Venetia

by Джорджетт Хейер

  Damerel pulled the gray up, and surveyed his youthful foe sardonically. “All that is needed to complete the picture is a mask and a pair of horse-pistols,” he remarked.

  “I have been waiting for you, my lord!” said Oswald, gritting his teeth.

  “I see you have.”

  “I imagine your lordship must know why! I said—I told you that you should hear from me!”

  “You did, but you’ve had time enough to think better of it. Try for a little wisdom, and go home!”

  “Do you think I’m afraid of you?” Oswald demanded fiercely. “I’m not, my lord!”

  “I can see no reason why you should be,” said Damerel. “You must know that there’s not the least possibility of my accepting a challenge from you.”

  Oswald flushed. “I know nothing of the sort! If you mean to say I’m unworthy of your sword I’ll take leave to tell you, sir, that I’m as well-born as you!”

  “Don’t rant! How old are you?”

  Oswald glared at him. There was a derisive gleam in the eyes which scanned him so indifferently, and it filled him with a primitive longing to smash his fist between them. “My age is of no consequence!” he snapped.

  “On the contrary: it is of the first consequence.”

  “Here it may be! I don’t regard that, and you need not either! I have been about the world a little, and visted places where—” He stopped, suddenly recollecting that he was talking to a man who had travelled widely.

  “If you have visted places where men of my years accept challenges from boys who might well be their sons you must have strayed into some pretty queer company,” remarked Damerel.

  “Well, anyway, I’m reckoned to be a fair shot!” said Oswald.

  “You terrify me. On what grounds do you mean to issue this challenge?”

  The angry young eyes held his for an instant longer, and then looked away.

  “I won’t press you for an answer,” said Damerel.

  “Wait!” Oswald blurted out, as Crusader moved forward. “You shan’t fob me off like that! I know I ought not to have— I never meant—I don’t know how I came to— But there was no need for you to—”

  “Go on!” said Damerel encouragingly, as Oswald broke off. “No need for me to rescue Miss Lanyon from a situation which she was plainly not enjoying? Is that what you mean?”

  “Damn you, no!” Oswald sought for words to express the hopeless tangle of his thoughts; none came to him, only the age-old cry of youth: ‘‘You don’t understand!”

  “You may ascribe the astonishing guard I have so far kept over my temper to the fact that I do,” was the rather unexpected reply. “Patience, however, was never numbered amongst my few virtues, so the sooner we part the better. I am very sorry for you, but there’s nothing I can do to help you recover from these pangs, and your inability to open your mouth without going off into rodomontade does rather alienate my sympathy, you know.”

  “I don’t want your damned sympathy!” Oswald flung at him, intolerably stung. “One thing you can do, my lord! You can stop trying to give Venetia a slip on the shoulder!” He saw the flash in Damerel’s eyes, and hurried on recklessly: “W-walking into her house as though it were your own, cajoling her with your man-of-the-town ways, c-cutting a wheedle with her because she’s too innocent to know it’s all a rig, and you’re bamboozling her! T-talking to me as if I was the loose-screw! I m-may have lost my head but I mean honestly by her! And you needn’t think I don’t know it’s uncivil to say things like this to you, because I do, and I don’t care a rush, and if you choose to nab the rust you may do so—in fact, I hope you will!— And I don’t care if you tell my father I’ve been uncivil to you either!”

  Damerel had been looking a little ugly, but this sudden anticlimax dispelled his wrath, and made him laugh. “Oh, I won’t proceed to such extreme measures as that!” he said. “If there were a horse-pond at hand—! But there isn’t, and at least you’ve made me a speech without any high-flown bombast attached to it. But unless you have a fancy for eating your dinner with your plate on the mantelpiece for the next few days don’t make me any more such speeches!”

  Oswald gave a gasp of outrage. “Only dismount, and we’ll try that!” he begged.

  “My deluded youth, that is being more childish valourous than manly wise: I’m sure you’re full of pluck, and equally sure that it would be bellows to mend with you in rather less than two minutes. I’m not a novice, you see. No, keep your mouth shut! It is now my turn to make a speech! It will be quite short, and, I trust, quite plain! I’ve borne with you because I haven’t forgotten the agonies of first love, or what a fool I made of myself at your age; and also because I perfectly understand your desire to murder me. But when you have the infernal impudence to tell me I can stop trying to seduce Miss Lanyon you’ve gone very far beyond the line of what I’ll take from you! Only her brother has the right to question my intentions. If he chooses to do it I’ll answer him, but the only answer I have for you is contained in the toe of my boot!”

  “Her brother isn’t here!” Oswald retorted swiftly. “If he were it would be a different matter!”

  “What the devil— Oh, you’re talking of her elder brother, are you? I wasn’t.”

  “Aubrey?” exclaimed Oswald incredulously. “That scrubby little ape? Much good he could do—even if he tried! What does he know about anything but his fusty classics? If he thought about it at all he wouldn’t have the least notion what sort of a game you’re playing!”

  Damerel gathered up his bridle, saying dryly: “Don’t despise him on that head! Neither have you the least notion.”

