Sprig Muslin

by Джорджетт Хейер

  Sir Gareth, who experienced no difficulty at all in thinking of it, said in a damping voice that by the time she had contrived to advise Neil of her danger it might be too late for him to effect a rescue.

  She rather regretfully acknowledged the justice of this observation, further disclosing that she was not perfectly sure of Neil’s direction, since he had gone to London, for a medical inspection, after which he would report at the Horse Guards. “And goodness knows how long that will take! And the dreadful part of it is that if the doctors think him quite well again, he may be sent back to Spain almost immediately! That is why it is imperative that I should lose not a moment in—in prosecuting my campaign!” She jumped up, saying with a challenging look: “I am very much obliged to you, sir, and now, if you please, we will part, for I believe Huntingdon is almost ten miles away, and if there is no stage, and you don’t wish to take me there in your carriage, I shall have to walk, so that it is high time I was setting forward.”

  She then held out her hand, with all the air of a great lady taking gracious leave of an acquaintance, but upon Sir Gareth’s not only taking it in his, but maintaining a firm hold on it, her grandeur abruptly deserted her, and she stamped her foot, and commanded him to let her go instantly.

  Sir Gareth was in a dilemma. It was plainly useless to continue arguing with Amanda, and he had seen enough of her to be tolerably sure that an attempt to frighten her into, disclosing her grandfather’s name and direction would fail. If he carried into execution his threat to hand her into the charge of the Parish officer, nothing was more certain than that she would give this worthy the slip. Leave her to her own absurd devices? No: it was impossible, he decided. Headstrong and, indeed, extremely naughty she might be, but she was as innocent as a kitten, and by far too lovely to be allowed towander unescorted about the country.

  “If you don’t let me go this instant, I shall bite you!” stormed Amanda, tugging fruitlessly at his long fingers.

  “Then not only will you not be offered a seat in my curricle, but you will get your ears soundly boxed into the bargain,” he replied cheerfully.

  “How dare you—” She broke off suddenly, stopped clawing at his hand, and raised a face alight with joyful expectation. “Oh, will you take me up in your curricle, sir? Thank you!”

  He would not have been in the least surprised had she flung her arms round his neck in her transport of gratitude, but she contented herself with squeezing his hand tightly between both of hers, and bestowing upon him a rapturous smile. Registering a silent vow not to let so trusting a damsel out of his sight until he could restore her to her proper guardian, he put her into a chair, and went off to inform his astonished groom that he must relinquish his seat in the curricle to a lady, and stand up behind as best he might.

  Trotton thought it a strange start, but when, a few minutes later, he clapped eyes on the unexpected passenger, the disturbing suspicion that his master had run mad darted into his mind. There were plenty of gentlemen in whom such conduct would have seemed natural, but Sir Gareth, in Trotton’s experience, had never been one to fall into the petticoat line. Sir Gareth had not told any member of his household what his errand was to Brancaster Park, but all his servants, from his butler down to the kitchen porter, had guessed what it must be, and it seemed to Trotton the height of insanity for him to succumb just at this moment to the lures thrown out by the pretty bit of muslin he was handing up into his curricle. A nice set-out it would be if he were to be seen driving such a prime article as that down the road! He wondered whether perhaps his master had a touch of the sun, and was trying to remember what ought to be done for sufferers from sunstroke when Sir Gareth’s voice recalled his wandering wits.

  “Are you deaf, Trotton? I said, let ‘em go!”

  Chapter 4

  A couple of miles beyond the cross-road from Cambridge to St. Neots the road forked. Sir Gareth took the right fork without hesitation. His youthful companion, who had (as she artlessly informed him) hitherto travelled in no more sporting vehicle than a gig, which Grandpapa sometimes permitted her to drive, was hugely enjoying herself, and was too ruthlessly intent on discovering whether her protector was a whip celebrated enough to merit the title of Nonesuch to notice a weatherbeaten signpost which bore, in faded lettering, the simple legend: To St. Ives. It was otherwise with the faithful henchman. Standing precariously behind his master, and maintaining his balance by a firm grip on the curricle’s lowered hood, he ventured to intervene. He had engaged himself to drive her to Huntingdon, and he considered it his duty to point out to Sir Gareth that he had taken the wrong fork.

