Cousin Kate

Dr Delabole took her wrist, and shook his head solemnly: “A tumultuous pulse!” he pronounced. “I shall prescribe warm tar-water—excellent for a fever!”

“Ugh!” shuddered Kate. “It sounds horrid!”

“All medicines are horrid!” stated Torquil.

“Very true,” agreed Lady Broome, casting a cloth over her embroidery frame, and rising to her feet. “However, I hardly think we shall have to dose Kate with tar-water, or anything else! My dear, if you are ready, shall we go up to bed? It is growing late.”

“Of course I am ready, ma’am! I wish I may not have been keeping you up: you should have told us to stop playing! Goodnight, sir—goodnight, cousin! If you hear a shriek in the night, you will know that I have had your nightmare, and have wakened just as I was about to be caught!”

She waved her hand to him, and went away with Lady Broome. She said, halfway along the gallery: “How well Torquil looks tonight! I shouldn’t wonder at it if that long, natural sleep did him all the good in the world. He had an appetite, too. Do you know, ma’am, it’s the first time since I came here that he has wanted his dinner? What a pity it is that he suffers so often from insomnia, and has to be given composers! Surely they must be very bad for him? I mean,” she added, remembering the snubs she had received, “that it is a pity he can’t sleep without them!”

“A great pity,” agreed her ladyship. “But I hope he may be in a way to be better.” She paused outside the door of Kate’s bedchamber, but instead of bidding her goodnight she said: “I shall come and tuck you up presently, so don’t fall asleep! I want to talk to you.”

She then went to her own room, leaving Kate considerably surprised, and quite at a loss to guess what they were going to talk about.

A very sleepy abigail was awaiting her. She had tried to dissuade Ellen from waiting to put her to bed, but without success. Ellen had looked shocked, and had said that she knew her duty. “It isn’t your duty if I don’t desire you to undress me,” had argued Kate. But Ellen had said that it was her duty, and that her ladyship would be very angry if she failed in it.

“Well, her ladyship won’t know!”

“Oh, yes, miss, she will—begging your pardon! Miss Sidlaw would tell her, and I’d be turned off! Oh, pray, miss, don’t say I must go to bed before you do!”

Since Ellen was plainly on the verge of tears, Kate was obliged to give way. She reflected that although no great hardship was suffered by Ellen or Sidlaw at Staplewood, where early hours were the rule, the life of a fashionable lady’s dresser must be arduous indeed. Perhaps a governess’ lot was preferable: she might have very much more to do during the day, but at least she was allowed to sleep at night.

She had just tied on her nightcap when Lady Broome tapped at the door. She jumped into bed, telling Ellen to admit her ladyship, and then go to bed, and sat up amongst the pillows, hugging her knees.

Lady Broome had taken off her dress, and was wearing an elegant dressing-gown of lavender satin, lavishly trimmed with lace and ribbons. Kate exclaimed involuntarily: “Oh, how pretty! How well it becomes you, ma’am! Ellen, set a chair for her ladyship before you go, if you please! I shan’t want you again tonight.”

“Yes, the purple shades do become me,” said Lady Broome, sitting down beside the bed. “Very few women can wear them. Now, you look your best in blue, and orange-blush. I wonder how yellow would become you? Not amber, or lemon, but primrose. Have you ever worn it?”

“Now and then, ma’am,” replied Kate.

“I must send for some patterns,” said Lady Broome, and went on to talk about silks and muslins and modes, until Kate said firmly that she had so many dresses already that she had no need of any more. She did not think that her aunt had come to her room to discuss fashions, and waited for the real object of her visit to be disclosed.

She had to wait several minutes, while Lady Broome continued to talk of furbelows, but at last Lady Broome said: “You looked particularly well in the dress you wore for our dinner-party; Torquil could scarcely take his eyes off you! My love, I must tell you that you have done Torquil a great deal of good! I am so grateful to you: you are precisely the kind of girl he needs!”

