Vernon was, indeed, sitting in his vehicle, and when he caught sight of the two women, he slapped the reins and drew up beside them.
“How long you have been gone! Come, take the place beside me—Miss Wilson will excuse you, I am sure, and you look very tired.”
“We are almost at the avenue, and the walking does me good.”
Vernon was not content to leave them alone and so he reined in the vehicle and walked the horse beside the two women. “You must tell me who you saw. Did you see the Reverend Mr. Chapman?”
“Only Mrs. Chapman.”
“And no one else?”
“No one. I took the liberty of asking her to wait upon us at Churchill. I understand that she and Mrs. Barrett attempted to visit and were turned away.”
“Oh, surely not! I am sure that I only told them that you were still fatigued from your journey. There will always be time for visiting.”
Lady Vernon was spared the necessity of a reply, for as they had got to the drive, a curricle raced toward the house at such an impossible speed that the women were forced to step away for fear of being caught under its wheels. Lady Vernon wondered at a person who drove with such disregard for those in his path.
“Reginald!” cried Vernon.
“It is Mrs. Vernon’s brother, Mr. deCourcy,” Wilson said in a low voice to her mistress.
The driver, observing the lady standing behind his brother, jumped down and handed the reins to the little groom who had struggled to keep pace with his master.
Reginald deCourcy was a very handsome young man. His eyes were the same color as his sister’s, but where Mrs. Vernon’s gaze was languid and indifferent, Reginald’s was penetrating and lively. He was taller than Vernon, and he moved with the assurance of one who was very pleased with himself and defied anyone else to be displeased with him.
The gentlemen greeted each other formally, and Reginald was introduced to Lady Vernon. She observed that Reginald’s bow was somewhat frosty and his address just short of outright impertinence. Her own curtsy was perfectly graceful and polite, which had the desired effect of making him conscious of his incivility, and he seemed close to making some sort of apology when his attention was diverted by his two nephews, who came running down the avenue. He was obliged to take each one in turn and toss him into the air and exclaim at how heavy and tall he had got since he had last seen him. He then lifted them both into the curricle and made a place for himself, and allowing each boy to put a hand on the reins, he guided the carriage, at a more moderate pace, down the drive.
Vernon excused himself and scrambled back into the gig, hurrying it after Reginald’s curricle in a manner that brought the women very near to laughter.
“He is quite handsome,” Wilson observed as she accompanied Lady Vernon down the drive.
“Yes, and he thinks well of himself, to be sure,” Lady Vernon replied. “His greeting was certainly very cool. I imagine that his sister has given him a very pretty opinion of me.”
The observation was soon confirmed in a conversation that Lady Vernon overheard not long after. She went up to her apartments to write a reply to her daughter and had got as far as
You are very good in suffering Mrs. Johnson’s notice. We must take it as a mark of her friendship for me, and I ask you to sacrifice a little of your time on my account. A reprieve from Miss Summers’s education can do you no harm. For the first week, we were very quiet. Now, however, our party is enlarged by Mrs. Vernon’s brother. He is very handsome
when, as the room had got quite warm, she paused to open the casement window above her little writing table. Directly below was a network of slate paths that ran beside the hedgerow, and Mrs. Vernon and her brother walked up and down in earnest conversation.
“We were obliged to receive her, Reginald,” Mrs. Vernon was saying. “What else could we do? Charles was always so attentive to his brother, always spending more effort than he ought in trying to keep up the relationship, and now extending his generosity to his brother’s widow. In my opinion, money is at the root of her coming to Churchill—she cannot live within her income and so means to impose upon Charles.”
“And by his act of charity, your husband admits into your household the most accomplished flirt in all of England. I know from Charles Smith that at Langford she behaved so atrociously that every woman in the household was miserable and wishing her gone.”
“You are mistaken there, I think. Eliza Manwaring would not keep up a correspondence if that were so.”
“Well, you do not see the letters. They may be from Manwaring himself, for it is said that he is quite smitten with her. Smith tells me that Mrs. Manwaring was made utterly wretched, and that Miss Manwaring, who was in a fair way to catching Sir James Martin, was thwarted by Lady Vernon’s determination to attach him to her daughter. Have you met her?”
“No. Lady Vernon has placed her in school in London. Oh, if you could but see her attentions to my children! The hypocrisy of interest and affection from a woman who has neglected her own child—but I am not deceived.”
“I must say,” Reginald said, somewhat reluctantly, “that as much as I have heard of Lady Vernon’s beauty, I was ill prepared for how close it came to truth. But it is what allows her to deceive so many—people will always be taken in by a beautiful woman but never by a plain one.”
After this remark, the pair moved out of Lady Vernon’s hearing, and she took up her pen once more with a mixture of satisfaction and anger. The latter emotion overwhelmed the former. A lady will always take pleasure in a compliment, particularly if she was not meant to hear it, as such a remark would be more genuine than one made to her face. The insult to Frederica, however, annulled any satisfaction, and it was in an ill humor that she continued her letter to her daughter.
and lively, but insolent; perhaps when I have inspired him with a greater respect for us than the kind opinions of his sister and his friends have encouraged, he may become agreeable. There is an exquisite pleasure in making a person acknowledge his prejudices—it is just the project to occupy my time and to prevent my feeling so acutely the separation from those whom I love.
chapter twenty-four
Reginald deCourcy came to Churchill Manor with a premeditated aversion toward Lady Vernon, expressed in a certain condescension, which the lady answered with calmness and reserve. Her manner was so free of vanity, pretension, or levity that Reginald began to wonder whether he might have placed an improper degree of confidence in Lady Hamilton’s assertions and Charles Smith’s gossip. He resolved to make out her character for himself and began to seek opportunities to engage her in conversation.
A few days after his arrival, he came upon Lady Vernon and his elder niece, a girl of about three years in age. The two were sitting on the ground in a little copse not far from the border of Churchill Wood. Lady Vernon had been showing young Kitty how to collect dried stalks and grass and to weave them into baskets.
“Good morning, Lady Vernon,” Reginald greeted her.
She replied with an inviting smile, and so he made some general remark about the mildness of the weather and added, “It is excellent for a sportsman. I have never had the pleasure of shooting in this part of Sussex.”
Lady Vernon hesitated just long enough to make the young man recognize his clumsiness. To his credit, he did recognize it and began to apologize.
“Say no more, Mr. deCourcy,” she said gravely. “If I have been brave enough to return to the scene of my husband’s accident, I cannot shrink from any allusion to it. You have come from Bath, I believe? I hope that you left your uncle in good health?”