Venetia Read online

  ‘Well, that fate will be preferable to starvation,’ he said. ‘Hand over the orphans!’

  She knelt on the edge of the loft, and reached the basket down to his upstretched hand. He grasped it, and set it down on the floor, and looked up again, rather wickedly smiling. ‘Shall I hold the ladder for you, my dear delight?’

  ‘Certainly not!’ said Venetia firmly.

  ‘But you said it was unsteady!’

  ‘It is, but if I could come up it I can come down it.’

  ‘Do!’ he said cordially. ‘I shall have a stiff neck if I’m obliged to converse with you at that level. Or shall I come up?’

  She looked down at him with laughter in her eyes, but said severely: ‘No, you will not come up! Odious creature! You know very well I can’t come down that ladder while you stand there watching me!’

  ‘Can’t you? Oh, that’s easily remedied!’ he retorted, and removed the ladder, and laid it down.

  It was this impish action which drew the protest from her which Oswald heard. ‘Fiend!’ she said. ‘Do put it back, and go away!’

  ‘Not I!’ he replied, grinning up at her.

  ‘But it is most unchivalrous of you!’ she complained.

  ‘No, no, on the contrary! The ladder is clearly unsafe.’

  She tried to make her mouth prim, but failed. ‘Do you know, my dear friend, that besides being most ungentlemanly you are shockingly untruthful?’ she enquired.

  ‘No, am I? Do you know how entrancing your face is when seen from this angle?’

  She was still kneeling, resting her hands on the edge of the loft, and looking directly down at him. ‘Upside down? Well, of all the unhandsome things to say! Now, Damerel, you will be so very obliging as to stop behaving like a horrid schoolboy, and set the ladder up again?’

  ‘No, dear torment, I will not!’

  ‘Wretch! Do you mean to keep me a prisoner up here? I warn you, the instant your back is turned I shall jump down!’

  ‘Oh, don’t wait for that! Jump now!’ he said. ‘I’ll catch you!’

  ‘Thank you, I had as lief not be caught!’

  ‘What, are you afraid I’ll let you fall? Little craven! And you a Lanyon of Undershaw!’

  ‘Pooh!’ said Venetia, making a face at him. She then altered her position, drew her flounced skirt tightly round her ankles, swung her legs over the edge of the loft, and slid down into Damerel’s arms.

  He caught her, and held her in a strong grip, but whatever might have been his next intention was frustrated by Oswald, who at this moment revealed his presence, starting forward with a wrathful imprecation.

  His purpose was to command Damerel to unhand Venetia, and, if necessary, to wrest her from his grasp, but as Damerel, without showing the smallest sign of surprise, much less of discomfiture, had already set her on her feet, and released her, there was no need to do this. He was unable, on the spur of the moment, to think of anything else to say, and stood glaring at Damerel instead.

  Venetia had been startled by his sudden appearance, but she betrayed no more discomfiture than Damerel, merely saying: ‘Oh, is it you, Oswald? What a pity you should not have arrived just one minute earlier! You might have played the knight-errant to my damsel in distress. Would you believe it? – finding me engaged on an errand of mercy up there, Lord Damerel treacherously removed the ladder!’ She laughed at Damerel. ‘In fact, you remind me strongly of my brother Conway!’

  ‘And worse you cannot say of anyone, I collect!’ His lazy yet penetrating gaze rested on Oswald’s flushed countenance for a moment. There was a good deal of amusement in his eyes, but some not unkindly understanding as well. ‘I shall go and seek comfort of Aubrey,’ he said.

  Oswald, standing in the doorway still, hesitated, but after a moment’s indecision, moved reluctantly aside to allow him to pass.

  Venetia bent to pick up her basket. ‘I must take these unfortunate kittens up to the house. At least their eyes are open, so perhaps they will be able to lap.’

  ‘Wait!’ uttered Oswald.

  She looked enquiringly at him. ‘Why?’

  ‘I must and will speak to you! That fellow – !’

  ‘If you mean Damerel, as I conclude you must, I wish you will say so, and not call him that fellow! It is not at all becoming in you to speak in such a way of a man so much older than you are, and particularly when you’ve no cause to do so.’

