Джорджетт Хейер - The Convenient Marriage

“I have been visiting friends out at Brentford,” he explained.

“ I thought you were going to the p-picnic at Ewell ?” she said.

He looked directly into her eyes. “I was,” he answered. “But my Lady Rule did not join the party.”

She became aware that her hand was still reposing in his and drew it away. “I d-didn’t think you c-cared a rap for that,” she said.

“Didn’t you? But I did care.”

She looked at him for a moment and then said shyly: “P-please will you d-drive back with m-me?”

He appeared to hesitate, that queer twisted smile hovering round his mouth.

“Why n-not?” Horatia asked.

“No reason in the world, ma’am,” he replied. “If you wish it of course I will drive with you.” He stepped down into the road again, and summoned up the groom, telling him to mount the bay horse. The groom, who was looking shamefaced from his late encounter with the coachman, hastened to obey him. Lord Lethbridge again climbed into the coach; the door was shut; and in a few minutes the vehicle began to move forward in the direction of London.

Inside it Horatia said with the frankness her family considered disastrous: “I quite thought you d-did not like m-me very much, you know.”

“Did you? But that would have been very bad taste on my part,” said his lordship.

“W-well, but you p-positively avoid me when we meet,” Horatia pointed out. “You know you d-do!”

“Ah!” said his lordship. “But that is not because I do not like you, ma’am.”

“W-why, then?” asked Horatia bluntly.

He turned his head. “Has no one warned you that Robert Lethbridge is too dangerous for you to know?”

Her eyes twinkled. “Yes, any number of people. Did you g-guess that?”

“Of course I did. I believe Mamas all warn their daughters against my wicked wiles. I am a very desperate character, you know.”

She laughed. “W-well, if I don’t m-mind, why should you?”

“That is rather different,” Lethbridge replied. “You see, you are—if you will let me say so—very young.”

“D-do you mean that I am too young to b-be a friend of yours?”

“No, that is not what I mean. You are too young to be allowed to do—unwise things, my dear.”

She looked inquiring. “W-would it be unwise of me to know you?”

“In the eyes of the world, certainly it would.”

“I d-don’t give a fig for the world!” declared Horatia roundly.

He stretched out his hand to take hers, and kissed her fingers. “You are—a very charming lady,” he said. “But were you and I to call friends, ma’am, the world would talk, and the world must not talk about my Lady Rule.”

“Why should people think odious things about you?” asked Horatia, indignation in her voice.

A sigh escaped him. “Unfortunately, ma’am, I have made for myself a most shocking reputation and once one has done that there is no being rid of it. Now I feel quite sure that your excellent brother told you to have naught to do with Lethbridge. Am I right?”

She coloured. “Oh, n-no one pays the least heed to P-Pel!”

she assured him. “And if you will l-let me be a friend of yours I w-will be whatever anyone says!”

Again he seemed to hesitate. A warm hand once more clasped his. “P-please let m-me!” Horatia begged.

His fingers closed round hers. “Why?” he asked. “Is it because you want to gamble with me? Is that why you offer me your friendship?”

“N-no, though that w-was what I wanted, to begin with,” Horatia admitted. “But now that you’ve told me all this I feel quite d-differently and I won’t be one of those horrid p-people who believe the worst.”

“Ah!” he said, “but I am afraid Rule would have something to say to that, my dear. I must tell you that he is not precisely one of my well-wishers. And husbands, you know, have to be obeyed.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to retort that she did not care a fig for Rule either, when it occurred to her that this was scarcely a proper sentiment, and she replied instead: “I assure you, sir, Rule d-does not interfere with my f-friendships.”

They had come by this time to the Hercules Pillars Inn by Hyde Park, and only a comparatively short distance remained between them and Grosvenor Square. The rain, which was now coming down in good earnest, beat against the windows of the coach, and the daylight had almost vanished. Horatia could no longer distinguish his lordship with any clarity, but she pressed his hand and said: “So that is quite decided, isn’t it?”

“Quite decided,” said his lordship.

She withdrew her hand. “And I will be v-very friendly and set you down at your house, sir, for it is raining much too hard for you to ride your horse. P-please tell my coachman your direction.”

