Georgette Heyer - [Alastair 02]

by Devil's Cub

  Light flashed in the Marquis’s sombre eyes. ‘Where in the Rue St Honoré, my man?’

  ‘It was a letter to an English Marquis, m’sieur, at the Hôtel Avon.’

  ‘Was it, by God!’ said Vidal, and promptly went off home.

  The letter, addressed in Mr Comyn’s neat handwriting, was lying on the table in the wide hall. Vidal broke the seal, and ran his eye down the single sheet.

  ‘My lord,’ wrote Mr Comyn, ‘I have to inform your lordship that my betrothal to Miss Juliana Marling being at an end, I have made bold to offer my hand in marriage to the lady lately travelling under your lordship’s protection. I think it only proper to apprise your lordship of this step, since your lordship was good enough to take me into your confidence. Miss Challoner having been so obliging as to accept of my offer, we are leaving Paris immediately. Miss Challoner, while sensible of the honour your lordship does her in proposing for her hand, is highly averse from a marriage which she deems unsuitable, and from the outset doomed to unhappiness. Since I apprehend that this aversion is known to your lordship, it will be unnecessary (I am assured) to request your lordship to relinquish the pretensions which have become a menace to Miss Challoner’s peace of mind.

  ‘I beg to remain, my lord, in all else,

  ‘Your lordship’s obedient servant to command,

  ‘Frederick Comyn.’

  His lordship swore softly and long, to the admiration of a lackey, who stood reverently listening to his fluency. Then he proceeded to set his household by the ears, and the word flew round inside of ten minutes that the Devil’s Cub was in a rare taking, and there would be bloodshed before nightfall. From the orders that followed one another like lightning off his lordship’s tongue, it was apparent that he was going on a sudden swift journey, and when Fletcher was bidden to send to the gates of Paris to find whether an Englishman accompanied by a lady had passed out of any one of them that morning, none of the household had any doubt at all of the nature of his lordship’s journey.

  ‘Damn my blood if I’ve ever seen the Cub so wild!’ remarked his lordship’s particular groom. ‘Ay, and I’ve known him a year or two.’

  ‘I’ve seen him wilder nor this,’ mused a footman, ‘but not for a female. And meself I’d say the Mantoni had more to her than this one, or that piece we had with us a couple of years back – what was her name, Horace? The beauty that threw a coffee-pot at the Cub in one of her tantrums.’

  ‘I’m not Horace to you, my lad,’ said Mr Timms loftily. ‘And me knowing what I do, which is natural in his lordship’s own gentleman, I’d advise you not to draw odious comparisons between Miss Challoner and those other trollops.’

  He went off to pack Vidal’s cloak-bag, and was much scandalised to discover that he was not to accompany his master. When he ventured on an expostulation he was asked roundly whether he imagined my lord was unable to dress himself. Being a polite person he disclaimed, but this was precisely what he did think. He had a vision, horrible to a gentleman’s gentleman, of my lord’s cravat ill-tied, his hair uncurled, his dress carelessly arranged; and when Vidal flung the pounce-box, the haresfoot, and the rouge-pot out of the cloak-bag, he was moved to beg his lordship to consider his feelings.

  Vidal gave a short bark of laughter. ‘What the devil have your feelings to do with it?’ he demanded. ‘Put up a change of clothing, and my razors, and my night-gear.’

  Mr Timms was ordinarily a timid creature, but where his profession was concerned he became possessed of great daring. He said firmly: ‘My lord, it’s well known that it’s me who has the dressing of your lordship. I have my pride, my lord, and to have you travelling amongst all these Frenchies, a disgrace to me, as you will, my lord, begging your pardon – oh, it’s enough to make a man cut his throat, sir!’

  Vidal, in his shirt sleeves, was pulling on his top-boots. He glanced up, not unamused, and said bluntly: ‘If you want a master you can dress like a painted puppet, you’d best leave my service, Timms. I’ll never be a credit to you.’

  ‘My lord,’ said Mr Timms, ‘if I may take leave to say so, there’s not a gentleman in London, no, nor in Paris either, that can be a greater credit to his valet than what your lordship can be.’

  ‘You flatter me,’ said Vidal, picking up his waistcoat.

