Free Bath Tangle by Georgette Heyer Page B

venison, and suddenly remarked: ‘So Rotherham took his guests to the Assembly on Boxing Day! I wouldn’t believe it when Dr Cliffe told me so, but it seems to be true enough. I saw Orrell the other day, and he vouched for it. A queer start, wasn’t it?’
    ‘It was a scheme got up for the entertainment of the young people,’ said Fanny calmly.
    ‘Ay, so I understand. No harm, of course, but I shouldn’t have thought Rotherham the man to condescend so far. I am not particularly acquainted with him, but he has always seemed to me pretty high in the instep: one of your haughty care-for-nobodies! However, Orrell assures me he was very civil and amiable. That Laleham woman was mightily set up by his standing up with her daughter, and not seeming to care for anyone else, but walking off to the card room immediately. Orrell says it was a study to look at the faces of the other mamas! But he came back at tea time, took in his cousin, and afterwards solicited some girl that had no partner to stand up with him, which was thought to be very good-natured in him, and lowered the Laleham crest a trifle! This Rhenish cream is most excellent, Lady Spenborough: a capital dinner! I shall tell Jane I get nothing so good at Milverley!’
    Fanny could not help glancing across the table to see whether Serena partook of her own astonishment. She could detect nothing in her face but a look of approval; and when, after Spenborough had left them, she ventured to ask her if she had not been very much surprised, she received a decided negative.
    ‘You were not? I own, I could hardly credit my ears. I had no notion that he cared so much for your opinion!’
    ‘No, indeed, and nor does he!’ Serena answered. ‘The outcome would have been the same whoever had taken him to task. When he does such things as that it is not from any conscious idea of his own consequence, or a contempt for persons of inferior rank, but from a sort of heedless arrogance, as I told him. He had the misfortune to lose his father when he was still a schoolboy: a most estimable man, I believe. Papa was used to say that everyone stood in great awe of him, because he was such a grand seigneur , but that pride in him didn’t lead him to offend people by any careless manners, but to treat everyone with the same punctilious courtesy. We should have thought him very stiff, I daresay, for he was held to be old-fashioned even when Papa was a young man. But Lady Rotherham was insufferably proud! You never knew her: I assure you, she was so puffed-up with conceit and consequence that there was no bearing it! She brought up all three of her children, and in particular, of course, Ivo, to believe themselves so superior that they might behave as they chose, since a Barrasford must be beyond the reach of censure! As for considering the feelings of others, such a notion can never have entered her head! Her selfishness was beyond anything, too! Everything, she thought, must give way to her whims. One cannot wonder at Ivo’s arrogance: the only wonder is that it should be unconscious – not rooted, as it was with her, in conceit! He was never taught to think of anything but his own pleasure, but his disposition is not bad, nor does he mean to offend the sensibilities of others. It is all heedlessness! If he can but be made to see that he has behaved badly, he is sorry for it at once.’
    ‘Oh, Serena! When I am sure he was ready to murder you for having presumed to tell him his conduct was not gentlemanly – !’
    ‘No, no, you are mistaken, Fanny!’ Serena said, laughing a little. ‘He didn’t wish to murder me, but himself! Oh, well, perhaps me, but much more himself! He knew what I said to be true, and that is what wounded his pride, and made him smart so.’
    ‘Do you think so?’ Fanny said doubtfully.
    ‘I know it! Don’t imagine that he instantly set about mending the matter because his conduct had given me an ill opinion of him! He did it because it gave him that ill