01 Bath Quadrille by Amanda Scott

Author:Amanda Scott [Scott, Amanda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780451168757
Publisher: Signet
Published: 1991-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

X

SYBILLA EXPLAINED THAT, FAR from quacking herself, she was doing her best to recover quickly from the illness that had incapacitated her. She would have been happy to recount the details to him, such as she knew them, but Brandon soon turned the subject to his favorite topic.

“I am perfectly stout again, myself,” he said, “and I know you will be glad I came to town, for you will not be thinking I’ve taken a bad toss if I am right here under your nose.”

“I suppose you found you did not have enough money for Leicestershire,” she said. “You said you had enough, but—”

He grimaced in annoyance. “Are you still on about that? I told you everything was all right and tight with me. In any event, I shan’t ask you for a penny, you may be sure of that!”

Since he still moved stiffly and was clearly not yet up to snuff, and since she knew from vast experience that his temper under such circumstances was not to be relied upon, she quickly changed the subject, asking if his friend had come with him.

“Oh, yes, Sitwell came, and we mean to stay through the Season, you know, for I cannot think it will do me any good to go back to school. You know Charlie only stayed the one year, Syb, and I don’t think Cambridge suits me any better than it did him.”

“But surely, Brandon, you would do better to finish what you have started, at least to finish out the term!”

“In point of fact, it has been suggested that I might prefer not to finish out the term,” he explained with a rueful grin.

“Oh, dear, but why did you not tell us? Papa will be vastly displeased, I can tell you, and all the more so that you—”

“I doubt he will pay any heed at all,” Brandon said. “He don’t care a whisker what I do, and never has.”

“That is not true,” Sybilla said, but the statement sounded weak even to her own ears, and she could not blame him for his look of scorn. “Why were you sent down?” she asked with a sigh, as much to remove that expression from his face as from any real wish to hear the details.

But Brandon was perfectly happy to tell her. “It was not so much the fact that I overturned my tutor in his own gig—Oh, don’t look so shocked, Sybby. What else was I to do when the silly gudgeon told me he had never been upset. What a damned slow fellow he must have been all his life! I decided he should have the experience, so I drove straight onto a steep bank and upset the gig. No real injury, of course, so that cannot have been it. The bagwig was not terribly clear as to his reasons, you know, or even clear as to whether I was actually being sent down. Just kept muttering about how I was as impossible as Papa, which cannot be the case, for no one is, and saying that perhaps I would prefer to be elsewhere for a time.

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