The Sleeping Sword by Brenda Jagger Page A

confirming my belief, as the brandied oranges and champagne syllabubs were brought in, that a sportsman will discuss his sport with the same fervour as an invalid listing his symptoms, and to the same stultifying effect.
    Noel Chard, who had served as master of the Lawdale Hunt during Sir Dominic’s absence, made small contribution to these equine enthusiasms, his attention absorbed by Blanche, his solicitude arousing in her an even greater helplessness than usual, a total inability to manage her napkin or reach her glass which clearly convinced Noel—if few others—of her frailty and her need, at all times, to be handled with care. Aunt Caroline too was silent, not really listening to the strident voices of her sons, not even calling them to order when one of them let slip an audible ‘damn’, a sure indication that her thoughts were very much occupied.
    â€˜When does Aunt Faith return from France?’ she asked me, although Blanche had mentioned the date not an hour before, and when I said that it would be the week after Christmas, she sighed and muttered: ‘How inconvenient, since they could join us—’, without specifying who or where.
    The dessert over, there was a pause, my eyes and Venetia’s going automatically to Aunt Caroline for our signal to withdraw, Dominic too glancing sharply at his mother, who had never before kept the ladies in the dining-room so long, depriving the squire of his port and cigars and the freedom to say ‘damn’and worse than that if he had a mind.
    â€˜Mamma?’ he said, puzzled and rather put out, revealing himself already as a gentleman who not only expected to get his own way but to get it at once, the very moment—as any fool could see—that he desired it.
    â€˜Yes, Dominic?’ she replied.
    â€˜Shouldn’t you—?’
    â€˜No,’ she said. ‘Not I, dear—not now.’
    And even then there was a moment before Blanche, catching her husband’s irritable eye, exclaimed, ‘Oh goodness! Are you waiting for me ?’, and started to her feet, her movement clearly requiring the assistance of Noel Chard if it was to be successfully completed.
    But Aunt Caroline, having scored her point and proved her daughter-in-law to be incompetent, shook her head, turning imperious again.
    â€˜In a moment, dear. First there is a word to be said, and a toast to be drunk, I think.’
    â€˜Oh yes,’ Blanche agreed, sliding back into her chair, assuming the toast was to be ‘long life and happiness to the bride’, so that she was unprepared and completely vulnerable when Aunt Caroline announced: ‘Dominic, as the head of the family, already knows what I have to say. I have his approval and am in no doubt of yours. The Duke of South Erin has asked me to be his wife—and I have agreed to it, which should surprise no one.’
    And through the sudden scraping back of chairs, the exclamations and the laughter as the little duke was shaken by the hand and the tall duchess kissed in turn by each of her tall sons—all three of them keenly alive to the advantages of a ducal step-papa—I heard Venetia’s clear voice say ‘Lord, what a lark! You’ve always been a duchess, Aunt Caroline’, while Blanche, feeling the weight of Listonby already on her shoulders, howled out her dismay. ‘You didn’t tell me, Dominic.’
    The match, of course, was altogether splendid, for while South Erin was not a great political duke, his family no older than the Clevedons and the Chards themselves, he was of the nobility, not the simple landed gentry as they were, and even Sir Dominic, whose view of his own worth must have been a great comfort to him, was impressed.
    There would be a tall, somewhat dilapidated house in Belgravia for Aunt Caroline to renovate, an estate in Devonshire for her to ‘improve’in her unique fashion, a presentation at Court, for although our Queen