Venetia

by Джорджетт Хейер

  “And worse you cannot say of anyone, I collect!” His lazy yet penetrating gaze rested on Oswald’s flushed countenance for a moment. There was a good deal of amusement in his eyes, but some not unkindly understanding as well. “I shall go and seek comfort of Aubrey,” he said.

  Oswald, standing in the doorway still, hesitated, but after a moment’s indecision, moved reluctantly aside to allow him to pass.

  Venetia bent to pick up her basket. “I must take these unfortunate kittens up to the house. At least their eyes are open, so perhaps they will be able to lap.”

  “Wait!” uttered Oswald.

  She looked enquiringly at him. “Why?”

  “I must and will speak to you! That fellow—!”

  “If you mean Damerel, as I conclude you must, I wish you will say so, and not call him that fellow! It is not at all becoming in you to speak in such a way of a man so much older than you are, and particularly when you’ve no cause to do so.”

  “No cause!” he exclaimed hotly. “When I find him here, f-forcing his improper attentions upon you!”

  “Fiddle!”

  He flushed. “How can you say that? When I saw—and heard—”

  “You neither saw nor heard him forcing anything upon me. And you won’t,” she added calmly.

  “You don’t understand! You—”

  “Yes, I do.”

  He stared at her, rather nonplussed. “You know nothing about men of his stamp! You’ve let him hoax you with his curst cajolery into thinking he means no harm, but if you knew what his reputation is—”

  “Well, I do know, better than you, I daresay.”

  “The fellow’s a rake! No female is safe with him!”

  She gave an involuntary laugh. “How very dreadful! Oswald, do, pray, stop talking fustian! You can’t think how absurd it is!”

  “It’s true!” he said earnestly.

  “Yes, it’s true that he’s a rake, but I assure you there is no need to worry over my safety. I expect you mean it kindly, but I shall be very much obliged to you if you will say no more!”

  He stared at her fiercely, and ejaculated: “You’re bewitched!”

  The oddest little smile flickered in her eyes. “Am I? Well, never mind! It is quite my own affair, after all. Now I must take these kittens up to the kitchen, and see what can be done for them.”

  He resolutely barred the way. “You shall hear me!” he declared. “You hope to fob me off, but it will not do!”

  She looked at him for a measuring instant, and then sat down on Aubrey’s bench, and folded her hands in her lap, saying, with resignation: “Very well: say what you wish, if nothing else will do for you!”

  It was not very encouraging, but there was so much that Oswald was burning to say, and had, indeed, several times rehearsed, that he was not at all daunted. He plunged, stammering a little, into a speech that began as worldly-wise advice from a man of wide experience to a singularly innocent and gullible girl, but very soon changed to a diatribe against Damerel, and an impassioned declaration of undying love for Venetia. It lasted for quite a considerable time, and Venetia made no attempt to check it. Nor did she laugh, for it was apparent to her that her youthful admirer had worked himself into a dangerously overwrought condition, and believed himself to be far more violently in love with her than she had guessed. She gathered from one or two of his utterances that he was persuaded that she had been in a fair way to returning his love until Damerel had cast his spell over her; and although she knew that she had never given him the smallest encouragement she was vexed with herself for not having perceived that a turbulent boy with a yearning for romance and a marked turn for dramatizing himself was quite capable of exaggerating mere elder-sisterly kindness into something far warmer. So she let him talk himself out uninterrupted, thinking that since so many wild and tangled emotions had been festering in his bosom he would probably feel much better for being allowed to pour them forth, and even a little ashamed of himself. However, when he reached the stage of urging her to marry him, and outlining, in a rapture of fantasy, a wedding-trip that included the more remote parts of the globe, and would, at the lowest computation, take quite three years to accomplish, she judged it to be time to intervene, and to administer a damper calculated to make him fall out of love with her as suddenly as he had fallen into it.

  As soon as he paused, eagerly scanning her face to see what effect his eloquence had had on her, she rose, and said, as she picked up her basket: “Well, now, Oswald, if you have finished talking nonsense, you may listen to what I have to say, and after that you may go home! You have been quite amazingly impertinent, but I don’t mean to scold you for that, because I can see that you’ve hoaxed yourself into thinking I was as good as promised to you before Damerel came to the Priory. How you can be so conceited as to suppose I should have a tendre for a boy not very much older than Aubrey I can’t think! I wish you will try to cure yourself of make-believe, and learn to be a little more sensible! It seems to me that you imagine so much that it gets to be quite real to you, which leads you, you know, to say the most absurd things! Only consider, for instance, what would happen if I were as silly as you, and agreed to marry you! Do you soberly suppose that Sir John and Lady Denny would have nothing to say to such a ridiculous match?”

