Lady Of Quality by Georgette Heyer

Author:Georgette Heyer [Heyer, Georgette]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Crime
ISBN: 9781446456309
Publisher: Cornerstone Digital
Published: 2011-02-11T00:00:00+00:00

Nine

By the time Miss Wychwood had said goodbye to the last, lingering guests she was feeling more weary than ever before at the end of a party. Everyone except herself (and, presumably, Mr Carleton) seemed to have enjoyed it, which was, she supposed some slight consolation to her for having spent a most disagreeable evening. Lucilla was in what she considered to be exaggerated raptures over it: she wished it might have gone on for ever! Miss Wychwood, barely repressing a shudder, sent her off to bed, and was about to follow her when she found Limbury in the way, obviously awaiting an opportunity to speak to her. She paused, looking an enquiry, and he all unwittingly set the seal on a horrid evening by disclosing, with the smile of one bearing welcome tidings, that Sir Geoffrey had arrived in Bath, and wished her to give him a look-in before she retired to bed.

‘Sir Geoffrey?’ she repeated blankly. ‘Here? Good God, what can have happpened to bring him to Bath at this hour of the night?’

‘Now, don’t you fret yourself, Miss Annis!’ Limbury said, in a fatherly way. ‘It’s no worse than the toothache which Master Tom has, and which my lady thinks may be an abscess, so she wishes to take him instantly to Mr Westcott. Sir Geoffrey arrived twenty minutes before you went down to supper, but when he saw you was holding a rout-party he charged me not on any account to say a word to you about it until the party was over, him being dressed in his riding-habit, and not having brought with him his evening attire, and not wishing to attend the rout in all his dirt. Which is very understandable, of course. So I directed Jane to make up the bed in the Blue bedchamber, miss, and myself carried up supper to him, which is what I knew you would wish me to do.’

Miss Farlow, who had paused in her rather ineffective attempts to restore the drawing-room to order, to listen to this interchange, exclaimed: ‘Oh, poor Sir Geoffrey! If only I had known! I would have run up immediately to make sure that he was comfortable – not that I mean to say Jane is not to be trusted, for she is a very dependable girl, but still – ! Dear little Tom, too! His papa must be in agonies, for nothing is worse than the pain one undergoes with the toothache, particularly when an abscess forms, as well I know, for never shall I forget the torture I suffered when I –’

‘It is Tom who has the toothache, not Geoffrey!’ snapped Miss Wychwood, interrupting this monologue without ceremony.

‘Well, I know, dearest, but the sight of one’s child’s suffering cannot but cast a fond parent into agonies!’ said Miss Farlow.

‘Oh, fiddle!’ said Annis, and went upstairs to rap on the door of the Blue bedchamber.

She found her brother flicking over the pages of the various periodicals with which Limbury had thoughtfully provided him.

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