False Colours (20 page)

The Dowager was inclined to be indignant with his lordship. ‘Depend upon it, Cressy, he’s getting to be spiteful! It’s often so with old bachelors. He dotes on the other boy, and is jealous of young Denville in consequence!’

‘He said nothing to Papa about Denville that was in the least spiteful, ma’am,’ Cressy ventured to interpolate. ‘Indeed, he told Papa that although Denville had been a little wild he believed that nothing more than a—a suitable marriage was wanting to make him—’

‘Stuff and nonsense!’ exclaimed the Dowager, her eyes snapping. ‘Henry Brumby’s an old woman, and so I shall tell him! There’s nothing of the profligate about the boy, and never was! I dare say he’s had his adventures: why not? But I cut
my
wisdoms long before Brumby cut his, and if he thinks I don’t know the signs of a loose-screw he very much mistakes the matter! There ain’t one to be seen in Denville—and
that
you may believe, girl! I like him. Do you?’

This sudden question slightly discomposed Cressy, but upon being adjured to answer it, she said, blushing a little: ‘Yes, I do. Much—much better than I did at the outset. But-’

‘But what?’ demanded the Dowager, as Cressy hesitated.

Cressy shook her head. ‘Nothing, ma’am! That is—no, nothing!’

The Dowager looked narrowly at her, but said, after a moment: ‘Early days yet! I don’t mean to press you, so I’ll say no more. You ain’t a simpering miss, so you won’t underrate the advantages of this match. You know as well as I do that Denville’s a matrimonial prize: time was when I should have thought more of that than I do today. So was his father, and much good did it do silly little Amabel Cliffe when she caught him!’ She sat ruminating for a moment, and then abruptly changed the subject, saying: ‘I collect that Bonamy Ripple is coming to join us tomorrow. What a bag-pudding! However, I shall be glad to see him, for he plays a good game of whist, and knows all the latest
on-dit
s.’ She paused again, before adding, with the utmost reluctance: ‘I’ll say this for Amabel!—to be able to drag Ripple away from Brighton at this season is something indeed!’

But when Sir Bonamy lowered himself, with the assistance of two muscular footmen, from his travelling carriage next day no one would have supposed from his demeanour that the smallest force had been necessary to bring him away from the Pavilion to the seclusion of Ravenhurst. Radiating good-humour, he grasped Kit’s hand with one of his own pudgy ones, and declared that this was ‘something like!’ Wheezing only a very little from the exertion of descending from the carriage, he stood looking about him, a not unimposing, if preposterous figure, in the nattiest of country raiment, with a voluminous drab driving coat hanging open from his shoulders, and a shaggy, low-crowned beaver set rakishly askew over his curled and pomaded locks. ‘Very agreeable!’ he pronounced. ‘Very pleasing prospect! Do you know, my boy, I’ve never seen it in the summer before? Excellent! just the thing for recruiting nature! I feel as fresh as a nosegay already.’

Kit’s eyes twinkled. ‘I’m happy to welcome you here, sir!’

Sir Bonamy’s little round eyes stared at him for an unwinking moment. ‘Much obliged to you! Very prettily said!’

Recalling belatedly that his twin barely tolerated their mama’s most devoted admirer, Kit skated smoothly over this, saying: ‘But I should warn you that the exigencies of country life may perhaps put you quite out of frame! We dine at six, sir!’

‘No need to warn me,’ Sir Bonamy said, slowly mounting the shallow steps. ‘I know the country habit! But you have a very good cook, and if one partakes of only a morsel by way of a nuncheon one is ready for one’s dinner by six o’clock—with a mere snack for supper.’

‘Oh, we shall offer you more than a snack!’ promised Kit. ‘You will certainly need a supporting meal after an evening spent in playing whist with the Dowager Lady Stavely!’

