The colour flamed high in Harriet’s cheeks, and she endeavoured to defend herself.
“Naturally it upsets me very much that Lord Bruce might be hurt if he—if he seriously desires to marry me,” she declared. “But it would hurt him even more if I married him knowing that I—if I married him without having any love for him at all, and knowing that I could never love him,” she corrected herself hurriedly. “That would be terribly unfair to him, and there must be many women in the world—beautiful women of his own kind—who would be happy to marry him.”
“Except that so far he doesn’t appear to have found one,” was the dry retort.
“But he is bound to find one—one day...”
“And you? You will not marry him?”
“No.”
Harriet looked down at her hands, which were now painfully linked in her lap, and she was aware that Lady Fanny was studying her as an object of considerable interest. She had come up to the schoolroom knowing that Verbena was temporarily absent to have what she had described at the outset as “a little talk” with Miss Yorke, and somewhat surprisingly, now that the talk was very frank and open she did not appear to be even mildly displeased with Harriet. She studied her from every angle as if she was greatly intrigued by her, and being finally convinced that Bruce was unlikely to be married in the near future she walked to the window and looked out at the garden which it overlooked. Uneasily, Harriet picked up her netting and watched her. Lady Fanny, rather more startling than usual in emerald green sarcenet and black lace, made an apparently casual observation while she flicked with her fan at a fly crawling over a pane of glass.
“You have heard, no doubt, of my brother’s engagement?”
“You—you mean the Marquis’s engagement to Lady Rowena?”
“Yes. Not that it is official yet, but we are all aware that it is only a matter of time. I had thought at the ball the other night he might make an announcement, but apparently they had not quite come to a decision. However, the disturbing thing in connection with Richard is that he had a nasty fall from his horse after his return to Capel, and although there were no bones broken he displaced his collar-bone and an arm was injured—unfortunately the arm which was penetrated by a bullet so very recently, as you yourself know very well. They have brought him back to St. James’s Square where the family physician will attend him, and I trust that he will make a speedy recovery—”
Harriet had risen to her feet, and all at once she was as white as a sheet. Lady Fanny turned to her in concern.
“My dear child!” she exclaimed, “what in the world is amiss with you?”
“L-Lord Capel,” Harriet stammered. “You said that he had displaced his collar bone—?”
“Well, and what of it, my dear? That is hardly likely to despatch him, and although I understand that he is covered in bruises, and there is once more some infection in his arm...”
“Not—serious infection?”
“They are finding it a little difficult to control the fever. That is why he is to be seen by Sir Robert Warburton, who is an expert on that sort of thing. Oh, my dear girl, I am not in the least worried ... Or I was not worried until last night, when he arrived in St. James’s Square. Apparently he suffered a good deal on the journey, and they had the greatest difficulty in getting him upstairs to his room. This morning the housekeeper reported that he had occasional lucid intervals, but otherwise he was quite wild in the head and rambling a good deal ... not even entirely certain where he was. He—he did, in one of his calmer moments, express a desire to see you—”
Harriet grasped at the back of a chair for support.
“You—you mean that he wishes me to go to him, my lady?”
“Well,” and Lady Fanny looked down in a certain amount of embarrassment at the carpet, “naturally we cannot presume on you, and your good nature has been taken so much advantage of in the past, but—you did have an extraordinary capacity for dealing with him, and it appears that the housekeeper is no good at all in a sick room, and the housemaids seem to drive him frantic whenever one of them puts her head in at the door of his bedroom. Our old nurse is too old now to be of much assistance, and it is difficult to find someone at such short notice who is suitable and who could control him in his awkward moods and have sufficient strength of mind to see that he takes his medicine instead of flinging it away, and—and you do appear to have many qualifications that it would be difficult to find elsewhere...”
“Then I will go at once,” Harriet announced, when Lady Fanny had run out of words for sheer lack of breath. “If you can find someone to take charge of Verbena I will leave immediately.”
“Never bother your head about Verbena,” Lady Fanny exclaimed with the greatest possible relief. “She is the least of our worries, and Cook will take charge of her in any case. But are you quite sure you do not feel we are taking an unworthy advantage of you?”
“Of course not.” Harriet was amazed at such stupidity when the minutes were ticking away and the Marquis might be sinking deeper and deeper into a state of delirium from which it might be well nigh impossible to rouse him, despite the skill of Sir Robert Warburton. Still clinging to the back of the chair, and with a trace of her colour returning, she added: “If you will order a carriage, my lady, I will go to my room and collect a few of my things, then if you are in agreement I will leave immediately. Fortunately I do have a certain amount of knowledge of sick nursing, and you can rest assured that I will do my best.”
Her voice, too, trailed away, and Lady Fanny looked at her with a certain amount of sympathy. She had never seen her so pale before.
“La, my dear,” she exclaimed, “you are quite a treasure! Even if you will not marry Bruce I have become quite fond of you, and now I am to be excessively grateful to you.”
Harriet made an impatient little gesture, and moved towards the door.
“I—I must not waste any time,” she said.
