Snowdrift and Other Stories

by Georgette Heyer

  ‘Indeed, ma’am, I believe Mr Edmund Monksley to be a most unexceptionable young man,’ replied Miss Fairfax, perceiving that in Lady Wilfrid Lucilla would find an eager ally. ‘The only objections are Lucilla’s youth and Mr Monksley’s lack of fortune.’

  Lady Wilfrid fixed her with a singularly calculating gaze. ‘My nephew never had the least disposition to sympathise with the Pangs of Love,’ she uttered. ‘With me, it is otherwise. I have the tender heart of a parent, and such vulgar considerations as poverty, or inequality of birth, weigh with me not at all. Nothing could be more affecting than Lucilla’s story! But then I am all sensibility, quite unlike Shane, who has a heart of stone! I shall tell him that he has no right to forbid this marriage.’

  The Honourable Frederick, who had apparently been pondering the situation, once more ceased sucking the knob of his cane to say in a tone of great relief, ‘Well this is famous! If he does not wed the governess, and we can prevail upon him to consent to Lucilla’s marriage to this swooning-fellow, I do not at all despair of a happy issue.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Miss Fairfax, conscious of her reddening cheeks. ‘I think I should go downstairs to assist in restoring Mr Monksley.’

  By the time Miss Fairfax reached his side, Mr Monksley, a fresh-faced young man, with very blue eyes and a decided chin, had recovered consciousness. Finding himself looking straight up into the countenance of his Lucilla’s guardian, he at once embarked on a speech, which would no doubt have become extremely impassioned had not the Earl cut it short by saying, ‘Yes, you may tell me all that later, but you had better be still now until the surgeon has attended to your shoulder.’

  Tenderly clasping one of Mr Monksley’s hands, Miss Gellibrand said in resolute accents, ‘Nothing you can say, Shane, will prevent my going to Gretna as soon as Edmund is well enough!’

  ‘Nonsense!’ said his lordship. ‘These Gretna weddings are not at all the thing, and you had better put such romantic fustian out of your head at once.’

  ‘Believe me, my lord,’ said Mr Monksley faintly, ‘nothing but the sternest necessity could have prevailed upon me to propose so clandestine a union to one for whom I entertain feelings of the deepest respect!’

  ‘I wish you will not talk to me like a play-actor!’ said his lordship irritably. ‘If you must marry my ward, let it at least be in a respectable fashion!’

  ‘Angel!’ cried Miss Gellibrand, lifting a glowing face.

  His lordship regarded her with the utmost disfavour. ‘If it is angelic to be more than willing to rid myself of a most tiresome charge, I am certainly an angel,’ he said witheringly.

  The arrival of a surgeon, carrying an ominous black bag, created a timely diversion. Mr Monksley’s broken shoulder was set and securely bound; two of the serving-men carried him upstairs to a bedchamber; and it was not until he had been comfortably disposed between sheets, and was being fed with spoonfuls of broth by his adoring Lucilla, that Miss Fairfax had leisure to go in search of her employer. She found him in the parlour belowstairs, giving some directions to the landlord. When he saw her, he smiled, and held out his hand, a gesture which made her feel very much inclined to burst into tears. The landlord having bowed himself out of the room, she said, however, in as prosaic a tone as she was able to command, ‘Mr Monksley is feeling much easier now. You have been so very kind, sir!’

  ‘Oh, the devil take Monksley, and Lucilla too!’ said his lordship. ‘We have more important things to consider. What in thunder are we to do, Mary Fairfax? I told that abominable old woman that we were going to be married at Gretna Green. But no consideration on earth would prevail upon me to behave in such a preposterous fashion! Besides, I cannot possibly take you to Gretna without another rag to your back than what you stand up in.’

  ‘My dear sir, there is no need for you to trouble your head about it,’ said Miss Fairfax, trying to smile. ‘I told Lady Wilfrid there was no question of our going to Gretna.’

  ‘You did, did you?’ said the Earl, looking at her rather keenly.

  ‘Yes of course, sir. Where – where is Lady Wilfrid?’

  ‘Gone to put up at the George, where I heartily hope she may find the sheets damp!’

  ‘But – but why?’ stammered Miss Fairfax.

  ‘Because,’ said the Earl, ‘I told her that we were going to be married just as soon as I can procure a licence!’

