Bath Tangle by Georgette Heyer Read Free Book Online Page A

been a friend of your dear Papa’s makes it so impossible for us to snub her! I can’t conceive how he came to marry her!’
    ‘Oh, he was all to pieces, and she had a great fortune, or was a great heiress, or some such thing! I pity her daughters: she has them in complete subjection, and, depend upon it, she means them all to contract brilliant marriages! She may succeed with Emily, but I defy her to foist the freckled one on to anything better than a baronet.’
    ‘How can you, Serena?’ protested Fanny.
    ‘I’m sure I could not !’
    ‘No, pray be serious! I daresay Anne will be quite as pretty as Emily in a year or two, and I do think Emily quite delightfully pretty, don’t you? Only I do hope she may not be persuaded into doing anything she doesn’t quite like.’
    ‘I’ll tell you what, Fanny: I shouldn’t wonder at it if all this toad-eating is directed to that end! Lady Laleham hopes to jockey you into sponsoring Emily!’
    ‘Oh, no, surely she could not? Besides, there is no need! She seems to know everyone, and to go everywhere!’
    ‘Franked by the Lalehams! Yes, but she’s as shrewd as she can hold together, and knows very well she is only tolerated. She is the kind of person one is obliged to invite to a rout-party, but never to a dinner for one’s friends!’
    Fanny admitted the truth of this, but said: ‘Yet her manners are not at all vulgar, and she doesn’t precisely toad-eat one.’
    ‘Her manners have all the tiresome formality of those who dare not unbend for fear of appearing not quite the thing, and her toad-eating is of the most unendurable order of that ancient art! I swear I prefer the truckler to that ridiculous parade of grandeur! “You and I, dear Lady Spenborough…” “A woman of quality’s laugh, as we know, Lady Serena…” Ugh!’
    ‘Oh, yes, very bad! quite absurd! But I like Emily, do not you? She is such a lively girl, with such natural, confiding manners!’
    ‘Too easily quelled! It is a study to see her guilt-stricken countenance when Mama’s basilisk eyes admonish her! I will allow her to be both natural and beautiful, but if you have discovered more wit in her than may be stowed in your thimble, and leave room to spare, you have remarkable powers of discernment, my dear!’
    ‘Ah, but you are so clever, Serena!’ Fanny said simply.
    ‘I?’ exclaimed Serena incredulously.
    ‘Oh, yes! Everyone says so, and indeed it is true!’
    ‘My dear Fanny, what in the world are you at? I have not the smallest pretensions to anything more than common sense!’
    ‘But you have! You have a well-informed mind, and you always know what to say to people. Why, when the Castlereaghs were staying with us last year, I was quite lost in admiration at the way you contrived to talk to him! When I could think of nothing to say but the merest commonplace!’
    ‘Good gracious, what nonsense! That style of thing, I promise you, is nothing but a trick! You forget how long I have been knocking about the world. When you are as old as I am you will be doing the same.’
    ‘Oh, no! I never shall be able to,’ Fanny said, shaking her head. ‘I am quite as stupid as Emily Laleham, and I’m sure you must often be quite provoked by me.’
    ‘Never till this moment!’ Serena declared, with a slightly heightened colour, but in a rallying tone. ‘Good God, if ever I have another suitor I’ll take good care to keep him out of your way! You would make him believe me a blue-stocking, and after that, farewell to my chance of contracting even a respectable marriage!’
    That made Fanny laugh, and no more was said. But Serena was shocked to realize how truly she had spoken. Much as she loved the gentle creature, she was sometimes provoked by her simplicity, and often longed for the companionship of someone with wits to match her own.
    It was hard, too, to accustom herself to what she thought a dawdling way of living, and harder still to abandon her hunting. That, while she was in deep