The most welcome letter Adam received came from his father’s astringent elder sister. Writing from her lord’s seat in Yorkshire Lady Nassington congratulated him on his common sense, and offered him both her house in Hampshire, as a honeymoon resort, and the services of her third son to support him through the wedding ceremony.
Adam was glad to accept the first of these offers, for Mr Chawleigh was showing alarming signs of being more than willing not only to plan the honeymoon, but to pay for it as well; but the second he refused, having provided himself with a groomsman in the lanky person of Timothy Beamish, Viscount Brough, the eldest son of the Earl of Adversane.
His friendship with Brough dated from his first term at Harrow, and had survived both separation and diverging interests. A desultory correspondence had kept them in touch, and the link had been strengthened after a few years by the arrival at the headquarters of the 52nd Regiment of Mr Vernon Beamish, a raw and bashful subaltern, for whom Brough solicited Adam’s patronage. “If he doesn’t fall overboard, or lose himself in the wilds of Portugal, you will shortly be reinforced by my little brother, my dear Dew,” had scrawled Brough. “Quite a nice pup, so be kind to him, and don’t let him play with the nasty Frogs....”
Brough had not been in London when Adam returned from France, but two days after the notice of Adam’s impending marriage appeared in the Gazette he strolled into Fenton’s Hotel, and, upon being informed that my Lord Lynton was out, said that he would await his return. An hour later Adam entered his private parlour to find him lounging in a chair by the fire, his very long legs stretched out before him, and the rest of his form hidden behind a copy of the Courier. He lowered this, as the door opened, disclosing a cadaverous countenance which wore an expression of settled melancholy.
“Brough!” exclaimed Adam joyfully.
“Now, don’t say you’re glad to see me!” begged his lordship. “I hate whiskers!”
“Whiskers be damned! I was never more glad to see anyone!”
“Pitching it too rum!” sighed Brough, dragging himself out of his chair. “Or have you but this instant arrived in England? Come along! don’t hesitate to try it on rare and thick!”
Adam gripped his bony hand, smiling. “I’ve been in England some weeks. Three — but it seems more.”
“Running rather sly, aren’t you?” drawled his friend.
“No — upon my honour! I looked for you in Brooks’s, but was told you were in Northamptonshire still. I wrote to you yesterday: you can’t have received my letter, surely? How did you find me out? What brings you to town?”
“I haven’t received your letter; I found you out by enquiring for you in Grosvenor Street; I was brought to town by the notice in the Gazette,” replied Brough, ticking off the several questions on his long fingers. That, you know, conveyed the intelligence to my powerful mind that you had returned to England. But why I should have taken the notion into my head that you might have some use for me I can’t conjecture!”
“Until your powerful mind apprehended that I wanted you for my groomsman!” said Adam, smiling up into his deep-set eyes. “Will you do that for me, Brough?”
“But of course! With the greatest pleasure on earth, dear boy! I’m not acquainted with Miss Chawleigh, but m’father tells me it’s an excellent match. Says you’ve done just as you ought, and I’m to present you with his felicitations. By the bye, how is my young brother?”
“He was in a capital way when I saw him last. I wish I knew what’s been happening since I left! Soult’s on the run, but not rompéd yet. What a moment to have been obliged to apply for furlough! Not that it is that, of course. I’m selling out”
“Well, you’d think it a dead bore to be serving in peacetime,” remarked Brough. “The on-dit is that the Bourbons will be back before the summer’s out. I don’t know how much of a set-back that pitiful business at Bergen-op-Zoom will prove to be. Graham seems to have made a rare mull of it.”
Adam nodded, grimacing, but said: “We shan’t be lurched by that. If we can outflank Soult, pin him up against the Pyrenees, cut off from his supplies, see if the whole house of cards don’t tumble down! You’ve no notion what the feeling is in southern France: We thought the natives better-disposed towards us than the Spaniards!” He laughed suddenly. “We pay for what we commandeer, you see, which Boney’s army doesn’t! Lord, I do wish I knew where we are now! It’s nearly a month since Orthes — I suppose we’re held up by a mingle-mangle of politicians!”
On the following day, the news of a victory at Tarbes on the 20th March was published. A part of the Light Division had been hotly engaged, but it did not seem as though the 52nd Regiment had taken much part in the action: a circumstance which slightly consoled Adam for his enforced absence. Nor, however, did it seem that Wellington had succeeded in cutting Soult’s lines of communication. The Marshal was retiring in good order upon Toulouse.
Matters of more domestic moment claimed Adam’s attention. Mr. Chawleigh, baulked in his plans for a splendid marriage ceremony, wanted to know whether his Jenny was expected to wait until the following year before being presented at Court. He understood, on the authority of Mrs Quarley-Bix, that she could not go into society until this function had been performed; but while he didn’t wish Jenny to do anything not quite the thing, it was plain that he viewed with considerable disfavour any postponement of her debut. If she was not to appear at any ton-party, it would look as though my lord was ashamed of his bride, and that (said Mr Chawleigh, his jaw pugnaciously out-thrust) was not what he had bargained for.
Adam neither relished the manner of this admonition nor wished to take part in the season’s festivities, but he did appreciate Mr Chawleigh’s objection. Mr Chawleigh was paying him handsomely to establish Jenny in the ranks of the ton, and although the letter of the bargain might be fulfilled by her elevation to the peerage, the spirit of it demanded that every effort should be made to introduce her into Society. There could be little satisfaction in becoming a Viscountess if one was obliged to live for a whole year in seclusion. Moreover, if no presentation took place, and no cards were sent out announcing the bridal couple’s readiness to receive visits of ceremony, Adam was afraid that some of the high sticklers whose notice was of the first importance to a lady desirous of entering the exclusive circle to which they belonged might consider that the period of mourning absolved them from any duty to call on Lady Lynton thereafter. It might even be thought that to preserve the strict period of mourning was a tacit signal that the usual civilities were not expected, for it was certainly very odd conduct to interrupt this period for the celebration of nuptials which it would have been more proper to have postponed.
“Ay, but your affairs won’t wait, my lord,” said Mr Chawleigh, when Adam tried to explain the difficulty to him. “I won’t tip over the dibs until I see the knot tied, because I’m not one to shell out the nonsense without I’ve better security than you can offer me. Now, there’s no need to nab the rust! I don’t doubt you’d stick to the bargain, but who’s to say you’d be alive to do it? Anything could happen to you, and then where would I be? Holding a draft on the Pump at Aldgate!”
This point of view could scarcely be expected to appeal to Adam; but his sense of humour came to his rescue, and, instead of yielding to a reckless impulse to repudiate the betrothal, he sought counsel of Lady Oversley.
She perceived the intricacies of the situation at once, and gave the matter her profound consideration. “She must be presented,” she decided. “It would have a very strange appearance if she weren’t, because one always is, you know, on the occasion of one’s marriage. And there is nothing improper in going to a Drawing-Room when in mourning, though not, I think, in colour — except lavender, perhaps. Only, who is to present her? In general, one’s mother does so, but poor Jenny has no mother, and even if she had — dear me, yes! this is a trifle awkward, because I don’t think you could ask it of your own mother. Not while she is in such deep mourning, I mean! Well, it will have to be me, though I am strongly of the opinion that if we could but hit on a member of your own family it would create a better impression.”