‘So that’s it, is it?’ said Sir Bonamy, pausing at the top of the steps to get his breath back. His large frame was shaken by a chuckle. ‘Now I know why you’re happy to welcome me! Quite right! quite right! you leave the old lady to me!
Ah!
’

This last exclamation was evoked by the emergence from the house of his hostess, who gave him both her hands, and an embracing smile, saying: ‘Dear Bonamy, I
knew
I might depend upon you! Infamous to have invited you to such a
dreadful
party, but I
needed
you!’

Kissing her hands, and continuing to hold them in his, Sir Bonamy said fondly: ‘Now, my pretty—! You know how happy it makes me to hear that! Ay, and you should know I couldn’t think any party dreadful which
you
grace! Anything I can do to oblige you I’ll do with alacrity. Just been telling Evelyn to leave Cornelia Stavely to me!’

‘Yes, but there is a worse thing!’ disclosed her ladyship. ‘I know I should have divulged it to you before, but I dared not, for fear you should refuse to come.’

‘No, no!’ he replied, releasing one of her hands so that he could pat the other. ‘Nothing could have made me do so! Not even if you had invited the greatest bore in the country!’

‘Well, that’s just what I have done,’ she said candidly. ‘It’s Cosmo!’

‘Your brother Cosmo?’ he asked.

‘And his wife,
and
his son!’ she said, making a clean breast of it.

‘Well, well!’ he said tolerantly. ‘I’m not acquainted with them, and I dare say Cliffe won’t fidget me very much. A dull dog, but there! No need to pay any heed to him, after all!’

‘I knew I might depend on you!’ said Lady Denville, withdrawing her hand from his, and tucking it into his arm. ‘Now you shall come into my own drawing-room, and drink a glass of wine, while your man unpacks your trunks, and tell me all the latest
crim. con.
stories!’

Kit, realizing that his presence was unwanted, went off to look for Miss Stavely. He found her, after an extensive search, in the Long Drawing-room, engaged in arranging fresh flowers in two of his mama’s new holders; and instantly demanded to be told who had set her to this task.

‘No one,’ she answered, her attention fixed on the exact placing of a tall lily. ‘I asked Lady Denville if I might do it for her, and she gave me leave—so, you see, I am
not
meddling, or being odiously encroaching!’

‘You know that’s not what I meant. But you can’t want to busy yourself with such matters! Mama assures me that there is nothing more exhausting.’

She laughed. ‘Yes, so she told me. I don’t find it anything but agreeable, however. Particularly here, where you have such a profusion of flowers. I’ve enjoyed myself uncommonly this morning, picking and choosing amongst them.’

‘I’m glad, but I wish you will leave one of the servants to finish the bowls!’

‘Certainly not! Why?’

‘To ride with me,’ he said, in a coaxing tone. ‘It’s not so hot today—and Mama’s mare needs exercise!’

‘Oh, dear!’ she sighed. ‘That’s tempting, but—No, I must not! The invitation cards have come from Brighton, and I am going to help Lady Denville to send them out for the Public Day. She has settled to hold it next week, so there’s no time to be lost.’

He was just about to offer his services when he remembered that his handwriting was very different from Evelyn’s scrawl. He bit the words back, all at once realizing that a fresh danger threatened him. Sooner or later, he thought, one of his guests would ask him for a frank. He could write the one word, Denville, in a passable imitation of Evelyn’s fist; but he felt it would be beyond his power to transcribe a full name and address. His father, rigidly meticulous, had always done so; he wondered if every peer and Member of Parliament adhered so strictly to the letter of the law. He rather fancied that most of them distributed their franks very freely; on the other hand he had an uneasy recollection of having read in some newspaper that franks were being subjected to close scrutiny by the Post Office, in an attempt to check the abuse of this privilege. He could only hope that Evelyn’s signature was not yet well-known to any local postmaster; and decide that if the worst befell he would trade on the illegibility of Evelyn’s writing, recommending the seeker after a frank to superscribe the letter himself, to ensure its safe arrival.

