Venetia Read online

  ‘I think that was the nearest I ever came to being nailed,’ said Damerel, grinning at the recollection. ‘I’ve got you into a lot of scrapes in my time – But one grows older, Marston.’

  ‘Yes, my lord, but not so old that you won’t get me into a good few more, I daresay.’

  ‘Or myself?’ Damerel said. ‘You think I’m in one now, don’t you? You may be right: I’m damned if I know!’ He stretched out his hand for the decanter, and tilted it over his glass, slopping the brandy over the table. ‘Oh, lord! Mop it up, or Imber will be sure I’m tap-hackled! I’m not: merely careless!’ He slouched back again in his chair, relapsing for several minutes into brooding silence, while Marston found an excuse for lingering in carefully aligning the several pieces of plate set out on the sideboard. He contrived to watch Damerel under his eyelids, misliking the look in his face, and a little puzzled by it. He was taking this affair hard, and that was not like him, for he was an easy lover, engaging lightly in his numerous adventures, foreseeing at the start of each its end, and quite indiscriminating in his choice. He was a charming protector; he would indulge the most exacting of his mistresses to the top of her bent; but no one who had seen his unconcern at parting, or his cynical acceptance of falsity, could doubt that he held women cheap. This look of bitter melancholy was strange to Marston, and disturbing.

  Damerel lifted his glass again, and sipped meditatively. ‘The King of Babylon, or an Ethiopian?’ he said. ‘Which, Marston? Which?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that, sir, not being familiar with the King of Babylon.’

  ‘Aren’t you? He stood at the parting of the way, but which way he took, or what befell him, I haven’t the smallest notion. We need Mrs Priddy to set us right. Not that I think she would take a hopeful view of my case, or think that there was the least chance that the years that the locust has eaten could yet be restored to me. She would be more likely to depress me with pithy sayings about pits and whirlwinds, or to remind me that whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap. Would you care to reap any crop of my sowing, Marston? I’m damned if I would!’ He tossed off the rest of his brandy, and set the glass down, thrusting it away. ‘To hell with it! I’m becoming ape-drunk. I can give you a better line than any you’ll get from Mrs Priddy! Learn that the present hour alone is man’s – and don’t ask me when I mean to leave Yorkshire! I can’t tell you. My intention is to remain until Sir Conway Lanyon comes home, but who knows? I might fall out of love as easily as I fell into it: that wouldn’t amaze you, would it?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir,’ Marston said.

  ‘You’d best pray I may do so!’ Damerel said. ‘Even if I could set my house in order – How far have I gone into Dun territory? Do I owe you any blunt, Marston?’

  ‘Nothing worth the mention, my lord – since Amaranthus won at Nottingham.’

  Damerel burst out laughing, and got up. ‘You’re a fool to stay with me, you know. What makes you do it? Habit?’

  ‘Not entirely,’ Marston replied, with one of his rare smiles. ‘Serving you, my lord, has its drawbacks, but also its advantages.’

  ‘I’m damned if I know what they are!’ said Damerel frankly. ‘Unless you count being paid at irregular intervals and finding yourself in scrapes not of your making as advantages?’

  ‘No,’ said Marston, moving to the door, and holding it open. ‘But sooner or later you do pay me, and if you lead me into scrapes you don’t forget to rescue me from them – on one or two occasions at considerable risk to yourself. There is a nice fire in the library, my lord, and Nidd brought back the London papers from York half an hour ago.’

  Ten

  The intelligence that her son was at daggers drawn with Lord Damerel, and Venetia Lanyon head over ears in love with him, reached Lady Denny at third hand, and from the lips of her eldest daughter. Clara was a very sensible girl, no more addicted to exaggeration than her father, but not even her temperate account of what Oswald had confided to Emily, and Emily had repeated to her, could make her disclosures anything but disquieting in the extreme.

