False Colours

by Джорджетт Хейер

  “Why?” demanded Cressy, blinking in bewilderment.

  “I knew my case to be hopeless. Your father would not have entertained my suit, nor did I feel that my circumstances were such as would enable me to support you in the style to which you were accustomed.”

  “You were modest, weren’t you?” said Evelyn.

  “Certainly I was! Noble, too, don’t you think?”

  “No,” replied Evelyn frankly. “Buffleheaded!”

  “Dear one, Evelyn is perfectly right!” said Lady Denville. “You couldn’t have been such a goose! Depend upon it, everyone must know that you came into a comfortable fortune when your father died!”

  “Let the boy alone!” commanded the Dowager. “Stavely thought it not large enough: I’ll attend to that! Go on!”

  “I’m much obliged to you, ma’am! Well, I withdrew, never dreaming that my passion was reciprocated, and that I was dashing Cressy’s hopes to the ground.”

  “Oh, Kit, no!” Cressy uttered imploringly. “Don’t tell me I hadn’t the wit to throw out even one lure!”

  “No, no!” he assured her. “You had too much maidenly reserve to do so! And far too much pride to let anyone suspect your secret. You resolutely thrust me out of your mind.”

  “No, I didn’t: I wondered if Evelyn wouldn’t suit me just as well. After all, he’s as like you as he can stare!”

  “That’s an even better notion,” said Kit approvingly. “We now arrive at the point where we stand on unassailable ground. My godfather died, leaving his entire fortune to me. I built the whole story round that circumstance, because it is precisely what did happen! Naturally, this altered the complexion of the affair. I came home, full of hope, to find you on the brink of becoming betrothed to my brother. We met, our feelings were too strong to be mastered, and either Evelyn discovered us locked in a fond embrace, or we disclosed our touching story to him—whichever you fancy, Eve!—whereupon he too succumbed to an attack of nobility, and gracefully retired from the lists.”

  “Only if I can also have too much pride to let anyone suspect my secret!” stipulated Evelyn. “Not even for you am I going to languish with a broken heart, Kester!”

  Sir Bonamy, who had listened in rapt interest to the tale, said: “Well, if ever I knew you had it in you, Kit! Why, I shouldn’t wonder at it if you could write a book, or a play, or some such thing!” He perceived, with faint surprise, that Cressy had collapsed into helpless giggles. “I’m bound to say I don’t see what there is to laugh at: in my opinion you made a dashed moving thing of it, my boy! You know, Amabel, I begin to think he’ll go a long way after all!”

  “I know he will!” she responded proudly. “I’ve frequently told you that Kit was always equal to anything!”

  Kit’s lips twitched at these tributes, but he was looking at the Dowager. “Will it do, ma’am?”

  She was not attending, and vouchsafed no answer. He waited; and after a short interval she said abruptly: “I’ll write to Stavely: no sense in leaving anything to chance! You’ll give the letter to him, and take care he reads it! I never in my life listened to a sicklier, stupider story, but, from what I’ve seen of you, all you would do, if I was to tell you I wouldn’t have it, would be to think of something even more outrageous! Cressy, you may give me your arm! I’m going to bed, for I’m fagged to death!” She bade the assembled company a cursory good night, but informed Kit, holding open the door for her, that she would thank him not to get himself hanged while she was still alive, and able to feel the shame of being connected with a gallows-bird. After that, she allowed him to kiss her hand, and withdrew, leaning heavily on Cressy’s arm.

  “Kester, if you do indeed mean to spread this story, we must give it a new touch! You could no more tell it as it stands than I could. Anyone who knows us would guess we were cutting a sham!”

  “Good God, we aren’t going to spread it!” replied Kit. “That’s the last thing we should do, if it happened to be true! There’s no need to dress it up. We have only to put Fimber and Challow in possession of the bare bones of it, and leave them to tell it as they please. Give Challow half-an-hour amongst his cronies at the Running Footman, and I’ll lay you any odds you like that there’ll be upwards of a dozen garbled versions spreading all over London within a day! Lord, how many times has Challow favoured you with a choice morsel of gossip? If Stavely consents to Cressy’s marriage, he’ll be only too glad to adopt the story; and I don’t mean to tell Mama what sort of touch to give it!”

