Parfit Knight

by Riley, Stella

  Rosalind leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. There was no place for relief since she had never believed the Marquis guilty of dishonour … and, instead, she found herself thinking of something Rockliffe had said and wondering how much of this he had either known or guessed.

  It was a long time before Philip spoke and, when he did so, it was to Robert.

  ‘Is it true?’

  Badly frightened, Robert slumped into a chair and floundered in a quagmire of unintelligible extenuations.

  ‘Is it true?’ repeated Philip, his voice like gun-fire.

  ‘Yes,’ muttered Robert. ‘God damn you, yes! But I – ‘

  ‘Don’t say anything else.’ His lordship’s voice was restrained again but far from reassuring. ‘If you do, I may not be able to keep my hands from your throat. I could forgive you the money – but not the deceit. Isabel is right. You are beneath contempt.’

  ‘I’m glad you think that,’ remarked Isabel sturdily, ‘because I haven’t finished yet. Not unless you are prepared to present your apologies to the Marquis and agree to his marrying Rosalind.’

  Rosalind’s eyes flew open and she sat up.

  ‘I shall apologise for misjudging him, naturally,’ said Philip stiffly. ‘But as for the rest – I don’t know yet. There are other considerations.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Rosalind unevenly. ‘He hasn’t asked me to marry him. He – he didn’t even come yesterday.’

  Isabel raised enquiring brows at Lord Philip and, when he said nothing, turned back to his sister. ‘He would have come,’ she said simply, ‘but that he thought you would not receive him. Philip called on him yesterday morning and told him that you knew of his part in your accident.’

  ‘Philip?’ The violet eyes were wide and dark. ‘Why?’

  His lordship flushed, suddenly ashamed. ‘I thought … it seemed to be for the best.’

  ‘For whom?’ Rosalind stood up. ‘Not for me – or only if he really was trifling with me. Was he?’

  Again, Isabel waited for Philip to speak before saying, ‘No. He wants to marry you. But because Philip believed him capable of every conceivable villainy, he used the only weapon he had and … implied … that you blamed Amberley for your blindness.’

  Rosalind did not know whether to laugh or cry. Shivering a little, she stretched out a groping hand to Isabel and felt it taken in a warm, comforting clasp.

  ‘I don’t understand. How could he possibly think I would blame him?’

  Isabel suddenly discovered that she felt very tired – as if all the life had drained out of her. She said, ‘I think you had best ask him that question yourself. I must go. I never meant to stay so long.’

  ‘No.’ Rosalind smiled mistily. ‘But I’m so very glad that you did. There is still a lot I need to understand … but you don’t know what you’ve done for me.’

  ‘Oh I think I do,’ replied Isabel dryly. And thought, I’ve betrayed my brother and disgraced myself in the eyes of yours. I only hope it was worth it. Releasing Rosalind’s hand, she stooped to pick up her mask and fan and then, when it was no longer possible to evade Philip’s eyes, she looked up and said flatly, ‘I’m sorry if you’re angry but I had to tell her – and I’m far guiltier than you for I should have told you the rest of it a long time ago.’ She glanced fleetingly at her brother and added, ‘Don’t forget to ask Rosalind about Vauxhall. Goodnight.’ And, with a small curtsy, she walked towards the door.

  ‘No – wait.’ Philip stepped impulsively after her. He did not know what to say – only that he must say something. ‘I’ve got to talk to you.’

  ‘Yes.’ Wearily, she turned round. ‘But not now, if you don’t mind. I’m tired and I want to go home but I can’t because I’ve got to back to the Anstey ball. I’m sorry – but I don’t think I can cope with you as well. Come, Robert.’

  Philip flinched as though she had slapped him and said nothing more. He managed a slight bow, avoided looking at the Honourable Robert and a minute later, they had gone. For a long time, he remained where he was, staring at the closed door and then he turned abruptly away to lean his hands on the mantel. The seconds ticked by in silence as he tried to master his hurt and come to terms with the shock of Isabel’s disclosures. Finally, he said curtly, ‘I seem to have made an utter fool of myself.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Rosalind, completely without rancour. ‘But it wasn’t entirely your fault and, for the most part, you acted in good faith. And it can be put right. Fortunately.’

