Little Coquette by Joan Smith Page A

confusing. I daresay it is not all Papa’s fault. I mean, Mama could have come to London with him so he would not be so much alone. And even at home—”
    “Do they not get along?”
    “He’s hardly ever there. And when he is, Mama pays very little heed to him. I mean—she bustles about and tries to do everything to suit him, but—I don’t know. She doesn’t bother going to his room to say good night. Little things like that. I never really noticed before. She’s dutiful, but not really friendly. And Papa is the same, really. They’re more like ...”
    “Brother and sister?” he suggested, when she hesitated.
    “No, not even that. Acquaintances, perhaps. But she would never look at any other man,” she added in a defensive way.
    Her revelation lured Beaumont into an admission. “My parents fought like cats and dogs,” he said. “One hardly knows which is worse: a polite, conjugal indifference or an excess of emotion. The indifference would be easier on the crockery. Mama used to throw cups and plates at Papa.”
    “Really! What did they fight about?” she asked. She remembered Beaumont’s papa as a jovial, handsome man, always laughing and joking. But then married people had two different faces, one for public and one for private. Now that she considered it, she realized her parents acted fonder of each other in company than when at home alone.
    “Everything. Money, me, his friends, her friends, her bonnets and gowns, his horses and gambling. I don’t know whether they hated or loved each other. Love, in the beginning, I daresay. Only a blighted love could lead to such rancor. Indifference wouldn’t do it. ‘Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned,’ as Congreve wrote. I always thought ‘Hell has no rage’ would be more like it.”
    “I don’t think my parents ever loved each other. I can’t remember ever seeing them snuggling or ... you know. Making little private jokes and things, the way people in love do. But they never fought. They were always polite to each other. I wonder if Mama has known about Prissie all along.”
    “Or cared if she did know.”
    “That would be the saddest thing of all, wouldn’t it?” she said, more to herself than to her companion. “To never have cared.”
    “Yet it’s the course you’ve chosen, not to marry, not to care for a special someone.”
    She puzzled over this a moment. “I was speaking of people who do marry. In that case, they ought to love each other. For people like myself, it is quite different. We expend our emotions on different things.” She thought of Nessie, who had surprised her by saying she regretted every day that she hadn’t married.
    “There speaks the voice of inexperience. When— if—you ever fall in love, you’ll feel differently.”
    “Is that the voice of experience or merely the opinion of the omniscient male sex?” she asked with a rueful smile. Not the derisive smile she usually wore when quizzing him. It was softer, even vulnerable.
    Beaumont just shook his head. “I’ll say one thing, Lydia. If you ever do tumble into love, you won’t do it blindly. You’ll have a strong light trained on all the victim’s faults. I never met such a mistrusting girl.”
    He thought she would flare up at him, but Lydia just laughed. She had enjoyed their little talk. It was interesting to hear the views of a young man-about-town.
    “Victim! You make me sound like a harpy!”
    “It’s you who said it!”
    “Then you’re lucky I don’t love you, for I would find faults aplenty. And before you jump down my throat, I admit you would find plenty in me.”
    “The redoubtable Miss Trevelyn admits to a fault?”
    “Oh, certainly. I am my father’s—parents’ daughter, after all. I am ignorant as a swan, somewhat stubborn, I don’t take kindly to orders, and I’m too skinny for the fashion.”
    “If that anticipatory smile suggests that you are now expecting a list of my faults, I am afraid you’ll be