Author: Georgette Heyer
Category: Historical
Go to read content：https://readnovelfree.com/p/35282_2
‘I am bringing the dear child out this season,’ she announced, ignoring the interpolation. ‘I shall present her, of course, at one of the Drawing-rooms – if the Queen holds any more, but they say her health is now so indifferent that –’
‘You’ll have to do something about her freckles – if she’s the one I think she is,’ he interrupted. ‘Have you tried citron-water?’
‘I didn’t invite you to come here to discuss Jane’s appearance!’ she snapped.
‘Well, why did you invite me?’
‘To ask you to hold a ball in her honour – at Alverstoke House!’ she disclosed, rushing her fence.
Plan B - SteamyCheck out the best interactive novels on Whispers: Interactive stories.
‘To do what?’
‘I know very well what you are going to say, but only consider, Vernon! She is your niece, and what place could be more suitable for her come-out ball than Alverstoke House?’
‘This house!’ he responded, without hesitation.
‘Oh, don’t be so disagreeable! I am persuaded they could not dance above thirty couples in this room, and only think of all the fuss and botheration!’
‘I am thinking of it,’ said his lordship.
‘But there can be no comparison! I mean, here, where I should be obliged to remove all the furniture from my drawing-room, besides using the dining-room for supper, and the parlour for the ladies’ cloaks – and Alverstoke House, where there is such a splendid ballroom! And it is my own old home, too!’
‘It is also my home,’ said the Marquis. ‘My memory is occasionally faulty, but I retain the liveliest recollection of what you so rightly term the fuss and botheration that attended the balls given there for Augusta, for yourself, and for Eliza, and my answer, dear sister, is No!’
‘Have you no proper feeling?’ she said tragically.
He had drawn an enamel snuff-box from his pocket, and was critically studying the painting on its lid. ‘No, none at all. I wonder if I made a mistake when I purchased this? I liked it at the time, but I begin to find it a trifle insipid.’ He sighed, and opened the box, with a practised flick of his thumb. ‘And I most assuredly do not like this mixture,’ he said, inhaling an infinitesimal pinch, and dusting his fingers with an expression of distaste. ‘You will say, of course, that I should have known better than to have permitted Mendlesham to thrust his Sort upon me, and you are perfectly right: one should always mix one’s own.’ He got up. ‘Well, if that’s all, I’ll take my leave of you.’
‘It is not all!’ she uttered, her colour much heightened. ‘I knew how it would be, of course – oh, I knew!’
‘I imagine you might, but why the devil you wasted my time –’
‘Because I hoped that for once in your life you might show some – some sensibility! some apprehension of what is due to your family!
even some affection for poor Jane!’
‘Rainbow-chasing, Louisa! My lack of sensibility has distressed you for years; I haven’t the least affection for your poor Jane, whom I should be hard put to it to recognise, if I met her unawares; and I’ve yet to learn that the Buxteds are members of my family.’
‘Am I not a member of your family?’ she demanded. ‘Do you forget that I am your sister?’
‘No: I’ve never been granted the opportunity to forget it. Oh, don’t fly off the hooks again – you can have no notion how bracket-faced you look when you get into one of your pelters! Console yourself with my assurance that if Buxted had left you purse-pinched I should have felt myself obliged to let you hang on my sleeve.’ He looked mockingly down at her. ‘Yes, I know you’re about to tell me that you haven’t sixpence to scratch with, but the plain truth is that you are very well to do in the world, my dear Louisa, but the most unconscionable pinch-penny of my acquaintance! Now, don’t nauseate me by prating of affection! You’ve no more for me than I have for you.’
Considerably disconcerted by this direct attack, she stammered: ‘How can you say so? When I am sure I have always been most sincerely attached to you!’
‘You deceive yourself, sister: not to me, but to my purse!’
‘Oh, how can you be so unjust? And as for my being well to do in the world, I daresay that you, with your reckless extravagance, would be astonished to learn that I am obliged to exercise the strictest economy! Why, pray, do you imagine that I removed from our beautiful house in Albemarle Street when Buxted died, and came to live in this out-of-the-way place?’
He smiled. ‘Since there was not the least occasion for that removal, I can only suppose that it was from your incurable love of sconcing the reckoning.’
‘If you mean that I was obliged to reduce my expenses –’
‘No, merely that you were unable to resist the temptation to do so.’
‘With five children left on my hands –’ She broke off, warned by the quizzical look in his eye that it would be unwise to develop this theme.
‘Just so!’ he said sympathetically. ‘I think we had better part, don’t you?’
‘Sometimes,’ said Lady Buxted, with suppressed passion, ‘I think you must be the most odious, unnatural creature that ever drew breath! No doubt if it had been Endymion who had applied to you you would have been all compliance!’