The Corinthian

by Джорджетт Хейер

  “I can’t read it—oh yes, I see! To-morrow morning, with her Papa. She says I am to tell you to arrange for the elopement this evening, without fail.”

  “Good God!” Piers snatched the letter from her, and read it for himself. “Yes, you are right: she does say tomorrow morning! Pen, if she goes, it will be the end of everything! I never meant to do anything so improper as to elope with her, but I have now no choice! It is not as though her parents disapprove of me, or—or that I am not eligible. If that were so, it would be different. But until they quarrelled—however, talking is to no purpose!” He turned to the maidservant, who had by this time put back her veil, and was listening to him with her mouth open. “Are you in your mistress’s confidence?” he demanded.

  “Oh yes, sir!” she assured him, adding with another giggle: “Though the master would tear me limb from limb if he knew I was taking letters to you, sir.”

  Piers ignored this somewhat exaggerated statement. “Tell me, is your mistress indeed resolved upon this course?”

  “Oh!” said the damsel, clasping her plump hands together, “she was never more resolved in her life, sir! “I must Fly!” she says to me, clean distracted. “Lucy,” she says, “I am Utterly Undone, for All is Discovered!” So I popped on my bonnet, sir, and slipped out when Cook’s back was turned, “for,” says my poor young mistress, with tears standing in her eyes fit to break anyone’s heart, “if I am whisked off to Lincolnshire, I shall die!” And so she will sir, no question!”

  Pen sat down again, hugging her knees. “Nothing could be better!” she declared. “I always liked the notion of your eloping to Gretna Green. In fact, it was my suggestion. Only, Lydia told me that you have no money, Piers. Shall we make Richard pay for the post-chaise?”

  “Certainly not!” he replied. “Of course I have enough money for that!”

  “I think you ought to have four horses,” she warned him. “Posting charges are very high, you know.”

  “Good God, Pen, I’m not penniless! Lydia meant only that I am dependent upon my father. If he refuses to forgive us, I shall be obliged to find some genteel occupation, but I am persuaded that once the deed is done he will very soon come round. Oh, Pen! is she not an angel? I am quite overcome! Is it not affecting that she should trust me so implicitly?”

  Pen opened her eyes at this. “Why shouldn’t she?” she asked, surprised.

  “Why shouldn’t she? Really, Pen, you don’t understand in the least! Think of her placing her life, honour, all, in my care!”

  “I don’t see anything wonderful in that,” replied Pen contemptuously. “I think it would be a great deal more extraordinary if she didn’t trust you.”

  “I remember now that you never had much sensibility,” said Piers. “You are such a child!” He turned again to the interested abigail. “Now, Lucy, attend to me! You must take a letter back to your mistress, and assure her besides that I shall not fail. Are you prepared to accompany us to Scotland?”

  She gaped at him for a moment, but however strange the idea might have been to her it apparently pleased her, for she nodded vehemently, and said: “Oh yes, sir, thank you, sir!”

  “Who ever heard of taking a maid on an elopement?” demanded Pen.

  “I will not ask Lydia to fly with me without some female to go with her!” declared Piers nobly.

  “Dear me, I should think she would wish the girl at Jericho!”

  “Lydia is quite unused to waiting upon herself,” said Piers. “Moreover, the presence of her maid must lend respectability to our flight.”

  “Has she a little lap-dog she would like to take with her too?” asked Pen innocently.

  Piers cast her a quelling look, and stalked across the room to a small writing-table near the window. After testing the pen that lay on it, mending it, and dipping it in the standish, he then sat while the ink dried on it, frowning over what he should write to his betrothed. Finally, he dipped the pen in the standish once more, and began to write, punctuating his labour with reminders to Lucy to see that her mistress had a warm cloak, and did not bring too many bandboxes with her.

  “Or the parrot,” interpolated Pen.

  “Lor’, sir, Miss Lydia hasn’t got any parrot!”

  “If you don’t hold your tongue, Pen—!”

  “No little lap-dog either?” Pen asked incredulously.

  “No, sir, “deed, no! There’s only her love-birds, the pretty things, and her doves!”

