Read Online Cressida by Clare Darcy - Free Book Online

also walked away.
    “I do wish I had not been obliged to present Rossiter to Kitty,” Cressida said in a vexed tone to Langmere as they took their places in the set. “He is not at all the sort of man for a young girl to know—but then I daresay it does not signify in the end. He will certainly not make  her the object of his gallantry. ”
    And she put the matter out of her mind, until at the end of the set she was startled to see that Rossiter, instead of bringing Kitty back to her, was standing amicably chatting with her, resisting the blandishments of Lady Dalingridge, who wished to parade her captive lion before her guests, and that he apparently had every intention of standing up with Miss Chenevix for the next set as well.
    “Devil!” thought Cressida, her indignation mounting once more. “He is only doing it because he thinks it will annoy me!”
    But again there was nothing she could do without provoking an undesirable small scene, so she allowed her own partner to lead her into the set, privately determining to get Kitty’s ear at its conclusion and inform her of the extreme inadvisability of a young girl’s making herself conspicuous by standing up twice in one evening with a man of Rossiter’s reputation.
    As it happened, however, she was spared the necessity of instructing Kitty upon this point by the arrival upon the scene, just as the set was ending, of a breathless Lady Constance, who, it appeared, had been routed out of the pleasures of a gossipping game of whist in the card-room by a well-meaning dowager who said she was sure she would wish to know that Miss Chenevix had stood up for two dances in a row with Captain Rossiter, and that Dolly Dalingridge was quite livid with disappointment because she had not been able to exchange more than two words with him herself and was telling everyone that she knew nothing at all about Kitty, but that one could see she had been brought up without proper principles.
    “And I did so depend upon you, dearest Cressy,” Lady Constance said, the very aigrette on her turban quivering with reproach, “to see to it that she didn’t fall into the briars, because she is quite inexperienced, you know, and didn’t so much as realise, until I warned her of it, that she must on no account waltz in public without the permission of one of the Patronesses of Almack’s! There! Thank goodness, the set is ending! Of course I have never met Captain Rossiter, but I shall most certainly give him a piece of my mind if he is bold enough to ask poor little Kitty to stand up with him for a third time!”
    And she hurried off, to be shortly seen snatching Kitty away from an amused Rossiter in a very highhanded sort of way, which would have convinced anyone of the genuineness of her claim to Plantagenet blood.
    Lord Langmere, who happened to have been standing beside Cressida when this bit of by-play had taken place, and had watched it with mild interest, now remarked to her that it rather appeared to him that Lady Constance was making a piece of work over nothing.
    “As a matter of fact,” he said, “she may even be doing your little Miss Chenevix a disservice. Rossiter is obviously attracted by the girl, and if he should have decided at this point in his life to settle himself—which seems possible, by his return to England—he would be a rich prize indeed for a penniless young girl to capture. ”
    “Rossiter! You cannot be serious!” Cressida turned an astonished face upon him. “A man of his—his experience, to use the politest term, to marry a girl scarcely out of the schoolroom! He would be bored to death in a week, and she— She shook her head decisively. “No, it is quite absurd! This is only one of his sudden freaks. He was piqued because I would not grant him a dance, and this is his way of being revenged upon me!”
    “Of course, you may be right,’ Lord Langmere conceded, but looking unconvinced. “A very thoughtless and