Judith pressed her hands to her cheeks. ‘It is too terrible! too shocking! Ever since that day Peregrine has been in danger!’
‘Hardly that,’ replied the Earl. ‘I have had him carefully watched ever since then. I believe Ned Hinkson has never been a favourite with you, Miss Taverner, but you will admit that his prompt action on Finchley Common last year compensated for his lack of skill on the box. He is by profession a pugilist, and although I have reason to believe that my tiger – a somewhat severe critic – doubts his ability to shine in the Ring, I myself feel that, given a patron, he may do very well indeed.’
‘Hinkson!’ Miss Taverner exclaimed. ‘Oh, I have been blind indeed!’
‘I am aware that an attempt was once made to hold my cousin up on Finchley Common,’ Bernard Taverner said contempt uously. ‘Is that also to be put to my account?’
‘I am quite sure that it might be put to your account,’ replied the Earl, ‘but I scarcely think a jury would be interested. But they might be interested in a certain jar of snuff at present in my possession, and still more interested in the effects of that snuff upon the human system.’
Bernard Taverner’s hand closed convulsively on the edge of the mantelpiece. ‘I fear I am far from understanding you now, my lord,’ he said.
‘Are you?’ said the Earl. ‘Have you never wondered why that snuff did not seem to affect Peregrine? I concede you a certain amount of forethought in thinking of a means of poisoning your cousin through a medium on which I am known to be an expert; but you might have considered, I should have thought, that while I might certainly be suspected of having put up the snuff, if its being poisoned were ever discovered, there was also a strong probability that I should be the very person to make that discovery. The circumstance of the mixture being heavily scented was enough to make me suspicious. I found the opportunity, while he was staying in my house, to abstract Peregrine’s snuff-box. It was a little difficult to determine the exact proportions of the three sorts used in making the original mixture, but I believe I succeeded fairly well. At all events, Peregrine detected no difference.’
‘His illness in your house!’ Miss Taverner cried. ‘That cough! Good God, is this possible?’
‘Oh yes,’ said the Earl in his matter-of-fact way. ‘Scented snuffs have long been a means of poisoning people.You may remember, Miss Taverner, that I found an excuse to send Hinkson up to Brook Street while you were at Worth?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You wanted the lease of the house.’
‘Not at all. I wanted the rest of Peregrine’s snuff. He had told me where the jar was kept, and Hinkson was easily able to find an opportunity to go up to his dressing-room and exchange the jar for another, similar one, that I had given him. Later, when I was in town again, I visited the principal snuff-shops in the whole of London – a wearing task, but one which repaid me. That particular mixture is not a common one; during the month of December only three four-pound jars of it were sold in town. One was bought at Fribourg and Treyer’s by Lord Edward Bentinck; one was sold by Wishart to the Duke of Sussex; and the third was sold by Pontet, in Pall Mall, to a gentleman who paid for it on the spot, and took it away with him, leaving no name. The description of that gentleman with which the shopman was obliging enough to furnish me was exact enough not only to satisfy me, but also to embolden me to suppose that he would have no difficulty in recognising his customer again at need. Do you think a jury would be interested in that, Mr Taverner?’
Bernard Taverner was still clenching the edge of the mantel piece. A rather ghastly smile parted his lips. ‘Interested – but not convinced, Lord Worth.’
‘Very well,’ said the Earl. ‘We must pass on then to your next and last attempt. I will do you the justice to say that I don’t think it was one you would have made had not the fixed date of Peregrine’s marriage made it imperative for you to get rid of him at once. You were hard-pressed, Mr Taverner, and a little too desperate to consider whether I might not be taking a hand in the affair. From the moment of Peregrine’s wedding-day being made known you have not made one movement out of your lodgings that has not been at once reported to me. You suspected Hinkson, but Hinkson was not the person who shadowed you. You have had on your heels a far more noted figure, one who must be as well known as I am myself. You have even thrown him a shilling for holding your horse. Don’t you know my tiger when you see him, Mr Taverner?’
