"Well, Maria, what do you think?"
Lady Deverell looked up from the letter she'd just finished reading, but her gaze went to the fire, rather than to her questioner. Though it was a bright, cozy fire, so comforting on this late winter evening, she sighed.
"How cleverly she writes. But then, I daresay she inherited her scholarly Papa's intellect."
"Well, it wasn't from her Mama, that's for certain. Juliet, rest her soul, was a beautiful giddypate. A more ill-suited pair one could scarcely imagine. Juliet would never budge from London, and Charles was determined to be abroad. So, what happens but Alexandra is left with a governess and one or two servants in that lonely little place in the country. She was neglected shamefully, to my way of thinking—and now this. If only she had confided the matter sooner, I might have done something before she went away with her Papa. Wretched man." Lady Bertram nodded balefully at the letter, as though it were Sir Charles Ashmore himself.
Certainly, if it were—and if it had had any sensibilities at all—it would have crept away in mortification. A tall, full-figured woman of sixty or so, unbowed by age or infirmity, the Countess Bertram could, when she liked, make herself very intimidating to lesser mortals.
All the same, the letter lay, oblivious to the countess's scorn, in Lady Deverell’s delicate hand. Nor was the languid owner of that hand intimidated. She, in fact, scarcely seemed to attend at all, so absentmindedly did she answer. "Yes, it is most tiresome. And yet they are so very far away. Albania. One can hardly think how to help her at this great distance."
"Nonetheless, one must. She's my goddaughter and requires my help. We must cudgel our brains, Maria."
"Oh, must we?" Lady Deverell sounded rather faint at the prospect, as though someone had proposed that she run from London to Brighton. "Oh, dear, I suppose we must. Well, let me see." She glanced down at the letter. "There is the money, of course. Though one cannot understand why Charles went to a wool merchant for financial backing."
"Because he is a proud, obstinate creature, who'd sooner shoot himself than toady to that bunch of aristocratic halfwits as he calls the Society of Dilettanti. So what does he do but put all his affairs into the hands of George Burnham— who was sly enough to toady to him."
"But it is only money, after all, and you have enough, certainly—"
"Yes, yes, I tried" was the impatient reply. "The day I received the letter, I dispatched a bank draft to Burnham. It came back with a curt note informing me that he could accept no funds on Ashmore's behalf without Ashmore's approval. Now Burnham has begun pressing for the marriage—and of course you see why."
Lady Deverell gave the letter another glance and sighed. "Ah, yes. The eldest daughter is nearly one-and-twenty and must make her come out before she is obliged to wear caps."
"A pack of mushrooms, Maria. Why should the Burnham care for my money when they might use Alexandra to introduce those ignorant, encroaching girls to society?"
Lady Deverell made vaguely sympathetic murmurs.
"I cannot think what to do next. For all her humourous comments, it's plain Alexandra is distressed. But if I write to her father, he'll resent my interference and, in one of his headstrong passions, is liable to haul them before one of those dervishes, to be married there. Really, he's the most vexing.”
Lady Bertram's companion, immovably unvexed, replied dreamily, "Yes. Matters seem to have reached a crisis. Your goddaughter has run out of strategems, and the Burnhams press her Papa. Dear, dear. So he is determined to be back in England by summer."
"Yes, and there's the devil of it. He'll pack her off to Yorkshire as soon as they set foot in the kingdom, and the poor girl will be married before she can blink."
"How fatiguing to think of so much energy expended to such ill purpose. Yet that is exactly what he must do." Lady Deverell's preoccupied gaze wandered to the clock on the mantelpiece. "Unless, of course, some complication should intervene."
"Yes." A faint smile softened the countess's patrician features.
Lady Deverell followed another bored sigh with a change of subject. "Dear me, what a dreary winter this has been with half the world in Brussels. But it is nearly over. I understand Basil Trevelyan plans to return from Greece by summer."
"Yes. So he's written."
"Well, that will be pleasant, will it not? After three years we shall all be glad to see him."
"Oh, yes. Prodigious glad."
"I wonder," Lady Deverell mused, her eyes still on the clock, "what he will think of Albania."
"Albania, my dear? Is that where he means to go?" the countess asked, very innocently.
"Why, yes, Clementina. Now I think of it, that must be exactly what he intends."