  It had been Oswald’s intention to have maintained an impenetrable silence on the events that had shattered his faith in women and transformed him, at one blow, from an ardent lover into an incurable misogynist; and had his parents, or even his two oldest sisters, had enough sensibility to enable them to perceive that the care-free youth who had ridden away from his home before noon returned at dinnertime an embittered cynic he would have refused to answer any of their anxious questions, but would have fobbed them off instead in a manner calculated to convince them that he had passed through a soul-searing experience. Unfortunately, the sensibilities of all four were so blunted that they noticed nothing unusual in his haggard mien and monosyllabic utterances, but talked throughout dinner of commonplaces, and in a cheerful style which could not but make him wonder how he came to be born into such an insensate family. His refusal to partake of any of the dishes that made up the second course did draw comment from his mama, but as she ascribed his loss of appetite to a surfeit of sugarplums, he could only be sorry that she had noticed his abstention.

  It was not until the following day that a chance remark made by Emily proved too much for his resolution. With all the tactlessness of her fifteen years she marvelled that he had not ridden off to visit Venetia, which goaded him into giving a bitter laugh, and saying that never again would he cross the threshold of Undershaw. As he added a warning to her to ask him no questions she at once begged him to tell her what had happened.

  He had no intention of telling her anything, but she was the most spiritually akin to him of all his family, and it was not long before he had confided some part at least of his troubles into her sympathetic ears, in a series of elliptical remarks which, while they conveyed no very accurate idea to her of the previous day’s events, appealed strongly to her romantic heart. She drank in all he said, filled in the gaps with the aid of an imagination quite as dramatic as his, and ended by recounting the whole to Clara, under the seal of secrecy.

  ‘But although I daresay it is all fustian, Mama, I felt obliged to say that I couldn’t think it right not to tell you,’ said Clara.

  ‘No, indeed!’ exclaimed Lady Denny, quite aghast. ‘Challenging Lord Damerel to a duel? Good God! he must be out of his mind! I never heard anything to equal it, and what your father will say I tremble to think of! Oh, it can’t be true! Ten to one it’s one of Emily’s Canterbury tales!’

  ‘I think it is not wholly that, Mama,’ said Clara conscientiously. ‘I fear there can be no doubt that Oswald has quarrelled with Lord Damerel, though whether he challenged him to a duel is another matter. You know how he and Emily exaggerate! I should have supposed it to have been impossible, but if it’s true that Lord Damerel is pursuing poor Venetia with his attentions it might be. Which is why I thought it my duty to tell you, because Oswald is certainly in one of his extravagant puckers, and when that happens one can’t depend on his behaving rationally. And if he should be so imprudent as to force a quarrel on Lord Damerel –’

  ‘Don’t speak of such a thing!’ begged Lady Denny, shuddering. ‘Oh dear, oh dear, why had that detestable man to come here? Setting us all in an uproar! Pursuing Venetia – Did you say he goes every day to Undershaw?’

  ‘Well, Mama, so Oswald told Emily, but I didn’t refine very much upon that, because he said also that Venetia is quite besotted, and encourages Lord Damerel to behave with the greatest impropriety, and that must be nonsense, mustn’t it?’

  But Lady Denny, far from being reassured, turned quite pale, and ejaculated: ‘I might have known what would happen! And what must Edward Yardley do at this of all moments but fall sick with chicken-pox! Not that I think he would be of the least use, but he might have prevented Damerel from living in Venetia’s pocket, instead of letting his mother send for Mr Huntspill every time she fancies his pulse is too rapid, and making as much fuss as if he had the small-pox!’ />
  ‘Oh, Mama!’ protested Clara, distressed by this severity. ‘You know Mr Huntspill told us that Edward’s papa had a consumptive habit, so that it was not to be wondered at that Mrs Yardley should be anxious! And he said that Edward was quite knocked-up, much more so than my sisters!’

  ‘What Mr Huntspill said,’ retorted Lady Denny grimly, ‘was that people like Edward Yardley, who have excellent constitutions and scarcely know what it is to be out of sorts, are the worst of patients, because they fancy themselves at death’s door if they only have a touch of the colic! Don’t talk to me of Edward! I must speak to your father immediately, for, however angry he may be, Oswald is his son, and it is his duty to do something about this dreadful business!’

