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attempt the journey after some four years’ absence
from that favourite haunt of her golden youth.
    For
to Lady Crossens, as to others of her generation, Tunbridge Wells
was steeped in nostalgia, and she could derive almost as much
pleasure in the early nineties in talking with her cronies of the
dear old days as she had enjoyed in the reality of its heyday in
the forties and fifties when Beau Nash reigned supreme.
    By
the time the coach rumbled into the town, and fetched up outside
the coach office, the questionable behaviour of Lady Crossens’
protégée had given way to a discussion over the identity of the man
who had incurred Verity’s wrath.
    ‘ From what you have said,’ offered her ladyship, ‘I should
guess this boy Braxted has come into his inheritance a minor, and
this person is his guardian.’
    ‘ Yes, that is quite possible,’ Verity agreed. ‘I suppose he is
an uncle or cousin. He certainly exhibited the sort of breeding
that would suggest a genteel background.’
    ‘ But
that would not preclude his taking a post of tutor or secretary,’
argued Lady Crossens. ‘Indeed, one would employ none but a
gentleman born on such work.’
    Verity thought about this. ‘I must say I should be glad to
know him for something insignificant of that sort, for his conduct
towards those poor children was quite abominable, and I am still
very much out of charity with him. But I must confess that the
other men treated him with a deference that argued against it. I am
inclined to think you are right, Lady Crossens. Let us suppose him
a guardian—and a remarkably bad one at that.’
    ‘ Pish! What should he do? Fawn all over them and indulge them
to death like another I could—’ Her ladyship broke off, belatedly
recognising the infelicity of this retort.
    But
Verity was not in the least offended and she knew very well what
the old lady had intended to say. ‘Like Papa, you mean. Yes, I know
he indulges us. He is the best and kindest of fathers.’
    And
the most sentimental, her ladyship might have added. But she did
not. There was a degree of intimacy in the Lambourn family that in
truth she envied a little, in spite of her strictures, and she
could readily appreciate Verity’s disgust at the quite different
circumstances that apparently prevailed in this boy Braxted’s
household.
    But
Miss Lambourn, having settled to her satisfaction the probable
station in life of her late antagonist, had moved on to indulge her
ready imagination in a fantastic flight of fancy. In her mind’s eye
she was turning the limping, angry young man into a hideously
deformed and ravening monster, who coveted his young ward’s title
and lands and was even now plotting to eliminate him and bury his
bones in the dried-up moat surrounding his sinister
castle.
    Lady
Crossens’ voice recalled her from a scene of terror in the young
lord’s bedchamber, where the grotesque figure of the murdering
guardian leaned over the angelic sleeping child, dagger raised
ready to strike.
    ‘ Here we are,’ trilled the old lady excitedly. ‘Oh, do but
look about you, child. Isn’t it heaven? I can hardly believe it. I
am back at last. Back at the Wells!’
     
     
     

Chapter
Two
     
    ‘ May
I say what an inestimable pleasure it is to welcome your ladyship
back among us? You have been sorely missed these last
years.’
    The
speaker, a dapper, middle-aged gentleman with a manner that nicely
blended respect with an air of self-importance, nevertheless spoke
in all sincerity. Mr Richard Tyson, the present master of
ceremonies for Tunbridge Wells, had a healthy fondness for any and
all of the wealthy and high-ranking patrons who still chose to
grace his domain in the summer. Especially those like Lady Crossens
who, although holding fast to old customs, still cared enough to
dress with the times and so keep the Wells a little in
fashion.
    Her ladyship had put
off her travelling dress and arrayed herself for the evening in an
open robe of figured French