  “Well, you will not have room in the chaise for a dovecot, but you should certainly bring the love-birds,” said Pen, with an irrepressible chuckle.

  Piers flung down his pen. “Another word from you, and I’ll put you out of the room!”

  “No, you won’t, because this is a private parlour, and you are nothing but a guest in it.”

  “But will I tell Miss to bring the love-birds?” asked Lucy, puzzled.,

  “No!” said Piers. “Oh, do stop, Pen! You are driving me distracted! Listen, I have told Lydia that I will have a chaise waiting in the lane behind the house at midnight. Do you think that is too early? Will her parents go to her room as late as that?”

  “No, sir, that they won’t!” said Lucy. “The Major does be such a one for retiring early! He’ll be in bed and asleep by eleven, take my word for it, sir!”

  “Fortunately, it is moonlight,” Piers said, shaking sand over his letter. “Listen, Lucy! I depend upon you to see that your mistress goes early to bed; she must get what sleep she can! And you must wake her at the proper time, do you understand? Can I trust you to pack for her, and to bring her safely to me?”

  “Oh, yes, sir!” replied Lucy, bobbing a curtsey. “For I wouldn’t be left to face the Major, not for ever so!”

  “You had best go back to the house with all possible speed,” Piers said, applying a wafer to the folded letter, and handing it to her. “Mind, now! that letter must not fall into the wrong hands!”

  “If anyone tries to take it from you, you must swallow it,” put in Pen.

  “Swallow it, sir?”

  ’Pay no heed to my friend!” said Piers hastily. There! Be off with you, and remember that I depend upon your fidelity!”

  Lucy curtseyed herself out of the room. Piers looked at Pen, still hugging her knees on the window-seat, and said severely: “I suppose you flatter yourself you have been helpful!”

  Impish lights danced in her eyes. “Oh, I have! Only think if you had had to turn back to fetch the love-birds, which very likely you would have had to do if I had not reminded the abigail about them!”

  He could not help grinning. “Pen, if she does bring them, I’ll—I’ll turn back just to wring your neck! Now I must go to arrange for the hire of a chaise, and four fast horses.”

  “Where will you find them?” she asked.

  “There is a posting-house at Keynsham where they keep very tolerable cattle. I shall drive over there immediately.”

  “Famous! Go where you are known, and let the news of your wanting a chaise for midnight spread all over the countryside within three hours!”

  He checked. “I had not thought of that! The devil! This means I must go into Bristol, and I can ill spare the time, with so much to attend to.”

  “Nothing of the sort!” said Pen, jumping up. “Now I will be helpful indeed! I will drive to Keynsham with you, and I will order the chaise.”

  His brow cleared. “Oh Pen, will you? But Sir Richard! Will he not object, do you think? Of course, I would take every care of you, but—”

  “No, no, he will not object, I assure you! I shall not tell him anything about it,” said Pen ingenuously.

  “But that would not be right! And I should not wish to do anything—”

  “I will leave a message for him with the landlord,” promised Pen. “Did you walk into the village, or have you a carriage here?”

  “Oh, I drove in! The gig is in the yard now. I confess, if you feel it would not be wrong of you to go with me, I should be glad of your help.”

  “Only
wait while I get my hat!” Pen said, and darted off in search of it.

  Chapter 12

  Miss Creed and Mr Luttrell, partaking of midday refreshment in Keynsham’s best inn, and exhaustively discussing the details of the elopement, were neither of them troubled by doubts of the wisdom of the gentleman’s whisking his betrothed off to Scotland at a moment when that lady had become entangled in a case of murder. Indeed, Mr Luttrell, a single-minded young man, was in a fair way to forgetting that he had ever had Beverley Brandon to stay with him. He had left his mother trying to write a suitable letter to Lady Saar, and if he thought about the unfortunate affair at all it was to reflect comfortably that Lady Luttrell would do everything that was proper. His conversation was confined almost exclusively to his own immediate problems, but he digressed several times animadvert on Pen’s unconventional exploits.