  But Sir John, when the story was first disclosed to him, was not disposed to attach much weight to it, and beyond saying that he was out of all patience with Oswald’s childish play-acting he showed no sign of flying into a rage. It was not until he had questioned Clara himself that he began to see that there might be more truth in the tale than he had supposed. Even then he seemed to be more vexed than dismayed, but after he had thought the matter over he said that if Oswald had no more sense than to make a pea-goose of himself over Venetia there was only one thing to be done, and that was to pack him off to another part of the country until he had recovered his wits.

  ‘He had better go to your brother George,’ he told Lady Denny. ‘That will give him something other to think about than this folly!’

  ‘Go to George? But –’

  ‘I’m not going to run the risk of his kicking up some infernal rumpus here. I don’t know how much to believe of the story, but if he’s as jealous as Clara thinks there’s no saying what he might do, and I tell you to your head, my dear, that I won’t have the young cub annoying Damerel, or anyone else!’

  ‘No, no! Only think how dreadful it would be if he forced a quarrel on to that man!’

  ‘Well, he won’t do that, so you may be easy on that score. If he did try to do so yesterday I sincerely hope Damerel clouted him over the head for his impudence! There’s nothing for it but to send him off to your brother’s place.’

  She said doubtfully: ‘Yes, but perhaps it might not suit them to have him at Crossley at this season. To be sure, George is very good-natured, and Elinor too, but I daresay they will have a houseful of guests, for they always do when the hunting begins.’

  ‘No need to worry over that. I said nothing about it at the time, because I don’t above half like sending Oswald into that fashionable set, but I had a letter from George last week saying that they would be glad to have him on a visit, if I cared to let him go. Well, I don’t, but I’d rather send him there than keep him here. I only hope he may keep the line!’

  ‘George will see he does so,’ said Lady Denny confidently. ‘Depend upon it, Sir John, it would be the very thing for Oswald, and nothing could do him more good than to be with his cousins. Only how to persuade him to go?’

  ‘Persuade him?’ repeated Sir John. ‘Persuade him to accept an invitation to stay in the heart of the Cottesmore country? In a house where he knows he’ll find himself amongst the Corinthian set? No, no, my love, that won’t be necessary!’

  She was by no means convinced, but Sir John was quite right. When the invitation was conveyed to Oswald its effect on him was almost ludicrous, so suddenly and so completely did it transform him from a sulky martyr into an excited boy in whom gratification, ecstatic anticipation, and some slight trepidation left no room for such minor matters as Venetia’s faithlessness, Damerel’s villainy, or his own broken heart. Stunned by the magnificence of the offered treat, he was at first unable to do more than stammer: ‘L-like to g-go to Crossley? I should th-think I would!’ After that he sat throughout the rest of dinner in a sort of trance, from which he later emerged in so sunny a mood that not even his father’s warning that he must conduct himself with propriety if he were permitted to go to Crossley roused umbrage in his breast. ‘Oh, yes, of course I will!’ he earnestly promised Sir John. He then spent a happy evening discussing with him such anxious matters as what he should bestow in vails at Crossley, how best to convey his hunters there, and whether he would be expected to wear knee-breeches in the evening. Sir John reassured him on this head, but seized the opportunity to enter an embargo against the sporting of coloured and loosely knotted handkerchiefs in place of neatly arranged neckcloths. But as the dizzy prospect of entering into Corinthian circles had banished from Oswald’s mind any desire to study the picturesque in his attire this was unnecessary, and Sir John soon found himself obliged instead to forbid the purchase of a pair of riding boots with white uppers. Oswald was disappointed, but so unwontedly docile that Sir John was encouraged to offer him some very sensible advice on the modest demeanour to be adopted by a novice who wished to win the approval of those hardened sportsmen who ranked as Top-of-the-Trees in the world of the haut ton. As he prefixed his rather damping homily by saying that if he had not been satisfied that he had nothing to blush for in his son’s horsemanship he would not for a moment have entertained the thought of permitting him to go to Crossley, Oswald was able to swallow the whole with a good grace. Sir John had not been so much in charity with his only son for many months, as he later informed Lady Denny, adding, as he snuffed his bedside candle, that if the boy behaved as prettily at Crossley he had no doubt that his uncle and aunt would be very well pleased with him.