  Miss Fairfax had the oddest sensation of turning first hot and then cold. ‘You are being absurd!’ she said, in a voice which did not seem to belong to her.

  ‘Mary,’ said his lordship, taking her hands in his, and holding them fast, ‘have those shocking faults of mine given you a disgust of me?’

  ‘No,’ said Miss Fairfax weakly. ‘Oh, no!’

  ‘I don’t know how I came to be such a fool (but you said I was stupid), yet – would you believe it? – it was not until my aunt accused me of it that I knew I had been in love with you for years!’

  Miss Fairfax trembled. ‘But you can’t! Marry to disoblige your family? Oh, no, no!’

  ‘My family be damned!’ said the Earl. ‘I wish you will look at me, Mary!’

  ‘Well, I won’t,’ said Miss Fairfax, making a feeble attempt to free her hands. ‘I did think that you regarded me sometimes with – with a certain partiality, but I know, if you do not, how shocking such a match would be, and I won’t marry you. I shall look for another eligible situation.’

  ‘No one will employ you without a testimonial, and I shan’t give you one.’

  ‘I think you are extremely disagreeable, besides being mad!’ said Miss Fairfax, in a scolding tone.

  ‘Yes,’ said the Earl, taking her in his arms. ‘And I have also the most overbearing manners, so you may as well stop arguing with me, and kiss me instead.’

  Miss Fairfax, apparently struck by this advice, abandoned her half-hearted struggles, said, ‘Oh, my dearest!’ in a wavering voice, and subsided meekly into his embrace.

  Runaway Match

  AS THE POST-CHAISE and four entered the town of Stamford, young Mr Morley, who had spent an uncomfortable night being jolted over the road, remorselessly prodded his companion.

  ‘We have reached Stamford,’ he announced. ‘We change horses here, and whatever you may choose to do, I shall bespeak breakfast.’

  Miss Paradise, snugly ensconced in her corner of the chaise, opened a pair of dark eyes, blinked once or twice, yawned behind her feather muff, and sat up.

  ‘Oh!’ said Miss Paradise, surveying the spring morning with enthusiasm. ‘It is quite daylight! I have had the most delightful sleep.’

  Mr Morley repeated his observation, not without a hint of pugnacity in his voice.

  Since the start of the elopement, rather more than nine hours before, Miss Paradise, who was just eighteen, had been a trifle difficult to manage. She had begun by taking strong exception to the ladder he had brought for her escape from her bedroom window. Her remarks, delivered in an indignant undertone as she had prepared to descend the ladder, might have been thought to augur ill for the success of the runaway match; but Mr Morley, who was also just eighteen, had quarrelled with Miss Paradise from the cradle, and thought her behaviour the most natural in the world. The disposition she showed to take the management of her flight into her own hands led to further wrangles, because, however much she might have been in the habit of taking the lead in their past scrapes, an elopement was a very different matter, and called for a display of male initiative. But when he had tried to point this out to Miss Paradise she had merely retorted, ‘Stuff! It was I who made the plan to elope. Now, Rupert, you know it was!’

  This rejoinder was unanswerable, and Mr Morley, who had been arguing in favour of putting up for the night at a respectable posting-house, had allowed himself to be overruled. They had travelled swiftly northwards by moonlight (a circumstance which had filled the romantic Miss Paradise with rapture) with the result that a good deal of Mr Morley’s zest for the adventure had worn off by the time he made his announcemen
t at eight o’clock.

  He was prepared to encounter opposition, but Miss Paradise, engaged in the task of tidying her tumbled curls, assented light-heartedly.

  ‘To be sure, I am excessively hungry,’ she said.

  She picked up a chip hat from the seat and tied it on her head by its green gauze ribbons.

  ‘I dare say I must look a positive fright,’ she remarked; ‘but you can have no notion how much I am enjoying myself.’

  This buoyancy had the effect of making Mr Morley slightly morose.

  ‘I can’t imagine what there is to enjoy in being bumped about all night,’ he said.

  Miss Paradise turned her enchanting little face towards him, and exclaimed with considerable chagrin: ‘Are you not enjoying it at all, Rupert? I must say I do think you need not get into a miff merely because of being bumped a trifle.’

