Venetia Read online

  ‘Very true, but as he thought you were in the library and I knew you were not I abandoned the quest. I only wanted to give you Reid’s Intellectual Powers, and I left it on your desk.’

  ‘Oh, good! Thank you! I was in the gunroom, as Ribble might have guessed, if he ever took the trouble to think. By the by, I found that passage: it was Virgil, but in the Georgics, not the fourth Eclogue. Come up to the house, and I’ll show you!’

  ‘I’ll take your word for it. I can’t stay now. I have an uneasy feeling, moreover, that if I linger I may be called upon to drown a litter of kittens and I prefer to leave that task to you!’

  ‘Is that what brought you here?’ enquired Aubrey, of his sister. ‘Yes, I remember now: you said something about it at breakfast, didn’t you?’ He cast a cursory glance at the orphans, and added: ‘Give ’em to Fingle: he’ll drown ’em for you.’

  ‘For shame! Have you no sensibility?’ Damerel said lightly. He held out his hand to Venetia. ‘I must go. He’s right, you know: you’ll never rear them!’ He kept her hand in his for a moment, and then, as though yielding to compulsion, raised it to his lips and kissed it. Their eyes met only fleetingly, but she saw in his the answer to the question in her heart, and the tiny doubt that had disturbed her happiness vanished.

  It struck Fingle, however, covertly observing Damerel as he saddled up for him, that his lordship was looking uncommonly grim. He had generally a pleasant word and a smile for anyone who performed a service for him, but he seemed to have nothing to say on this occasion beyond a curt Thank you when he took the bridle in his hand, and swung himself into the saddle. He did not forget to bestow his usual douceur upon Fingle, but no smile went with it: he seemed to be thinking of something else, and nothing so very agreeable either, to judge by the frown on his face, thought Fingle.

  Damerel rode slowly back to the Priory, for a considerable part of the way with a slack rein, allowing the gray to walk. The frown did not lift from his brow; rather it deepened; and it was not until Crusader, startled by the sudden uprising of a pheasant, stopped dead, throwing up his head and snorting, that he was jerked out of his abstraction. He admonished Crusader, but leaned forward to pat his neck as well, because he knew the fault was his. ‘Old fool!’ he said. ‘Like your master – who is something worse than a fool. Would she could make of me a saint, or I of her a sinner – Who the devil wrote that? You don’t know, and I’ve forgotten, and in any event it’s of no consequence. For the first part it’s too late, old friend, too late! And for the second – it was precisely my intention, and a rare moment this is to discover that if I could I would not! Come up!’

  Crusader broke into a trot, and was kept to it, until, rounding a bend in the lane that brought the main gates of the Priory within view, Damerel saw a solitary horseman, walking his horse, and ejaculated: ‘Damn the boy!’

  Young Mr Denny, looking over his shoulder, braced himself, and wheeled about, and took up a position in the centre of the lane with the evident intention of disputing the right of way if his quarry should try to elude him. The set of his jaw was pugnacious, but he also looked to be suffering a considerable degree of embarrassment, which, indeed, he was.

  Impetuosity had betrayed him into a false position from which he could see no way of extricating himself with credit. Leaving Undershaw on the crest of his fury he had indulged for a time in very much the sort of imaginings which Damerel had described to Venetia; but even such wrath as his could not be maintained at fever-heat for long. Thanks to Damerel’s dawdling return to the Priory his had subsided into resentment some time before the gray horse came into sight, and for a full half hour he had been trying to make up his mind what to do, and without once allowing it to wander into the realm of fancy. From the moment when it occurred to him that the humiliation he had suffered was the direct result of his own misconduct the affair had been too serious for grandiose dreams. He suddenly perceived that Damerel had played the part he had imagined for himself: it was the villain who had rescued the lady from the hero. So appalling was this realization that for several minutes he could see no other solution to his troubles than instant flight from Yorkshire, and a future spent in obscurity, preferably at the other end of the world. His next and more rational impulse was to abandon his plan of challenging Damerel to a duel; and he had actually started for home when another hideous thought entered his head: he had addressed fatal words to Damerel, and if he did not make them good Damerel would believe that he had failed to do so because he was afraid. So he turned back again, because whatever else Damerel might say of him he was determined he should never be able to say that he had no more pluck than a dunghill cock. The challenge must be delivered, but try as he would Oswald could not recapture his eagerness. An uneasy suspicion that persons more familiar with the Code of Honour than himself would condemn his action as grossly improper nagged at him; and when he placed himself in Damerel’s path he would have given everything he possessed to have been a hundred miles away.

