The LadyShip by Elisabeth Kidd

shook her head and then suddenly, with a sob, broke away from him and ran out of the room, leaving the salon door open behind her.
     
     
     

Chapter 4
     
    Allingham stood for some minutes fastened by sheer as tonishment to the carpet. It was not until Lady Alfred entered, gushing, that he was able to recover his wits and to force some semblance of life into his limbs.
    “My dear Marcus!” Helena exclaimed, insinuating her arm into his rather rigid elbow. “I fear Clarissa is so over come by emotion that I was unable to get anything out of her when I stopped—ah, encountered her in the passage just now. Nonetheless, I am convinced that when she has had a moment to reflect, she will realise that this good for tune has indeed befallen her.”
    “My dear ma’am,” Allingham interrupted in a voice that Lord Vernon would have regarded as ominous, “I fear Miss Dudley does not consider marriage to me to be such a honeyfall—not in the personal sense, at any rate.”
    Lady Alfred moved a step backwards and, placing her other hand on Allingham’s wrist, stared up at him, her eyes round with disbelief. “But...surely you are not saying ...she has not refused you!”
    “Not in so many words,” Allingham said, ever precise. “She did not, however, give any indication of being eager to consider my offer.”
    “Nonsense!” Helena declared, abruptly releasing her hold on his sleeve. “The chit is merely being coy. She is so accustomed to foolish flirtations with her silly young beaux that she does not know how to receive an offer in form.”
    “Just so.”
    There was a world of meaning in those words. Lady Alfred was brought with a start to the realisation of her indis cretion and made haste to propitiate Mr Allingham, who was beginning to look grim. She may well have succeeded; not for nothing had her own mother instilled into her daughter her precepts on the care and nourishment of delicate male sensibilities and the most subtle methods of han dling a sensitive social situation.
    Moreover, Allingham was at the moment not at all certain that he was not himself somewhat at fault. He was aware that his talent for charm ing the fair sex was minimal at best, and he was soon per suaded that he ought to try again. While Lady Alfred went upstairs to have “a little talk” with her daughter, therefore, Allingham took a turn about the garden and rehearsed a few somewhat warmer and more lover-like phrases to present to Clarissa in lieu of what he now perceived to have been his initial regrettably unpractised approach. That these were likely to emerge sounding nonetheless like the stiffly legal terms of a marriage settlement did not occur to him. He had, after all, as little experience as skill in this sort of thing—indeed, he devoutly hoped that Clarissa would ac cept him only so that he would not be obliged to acquire any further such worldly wisdom.
    In the interval, Miss Dudley was, in her own manner, also searching her soul. Her manner being entirely opposite to Mr Allingham’s methodical ways, she approached a pre dicament by inventing first one scheme, then another, for resolving it, examining each in her mind as if it were a par ticular shade of hair-ribbon she searched for. In her man ner, nonetheless, she also reached a conclusion.
    “You foolish girl, do you realise what you have done—or rather undone?”
    Lady Alfred stormed unannounced into her daughter’s room—being careful, however, not to slam the door be hind her, lest Allingham should hear it—and resumed, ral lentando, her tirade.
    “All the work your father and I—I, in particular—have put into arranging this meeting today, in luring Alling ham here expressly to make you an offer—which re quired a good deal of contriving, let me inform you—and you insult him, you turn your back on him—you refuse him!”
    Clarissa, having reached her conclusion, was quite calm now. “I have not refused him, Mama,” she said, staring into her mirror as