Deception (Daughters of Mannerling 3) by M.C. Beaton Read Free Book Online Page B

twins, and yet felt he would be able to tell Abigail from Rachel quite easily. Abigail had the more dominating personality. Rachel was quieter, more subdued, quite shy.
    He found Prudence a pleasant sort of lady, just the sort he ought to marry. She would run his home well, and she was past the first blush of youth and would therefore be more sensible than any flighty young girl.
    He had not really meant to ask Abigail for the supper dance but somehow he found himself doing just that. He performed a country dance with her, noticing how light and graceful she was. When he led her to the supper room, she seemed very much at ease with him, and that caused him a slight feeling of pique. He wondered what it would take to make Miss Abigail Beverley aware of him as a man.
    When they had been served with food and wine, Abigail asked, ‘Did you leave the army before the start of the Peninsular Wars?’
    ‘No, I served there as well.’
    ‘Is there a great deal of hardship for such as you, marching so long and fighting so hard?’
    ‘It varies, Miss Abigail. Sometimes it was hard to find a dry place to pass the night. I remember when a Colonel Freemantle was sent ahead during the retreat of the army from Burgos to find accommodation for Wellington himself. All he could find was a simple hut. He had a fire lit and then scrawled a message on the door that the hut was reserved for Wellington, but when he returned later to the hut, he found an officer warming himself by the fire and refusing to move, “not even for Wellington, not even for Old Nick himself.” The officer, however, moved when he was threatened with arrest. The story was repeated at White’s, where our celebrated Beau Brummel exclaimed to Freemantle, “If I had been in your place, Freemantle, I should have rung the bell and had the fellow kicked downstairs by the servants,” which shows how little some of our dandies know about campaigning. But tell me something of yourself, Miss Abigail. Do you go to London?’
    ‘I shall never see London again,’ said Abigail gloomily. ‘We used to go when Isabella was making her come-out and I loved the theatres and plays, the parks and the people. It must be fine to be able to visit London, particularly in the winter. The nights are so long and dark, and we have to be abed so early.’
    ‘And why is that?’
    ‘To save candles.’ Abigail bit her lip and blushed, cursing her mother’s parsimony in her heart. What would he think of a family who saved candles like the veriest peasant?
    ‘I saw a very good performance of Falstaff when I was last in London,’ he said quickly. ‘Kean was playing him and was quite brilliant. He caught the finest shades of the character.’
    ‘I feel some actors forget that Falstaff, although a man of vulgar soul, is still by habit and inclination a practised courtier,’ said Abigail eagerly, ‘and the coarseness he often assumes in the prince’s company is at least as much intentional acting, employed by him to amuse the prince, as to gratify his own humour.’
    ‘You have the right of it,’ said Lord Burfield, signailing to a footman to pour more wine for them. ‘The way Kean portrayed him, at first you see a facetious man, ludicrously fat, but a man of dignified and gentlemanlike air, always a joker, it is true, but good
ton
. In the second stage, he allows himself to take all sorts of freedoms but with every care to exalt the prince and to assume only the privilege of a court fool who
apparently
may say all that comes into his head. In the last stage, we see Falstaff in complete ‘negligé’, after he has thrown off all regard to good appearances, and yet he still remains original and excites more laughter than disgust. Shakespeare’s genius never fails to amaze me. As Sir Walter Scott so prettily puts it, “I can only compare Shakespeare with that man in the
Arabian Nights
who has the power of passing into any body with ease, and imitating its feelings and actions.”
    ‘But