  Restraining an impulse to curse his too-helpful retainer, Sir Gareth said calmly. “Thank you, Trotton, I know the road.”

  But the mischief was done. Bristling with suspicion, Amanda demanded: “Is this not the road to Huntingdon?”

  It had been Sir Gareth’s intention to postpone for as long as possible the disclosure that he was taking Amanda not to Huntingdon but to Brancaster Park; but thus directly questioned he saw nothing for it but to tell her the truth. He replied: “No, but I have a better plan for you.”

  “You promised you would drive me to Huntingdon!” she cried hotly.

  “Oh, no, I didn’t! I offered you a seat in my curricle: no more than that! You cannot have forgotten that I told you I would for no persuasion leave you in a public inn.”

  “Stop! Set me down at once!” she ordered. “I won’t go with you! I was never so taken in! Why—why, you are nothing but an abductor!”

  He could not help laughing at this, which naturally made her very angry. She raged at him for several minutes, but as soon as she paused for breath he said soothingly: “If you will be quiet for a moment, and listen to what I have to say, I’ll tell you where I am taking you.”

  “It is not of the slightest consequence, because I won’t go with you anywhere! You are a deceiver, and a wicked person, and very likely you mean to murder me!”

  “Then you are now in dire peril, and what you should do is to summon your Brigade-Major to the rescue immediately,” he returned. “A message to the Horse Guards will undoubtedly find him. Tell me his name, and I will engage not only to bring him to you with all possible speed, but also to refrain from murdering you in the meantime.”

  “I hope very much that he will murder you!”she declared through shut teeth. “And I expect he will, when he knows how treacherously you have behaved to me!”

  “But you can’t expect him to murder me if you don’t tell him of my treachery,” he pointed out, in a very reasonable way. “If I were you, I would lose not a moment in summoning him to your side. Trotton shall travel post to London with a message for him. I shouldn’t be astonished if I were a dead man within two days.”

  From the sparkling look in her eyes, it was to be inferred that the prospect strongly attracted her. It seemed, for a moment, as though she were on the point of divulging her Brigade-Major’s name, but just as Sir Gareth was silently congratulating himself on the success of his tactics, she said suddenly: “I see what it is! It is all a trick, so that you may discover where I live, and ruin my scheme! Well, I shall not send a message to Neil!”

  “You know, Amanda,” he said seriously, “you may just as well tell me what I wish to know, because I am going to discover it, whether you do or whether you don’t.”

  “No! How can you?” she demanded.

  “If you force me to do so, I shall pay a visit to the Horse Guards, and enquire of them there if they can furnish me with the direction of a captain of infantry, a Brigade-Major, sent home from the Peninsula with a ball in his shoulder, but now in hourly expectation of rejoining. I expect they will be able to help me, though I can’t but feel that Neil would infinitely prefer to be discovered in a rather more private style. This is for you to decide.”

  She did not speak for several moments; then she said, in a gritty little voice: “You think you’ve worsted me, but you have not! I shan’t tell you anything, and I promise you I—I sha
ll come about!”

  “Very well,” he replied equably.

  “I believe,” said Amanda, after another seething pause, “that kidnappers are sent to prison, or even transported! You would not like that, I daresay!”

  “No, indeed!”

  “Well! I am just warning you!” she said.

  “Thank you! I am very much obliged to you.”

  “And if you,”declared Amanda, bethinking herself of the groom, and twisting round to address him, “had one grain of manliness, you would not permit your master to carry me off!”

  Trotton, a deeply interested audience, was unprepared for this attack, and nearly lost his balance. Much discomposed, he could only stammer an unintelligible answer, and glance imploringly at Sir Gareth’s back-view.

  “Oh, you mustn’t blame Trotton!” said Sir Gareth. “Consider how difficult is his position! He is obliged to obey my orders, you see.”

  “He is not obliged to assist you in kidnapping people!” she retorted.

  “I engaged him on the strict understanding,” said Sir Gareth firmly, “that that would form an important part of his duties.”