  “I know you don’t mean marriage!” Oswald retorted.

  Damerel looked at him for a moment, an oddly disquieting smile in his eyes. “Do you?” he said.

  “Yes, by God I do!” As Crusader moved forward, Oswald wrenched his own horse round, staring after Damerel in sudden dismay. He stammered: “Marriage? You and Venetia? She wouldn’t—she couldn’t!”

  There was undisguised revulsion in his voice, but the only response it drew from Damerel was a laugh, as he turned Crusader in through the gateway of the Priory, and cantered away down the long weed-grown avenue.

  Oswald could hardly have been more shocked had Damerel openly declared the most dishonourable of intentions. He was left a prey to doubt and disbelief, and with no other course open to him than to ride tamely home to Ebbersley. It was a long, dull ride, and with only the most humiliating reflections to occupy his mind he very soon became so sunk in gloom that not even the knowledge that his last words at least had flicked Damerel on the raw would have done much to elevate his spirits.

  Marston, gathering up Damerel’s discarded coat and breeches, looked thoughtfully at him, but offered no comment, either then or much later, when he found Imber, an expression of long-suffering on his face, decanting a bottle of brandy.

  “On the cut!” said Imber. “I thought it wouldn’t be long before he was making indentures. He’s finished the Diabolino, what’s more, so if he doesn’t relish what was always good enough for his late lordship it’s no manner of use for him to blame me. I told him a se’ennight past how it was.”

  “I’ll take it to him,” Marston said.

  Imber sniffed, but raised no demur. He was an old man, and his feet hurt him. He always accepted Marston’s services, but thought poorly of him for undertaking tasks which lay outside his province. Quite menial tasks, some of them: he made nothing of fetching in logs for the fires, or even of sawing them up; and had been known, when Nidd was absent, to unsaddle his master’s horse, and rub him down. You wouldn’t have caught the late lord’s valet so demeaning himself, thought Imber, contrasting him unfavourably with that most correct of gentlemen’s gentlemen! Like master like man, he thought. Stiff-rumped the late lord had been; he knew what was due to his consequence, and always kept a proper distance. No one ever dared to take any liberties with him, any more than he ever talked to his servants in the familiar way the present lord u
sed. As for arriving at the Priory without a word of warning, and accompanied only by his valet and his groom, and taking up a protracted residence there with more than half the rooms shut up, and not so much as a single footman to lend respectability to the household, imagination boggled at the very idea of his late lordship behaving so improperly. It all came of living in foreign parts, amongst people who like as not were little better than savages. That was what his present lordship had said, when he had ventured to give him a hint that the terms he stood on with Marston were unseemly in a gentleman of his position. “Marston and I are old friends,” he had said. “We’ve been in too many tight corners together to stand on ceremony.” It was no wonder that Marston thought himself above his company, and was too top-lofty to indulge in comfortable gossip about his lordship. He was pleasant enough, in his quiet way, but close as wax, and with a trick of seeming not to hear what he didn’t choose to answer. If he was so out of reason fond of his lordship why didn’t he speak up for him? instead of looking like a wooden image? thought Imber resentfully, watching him pick up the salver, and carry it away, down the stone-flagged passage that led to the front hall.

  Damerel did not keep town-hours at the Priory; he allowed the Imbers to serve dinner at six o’clock; and, since Aubrey’s arrival, he had abandoned his tiresome habit of lingering in the dining-room over his port, but had carried it up to Aubrey’s room while Aubrey was confined to bed, and later had fallen into the way of drinking it in the library. Tonight, however, he had shown no disposition to leave the table, but sat lounging in his great, carved chair as though he meant to stay there all night.

  Marston cast a measuring look at him before moving out of the shadowed doorway into the light of the candles on the table. He was staring fixedly ahead, lost in a brown study, the pupils of his eyes slightly blurred. He gave no sign that he had noticed Marston’s entrance, but that one look had sufficed to satisfy Marston that Imber had exaggerated. He had been dipping rather deep, perhaps, but he wasn’t as much as half-sprung: just a trifle concerned, certainly not castaway. It was only on very rare occasions that he was really shot in the neck, for he was one who could see them all out, as the saying went.

  Marston set the decanter down, and went over to the big, open fireplace, and set another log on the sinking embers. The fine weather was still holding, but when the sun went down a creeping chill made one glad to see the curtains drawn across the windows and a fire burning in the hearth. Marston swept the wood-ash into a pile, and rose from his knees. One of the candles had begun to gutter, and he snuffed it. Damerel lifted his eyes.

  “Oh, it’s you, is it?” he said. “What’s happened to Imber? Fallen down the cellar stairs?”

  Marston’s impassive countenance relaxed into a faint smile. “No, my lord.”

  “Did he tell you I was dead-beat?” enquired Damerel, taking the stopper out of the decanter, and pouring some brandy into his glass. “He’s got his Friday-face on: enough to give one a fit of the blue devils!”