  “Nothing they could say would turn me from my purpose!” he averred.

  “Oh, wouldn’t it?” she retorted. “We should just fly to the Border, I collect, since you’re not of age, and be married over the anvil! I should cut a pretty figure! What next should we do? Set forth on this wonderful journey of yours?— which sounds to me excessively uncomfortable, and, indeed, would be more than uncomfortable, because we should soon find ourselves without a feather to fly with. Or have you bamboozled yourself into believing that Sir John will be so obliging as to put you in command of a handsome independence?” She paused, and could not help smiling at the sudden change in his expression. A baffled and angry scowl, which made him look like a thwarted schoolboy, was now being bent upon her, and seemed to indicate that he was already more than half out of love. She moved forward, saying: “You see how foolish it is, don’t you? Don’t let us say any more about it! When you are as old as I am I expect you will be very much in love, not play-acting, with a girl who is at this present sewing samplers in the schoolroom, and if you remember me at all, which you very likely won’t, you’ll wonder how you came to make such a cake of yourself! Go home now—and no more dangling after me, if you please!”

  By this time Oswald was hating her quite as much as he had adored her, but not being prone in his most equable moods to consider what was the true state of his feelings he was quite incapable of performing this feat when a prey to emotion. In the jumble of hurt, and fury, and chagrin into which Venetia’s cool mockery had plunged him he saw only one thing clearly, and that was that she looked on him as a schoolboy. He said in a voice that shook with anger: “You think I’m too young to love, do you? Well, you’re wrong!”

  With these bitter words, and before she had had time to realize his intention, he seized her, and managed, though not very expertly, to get his arms round her.

  Venetia, more concerned for the unhappy kittens, which were very nearly tilted out of the basket by this sudden onslaught, than for herself, cried sharply: “Take care! You idiotish boy, let me go at once!”

  But Oswald, who had never before held a girl in his arms, was in the grip of a novel and exciting sensation, and he hugged her rather more tightly, and kissed first her ear, then her eyebrow, and then her cheekbone in several dogged attempts to reach her lips. Between these assaults he said in a breathless, exultant voice: “A child, am I? I’ll show you!”

  “Oswald, stop! How dare you—oh, thank goodness!”

  If Oswald wondered what had drawn this unexpected exclamation from her, or why she suddenly ceased struggling, he was not left for more than a very few seconds in doubt. A hand was thrust roughly into his neckband, and closed like a vice, nearly choking him, and it
s fellow grasped the seat of his riding-breeches; he was plucked bodily away from Venetia, jerked round, propelled irresistibly to the doorway, and sent sprawling through it.

  IX

  Having disposed in this rough and ready fashion of Oswald, Damerel turned to direct a quizzical look at Venetia. “What the deuce have you been doing to cast the boy into this frenzy?” he enquired.

  “You may well wonder!” she replied, very much incensed, and considerably dishevelled. “Trying to cure him of his silly fancy for me!”

  “Oh, that was it, was it?” he said, amused. He glanced towards Oswald, who was picking himself up. “Well, you had best remain discreetly out of sight now, fair disaster, because if I know anything of the matter your hot-headed swain is about to make a spirited attempt to send me to grass.”

  “Oh, no, he is not!” declared Venetia, a martial light in her eye. “You may leave this to me, Damerel! In fact, I order you to do so!”

  She swept past him, just as Oswald, having managed to overcome the effects of semi-strangulation, started towards Damerel with his fists clenched. Finding Venetia in his path, he was obliged to check himself, and before he could thrust her aside, which, in his blind rage, he had every intention of doing, she had spoken words that fell on him like a cold douche. “Are you now proposing to begin a vulgar brawl for my entertainment? I give you fair warning, Oswald, that if I have to endure any more of your unmannerly behaviour I shall tell your papa just what has occurred, and with what a total lack of good breeding or propriety you have conducted yourself! I am excessively reluctant to inflict such a mortification upon him, or to distress your mama, so if you wish to make me amends for your rudeness don’t make it necessary for me to do so!”