  “I w-wish you will not be so absurd!” said Amanda, struggling to suppress a giggle.

  He turned his head to smile down at her. “That’s better!”

  She laid a mittened hand on his sleeve, directing a beseeching look up at him. “Oh, will you please let me go? You are ruining everything!”

  “I know I am, and I do beg your pardon. I must be quite the most abominable marplot imaginable.”

  “Well, you are! And I thought you were so very agreeable!”

  “I too have been badly deceived in myself,” he said, shaking his head. “Would you believe it?—I had no notion that I was such a monster of inhumanity as I have proved myself to be.”

  “Well, it is being a monster to betray me, and then to try to roast me!” she said, turning away her flushed countenance, and biting her lip.

  “Poor Amanda! You are perfectly right: it is a great deal too bad of me, and I won’t roast you any more. Let me tell you instead where I am taking you!”

  “I shan’t listen to a word you say,” she informed him coldly.

  “That will teach me a lesson,” he observed.

  “I think you are the horridest creature!” she exclaimed. “Yes, and now I come to think of it, if you are taking me to your own home, it is most improper, and far worse than letting me go to an inn!”

  “It would be,” he agreed. “But my home isn’t in this part of the country. I am taking you to Brancaster Park, where I think you will find a very kind hostess in Lady Hester Theale.”

  Upon hearing these words, Trotton, who was much attached to his master, very nearly allowed a protest to escape him. If Sir Gareth meant to arrive at Brancaster Park with this dazzling young beauty on his arm, he was unquestionably out of his senses, and ought to be restrained. But it was not the business of his groom to point out to him the unwisdom of introducing his chance-met bit of muslin to the Lady Hester. Trotton dared do no more than give a warning cough, to which Sir Gareth paid no heed at all.

  Sir Gareth stood in no need of warning. Had any other solution for the safe disposal of Amanda occurred to him, he. would have seized it, for he was well aware that to present himself at Brancaster Park, with the declared intention of proposing marriage to Lady Hester, accompanied by Amanda must be as prejudicial to his interests as it was ludicrous. But he believed that he could rely on Hester to receive Amanda kindly; and he hoped that she would understand that he had no other choice than to bring that headstrong damsel to the shelter of her home.

  Amanda, meanwhile, was demanding to be told who lived at Brancaster Park. When she learned that she was to be the uninvited guest of Lord Brancaster, and of his daughter, she protested vehemently, saying that so far from being anxious to regain possession of her, her grandfather would in all probability be delighted to know she was a guest in an Earl’s country seat. Sir Gareth suggested helpfully that she should prevail upon Lady Hester to hire her as an abigail.

  Amanda audibly ground her teeth. “If you force me to go there with you, I shall make you very, very sorry!” she warned him.

  “I expect you will, and am already in a quake of terror,” he agreed.

  “I trusted you!” she said tragically. “Now you are going to betray my confidence, besides ruining all my schemes!”

  “No, I won’t betray your confidence, except, I think, to Lady Hester. When you have met her, you won’t, I fancy, object to her knowing the truth. I shall desire her not to divulge it to her father, or—if they should happen to be at Brancaster—to her brother and his wife.”

  She was quick to catch a certain inflexion in his voice, and lifted her eyes to his profile, saying: “I can tell you don’t like them above half, sir. Are they horrid?”

  He smiled. “No, not horrid. I daresay very worthy people, but it so happens that they are not particular friends of mine.”

  “Oh! Is Lord Brancaster a particular friend of yours, sir?”

  “Well, he is considerably older than I am,” he temporised.

  She digested this, enquiring presently: “Is Lady Hester a particular friend of yours, then?”

  “Why, yes! She and I have been good friends for many years now.”

  He was prepared for even more searching questions, but she relapsed into silence. After several minutes, he said: “I have been wondering what I should tell Brancaster, and the Widmores, and I am strongly of the opinion, Amanda, that you are the daughter of some acquaintances with whom I have been staying, at Baldock. You are on your way to visit relations at—Oundle, perhaps—and from some cause or another I offered to take you with me as far as to Huntingdon, where these relations had engaged themselves to meet you. Unhappily, there must have been a misunderstanding, for no carriage awaited you there. Being pledged to present myself at Brancaster Park today, what was I to do? Why, take you along with me, to be sure, with the intention of conveying you to Oundle tomorrow! How does that suit your notion of a splendid story?”

