April Lady

by Джорджетт Хейер

  “Dashed if I would!” remarked the Viscount.

  “Giles!”

  He laid his hand over the small one insistently tugging at the lapel of his coat. “Hush, my love! This is where we must be guided by the judgment of that arbiter of all matters of taste and ton. Well, Felix?”

  Mr. Hethersett, impervious to the quizzical look in his cousin’s eye, took snuff in a meditative way, his brow creased. “Don’t fancy it will make much difference,” he pronounced at last, restoring the box to his pocket, and flicking a few grains of King’s Martinique from his sleeve. “Bound to be a deal of gossip whatever you do. Can’t suppose it won’t leak out, if you go careering off after Letty. Devilish nasty scene, too, if you force her to come home. Seems to have gone into strong hysterics when Allandale tried to get her to do that. Not the sort of thing I should care for.”

  “No, my God!” said Cardross, with feeling.

  “Better make the best of it,” decided Mr. Hethersett. “Think I’ll be going now. Daresay you’ll like to be left alone.”

  Nell held out her hand to him. “I have quite ruined your evening!” she said contritely. “Indeed, I am sorry, and so very much obliged to you!”

  “No, no, happy to have been of service!” he replied, bowing with exquisite grace over her hand. “Besides, no such thing! Only on my way to White’s, before taking a look-in at the Seftons’ ball. Night’s young yet!”

  “Yes, by Jove, so it is!” said the Viscount. “Here, Corny, wake up!”

  Mr. Fancot, urgently shaken, opened his eyes, smiled upon the company, and began to hum softly and unmelodiously to himself.

  “Now, for the lord’s sake, Corny, you ain’t as dead-beat as that!” said the Viscount. “Don’t start singing again, because you know dashed well you can’t do it!”

  “It’s my birthday,” stated Mr. Fancot.

  “Well, that’s got nothing to say to anything! Come along! Time we were going!”

  “I can sing on my birthday,” said Mr. Fancot. “I can sing Sing old rose, and burn the bellows, and I can sing your song, and I can—”

  “Chip-chow, cherry-chow?” interrupted Mr. Hethersett.

  “That’s the one!” nodded Mr. Fancot, pleased. “You know it too?”

  “I’ve heard it,” replied Mr. Hethersett, rather grimly. He met the Viscount’s challenging gaze, and held it. “You’ve called me a few names this night, Dysart! Now I’ll take leave to tell you that you’re the biggest cod’s head I ever knew!”

  “What the devil do you mean by that?” the Viscount shot at him, flushing.

  “You know dashed well what I mean! You learned that song from Cripplegate!”

  “What if I did?” demanded Dysart.

  “I’ll tell you that, Dysart,” interposed Cardross. He nodded dismissal to his cousin, and looked Dysart over. “Beggar’s Club, eh? Well, I thought as much! A Hussar regiment should suit you: it would be a pity to waste your horsemanship. Well?”

  “Oh, to hell with you! I’ve told you I can’t!” Dysart said.

  “You’ll find you can, I promise you.”

  “By Jove, what wouldn’t I give to be out there!” Dysart said impulsively.

  “You going to join, Dy?” enquired Mr. Fancot, who had been following this conversation with great interest. “That’s a devilish good notion! Let’s go and join at once!”

  “Well, we can’t,” said Dysart shortly. “Besides, you don’t want to join!”

  “Yes, I do,” asserted Mr. Fancot. “Can’t think why I didn’t hit on the notion before! There’s nothing left to do here, except walk backwards to Brighton, and I don’t fancy that above half.”

  “Who shall blame you?” agreed Cardross, shepherding him kindly but firmly into the hall.

  “That’s just it,” explained Mr. Fancot. “I may have to. Never refused a challenge in my life, and I’ve a notion Willy means to try me with that one. You know Willy?”

  “No, but I should lose no time in leaving the country.”

  “You’re a sensible man,” said Mr. Fancot warmly. “Very happy to have met you!”

  “The pleasure has been all mine,” said Cardross, putting his hat into his hand, and opening the front door.

  “Not at all, not at all!” responded Mr. Fancot, ambling down the steps.

