April Lady by Georgette Heyer

Author:Georgette Heyer
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
Published: 2011-11-06T13:00:00+00:00

Eight

Letty remained in Bryanston Square all day; and great was Mrs Thorne’s delight to find her there when she returned from a protracted shopping expedition with Fanny. Silks and muslins for the making of Fanny’s bride-clothes had been their object; and while the tour of the warehouses had been in the nature of a preliminary skirmish so much had been bought, and so many patterns had been brought home to be studied at leisure that little else was talked of during the remainder of Letty’s visit. Mrs Thorne did indeed notice that she was rather languid in spirit, but this circumstance she ascribed to pique, and paid no heed to it, beyond remarking, not very felicitously, that in spite of her three years’ seniority she had never expected Fanny to go off before her cousin.

Nell, meanwhile, spent an unexceptionable if rather dull day, and since such sedentary occupations as netting, tatting, knotting a fringe, or trying to bring to a successful conclusion a game of Patience, a new form of recreation which the Prince Regent had been so condescending as to explain to her, left her mind rather too much at liberty to fret over her troubles, she soon began to be sorry she had refused even so mild a form of entertainment as an invitation to practise French country-dances at a select morning-ball. In general, there never seemed to be enough time into which to fit her various engagements, for once the season was in full swing every sort of amusement offered, from Venetian breakfasts to Grand Balloon Ascensions; and in brief respites from these she was either submitting to the ministrations of Mr Blake, who combined a laughable coxcombry with a positive genius for cutting ladies’ hair; or sitting for her portrait to Mr Lawrence. Cardross had commissioned this full-length likeness of his lovely bride, and since Lawrence had become, since Hoppner’s death, the most fashionable portrait painter in England it was going to cost him not a penny less than four hundred guineas. But Mr Blake had given her a smart new crop only a week earlier; Mr Lawrence’s work on the portrait had had to be suspended until he had recovered from an indisposition. She did not care to visit the Royal Academy’s exhibition at Somerset House alone, for that would not only be dull work, but might render her an easy prey to some other unaccompanied lady: probably Miss Berry, whom one ought to admire, but could not contrive to like. London was overfull of elderly ladies who were Mama’s dear friends, and Somerset House was just the place where one might be sure of meeting them. So after knotting a few inches of fringe, reading three pages of Corinne, rather wistfully watching some children playing at battledore and shuttlecock in the Square-garden, and trying to make up her mind to write an overdue letter to Miss Wilby, she decided that the day was too fine for such sedentary pursuits, and determined, in default of

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