“Of course not, my dear! I will ask the coachman to make as much speed as he can with his horses in order to get you to St. James’s Square as quickly as possible.”
Harriet was grateful that the coachman obeyed his mistress’s orders to the word, and they reached St. James’s Square so rapidly that she could hardly believe it when they drew up outside the Marquis’s town house. She was too disturbed and anxious to think of that other occasion when she had drawn up in a hackney coach outside that very same house, and even when Pauncefoot opened the door she was too preoccupied to recollect that other occasion when he had done so. It did strike her that he looked at her a little peculiarly, but he was extraordinarily deferential, and it was plain that he was expecting her. He led the way at once to the small anteroom where he had left her before, said that he would not keep her waiting above a few minutes, and left her alone to contemplate the silk-lined walls and the Dresden ornaments. In almost exactly five minutes by the ornamental clock on the mantelpiece he was back, bowing from his portly waist as he might have bowed to Lord Capel himself, and asked her to accompany him to the library.
This surprised Harriet, for she had been expecting to be taken upstairs to the Marquis’s bedroom. Alarmed lest matters had deteriorated since she set out from Hill Street, she hastened after the dignified butler and enquired of him breathlessly as they reached the library door:
“H-how is Lord Capel, Pauncefoot? Is there any improvement in his condition?”
Pauncefoot swung wide the library door and looked down at her from his infinitely superior height with a faint but noticeable arch to his eyebrows.
“His lordship is expecting you, miss,” he replied, and then added: “Miss Yorke to see you, my lord,” and stood aside for her to enter the well-remembered room.
There were still some very handsome flower arrangements in the vases which had survived since the ball, and which still appeared to be fresh. The library curtains were drawn a little over the windows so that it was rather dim, but it was quite impossible to mistake the outlines of the great desk behind
which Lord Capel had sat while he prepared to write his farewell letters. And once more he was seated behind the desk, and he didn’t look in the least ill, and by no stretch of the imagination did it seem as if he was in need of the attentions of a very eminent physician ... let alone the ministrations of Miss Harriet Yorke.
“Ah, thank you, Pauncefoot,” he said dismissingly to the butler, and then stood up behind the desk and acknowledged Harriet’s presence with a disarming smile. “How good of you to waste so little time in getting here,” he told her. “Pray do come in, Miss Yorke, and sit down. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this extreme solicitude.”
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
Harriet remained standing very close to the library door. She could hear Pauncefoot retreating discreetly along the corridor, and from the hall the mellow tones of a chiming clock reached her. Eleven o’clock. She had indeed made good time on that painful journey from Hill Street.
She swallowed slightly, feeling as if the muscles of her throat were constricting and choking her. The Marquis’s face swam before her eyes, which was absurd because he had never appeared so cool and urbane and so inexpressibly well turned-out by the skilful hands of Fetcham as he did this morning. It must have been reaction to the discovery that he was in no danger at all when she had been imagining him half-dead that brought a strange pricking to her eyes and a faint film of moisture threatened to spill over and run down her cheeks. She gulped again, and blinked her eyes angrily and rapidly ... At least her dignity need not suffer, even if she had been deceived.
“I have no doubt, my lord,” she said huskily, “that you find this very amusing.”
The Marquis walked swiftly round the desk and stood in front of her.
“I find nothing amusing,” he told her with a complete change of expression. “I am only delighted to make the discovery that you are human at last.”
“W-what precisely do you mean by that, my—my lord?”
“Oh, Harriet,” he said, shaking his head at her, as one tear did actually spill over despite her endeavours and ran down beside her nose. “Oh, Harriet! That you can so deceive yourself is quite astounding, but that you should attempt to deceive me is past belief. We were virtually thrust into one another’s company, we have endured so much together, and yet you cannot accept it that it was all for a very particular purpose. You actually hid behind my window curtains here in this very room and looked on at me when I had very little doubt I would lose my life the following day—and would have done but for you. Aintree meant to kill me, you know, and my promise to my father made it impossible for me to kill him. And now all you can do is weep because I am not as ill as you supposed!”
“Oh, n-no, my lord,” she stammered, while the tears quite literally flowed. “I am so glad because you are not—not ill at all!”
“Not noticeably ill,” he admitted, “but perhaps not as bright as I might have been after riding all night to get here this morning.” He passed her his fine cambric handkerchief. “Otherwise I’d know what to do about all that crying of yours, which is quite disfiguring your nose.”
“I’m so—s-sorry, my lord.”
He moved a little nearer to her.
“What did Fanny tell you?”
“That you’d been thrown from your horse—”
“A likely story! And as a result they had me brought all the way to London?”
“Y-yes.”
“Anything else?”
“That your wound had broken out afresh. The wound in your arm!”
“Ah!” he exclaimed.
He held wide his arms to her, and perhaps because she was still half blinded by her fears she blundered into them. His exquisitely-tied cravat was very quickly reduced to a near ruin as she wept uncontrollably for a few minutes. Then, when the extraordinary comfort of his arms began to have effect, and the feel of his mouth moving softly along her arm soothed her still more, she managed to look up at him and to apologise with limpid eyes for behaving so irrationally, in a manner her late father would have deplored.
