Cotillion by Georgette Heyer Page B

overnight by his valet, Spiddle naturally did not inform the happy pair. The night had brought counsel; and had anything further been needed to confirm the old gentleman’s resolve to pursue a Machiavellian policy it was supplied by an early visit from the Reverend Hugh Rattray, whose discourse so much enraged Mr. Penicuik that he declared himself thankful at least that his ward had not been so misguided as to become engaged to such an intolerable stick of a parson. He then indicated his burning desire to see his house rid of his great-nephews, and charged the Rector with a message for his brother and for Dolphinton, that they need not put themselves to the trouble of taking formal leave of him.
    By the time that Kitty and Mr. Standen (no early riser)
    presented themselves, Mr. Penicuik had consumed a sustaining repast, and was seated in a winged chair before the fire in his dressing-room, a shawl over his knees and another round his shoulders. His sagging form and apparently palsied hand informed the initiated that his role this morning was one of senile decay; but there was nothing very senile in the needle-sharp glance he cast at his ward, as she approached his chair.
    “Well, my dear!” he said. “They tell me I’m to wish you happy. Hey?”
    “If you please, sir,” responded Kitty, dutifully bending to kiss his cheek.
    “I do wish you happy!” said Mr. Penicuik, with strong resolution. He turned his penetrating eyes towards Freddy, but instantly shut them, his countenance contorted, possibly, by a twinge of gout. “I felicitate you, Frederick!” he said. He opened his eyes again, took another look at the successful suitor, and averted them with a visible shudder. But this was unfair: the Honourable Frederick had done justice to the occasion by arranging his neck-tie in the style known as the trône d’amour , a mode as difficult to achieve as it was beautiful to behold. Any one of a score or more aspirants to fashion would have been glad to have studied its intricacies, and several dashing blades would have had no hesitation in demanding the name of the genius who had designed his waistcoat. It was not so with Mr. Penicuik. He reached out a trembling hand for his snuff-box, recruited his forces with a large pinch of Nut Brown, sneezed violently, shut the box with a snap, and said with all the air of one who had made up his mind to perform a painful duty: “Very well! You have my blessing!”
    Kitty looked at her swain in an expectant way, but Freddy, quite unnerved by the basilisk glance he had encountered, forgot his carefully conned part, and merely said that he was very much obliged. Kitty, realizing that little could be hoped for from that quarter, made the best of it, and said brightly: “Yes, sir, and Freddy wishes me to go to Mount Street, to be formally presented to his parents, if you should not object to it.”
    Recalled to a sense of his shortcoming, Freddy made hasty amends. “Very likely to have forgotten her,” he explained. “Good thing to remind them!”
    “Imbecile!” said Mr. Penicuik. His gaze rested thoughtfully on Kitty’s face. There was a tense pause. “London, eh?” he said at last. “What do you mean to do there, miss?”
    Kitty’s heart began to thump. “If—if Lady Legerwood should be so obliging as to invite me, sir, I—I shall do whatever she desires, of course!” she produced.
    “Don’t tell me!” said Mr. Penicuik. “Go raking about town, that’s what you want to do!” He turned his eyes upon Freddy. “I suppose Emma—your mother—goes to all the swell places? Almack’s—box at the Opera—Carlton House parties? She was dressed as fine as fivepence the last time I saw her: I daresay fifty pounds wouldn’t have paid for what she had on her back! Not that it’s any concern of mine if your father chooses to let her squander a fortune on trumpery!”
    “No,” said Freddy.
    “What do you mean, No ?” demanded Mr. Penicuik, glaring at him.
    “No