A Breach of Promise - Anne Perry [9]
“And my younger daughter, Julia,” Mrs. Ballinger was saying to him.
“How do you do, Miss Julia.” Rathbone inclined his head towards her. She was no prettier than her sister and had the same frank, almost amused stare.
“Did you attend the concert at Lady Thorpe’s house yesterday evening?” Mrs. Ballinger was asking Mrs. Lambert. “We went for Margaret’s sake. She is so fond of music, and of course is a most accomplished violinist, if I do say so myself.” She turned to Rathbone with a bright smile. “Are you fond of music, Sir Oliver?”
Rathbone wanted to lie and say he was tone-deaf. He saw the eagerness in Mrs. Ballinger’s face and the embarrassment in Margaret’s. She must feel as if she were bloodstock being paraded in front of a prospective buyer. It was not far from the truth.
Mrs. Lambert smiled with inner satisfaction. She had already won and no longer needed to compete. The triumph of it was luminous in her eyes. Zillah herself looked serenely happy.
Rathbone felt like part of a group picnicking in the sun, and he was the only one aware of the clouds thickening over the horizon, and growing chill in the air.
Mrs. Ballinger was waiting for a reply.
Rathbone looked at Margaret, and his compassion overcame his sense and he answered with the truth.
“Yes, I am very fond of music, particularly the violin.”
Mrs. Ballinger’s answer was immediate.
“Then perhaps you would care to visit with us some occasion and hear Margaret play. We are holding a soirée next Thursday.”
Margaret bit her lip and the color mounted up her face. She turned away from Rathbone, and he was quite certain she would have looked daggers at her mother had she dared. He wondered how many times before she had endured this scene, or ones like it.
He had walked straight into the trap. He was almost as angry as Margaret at the blatancy of it. And yet neither of them could do anything without making it worse.
Delphine Lambert was watching with an air of gentle amusement, her delicate mouth not quite smiling.
It was Julia Ballinger who broke the minute’s silence.
“I daresay Sir Oliver does not have his diary to hand, Mama. I am sure he will send us a card to say whether he is able to accept, if we allow him our address.”
Margaret shot her a look of gratitude.
Rathbone smiled. “You are perfectly correct, Miss Julia. I am afraid I am not certain of my engagements a week ahead. My memory is not as exact as I should like, and I should be mortified to find I had offended someone by failing to attend an invitation I had already accepted. Or indeed that a case kept me overlong where I had foreseen it might …”
“Of course,” Margaret said hastily.
But Mrs. Ballinger did not give up so easily. She produced a card from her reticule and passed it to him. It noted her name and address. “You are always welcome, Sir Oliver, even if you are not able to confirm beforehand. We are not so very formal as to admit only those we expect when an evening of social pleasure is to be enjoyed.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Ballinger.” He took the card and slipped it into his pocket. He was sufficiently annoyed with her insensitivity that he might even go, for Margaret’s sake. Looking at her now, standing stiffly with her shoulders squared, horribly uncomfortable, and knowing this ritual would be observed until she was either successfully married or past marriageable age, she reminded him faintly of Hester Latterly, whom he had come to know in some ways so well in the last few years. There was a similar courage and vulnerability in her, an awareness of precisely what was going on, a contempt for it, and yet a knowledge that she was inevitably caught up in it and trapped.
Of course, Hester was not any longer similarly caught. She had broken free and gone to the Crimea to nurse with