Cupid's Dart (24 page)

Quentin hugged his daughter, somewhat awkwardly, because she was taller than he, and also distraught. "You aren't wishful of eloping, puss?"

Sarah-Louise shuddered. "I never wanted to elope, even when I thought I liked Mr. Teasdale, which I do not anymore. Oh, Papa, if only I had listened to you, none of this would have happened, because all along you were right. Peregrine was everything you said he was. Can you ever forgive me?"

"There, there!" Quentin gave his daughter's arm an awkward pat. "It's partly my fault. I shouldn't have sent you off to your aunt. But if you weren't wishful of running off with him, then why are you here?"

Sarah-Louise explained the accident. "I only got into his curricle because he said he would take Lump and me back to Aunt Amice."

Quentin's eye kindled. "The scoundrel kidnapped you. I'll give him his bastings, that I will." He paused. "He didn't, er—"

Sarah-Louise wasn't sure quite what "er" entailed. "He has never so much as k-kissed me, Papa."

Mr. Teasdale was not only a knave, but a knuckle-head as well. "What a paltry fellow," Quentin soothed. "You'll want Sutton, then."

Sarah-Louise glanced at Mr. Sutton, who looked as appalled as she felt. "I do not wish to marry Mr. Sutton! Nor does he wish to marry me. Besides, he is quite old."

Quentin frowned at this pronouncement. It was clear that Sarah-Louise needed a husband, the sooner the better; Sutton would make Sarah-Louise a better husband than the mincing Peregrine. Still, if the girl didn't want him— "That settles it! I don't care if you
are
rich as Croesus. I shan't have my girl taken off to India, and there's an end to it."

Carlisle was happy to disabuse Sarah-Louise's papa of this bloodcurdling notion. "Your sister's matchmaking aspirations are so much moonshine, Inchquist. The furthest I agreed to escort your daughter was to the Hallidays, and even that has proved to be a large mistake."

Things had gone from bad to worse. Peregrine wished only to escape. He picked up the fireplace poker. Unfortunately, the only exit was the doorway, where Mr. Sutton stood.

Lump grew bored with watching Miss Inchquist and her papa clutch each other. Clearly, nothing interesting was going to happen there. He looked around the room for further entertainment, or perhaps another pigeon pie. Then he espied Mr. Sutton in the doorway. Lump remembered Mr. Sutton, and the tack room. Growling, he advanced.

Carlisle Sutton was not about to wind up this wretched day getting either dog-bit or brained by a fireplace poker. Therefore, he did the only thing he could. With a kick and a swish and a thump he divested Mr. Teasdale of his weapon, knocking him unconscious in the process, and with the poker held off the dog. "Get back, you cur!"

Thus distracted from their hugging, the Inchquists turned to look. Sarah-Louise hurried forward to grasp Lump's collar. "No, no! Mr. Sutton is a friend!" she said. "If you wish to bite someone, bite Mr. Teasdale."

Lump did not wish to bite Mr. Teasdale, or, for that matter, anyone. The pigeon pie was not sitting well with him. He parted his great jaws, and belched.

Mr. Sutton looked at Peregrine, stretched out unconscious on the floor, and suggested that they take their leave before the gentleman awoke. Ungently, Mr. Inchquist prodded the body with his boot. Much as Quentin would have liked to dress the rapscallion's hide neatly, prudence dictated otherwise. Unless he wished to be clapped in irons for attempted kidnapping, the twiddlepoop would bother them no more.

Chapter Thirty

Georgie lay on the drawing room sofa with a damp cloth upon her forehead. Andrew had moved with his blanket to a chair, his lame leg propped up before him on a stool. "If that potion is what Agatha has been physicking you with," moaned Georgie, "no wonder you were ill."

Andrew had no idea what concoction Georgie had swallowed in his place. "I'm just as glad you drank it instead of me," he said. "Though I'm sorry for your headache."

Georgie pushed back the damp cloth. "You were shamming earlier, weren't you, Andrew? When you were talking about Cuidad Rodrigo and Badajoz?
You
are not still feeling ill?"

Only of the mulligrubs, as Marigold would say. Her words, and the truth of them, still stuck in his mind. "No, sis. I'm not feeling ill. I just wished to throw Mr. Sutton off the scent." Could Andrew have paced the floor, he would have. Instead, he drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. "I wish the devil I knew what was happening."

