Talk of the Town by Joan Smith

Author:Joan Smith [Smith, Joan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Regency Romance
Publisher: Belgrave House
Published: 1979-05-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

After his fight with Miss Ingleside, St. Felix posted directly back to his sister’s house to enquire of her if she had ever heard anything of an affair between their father and Mrs. Pealing.

“Of course not. The idea’s ridiculous!” she declared. “Who is saying such a thing?”

“Pealing’s niece. She claims father asked the woman to marry him.”

“What nonsense!”

“I knew it could not be true. Father was always so—well, almost holy. He never looked at another woman for as long as I knew him.”

“Yes, he straightened out remarkably,” was the frightening response to this.

“What do you mean? He never ran around— there was never any talk of that sort attached to him. I don’t know of any gentleman of whom more good was spoken than Papa, unless it were Uncle Archie, the Archbishop.”

“Ages ago—oh, years and years ago, Dickie, when you were hardly born—he had a few affairs; nothing to signify. And your Uncle Archie, too, for that matter. But it was opera dancers with him, as a rule. Papa’s girl was an actress, I think, and some other woman. But I was very young myself and only remember listening to Mama and Papa fighting behind closed doors.”

“An actress?” he asked. She didn’t care for the little actress he kept on the side, he thought to himself.

“Yes, a redhead, I think she was, from the Theatre Royal; but it was the other one Mama was really concerned about. It was not Mrs. Pealing, for Mama called her Lady something or other. They even mentioned divorce. I remember lying in bed trembling lest it should happen. How selfish children are. I was due to make my bows in a year or two, and all I thought was that I would be disgraced, and never gave a thought to what poor Mama must be going through. And Papa, too, for that matter. I don’t suppose he relished the idea of divorce; and he must have been dreadfully in love to have even thought of it, for in general all he ever spoke of was keeping the family together, and everyone doing his part, and so on.”

“You don’t know who the woman was? Mrs. Pealing was once a Countess. Mama could have meant her.”

“It couldn’t have been Mrs. Pealing.”

“Why not?”

“Because they haven’t mentioned it to you, and they’d be demanding a couple of thousand pounds if they had such a story as that in their book.”

“Or a voucher to Almack’s,” he added, chagrined.

Elizabeth ignored this aside. “I don’t know what I am to do about that pair. They have sent in a refusal to my tea. They are clearly holding out for a larger party. And now with Prinney calling on them I daren’t refuse. I shall have to send tickets to my ball.”

She thought she would hear an argument against this plan, but Richard was sunk in some deep reverie from which there was no rousing him, and he hadn’t heard.

“Uncle Algernon!” he said, out of the blue.

“Yes, I asked him, but with his gout, you know, I don’t look to see him.

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