Bernard Taverner’s eyes were fixed on the Earl’s face. He swallowed once, but said nothing.
The Earl took a pinch of snuff. ‘On the whole,’ he said reflectively, ‘I believe Henry enjoyed the task. It was a little beneath his dignity, but he is extremely attached to me, Mr Taverner – a far more reliable tool, I assure you, than any of your not very efficient hirelings – and he obeyed me implicitly in not letting you out of his sight. You would be surprised at his resourcefulness. When you drove your gig over to New Shoreham to strike a bargain with that seafaring friend of yours you took Henry with you, curled up in the boot. His description of that mode of travel is profane but very graphic. I am anticipating, however. Your first action was to introduce a creature of your own into Peregrine’s household – a somewhat foolhardy proceeding, if I may say so. It would have been wiser to have risked coming into the foreground at that juncture, my dear sir. You should have disposed of Peregrine yourself. Well, you made arrangements to have Peregrine transported out to sea. Was he then to be dropped overboard? It would be interesting to know what precise fate lay in store for him. I can only trust that it may have befallen Tyler, whose task was undoubtedly to have overpowered Peregrine at a convenient moment during his drive to Worthing, and to have handed him over to the captain of that vessel. To make doubly sure, Tyler tried to drink Hinkson under the table before setting out. But Hinkson has a harder head than you would believe possible, and instead of remaining under the table, he came to me. I waylaid Peregrine on the West Cliff, and requested him to come back with me to my house on a matter of business. Once I had him under my roof I gave him drugged wine to drink, while Henry performed the same office for Tyler. Hinkson then drove Tyler to the rendezvous you had appointed, Mr Taverner, and delivered him up to your engaging friends. It was he who wrote you the message which you thought came from Tyler, telling you that he had done his part, and would meet you in London. Peregrine was carried out of my house that evening and taken aboard my yacht, which was lying in New Shoreham harbour.’
‘Oh, how could you?’ Judith broke in. ‘What he must have suffered!’
He smiled. ‘Charles felt very much as you appear to do, Miss Taverner. Fortunately I am not so tender-hearted. Peregrine has suffered nothing worse than a severe headache, and a week’s cruise in excellent weather. He has not been imagining himself in any danger, for I gave my captain a letter of explanation to be delivered to him when he came to his senses.’
‘You might have told me!’ Judith said.
‘I might, had I not had an ardent desire to try your cousin into betraying himself,’ replied the Earl coolly. ‘It was with that object that I left Brighton. Charles did the rest. He led Mr Bernard Taverner to believe – did he not, my dear sir? – that he and I had concocted a scheme to lure you to town, and there to force you into marriage with one or other of us. He dropped a special licence under Mr Taverner’s nose and left the rest to his own ingenuity. You took fright, sir, precisely as you were meant to, and this is the outcome. The game is up!’
‘But – but you?’ demanded Miss Taverner, in a bewildered voice. ‘Where were you, Lord Worth? How could you know that my cousin meant to bring me here?’
‘I did not know. But when Henry was able to report to Charles that your cousin had left Brighton on Saturday night, Charles sent the tidings to me express, and I returned to Brighton on Sunday night, where I have been ever since, waiting for your cousin to move. Henry followed you to the Post Office this morning, witnessed your meeting with Mr Taverner, and ran to tell me of it. I could have overtaken you at any moment during you
r drive here had I wanted to.’
‘Oh, it was not fair!’ exclaimed Miss Taverner indignantly. ‘You should have told me! I am very grateful to you for all the rest, but this –’ She got up from her chair, rather flushed, and glanced towards her cousin. He was still standing before the fireplace, his face rigid, and almost bloodless. She shuddered. ‘I trusted you!’ she said. ‘All the time you were trying to murder Perry I believed you to be our friend. My uncle I did suspect, but you never!’
He said in a constricted voice: ‘Whatever I may have done, my father had no hand in. I admit nothing. Arrest me, if you choose. Lord Worth has yet to prove his accusations.’
