Indiscretion (Jude Morgan) by Jude Morgan

Author:Jude Morgan
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 0312374372
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Published: 2005-01-02T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter XV

The ball at Mr Leabrook’s house was soon a settled thing. Invitations, quickly extended, were as quickly accepted in a neighbourhood not over-supplied with such entertainments at this season; and now there was nothing to do but prepare in happy anticipation — or, in Caroline’s case, to dread, and wish for a way of not going to Hethersett at all.

It was nearly worse: for Mr Leabrook, in the flush of hospitality, talked of the whole Wythorpe party sleeping overnight at Hethersett as his guests, so they need not leave the ball so early to ride home; and the whole Wythorpe party must mean both Manor and Rectory families. But fortunately Lady Milner expressed some finicking doubt about the propriety of Isabella staying under the same roof as her fiancé before the marriage; and Isabella herself raised the more practical question of how so many people were to be comfortably accommodated at Hethersett, large as it was, when Mr Leabrook already had company staying for that week. So Caroline was thankful to find that idea dropped — though it did raise another idea that had been plucking at her, and which at last she had confirmed by Isabella: just who were these people from London that Mr Leabrook had to stay?

‘A young couple named Downey. He invited them to come and see him a good while ago, when he was at Brighton, I believe. Oh, Caro, perhaps you know them too, then, from that time?’

‘Yes — yes, I met them — they are not a couple, by the by, but brother and sister — relatives of my late employer. Well, well, how nice.’

‘I almost begin to envy you that time at Brighton, my dear, for you have quite stolen a march on me — I don’t know them at all — but they are very agreeable, according to Richard. Though men say that about everybody in any case — so tell me, what do you say?’

Caroline, still rather pained at finding herself using the phrase how nice — not just in response to this news, but in any context whatever — struggled a moment and said: ‘Yes — certainly, they are agreeable people from what I knew of them. Now, have you decided yet what you shall wear?’

So, the company from London was none other than Matthew and Maria! The thought had hardly occurred to her when Mr Leabrook had first mentioned his expected visitors, but then everything connected with that time seemed to Caroline to lie on the other side of a great gulf; only afterwards had she begun to ponder, and to remember that invitation he had urged upon them at Brighton. It was another jolt of surprise in the placid surface of her new life — if not one that should occasion any such disquiet as the reappearance of Mr Leabrook. After all, no bitter memory attached to the Downeys: no present difficulty was presented by their past association. Still, they were in themselves reminders of that

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