be thinking of someone else,” said Mr Calverleigh meekly. “What was the name of that towheaded bit of game Tom Plumley brought along with him?”

“That fussock!” she exclaimed, in a voice vibrant with scorn. “Why, she hadn’t enough spunk to hit a blackbeetle on the head! Now, give over, Miles, do! I don’t say I’m not glad to see you again: well, it’s like a breath of old times, but that’s the trouble! Seeing you makes me forget myself, and start talking flash, which is a thing I haven’t done in years! What’s more, you didn’t come here to crack about old revel-routs! And if, Mr Calverleigh,” she added, with another transition into gentility, but with a twinkle in her sharp eyes, “you have come here in search of a bit of game,I must warn you that you will find no cheap molls in this establishment, but only young ladies of refinement.”

“That’s very good, Dolly!” he approved. “Did it take you long to learn to talk like that?”

“Out with it! What is it you want?” she demanded, ignoring this sally.

“Just what you said, of course,” he replied. “A young lady of refinement!”

The Leavenings had hired lodgings in Orange Grove. Not an ideal situation, perhaps, admitted Mrs Leavening, when Selina pointed out to her its several disadvantages, but it was a fine, open place, and no need at all to summon up a chair every time she wanted to visit the Pump Room, or do a little shopping. As for the Abbey bells, she didn’t doubt that they would soon grow to be so accustomed to them that they would scarcely notice them. “Well, my dear,” she told Selina placidly, “when you get to be of our age, you must have learnt that you won’t find anything that’s exactly what you want, so, if you’ve a particle of common-sense, you’ll take the best that’s offered you.” She then said, with a chuckle: “Mr Calverleigh will laugh when he hears of it! He would have it, only because I like looking out of the window at what’s passing in the street, that I should never be happy but in the centre of the Town!”

Abby had been taking no more than a polite interest in the Leavenings’ plans, but these words affected her powerfully. She said: “If he ever does hear of it! Does he mean to return to Bath, ma’am?”

She spoke with studied nonchalance, but Mrs Leavening was not deceived. The quizzical gleam in her eye brought the blood into Abby’s cheeks, but all she said was: “Well, my dear, as his rooms are being kept for him at the York House, it’s to be supposed he does!”