  ‘No, my lord. I was three years with Sir Jasper Trelawney, who was thought to be a fine beau in his day. The clothes we had! Ah, that was a gentleman as was an artist. But the shoulders to his coats had to be padded so that it fair broke one’s heart, and when it came to him wearing three patches on his face I had to leave him, because I’d my reputation to think of, like any other man.’

  ‘Good God!’ said Vidal. ‘I trust my shoulders don’t offend your sensibilities, Timms?’

  ‘If I may take the liberty of saying so, my lord, I have seldom seen a finer pair. Whatever else may sometimes be amiss, our coats set so that it is a pleasure to see them done justice to.’ He assisted his lordship to struggle into one as he spoke, and smoothed the cloth with a loving hand. ‘When I was with Lord Devenish, sir,’ he said reminiscently, ‘we had to assist his lordship’s legs a little with sawdust in the stocking. But even so they were never what one likes to see in a gentleman of fashion. Everything else about his lordship was as it should be; I believe I never saw a neater waist, and at that time, my lord, coats were worn very tight at the waist with whaleboned skirts. But below the knee his lordship fell off sadly. It took away from one’s pride in dressing him, and sawdust, though helpful, is not like good muscle.’

  ‘I can imagine nothing more unlike,’ said Vidal, who was eyeing him in open astonishment. ‘You seem to have been hard put to it with your previous masters.’

  ‘That, my lord, was the trouble,’ replied Timms. ‘If your lordship will permit me, I will adjust this buckle. When I left Lord Devenish I was with young Mr Harry Cheston for a space. Shoulders, legs, waist – all very passable. He wore his clothes very well, my lord; never a crease, nor a pin out of place, though he favoured vellum-hole waistcoats more than I could like. It was Mr Cheston’s hands that were his undoing. Do what one would, my lord, they were such as to render the perfection of his attire quite negligible. He slept every night in chicken-skin gloves, but it was of no use, they remained a vulgar red.’

  Vidal cast himself down in the chair by the dressing-table, and leaned back in it, surveying his valet with a half-smile curling his lips. ‘You alarm me, Timms, positively you alarm me.’

  Mr Timms smiled indulgently. ‘Your lordship has no need to feel alarm. I could wish that we wore a ring – not a profusion, sir, but one ring, possibly an emerald, which is a stone designed to set off the whiteness of a gentleman’s hand – but since your lordship has a strong aversion from jewels we must forgo the adornment. The hands themselves, if your lordship will not think it impertinent, are all that I could wish.’

  His lordship, quite unnerved by this encomium, thrust them both into his breeches pockets. ‘Come, let me have it, Timms!’ he said. ‘Where do I fall short of your devilish high standards? Let me know the worst.’

  Mr Timms bent to dust one of his lordship’s shining boots. ‘Your lordship can hardly fail to be aware of the elegance of your lordship’s whole figure. In the twenty-five years during which I have been a gentleman’s valet I have always had to fight against odds, as it were. Your lordship would be surprised to know how one inferior feature can ruin the most modish toilet. There was the Honourable Peter Hailing, sir, whose coats were so exactly cut to his figure that it needed myself and two lackeys to coax him into them. He had a leg such as is seldom seen, and his countenance was by no means contemptible. But it all went for nothing, my lord. Mr Hailing’s neck was so short that no neckcloth could be made to disguise it. I could tell your lordship of a dozen such cases. Sometimes it’s the shoulders, at others the legs; once I served a gentleman with a fatal tendency to corpulence. We did what we could with tight-lacing, but it was not successful. Yet he was as handsome as your lordship, if I may
say so.’

  ‘Spare my blushes, Timms,’ said the Marquis sardonically. ‘I don’t aspire to be an Adonis. Out with it! What’s my fault?’

  Mr Timms said simply: ‘Your lordship has none.’

  The Marquis was startled. ‘Eh?’

  ‘None whatsoever, my lord. One could wish for greater care in the arrangement of the cravat, and a more frequent use of the curling-irons and pounce-box; but we have nothing to conceal. Your lordship will understand that a constant struggle against nature disheartens one. When your lordship found yourself in need of a valet, I applied for the post, being confident – with all respect, my lord – that though your lordship might affect a carelessness that one is bound to deplore, the figure, face, hands – your lordship’s whole person, in short – were so exactly proportioned as to render the apparelling of your lordship a work of pleasure unmarred by any feeling of dissatisfaction.’

