A Lady's Guide to Fortune-Hunting(58)
Another pause. ‘Perhaps we ought just to decide upon the favour now, for ease.’
‘No.’
‘Then we have a deal,’ Kitty said promptly. ‘How soon can I expect you to have the information for me?’
‘Please leave,’ he said plaintively. ‘You are far too exhausting. The sooner you leave, the sooner I’ll have it.’
‘Wonderful.’ Kitty beamed seraphically. She stood to leave, then hesitated, remembering her other task. She pulled an envelope from her pocket.
‘I wonder,’ she said tentatively. ‘If I might ask one more thing of you … I should like to write to my sisters, but the cost to receive post is such that they – well, every penny is already accounted for. Could I ask you to frank my letter?’
Her face was hot – this request, though less audacious than her previous, felt far more difficult to make. Members of the peerage were entitled to have their post delivered free of charge, by the simple means of signing the envelope – though Kitty imagined only Radcliffe’s family and close friends would feel confident asking it of him. She braced herself for a denial. But she need not have worried. Wordlessly, Radcliffe held her eyes and held out his hand – he was not wearing gloves – and Kitty pressed the letter gratefully into it. As his fingers curled carefully around the edges, she felt the whisper of his touch against her own gloved hand.
‘I’ll send it today,’ he promised, and she believed him.
Archie hesitated on the edge of St James’s Place. He was unsure – even now – whether this was totally necessary. After all, it was not as if Selbourne had behaved ill towards him – on the contrary! At the beginning of their friendship, Archie had of course borne in mind Gerry’s warning. He had dubbed Selbourne – Selby, as Archie had been begged to call him – a bounder of the worst sort. And yet as Selby had confidently asserted to Archie that he was emphatically not a bounder of the worst sort, it was this that Archie was inclined to believe. And thus far, he could not have been kinder to Archie, inviting him along to house parties and faro clubs, guiding him through the most exciting and decadent nights Archie had ever experienced.
It was just that … It was just that now, Archie wondered if the life of a man-about-town was for him. He was so tired, feeling always ill at ease in mind and body. And until his recent birthday, he hadn’t a sixpence to scratch with, having spent all of his allowance for the whole quarter in the company of Selby. He could only be thankful that he now had full access to his inheritance.
In the midst of all this uncertainty, Archie felt sure his brother would know what to do. Resolute again, Archie took a bracing step forward, eyes fixed upon the door to number seven. The door opened, and Archie hastened forward. It was unlike Radcliffe to be up and out so early, but Archie could not miss him. He had to speak to his brother today. But no … the figure was unmistakably feminine. Archie slowed once more, his eyebrows shooting up. How terribly improper, he couldn’t help thinking. A second later, another feminine figure emerged from the house – a maid, it seemed, from the cap. Thank goodness. That did make the thing more appropriate – an official visit, then, rather than a clandestine arrangement. The first lady turned her head in Archie’s direction, and he realised – with a sickening jolt in his stomach – that it was Miss Talbot. Miss Talbot who was leaving his brother’s lodgings. The same Miss Talbot that he had thought, not so many weeks ago, he himself would be marrying. Archie stood stock still, watching her walk away. It was like that between them, then.
No wonder, he thought, with a bleak amusement that felt very alien to him, no wonder Radcliffe hadn’t wanted him to marry her. How they must have laughed together, his brother and Miss Talbot. At the silly boy in hopeless love, who had no idea how very foolish he was. Archie turned around, walking slowly away from St James’s Place. Life in Selbourne’s set might be strange, might make him feel less like himself with every passing moment – but at least it had never made him feel like this.
25
As the year fell properly into May, the first taste of summer became quite palpable. Though the change was not as dramatic as it would have been at Netley Cottage – where the fields and woods around them would burst quite suddenly into life like a match struck in a dark room – the oncoming Season could still be felt in the city. The flowers had made their grand entrances from tightly furled buds, one could still smell the unmistakable scent of warm soil drying from the night’s rain.
The mood here was the same as it was in Biddington in May. The British, it seemed – whether in Dorsetshire, in London, north, south, east or west – would always be cheered by warmth and sunshine, even if only for the novelty of complaining about something new. And yet though the similarity should have pleased Kitty, she was instead beginning to feel quite wretchedly homesick. A hundred miles away, Beatrice, Harriet and Jane might be busy in the garden, or walking to the market – that Kitty wouldn’t know until she received another letter felt like a constant ache.
Kitty had taken advantage of the fine weather to arrange intimate walks with both Pemberton and Crawton, one after the other, hoping that the illusion of privacy – though Aunt Dorothy and Cecily walked only a few paces behind – might prompt a confession of love from either of them. She was to be disappointed. Pemberton had spent an hour giving her a beat for beat revival of not only his vicar’s latest sermon – an entirely uninteresting oration upon the equally dull topics of patience and humility – but also the full conversation he and his mother had shared, following it. Pemberton’s mother was a retiring woman, Kitty was told, who preferred not to mix in society unless it was to attend church. Mrs Pemberton, Kitty felt sure, must also be very dull.