  Philip frowned down into the fire, thinking how close he had come to making it horribly and irreparably wrong.

  ‘You really do love him, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes. I really do.’

  ‘So much that nothing else matters?’

  ‘That much and more.’

  ‘I see. He is to be envied.’ His hands fell to his sides and he turned to face her. ‘I’ll visit him tomorrow and do what I can to set matters right. The rest will be up to him.’ He grinned crookedly. ‘Do you suppose he’ll kick me down the steps or fall on my neck?’

  ‘Neither,’ smiled Rosalind. ‘He’s much more likely to make a joke of it. You know he can’t help it – even when he’s bleeding like a pig.’

  *

  There is nothing very funny about having to admit all your mistakes and follies to the man you have insulted in every conceivable way and Philip was not looking forward to his interview with the Marquis. He could remember with distressing clarity all the unjust accusations he had hurled at Amberley’s head and there was no reason, he thought gloomily, to suppose that Amberley would not remember them too. He had lied, not openly, but by implication, about Rosalind’s feelings and would now have to admit it. And yesterday, adding injury to insult, he’d put a bullet through the fellow’s arm.

  It did not augur well for their future relationship and Philip would not have been human if he had not wished that his sister had chosen to bestow her heart elsewhere. But since there was no help for it, since he owed both Rosalind and her Marquis some reparation and had only just come, at last, to understand how they felt, he duly left Jermyn Street on the stroke of eleven the following morning and set off to do his endeavour in Hanover Square.

  His resolution was wasted for the Marquis was not at home. He had left early that morning for Surrey, said his butler, and was not expected to return before the end of the week. Unable to decide if he was glad or sorry, Philip went reluctantly home to tell his sister.

  Under all the vicissitudes of the previous evening, Rosalind had remained reasonable and understanding. Today, she was neither. She demanded to be taken instantly to Surrey.

  Philip stared at her. ‘Don’t be an idiot, Rose. I can’t go chasing the man all over the countryside – and neither can you. It isn’t sensible.’

  ‘I won’t be sensible if I have to wait for three whole days or maybe more,’ she retorted flatly. ‘And it isn’t all over the countryside. He’ll have gone to Richmond. It can’t take more than an hour.’

  ‘That isn’t the point. I’ve made a big enough idiot of myself as it is without charging about like a damned lunatic. He may be in Richmond – or he may not. You don’t know – ‘

  ‘Yes, I do. He’ll be at Mallory Place in Richmond. It’s where – ’

  ‘That’s as maybe. But we can’t just go barging uninvited into a complete stranger’s – ‘

  ‘Why not? It’s his mother’s house and I shouldn’t think she’d mind.’

  ‘Oh wonderful!’ said Philip. ‘As if it’s not bad enough having to face Amberley, you want me to call on his mother and explain how I came to shoot her son. No thank you!’

  Rosalind swallowed an infelicitous reply and tried what coaxing would do.

  ‘Please, Phil,’ she begged. ‘It’s such a little thing to ask.’

  ‘That’s all very well for you to say. Your part is easy.’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ she replied dryly. ‘And don’t you – ‘

  ‘No! God knows I’ll be lu
cky to come out of this with any dignity at all – and I certainly don’t intend to squander what little I do have by running after him like a damned tyro. I’ll leave a letter in Hanover Square asking him to receive me when he comes back to town – but that’s all I will do. And if,’ he concluded wisely, scanning her flushed, stubborn countenance, ‘you’re going to fly into a temper, you can do it on your own. I’m off to see Isabel.’

  *

  As soon as he turned into Clarges Street he realised that all was not well in the Linton household. The door of the house stood wide open and through it, to the evident delight of the small group of urchins, maidservants and passers-by gathered on the pavement, came the loud, blustering tones of the Viscount demanding that some person or persons should immediately vacate his house.

  ‘Oh Lord!’ thought Philip irritably, as he pushed his way through to the steps. ‘What now?’

  The scene in the hall was one of noisy confusion. Facing the Viscount and all talking at once were some seven or eight soberly-dressed individuals all clutching sheets of paper which they brandished militantly in his lordship’s alarmingly suffused face. And, behind his father – pale, shaking and striving not to be noticed – stood the Honourable Robert. The situation, thought Philip savagely, was suddenly crystal clear.

