‘Mr de Lacy, may I ask you a question?’ she asked, as Cecily and Lady Amelia moved off ahead of them. ‘I am still unused to London ways, you see. Is it regular for a man such as yourself, of your age and stature, to still lodge with his mother?’
Mr de Lacy looked taken aback. ‘My schoolfriends all do so,’ he confessed. ‘James, my brother, does still have his own lodgings in town, though the family house is his now – Mama did offer to leave, but he wouldn’t hear of it. Though as he is hardly ever in London, he rarely uses either house.’
‘I see,’ Kitty said thoughtfully. ‘Do you think he would grant you leave to use them, should you like to? I own that were I in your shoes, I should very much like the freedom living alone would offer.’
‘What do you mean?’ Mr de Lacy asked, uncertainly. The idea of having his own lodgings had never occurred to him.
‘Well, one could do what one wanted, whenever the fancy struck,’ Kitty suggested. ‘Come and go as one pleased, and suchlike.’
‘I would not have to answer to Mama or Pattson, who always seem to have something to say about everything I do,’ Mr de Lacy said, catching on.
‘You could breakfast for supper,’ Kitty said roguishly. ‘And stay up as late as you like.’
‘Oh, I say,’ he chuckled, finding this idea quite scandalous.
‘Just a thought,’ she said. ‘It could be marvellous, you know.’
Kitty hoped this had been enough to prompt some action from the boy, but upon the next day, perceived at once this tactic to have been a mistake. Lady Amelia greeted them with the news that they had been forbidden from ever seeing the Misses Talbot again – a decree that they seemed all too cheerful to disobey, the attraction of youthful company in an otherwise deserted London proving too powerful to ignore.
‘Mama almost fainted when Archie said he wanted to find his own lodgings,’ Lady Amelia told them. ‘She lays all the blame on you, Miss Talbot.’
‘Tosh,’ Mr de Lacy dismissed at once. ‘A load of dramatics. Do not think on it for a second, Miss Talbot, she’ll come around soon enough.’
‘Will she not notice you have left to meet us, as normal?’ Cecily asked.
‘Not a jot,’ Mr de Lacy said. ‘Got one of these new fainting spells – forget what she’s calling them now. Two doctors have been already, and we slipped out amidst all the confusion.’
‘Good thing too,’ Lady Amelia agreed. ‘Can’t bear to discuss her health a second longer. Besides,’ she linked her arm through Cecily’s, ‘makes it quite exciting – all very clandestine.’
Kitty’s heart sank at this. It would not do at all for theirs to become a clandestine arrangement. Clandestine meant scandal, and Kitty knew very well where scandals ended up. It was not a life she wanted for herself, at all.
‘Mr de Lacy, I am dismayed to have caused so much upset,’ she said. ‘I do not want your mother to dislike me so.’
Archie gave a careless wave of his hand, brushing this concern off entirely. ‘She’ll come around, don’t you worry,’ he said dismissively. ‘You simply must hear about Gerry’s latest letter – my friend from Eton, you know, should be in town in a week or so. Damnedest thing—’
Mr de Lacy barrelled on with a long and uninteresting story about Gerry’s latest escapade, and though Kitty laughed along, her attention was firmly elsewhere. While Mr de Lacy might move through life with the cheery self-assurance that everything would work out in his favour in the end, Kitty did not. She highly doubted that Lady Radcliffe would change her opinion without some outside intervention, and so she must think of a way to make Lady Radcliffe like her. But how to do it?
‘I am so sorry to hear of your mother’s illness,’ she said softly, once Mr de Lacy had finished his soliloquy. ‘I only wish there was something I could do.’
‘Wouldn’t worry your head about it,’ Mr de Lacy told her. ‘The doctors will say there’s nothing wrong with her, she won’t believe them, and it will be some hocus-pocus medicine from cook or Lady Montagu that will cure her in the end. Before the whole thing starts up again.’
‘Is that so,’ Kitty said thoughtfully. Then, after a beat, ‘Have I ever told you that I have a great interest in medicine?’
‘You haven’t – at least, not that I can remember,’ Archie confessed.
‘I do. In Dorsetshire, you know we are most comfortable with the use of herbal remedies,’ she lied. ‘Your mother’s fainting spells sound most familiar to me; I am sure Mrs Palmer from our town was similarly afflicted and I have a recipe of the elixir that cured her. Would you permit me to write her a note recommending it?’