  ‘Good God!’ said the Marquis.

  Mr Timms said insinuatingly: ‘If your lordship would permit me to place one patch – one only –’

  The Marquis got up. ‘Content yourself with my perfect proportions, Timms,’ he said. ‘Where’s that fellow Fletcher?’ He strode out, calling to his major-domo, who came sedately up the stairs to meet him. ‘Well, man, are those damned lackeys to be all day about their business?’ he demanded.

  ‘John, my lord, is come in. At the Porte Saint-Denis, no one. At the Porte Saint-Martin, no one. I await the return of Robert and Mitchell, my lord, and will apprise your lordship instantly.’

  ‘No luck at the northern gates,’ the Marquis said, musing. ‘So he’s not taking her back to England. Now what the devil’s his game?’

  Ten minutes later Fletcher came to find him again, and said impassively: ‘Robert reports, my lord, that shortly before noon a travelling chaise passed out of Paris by the Port Royal. It contained an Englishman who spoke French very indifferently, and one lady.’

  The Marquis’s hand clutched on his riding-whip. ‘Dijon!’ he said, with something of a snarl. ‘Damn his infernal impudence! Have the bay saddled, Fletcher, and send me a man to take a note to Miss Marling.’ He sat down at the writing-desk, and jabbed a quill in the standish. He scrawled one line only to his cousin. ‘They’re off to Dijon. I leave Paris in half an hour.’ Having given this to a lackey, he picked up his hat and went off to Foley, his grace of Avon’s banker.

  When he returned, twenty minutes later, his light chaise was already awaiting him in the courtyard, and his groom was walking the bay up and down. A lackey was in the act of placing two band boxes in the chaise, but was checked by a thunderous demand to know what the devil he was about.

  ‘They belong to the lady, my lord,’ explained the lackey nervously.

  ‘Lady? What lady?’ said Vidal, astonished.

  He was answered by the appearance of his cousin in the big doorway. Miss Marling had on a highly becoming hat, tied under her chin with pink ribands, and carried a feather-muff. Her face wore a look of mulish determination. ‘Oh, so there you are at last, Vidal!’ she said.

  ‘What in the fiend’s name brings you here?’ asked the Marquis, coming to her side. ‘There’s nothing for you to do in this coil.’

  Miss Marling looked up at him defiantly. ‘I am coming with you.’

  ‘The devil you are!’ ejaculated his lordship. ‘No, my fair cousin. I don’t hamper myself with a petticoat on this journey.’

  ‘I am coming with you,’ repeated Miss Marling.

  ‘You’re not,’ said Vidal curtly, and beckoned to his groom.

  Juliana caught at his wrist. ‘You shan’t go without me!’ she said in a fierce whisper. ‘You only care for your odious Mary, but she has run off with my Frederick, I’ll have you know, and I’ll come if I have to hire a post-chaise and travel alone! I mean it, Vidal!’

  He looked down at her frowningly. ‘You do, do you? I doubt you won’t relish this journey overmuch.’

  ‘You’ll take me?’ she said eagerly.

  He shrugged. ‘I’ll take you, but if I were your husband I’d soon school you, my girl.’ He handed her up somewhat urgently into the chaise, and said brusquely: ‘Does Tante know of this?’

  ‘Well, she was gone out, but I left a letter explaining as well as I could for the hurry I was in.’

  ‘Very well,’ Vidal said, and shut the door on her.

  One of the lackeys put up the steps; the postillions were already in their saddles, and grooms stood to the horses’ heads. Vidal pulled on his gloves, gathered the bay’s bridle in his left hand, and mounted. ‘Port Royal!’ he said to the postillions, and reined the bay in hard to let the chaise pass out of the courtyard.

  At the first post-stage Miss Marling insisted on descending from the chaise. While the horses were changed she favoured the Marquis with a pungent criticism of his manners, and the springs of the chaise. She said that never had she been so shaken and battered. She wondered that any man should be so brutal as to subject a lady to such discomfort, and declared that she vastly regretted having come on the journey.

  ‘I thought you would,’ replied his lordship. ‘Perhaps it’ll teach you not to meddle in my affairs.’

  ‘Your affairs?’ gasped Miss Marling. ‘Do you imagine that I care a pin for your affairs? I’ve come on my own, Vidal!’

  ‘Then don’t grumble,’ he returned.

