A Regency Match (5 page)

Lady Alicia frowned at her grandson indignantly. “I have as little patience with sentimentality as anyone,” she declared roundly, “but remaining unmoved by these remarkable performances, Bertie, shows you to be sadly undiscerning, and to find Shakespeare a bore says little for your education and your taste.”

Bertie, thus chastized, promptly made his exit from the box with the excuse that he would fetch a glass of champagne for each of the ladies.

Sophy brought to her grandmother's notice the fact that her crony, Lady March, seated several boxes away, was attempting to send a message to Lady Alicia by means of some indecipherable hand-signals and eye-blinkings. “What on earth can the woman be trying to tell me?” Alicia muttered irritably. “Run over there, Sophy, and find out what she wants.”

Obediently, Sophy left the box and hurried down the corridor toward Lady March's location. To her intense dismay, she saw that, far down the hallway, two men were approaching, one of whom was the disturbing Lord Wynwood. The men were engrossed in conversation and probably had not yet noticed her. She looked about desperately for somewhere to hide. At her left was the open door of a box. A quick look showed it to be empty. Sophy darted inside and closed the door. She leaned against it, trying over the beating of her heart to listen for the two gentlemen's passing steps. But she could hear nothing. After an interminable moment, she opened the door just a crack and peeped out.

In the restricted view the narrow opening provided, she could see a few people milling about a waiter who carried a tray loaded with glasses of champagne. Lord Wynwood and his friend walked into her line of vision, approached the waiter and each took a glass. Horrified, she watched as they stood sipping their drinks just outside the door behind which she'd hidden herself. She ground her teeth in frustration.

“Filthy stuff,” she heard Lord Wynwood's friend mutter in disgust.

“Well, Dennis,” Lord Wynwood answered pleasantly, “one can hardly expect the best champagne at Drury Lane. This is not Prinny's table, after all.”

The man called Dennis laughed and nodded, drinking the champagne with apparent gusto despite his criticism of it. “But to return to our subject,” he said, “I mean no criticism of Iris (who is a divine creature, I assure you) when I say you are making a mistake.”

“A mistake? To marry?” Wynwood asked calmly. “Are you against marriage on principle? I'm very much afraid, Dennis, that your development has been arrested somewhere at about nineteen years of age. There comes a time, old fellow, when one must face up to one's responsibilities.”

“Responsibilities? Have we a responsibility to settle down like old codgers snoozing before the fireside of life?”

Wynwood laughed. “You phrased that very poetically, I must admit, but not very logically. We're past thirty. It's more than time we settled down to raising families, overseeing properties, attending to politics, and facing all the other concerns of maturity.”

“Faugh! Marcus, you sound quite like my father. You must do as you see fit, of course, but as for me, I intend to spend ten years more at least on chasing females, gambling recklessly and wasting my time at all the more reprehensible pursuits.”

“Do so, by all means. I'm not your father, however much my views may resemble his. If you wish to behave like an over-aged schoolboy, I haven't the least objection. Only don't expect me to join you.”

“Too bad,” Dennis sighed with exaggerated disappointment. “What great fun you'll miss. But it's not yet too late. At least
tonight
you're still free. The night is charged with promise. What say you, Marcus, old man? Look at that ladybird down the hall standing with Hester Delafield. Isn't she a beauty?”

“Yes, she is, indeed. I've no objection to your departing from my side to try your hand with her.”

“No, no, I meant her for
you. I
have my eye on the girl I pointed out to you in the box. The one in the green dress, Now,
there's
a filly who's
something like
! Don't you think so?”

“Green dress? I don't seem to recall—”

Dennis made an impatient gesture. “Of course you do. I pointed her out to you earlier. She's the one who threw herself at you at the Gilberts' ball.”

Sophy gasped. Those dreadful men were talking about
her
! She had a strong desire to throw open the door, fix them both with an icy stare and leave them in humiliated astonishment. But Lord Wynwood was about to respond to his friend's question concerning his opinion of her, and she could no more resist eavesdropping on his answer than she could refrain from breathing. She put her ear close to the tiny opening in the door and listened.