  “Oh, no!” agreed Lady Denville. “I know just how I shall tell it, if anyone ventures to ask me any questions, when the advertisement of the engagement appears! Of course, only my particular friends will venture, but I know one who will, and it won’t matter a rush if not another soul does!”

  “For my part,” said Sir Bonamy firmly, “I shall say I ain’t on the high gab!”

  “That’s the ticket, sir!” said Kit, grinning at him. “Give ’em a set-down!”

  “Yes, but do you think it might give people quitea wrong notion?” suggested Lady Denville. “Could you, perhaps, say that it is a—a most touching romance?”

  “I might do that,” conceded Sir Bonamy, having subjected the proposition to careful consideration.

  “What do you think Evelyn should say, Kit?” asked her ladyship anxiously.

  “Nothing whatsoever!” he replied.

  “That’s fortunate!” remarked his twin.

  “All Evelyn has to do,” said Kit, answering the doubtful question in her ladyship’s eyes, “is to behave exactly as he would if the story were true! Poker up, assume an air of distant civility, look down his nose—You know what he is when he gets on his high ropes, Mama!”

  “And how, you uppish Jack-in-the-pulpit, do you mean to answer the curious?” inquired Evelyn.

  “If it please your lordship—or even if it doesn’t!—” retorted Kit, “I shan’t be obliged to answer them, because by the time the news is out, I shall be in Vienna! Now, don’t eat me! Before I make good my escape, I am going to divulge my apocryphal story to the person for whose benefit it was principally designed. And if you imagine, Eve, that—” He broke off, as the door opened, and looked quickly round.

  But it was Cressy who came into the room, and, as she told him, only to bid him goodnight, and to tell him that she had left the Dowager chuckling. “I said I was positive you would make a stir in the world, and that’s what set her off: she said she hadn’t a doubt you would, and fell into such a fit of choking that I was in the greatest dread that it would carry her off! Kit, only a Fancot could have fabricated such a story! Of all the—No, I will not start laughing again!” Her hands were clasped in his, and her slender fingers tightened. “When shall I see you again?” she asked, looking up into his face.

  “Tomorrow, love,” he answered, smiling tenderly down at her.

  “Ah, yes, but after that?”

  “As soon as I can contrive it. That’s something I must discuss with your father. If the abominable Albinia could be cajoled into thinking she would enjoy a trip abroad—But we won’t pin our hopes to that chance! Stewart, I’m persuaded, would give me leave in August.”

  She said, resolutely smiling: “Not so very long, then! We shall leave for Worthing almost immediately. I suppose, you couldn’t—No, of course not!”

  He shook his head. “I’ve still something to do, love, and I’ve lingered too long already.”

  “Cressy, my dear, forgive me if I run away!” interposed Lady Denville. “I have suddenly remembered that I have something most important I must say to Evelyn, before he goes back to Pinny!”

  Evelyn, instantly and accurately interpreting this as an excuse hurriedly conjured up to leave Kit alone with his prospective bride, responded without hesitation. Sir Bonamy was a little harder to move, but it was not long before he grasped that her ladyship was trying to convey a silent message to him, and no time at all after that, before complete enlightenment dawned upon him. “Oh!” he said, hoisting himself to his fe
et: “Yes, yes, my pretty! To be sure! I’ll bid you goodnight, my dear Miss Stavely! It’s been a tiring day, you know—devilish tiring!”

  “Yes, indeed!” said Kit, perceiving that his love was once more in dire straits. “Eve, wait for me!”

  “Why, Kester, of course! What’s an hour to me? Don’t hesitate to wake me if I should happen to have fallen asleep!” responded his twin, strategically retiring in Sir Bonamy’s wake, and closing the door behind him.

  It was not, however, many minutes before Kit joined him. “Hell-hound!” Kit said, entirely without rancour. “Eve, I racked my brains to hit upon a way to speed your affair, but it can’t be done! The only way to enable us to get there with both feet is for me to marry Cressy before you allow my uncle even to know that Miss Askham exists.”

