Arabella

by Georgette Heyer

‘My love,’ responded the Vicar, with one of his humorous looks, ‘if I believed you, I should perhaps consider it my duty to show you that an ambition to move in the first circles, as you call them, could never be an ideal I could wish any of my daughters to aspire to. But as I am persuaded that you have a great many other arguments to advance, I will hold my peace, and merely beg you to continue!’

‘Shall you be at the masquerade at the Argyll Rooms tonight?’ ‘I never attend such affairs, ma’am!’ he retorted, putting her in her place. ‘Oh, then I shall not see you there!’ remarked Miss Tallant, with unimpaired cheerfulness. She did not see him there, but, little though she might have known it, he was obliged to exercise considerable restraint not to cast to the four winds his famed fastidiousness, and to minister to her vanity by appearing at the ball. He did not do it, and hoped that she had missed him. She had, but this was something she would not acknowledge even to herself. Arabella, who had liked the Nonpareil on sight, was setting a strong guard over her sensibilities. He had seemed to her, when first her eyes had alighted on his handsome person, to be almost the embodiment of a dream. Then he had uttered such words to his friend as must shatter for ever her esteem, and had wickedly led her into vulgar prevarication. Now it pleased his fancy to single her out from all the beauties in town, for reasons better known to himself than to her, but which she darkly suspected to be mischievous. No fool, the little Tallant! Not for one moment would she permit herself to indulge the absurd fancy that his court was serious.

He encountered a look which surprised him. ‘I do not permit anyone, Lord Bridlington, to tell me that in rescuing a helpless child from the brutality of a monster I am doing what is improper!’ said Arabella.

Arabella turned on him like a flash, her eyes bright with tears, her voice unsteady with indignation. ‘I will not be silenced! It is a topic that should be discussed in every Christian lady’s sitting-room!

It was she who broke the silence. ‘You?’ she said, the incredulity in her tone leaving him in no doubt of her opinion of his character.

Lord Fleetwood looked at him in some concern. ‘You know, Robert, if you’re not careful you’ll find yourself walking to the altar before you’re much older!’ he said. ‘No, she has the poorest opinion of me,’ replied Mr Beaumaris.

‘Devil!’ said his lordship, with feeling. ‘Well, I wash my hands of you – and I hope she will lead you a pretty dance!’ ‘I have a strong premonition,’ replied Mr Beaumaris, ‘that your hope is likely to be realised.’

‘Do you know, I had begun to believe that everyone in town – all the grand people, I mean – were quite heartless, and selfish?’ she confided. ‘I am afraid I was not quite civil to you – indeed, Lady Bridlington assures me that I was shockingly rude! – but then, you see, I had no notion that you were not like all the rest. I beg your pardon!’ Mr Beaumaris had the grace to acknowledge a twinge of conscience. It led him to say: ‘Miss Tallant, I did it in the hope of pleasing you.’ Then he wished that he had curbed his tongue, for her confiding air left her, and although she talked easily for a few more minutes he was fully aware that she had withdrawn from him again.

‘How odious men are!’ exclaimed Lady Bridlington indignantly.

There was something so irresistibly humorous to Arabella in the thought that her straitened circumstances had been at the root of a new mode that she began to giggle.

I wonder you do not have a dog already.’ ‘I do – in the country,’ he replied. ‘Oh, sporting dogs! They are not at all the same.’ Mr Beaumaris, after another look at his prospective companion, found himself able to agree with this remark with heartfelt sincerity.

and, oh, Bertram, it is true! I have refused five offers already!’ The idea that there could be found five gentlemen ready to marry his sister struck Bertram as being exquisitely humorous, and he went off into another burst of laughter.

He then lifted her disengaged hand to his lips, and said gently: ‘You are a rude and an overbearing old woman, ma’am, but I hope you may live to be a hundred, for I like you so much better than any other of my relatives!’ ‘I daresay that’s not saying much,’ she remarked, rather pleased by this audacious speech.

‘Oh, I don’t think she has any fortune at all!’ replied Mr Beaumaris coolly. ‘She only said she had to put me in my place.’

She sat staring down at her clasped hands in great agitation of spirit, her mind in a turmoil, tossed between surprise at such a declaration, coming from one whom she had believed to have been merely amusing himself, and the shock of realising, for the first time, that there was no one she would rather marry than Mr Beaumaris.