  “He’s old, my lord,” Marston said, trimming another over-long wick. “If you were meaning to remain here it would be necessary to hire more servants.”

  He spoke in his usual expressionless manner, but Damerel looked up from his glass, which he was holding cupped between his hands.

  “But I daresay we shan’t return here after the Second Autumn Meeting,” Marston continued, his attention still on the candles. “Which reminds me, my lord, that it would be as well for me to write to inform Hanbury at what date you mean to arrive at the Lodge, and whether you will be bringing company with you.”

  “I haven’t thought about it.”

  “No, my lord. With the weather so remarkably warm one hardly realizes that we shall soon be into November,” agreed Marston. “And the Autumn Meeting, I fancy—”

  “I’m not going to Newmarket.” Damerel drank some of the brandy in his glass, and after a moment gave a short laugh, and said: “You’re not gammoning me, you know. Think I ought to go, don’t you?”

  “I rather supposed that you would go, sir—when you have a horse running.”

  “I’ve two horses entered, and precious few hopes of either.” Damerel drank again, draining his glass. His mouth curled, but in a sneer rather than a smile. “Any more plans for me?” he asked. “Newmarket—Leicestershire—then what?” Marston looked down at him at that, but said nothing. “Shall we go to Brook Street, or shall we embark on a journey to some place we haven’t yet seen? We can be as easily bored by either scheme.”

  “Not if I know your lordship!” replied Marston, with a gleam of humour. “I don’t think I ever went anywhere with you but what you got into some kind of hobble, and, speaking for myself, I never found the time for being bored. When I wasn’t expecting to be shipwrecked I was either hoping to God we could convince a lot of murderous heathen that we were friendly, or wondering how long it would be before I found myself sewn up in a sack and being thrown into the Bosphorus!”

  “I think that was the nearest I ever came to being nailed,” said Damerel, grinning at the recollection. “I’ve got you into a lot of scrapes in my time— But one grows older, Marston.”

  “Yes, my lord, but not so old that you won’t get me into a good few more, I daresay.”

  “Or myself?” Damerel said. “You think I’m in one now, don’t you? You may be right: I’m damned if I know!” He stretched out his hand for the decanter, and tilted it over his glass, slopping the brandy over the table. “Oh, lord! Mop it up, or Imber will be sure I’m tap-hackled! I’m not: merely careless!” He slouched back again in his chair, relapsing for several minutes into brooding silence, while Marston found an excuse for lingering in carefully aligning the several pieces of plate set out on the sideboard. He contrived to watch Damerel under his eyelids, misliking the look in his face, and a little puzzled by it. He was taking this affair hard, and that was not like him, for he was an easy lover, engaging lightly in his numerous adventures, foreseeing at the start of each its end, and quite indiscriminating in his choice. He was a charming protector; he would indulge the most exacting of his mistresses to the top of her bent; but no one who had seen his unconcern at parting, or his cynical acceptance of falsity, could doubt that he held women cheap. This look of bitter melancholy was strange to Marston, and disturbing.

  Damerel lifted his glass again, and sipped meditatively. “The King of Babylon, or an Ethiopian?” he said. “Which, Marston? Which?”

  “I can’t tell you that, sir, not being familiar with the King of Babylon.”

  “Aren’t you? He stood at the parting of the way, but which way he took, or what befell him, I haven’t the smallest notion. We need Mrs. Priddy to set us right. Not that I think she would take a hopeful view of my case, or think that there was the least chance that the years that the locust has eaten could yet be restored to me. She would be more likely to depress me with pithy sayings about pits and whirlwinds, or to remind me that whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap. Would you care to reap any crop of my sowing, Marston? I’m damned if I would!” He tossed off the rest of his brandy, and set the glass down, thrusting it away. “To hell with it! I’m becoming ape-drunk. I can give you a better line than any you’ll get from Mrs. Priddy! Learn that the present hour alone is man’s—and don’t ask me when I mean to leave Yorkshire! I can’t tell you. My intention is to remain until Sir Conway Lanyon comes home, but who knows? I might fall out of love as easily as I fell into it: that wouldn’t amaze you, would it?”

  “I don’t know, sir,” Marston said.

  “You’d best pray I may do so!” Damerel said. “Even if I could set my house in order— How far have I gone into Dun territory? Do I owe you any blunt, Marston?”

  “Nothing worth the mention, my lord—since Amaranthus won at Nottingham.”

  Damerel burst out laughing, and got up. “You’re a fool to stay with me, you know. What makes you do it? Habit?”

  “Not entirely,” Marston replied, with one of his rare smiles. “S
erving you, my lord, has its drawbacks, but also its advantages.”

  “I’m damned if I know what they are!” said Damerel frankly. “Unless you count being paid at irregular intervals and finding yourself in scrapes not of your making as advantages?”

  “No,” said Marston, moving to the door, and holding it open. “But sooner or later you do pay me, and if you lead me into scrapes you don’t forget to rescue me from them—on one or two occasions at considerable risk to yourself. There is a nice fire in the library, my lord, and Nidd brought back the London papers from York half an hour ago.”