April Lady Read online

  Subjected to such treatment as this, it was hardly surprising that Cardross, far too proud to betray his hurt, retired behind a barrier of cool, faintly ironic civility, which effectually slew at birth Nell’s impulse to fling caution to the winds, and all her doubts and difficulties at his feet.

  To make matters worse, no word came from Dysart, and Letty, bent on achieving her own ends, wore her brother’s temper thin by renewing her attacks every time she saw him. As she had been pledging his credit all over town for weeks past he was soon provoked into addressing a few shattering home truths to her, from which his unhappy wife, an unwilling third at this encounter, gathered that debt and dishonesty were, in his austere view, synonymous terms. Certainly no moment for the disclosure of her own embarrassments could be more unpropitious.

  It was therefore with relief that she bade him farewell. He expected to be away for a se’enight, within which time she thought it not unreasonable to suppose that Dysart must have discovered a means of discharging her debt to Madame Lavalle. By way of recalling it to his mind (just in case, in the press of his sporting engagements, he had temporarily forgotten its urgency) she sent round a note to his lodging in Duke Street, inviting him to dine in Grosvenor Square on the night of the masquerade. Well aware of the fatal results of importunacy she resisted a temptation to ask him what progress he had made towards settling her affairs, and was soon rewarded for her restraint. The Viscount not only sent back a note accepting her invitation, but added, in a postscript, that she need not trouble her head more over That Other Matter.

  This cryptic message sent her spirits up immediately. It would have been more satisfactory, perhaps, if Dysart had told her what expedient he had hit upon but she knew him to be no ready letter-writer, and was content to trust that his third attempt at solving her difficulties would be more acceptable to her than his two previous suggestions. Except for one encounter in the Park, where it was impossible to hold private conversation with him, she did not meet him: a circumstance which led her to suppose that whatever plan he had evolved needed a good deal of preparation. This made her feel a trifle uneasy, but he nodded to her so reassuringly at the end of their once chance meeting that her misgivings were soothed. ‘I shall see you on Thursday,’ he said; and that, she thought, was his way of informing her that on Thursday, when he was to go with her to the masquerade, he would be able to tell her just what she must do to rid herself of her intolerable debt.

  And then, on Thursday evening, when both the fair hostesses awaited his arrival in Grosvenor Square, he did not come.

  Neither was surprised that he should be late in keeping his engagement, for his habits were known to be erratic; and for a full half-hour only the wizard belowstairs, with two capons roasted to a turn on the spits, fat livers in cases in imminent danger of becoming over-baked in the oven, and the caramel sugar spun over a dish of peu d’amours rapidly hardening, saw any cause for agitation. Letty, who had been in low spirits for days past, was wearing a new and extremely dashing ball-dress of white crape so profusely embroidered with silver spangles that when she stood in the light of the great chandelier in the drawing-room the effect was quite dazzling. Nell, less strikingly attired in satin and blonde lace, knew that if Lady Chudleigh should be at the masquerade she would unhesitatingly condemn this toilette as being totally unsuited to a young lady in her first season, for it was cut indecorously low, besides being worn over the most diaphanous of petticoats. Cardross would probably have insisted on its being changed for something more demure. He might even have considered that in his absence his wife should have done so, but Nell felt herself to be unequal to an exhausting and almost certainly losing battle; and assuaged her conscience with the reflection that the dress would be largely hidden by the domino of shimmering rose silk, which Letty had tossed across the back of a chair. Besides, Letty was so pleased with her appearance that it had put her into the sunniest of humours, which Nell, having endured a week of sulks and repinings, would not willingly upset.

  ‘The worst of brothers is that they never think it is of the least consequence to keep one waiting,’ remarked Letty, spreading open a fan spangled to match her gown. ‘I only hope he may not be foxed when he does arrive! Look, do you think this is pretty?’

  ‘Foxed! Why should he be?’ demanded Nell rather indignantly.

  ‘Oh! You know what men are, when they go off to watch a cock-fight!’ said the worldly wise Letty. ‘There was one at Epsom today, I fancy.’

  ‘Good heavens, did he tell you he meant to go there?’

