Read Online Bething's Folly by Bárbara Metzger - Free Book Online Page A

butler accurately determined their social importance. He immediately summoned a footman to lead the horses to the stables and drew himself up to accept the gentlemen’s cards with all the dignity of his breed, despite his informal appearance. He led them to a small sitting room off the front hall while he went to announce them to Lady Burke, who he assured them was at home.
    “Peculiar household, don’t you think?” Ferddie asked, wandering around the small room whose furnishings were a little worn, the draperies somewhat faded.
    Carleton made no answer, trying to visualise this as a setting for the girl he had met last night. Yes, he could see her here, her honest, outspoken ways matching the sturdy, comfortable furnishings, her unaffected loveliness recalled by the wildflowers collected in simple glass vases. He smiled , amused by his own romanticising. He was making too much of last night’s encounter. Surely Miss Bethingame would turn out to be a pretty enough country miss with the same cloying agreeableness of all the others, or a spoiled, demanding beauty, like so many of the London Incomparables. She would be as selfishly two-faced as any other woman when it suited her. Still, he could not help his eager anticipation when the butler returned, this time with formal coat buttoned and gloves on.
    “Lady Burke would be honoured to receive you,” he said. “Will you follow me?” He spoke with perfect composure, not reflecting the turmoil these two guests’ arrival had created in the drawing room.
    Lady Burke was there dithering around the room, straightening pillows and searching for somewhere to stash the disreputable novel she’d been reading. She finally shoved it into a sewing basket, muttering the whole time about Aubry’s business, and there, didn’t she just know it, and where was Elizabeth? This was how Carleton and Milbrooke found her when the butler opened the door and stood aside. She was talking to herself, they realised, unless one counted the small, ancient pug at her side. This creature, as squat and plump as its mistress, instantly set to yapping when they entered the room, and trundled toward them as fast as its little bowed legs could carry it to commence snapping at their boots. Its snarling attack made greetings and introductions impossible; Lady Burke’s oh dear’s helped not at all, and the butler had disappeared. In desperation Carleton reached out to a side table near the doorway, where they still stood, and took a bon-bon from a dish. He rolled it across the floor, just past the pug’s nose. The dog waddled over to the treat, then darted between its mistress’s feet with it, as though to eat in a safe spot. At least it had finally quieted. Lady Burke gathered the dog to her cushiony bosom with a few bad doggie’s and oh my’s and at last remembered to invite her guests to be seated. She chose a sofa, with the pug up next to her. Ferddie selected a seat as far away as was polite, once he had been introduced.
    “Lady Burke,” Carleton began in as reasonably steady a voice as he could muster after that interlude, “I hope we are not intruding, but we have called to enquire after your niece. We pray she has recovered from her headache of last night?”
    “Headache? The girl’s never had a headache! Well, maybe with the measles, but, let me tell you, it was something else on her mind, one of her racketty notions ... Oh, dear, perhaps I should not have said that.” Here Lady Burke frowned, but then her round face brightened as she found a solution. “Well, um, perhaps one of her notions did give her the headache last night. Yes, I am sure of it! Of course, she is very well this morning. That is, I think she is...” And here dismay mingled with uncertainty in her expression.
    Carleton was saved from having to reply to this bewildering speech by the return of the butler, who was bearing a tray of decanters and glasses. Behind him a footman carried tea things over to Lady