  Damerel pulled the gray up, and surveyed his youthful foe sardonically. ‘All that is needed to complete the picture is a mask and a pair of horse-pistols,’ he remarked.

  ‘I have been waiting for you, my lord!’ said Oswald, gritting his teeth.

  ‘I see you have.’

  ‘I imagine your lordship must know why! I said – I told you that you should hear from me!’

  ‘You did, but you’ve had time enough to think better of it. Try for a little wisdom, and go home!’

  ‘Do you think I’m afraid of you?’ Oswald demanded fiercely. ‘I’m not, my lord!’

  ‘I can see no reason why you should be,’ said Damerel. ‘You must know that there’s not the least possibility of my accepting a challenge from you.’

  Oswald flushed. ‘I know nothing of the sort! If you mean to say I’m unworthy of your sword I’ll take leave to tell you, sir, that I’m as well-born as you!’

  ‘Don’t rant! How old are you?’

  Oswald glared at him. There was a derisive gleam in the eyes which scanned him so indifferently, and it filled him with a primitive longing to smash his fist between them. ‘My age is of no consequence!’ he snapped.

  ‘On the contrary: it is of the first consequence.’

  ‘Here it may be! I don’t regard that, and you need not either! I have been about the world a little, and visited places where –’ He stopped, suddenly recollecting that he was talking to a man who had travelled widely.

  ‘If you have visited places where men of my years accept challenges from boys who might well be their sons you must have strayed into some pretty queer company,’ remarked Damerel.

  ‘Well, anyway, I’m reckoned to be a fair shot!’ said Oswald.

  ‘You terrify me. On what grounds do you mean to issue this challenge?’

  The angry young eyes held his for an instant longer, and then looked away.

  ‘I won’t press you for an answer,’ said Damerel.

  ‘Wait!’ Oswald blurted out, as Crusader moved forward. ‘You shan’t fob me off like that! I know I ought not to have – I never meant – I don’t know how I came to – But there was no need for you to –’

  ‘Go on!’ said Damerel encouragingly, as Oswald broke off. ‘No need for me to rescue Miss Lanyon from a situation which she was plainly not enjoying? Is that what you mean?’

  ‘Damn you, no!’ Oswald sought for words to express the hopeless tangle of his thoughts; none came to him, only the age-old cry of youth: ‘You don’t understand!’

  ‘You may ascribe the astonishing guard I have so far kept over my temper to the fact that I do,’ was the rather unexpected reply. ‘Patience, however, was never numbered amongst my few virtues, so the sooner we part the better. I am very sorry for you, but there’s nothing I can do to help you to recover from these pangs, and your inability to open your mouth without going off into rodomontade does rather alienate my sympathy, you know.’ />
  ‘I don’t want your damned sympathy!’ Oswald flung at him, intolerably stung. ‘One thing you can do, my lord! You can stop trying to give Venetia a slip on the shoulder!’ He saw the flash in Damerel’s eyes, and hurried on recklessly: ‘W-walking into her house as though it were your own, cajoling her with your man-of-the-town ways, c-cutting a wheedle with her because she’s too innocent to know it’s all a rig, and you’re bamboozling her! T-talking to me as if I was the loose-screw! I m-may have lost my head but I mean honestly by her! And you needn’t think I don’t know it’s uncivil to say things like this to you, because I do, and I don’t care a rush, and if you choose to nab the rust you may do so – in fact, I hope you will! – And I don’t care if you tell my father I’ve been uncivil to you either!’

  Damerel had been looking a little ugly, but this sudden anticlimax dispelled his wrath, and made him laugh. ‘Oh, I won’t proceed to such extreme measures as that!’ he said. ‘If there were a horse-pond at hand – ! But there isn’t, and at least you’ve made me a speech without any high-flown bombast attached to it. But unless you have a fancy for eating your dinner with your plate on the mantelpiece for the next few days don’t make me any more such speeches!’

