Georgette Heyer by Fridays Child

Author:Fridays Child
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Fifteen

EVER SINCE THE EVENING WHEN LORD WROTHAM HAD escorted Hero to Almack’s Assembly Rooms in his stead, Sherry had been careful to afford no other altruistic gentleman an opportunity for displaying his chivalry. If Hero were invited to attend the Assembly under some matron’s wing, he hailed this as a reprieve, and took himself blithely off on his own amusements; but if no matron came forward he offered himself up on the altar of duty with a very good grace, even going so far as to check any attempt on Hero’s part to convince him that she would be pleased to stay at home. Heedless his lordship might be, but however little, during the twenty-four years of his existence, he had been in the habit of considering any other desires than his own, he was not deliberately selfish, and he would have thought it a shocking thing to have condemned his wife to forgo a pleasure she obviously enjoyed merely because he himself would have preferred to have been disporting himself in quite another fashion. It was true that when he had so light-heartedly embarked on matrimony he had not bargained for the obligations attached to it; it was equally true that he had warned Hero that he had no intention of altering his habits to suit her convenience. He had moulded his ideas on the conduct of various sportive young matrons of his acquaintance, who certainly felt no overmastering desire to keep their husbands at their sides, but contrived – perfectly discreetly, to be sure – to amuse themselves without these complaisant gentlemen. But Sherry had realised early in his married career that Hero differed essentially from such worldly-wise ladies. Having neither the training that would have fitted her for fashionable life, nor relatives to whom she could turn, she was dependent upon her husband to a degree that would have alarmed him very much had he known at the outset how it would be. Within a month of their taking up their residence in Half Moon Street, it had been borne in upon his lordship that his wife was no more fit to carve her way through life than the kitten he called her. His lordship, who had never known responsibility, or shown the least ability to regulate his own career on respectable lines, found himself sole lord and master of a confiding little creature who placed implicit faith in his judgment, and relied upon him not only to guide her footsteps, but to rescue her from the consequences of her own ignorance. A man with a colder heart than Sherry’s would have shrugged and turned a blind eye to his wife’s difficulties. But the Viscount’s heart was not cold, and just as his protective instinct had one night made him search all night through the woods at Sheringham Place for a favourite dog which had dug deep into a rabbit burrow and had been trapped there, so it compelled him to take such care of his Hero as occurred to him.

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