  ‘No cause!’ he exclaimed hotly. ‘When I find him here, f-forcing his improper attentions upon you!’

  ‘Fiddle!’

  He flushed. ‘How can you say that? When I saw – and heard –’

  ‘You neither saw nor heard him forcing anything upon me. And you won’t,’ she added calmly.

  ‘You don’t understand! You –’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  He stared at her, rather nonplussed. ‘You know nothing about men of his stamp! You’ve let him hoax you with his curst cajolery into thinking he means no harm, but if you knew what his reputation is –’

  ‘Well, I do know, better than you, I daresay.’

  ‘The fellow’s a rake! No female is safe with him!’

  She gave an involuntary laugh. ‘How very dreadful! Oswald, do, pray, stop talking fustian! You can’t think how absurd it is!’

  ‘It’s true!’ he said earnestly.

  ‘Yes, it’s true that he’s a rake, but I assure you there is no need to worry over my safety. I expect you mean it kindly, but I shall be very much obliged to you if you will say no more!’

  He stared at her fiercely, and ejaculated: ‘You’re bewitched!’

  The oddest little smile flickered in her eyes. ‘Am I? Well, never mind! It is quite my own affair, after all. Now I must take these kittens up to the kitchen, and see what can be done for them.’

  He resolutely barred the way. ‘You shall hear me!’ he declared. ‘You hope to fob me off, but it will not do!’

  She looked at him for a measuring instant, and then sat down on Aubrey’s bench, and folded her hands in her lap, saying, with resignation: ‘Very well: say what you wish, if nothing else will do for you!’

  It was not very encouraging, but there was so much that Oswald was burning to say, and had, indeed, several times rehearsed, that he was not at all daunted. He plunged, stammering a little, into a speech that began as worldly-wise advice from a man of wide experience to a singularly innocent and gullible girl, but very soon changed to a diatribe against Damerel, and an impassioned declaration of undying love for Venetia. It lasted for quite a considerable time, and Venetia made no attempt to check it. Nor did she laugh, for it was apparent to her that her youthful admirer had worked himself into a dangerously overwrought condition, and believed himself to be far more violently in love with her than she had guessed. She gathered from one or two of his utterances that he was persuaded that she had been in a fair way to returning his love until Damerel had cast his spell over her; and although she knew that she had never given him the smallest encouragement she was vexed with herself for not having perceived that a turbulent boy with a yearning for romance and a marked turn for dramatising himself was quite capable of exaggerating mere elder-sisterly kindness into something far warmer. So she let him talk himself out uninterrupted, thinking that since so many wild and tangled emotions had been festering in his bosom he would probably feel much better for being allowed to pour them forth, and even a little ashamed of himself. However, when he reached the stage of urging her to marry him, and outlining, in a rapture of fantasy, a wedding-trip that included the more remote parts of the globe, and would, at the lowest computation, take quite three years to accomplish, she judged it to be time to intervene, and to administer a damper calculated to make him fall out of love with her as suddenly as he had fallen into it.

  As soon as he paused, eagerly scanning her face to see what effect his eloquence had had on her, she rose,
and said, as she picked up her basket: ‘Well, now, Oswald, if you have finished talking nonsense, you may listen to what I have to say, and after that you may go home! You have been quite amazingly impertinent, but I don’t mean to scold you for that, because I can see that you’ve hoaxed yourself into thinking I was as good as promised to you before Damerel came to the Priory. How you can be so conceited as to suppose I should have a tendre for a boy not very much older than Aubrey I can’t think! I wish you will try to cure yourself of make-believe, and learn to be a little more sensible! It seems to me that you imagine so much that it gets to be quite real to you, which leads you, you know, to say the most absurd things! Only consider, for instance, what would happen if I were as silly as you, and agreed to marry you! Do you soberly suppose that Sir John and Lady Denny would have nothing to say to such a ridiculous match?’

  ‘Nothing they could say would turn me from my purpose!’ he averred.

