Lady of Quality by Georgette Heyer Read Free Book Online

aunt will write to Uncle Carleton and he will order me to do as I'm bid. I don't believe there is any hope for me."
    "Oh, don't despair!" said Annis cheerfully. "It wouldn't surprise me if your aunt were to be too thankful to learn that you are in safe hands to raise the least objection to your prolonging your visit to me. She might even be glad of a respite! And if she thinks the matter over she will surely perceive that to fetch you back immediately would give rise to just the sort of scandal-broth she must be most anxious to avoid. Ninian escorted you here because I invited you: what could be more natural? I wonder where I made your acquaintance?"
    Lucilla smiled faintly at this, but it was a woebegone effort, and it took a little time to convince her that there was no other way out of her difficulties. Annis felt extremely sorry for her, since it was obvious that Mrs Amber was so morbidly conscious of the responsibility laid on her that she chafed the poor child almost to desperation by the excessive care she took of her.
    Before the tea-tray was brought in, Annis took Ninian to her book-room while she there wrote the letter he was to carry to Mrs Amber, and supplied him with enough money to defray the various expenses he had incurred. She told Lucilla that she needed his help in the composition of the letter, but her real object was to discover rather more about Lucilla's flight than had so far been disclosed. She had mentally discounted much of what Lucilla had told her as the exaggeration natural to youth, but by the time Ninian had favoured her with his version of the affair she had realized that Lucilla had not exaggerated the pressure brought to bear on her, and could easily picture the effect on a sensitive girl such pressure would have. No one had ill-treated her; she had been suffocated with loving kindness, not only by her aunt, but by Lord and Lady Iverley, and by Ninian's three sisters; even Eliza, a ten-year old, conceiving a schoolgirl passion for her, and doting on her in a very embarrassing way. Cordelia and Lavinia, both of whom Miss Wychwood judged to be two meekly insipid young women, had, apparently, told Lucilla that they looked forward to the day when they could call her sister. This, Ninian said, in a judicial way, had been a mistaken thing to have done; but it did not seem to have occurred to him that his own conduct left much to be desired. It was obvious to Miss Wychwood that his devotion to his parents was excessive; but when she asked him if he had indeed been prepared to marry Lucilla, he replied: "No, no! That is to say—well, what I mean is—oh, I don't know, but I thought something would be bound to happen to prevent it!"
    "But I collect, my dear boy," said Miss Wychwood, "that your parents love you very dearly, and have never denied you anything?"
    "That is just it!" said Ninian eagerly. "My—my every wish has been granted me, so—so how could I be so ungrateful as to refuse to do the only thing they have ever asked me to do? Particularly when my mother begged me, with tears in her eyes, not to shatter the one hope my father had left to him!"
    This moving picture failed to impress Miss Wychwood. She said, somewhat dryly, that she was at a loss to understand why his loving parents should have set their hearts on his marriage to a girl he had no wish to marry.
    "She is the daughter of Papa's dearest friend," explained Ninian, in a reverential tone. "When Captain Carleton bought Old Manor, it was in the hope that the two estates would be joined, in the end, by this marriage."
    "Captain Carleton, I assume, was a gentleman of substance?"
    "Oh, yes! All the Carletons are full of juice!" said Ninian. "But that has nothing to do with the case!"
    Miss Wychwood thought that it probably had a great deal to do with the case, but kept this reflection to herself. After a moment, Ninian said, flushing slightly: "My father, I daresay, has never had a mercenary thought in his head, ma'am! His only