  Scarlet-faced, he stammered: “I’m sorry—it wasn’t—I didn’t mean—”

  “Very well, you need say no more,” she interrupted. “I shall not speak of it to anyone, and nor, you may be sure, will Lord Damerel. You had best go home now.”

  To his credit, he managed, though the effort nearly choked him, to swallow the various scathing retorts which rose to his tongue, and even to achieve a stiff bow. “Pray—pray accept my humble apologies, and believe that I shall not again trouble you, ma’am!” he said. He then turned his smouldering gaze on to Damerel, and suffered a slight lapse from his stateliness. “And as for you,” he said fiercely, “I’ll—” He gave a gasp, and ended on a note of paralysing formality: “Your lordship shall hear from mo!”

  He then executed another bow, and strode away.

  “Alas, poor Yorick!” remarked Damerel. “My withers are slightly wrung, you know.”

  “Yes, so too are mine,” Venetia agreed, a worried frown between her brows. “I can’t but feel that I am to blame for not having given him a heavy set-down as soon as he began to dangle after me. If I had had the least notion that he was suffering from anything more than a fit of calf-love which would very soon wear itself out I would have done so, of course.”

  “He wasn’t. Unless I am much mistaken, it’s I who am responsible for today’s outburst, not you. The silly young nod-cock has been wanting to murder me from the moment he first clapped eyes on me.”

  She turned her eyes towards him. “Yes, he has. Oh dear, I do trust he won’t do anything foolish!”

  He smiled. “That’s past praying for, but it isn’t his own life he is planning to end! Don’t look so concerned! From what I have seen of him I’d wager a handsome sum on the certainty that before he reaches Ebbersley the worst of his present pangs will be over, and he will be deriving great satisfaction from a vision of my lifeless corpse stretched on the ground—at a distance of twenty yards. Or even of his own. Lord, yes, of course his own! That would ensure a lifetime of remorse for you, my cruel fair, and for me the execration of all. I should be obliged to fly the country, and serve me right! Even my seconds would shun me, for if I didn’t fire before the drop of the handkerchief, or something equally dastardly, you may depend upon it that I should in some way or other cut a very contemptible figure, while he won their pity and admiration by his unshakeable calm and noble bearing.”

  She could not help laughing, but she said rather anxiously: “I know that’s what he meant, when he said you should hear from him, but surely he wouldn’t do anything as silly as that? For when he thinks it over— No, that’s just what he won’t do! If he sends you a challenge, must you accept it?”

  “What, accept a challenge from a whelp who hasn’t yet cut his milk teeth? No, you absurd girl! I most emphatically must not!”

  “Well, thank goodness for that!” she said, relieved. “Not but what he deserves a sharp lesson! He very nearly made me drop these unfortunate kittens, mauling me about in that detestable way! There is nothing I dislike more!”

  “I agree that he needs a lesson. I should rather suppose it to have been his first attempt. He ought, of course, to have got rid of the livestock,” said Damerel, taking the basket out of her hand, and setting it down, “for while you were preoccupied with their safety what could he expect but a rebuff? Once they were disposed of he should have taken you in his arms, like this, and not as though he were a bear, bent on hugging you to death. Nor am I in favour of dabbing kisses all over a girl’s face. If you cannot persuade her, by a ruse, to look up, you should make her do so, with a hand under her chin—thus, my dear delight!”

  She had offered no resistance, and she lifted her face now without the urge of his hand. She was blushing a little, but she looked up into his eyes very willingly, her own shyly smiling.

  He too was smiling, but as he stared down at her she saw the smile fade, and an intent, searching look take its place. He was still holding her, but he seemed to stiffen. She heard the sharp intake of his breath, and, the next instant, Aubrey’s voice, shouting his name, and then she was no longer in his arms, and he had turned away to answer Aubrey’s call. She looked doubtfully at him, for it had seemed to her that it had not been Aubrey’s voice which had made him refrain from kissing her but some change in his own mind.

  Aubrey came limping between the trees towards them. “What the deuce are you doing here?” he asked. “Ribble said you had been asking for me.”

  “Very true, but as he thought you were in the library and I knew you were not I abandoned the quest. I only wanted to give you Reid’s Intellectual Powers, and I left it on your desk.”

