Angel's Touch Read Online Free PDF Page B

acquainted.’
    ‘ Oh, I know what you mean. So unlikely a
friendship, don’t you feel?’ said the lady, displaying so
unexpectedly accurate an understanding of Verity’s thought that she
felt herself redden a little. But Mrs Polegate did not appear to
notice. ‘You may say we are Wellsian friends, I suppose, for we
met here, both in our very first season. What days they were!
Dancing on the green! Do you not remember,
Emilia?’
    ‘ Do
I not? I ruined my best satin shoes and lost a diamond
buckle.’
    ‘ How
your mama did scold.’
    Like
all the elderly habitués of Tunbridge Wells, the two ladies were
forever to be heard reminiscing about the ‘dear old days’. Today
was no exception, and while they rattled on Verity had time to
recover her poise, which had been very much overset by the
unexpected encounter with the angry young man of her
adventure.
    She
therefore greeted the sight of the widow’s plump, unsuitably
clothed figure with relief. In spite of Lady Crossens’ freely
expressed criticisms, Mrs Polegate arrayed herself always in the
chemise gowns she loved, exposing a good deal of bosom and
demonstrating the girth of her thickened waistline all too clearly
with the gathered-in style, and the sash that all but vanished
between the rolls of flesh above and below. She was addicted,
moreover, to large mob-caps which most unflatteringly framed her
round pink face and only added to the unfortunate impression of
mutton dressed as lamb.
    ‘ And
of course you recall that dreadful Mrs Montagu and her
blue-stocking set,’ she was saying to her friend. ‘So clever. I
never could understand the half of her discourse.’
    ‘ That woman!’ Lady Crossens snorted. ‘She was not near so
clever as she would have us believe. Setting herself up for a queen
to all the men of letters. I was never so happy as when her coach
overturned.’
    ‘ Oh,
no, ma’am, how uncharitable,’ exclaimed Verity, startled out of her
preoccupation.
    ‘ Oh, yes, Emilia,’ echoed Mrs Polegate.
‘ Poor Mrs
Montagu! Not but what the coach did not in fact overturn. But she
was very much shaken.’
    ‘ Poor Mrs Montagu indeed,’ said her ladyship impenitently.
‘You had as well say poor Miss Chudleigh.’
    ‘ If
I had not forgotten her,’ shrieked Mrs Polegate. ‘Scandalous,
shameless woman!’
    ‘ Why, what did she do?’ asked Verity, glad of something
sufficiently diverting to keep at bay the intrusive memories of a
certain gentleman.
    ‘ What did she not do?’ countered Lady Crossens.
    ‘ Well, my dear,’ began Mrs Polegate, with an
air of unfolding a great mystery, ‘Elizabeth Chudleigh was an
extremely beautiful lady and the gentlemen were mad for her, but in
the end she married the Duke of Kingston. And then it transpired that she was
already married.’
    ‘ And
so it all came out,’ put in Lady Crossens. ‘She was tried for
bigamy by the House of Lords.’
    ‘ And
convicted?’ asked Verity, quite shocked.
    ‘ Oh, yes,’ said Mrs Polegate. ‘But they
could do nothing about it, for she was a peeress. She was ruined,
naturally. But she went abroad—’
    ‘ Taking, so it was said, the Duke’s money with
her.’
    ‘ Yes but, Emilia, he was dead.’
    Verity was betrayed into a choke of laughter. ‘Gracious, I
had no idea Tunbridge Wells was such a den of vice.’
    ‘ Oh, but all that occurred in London, you know,’
said Mrs Polegate excusingly. ‘She behaved quite respectably here. And she was
very beautiful.’
    ‘ Does that make it any better?’
    ‘ Beauty and wit may generally excuse a good deal,’ said Lady
Crossens shrewdly. ‘Not that there has been much of the latter in
evidence at the Wells.’
    ‘ But, Emilia, only think of the water poets,’ protested the
widow. ‘Some of the verses were very witty. And so elegant and
pretty.’
    ‘ Who
in the world are the water poets?’ demanded Verity.
    ‘ Anyone who could turn a verse. Or, indeed,
who thought they
could,’ her ladyship explained.
    ‘