Her mouth trembled. ‘I cannot answer you. Your kindness, your professions of regard for me – all false! Oh, it is horrible!’
‘My regard for you at least was not false!’ he said hoarsely. ‘That was so real, grew to be so – But it does not signify talking!’
‘If you stood in such desperate need of money,’ she said haltingly, ‘could you not have told us? We should have been so happy to have assisted you out of your difficulties!’
He winced at that, but the Earl said in his most damping tone: ‘Possibly, but it is conceivable that I might have had something to say to that, my ward. Nor do I imagine that with a fortune of twelve thousand pounds a year to tempt him Mr Taverner would have been satisfied with becoming your pensioner. May I suggest that you leave this matter in my hands now, Miss Taverner? You have nothing further to fear from your cousin, and you cannot profitably continue this discussion. You will find that the chaise that is to convey you back to Brighton has arrived by now. I want you to go out to it, and to leave me to wind up this affair in my own way.’
She looked up at him doubtfully. ‘You are not going to come with me?’ she asked.
‘I must ask you to excuse me, Miss Taverner. I have still something to do here.’
She let him lead her to the door, but as he opened it, and would have bowed her out, she laid her hand on his arm, and said under her breath: ‘I don’t want him to be arrested!’
‘You may safely leave everything to me, Miss Taverner. There will be no scandal.’
She cast a glance at her cousin, and looked up again at the Earl. ‘Very well. I – I will go. But I – I don’t want you to be hurt, Lord Worth!’
He smiled rather grimly. ‘You need not be alarmed, my child. I shan’t be.’
‘But –’
‘Go, Miss Taverner,’ he said quietly.
Miss Taverner, recognising the note of finality in his voice, obeyed him.
She found that a chaise-and-four, with the Earl’s crest on the panels, was waiting for her outside the cottage. She got into it, and sank back against the cushions. It moved forward, and closing her eyes, Miss Taverner gave herself up to reflection. The events of the past hours, the shock of finding her cousin to be a villain, could not soon be recovered from. The drive to Brighton, which had seemed so interminable earlier in the day, was now too short to allow her sufficient time to compose her thoughts. These were in confusion; it would be many hours before she could be calm again, many hours before her mind would be capable of receiving other and happier impressions.
The chaise bore her smoothly to Brighton, and she found Peregrine awaiting her in Marine Parade. She threw herself into his arms, her overcharged spirits finding relief in a burst of tears.‘Oh, Perry, Perry, how brown you look!’ she sobbed.
‘Well, there is nothing to cry about in that, is there?’ asked Peregrine, considerably surprised.
‘No, oh no!’ wept Miss Taverner, laying her cheek against his shoulder. ‘It is only that I am so thankful!’
Twenty-Three
IF MISS TAVERNER EXPECTED TO FIND HER BROTHER indignant at the treatment he had undergone she was soon informed of her mistake. He had had a capital time.
‘Nothing could be like it!’ he told her over and over again. ‘I must have a yacht of my own. If Worth won’t consent to it it will be the greatest shame imaginable! I am persuaded Harriet would like it above all things. I wish Worth had come here to-night, I cannot conceive why he should not. Evans – he is Worth’s captain, you know: a first-rate fellow! – Evans says I have a great aptitude. Never in the least sick – and we ran into a pretty ground-swell on Tuesday, I can tell you! But it made no odds to me, never felt better in my life!’
‘But Perry, when you awoke from that drug, were you not sadly alarmed?’
‘No, why should I be? I had a devilish headache, but that soon went off, and then Evans gave me Worth’s letter.’
‘What must your feelings have been when you read it! He told you the whole?’
‘Oh yes, I was excessively shocked! But ever since he had the impudence to interfere over that duel I have not at all liked my cousin, you know.’
‘But Perry, he did not interfere! It was he who –’
‘Ay, so it was; I was forgetting. But it’s all one: I have been thinking him a shabby fellow these several months.’