  Oswald gave a gasp of outrage. ‘Only dismount, and we’ll try that!’ he begged.

  ‘My deluded youth, that is being more childish valourous than manly wise: I’m sure you’re full of pluck, and equally sure that it would be bellows to mend with you in rather less than two minutes. I’m not a novice, you see. No, keep your mouth shut! It is now my turn to make a speech! It will be quite short, and, I trust, quite plain! I’ve borne with you because I haven’t forgotten the agonies of first love, or what a fool I made of myself at your age; and also because I perfectly understand your desire to murder me. But when you have the infernal impudence to tell me I can stop trying to seduce Miss Lanyon you’ve gone very far beyond the line of what I’ll take from you! Only her brother has the right to question my intentions. If he chooses to do it I’ll answer him, but the only answer I have for you is contained in the toe of my boot!’

  ‘Her brother isn’t here!’ Oswald retorted swiftly. ‘If he were it would be a different matter!’

  ‘What the devil – Oh, you’re talking of her elder brother, are you? I wasn’t.’

  ‘Aubrey?’ exclaimed Oswald incredulously. ‘That scrubby little ape? Much good he could do – even if he tried! What does he know about anything but his fusty classics? If he thought about it at all he wouldn’t have the least notion what sort of a game you’re playing!’

  Damerel gathered up his bridle, saying dryly: ‘Don’t despise him on that head! Neither have you the least notion.’

  ‘I know you don’t mean marriage!’ Oswald retorted.

  Damerel looked at him for a moment, an oddly disquieting smile in his eyes. ‘Do you?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, by God I do!’ As Crusader moved forward, Oswald wrenched his own horse round, staring after Damerel in sudden dismay. He stammered: ‘Marriage? You and Venetia? She wouldn’t – she couldn’t!’

  There was undisguised revulsion in his voice, but the only response it drew from Damerel was a laugh, as he turned Crusader in through the gateway of the Priory, and cantered away down the long weed-grown avenue.

  Oswald could hardly have been more shocked had Damerel openly declared the most dishonourable of intentions. He was left a prey to doubt and disbelief, and with no other course open to him than to ride tamely home to Ebbersley. It was a long, dull ride, and with only the most humiliating reflections to occupy his mind he very soon became so sunk in gloom that not even the knowledge that his last words at least had flicked Damerel on the raw would have done much to elevate his spirits.

  Marston, gathering up Damerel’s discarded coat and breeches, looked thoughtfully at him, but offered no comment, either then or much later, when he found Imber, an expression of long-suffering on his face, decanting a bottle of brandy.

  ‘On the cut!’ said Imber. ‘I thought it wouldn’t be long before he was making indentures. He’s finished the Diabolino, what’s more, so if he doesn’t relish what was always good enough for his late lordship it’s no manner of use for him to blame me. I told him a se’ennight past how it was.’

  ‘I’ll take it to him,’ Marston said.

  Imber sniffed, but raised no demur. He was an old man, and his feet hurt him. He always accepted Marston’s services, but thought poorly of him for undertaking tasks which lay outside his province. Quite menial tasks, some of them: he made nothing of fetching in logs for the fires, or even of sawing them up; and had been known, when Nidd was absent, to unsaddle his master’s horse, and rub him down. You wouldn’t have caught the late lord’s valet so demeaning himself, thought Imber, contrasting him unfavourably with that most correct of gentlemen’s gentlemen. Like master like man, he thought. Stiff-rumped the late lord had been; he knew what was due to his consequence, and always kept a proper distance. No one ever dared to take any liberties with him, any more than he ever talked to his servants in the familiar way the present lord used. As for arriving at the Priory without a word of warning, and accompanied only by his valet and his groom, and taking up a protracted residence there with more than half the rooms shut up, and not so much as a single footman to lend respectability to the household, imagination boggled at the very idea of his late lordship behaving so improperly. It all came of living in foreign parts, amongst people who like as not were little better than savages. That was what his present lordship had said, when he had ventured to give him a hint that the terms he stood on with Marston were unseemly in a gentleman of his position. ‘Marston and I are old friends,’ he had said. ‘We’ve been in too many tight corners together to stand on ceremony.’ It was no wonder that Marston thought himself above his company, and was too top-lofty to indulge in comfortable gossip about his lordship. He was pleasant enough, in his quiet way, but close as wax, and with a trick of seeming not to hear what he didn’t choose to answer. If he was so out of reason fond of his lordship why didn’t he speak up for him? instead of looking like a wooden image? thought Imber resentfully, watching him pick up the salver, and carry it away, down the stone-flagged passage that led to the front hall.