  “Lord, if ever I saw him in such prime and plummy order before!” said the Viscount. “Now I shall have him going all over town, trying to find the Horse Guards!” He picked up his own hat, and hesitated, looking at Cardross.

  Cardross smiled. “You’re a damned fool, Dysart, and a damned nuisance besides—but too good a man to be wasting your talents cutting up cork-brained larks! Don’t tease yourself about your mother! I’ll make all right in that quarter.”

  He held out his hand, and the Viscount took it, grinning ruefully. “I wish you might!”

  “I will.”

  “Devilish good of you. Got something else to say to you, and it ain’t easy. From what Nell told me, when she found herself in that fix—Well, the long and the short of it is she didn’t know till I told her that you were in love with her. Thought you’d married her as a matter of convenience, and had too much civility to let her see it.” He gave a crack of laughter. “Convenience! Lord, what a silly little greenhead!

  “Are you serious?” Cardross demanded. “It isn’t possible!”

  “Ain’t it? You don’t know my mother, Cardross!” said Dysart. “Good-night! Must go after Corny!”

  He went down the steps, waved, and went striding off. Cardross stood looking after him for a moment, and was just about to go back into the house when a post-chaise swept round the angle of the square, and drew up below him. From this vehicle Mr. Allandale jumped down, and turned to give his supporting hand to his betrothed.

  “But what a charming surprise!” said Cardross blandly.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Mr. Allandale, having paid off the postilion, took his love in one hand and Mr. Thorne’s cloak-bag in the other, and trod up the steps to the front-door. Here he paused and looked Cardross squarely in the face. “I have brought her home, sir,” he said.

  “I see you have,” replied Cardross. “Most understandable, I am sure!”

  Letty cast a scared, resentful look up at him, but said nothing.

  “An explanation is due to you,” said Mr. Allandale. “But first I must beg of you most earnestly that whatever wrath you may feel—and I do not deny that it is a just wrath!—you will visit upon my head alone!”

  “I fail entirely to see why I should visit my wrath on your head, but if you suppose me to be contemplating a violent revenge on Letty do let me hasten to reassure you!”

  “You see, love?” said Mr. Allandale tenderly.

  “I’m n-not afraid of Cardross!” said Letty, in a small resentful voice.

  “It would have been very much better for you, and all of us, if you had been,” said Cardross. “Come into the house, but leave your heroism outside!” He led the way into the hall and saw Farley standing in the middle of it with his mouth at half-cock. “Just so!” he remarked.

  “I heard a carriage drive up, my lord!” explained the butler, staring at Letty.

  “Yes, Lady Letty decided after all she would not spend the night in Bryanston Square,” said Cardross ironically. “You may come into the book-room, both of you.” He walked to the door and held it wide. Across the room Nell’s eyes met his, a startled question in them. “Giles, I thought I heard—”

  “You did, my love. Can you conceive of anything more delightful? Dear little Letty is once more in our midst!”

  “I hate you!” said Letty passionately, and burst into tears.

  “Letty! Oh, Letty, thank God you’ve come back!” cried Nell, hurrying forward.

  “I wish I hadn’t! I wish I were dead!” sobbed Letty.

  “No, no, you mustn’t say that!” Nell told her, putting an arm round her, and stretching out her other hand to Mr. Allandale. “Mr. Allandale, how glad I am that I wasn
’t mistaken in you! I couldn’t think it possible that you would do such an improper thing as to elope with her!”

  He kissed her hand punctiliously, and said: “I wish that I could find the words to express to your ladyship the sense of obligation I feel. But when I consider the circumstances, and what cause you have had (the whole truth not being known to you) to think me infamous, I am rendered tongue-tied.”

  “Not noticeably,” said Cardross dryly.

  Nell bit her lip, and drew Letty to the sofa. “Come, love, sit down beside me, and try to compose yourself!” She saw how anxiously Mr. Allandale was watching Letty, and smiled at him reassuringly. “She will be better directly: don’t pay any heed to her!”

  He looked grateful, but turned with a resolute air to Cardross. “Sir, I have a duty to discharge. I speak on behalf of Lady Letitia, and I shall be brief, merely imploring you to remember that she is young, and in the greatest distress, and has thrown herself upon your mercy. What I have to disclose to you cannot but shock you deeply. You do not yet know the worst, and it is my painful duty to inform you of it.”