‘We have not valued Lord Worth’s protection as we should,’ said Judith, colouring faintly. ‘If we had trusted him more, been upon kinder terms, perhaps he need not have put you away, or –’
‘Lord, there’s nothing in that!’ Peregrine declared. ‘I am precious glad he did, because I had never been to sea before in my life. I would not have missed it for the world! To own the truth, I did not above half like coming ashore again, except, of course, for seeing you and Harriet. However, I am quite determined to set up a yacht of my own, only it will cost a good deal, I daresay, and ten to one Worth won’t hear of it.’
‘I wish,’ said Miss Taverner, with some asperity, ‘that you would give your thoughts a more proper direction! Towards Lord Worth we must be all obligation. Without his protection I am very much disposed to think that you and I should have made but wretched work of everything.’
‘It is very true, upon my honour! I assure you I am quite in charity with him. But then, you know, I never disliked him as much as you did, though he has often been amazingly disagreeable.’
Miss Taverner’s flush deepened. ‘Yes, at first I did dislike him. The circumstances of our –’
‘Lord, I shall never forget the day we called in Cavendish Square, and found that it was he who was our guardian! You were as mad as fire!’
‘It is a recollection that should be forgotten,’ replied Miss Taverner. ‘Lord Worth’s manners are – are not always conciliating, but of the propriety of his motives we can never stand in doubt. We owe him a debt of gratitude, Perry.’
‘I am very sensible of it. To be sure, we were completely taken in by my cousin. And to drug me, and put me aboard his yacht – Lord, I thought he was going to murder me when he forced that stuff down my throat! – was the neatest piece of work! I had no notion I should like being upon the sea so much! Evans was in a great pucker lest I should be angry at it, but, “Lord,” I said, “you need not think I shall try to swim to shore! This is beyond anything great!”’
Miss Taverner sighed, and gave up the struggle. Peregrine continued to talk of his experiences at sea until it was time to go to bed. Miss Taverner could only be glad that since he had formed the intention of driving to Worthing upon the following day any further descriptions of ground-swells, squalls, wearing, luffing, squaring the yards, or reefing the sails must fall to Miss Fairford’s lot instead of hers. It was a melancholy reflection that although she would have been ready to swear, a day before, that she could not have borne to have let him out of her sight again, if he should be restored to her, three hours of his company were enough to make her look forward with complaisance to his leaving her directly after breakfast next morning. Even when he was not recounting his adventures his conversation had a nautical flavour. He talked of crowding all sail to Worthing, of bringing to, and hauling his wind, and of making out a friend at cable’s length. An empty wine-bottle became a marine officer, landsmen on board a ship were live lumber, and a passer-by in the street was described as being as round as
a nine-pounder. A number of sea-shanties being sung loudly and inaccurately all over the house finally alienated even Mrs Scattergood’s sympathy, and by eleven o’clock on Thursday nothing could have exceeded both ladies’ anxious solicitude to set him on his way to Worthing.
Miss Taverner then sat down to await her guardian. He did not come. Only Captain Audley called in Marine Parade that morning, and when Miss Taverner asked, as carelessly as she could, whether his lordship was in Brighton, the Captain merely said: ‘Julian? Oh yes, he is here, but I fancy you won’t see him to-day. York arrived in Brighton yesterday, you know.’
Miss Taverner, who was inclined to rate her claims quite as high as the Duke of York’s said: ‘Indeed!’ in a cold voice, and turned the subject.
There was no appearance of Worth at the ball that night, but upon Miss Taverner’s return to Marine Parade she found a note from him lying on the table in the hall. She broke the seal at once, and eagerly spread open the single sheet.
Old Steyne, June 25th, 1812.
Dear Miss Taverner. – I shall do myself the honour of waiting on you to-morrow morning at noon, if this should be convenient to you, for the purpose of resigning into your charge the documents relating to your affairs with which I have been entrusted during the period of my guardianship.Yours, etc.,
Worth.
Miss Taverner read this missive with a sinking heart, and slowly folded it up again. Mrs Scattergood, observing her downcast look, hoped that she had not had bad news. ‘Oh dear me, no!’ said Miss Taverner.
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