A little overcome, Kate stammered: “You are very good, Aunt! I hope you may be right, because it has seemed to me that—that by trying to keep Torquil out of the sullens I could—in some sort—repay you for your—your kindness to me!”

“Dear child!” Lady Broome said, in a voice of velvet, and stretching out a hand to clasp one of Kate’s. “If that was your aim, you have succeeded! He is in far better frame! Dr Delabole has been telling me that there has been a marked improvement since he had the benefit of your companionship.”

Kate swallowed, and said rather faintly: “Has there, ma’am?”

“Yes, indeed there has been!” Lady Broome assured her. “There is a want of disposition in him, and he still has odd humours, but I now have every hope that he will drive a better trade—because his ardent desire is to please you!”

Kate could only stare at her. It did not seem to her that Torquil had any desire to please anyone but himself; and she was unable to repress the thought that if his mother thought him improved since her arrival at Staplewood his previous state must have been parlous indeed.

Lady Broome smiled at her, pressing her hand. “He has a great regard for you, you know! I have come to believe that you would be just the wife for him!”

Kate gasped. “Are you joking me, ma’am?”

“No, indeed I am not! I should welcome such an alliance. Have you never thought of it?”

“Good God, no!”

“But why not?”

Utterly taken aback, Kate said, groping for words: “I’m too old—it would be quite unsuitable! Dear Aunt Minerva, forgive me, but—but you must be all about in your head!”

“Oh, no, I’m not, I promise you! I think it will be best for Torquil to marry a woman who is older than himself; and as for unsuitable, what, pray, do you mean, Kate?”

“I mean that I’m a penniless nobody!”

Lady Broome raised her brows. “You are certainly penniless, my dear, but scarcely a nobody! You are a Malvern, as I am myself, and if Sir Timothy thought me fit to be his wife you must surely be fit to become his son’s wife!”

“Yes, if I were younger, or he older! If we loved one another!”

“Oh, love!—” said Lady Broome, shrugging her shoulders. “It isn’t necessary for a successful marriage, my dear, but you may be sure that Torquil is in love with you!”

Fudge!” exclaimed Kate wrathfully. “Oh, I beg your pardon, ma’am, but it is fudge! Why, he was fancying himself in love with Miss Templecombe when I first came here!”

“I am thankful that you drove her out of his head! She would not have done for him!”

“No, very likely not, but the thing is that he is by far too young to be fixing his interest! Good God, ma’am, he hasn’t been granted the opportunity to meet any—any eligible girls! When he is older—when his health is established—and you permit him to leave Staplewood—”

“I shall not do so.” The words, granite-hard, fell heavily, and all at once, seeing the grim set to her aunt’s mouth, and the stern resolution in her eyes, Kate was afraid, and almost shrank from her. But the revealing moment was swiftly gone: Lady Broome laughed softly, and said: “He is too handsome, and too big a matrimonial prize! Every matchmaking mother in London would be on the scramble for him, and he would fall a victim to the first designing female who set her cap at him! No, no, I mean to see him safely riveted before I set him loose upon the town! Does that seem unfeeling? Believe me, I know him too well to run any risks! His constitution will always be delicate, I fear, and a few weeks racketing about London would knock him up, just as his father was knocked-up. That is why I wish him to marry a woman of sense, not a giddy girl.”

Kate said carefully: “Yes, ma’am, you must hope that he will do so, but not for some years yet, surely! He is only nineteen, and young for his years, I think. I have been acquainted with many boys of his age, and although some of them were what my father called callow halflings they were none of them so—so childish as Torquil!”

“Exactly so!” said Lady Broome. “Other boys are sent to school, and find their feet. It was not possible to expose Torquil to the rigours of school-life. He was the sickliest child, and at one time I despaired of rearing him. But I did rear him, thanks to Dr Delabole’s skill and understanding, and he is now going on prosperously. But he is