'Yes, but I don't wish to be reminded of it.'
'Such a dreadfully ageing title, isn't it?' said Miss Wychwood, with spurious sympathy.
'Exactly so!' he replied. 'Almost worse than aunt!'
She shook her head sadly. 'Indeed yes! Though it was being called aunt that drove me from my home.'
'Well, what am I to call you?' demanded Lucilla.
'Anything else you like,' he responded, in a voice devoid of interest.
'Now, that very generous permission opens a wide field to you, my dear,' said Miss Wychwood. 'It wouldn't do for you to call him Bangster, for that would be too impolite, but I see nothing amiss with you calling him Captain Hackum, which has the same meaning, but wrapped up in clean linen!'
Mr Carleton grinned, and kindly explained to his bewildered niece that these terms signified a bully. 'They are cant terms,' he further explained, 'and far too vulgar for you to use! Anyone hearing them on your lips would write you down as a brassfaced hussy, without conduct or delicacy.'
'Devil!' said Miss Wychwood, with feeling.
'Oh, you're quizzing me!' Lucilla exclaimed, slightly offended. 'Both of you! I wish you will not! I am not a brass-faced hussy, though I daresay people would think me one if I called you merely Oliver ! I am sure it must be most
improper!'
'It would not only be improper but it would bring down instant retribution on your head!' he told her. 'I have no objection to your addressing me as Oliver, but Merely Oliver I'm damned if I'll tolerate!'
She gave a choke of laughter. 'I didn't mean that! You know I didn't! Of course, if you had a title it would be perfectly proper to call you by it, but only think what my aunt would say if she heard me calling you Oliver!'
'As it seems unlikely that she will hear it, that need not trouble you,' he said. 'If you have any qualms, allay them with the reflection that Princess Charlotte addresses all her uncles – and, for anything I know, her aunts too – by their Christian names, and even the youngest of them is older than I am!'
Lucilla had little interest in Royalty and dismissed the Princess Charlotte summarily. 'Oh, well, I daresay things are different for princesses!' she said. 'But you said that it's unlikely my aunt will ever hear me call you Oliver. W-what do you mean, Unc– sir ?'
'I understand that she has washed her hands of you?'
'Yes!' breathed Lucilla, clasping her hands together, and keeping her eyes fixed on his face. 'And so – ?'
'It behoves me, of course, to find some other female willing to take charge of you.'
Her face fell. 'But when am I to make my come-out?'
'Next year,' he replied.
'Next year? Oh, that's too bad of you!' she cried. 'I shall be past eighteen by then, and almost on the shelf ! I want to come out this year!'
'I daresay, but it won't harm you to wait for another year,' he answered unfeelingly. 'In any event, you must, because Julia Trevisian, who is to present you at one of the Drawing-rooms, cannot undertake the very exhausting task of chaperoning you to all the functions to which she will see to it that you are invited, until your cousin Marianne is off her hands. Marianne is to be married in May, midway through the Season, and that would be far too late for you to make your first appearance – even if Julia were not, by that time, wholly done-up, which, from her conversation when I last saw her, I gather she expects to be.'
'Is Cousin Julia going to bring me out?' she asked, brightening perceptibly. 'Well, I must say that if you arranged that, sir, it is quite the best thing you've ever done for me! In fact, it is the only good thing you've ever done for me, and I am truly grateful to you!'
'Handsomely said!'
'Yes, but it doesn't settle the question of where I am to live, or what I am to do for a whole year,' she pointed out. 'And I wish to make it plain to you that nothing – nothing! – will prevail upon me to return to Aunt Clara! If you force me to go back, I shall run away again!'
'Not if you have a particle of commonsense,' he said dryly. He looked her over, rather sardonically smiling. 'You'll do as you are bid, my girl, for if I have any more highty-tighty behaviour from you I promise you I shan't permit you to come out next Season.'
She turned white with sheer rage, and stammered: 'You – you –'
'Enough of this folly!' interposed Miss Wychwood, in blighting accents. 'You are both talking arrant nonsense! I don't know which of you is being the more childish, but I know which of you has the least excuse for behaving like a spoilt baby!'
A tinge of colour stole into Mr Carleton's cheeks, but he shrugged, and said, with a short laugh: 'I've no patience to waste on pert and disobedient schoolgirls.'
'I hate you!' said Lucilla, in a low and trembling voice.