Elizabeth Mansfield by Matched Pairs Page A

pursuit of a man who is quite beneath you? And that I accompany you all the way to Derbyshire to drop in on someone who isn’t even expecting us? You are mad! You sound like an immodest, manipulative virago! I won’t even discuss such a brazen idea!” And he turned on his heel and marched up out of her sight.
    Cleo sank down on the step and leaned her forehead on the bannister, her mind in a whirl. It was a brazen idea, she thought, just as her father said it was. But it was also a good one. There was much she could accomplish in a visit to Tris’s home. For one thing, he would, as her host, be forced by simple good manners to reconcile with her. She would meet his mother, for another. And she would get a glimpse of the mysterious Julie, the “neighbor” who had such power over him that one crook of her little finger had lifted him from her own arms and sent him rushing home. Cleo wanted more than anything else to get a look at that female.
    Yes, it was in Derbyshire, rather than in London, that she, Miss Cleo Smallwood, could learn what she needed to know of the real Tris. And if in the process she appeared to her father—and to the rest of the world—to be a manipulative, immodest virago, so be it. It would be worth it.
    Of course, she couldn’t make the trip without escort; she wasn’t such a virago as all that. But there was no one other than her father who could escort her. He’d refused to do it, and in terms that seemed to brook no argument. But she could change his mind; his refusal did not worry her. Papa would succumb to her blandishments sooner or later, she was sure of that. By the time she was ready to leave, she’d surely have won him over. She could always twist him round her little finger. When Tris had stormed from the house, she’d worried that she’d lost some of her power to charm men. But not her power over Papa. Good God, no! She couldn’t have lost as much as that.
     
     

 
     
    13
     
     
    An hour before the guests were due to arrive for the dinner party, Tris decided to look into the dining room to check on the preparations. What he saw struck him like a blow. This was not the small informal dinner he’d envisioned. The table had been expanded to its fullest length—seating twenty-four!—and was set with the finest china and plate. At least five goblets were lined up at each place, and two footmen were busily setting up floral centerpieces at three-foot intervals on the table, having already adorned the sideboards with an alarming number of decanters, silver servers, chafing dishes, candelabra, epergnes and trays. The room glowed as if in preparation for the regent himself.
    Turning quite pale in chagrin, Tris immediately turned about and stormed up to his mother’s bedroom. “Mama!” he shouted, bursting in on her with no more warning than an angry knock. “What have you done?”
    She was sitting at her dressing table in an enormous dressing gown, her abigail doing up her hair. “Done about what?” she asked calmly, turning about in her chair to face her son.
    “About tonight’s dinner! It was supposed to be small. And informal! ”
    “Smaller than twenty-four was not possible,” Lady Phyllis explained, signaling the abigail to leave them. “If, for example, I’d invited the Frobishers without asking the Severns, the Severns would have been dreadfully offended. And the Kentings have two houseguests who had to be included. And the Harroway daughters are back from London, which of course I didn’t know, for if I did I’d never have sent the Harroways a card. Those Harroway girls, you know, are the two most irritating chatterboxes in the world, and why they’re called girls I never will understand, for they are thirty-five if they’re a day! And I couldn’t omit Lady Stythe and her sister—”
    “Enough!” Tris said, holding his ears. “I see your point; you needn’t go over the entire guest list. But didn’t you hear me say it was to be informal?”
    “Of