Free The Nonesuch by Georgette Heyer

have been the feelings of two such faithful people when they discovered how little their service had been valued!’
    Ancilla acknowledged it; but murmured wickedly: ‘He has won your heart, I see! He has great address!’
    ‘Oh, no !’cried Patience, quite shocked. ‘How can you – ? Oh, you are funning, but indeed you should not! I hope my heart is not so easily won!’
    Ancilla smiled at her. ‘I hope it may not be – and certainly not by a Corinthian! Don’t look distressed! I was only funning, of course: I don’t fear for you!’
    Recovering her complexion, Patience said: ‘We shall none of us have time to lose our hearts: he doesn’t mean to settle at Broom Hall, you know.’
    ‘I should suppose not: he would find it very slow. Does he mean to sell the place?’
    ‘We don’t know. He didn’t tell us what he means to do; and, naturally, one would not ask prying questions.’ She looked up, as her mother came into the room, and smiled, saying: ‘I have been telling Miss Trent how agreeable we think Sir Waldo Hawkridge, Mama: gossiping, you will say!’
    ‘I suppose we all gossip about him,’ Mrs Chartley replied, shaking hands with Ancilla. ‘How do you do, Miss Trent? Yes, I must own that I was very pleasantly surprised in Sir Waldo. After the tales we have heard about the Nonesuch Ihad not expected to find that this Tulip of the Ton, instead of being a great coxcomb, is a man who wants neither sense nor feeling. I thought his manners particularly good, too: he has an air of well-bred ease, and no pretension – and as for his leading our sons astray, nonsense! I hope they may copy him! Indeed, I find myself regretting that Dick is at school, for he would be all the better for a little polish!’
    ‘Town bronze, ma’am? Oh, no!’ Ancilla protested.
    ‘Oh, not à la modality! I meant only that it would do him a great deal of good to perceive that a man may be sporting-mad without advertizing the circumstance.’
    She said no more about Sir Waldo, and Ancilla made no attempt to bring the conversation back to him. His name was not mentioned again until Charlotte, seated beside her in the phaeton, uttered in awed accents: ‘Well! To think we should have been the first to meet Sir Waldo, and to talk to him! Oh, Miss Trent, wasn’t it nuts for us?’
    Ancilla burst out laughing, but protested as well. ‘Charlotte! Do you wish to see me turned off without a character, you abominable girl? Nuts for us ,indeed!’
    ‘As though Mama would! No, but wasn’t it? Tiffany will be as angry as a wasp!’
    Knowing that it would be useless to expect Charlotte to refrain from exulting over her cousin, Ancilla held her peace. She was justified by the result: Tiffany received the news with indifference; for while Charlotte had been making the acquaintance of the Nonesuch she had met and dazzled Lord Lindeth.
    Whether the encounter had been by accident or by her own design was a point she left undisclosed. She had refused to accompany her cousin and governess that morning, voting the object of the expedition slow work, and declaring that nothing would prevail upon her to sit bodkin in a carriage designed to carry no more than two persons. Instead, she had had her pretty bay mare saddled, and had ridden out alone, declining the escort of the groom expressly hired to attend her. Since there was nothing unusual about this he made no attempt to dissuade her from conduct unbefitting her years and station, merely remarking to Courtenay’s groom that one of these days, mark his words, Miss would be brought home with her neck broke, ramming her horses along the way she did, and thinking herself at home to a peg, which the lord knew she wasn’t.
    The latter part of this criticism Tiffany would have much resented; but she would have been rather pleased than annoyed at the accusation of ramming her horses along, which she considered to be exactly the style to be expected of one who took pride in being a hard-goer. Accustomed,