  “I might have guessed you’d stab me in the back!” said Evelyn mournfully. “First you tried to usurp my place; then you stole my bride—Kester, remember my shoulder, remember I’m the head of the family, you unnatural brute!”

  “Will you be serious?” demanded Kit wrathfully.

  “I swear I will be, if only you won’t talk balderdash! Good God, you great gudgeon, I haven’t yet so much as made the smallest push even to fix Patience’s interest!”

  “I know that, but I know you too, twin! However, it can’t be helped, and if you join Mama in Brighton presently you won’t be so far off that you can’t visit the Askhams, will you?”

  “No, Kester, I shan’t. So, now that that’s off your mind, let us consider your affairs! I’ve an uneasy conviction that you should have been in Vienna days ago. Yes?”

  “Yes,” Kit admitted, “I don’t think Stewart will cut up stiff, however, so don’t tease yourself! I made my godfather’s death my excuse for wanting leave of absence, and couldn’t have hit on a surer card! He almost ordered me not to hesitate to extend my furlough, if I found myself unable to settle my affairs as soon as I’d thought I should. So, as I hadn’t the smallest notion where you were, or how long it would be before you reappeared, I took the precaution of writing to him, before I left London, telling him that I’d found things in the deuce of a tangle! Never mind that! What I was going to tell you when Cressy came into the room, was that the moment I’ve settled things with Stavely, I’m going to post off to present my uncle with my moving story. That ought to make all tidy!”

  “Make all tidy—! You’d ruin yourself with him!”

  “Not a bit of it!” said Kit cheerfully. “You think that because you can’t deal with him no one can, but that’s where you’re out! You leave him to me—but for God’s sake, don’t forget the part you played in the epic! Perhaps I’d better write it down for you.”

  “Perhaps you had,” agreed Evelyn. “After all, there’s no saying what I might do, when you aren’t here to—Listen! That’s not Fimber’s step!”

  He got up, as a knock fell on the door, and prepared to slip behind the bed-curtains. Kit strode over to the door, and opened it, to find Sir Bonamy standing outside, his nightcap already on his head, and his uncorseted form swathed in his gorgeous dressing-gown. “Oh, it’s you, sir!” Kit said. “Come in! Is there anything amiss?”

  “No, no, I wouldn’t say there was anything amiss!” replied Sir Bonamy. “The thing is—” He broke off, as his eyes fell upon Evelyn. “I thought you was alone!” he told Kit. “Well, well, never mind! It wasn’t important!”

  Evelyn, stunned by the monstrous figure presented by Sir Bonamy en deshabille, said faintly: “Don’t go on my account, sir! Or shall I go?”

  “No, no! I haven’t anything private to say! I dare say you’ll think it of no consequence—well, no more it is! Just one of those trifling things one gets to thinking about in the middle of the night! Ay, and worse! Damme, if I didn’t dream I was eating it last night! Never had such a nightmare in my life! I thought I’d have a word with you, Kit, before you go off to Vienna. Well, you’ve been very civil—very civil and amiable, and you’ve a deal of influence with your mother, and if you would just drop a word in her ear I should be devilish obliged to you! Mind, I don’t mean I shan’t like being married to her, because, in a great many ways, I rather think I shall. But not if she means to give me biscuits and soda-water!”

  “D-does she?” asked Evelyn, in a shaking voice.

  “Of course she doesn’t!” said Kit.

  “I wouldn’t say that,” said Sir Bonamy. “You remember her telling me I ought to live on biscuits and soda-water?”

  “I can’t say I do, sir, but if she did she was only funning, I promise you!”

  “Ah, but you never know what notions a female will take into her head! What’s more, they always get their own way! Ask Evelyn, if you don’t believe me! You ain’t much in the petticoat-line yourself, I fancy.”

  “N-not very much, sir!” acknowledged Kit. “I’ll take your word for it, however, and—and won’t fail to speak to Mama!”