Georgie wished she knew where Marigold had got to. Her guest was nowhere in the house. Agatha entered the room with a tea tray, to inform them that Mr. Brown was still in the kitchen with Janie, the pair of them sitting at the kitchen table munching freshly baked almond cake and talking a blue streak.

She placed the tea tray on a table. Georgie eyed it doubtfully. "Pray take no offense, Agatha, but what is in that pot?"

"Just some nice tea," soothed Agatha, failing to add that she had added a bit of borage to expel pensiveness and melancholy, and clarify the blood.

Gingerly, Georgie sat up, and allowed Agatha to pour her a cup of tea, which she then spilled all over herself and the sofa, because Lump bounded into the room and leapt into her lap. Lump was much too large a dog to fit comfortably upon anybody's lap, but Georgie didn't mind. She hugged him. Lump licked her face. Agatha tsk'd and set about mopping up the spilt liquid. Andrew looked anxiously at the door
.

At a less excited pace, Mr. Inchquist and his daughter entered the drawing room, followed by Tibble, who had given up trying to monitor the parade of people in and out of this house. "Inchquist!" he announced, belatedly, before Agatha shooed him back to the kitchen to act as Janie's chaperone.

"You have found Lump. I am grateful to you." Georgie studied her pet, who was now sprawled across the sofa, as well as her lap. "He doesn't look well."

"I think it was the pigeon pie," offered Sarah-Louise, looking not at Lump but at Andrew, who was likewise staring at her.

Agatha paused in the doorway, en route to fetch more teacups. "Georgie, set that dog down at once! Before he casts up his accounts."

Damned if this wasn't a chaotic household. "He's already done that," Quentin said, as he settled in a chair near Georgie. "All over my coachman."

Georgie buried her fingers in Lump's thick fur. "I am so sorry, Mr. Inchquist. We Hallidays have caused you a great deal of trouble, sir."

"Nothing of the sort." Quentin squelched an impulse to pat Lady Georgiana comfortingly on the knee, so disheveled did she look, with her hair every which way, and her dress stained with tea, and that great hound stretched across her lap, staring up at her soulfully. "You Hallidays have
spared
me a great deal of trouble, because if not for your brother I would not have reached my girl in time. We'll say no more on it. Save that I, Quentin Inchquist, am in your debt."

Georgie wondered if Quentin Inchquist might wish to donate twenty-five thousand pounds to the cause of retrieving a certain emerald necklace, then cast aside that unworthy thought. "I am glad all has ended well," she said.

Andrew was less certain that all had ended well. "You
didn’t
wish to elope with Teasdale?" he inquired of Miss Inchquist, who perched upon another stool drawn up by his chair. "I'm sure you said you did. You liked that he was a poet. Wrote sonnets to you, and such stuff."

"Yes, but he didn't!" explained Sarah-Louise. "None of those words were his. Mr. Teasdale was a mere pretender
,
and I changed my mind."

Andrew was trying hard to understand. "Sutton, then. I wouldn't wish to go to India myself, but you must know what's best." Sarah-Louise protested that she didn't wish to go to India, either, which further confused Andrew. "Dash it, I was sure you wished to elope with someone!"

"No, I didn't." Sarah-Louise's cheeks were pink. "Or if I did, it was none of them. Anyway,
you
were the one who was going to run off to Gretna Green."

"I was?" Andrew set down his teacup, and wondered if Agatha had doctored it again, because this conversation was making no sense. "No, I wasn't! I never would have done such a thing."

"Why is it that gentlemen must be forever telling whoppers?" In her frustration, Sarah-Louise so forgot herself as to strike Andrew on the leg. "I had not thought that
you
would treat me so. With my own ears, I heard you ask that pretty lady if she would like to elope, just before she hid behind the couch."

"Pretty lady?" Andrew clutched his injured knee and stared at her, appalled. "You mean Marigold. Miss Inchquist, I would allow myself to be captured and tortured by Afrancesados
before I ran off with a featherhead like Marigold."

"Oh," said Sarah-Louise, in a little voice. "I must have misunderstood."

"Yes, you did," retorted Andrew. "I was asking Marigold why
you
would wish to elope."

"Oh," Sarah-Louise said again.

Mr. Inchquist and Lady Georgiana looked at one another. "As I live!" Mr. Inchquist remarked. Said Lady Georgiana, "Which reminds me, where
is
Mr. Sutton? He did not accompany you here."

Quentin was still watching her brother and his daughter. The girl had some gumption after all. "Sutton said he had some business to attend to. I hope you will forgive my boldness, Lady Georgiana, but your brother is not well?"