  ‘Stop this infernal din!’ he shouted in a voice any soldier would have recognised.

  It had its effect. The hall fell abruptly silent and every eye swung round to stare at him. Philip nodded curtly to the Viscount and fixed a derisive blue stare on his son.

  ‘Your creditors, I presume?’

  Robert fidgeted and turned away.

  ‘Yes, young sir – we are his creditors!’ volunteered a portly gentleman in brown. ‘And we are here to – ‘

  ‘I asked you to be quiet,’ rapped Philip. ‘It doesn’t take a genius to see why you’re here – or that you are wasting your time. I take it,’ he said, looking at Lord Linton, ‘that, as usual, your son is unable to meet his obligations?’

  ‘Of course he can’t meet ‘em!’ snorted the Viscount. ‘And I’ll not settle ‘em. Couldn’t even if I wanted to – which I don’t!’

  ‘I see.’ Philip smiled coldly at Robert. ‘Then it looks as though you are about to take up residence in the Fleet, doesn’t it?’

  A murmur of dissatisfaction rippled through the ranks of the assembled tradesmen.

  ‘Much good that’ll do us,’ grumbled one.

  ‘And that’s if the young puppy don’t skip off to Foreign Parts,’ added another.

  Lord Linton eyed Philip speculatively.

  ‘Don’t suppose you’d think of helping the boy out, would you?’

  ‘I already have,’ replied Philip. ‘Frequently.’

  ‘Ah.’ The Viscount rocked back and forth, nodding wisely at the floor. ‘But just once more? For Bella? Poor girl won’t like to see her brother clapped up, I daresay.’

  ‘But then she won’t see it, will she?’ objected Philip pleasantly. He was deriving a certain grim enjoyment from repaying Robert for some of the trouble he had caused. ‘You could hardly expect Isabel to visit the debtor’s ward, after all. And I wouldn’t be surprised if she wasn’t rather glad to have Robert safely out of harm’s way.’

  This aspect of the matter had not previously occurred to Lord Linton and he appeared to consider it. Then he shook his head and said, a shade regretfully, ‘No. Too much scandal. Got the name to think of, y’know. And it’s Bella’s name too.’

  ‘It won’t be when she is married to me,’ Philip pointed out. And then, tiring of the game, ‘But I might be willing to help … under certain conditions.’

  His lordship brightened. ‘Ha! Anything you like, dear boy. Only have to name it.’

  The prospect of a reprieve put new life into Robert.

  ‘Don’t you think,’ he asked sullenly, ‘that we should discuss this in private?’

  The sapphire gaze travelled along the row of silently hopeful spectators and eventually came to rest on Robert.

  ‘Oh no,’ said Lord Philip sweetly. ‘These gentlemen have a vested interest and I … I am anxious to avoid knocking your teeth down your throat. So here and now will do very well indeed. Do I have your undivided attention?’

  Robert coloured and toyed nervously with his quizzing-glass.

  ‘Yes. Get on with it.’

  Philip nodded. ‘Very well. I have no intention of putting money in your hands because we both know what that will lead to. But if these gentlemen will present their accounts to me, I will discharge them – along with any others you may have. I shall also purchase you a commission in any regiment I can find that will take you out of England for the foreseeable future – and after that I shall never do anything for you again. Those are my terms. Take them or leave them. Well?’

  There was a long, nerve-racking pause and then Robert said furiously, ‘Damn you – what choice to I have?’

  ‘None,’ replied Philip, coldly indifferent. ‘But whose fault is that?’

  *

  At about the time that Lord Philip arrived in Clarges Street, his betrothed - who had no idea of the stirring events taking place at her home – called on Rosalind and found her pacing restlessly up and down the parlour in an orgy of frustration.

  ‘Isabel – just the person!’ she exclaimed, abruptly ceasing her perambulations. And then, anxiously, ‘Philip isn’t with you, is he?’

  ‘No.’ Isabel looked faintly mystified. ‘I’ve been to Phanie’s for a fitting for my wedding dress. Why?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. It’s just that he went to Clarges Street to see you.’

