The Black Moth by Georgette Heyer (best mobile ebook reader TXT) 📕

NOT twenty minutes’ walk from Lady Lavinia’s house in Queen Square resided a certain Madam Thompson—a widow—who had lived in Bath for nearly fifteen years. With her was staying Miss Elizabeth Beauleigh and her niece, Diana. Madam Thompson had been at a seminary with Miss Elizabeth when both were girls, and they had ever afterwards kept up their friendship, occasionally visiting one another, but more often contenting themselves with the writing of lengthy epistles, full of unimportant scraps of news and much gossip, amusing only on Miss Elizabeth’s side, and on the widow’s uninteresting and rambling.

It was a great joy to Madam Thompson when she received a letter from Miss Beauleigh begging that she and her niece might be allowed to pay a visit to her house in Bath, and to stay at least three weeks. The good lady was delighted at having her standing invitation at last accepted, and straightway wrote back a glad assent. She prepared her very best bedchamber for Miss Beauleigh, who, she understood, was coming to Bath principally for a change of air and scene after a long and rather trying illness.

In due course the two ladies arrived, the elder very small and thin, and birdlike in her movements, the younger moderately tall, and graceful as a willow tree, with great candid brown eyes that looked fearlessly out on to the world, and a tragic mouth that belied a usually cheerful disposition, and hinted at a tendency to look on the gloomy side of life.

Madam Thompson, whose first meeting with Diana this was, remarked on the sad mouth to Miss Elizabeth, or Betty as she was more often called, as they sat over the fire on the first night, Diana herself having retired to her room.

Miss Betty shook her head darkly and prophesied that her precious Di would one day love some man as no man in her opinion deserved to be loved!

“And she’ll have love badly,” she said, clicking her knitting-needles energetically. “I know these temperamental children!”

“She looks so melancholy,” ventured the widow.

“Well there you are wrong!” replied Miss Betty. “‘Tis the sunniest-tempered child, and the sweetest-natured in the whole wide world, bless her! But I don’t deny that she can be miserable. Far from it. Why, I’ve known her weep her pretty eyes out over a dead puppy even! But usually she is gay enough.”

“I fear this house will be dull and stupid for her,” said Madam Thompson regretfully. “If only my dear son George were at home to entertain her—”

“My love, pray do not put yourself out! I assure you Diana will not at all object to a little quiet after the life she has been leading in town this winter with her friend’s family.”

Whatever Diana thought of the quiet, she at least made no complaint, and adapted herself to her surroundings quite contentedly.

In the morning they would all walk as far as the Assembly Rooms, and Miss Betty would drink the waters in the old Pump Room, pacing sedately up and down with her friend on one side and her niece on the other. Madam Thompson had very few acquaintances in Bath, and the people she did know were all of her own age and habits, rarely venturing as far as the crowded fashionable quarter; so Diana had to be content with the society of the two old ladies, who gossiped happily enough together, but whose conversation she could not but find singularly uninteresting.

She watched the monde with concealed wistfulness, seeing Beau Nash strut about among the ladies, bowing with his extreme gallantry, always impeccably garbed, and in spite of his rapidly increasing age and bulk still absolute monarch of Bath. She saw fine painted madams in enormous hoops, and with their hair so extravagantly curled and powdered that it appeared quite grotesque, mincing along with their various cavaliers; elderly beaux with coats padded to hid their shrunken shoulders, and paint to fill the wrinkles on their faces; young rakes; stout dowagers with their demure daughters; old ladies who had come to Bath for their health’s sake; titled folk of fashion, and plain gentry from the country—all parading before her eyes.

One or two young bucks tried to ogle her, and received such indignant glances from those clear eyes, that they never dared annoy her again, but for the most part no one paid any heed to the unknown and plainly clad girl.

Then came his Grace of Andover upon the stage.

He drew Diana’s attention from the first moment that he entered the Pump Room—a black moth amongst the gaily-hued butterflies. He had swept a comprehensive glance round the scene and at once perceived Diana. Somehow, exactly how she could never afterwards remember, he had introduced himself to her aunt and won that lady’s good will by his smoothness of manner and polished air. Madam Thompson, who left to herself, never visited the Assembly Rooms, could not be expected to recognise Devil Belmanoir in the simple Mr. Everard who presented himself.

As he had told his sister, Diana was cold. There was something about his Grace that repelled her, even while his mesmeric personality fascinated. He was right when he said that she feared him; she was nervous, and the element of fear gave birth to curiosity. She was intrigued, and began to look forward to his daily appearance in the Pump Room with mingled excitement and apprehension. She liked his flattering attention, and his grand air. Often she would watch him stroll across the floor, bowing to right and left with that touch of insolence that characterised him, and rejoiced in the knowledge that he was coming straight to her, and that the painted beauties who so palpably ogled and invited him to their sides could not alter his course. She felt her power with a thrill of delight, and smiled upon Mr. Everard, giving him her hand to kiss, and graciously permitting him to sit with her beside her aunt. He would point out all the celebrities of town and Bath for her edification, recalling carefully chosen and still more carefully censured anecdotes of each one. She discovered that Mr. Everard was an entertaining and harmless enough companion, and even expanded a little, allowing him a glimpse of her whimsical nature with its laughter and its hint of tears.