  “Oh, yes, I do!” replied Cardross. “You are about to tell me that Letty stole the Cardross necklace.”

  Letty raised her head from Nell’s shoulder. “It wasn’t stealing! It wasn’t!” she declared. “It didn’t belong to Nell, and she didn’t even like it! It belonged to the family, and so it was just as much mine as yours, Giles!”

  “My love, you are forgetting that I have several times explained to you that that is not so,” said Mr. Allandale gravely.

  “Yes, but it is! And anyway Giles won’t let me have my fortune, so what else could I do?”

  Mr. Allandale looked pained, but apparently decided that the moment was not ripe for argument. Drawing a package from his pocket, he laid it on the table before him, and said: “That is the sum the necklace realized, my lord. Had I been able, I would have done my utmost to recover the necklace itself. It was not in my power, however: I have not been at liberty to repair to the jeweller to whom it was sold. I will furnish your lordship with—”

  “Let me set your mind at rest!” Cardross interrupted. “The jeweller brought it to me earlier today, and I have already redeemed it.”

  “Sir, you have removed, a weight from my mind!” said Mr. Allandale earnestly.

  “Yes, I expect I have,” agreed Cardross. “I wish you will satisfy the curiosity in mine! Was it the discovery that your bride had stolen the necklace which made you abandon your flight to Gretna Green? At what stage did you turn back?”

  “There was no such flight, my lord.”

  “No, of course not!” Nell said. “But—where did you go to, Mr. Allandale?”

  “I was guilty of practicing deception,” he said heavily. “I need not, I hope, assure you that such a course was of the utmost repugnance to me. To deceive one so dear to me, and one who, moreover, placed the most implicit trust in my integrity, was more painful than I can describe. But when I found that no words of mine could avail to persuade my darling to return to her home, when I saw her in such agony of grief and despair—”

  “Yes, I’ve seen Letty in hysterics,” said Cardross. “You have no need to describe the scene to me! I pity you sincerely. What, in fact, did you do?”

  “Fearing that if I compelled her to return to this house she might put a period to her existence, I agreed to fly with her to the Border,” said Mr. Allandale. “She believed that we were on our way north, but it was not so. I did not carry her to Gretna Green, but to Wimbledon.”

  There was a moment’s astonished silence. “To Wimbledon!” said Cardross, in a voice that shook. “I expect you had an excellent reason for your choice.”

  “Why, to be sure he had!” exclaimed Nell, bestowing a warm, smile upon Mr. Allandale. “You mean you took her to your mother’s house! How very wise of you!”

  He bowed. “It seemed to me, ma’am, the only course open to me. In my mother’s judgment I could repose complete confidence, for her understanding is superior, her mind of an elevated order, and her firm yet tender command over my sisters such as encouraged me to hope that over my darling also her influence would prevail.”

  “And we perceive that it did!” said Cardross. “My dear Allandale, why have I never been privileged to meet your mother?”

  “I would like to kill you!” choked Letty.

  “My mother, sir, seldom goes into society,” said Mr. Allandale stiffly.

  “But I hope she may be persuaded to receive me, nevertheless.”

  “I am at a loss to understand your lordship,” said Mr. Allandale, more stiffly yet. “I apprehend, however, that you are in funning humour!”

  “No, I am not funning,” Cardross replied. “Oblige me by telling me, in all frankness, whether or not my sister’s want of conduct, her excessive sensibility, and the unscrupulous means she does not hesitate to use to attain her ends have convinced you that she is totally unfitted to be your wife?”

  “Giles, don’t!” begged Nell, as Letty broke into renewed weeping.

  “Sir,” said Mr. Allandale, very pale, but steadily meeting Cardross’s eyes, “I do not attempt to condone her faults, though I can perceive excuses for them, but I love her, and must always do so, whatever she is, or whatever she does.”

  Letty looked up, her tears arrested, awe in her face. “Jeremy!” she said, “Oh, Jeremy!”

  Cardross turned his head. “You are not worthy of that, Letty.”

  “No,” she said forlornly. “I know I am not, but—oh, I wish I were!”