  ‘Oh.’ Isabel turned rather pink. ‘Then perhaps I ought to go home – or do you think it would be better to wait for him here?’

  ‘Neither,’ said Rosalind firmly, her eyes sparkling with determination. ‘If you go, you’ll probably miss him. And when he finds you are out, I imagine he’ll go to his club. He certainly won’t come back here.’ She laughed oddly. ‘Yes. It’s perfect – couldn’t be better.’

  ‘What couldn’t?’ asked Isabel, baffled. And then, with dire foreboding, ‘You’re plotting something, aren’t you? Something dreadful.’

  ‘Yes – and no.’ Rosalind’s smile was tinged with brittle brilliance. ‘I just thought you might like to go for a little drive with me. Will you?’

  ‘I might,’ came the cautious reply. ‘Where to?’

  ‘Richmond,’ said Mistress Vernon casually. ‘Philip wouldn’t take me … but I think that, if we left him a note, he might follow us.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Because you are with me.’

  ‘I meant,’ said Isabel dryly, ‘why are we going?’

  Rosalind laughed again and the sound had a recklessness that was strangely disquieting.

  ‘To see Lord Amberley – and lay a ghost. I hope.’

  ~ * * * ~

  SEVENTEEN

  ‘Mon fils, I do not mind if you do not wish to talk to me,’ lied the Dowager Marchioness of Amberley with an apparent placidity designed to cover her inner anxiety, ‘but the roses you are scraping off that plate are what make it part of a set. Also, I do not like the noise.’

  Starting slightly, the Marquis frowned down at the knife he had been running absently back and forth across the gleaming surface of a small Sèvres plate and laid it aside.

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said with a smile that did not quite reach his eyes. ‘I was thinking of something else. I am a poor guest, am I not?’

  ‘Affreux,’ she agreed frankly, her gaze on the black silk sling that supported his left arm. It lent him a romantically heroic appearance that accorded rather well with the bleak pallor of his face but Eloise appreciated neither. Still less did she appreciate the phrase ‘a slight accident’ – which was all the explanation he would give.

  He said wryly, ‘Perhaps I should have gone to Amberley.’

  His mother rested her chin on one slender palm and surveyed him enigmatically across the table. ‘Why did y
ou not, then?’

  And that brought him up short. Why hadn’t he? Because he hadn’t wanted to go that far away? Because he had hoped against hope that something might change? Folly. One had as well try grasping the moon’s reflection in a pond. The only solid truth was that he could not stay in London for everyone to see that his duel with Lord Philip had been no joke – and could not yet face the prospect of meeting Rosalind at some social engagement or other. So he had come to Richmond in time to sit over a late breakfast with Eloise and tell her none of the things she wanted to know.

  His mother was an unusual woman – and, in some ways, remarkable. He knew she would sooner bleed to death than burden him with her concern and her questions; but they were there nonetheless and he found himself vaguely regretting that he had come.

  The word vague, he thought, seemed to say it all – to describe his every thought, word and deed; he even felt vaguely unwell for the dull throbbing of his arm was echoed by a nagging ache in his head that would not go away. He was used to none of it and it produced a degree of irritation that occasionally prompted him to cut through the cocoon of mists and shadows with the lash of his tongue. It did so now and, because he would not speak to his mother that way, he stood up, saying abruptly, ‘I thought I might go abroad again.’

  Dismay clutched at the Dowager’s heart but she merely said, ‘Oh? And where to this time?’

  He shrugged and his mouth twisted in something not quite a smile.

  ‘Anywhere. I don’t know. It really isn’t important.’

  This was too much for Eloise and, colouring faintly, she said, ‘It is Mademoiselle Vernon, n’est-ce-pas? I do not like to ask – but if it is to take you away again, I think I must. She will not have you, la petite? C’est ça?’

  ‘Oui – c’est ça.’ There was no attempt at lightness now and his face was as hard and expressionless as a carved mask.

  ‘Oh. I am very sorry. You told her?’

  ‘Not I, no. Her brother.’ And for all I know he may even be regretting it thanks to Rock. But it’s too late now. The damage is done and past mending. He looked frozenly at Eloise’s bent head and said, ‘I’m sorry, maman. I can’t discuss it yet. Have you anything in your stables that is up to my weight?’