Amanda Scott Read Free Page B

owning, for indeed, my dear, it is.”
    Nell smiled. “No doubt it is, ma’am, but I must tell you that since I never expected to inherit anything from you, I find it impossible to believe that Cousin Jarvis might expect me to do so. As to anyone else’s believing it, you must forgive me for telling you to your head that such a notion is absurd. No one could be sufficiently interested even to wonder about it.”
    “Innocent, that’s what you are,” Lady Flavia said, shaking her head. “Only think, my dear, how quickly information flies about in a country village like Trowbridge. Then consider Bath.”
    “I do not know what you mean, ma’am. To be sure, at home folk talk about their neighbors, but what else is there to talk about? And what can Bath know of me? ’Tis a very sleepy town, for all that it was used to be so fashionable. I know there are assemblies and concerts, and I should love to have the money to indulge myself in a visit to the shops in Milsom Street, for we have nothing like them at home, but that people should care—”
    “That is just the point,” Lady Flavia said. “In Bath people live for gossip. No entertainment at the Pump Room or the Assembly Rooms can ever be as interesting as what one’s neighbor is doing, or means to do, or has had done to him. If, on any given day, there is not adequate grist for the rumor mill, people have been known to make things up, a fact that irritated the great Beau Nash fifty years ago, and would no doubt still irritate him today. Thankfully, with such a wealth of gossip as there is, such tactics are rarely necessary.”
    Sighing, Nell said, “I do not doubt that what you say is true, ma’am, but it does not change my mind about what I must do. If I were a man, I would be working to prove Nigel innocent of the charge against him. Instead, as you say, I have run away from prattling tongues, knowing looks, and Jarvis, hoping to find sanctuary in Bath. If I cannot do that, at least I will not allow myself to become a burden upon you, and perhaps in time I will yet discover the truth about both Papa and Nigel.”
    “The truth is already known,” Lady Flavia said in a gentler tone than any she had used before, “and you do no good, child, by deluding yourself to think otherwise. In Nigel’s case, there were witnesses, were there not? Indeed, there must have been.”
    “All but Cousin Jarvis supposedly as drunk as Nigel,” Nell said bitterly. “And what with Jarvis’s having been the only reliable witness …” She shrugged and fell silent.
    “’Tis as I said, then,” Lady Flavia declared, “and a pity it is that he was not the victim instead of that Mr. Bygrave, for no one would have caviled at that, and there would then have been no witness, so Nigel might have gone tamely home again. As it is, you can do nothing about his difficulty. Indeed, even if there might be more to the matter than we know, Nigel brought it on himself, for he is no pattern card, my dear, as well you know. And to be grieving over his problems instead of looking after yourself is quite foolish. You would be a great deal more sensible to be thinking of marriage.”
    “Marriage! But I told you I would not even think—”
    “Oh, not to Jarvis, for pity’s sake. And Bath, of course, is not precisely as full as it can hold of eligible young men,” she added, “though I suppose there must be some.”
    “It cannot matter if there are,” Nell said, staring at her. “There is no possible way that—”
    “Oh, but there is always a way, my dear,” Lady Flavia said placidly. “Now hush and let me think.”
    “But, Aunt—”
    “Hush, I said. This may take a moment or two.” And with that, the old lady leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes.
    Watching her, Nell was torn between equally strong urges to laugh and to cry. Certain that her aunt had, after the fashion of the elderly, merely decided to take a nap without admitting the need for one, she exerted herself to