  Damerel did not keep town-hours at the Priory; he allowed the Imbers to serve dinner at six o’clock; and, since Aubrey’s arrival, he had abandoned his tiresome habit of lingering in the dining-room over his port, but had carried it up to Aubrey’s room while Aubrey was confined to bed, and later had fallen into the way of drinking it in the library. Tonight, however, he had shown no disposition to leave the table, but sat lounging in his great, carved chair as though he meant to stay there all night.

  Marston cast a measuring look at him before moving out of the shadowed doorway into the light of the candles on the table. He was staring fixedly ahead, lost in a brown study, the pupils of his eyes slightly blurred. He gave no sign that he had noticed Marston’s entrance, but that one look had sufficed to satisfy Marston that Imber had exaggerated. He had been dipping rather deep, perhaps, but he wasn’t as much as half-sprung: just a trifle concerned, certainly not castaway. It was only on very rare occasions that he was really shot in the neck, for he was one who could see them all out, as the saying went.

  Marston set the decanter down, and went over to the big, open fireplace, and set another log on the sinking embers. The fine weather was still holding, but when the sun went down a creeping chill made one glad to see the curtains drawn across the windows and a fire burning in the hearth.

  Marston swept the wood-ash into a pile, and rose from his knees. One of the candles had begun to gutter, and he snuffed it. Damerel lifted his eyes. ‘Oh, it’s you, is it?’ he said. ‘What’s happened to Imber? Fallen down the cellar stairs?’

  Marston’s impassive countenance relaxed into a faint smile. ‘No, my lord.’

  ‘Did he tell you I was dead-beat?’ enquired Damerel, taking
the stopper out of the decanter, and pouring some brandy into his glass. ‘He’s got his Friday-face on: enough to give one a fit of the blue devils!’

  ‘He’s old, my lord,’ Marston said, trimming another over-long wick. ‘If you were meaning to remain here it would be necessary to hire more servants.’

  He spoke in his usual expressionless manner, but Damerel looked up from his glass, which he was holding cupped between his hands.

  ‘But I daresay we shan’t return here after the Second Autumn Meeting,’ Marston continued, his attention still on the candles. ‘Which reminds me, my lord, that it would be as well for me to write to inform Hanbury at what date you mean to arrive at the Lodge, and whether you will be bringing company with you.’

  ‘I haven’t thought about it.’

  ‘No, my lord. With the weather so remarkably warm one hardly realises that we shall soon be into November,’ agreed Marston. ‘And the Autumn Meeting, I fancy –’

  ‘I’m not going to Newmarket.’ Damerel drank some of the brandy in his glass, and after a moment gave a short laugh, and said: ‘You’re not gammoning me, you know. Think I ought to go, don’t you?’

  ‘I rather supposed that you would go, sir – when you have a horse running.’

  ‘I’ve two horses entered, and precious few hopes of either.’ Damerel drank again, draining his glass. His mouth curled, but in a sneer rather than a smile. ‘Any more plans for me?’ he asked. ‘Newmarket–Leicestershire–then what?’ Marston looked down at him at that, but said nothing. ‘Shall we go to Brook Street, or shall we embark on a journey to some place we haven’t yet seen? We can be as easily bored by either scheme.’

  ‘Not if I know your lordship!’ replied Marston, with a gleam of humour. ‘I don’t think I ever went anywhere with you but what you got into some kind of hobble, and, speaking for myself, I never found the time for being bored. When I wasn’t expecting to be shipwrecked I was either hoping to God we could convince a lot of murderous heathen that we were friendly, or wondering how long it would be before I found myself sewn up in a sack and being thrown into the Bosphorus!’