  ‘Oh, wouldn’t it?’ she retorted. ‘We should just fly to the Border, I collect, since you’re not of age, and be married over the anvil! I should cut a pretty figure! What next should we do? Set forth on this wonderful journey of yours? – which sounds to me excessively uncomfortable, and, indeed, would be more than uncomfortable, because we should soon find ourselves without a feather to fly with. Or have you bamboozled yourself into believing that Sir John will be so obliging as to put you in command of a handsome independence?’ She paused, and could not help smiling at the sudden change in his expression. A baffled and angry scowl, which made him look like a thwarted schoolboy, was now being bent upon her, and seemed to indicate that he was already more than half out of love. She moved forward, saying: ‘You see how foolish it is, don’t you? Don’t let us say any more about it! When you are as old as I am I expect you will be very much in love, not play-acting, with a girl who is at this present sewing samplers in the schoolroom, and if you remember me at all, which you very likely won’t, you’ll wonder how you came to make such a cake of yourself! Go home now – and no more dangling after me, if you please!’

  By this time Oswald was hating her quite as much as he had adored her, but not being prone in his most equable moods to consider what was the true state of his feelings he was quite incapable of performing this feat when a prey to emotion. In the jumble of hurt, and fury, and chagrin into which Venetia’s cool mockery had plunged him he saw only one thing clearly, and that was that she looked on him as a schoolboy. He said in a voice that shook with anger: ‘You think I’m too young to love, do you? Well, you’re wrong!’

  With these bitter words, and before she had had time to realise his intention, he seized her, and managed, though not very expertly, to get his arms round her.

  Venetia, more concerned for the unhappy kittens, which were very nearly tilted out of the basket by this sudden onslaught, than for herself, cried sharply: ‘Take care! You idiotish boy, let me go at once!’

  But Oswald, who had never before held a girl in his arms, was in the grip of a novel and exciting sensation, and he hugged her rather more tightly, and kissed first her ear, then her eyebrow, and then her cheekbone in several dogged attempts to reach her lips. Between these assaults he said in a breathless, exultant voice: ‘A child, am I? I’ll show you!’

  ‘Oswald, stop! How dare you – oh, thank goodness!’

  If Oswald wondered what had drawn this unexpected exclamation from her, or why she suddenly ceased struggling, he was not left for more than a very few seconds in doubt. A hand was thrust roughly into his neckband, and closed like a vice, nearly choking him, and its fellow grasped the seat of his riding-breeches; he was plucked bodily away from Venetia, jerked round, propelled irresistibly to the doorway, and sent sprawling through it.

  Nine

  Having disposed in this rough and ready fashion of Oswald, Damerel turned to direct a quizzical look at Venetia. ‘What the deuce have you been doing to cast the boy into this frenzy?’ he enquired.

  ‘You may well wonder!’ she replied, very much incensed, and considerably dishevelled. ‘Trying to cure him of his silly fancy for me!’

  ‘Oh, that was it, was it?’ he said, amused. He glanced towards Oswald, who was picking himself up. ‘Well, you had best remain discreetly out of sight now, fair disaster, because if I know anything of the matter your hot-headed swain is about to make a spirited attempt to send me to grass.’

  ‘Oh, no, he is not!’ declared Venetia, a martial light in her eye. ‘You may leave this to me, Damerel! In fact, I order you to do so!’

  She swept past him, just as Oswald, having managed to overcome the effects of semi-strangulation, started towards Damerel with his fists clenched. Finding Venetia in his path, he was obliged to check himself, and before he could thrust her aside, which, in his blind rage, he had every intention of doing, she had spoken words that fell on him like a cold douche. ‘Are you now proposing to begin a vulgar brawl for my entertainment? I give you fair warning, Oswald, that if I have to endure any more of your unmannerly behaviour I shall tell your papa just what has occurred, and with what a total lack of good breeding or propriety you have conducted yourself! I am excessively reluctant to inflict such a mortification upon him, or to distress your mama, so if you wish to make me amends for your rudeness don’t make it necessary for me to do so!’