Ten minutes later the coach drew up in Half-Moon Street. Horatia beckoned up her groom and bade him ride his lordship’s horse on to its stable. “And I n-never thanked you, my lord, for rescuing me!” she said. “I am truly very much obliged.”

Lethbridge replied: “And so am I, ma’am, for having been granted the opportunity.” He bowed over her hand. “Till our next meeting,” he said, and stepped down on to the streaming pavement.

The coach moved forward. Lethbridge stood for a moment in the rain, watching it sway up the road towards Curzon

Street and then turned with the faintest shrug of his shoulders and walked up the steps of his house.

The door was held for him by the porter. He said respectfully: “A wet evening, my lord.”

“Very,” said Lethbridge curtly.

“I should tell your lordship that a—a person has called. He arrived but a short time ahead of your lordship, and I have him downstairs, keeping an eye on him.”

“Send him up,” Lethbridge said, and went into the room that overlooked the street.

Here he was joined in a few moments by his visitor, who was ushered into the room by the disapproving porter. He was a burly individual, dressed in a frieze coat, with a slouch hat grasped in one dirty hand. He grinned when he saw Lethbridge and touched his finger to his forelock. “Hoping all’s bowman, your honour, and the leddy none the worse.”

Lethbridge did not reply, but taking a key from his pocket unlocked one of the drawers of his desk and drew out a purse. This he tossed across the room to his guest, saying briefly: “Take it, and be off with you. And remember, my friend, to keep your mouth shut.”

“God love yer, may I shove the tumbler if ever I was one to squeak!” said the frieze-clad gentleman indignantly. He shook the contents of the purse out on to the table and began to tell over the coins.

Lethbridge’s lip curled. “You can spare yourself the pains. I pay what I promised.”

The man grinned more knowingly than ever. “Ah, you’re a peevy cull, you are. And when I works with a flash, why, I’m careful, see?” He told over the rest of the money, scooped it all up in one capacious paw, and bestowed it in his pocket. “Right it is,” he observed genially, “and easy earned. I’ll let myself out of the jigger.”

Lethbridge followed him into the narrow hall. “No doubt,” he said. “But I will give myself the pleasure of seeing you off the premises.”

“God love yer, do you take me for a mill ken?” demanded the visitor, affronted. “Lordy, them as is on the rattling lay don’t take to slumming kens!” With which lofty but somewhat obscure remark he took himself off down the steps of the house and slouched away towards Piccadilly.

Lord Lethbridge shut the door and stood for a moment in frowning silence. He was aroused from his abstraction by the approach of his valet, who came up the stairs from the basement to attend him and remarked with concern that the rain had wetted his lordship’s coat.

The frown cleared. “So I perceive,” Lethbridge said. “But it was undoubtedly worth it.”

It was past five o’clock when Horatia arrived in Grosvenor Square, and upon hearing the time from the porter, she gave a small shriek of dismay, and fled upstairs. In the upper hall she almost collided with Rule, already dressed for the opera. “Oh, my l-lord, such an adventure!” she said, breathlessly. “I am horribly l-late, or I would tell you now. Do p-pray forgive me! I w-won’t be above a moment!”

Rule watched her vanish into her own room, and proceeded on his way downstairs. Apparently having very little dependence on his wife’s notions of time, he sent a message to the kitchens that dinner was to be set back half an hour, and strolled into one of the saloons to await Horatia’s reappearance. The fact that the opera began at seven did not seem to worry him in the least, and not even when the hands of the gilt clock on the mantelpiece stood at a quarter to six did he betray any sign of impatience. Below the stairs the cook, hovering anxiously between a couple of fat turkey poults on the spits and a dish of buttered crab, called down uncouth curses on the heads of all women.

But by five minutes to six the Countess, a vision of gauze, lace, and plumes, took her seat at the dinner-table opposite her husband, and announced with a winning smile that she was not so very late after all. “And if it is G-Gluck, I d-don’t mind m-missing some of it,” she remarked. “But I m-must tell you about my adventure. Only fancy, M-Marcus, I have been held up by highwaymen!”

“Held up by highwaymen?” repeated the Earl, somewhat surprised.

Horatia, her mouth full of buttered crab, nodded vigorously.

“My dear child, when and where?”

“Oh, by the Half-way House when I was c-coming home from Laney’s. It was f-full daylight too and they t-took my purse. But there wasn’t much in it.”