  Sir Bonamy, much moved, shook him warmly by the hand, and thanked him with heartfelt sincerity, saying that he could now seek his bed without dreading a recurrence of his hideous nightmare. He then surged out of the room, just as Lady Denville, looking like a water-nymph, in a dressing-gown composed of layer upon layer of diaphanous material dyed every shade of green, emerged from her own bedchamber. He shrank instinctively, but she positively recoiled, gasping: “Great heavens—! Bonamy!”

  Overcoming his discomposure, he said, putting a bold face on it: “Not wearing my corsets! I know you don’t like ’em: you told me so!”

  Recovering from her initial shock, she floated up to him, laying a fragile hand on his arm, and saying: “Dearest friend, you must be mistaken! How could I have said such a thing?”

  “No, I’m not,” asserted Sir Bonamy, fixedly regarding her. “You begged me to give up strait-lacing!”

  “I must have been mad!” said her ladyship.

  “And,” continued Sir Bonamy, hope in his eyes, “you said I creaked!”

  “Now, that,” conceded her ladyship, “I do recall! But don’t give it another thought, my dear! I have grown perfectly accustomed to it! Never abandon your Cumberland corset, I beg of you!”

  “You know what, my pretty?” said Sir Bonamy, care wiped from his brow. “You’ve taken a weight off my mind! Damme, I am the happiest man alive! Bless you, my lovely one!”

  Lady Denville, emerging unruffled from an overwhelming embrace, dismissed him in the kindest way to his allotted bedchamber, and joined her sons, saying, as she entered the room: “Poor Bonamy! I am quite shocked to think that I never before realized how much he needs me to take care of him!”

  “I don’t th-think he realizes it either, M-mama!” said Kit.

  “No, not yet, but I promise you he will! Naturally, it came as a dreadful shock to him, but already he is beginning to grow more cheerful!” She added, as this drew wails from her distressingly afflicted sons, each of whom was clinging to a heavily carved bedpost: “Wicked ones, wicked ones, you are not to laugh at him!”

  “Only give me leave to tell him you won’t f-feed him on biscuits and soda-water!” gasped Kit.

  At that, her own enchanting ripple of laughter bubbled up. “Oh, poor lamb! As though I could be so inhuman! I should think it would kill him! Tell him that I shan’t interfere in any way! I shall, of course, but he will never know it, so you needn’t scruple to say that, dearest!”

  It was Evelyn who laughed the most at this, and inevitably, he whose laughter quite suddenly vanished. He said vehemently: “Don’t do it, Mama, don’t do it! You can’t! You must know you can’t!”

  She replied quite seriously: “That is exactly what I thought myself, when I made up my mind that I would do it! But, do you know, my dear one, the more I think about it the more I believe that I shall positively enjoy being married to Bonamy! That’s what I came to tell you, because I know you don’t like it, and I haven’t been able to snatch a word with either of you since it happened! And suddenly it occurred to me that I shan’t be a Dowager after all! You can�
��t think what a relief that is to me!” She drew his handsome head down, and kissed him. “So now you’ll let Fimber take you back to Pinny, my dearest, and you won’t worry about anything, because there is nothing more you can worry about! Kit came to the rescue, just as he—just as he—” Her voice cracked, and she turned swiftly to hug her younger son convulsively. “Oh, my darling!” she said. “Thank you! I’m not going to say another word, because I should cry if I did, and I look hideous, when I do that! Good night, my precious ones!”

  The twins were left confronting one another. “You’ll grow accustomed to it, Eve,” said Kit, faintly smiling. “She will enjoy being married to him!”

  “Yes,” said Evelyn. He raised his eyes to Kit’s, and a reflection of Kit’s smile glimmered in them. “I don’t propose to embarrass you, Kester, by enlarging on what our beloved parent said—or, mercifully, left unsaid!”

  “Well, thank God for that!” said Kit.

  “Just so! I do hope we shall never be obliged to say anything to each other!”

  “Why the devil should we?”

  “I haven’t the least idea. Give the bell a tug, Kester! I’m, going to bed! In the words of our future father-in-law, it’s been a tiring day!”

  “Devilish tiring!” instantly responded his twin.

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