  Scarlet-faced, he stammered: ‘I’m sorry – it wasn’t – I didn’t mean –’

  ‘Very well, you need say no more,’ she interrupted. ‘I shall not speak of it to anyone, and nor, you may be sure, will Lord Damerel. You had best go home now.’

  To his credit, he managed, though the effort nearly choked him, to swallow the various scathing retorts which rose to his tongue, and even to achieve a stiff bow. ‘Pray – pray accept my humble apologies, and believe that I shall not again trouble you, ma’am!’ he said. He then turned his smouldering gaze on to Damerel, and suffered a slight lapse from his stateliness. ‘And as for you,’ he said fiercely, ‘I’ll –’ He gave a gasp, and ended on a note of paralysing formality: ‘Your lordship shall hear from me!’

  He then executed another bow, and strode away.

  ‘Alas, poor Yorick!’ remarked Damerel. ‘My withers are slightly wrung, you know.’

  ‘Yes, so too are mine,’ Venetia agreed, a worried frown between her brows. ‘I can’t but feel that I am to blame for not having given him a heavy set-down as soon as he began to dangle after me. If I had had the least notion that he was suffering from anything more than a fit of calf-love which would very soon wear itself out I would have done so, of course.’

  ‘He wasn’t. Unless I am much mistaken, it’s I who am responsible for today’s outburst, not you. The silly young nodcock has been wanting to murder me from the moment he first clapped eyes on me.’

  She turned her eyes towards him. ‘Yes, he has. Oh dear, I do trust he won’t do anything foolish!’

  He smiled. ‘That’s past praying for, but it isn’t his own life he is planning to end! Don’t look so concerned! From what I have seen of him I’d wager a handsome sum on the certainty that before he reaches Ebbersley the worst of his present pangs will be over, and he will be deriving great satisfaction from a vision of my lifeless corpse stretched on the ground – at a distance of twenty yards. Or even of his own. Lord, yes, of course his own! That would ensure a lifetime of remorse for you, my cruel fair, and for me the execration of all. I should be obliged to fly the country, and serve me right! Even my seconds would shun me, for if I didn’t fire before the drop of the handkerchief, or something equally dastardly, you may depend upon it that I should in some way or other cut a very contemptible figure, while he won their pity and admiration by his unshakeable calm and noble bearing.’

  She could not help laughing, but she said rather anxiously: ‘I know that’s what he meant, when he said you should hear from him, but surely he wouldn’t do anything as silly as that? For when he thinks it over – No, that’s just what he won’t do! If he send you
a challenge, must you accept it?’

  ‘What, accept a challenge from a whelp who hasn’t yet cut his milk teeth? No, you absurd girl! I most emphatically must not!’

  ‘Well, thank goodness for that!’ she said, relieved. ‘Not but what he deserves a sharp lesson! He very nearly made me drop these unfortunate kittens, mauling me about in that detestable way! There is nothing I dislike more!’

  ‘I agree that he needs a lesson. I should rather suppose it to have been his first attempt. He ought, of course, to have got rid of the livestock,’ said Damerel, taking the basket out of her hand, and setting it down, ‘for while you were preoccupied with their safety what could he expect but a rebuff? Once they were disposed of he should have taken you in his arms, like this, and not as though he were a bear, bent on hugging you to death. Nor am I in favour of dabbing kisses all over a girl’s face. If you cannot persuade her, by a ruse, to look up, you should make her do so, with a hand under her chin – thus, my dear delight!’

  She had offered no resistance, and she lifted her face now without the urge of his hand. She was blushing a little, but she looked up into his eyes very willingly, her own shyly smiling.

  He too was smiling, but as he stared down at her she saw the smile fade, and an intent, searching look take its place. He was still holding her, but he seemed to stiffen. She heard the sharp intake of his breath, and, the next instant, Aubrey’s voice, shouting his name, and then she was no longer in his arms, and he had turned away to answer Aubrey’s call. She looked doubtfully at him, for it had seemed to her that it had not been Aubrey’s voice which had made him refrain from kissing her but some change in his own mind.

  Aubrey came limping between the trees towards them. ‘What the deuce are you doing here?’ he asked. ‘Ribble said you had been asking for me.’