  ‘No, but I heard Hardwick talking to Mr Bottisham about it, and he said something about Dysart’s taking him up in his curricle.’

  ‘Oh, dear!’ said Nell, considerably dismayed by this most unwelcome intelligence. ‘If that is so – Oh, I do hope he may not have forgotten he is to take us to Chiswick tonight!’

  ‘What, you don’t mean to say that you think he might?’ exclaimed Letty, allowing her fan to drop into her lap. ‘Oh, it would be too infamous!’

  Certain sinister memories flitted through Nell’s mind. ‘Well, I trust he has not, but he – he does sometimes forget his engagements – particularly when he doesn’t like them excessively!’ she said.

  Letty controlled herself with a strong effort, but when, at the end of another ten minutes, there was still no sign of the Viscount, she could contain herself no longer, but said bitterly: ‘Even if he is your brother, Nell, I don’t believe he ever meant to go with us, and he just said he would so that you shouldn’t tease him!’

  ‘No, no, he did mean to, for he said he would see me tonight when we met him in the Park that day! Besides, although I own he is shockingly careless, he wouldn’t serve me such an unhandsome trick as that! I was wondering if I should perhaps send a note round to his lodging, to remind him. Only I daresay it would take my footman at least twenty minutes to reach Duke Street –’

  ‘Yes, and ten to one he wouldn’t find him at home when he did reach his lodging!’ interrupted Letty. ‘For my part, I don’t care a button whether he comes or not, for I am persuaded we shall do very well without him!’ She looked at Nell with sharp suspicion. ‘You are not going to say we can’t go to the masquerade unless he escorts us? Oh, Nell, you couldn’t be so shabby!’

  ‘No – that is, I know I need not scruple to go, when it is to my cousin’s party, but I cannot like it! I wish you were not so set on it – and, to own the truth, I can’t think why you should be, unless you have cajoled Mr Allandale to go, and mean to spend the evening in his pocket! And mask or no mask, Letty, I can’t and I won’t permit it!’

  ‘I did try to make him go,’ admitted Letty, quite unabashed, ‘but he holds to it that it would be improper, even if he slipped away before the unmasking, so you needn’t be in a fidget! The thing is that I have never attended a masquerade, and if I don’t go to this one I may not have the chance to go to one for years, for there’s no saying that they have them in Brazil, after all.’

  Nell looked at her in concern. ‘No, but – Dearest Letty, don’t indulge your fancy with that thought! Cardross won’t give his consent: it is useless to think he might!’

  ‘I shall compel him!’ Letty said, looking mulish.

  ‘How could you possibly do that?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know that yet, but you may depend upon it that I shall do it! Recollect that he said I shouldn’t be presented till I was eighteen, or act in the theatricals at Roxwell, at Christmas, or drive his bays, or – oh, a hundred things! I can always get Giles to let me have my own way, in the end!’

  Nell could not help smiling at the naïveté with which Letty classed these trivialities with her marriage, but before she could make any attempt to show her sister-in-law how the very fondness which led Cardross to indulge her in small matters would stiffen his resolve not to permit her (as he thought) to throw herself away in a marriage doomed to failure, Farley, her butler, had en
tered the room, bearing on a salver a sealed billet, and on his countenance the expression of one who not only brought evil tidings but had foreseen from the outset that this was precisely how it would be.

  ‘My Lord Dysart’s groom, my lady, has desired me to give this instantly into your ladyship’s hands,’ he announced, proffering the salver.

  ‘Only wait until I next see Dysart!’ uttered Letty direfully.

  Feeling as conscience-stricken as though she and not Dysart had been the culprit, Nell broke the wafer that sealed his note, and hastily unfolded the scrawled message. A sigh of relief escaped her, for although the news the message contained was bad, it was not as bad as it might have been. Dysart must certainly have lingered overlong at Epsom, but he had not forgotten that he was engaged to escort his sister to a masquerade. He begged her pardon for being unable to dine with her, but promised faithfully to pick her and Letty up in Grosvenor Square not a moment later than ten o’clock, unless (in a postscript) he should be unavoidably detained, in which case they were to set forward for Chiswick, and might be sure that he would meet them there, his mask in his hand.