His Grace of Andover saw enough to guess at the unsounded depths in her soul, and he became lover-like. Diana recoiled instinctively, throwing up a barrier of reserve between them. It was not what he said that alarmed her, but it was the way in which he said it, and the vague something in the purring, faintly sinister voice that she could not quite define, that made her heart beat unpleasantly fast, and the blood rush to her temples. She began first to dread the morning promenade, and then to avoid it. One day she had a headache; the next her foot was sore; another time she wanted to work at her fancy stitchery, until her aunt, who knew how she disliked her needle, and how singularly free from headaches and all petty ailments she was wont to be, openly taxed her with no longer wishing to walk abroad.

They were in the girl’s bedroom at the time, Diana seated before her dressing-table, brushing out her hair for the night. When her aunt put the abrupt question she hesitated, caught a long strand in her comb, and pretended to be absorbed in its disentanglement. The clouds of rippling hair half hid her face, but Miss Betty observed how her fingers trembled, and repeated her question. Then came the confession. Mr. Everard was unbearable; his attentions were odious; his continued presence revolting to Mistress Di. She was afraid of him, afraid of his dreadful green eyes and of his soft voice. She wished they had never come to Bath, and still more that they had not met him. He looked at her as if—as if—oh, in short, he was hateful!

Miss Betty was horrified.

“You cannot mean it! Dear, dear, dear! Here was I thinking what a pleasant gentleman he was, and all the time he was persecuting my poor Di, the wretch! I know the type, my love, and I feel inclined to give him a good piece of my mind!”

“Oh, no—no!” implored Diana. “Indeed, you must do no such thing, Auntie! He has said nought that I could possibly be offended at—‘tis but his manner, and the—and the way he looked at me. Indeed, indeed, you must not!”

“Tut, child! Of course I shall say nought. But it makes me so monstrous angry to think of my poor lamb being tormented by such as he that I declare I could tear his eyes out! Yes, my dear, I could! Thank goodness we are leaving Bath next week!”

“Yes,” sighed Diana. “I cannot help being glad, though Madam Thompson is very amiable! ‘Tis so very different when there is no man with one!”

“You are quite right, my love. We should have insisted on your father’s staying with us instead of allowing him to fly back to his fusty, musty old volumes. I shall not be so foolish another time, I can assure you. But we need not go to the Assembly Rooms again.”

“I need not go,” corrected Diana gently. “Of course you and Madam Thompson will continue to.”

“To tell the truth, my love,” confessed Miss Betty, “I shall not be sorry for an excuse to stay away. ‘Tis doubtless most ill-natured of me, but I cannot but think that Hester has altered sadly since last I saw her. She is always talking of sermons and good works!”

Diana twisted her luxuriant hair into a long plait, and gave a gurgling little laugh.

“Oh, Auntie, is it not depressing? I wondered how you could tolerate it! She is so vastly solemn, poor dear thing!”

“Well,” said Miss Betty charitably, “she has seen trouble, has Hester Thompson, and I have my doubts about this George of hers. A worthless young man, I fear, from all accounts. But, unkind though it may be, I shall be glad to find myself at home again, and that’s the truth!” She rose and picked up her candle. “In fact, I find Bath not half so amusing as I was told ‘twould be.”

Diana walked with her to the door.

“‘Tis not amusing at all when one

has no friends; but last year, when my cousins were with us and papa took a house for the season on the North Parade, ‘twas most enjoyable. I wish you had been there, instead of with that disagreeable Aunt Jennifer!”

She kissed her relative most affectionately and lighted her across the landing to her room. Then she returned to her room and shut the door, giving a tired little yawn.

It was at about that moment that his Grace of Andover was ushered into the already crowded card-room of my Lord Avon’s house in Catharine Place, and was greeted with ribald cries of “Oho, Belmanoir!”, and “Where’s the lady, Devil?”

He walked coolly forward into the full light of a great pendant chandelier, standing directly beneath it, the diamond order on his breast burning and winking like a living thing. The diamonds in his cravat and on his fingers glittered every time he moved, until he seemed to be carelessly powdered with iridescent gems. As usual, he was clad in black, but it would have been difficult to find any other dress in the room more sumptuous or more magnificent than his sable satin with its heavy silver lacing, and shimmering waistcoat. Silver lace adorned his throat and fell in deep ruffles over his hands, and in defiance of Fashion, which decreed that black alone should be worn to tie the hair,