The Regency Read Online Free PDF Page A

forward. Say good-day to Mrs Shawe and Lady Fussell. I have just come from Fussell Manor, ma'am,' she added to the latter. 'I left my card.'
    ‘ Did they not tell you I was here? I come every day. Poor 'Tina has been very low,' said Lady Fussell. She turned her eyes hungrily on the children. 'And here is little Miss Sophie! I must tell you, Lady Morland, how I dote on her! And how quiet and good they both are — so different from my sister Celia's children, who are always squabbling and shrieking, and pull one about so, there's no bearing it. Come and give me a kiss, angels!’
    Sophie obeyed good-naturedly, though Thomas, who was always rather shy, remained at Héloïse's side after making his bow to each of the ladies. Héloïse watched, amused, as Lady Fussell, fascinated by Sophie's bilingual abilities, attempted to converse with her in French, and was soon left floundering. Eventually Héloïse felt constrained to rescue her, and made Sophie recite from her repertoire of poems until Mrs Shawe's three boys were brought in by a nursery-maid. They were pale, undersized little things, Héloïse thought, with a pinched look about the eyes, and a shrinking air, as if they had been too often beaten. Beside them, Sophie looked strong and bright and vigorous, as though she had grown up in sunlight, and they in semi-darkness.
    The children were introduced to each other, and taken away to another room to play, and the women were then free to converse more openly.
    Valentina's miscarriage was naturally the first subject. She had been unlucky with her pregnancies, for this was the second consecutive miscarriage, and she had lost two of her children in infancy as well.
    ‘ But at least you have the dear boys,' Lizzie said mourn fully. 'As for me, I have never shewn even the slightest sign of —' She sighed. 'I sometimes wonder if that's why Arthur is so — difficult.'
    ‘ No, love,' Valentina said, pressing her hand. 'I'm sure not. Arthur was always the same, even when he was a boy. Father was forever whipping him, but it never seemed to make the slightest difference.’
    Arthur Fussell and Crosby Shawe had been schoolfriends. Lizzie and Valentina had made good marriages in the eyes of the world: for Lizzie, youngest of a large family and with only a modest dowry, to marry a baronet with an estate was con sidered brilliant; while Valentina, the baronet's quietest and least pretty sister, might have done much worse than Crosby Shawe, who had his merchant father's fortune to squander.
    But Arthur, spoilt as a child, had grown up a thoroughly selfish, dissolute man, while Crosby Shawe, who was merely weak and impressionable, copied him in everything. Both men succeeded in making their wives very unhappy, and it was proof of how much the women had come to like Héloïse in the snort time they had known her, that they could regard her evident happiness kindly.
    Héloïse knew all about them and their husbands: Marie was a very good informant about everything that went on in the neighbourhood, and James in the course of their long conversations in bed had told her the rest.
    ‘ Arthur Fussell was always an arrogant little brute, foul- tempered and a fouler horseman. Worst hands in the Ridings! And a gamester! I was very sorry for Lizzie having to marry him. But their fathers arranged it all — they'd known each other for ever, and poor Lizzie at twenty-five was almost on the shelf. But I'm surprised at the way Crosby Shawe turned out. I always thought him a good enough sort of man: quiet, you know, and not much to him, but a dull and decent sort. But he and Arthur were bosom-bows at school, and I suppose the rest just followed. Valentina's a great deal too good for him. You might not think it to look at her,' he added, making Héloïse smile into the darkness at his naiveté, 'but she's a remarkably intelligent woman. The rest of her family were positively sheep-witted, but Valentina was always clever.’
    Héloïse also knew,