  “Of course,” he conceded, “it is not so shocking now that you are betrothed to Wyndham, but I own it does surprise me that he—a man of the world!—should have countenanced such a prank. But these Corinthians delight in oddities, I believe! I dare say no one will wonder at it very much. If you were not betrothed it would be different, naturally!”

  Pen’s clear gaze met his steadily. “I think you make a great bustle about nothing,” she said.

  “My dear Pen!” He gave a little laugh. “You are such a child! I believe you haven’t the smallest notion of the ways of the world!”

  She was obliged to admit that this was true. It occurred to her that since Piers seemed to be well-informed on this subject she might with advantage learn a little from him. “If I were not going to marry Richard, would it be very dreadful?” she asked.

  “Pen! What things you do say!” he exclaimed. “Only think of your situation, travelling all the way from London in Wyndham’s company, without even your maid to go with you! Why, you must marry him now!”

  She tilted her chin. “I don’t see that I must at all.”

  “Depend upon it, if you do not, he does. I must say, I think it excessively strange that a man of his years and—and milieu—should have wished to marry you, Pen.” He realized his speech was scarcely complimentary, and hastened to add: “I don’t mean that precisely, only you are so much younger than he is, and such a little innocent!”

  She pounced on this. “Well, that is one very good reason why I need not marry him!” she said. “He is so much older than I am that I dare say no one would think it in the smallest degree odd that we should have taken this journey together.”

  “Good Gad, Pen, he is not as old as that! What a strange girl you are! Don’t you wish to marry him?”

  She stared at him with puckered brows. She thought of Sir Richard, of the adventures she had encountered in his company, and of the laughter in his eyes, and of the teasing note in his voice. Suddenly she flushed rosily, and the tears started to her own eyes. “Yes. Oh, yes, I do!” she said.

  “Well! But what is there to cry over?” demanded Piers.

  “For a moment I quite thought—Now, don’t be silly, Pen!”

  She blew her nose defiantly, and said in somewhat watery accents: “I’m not crying!”

  “Indeed, I can’t conceive why you should. I think Wyndham a very good sort of man—a famous fellow! I suppose you will become very fashionable, Pen, and cut the deuce of a dash in town!”

  Pen, who could see no future beyond a life spent within the walls of her aunt’s respectable house, agreed to this, and made haste to direct the conversation into less painful channels.

  Although Keynsham was situated only a few miles distant from Queen Charlton, it was close on the dinner-hour when Piers set Pen down at the George Inn again. By this time, a post-chaise had been hired, and four good horses chosen to draw it, the whole being appointed to arrive at a rendezvous outside the gates of Crome Hall at half-past eleven that evening. Beyond a certain degree of anxiety concerning the extent of the baggage his betrothed would wish to bring with her, and some fears that her flight might be intercepted at the outset, Mr Luttrell had nothing further to worry about, as his guide and mentor frequently assured him.

  Pen would have liked to have been present at the fatal hour, but this offer Piers declined. They bade each other farewell, therefore, at the door of the George Inn, neither suffering the smallest pang at the notion that each was about to be joined in wedlock to another.

  Having waved a last good-bye to her old playmate, Pen went into the inn, and was met by Sir Richard, who looked her up and down, and said: “Abominable brat, you had better make a clean breast of the whole! Where have you been, and what mischief have you done?”

  “Oh, but I left a message for you!” Pen protested. “Did they not give it to you, sir?”

  “They did. But the intelligence that you had gone off with young Luttrell merely filled me with misgiving. Confess!”

  She twinkled up at him. “Well, perhaps you will not be quite pleased, but indeed I did it all for the best, Richard!”

  “This becomes more and more ominous. I am persuaded you have committed some devilry.”

  She passed into the parlour, and went to the mirror above the fireplace to pat her crisp, dishevelled curls into order. “Not devilry, precisely,” she demurred.

  Sir Richard who had been observing her in some amusement, said: “I am relieved. Yes, I think the sooner you put on your petticoats again the better, Pen. That is a very feminine trick, let me tell you.”

  She coloured, laughed, and turned away from the mirror. “I forgot. Well, it doesn’t signify, after all, for it seems to me that I have reached the end of my adventure.”

