Read Online Bath Tangle by Georgette Heyer - Free Book Online Page A

That is to say, I don’t know, for I was never at one before.’
    ‘Not being precisely out. Do you live in Quenbury?’
    ‘Oh, no! At Cherrifield Place! Don’t you know it? You came by it this morning!’
    ‘Did I?’
    ‘Yes, and Mama knew it must be you, because of the crest. We were at the gate, meaning only to walk into the village, but Mama said we would come here instead, because there was a recipe she wished to give Lady Spenborough.’
    ‘Providential!’
    She was puzzled, and, scared by the satirical note in his voice, was stricken to silence. Serena, a trifle unsteadily, said: ‘Well, I hope you will enjoy the Assembly, and have a great many partners.’
    ‘Within the limits of exclusiveness,’ interpolated Rotherham, meeting her eye.
    She frowned at him, knowing him to be quite capable of saying something outrageous enough to be understood by his innocent neighbour. Fortunately, since he met the frown with a bland look she knew well, Lady Laleham, having achieved her object, now judged it to be good tactics to take her leave. Her carriage was called for, and she bore her daughter off, well pleased with the success of her morning’s campaign.
    ‘I never meet that woman but I smell the shop,’ observed Lady Silchester calmly. ‘I wish I may not be her dear Augusta Silchester hereafter!’
    ‘You are well served for having been fool enough to have mentioned the Assembly,’ said her brother.
    ‘Very true. I shall have the headache, and send Caroline with Cordelia.’
    ‘I believe she knew you were here, and that is why she came!’ declared Fanny, very much ruffled.
    ‘She did!’ Serena said, her eyes dancing. ‘That absurd child let the secret out in the most innocent fashion imaginable! How I contrived to keep my face I don’t know! Well for her Mama was not attending!’
    ‘A pretty little dab of a girl,’ said Lady Silchester. ‘Not enough countenance, but she’ll take very well, I daresay. Dark girls are being much admired just now. Depend upon it, her mother means her to go to the highest bidder. They say Laleham is pretty well at a standstill.’
    ‘What I want to know,’ said Rotherham, ‘is why Grandmama won’t be at the ball which she is to give.’
    ‘I was in dread that you would ask her!’ Serena said.
    ‘I shall discover it at the Assembly, when you are not there to spoil sport.’
    ‘You will not go to the Assembly!’ she exclaimed incredulously.
    ‘Certainly I shall.’
    ‘Having a taste for being toad-eaten?’ she quizzed him.
    ‘No, for Miss Laleham’s artless conversation!’
    ‘Ah, she won’t gratify you! You have frightened her away!’
    ‘She must be lured back to hand.’
    ‘No, no, it would be too bad of you! You might wake expectations in Mama’s bosom, moreover!’
    ‘Irresistible! I shall come out on the side of my niece and my wards, and you will hear next that I am not by half as disagreeable as they had supposed.’
    She laughed, but could not believe him to be serious. However, the next visitor to the Dower House was Mrs Monksleigh, who drove over from Claycross on Christmas Eve, and disclosed that the Assembly scheme was now a settled thing. ‘I own, I thought it would come to nothing, and so I warned the girls. I’m sure I was never more astonished than when Rotherham said he saw no harm in it, and as for Susan, she was ready to drop! I expected he would have given her one of his set-downs, but he was perfectly amiable!’
    Mrs Monksleigh was the relict of a military man, who had left her with six children and a competence judged by his family to be respectable, and by her, inadequate. She was a very good-natured woman, but having, unfortunately, less than common sense, she had never been able to teach herself habits of economy. There was a want of management in her house which led to a succession of financial crises driving her quite distracted, and never failing to exasperate Rotherham. He was not her cousin, but her husband’s; and, in