The old adage that eavesdroppers never hear good of themselves proved again to be quite true. “You mean Miss Edgerton, I collect,” Lord Wynwood was saying. “She's a pretty-enough little thing, I grant you, but I shouldn't want to become involved with her sort.”

“What sort is that?” Dennis asked in a tone that clearly expressed his intention to disagree with whatever it was his friend would tell him.

“The melodramatic sort,” Marcus said promptly. “A shatterbrained hysteric. You know, the sort of little ninny who makes scenes, enacts Cheltenham tragedies, farcical comedies and all levels of melodrama in between.”

Dennis looked at his friend dubiously. “What
are
you talking about? You met the girl only once, isn't that right? How can you jump to such conclusions from just one meeting? And
how
did you learn her name?”

“I met her
twice
, giving me quite enough time in which to learn her name and her nature. During the first meeting, you were present. You saw with your own eyes the scene she created, so I needn't review the details. During my second meeting with the silly chit, she managed to make herself and me the center of attention in a bookstore crowded with people. It took her barely five minutes to embarrass me about my manners and my coat—”

“Your coat?”

“My coat. And not two minutes later, the girl somehow contrived to overturn a table covered with books. When I last saw her, she was surrounded by a pile of debris and a cloud of rising dust, but managing to hold her head up high.” He laughed at the recollection. “She was not unlike our Mrs. Siddons in that last act, declaring to Coriolanus that ‘Thy valiantness was mine!'”

Dennis chuckled and shook his head. “Sounds like a Banbury tale to me. Are you bamming me, Marcus?”

“I shall allow you to decide that for yourself. In the meantime, we'd best start back. The crowd has thinned. Intermission must be coming to an end.”

They turned and strolled back down the corridor, leaving behind a Sophia trembling with fury. How
dared
that beast malign her so! How dared he take a series of unfortunate mishaps and twist them into an indictment of her character! Was it her fault that the table in the bookstore had fallen over? The manager himself had admitted that the table had a weakness in its structure. And was it her fault that Dilly had made that unfortunate remark about Lord Wynwood's coat? The remark, embarrassing as it had been, had been made in admiration, after all …

Approaching footsteps checked her angry brooding. People were returning to their boxes. She slipped from her hiding place and hurried back to Sir Walter's box.

“There you are, girl,” her grandmother declared. “Where have you been this age? What did Lady March want?”

Sophy blinked. “Lady March?” she asked stupidly.

“Yes, Lady March, Lady March! Isn't that where you went?”

Sophy had completely forgotten her errand. How was she to explain to her irritable grandmother that she'd spent the entire intermission hiding behind a door? Before she could frame a reply, the curtains rose on the fourth act.

“Never mind,” Lady Alicia muttered. “Lady March's remarks are never of any consequence.” And she turned her attention to the play.

But Sophy was no longer interested in the tribulations of Coriolanus and his prideful mother. Even Mrs. Siddons's magnificent bearing and reverberating voice failed to distract Sophy from her brooding over what she'd overheard. He'd called her a shatterbrained hysteric! A ninny! A silly chit! She positively trembled with vexation. Never had she felt so painfully humiliated.

She turned her eyes to Lord Wynwood's box. He was watching the play, but his friend's head was turned in her direction. The great distance between them made his face seem a white blur, but Sophia was convinced that he was grinning at her. She turned her back on him. The detestable Lord Wynwood had evidently succeeded in turning an admirer into a scoffer. She was nothing now but an object of ridicule. But why should she care? Both Lord Wynwood and his friend Dennis Whoever-he-was meant less than nothing to her!

Sophia was grimly silent on the way home, making it plain to the family that the evening they had planned with such optimism, and which had started with such promise, had failed in the end to give the girl a bit of cheer. Isabel remarked to Sir Walter, after they'd said their good-nights to Lady Alicia and the stormy-eyed Sophia, that she'd been afraid from the first that Coriolanus had been a poor choice of play. “All that ranting over honor and death—it's enough to give one the megrims,” she complained.