  ‘Ten o’clock! And we are invited for half-past nine!’ said Letty wrathfully, when this was read to her.

  A gleam of mischief shone in Nell’s angelic eyes. ‘My dear, surely you would not be so gothic as to arrive at the very start of the party?’

  ‘I daresay he won’t come here at all!’ said Letty crossly.

  This seemed more than likely to Dysart’s experienced sister, but loyalty as much as disinclination to drive out to Chiswick without male escort hardened her resolution not to order her landau to come round to the house a moment earlier than ten o’clock. The hour was by this time so far advanced that they had not very long to wait after dinner before Farley announced that the carriage waited for their ladyships. Dysart had put in no appearance, and although a loving sister would have given him a few more moments’ grace she dared not, in face of Letty’s kindling glance, suggest this. The dominoes, one rose-pink and the other sapphire-blue, were assumed; long gloves of French kid drawn on; loo-masks tucked into reticules; and evening mantles carefully donned over the silken dominoes. A final prinking, on tiptoe before the gilded looking-glass over the mantelpiece, and the ladies were ready to be escorted down the staircase, and handed up into the waiting carriage. Their respective women were in attendance, jealously arranging their delicate skirts, and laying shawls across their knees, Letty’s Martha presuming on long service to warn her young mistress against adding any more Bloom of Ninon to an already perfect complexion; and Nell’s lofty dresser reminding her to take care that her train of ivory satin did not brush the steps of the landau when she alighted from it.

  Those steps were at last let up, and the door shut; the footmen nimbly mounted up behind; the coachman set his horses in motion; and the landau swayed forward over the cobbles.

  It had not occurred to Nell, or, indeed, to any of her servants, that a drive to Chiswick could be attended by danger, so no one had thought it necessary to provide the equipage with outriders to protect her from possible highwaymen. But no one had foreseen that the Cardross carriage, instead of joining a procession of vehicles bound for Brent House, would be the last to arrive there by more than half an hour. There was hardly any traffic beyond the first pike off the stones. Kensington village seemed to be sleeping in the bright moonlight; only a post-chaise and an Accommodation coach were met in Hammersmith, coming in from the west; no other vehicle was seen except one of the mails, which swept past the Cardross carriage, its four fresh horses going along at a spanking pace, and its guard blowing a very loud blast of warning on his yard of tin. Shortly after this, the carriage turned off the high road towards Chiswick Mall; and then, just as Letty was saying: ‘Well, at all events it hasn’t been nearly as tedious a drive as if we had been obliged to dawdle behind some rumbling coach!’ both ladies were unpleasantly startled by a sudden pistol-shot, followed by a medley of alarming noises, in which the equal of a frightened horse mingled with various rough voices upraised either in command or expostulation, and the trampling of hooves.

  Letty uttered a whimper of fright, and clutched her sister-in-law, saying on a rising note of panic: ‘What must we do? What will happen to us? Oh, Nell, we are being held up! Why don’t those cowards of footmen do something? This is all Dysart’s fault! Will they murder us? Oh, I wish we hadn’t come!’

  Nell was not feeling very brave herself, but she was made of sterner stuff than this, and managed to reply with very creditable command over her voice: ‘Nonsense! Of course they will not murder us, though I am afraid they will take our jewels. Thank God I am not wearing the Cardross necklace, or my precious sapphires!’

  ‘Give them everything!’ begged Letty, her teeth chattering. ‘I feel sick with apprehension, and I am sure I shall faint! What is the use of taking footmen, when they do nothing to protect us? I shall tell Giles, and he will turn them off directly! He ought to be here: he had no right to go off to Merion, when he might have known –’

  ‘Oh, do, pray, hold your tongue, Letty!’ interrupted Nell, exasperated. ‘I wonder you should not have more pride than to let the wretches see you are afraid! And as for the footmen, what could the poor men do against armed ruffians? They are not carrying pistols! I don’t suppose they ever dreamed we should be held up on the road to Chiswick, of all places! Oh, dear, it sounds as if there were several of them! I do hope they will be satisfied with our jewels, and not wish to ransack the carriage for a strong-box!’