  ‘I am not in a miff!’ said Mr Morley, ‘but –’

  ‘Oh, Rupert!’ cried Miss Paradise, letting her muff fall. ‘Don’t, don’t say that you do not want to elope with me, after all!’

  ‘No, of course I do,’ responded Mr Morley. ‘The fact is, I didn’t contrive to sleep above an hour or two. I shall be in better cue after breakfast.’

  ‘Yes, I expect that’s it,’ nodded Miss Paradise, relieved. ‘Only, I don’t think we should waste very much time, you know, because when Papa discovers our flight he is bound to pursue us.’

  ‘I don’t see that,’ objected Mr Morley. ‘He can’t know where you have gone.’

  ‘Yes, he can,’ said Miss Paradise. ‘I left a note on my pillow for him.’

  ‘What!’ ejaculated Mr Morley. ‘Good heavens, Bab, why?’

  ‘But he would be in a dreadful rout if I hadn’t told him,’ explained Miss Paradise. ‘And even though he has behaved shockingly to me I don’t want him to be anxious about me.’

  Mr Morley retorted: ‘If you think to have put an end to his anxiety by telling him you have eloped with me you very much mistake the matter.’

  ‘No, but at least he will be sure that I am safe,’ said Miss Paradise. ‘You know that he likes you extremely, Rupert, even though he does not wish me to marry you. That is only because he says you are too young; and because he has this stupid notion that I must make a good match, of course,’ she added candidly.

  ‘Well, I think you must be mad,’ said Mr Morley. ‘I’ll lay you a button he rides over immediately to tell my father. Then we shall have the pair of them at our heels, and a pretty pucker there will be.’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ confessed Miss Paradise. ‘But I dare say we shall have reached Gretna Green long before they come up with us.’

  The chaise had arrived at the George Inn by this time, and had turned in under the archway to the courtyard. The steps were let down and the travellers alighted. Mr Morley felt stiff, but Miss Paradise gave her tiffany skirts a shake and tripped into the inn for all the world as though she had enjoyed a perfect night’s rest.

  There was not much sign of activity in the George at this early hour, but the landlord came out and led the way to a private parlour overlooking the street, and promised to serve breakfast in the shortest possible time. He betrayed no extraordinary curiosity, the extremely youthful appearance of his guests leading him to suppose them to be brother and sister.

  Miss Paradise, realizing this, was disappointed, and commented on it to Mr Morley with considerable dissatisfaction.

  ‘Well, thank Heaven for it,’ said Mr Morley.

  ‘Sometimes, Rupert,’ said Miss Paradise, ‘I think you are not romantic in the very least.’

  ‘I never said that I was,’ replied Mr Morley.

  ‘You may not have said it, but you did say that you would rescue me from that odious Sir Roland, and if that is not –’

  ‘Well, I am rescuing you,’ interrupted Mr Morley, ‘and I don’t object to being romantic in reason. But when it comes to you wanting a rope-ladder to escape by,’ he continued, last night’s quarrel taking possession of his mind again, ‘I call it the outside of enough.’

  ‘Who ever heard of any other kind of ladder for an elopement?’ demanded Miss Paradise scathingly.

  ‘I don’t know, but how was I to find such a thing? And now I come to think of it,’ pursued Mr Morley, ‘why the devil did you want a ladder at all? Your father and your aunt were both gone out, and you told me yourself the servants were all in bed.’

  A disarming dimple peeped in Miss Paradise’s cheek.

  ‘Well, to tell you the truth, it wasn’t very necessary,’ she confessed. ‘Only it seemed so much more exciting.’

  The entrance of a serving-man with a tray prevented Mr Morley from uttering the indignant retort that sprang to his lips, and by the time the table was laid and the covers set on it the mingled aromas of coffee and broiled ham and ale had put all other thought than that of breakfast out of his head. He handed Miss Paradise to a chair, drew one out for himself, and was soon engaged in assuaging the first pangs of his hunger.

  Miss Paradise, pursuing thoughts of her own, presently said:

  ‘I dare say they won’t have found my note yet.’

  ‘I wish to Heaven you hadn’t written it, Bab!’

  ‘Well, so do I now,’ admitted Miss Paradise. ‘Because although I made certain that Aunt Albinia would not think of going to my room when she came home last night, it has all at once occurred to me that perhaps she might.’