“Don't refine on it too much, Mama,” Bertie advised callously as he went off down the hall to his bedroom. “Sophy'll get over it. I've never known her to poker up for very long.”

Lady Alicia, undressing for bed, was having thoughts of a similar nature. Although she would not have expressed herself like Bertie, she was convinced that her volatile granddaughter would not remain in the doldrums for very long. However, she could not be easy in her mind while the girl was unhappy. If the prospect of a fortnight's visit to her stepmother could depress the girl to such an extent, perhaps it behooved Alicia to cancel her trip to Sussex.

She dismissed Miss Leale, put a wrapper over her nightdress and padded in slippered feet across the hall to her granddaughter's bedroom. “Sophy,” she asked, tapping lightly on the door, “are you asleep?”

“No, Grandmama. Come in if you wish.”

Lady Alicia stepped into her granddaughter's room and peered about her in astonishment. The girl had not even undressed. Her portmanteau, which had already been packed for her trip home, was lying open on her bed. Her trunk stood open on the floor. She had evidently been rummaging through her luggage. Petticoats, shawls, dresses and shoes were scattered about in considerable upheaval. “What on earth are you doing?” Lady Alicia asked bewilderedly.

“Packing, as you see,” the girl told her curtly.

“Packing? But you'd
already
packed.”

“Well then, if you wish me to be perfectly accurate,” Sophy said, ruthlessly crushing an expensive silk evening dress into a ball and tossing it into the trunk, “I'm
re
packing.”

“But … whatever for? And
why
are you taking that ball gown? Surely you won't need it in Wiltshire.”

“That's just the point. I'm not going to Wiltshire.”

“Not going to—?” Poor Lady Alicia dropped into the nearest chair, groaned and put a hand to her forehead. “Sophia, you are giving me the most fearful headache. If you're not going home to Wiltshire, will you kindly tell me
where
you plan to go?”

“I'm going with
you
… to Sussex.” The words were said with grim determination, the girl sorting out clothes with careless dispatch.

“
What
! To
Sussex
!” The old woman studied her granddaughter narrowly. “What sort of hum is this. You've been
adamant
in your refusal to set foot in Wynwood Hall. What has caused this sudden about-face?”

Sophy ceased her frenzied packing and looked down at her grandmother with a glint in her eye which Lady Alicia had not seen before. “I've changed my mind,” she said, elaborately casual.

“Why?”

Sophy shrugged. “Call it a whim.”

“A
whim
? Listen here, girl, I don't like whims. For days now, you have been swearing—and for no reason that I can determine—that you'll never face Lord Wynwood again. Suddenly, because of a
whim
, you make a complete reversal. How can I plan our lives on
whims
? Perhaps, when the wind changes, you'll reverse yourself again.”

“I promise I shall not.”

“Are you telling me that you are now willing to
face
Lord Wynwood?”

“Willing?” Sophy smiled, a slight smile that held no warmth and caused her grandmother to feel a twinge of apprehension. “I'm more than willing. In fact, there's suddenly nothing I'd rather do than face Lord Wynwood again.”

Lady Alicia returned to her room, her brow creased in thought. What had caused this shocking turnabout? That something had happened in the theater was obvious. She could even pinpoint the time of the occurrence: the intermission following the third act. And of course, Marcus Harvey, Lord Wynwood, was somehow involved. What part had he played? Had he
cut
the girl? Was Sophy planning a foolish revenge of some sort?

She shook her head and climbed wearily into bed. She must give up this pointless speculation. Whatever had occurred, it would lead to some sort of disaster—of that she was sure. Well, she'd long been aware that Sophy's headstrong behavior would lead the girl into trouble. It was coming … the old woman could feel its approach in her bones. But as she pulled the covers up to her neck and snuggled into the comforting warmth, she banished the subject from her mind. She couldn't live Sophy's life for her. Nor could she protect the girl from the consequences of her impetuous behavior. Sophy would have to handle those consequences herself; there was very little a grandmother could do. Lady Alicia could only hope that the pain would not be severe, that Sophy would learn from her mistakes, and that she, weary old creature though she was, would be permitted to assist in picking up the pieces.