  Miss Marling stalked back to the chaise in high dudgeon. At the next halt she did not even look out of the window, but at the end of another twelve miles, she alighted once more, with her cloak held tightly round her against the sharp evening wind.

  It was dusk and the landscape was dim, with a grey mist rising off the ground. The lamps on the chaise had been lit, and a comfortable glow came from the windows of the small inn.

  ‘Vidal, can we not stay here for the night?’ asked Miss Marling in a fading voice.

  His lordship was speaking to one of the ostlers. He finished what he had to say, and then came leisurely towards his cousin. He had put on his greatcoat, an affair of buff-coloured cloth, with three capes at the shoulders. ‘Tired?’ he said.

  ‘Of course I am tired, stupid creature!’ replied Miss Marling.

  ‘Go into the inn,’ he commanded. ‘We dine here.’

  ‘I vow I could not eat a morsel.’

  He did not pay any heed to this, but walked back to say something to his groom. Miss Marling, hating him, flounced into the inn, and was escorted by the landlord to a private parlour. A fire had been kindled in the grate, and Juliana drew up a chair and sat down, spreading her chilled fingers to the warmth.

  Presently the Marquis came in. He flung his greatcoat over a chair, and kicked the smouldering logs to a small blaze. ‘That’s better,’ he said briskly.

  ‘You have made it smoke,’ remarked Miss Marling in a voice of long suffering.

  He looked down at her with a hint of a smile. ‘You’re hungry, and devilish cross, Ju.’

  Her bosom swelled. ‘You have treated me abominably,’ she said.

  ‘Fiddle!’ replied the Marquis.

  ‘You let me be jolted and bumped till the teeth rattled in my head. You thrust me into your odious chaise as though I were a mere piece of baggage, and you have not the civility to stay with me.’

  ‘I never drive when I can ride,’ said his lordship indifferently.

  ‘I make no doubt at all that had I been Mary Challoner you would have been glad enough to have borne me company!’

  The Marquis was snuffing one of the candles, but he looked up at that, and there was a glint in his eye. ‘That, my dear, is quite another matter,’ he said.

  Miss Marling told him roundly that he was the rudest creature she had ever met and when he only laughed, she launched into a speech of some length.

  He interrupted her to say: ‘My good cousin, do you wish to catch up with our two runaways, or not?’

  ‘Of course I do! But must we travel at this shocking speed? They cannot reach Dijon for two or three days, and we’ve time enough, I
should have thought, to come up with them.’

  ‘I want to overtake them to-night,’ Vidal said grimly. ‘They are not three hours ahead of us now.’

  ‘What! Have we gained on them so fast? Then I take it all back, Vidal, every word. Let us go on at once!’

  ‘We’ll dine first,’ answered his lordship.

  ‘How,’ demanded Juliana tragically, ‘can you suppose that I could think of food at such a time?’

  ‘Do you know,’ said the Marquis gently, ‘I find you excessively tedious, Juliana. You complain of the speed at which I choose to travel; you talk a great deal of damned nonsense about my incivility and your sensibilities; you spurn dinner as though it were poisoned; you behave, in short, like a heroine out of a melodrama.’

  Miss Marling was prevented from replying by the entrance of two serving-men. Covers were laid, and chairs placed at the table. The men withdrew, and Miss Marling said carefully: ‘You have a vast deal to say in my dispraise, Vidal. Pray, is it to be expected that I should feel no agitation? To be sure, I am sorry I complained of the speed, but to be left hour upon hour alone in a jolting chaise is enough to try the patience even of a Mary Challoner.’

  ‘No,’ said his lordship. A reminiscent smile softened his mouth for a brief moment. ‘Come and sit down.’

  She came, but told him that a glass of wine to revive her was all that was needed.

  The Marquis shrugged. ‘Just as you please, cousin.’

  Miss Marling sipped her wine, and watched his lordship carve the capon. She shuddered, and said that she wondered at him. ‘For my part,’ she added, ‘I should have thought any gentleman of the least sensibility would have refrained from – from gorging when the lady in his company –’

  ‘Ah, but I’m not a gentleman,’ said the Marquis. ‘I have it on the best of authority that I am only a nobleman.’

  ‘Good gracious, Vidal, who in the world dared to say such a thing?’ cried his cousin, instantly diverted.