  Mr Morley, who was carving the cold sirloin, gave a groan.

  ‘Why? If she never does –’

  ‘Yes, but you see, I said I had the headache, Rupert, because they would have forced me to go with them to the dinner-party if I hadn’t.’ Her brow darkened. ‘To meet that odious old man,’ she added broodingly.

  ‘Sale?’ enquired Mr Morley.

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘He isn’t as old as that, Bab. Hang it, he can’t be much above thirty. And you don’t know that he’s odious after all.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I do,’ retorted Miss Paradise with strong feeling. ‘He wrote to Papa that he was perfectly willing to fulfil his obligations and marry me. I never heard of anything so odious in my life. He must be the most horrid creature imaginable, and as for Papa, I am sorry to be obliged to say it, but he is very little better; in fact, I think, worse, because it was he who made this abominable plan to marry me to an Eligible Person with whom I am not even acquainted. And Sir Joseph Sale, too, of course, detestable old man that he was.’

  ‘Gad, he was!’ agreed Mr Morley. ‘Do you remember –’

  ‘No,’ said Miss Paradise. ‘At least, I’m not going to, because one should never speak ill of the dead. But you may depend upon it his nephew is just like him, and if Papa thinks I am going to marry to oblige him he very much mistakes the matter. As though you and I had not said years and years ago that we would marry each other.’

  ‘Parents are all alike,’ said Mr Morley gloomily. ‘However, this should show my father that I am not to be treated like a child any longer.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Miss Paradise, pouring out another cup of coffee. ‘And if they don’t like it on account of your being too young, I shall tell Papa that it is all his fault, because if he hadn’t made an arrangement for me to marry a man I’ve never clapped eyes on we shouldn’t have thought of being married for a long time, should we?’

  ‘No,’ said Mr Morley. ‘Not until I had come down from Oxford, at all events, and after that, I believe there was a scheme for me to make the Grand Tour, which I must say I should have liked. I dare say we shouldn’t have thought of being married for four or five years.’

  Miss Paradise paused in the act of drinking her coffee and lowered the cup.

  ‘Four or five years!’ she repeated. ‘But I should be twenty-two or -three years old.’

  ‘Well, so should I,’ Mr Morley pointed out.

  ‘But that is not at all the same thing,’ said Miss Paradise indignantly.

  ‘Oh, well, there’s no sense in arguing about it,’ replied Mr
Morley, finishing his ale, and getting up. ‘They have compelled us to elope, and there’s an end to it. I had best tell them to have the horses put-to at once, I think. We have no time to lose.’

  Miss Paradise agreed to it, and engaged to be in readiness to resume the journey by the time Mr Morley had paid the reckoning and seen a fresh team harnessed to the chaise. He went out, and she was left to drink the last of her coffee, to tie on her becoming hat once more, and to straighten her tucker. This did not take long; she was ready before her swain, and was about to sally forth into the yard when the sound of a carriage being driven fast down the street made her run to the window.

  It was not, however, a post-chaise, and no such dreaded sight as Sir John Paradise’s face met her alarmed gaze. Instead, she saw a curricle and four driven by a gentleman in a very modish dress of dark blue with gold buttons. He wore a gold-laced tricorne on his own unpowdered hair, and a fringed cravat thrust through a gold buttonhole. A surtout with four laps on each side hung negligently open over his dress, and on his feet he had a pair of very highly polished top-boots. He was looking straight ahead, and so did not see Miss Paradise peeping at him over the short blind. She had a glimpse of a straight, rather haughty profile as the curricle passed the window; then the horses were checked, and the equipage swung round under the archway into the courtyard.

  ‘Bab!’ gasped Mr Morley, who had entered the room behind her. ‘We are overtaken!’

  Miss Paradise gave a shriek and dropped her muff.

  ‘Mercy on me! Not Papa?’

  ‘No, I don’t know who it can be, but a man has this instant driven into the yard –’

  ‘Yes, yes, I saw him. But what in the world can he have to do with us?’

  ‘I tell you I don’t know, but he asked the landlord if he had seen anything of a young lady and gentleman. I did not wait for more, as you may imagine. What are we to do? Who in thunder can he be?’

  A premonition had seized Miss Paradise. She took a step back, clasping her hands together in great agitation.