  “It is quite untrue,” she said primly.

  “I wonder why I should have thought that that would have recommended it to you?” he murmured.

  The only reply he got to this sally was a dagger-glance. He said, over his shoulder: “I trust you heard that, Trotton?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, don’t forget it!”

  “Pray have the goodness to inform me, sir,” said Amanda, with awful civility, “where you have the intention of taking me tomorrow?”

  “I hope, to your grandfather.”

  “No!”

  He shrugged. “As you wish.”

  Intrigued, she demanded: “Where, then?”

  “That, my child, you will see, in good time.”

  “I believe you are at a stand!” she challenged him.

  “Not a bit of it!”

  Conversation languished after that, Amanda occupying herself for the remainder of the journey in turning over in her mind various plots for Sir Gareth’s discomfiture, and returning only monosyllabic replies to his occasional remarks.

  They reached Brancaster Park as the shadows were beginning to lengthen, passing through impressive lodge-gates, and driving for some way up an avenue which had been allowed to deteriorate into something akin to a cart-track. The trees, growing rather too thickly beside it, rendered it both damp and gloomy; and when the pleasure gardens came into sight these too bore unmistakeable signs of neglect. Amanda looked about her with disfavour; and, when her eyes alighted on the square, grey mansion, exclaimed: “Oh, I wish you had not brought me here! What an ugly, disagreeable house!”

  “If I could have thought of any other place for you, believe me, I wouldn’t have brought you here, Amanda!” he said frankly. “For a more awkward situation I defy anyone to imagine!”

  “Well, if it seems so to you, set me down now, while there is still time!” she urged.

  “No, I am determined not to let
you escape me,” he replied lightly. “I can only hope to be able to pass you off with some credit—though what the household will think of a young lady who travels with her belongings contained in a couple of bandboxes heaven only knows! I trust at least that we may not find the house full of guests. No, I fancy it won’t be.”

  He was right, but his host, who did not scruple to exaggerate in moments of acute vexation, had been so describing it ever since the unwelcome arrival, earlier in the day, of the Honourable Fabian Theale.

  Mr. Theale was his lordship’s brother, and if he had been born with any other object than to embarrass his family, his lordship had yet to discover it. He was a bachelor, with erratic habits, expensive tastes, and pockets permanently to let. His character was volatile, his disposition amiable; and since he had a firm belief in benevolent Providence neither duns nor impending scandals had the power to ruffle his placidity. That it was first his father, and, later, his elder brother, who enacted the role of Providence troubled him not at all; and whenever the Earl swore that he had rescued him for the last time he made not the slightest effort either to placate his brother or to mend his extremely reprehensible ways, because he knew that while the Earl shared many of his tastes he had also a strong prejudice against open scandals, and could always be relied upon, whatever the exigencies of his own situation, to rescue one of his name from the bailiff’s clutches.

  At no time was his lordship pleased to receive a visit from Mr. Theale; when that florid and portly gentleman descended upon him on the very day appointed for Sir Gareth’s arrival he so far forgot himself as to say, in front of the butler, a footman, and Mr. Theale’s own valet, that no one need trouble to carry the numerous valises upstairs, since he was not going to house his brother for as much as a night.

  Mr. Theale, beyond enquiring solicitously if his lordship’s gout was plaguing him, paid no attention to this. He adjured the footman to handle his dressing-case carefully, and informed the Earl that he was on his way to Leicestershire. The Earl eyed him with wrath and misgiving. Mr. Theale owned a snug little hunting-box near Melton Mowbray, but if he was proposing to visit it in the middle of July this could only mean that circumstances had rendered it prudent, if not urgently necessary, for him to leave town for a space. “What is it this time?” he demanded, leading the way into the library. “You haven’t come home for the pleasure of seeing me, so out with it I And I give you fair warning, Fabian—”