  He smiled wryly. “Well, I daresay there may be hope for you. You had better marry her, Allandale.”

  It seemed for several moments as though neither of the interested parties could believe that they had heard him correctly. It was Letty who found her voice first. “Giles—do you mean now? Before he sails?”

  “Yes, that’s what I mean.”

  “Oh, my dearest brother, how kind you are!” cried Letty, flying up off the sofa and casting herself upon his chest. “Pray forgive me for saying horrid things to you! I didn’t mean them! Oh, how happy I am! Oh, Jeremy, I promise I will never do anything you don’t like!”

  “Sir,” said Mr. Allandale, “I do not know how to convey to you my sense of your generosity, my gratitude, the—”

  “Then don’t try!” said Cardross. “You are a very estimable young man, but I should like you so much more if you would refrain from addressing me in flowing periods! I am going to send you away now, but you may come to see me tomorrow, at noon, if that should be convenient to you, when I will arrange the marriage settlements with you. You may escort him to the front door, Letty, and after you have bidden him good-night, you had better go to bed.”

  “Bed at ten o’clock!” she said, by no means pleased.

  “Yes, bed at ten o’clock. If you are not exhausted after a day of unbridled passion, you should be! Don’t argue with me! My patience won’t stand it.”

  “Indeed, you should go, love!” Nell urged her. “You are quite worn out. I will come up to you, and—”

  “No, you will not,” Cardross interrupted.

  Overawed by this display of cool and sweeping authority the young lovers withdrew circumspectly. Nell showed her husband a laughing countenance. “Well, really, Giles!” she expostulated.

  He caught her up from the sofa, and held her a little away from him, looking down into her face with bright, smiling eyes. “Yes, really, Giles!” he retorted. “How much longer did you think I would wait to get you to myself?”

  She did not answer him, but blushed a little, meeting his gaze shyly but very openly.

  “There’s so much to say to you, Nell—and, God forgive me, so much to unsay! My darling, I wish I had cut my tongue out before—”

  “No, there is nothing to unsay, because you didn’t say those things to me,” she intervened. “They hurt me only a very little—not as much as I deserved, perhaps! For I am afraid I have been extravagant, and—and deceitful, and very fooli
sh!”

  “And above all very foolish,” he agreed, turning her words into a caress. “It seems I have been a great deal too easy with you, Madam Wife! That will not happen again! So you thought I offered for you because I wanted a wife, and saw nothing in you to disgust me, did you? Nell, how could you be such a goose?”

  The blush deepened; she hung her head... “Mama said—that you were disposed to be fond of me, and considerate, and she warned me not to hang on you, or—or appear to notice it if—perhaps—you had Another Interest.”

  “I am obliged to Mama! And did it seem to you that I had Another Interest?”

  “No. But I knew,” she said simply. “The first time we met Letty said that I was prettier than your mistress.”

  “She was right. I wish I could think that Allandale would beat her regularly every week, but I fear he won’t. The lady with whom I enjoyed an agreeable connection for several years need never have troubled you. We parted without regret or ill-will, and when we meet in company today it is with the indifferent pleasure of old acquaintances. From the moment I saw you, Nell, you have had all my heart. That is the truth.”

  “Dysart said that. He said that everyone knew it, too.”

  “I infinitely prefer your brother to my sister. But why, my foolish little love, did you then keep me at an even greater distance?”

  She looked up again. “You see, I owed Lavalle more than three hundred pounds, so how could I do anything else, until that dreadful debt was paid? With that on my conscience I couldn’t tell you that I had been agonizingly in love with you from the very beginning; and if you had discovered the debt you would never have believed me. But I was, Giles.”

  Farley, quietly entering the room at that moment, beheld his mistress locked in a crushing embrace, and with instant presence of mind stepped noiselessly back into the hall. There he remained for some few minutes, after which, with a little fumbling with the door-handle, he entered the book-room for the second time. My lord, before the mirror above the fireplace, was pensively absorbed in some delicate adjustment to the folds of his cravat; my lady, a trifle dishevelled, but otherwise a model of fashionable decorum, was seated in a large armchair. “I don’t know how it comes about, my lord,” she said, in a light, languid voice, “but we do not increase our covers for guests tonight.”