Mr. Inchquist's boldness was quite understandable, considering that his daughter and Andrew were casting sheep's eyes at one another. "It is only a fever that he brought back from the Peninsula, and which sometimes recurs," Georgie said. "The doctor thinks those episodes will grow less and less frequent with the passage of time."

"The Peninsula," Quentin repeated judiciously. "Connaught's Boys. The Devil's Own. Nothing wrong with that. But still—"

Georgie interrupted. "Mr. Inchquist, you have seen us at our worst. Under normal circumstances, we are so unexceptionable as to be positively dull. All this muddle is the fault of Marigold—"

Now Mr. Inchquist interrupted. "The lady behind the couch?"

"I was not here to see it," admitted Georgie, "but that sounds like Marigold. She would have been hiding from Mr. Sutton, because she was married to his uncle, and has something in her possession that he wishes her to return. Except that it isn't in her possession anymore."

Mr. Inchquist was fascinated. "Extraordinary," he said.

Extraordinary, indeed. "You know how you do not wish to talk about the circumstances in which you found your daughter?" said Georgie. "That is how I feel about Marigold. As for my brother, I should perhaps explain that he is not exactly on the brink of poverty, despite the simple way we live. He has his prize money, of course. As well as properly in Devonshire. My uncle is overseeing it until such time as Andrew wishes to shoulder the responsibility. Additionally—" She explained her father's trust.

Quentin frowned at her. "And what of yourself?"

"I have my dowry," retorted Georgie, who was wearied beyond measure by all this fuss about finances. "My father discussed it all with me before the papers were drawn up."

Lady Georgiana's papa would have assumed she'd marry, and thus be provided for. Quentin wondered why she had not. Thought of daughters recalled to him his own, who showed signs of growing positively fickle, he thought.

Andrew was experiencing a similar notion. "Then who did you wish to elope with?" he inquired. "If not Teasdale or Sutton, who else was dangling after you?"

Sarah-Louise blushed even brighter at the notion that someone should dangle after her. "No one!" she protested. "I am not—That is—Oh, g-gracious, it was you! Not that you were—Of course you couldn't—A great freckled beanpole like myself! But I—Oh,
drat!"

Andrew was moved by this pretty speech. "Of course I do!" he said. "But I cannot—" And then he spoke a great deal of nonsense about honor and unworthiness, and she had grown very precious to him, and he would much rather she was a beanpole than a nonpareil, and curst cripples who did not dare think of such happiness.

Again, Mr. Inchquist and Lady Georgiana exchanged glances. Georgie was relieved to see that Mr. Inchquist looked amused. "Tell me, boy," he interrupted. "Would you like to marry m'girl?"

Now it was Andrew who flushed. "More than anything!" he said. "But—"

Quentin held up his hand. He was a gentleman who believed in cutting to the chase. Someone needed to take the responsibility of Lieutenant Halliday off his sister's shoulders. The boy needed stiffening up. A wife and family would do that for him. And a determined papa-in-law. Quentin had never shied away from a challenge. "No buts! If not for you, Sarah-Louise might have come to such grief as would make it impossible for her to honorably marry anyone.
And
she's showing signs of turning into a shocking flirt, so we had better get her married off. Don't poker up, puss! I spoke in jest. Are you sure you wish to marry this young man?"

Sarah-Louise's cheeks had by this time achieved the rosiness of a ripe tomato. "Yes, Papa," she said.

"That's settled, then." Quentin announced. Sarah-Louise and Andrew stared rapt at one another. Mr. Inchquist turned back to Lady Georgiana, who looked dazed. "I'll warrant they'll rub along as well together as two ducks on a pond. More important, he'll do right by my girl. I wouldn't see her married to someone who would not." Now that they were practically related, he did pat Lady Georgiana's knee. "I had not wanted to mention it earlier, but Amice said something about some sort of scandal, not that it will signify. We have just narrowly avoided a scandal of our own. I was curious merely as to what she spoke about."

"Scandal?" Georgie wondered for a moment if Lady Denham knew she had sat on Magnus Eliot's lap. "She must have been referring to Garth. Lord Warwick was married to our cousin Catherine. Or is married to her. She has disappeared."

"Oh, if that's all!" said Quentin. "And you had it right the first time. The only remarkable thing is that Warwick waited so long to apply for a divorce. Naturally, there will be talk, but there already
was
talk, so it seems to me that he's done the right thing."