  “Oh, good! Thank you! I was in the gunroom, as Ribble might have guessed, if he ever took the trouble to think. By the by, I found that passage: it was Virgil, but in the Georgics, not the fourth Eclogue. Come up to the house, and I’ll show you!”

  “I’ll take your word for it. I can’t stay now. I have an uneasy feeling, moreover, that if I linger I may be called upon to drown a litter of kittens and I prefer to leave that task to you!”

  “Is that what brought you here?” enquired Aubrey, of his sister. “Yes, I remember now: you said something about it at breakfast, didn’t you?” He cast a cursory glance at the orphans, and added: “Give ’em to Fingle: he’ll drown ’em for you.”

  “For shame! Have you no sensibility?” Damerel said lightly. He held out his hand to Venetia. “I must go. He’s right, you know: you’ll never rear them!” He kept her hand in his for a moment, and then, as though yielding to compulsion, raised it to his lips and kissed it. Their eyes met only fleetingly, but she saw in his the answer to the question in her heart, and the tiny doubt that had disturbed her happiness vanished.

  It struck Fingle, however, covertly observing Damerel as he saddled up for him, that his lordship was looking uncommonly grim. He had generally a pleasant word and a smile for anyone who performed a service for him, but he seemed to have nothing to say on this occasion beyond a curt Thank you when he took the bridle in his hand, and swung himself into the saddle. He did not forget to bestow his usual douceur upon Fingle, but no smile went with it: he seemed to be thinking of something else, and nothing so very agreeable either, to judge by the frown on his face, thought Fingle.

  Dame
rel rode slowly back to the Priory, for a considerable part of the way with a slack rein, allowing the gray to walk. The frown did not lift from his brow; rather it deepened; and it was not until Crusader, startled by the sudden uprising of a pheasant, stopped dead, throwing up his head and snorting, that he was jerked out of his abstraction. He admonished Crusader, but leaned forward to pat his neck as well, because he knew the fault was his. “Old fool!” he said. “Like your master—who is something worse than a fool. Would she could make of me a saint, or I of her a sinner— Who the devil wrote that? You don’t know, and I’ve forgotten, and in any event it’s of no consequence. For the first part it’s too late, old friend, too late! And for the second—it was precisely my intention, and a rare moment this is to discover that if I could I would not! Come up!”

  Crusader broke into a trot, and was kept to it, until, rounding a bend in the lane that brought the main gates of the Priory within view, Damerel saw a solitary horseman, walking his horse, and ejaculated: “Damn the boy!”

  Young Mr. Denny, looking over his shoulder, braced himself, and wheeled about, and took up a position in the centre of the lane with the evident intention of disputing the right of way if his quarry should try to elude him. The set of his jaw was pugnacious, but he also looked to be suffering a considerable degree of embarrassment, which, indeed, he was.

  Impetuosity had betrayed him into a false position from which he could see no way of extricating himself with credit. Leaving Undershaw on the crest of his fury he had indulged for a time in very much the sort of imaginings which Damerel had described to Venetia; but even such wrath as his could not be maintained at fever-heat for long. Thanks to Damerel’s dawdling return to the Priory his had subsided into resentment some time before the gray horse came into sight, and for a full half hour he had been trying to make up his mind what to do, and without once allowing it to wander into the realm of fancy. From the moment when it occurred to him that the humiliation he had suffered was the direct result of his own misconduct the affair had been too serious for grandiose dreams. He suddenly perceived that Damerel had played the part he had imagined for himself: it was the villain who had rescued the lady from the hero. So appalling was this realization that for several minutes he could see no other solution to his troubles than instant flight from Yorkshire, and a future spent in obscurity, preferably at the other end of the world. His next and more rational impulse was to abandon his plan of challenging Damerel to a duel; and he had actually started for home when another hideous thought entered his head: he had addressed fatal words to Damerel, and if he did not make them good Damerel would believe that he had failed to do so because he was afraid. So he turned back again, because whatever else Damerel might say of him he was determined he should never be able to say that he had no more pluck than a dunghill cock. The challenge must be delivered, but try as he would Oswald could not recapture his eagerness. An uneasy suspicion that persons more familiar with the Code of Honour than himself would condemn his action as grossly improper nagged at him; and when he placed himself in Damerel’s path he would have given everything he possessed to have been a hundred miles away.