“I was so very much afraid I might not get here in time,” she confessed. “Lady Fanny was so—so very convincing!”
“Only because we neither of us could think of a way to bring you to your senses, you sweet idiot,” the Marquis told her. “I used Rowena shamelessly to make you jealous, but even that didn’t appear to work very well. She was most obliging and spent half an hour with me in that summerhouse before you made your appearance, but you were as cool and detached as the north wind when I saw you afterwards. Even poor old Bruce didn’t seem to think I’d much of a chance after that, and began to be a little more hopeful for his own chances.”
“Then—then he—too...?”
“Yes, I’m afraid he, too ... Which was generous of him, as he’s desperately in love with you!”
“I do like him very much indeed,” she admitted, burying her nose in his brutally used cravat.
“But you think you can bear to marry me rather than become Lady Bruce Wendover? Of course, if you feel it is your duty to console Bruce, and if on reflection you decide that you could become sufficiently fond of him.”
“No, no, no!” she exclaimed, unashamedly putting back her head and looking up at him in a manner that could not have been more revealing. “But I did see you kiss Lady Rowena, and you kissed her so very many times that you must have enjoyed it, and you were not always particularly nice to me, you know. Although you asked me to marry you when your conscience was troubling you, you made it plain when I declined to accept you that you were very much relieved. I had no doubt of that, and it was because of your attitude that I began to dislike you very much—or thought I did! I even began to—to hate you...”
“And now?” he asked, his dark eyes burning into hers.
“I—I—”
“Say it, Harriet,” he urged quietly, as he gently untied the ribbons of her bonnet. “Have the courage to say it before I do. You owe me that much, since you have held me so frequently in contempt.”
Harriet took a deep breath, and realised that she was committing herself beyond recall.
“I—I’m very much afraid that I love you with all my heart, my lord,” she told him simply at last, and his dark face altered so completely that she knew she would never need to retract those words.
He put his fingers under her chin and lifted it up, and they were far from steady as he did so.
“And I, my dearest love,” he told her, “have adored you from the moment I first saw you here in this room! I knew there would never be any other woman in my life but you, however many indiscretions I may have committed in the past. So you must take me for what I am, Harriet, self-centred, arrogant, perhaps, impatient and unworthy—but deeply, almost unbearably in love with you! Now, will you kiss me, my dearest heart?”
Harriet’s bonnet slipped, unheeded, to the floor.
Ten minutes or so later there came a discreet tap at the door, and when it was opened Lady Fanny stood looking in on them, beaming in anticipation of what she expected to find, but not entirely certain in her own mind that this was the right moment to put her hopes to the test. She had already dismissed Pauncefoot and told him that she was quite capable of announcing herself, but now that the moment had arrived she looked as if she might very readily take flight if circumstances proved to be adverse and she herself unwelcome.
“My dears,” she declared as the Marquis partially released Harriet, “I shall take no offence whatsoever if you would prefer that I withdraw and occupy myself in some useful manner until you are ready to discuss pressing matters with me. But if we are to leave for Capel while there is still plenty of daylight I think we should not delay unduly.”
And then as the Marquis smiled at her she went forward and prepared to embrace Harriet.
“So I was right after all,” she said softly, as a violently blushing Harriet endeavoured to restore some order to her curls. “You are far from being as indifferent to him as you would have us all belie
ve!”
“She is not in the least indifferent to me, I give you my word,” the Marquis said triumphantly as he saluted his sister’s hand in gratitude. “It was not even necessary for me to take to my bed to have her displaying every sign of contemplating her own early demise if nothing could be done to save me. And now let me present to you the future Marchioness of Capel ... as lovely and enchanting a one as we have ever had in the family!”
Lady Fanny embraced Harriet with every sign of approval, and kissed her affectionately on both cheeks in the French manner. She declared she could not be more delighted.
“I don’t know what it is about you, my dear,” she confessed, “but there is something which it is almost impossible to set aside. Perhaps it is the way your father brought you up: to be so heedless of convention, and so completely unafraid, that you will take the most outrageous risks if you feel it will bring about a desired result. However, when you are married to Richard I hope you will become a little more conventional. Richard will need a highly conventional wife, and perhaps a very—patient one?” glancing at her brother. “We have all had to be a little patient with Richard since the days when he was a somewhat turbulent small boy.”
“I intend to become a model husband,” Richard assured his sister with curious fervour. “Harriet deserves no less.”
“And you have explained to her that we are leaving for Capel immediately?” She turned to Harriet and touched her cheek lightly. “My father is awaiting us there, and the chapel is the very place for a wedding. Indeed, Capel is altogether a delightful house, and I am very certain you will love it. My maid has packed all your things, and once you are married and return to town you can do as much shopping as you please. I shall recommend you to all the best dressmakers and milliners, and there is no reason why you should not become the talk of London m no time at all. With your colouring, and that certain air you have, and your enchanting figure—so childlike and yet not in the least childlike, if you follow me—”
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