  “Not quite,” he replied.

  “Yes, I have. You do not know!”

  “You look extremely wicked. Out with it!”

  “Piers and Lydia are going to elope to-night!”

  The laugh died out of his eyes. “Pen, is this your doing?”

  “Oh no, indeed it is not, sir! In fact, I had quite a different plan, only I dared not tell you, and, as a matter of fact, Piers did not think well of it. I wanted to abduct Lydia, so that Piers could rescue her from me, and so soften her Papa’s heart However, I dare say you would not have approved of that.”

  “I should not,” said Sir Richard emphatically.

  “No, that’s why I said nothing to you about it. In the end Lydia decided to elope.”

  “You mean that you bullied the wretched girl—”

  “I did not! You are most unjust, sir! On my honour, I did not! I don’t say that I didn’t perhaps put the notion into her head, but it was all the Major’s doing. He threatened to take her to Lincolnshire to-morrow morning, and of course she could not support life there! Oh, here comes the waiter! I will tell you the whole story presently.”

  She retired to her favourite seat in the window while the covers were laid, and Sir Richard, standing with his back to the mighty fireplace, watched her. The waiter took his time over the preparations for dinner, and during one of his brief absences from the parlour, Pen said abruptly: “You were quite right: he has changed, sir. Only you were wrong about one thing: he does not think I have changed at all.”

  “I did not suspect him to be capable of paying you so pretty a compliment,” said Sir Richard, raising his brows.

  “Well, I don’t think he meant it to be a compliment,” said Pen doubtfully.

  He smiled but said nothing. The waiter came back into the room with a laden tray, and began to set various dishes on the table. When he had withdrawn, Sir Richard pulled a chair out for Pen, and said: “You are served, brat. Hungry?”

  “Not very,” she replied, sitting down.

  He moved to his own place. “Why, how is this?”

  “Well, I don’t know. Piers is going to elope with Lydia at midnight.”

  “I trust that circumstance has not taken away your appetite?”

  “Oh no! I think they will deal famously together, for they are both very silly.”

  “True. What had you to do with their elopement?”


  “Oh, very little, I assure you, sir! Lydia made up her mind to do it without any urging from me. All I did was to hire the post-chaise for Piers, on account of his being well-known in Keynsham.”

  “I suppose that means that we shall be obliged to sustain another visit from Major Daubenay. I seem to be plunging deeper and deeper into a life of crime.”

  She looked up enquiringly. “Why, sir? You have done nothing!”

  “I am aware. But I undoubtedly should do something.”

  “Oh no, it is all arranged! There is truly nothing left to do.”

  “You don’t think that I—as one having reached years of discretion—might perhaps be expected to nip this shocking affair in the bud?”

  “Tell the Major, do you mean?” Pen cried. “Oh, Richard, you would not do such a cruel thing? I am persuaded you could not!”

  He refilled his glass. “I could, very easily, but I won’t. I am not, to tell you the truth, much interested in the affairs of a pair of lovers whom I have found, from the outset, extremely tiresome. Shall we discuss instead our own affairs?”

  “Yes, I think we ought to,” she agreed. “I have been so busy to-day I had almost forgot the stammering-man. I do trust, Richard, we shall not be arrested!”

  “Indeed, so do I!” he said, laughing.

  “It’s very well to laugh, but I could see that Mr Philips did not like us at all.”

  “I fear that your activities disarranged his mind. Fortunately, news has reached him that a man whom I suspect of being none other than the egregious Captain Trimble has been taken up by the authorities in Bath.”

  “Good gracious, I never thought he would be caught! Pray, had he the necklace?”

  “That, I am as yet unable to tell you. It is to be hoped that Luttrell and his bride will not prolong their honeymoon, since I fancy Lydia will be wanted to identify the prisoner.”

  “If she knew that, I dare say she would never come back at all,” said Pen.

  “A public-spirited female,” commented Sir Richard.

  She giggled. “She has no spirit at all. I told you so, sir! Will the—the authorities wish to see me?”