  Her mind relieved of its weightiest care, Lady Denny was able to turn it to the consideration of a secondary anxiety. Sir John having rejected in unequivocal terms a tentative suggestion that he should hint Damerel away from Undershaw, she decided that notwithstanding the claims of her invalid children it was her duty to drive over to Undershaw, to see for herself how much truth there was in Oswald’s allegations, and, if necessary, to take such steps as would bring to an end a very dangerous situation. What steps it would be possible for her to take she did not know, or very seriously consider, for the more she thought about the matter the more hopeful did she become that she would find that the alarming story was nothing but a product of Oswald’s fevered imagination.

  But when she arrived at Undershaw on the following day she saw at one glance that she had been indulging a groundless optimism. Venetia was radiant, lovelier than ever before, with happiness shining in her eyes, and a new bloom in her cheeks.

  She greeted her motherly friend with her usual affection, and every expression of pleasure at receiving a visit from her, but Lady Denny was not deceived: she was living in a halcyon world of her own; and although she enquired after the invalids at Ebbersley, listened with sympathy to an account of their progress, laughed at a description of Mrs Yardley’s daily alarms, and appeared to be genuinely interested in these and several other such topics, her civilities were only surface deep.

  Lady Denny, trying, while she maintained a comfortable flow of small-talk, to discover some way of introducing the real purpose of her visit without too obviously disclosing what this was, had seldom found herself at such a loss. She had decided that the most natural approach would be through discussion of Aubrey’s accident, but although she got as far as to say that it had placed Venetia in an awkward situation this promising gambit failed. Venetia smiled mischievously at her, and replied: ‘Dear ma’am, that makes you sound like Edward! I beg your pardon, but I can’t help laughing! It wasn’t in the least awkward.’

  Lady Denny tried her best. ‘Well, my dear, I am happy to know that, but I think you don’t quite understand that the situation was one of particular delicacy.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Venetia disconcertingly. ‘I can understand, of course, that it might have been awkward, though at the outset I was too anxious about Aubrey to think about that, and later it would have been absurd to think about it. The Priory seemed like my own home, and Damerel – oh, a friend whom I had known all my life! I don’t think either Aubrey or I ever spent ten days more happily. Even Nurse, I f
ancy, was secretly sorry to leave the Priory!’

  Taken aback by the unexpected openness of this reply Lady Denny could think of nothing whatsoever to say. Before she had collected her wits again Venetia was entertaining her with a lively account of Nurse’s behaviour at the Priory. The hope of being offered an opportunity to discharge her mission steadily receded, and vanished altogether when Venetia told her how kind Damerel was to Aubrey and how much Aubrey had benefited from his friendship. She was no fool, and she saw clearly that to suggest to Venetia that Damerel was using Aubrey as a tool would serve no other purpose than to estrange her. Her spirits sank; she began to be seriously alarmed, feeling Venetia to be beyond her reach, and so bedazzled that no dependence could be placed on the calm good sense which had previously characterised her.

  All at once the door opened, and Aubrey looked into the room, saying: ‘Venetia, I’m going into York with Jasper. Have you any –’ He broke off, seeing Lady Denny, and limped across the room, to shake hands with her. ‘I beg pardon, ma’am. How do you do?’

  She saw Damerel on the threshold, and while she asked Aubrey if he had quite recovered from the effects of his fall managed to keep both him and Venetia under observation. If either of them had shown a trace of embarrassment she would have been less dismayed. Neither did; and had anything been wanting to convince her that Oswald had not exaggerated when he said that Damerel visited Undershaw daily it would have been supplied by the entire absence of ceremony shown him by Venetia. Instead of rising, as a hostess should, and shaking hands, she only turned her head and smiled at him. Lady Denny saw that smile, and, glancing swiftly at Damerel, saw the smile that answered it. As well might they have kissed! she thought, suddenly aware of a hitherto unsuspected danger.