  This horrid thought made Letty shake with terror. Then she screamed, for a hideous figure, enveloped in a dark cloak, and with a mask covering his face, loomed up, and wrenched open the door of the carriage, presenting the barrel of a large horse-pistol, and growling in ferocious accents: ‘Hand over the gewgaws, and be quick about it!’

  The moonlight glinted on the pistol, and the hand that held it. Letty cried: ‘Don’t, don’t!’ and tried with feverish haste to unclasp the single row of pearls from round her throat.

  ‘Not you!’ said the highwayman, even more ferociously. ‘You!’

  The pistol was now pointing straight at Nell, but instead of shrinking away, or making haste (as Letty quaveringly implored her to do) to strip off her bracelets and rings and the large pendant that flashed on her breast, she was sitting bolt upright, her incredulous gaze fixed at first on the hand that grasped the pistol, and then lifting to the masked face.

  ‘Quick!’ commanded the highwayman harshly. ‘If you don’t want me to put a bullet through you!’

  ‘Dysart!’

  ‘Hell and the devil confound it!’ ejaculated his lordship, adding, however, in a hasty attempt to cover this lapse: ‘None o’ that! Hand over the gewgaws!’

  ‘Take that pistol away!’ ordered Nell. ‘How dare you try to frighten me like this? Of all the outrageous things to do – ! It is a great deal too bad of you! What in the world possessed you?’

  ‘Well, if you can’t tell that you must be a bigger sapskull than I knew!’ said his lordship disgustedly. He pulled off his mask, and called over his shoulder: ‘Bubbled, Corny!’

  ‘There, what did I tell you?’ said Mr Fancot, putting up the weapon with which he had been covering the coachman, and riding up to bow politely to the occupants of the carriage. ‘You ought to have let me do the trick, dear boy: I said her ladyship would recognize you!’

  ‘Well, I don’t know how the devil she should!’ said the Viscount, considerably put-out.

  ‘Oh, Dy, how absurd you are!’ Nell exclaimed, trying not to laugh. ‘The moonlight was shining on the ring Mama gave you when you came of age! And then you said, Not you! to Letty! Of course I recognized you!’

  ‘Then you might have had the wit to pretend you didn’t!’ said the Viscount, with asperity. ‘Totty-headed, that’s what you are, my girl! Hi, Joe! No need to keep those fellows covered any longer! I’ve
lost the bet.’

  ‘Dysart, how abominable of you!’ Nell said indignantly. ‘To bring your groom into this is utterly beyond the line!’

  ‘Fiddle!’ said the Viscount. ‘You might as well say it was beyond the line to bring Corny in! I’ve known Joe all my life! Besides, I told him it was for a wager.’

  ‘I do say it was beyond the line to bring Mr Fancot in. And I should have supposed he would have thought so too!’ added Nell, with some severity.

  ‘No, no! Assure you, ma’am! Always happy to be of service,’ said Mr Fancot gallantly. ‘Pleasure!’

  Letty, to whom relief had brought its inevitable sequel, said in a furious undervoice: ‘Idiot!’

  ‘Nothing of the sort!’ said the Viscount, overhearing. ‘In fact, if we’re to talk of idiots –’

  ‘I think you are detestable! You broke your engagement with Nell in the rudest way, just that you might play this odious trick on her, and frightened us to death for sport! Sport!’

  ‘What a hen-hearted girl you are!’ remarked his lordship scornfully. ‘Frightened you to death, indeed! Lord, Nell’s worth a dozen of you! Not but what she’s got more hair than wit! Of course I didn’t do it for sport! I had a devilish good reason, but one might as well try to milk a pigeon as set about helping a female out of a fix!’

  Letty was so much intrigued by this cryptic utterance that her wrath gave place to the liveliest curiosity. ‘What can you mean? Who is in a fix? Is it Nell? But how – Oh, do tell me! I’m sorry I was cross, but how could I guess it was a plot, when no one told me?’

  ‘Ask Nell!’ recommended Dysart. ‘You’d best be on your way, if you don’t wish to be late. I’ll follow you presently.’

  ‘Dysart!’ said Nell despairingly. ‘It must be nearly eleven o’clock already! How can you possibly follow us? You cannot attend a masquerade in your riding-dress, and by the time you have returned to town, and –’