Cressy stood back, the better to survey her handiwork. ‘I hope Lady Denville will like it,’ she said. ‘I think it is quite tolerable, don’t you?’

‘Just passable!’ he said gravely.

She laughed. ‘Let me tell you, sir, that I preen myself a little on my flower arrangements!’

‘I can see that you do. If you won’t ride with me, will you take a turn about the gardens with me?’

She glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece, and picked up her simple straw bergere hat. ‘Yes, that would be very agreeable—for half-an-hour?’

He nodded. They went out together, and passed down the terrace steps on to the lawn, and across it to a succession of shallow terraces backed by wide flower-borders on one side, and low stone parapets on the other. Cressy sighed. ‘What a pity it is that dear Godmama doesn’t care for the country! It is so beautiful here!’

‘No, Mama finds it a dead bore, unless the house is filled with entertaining guests.’ He hesitated. ‘Are you very fond of the country, Cressy?’

She considered the matter, wrinkling her brow in the way he had come to think charming. Then she said, with the flicker of a smile: ‘That’s a home question! When I’m here, and in such delightful weather, I wonder how I can support life in London. But the melancholy suspicion occurs to me that I am,
au fond
,
a town-creature!’ She glanced round at him, arching her brows quizzically. ‘Does that cast you down? I recall that you told me, at that first encounter, that if you knew yourself to be master here you would choose to spend all but the spring months at Ravenhurst, or in Leicestershire. Don’t be alarmed! I promise you I won’t repine!’

He said nothing for a moment, for it flashed across his mind that her words had supplied him with the answer to the problem which had been troubling him. Evelyn, a far keener sportsman than himself, had always loved Ravenhurst for the congenial amusements it offered; and, perhaps from a natural aptitude for the life of a country landowner, perhaps because he had known all his life that it would one day be his own, he had taken much more interest in the management of the estates than had his twin. But his impetuous, autocratic temper made it impossible for him to bear with equanimity the humiliation of being master only in name; and that was why he had, apparently, plunged into the wild career of a regular dash, or Bond Street Spark. Kit could perceive, dispassionately, that this was folly, but he accepted it without criticism because it was a part of Evelyn, neither to be censured nor amended. The only thought in his head was that by hedge or by stile the Trust must be brought to an end. That Miss Stavely personified neither of these homely objects was a thought which had entered his head several days previously, and had taken such firm root there that it had swiftly become something to be taken for granted.

Watching him, Cressy said gently: ‘Vexed, sir?’

His eyes, which had been looking frowningly ahead, travelled to her face, and smiled again. ‘No, far from it!’

‘In a little worry, then?’

‘A little,’ he acknowledged. ‘For reasons which I can’t, at present, explain to you. Bear with me!’

‘Why, of course!’ She strolled on beside him for a few paces. ‘Did you wish to say something of a particular nature when you asked me to come into the garden?’

‘No—that is, I have much to say to you of a very particular nature, but not yet!’ He broke off, as the evils of his situation came home to him more forcibly than ever before. He felt himself to be at a stand, for, although every impulse urged him to disclose the truth to Cressy, to do so under the existing circumstances, and while he was uncertain of her mind, would be to run the risk of flooring not only himself but Evelyn as well.

That she was inclined, for some inscrutable reason, to prefer him to his twin, he knew; but he was no self-flatterer: he thought Evelyn his superior in all the qualities that might be supposed to captivate a lady; and he knew that in position and fortune Evelyn wholly eclipsed him. Cressy’s affections were not engaged: that had been made plain to him at the outset, when he had consented to impersonate his twin for one, vital evening. Under no other circumstance would he have lent himself to such a hoax, but this now seemed to make the situation worse rather than better. Cressy, entering into a marriage of convenience, had shown herself willing to accept an offer which the ton would certainly think splendid. In Kit’s view, that was a sensible thing to do: one could not have everything in an imperfect world, so if one was denied the best thing of all it would be foolish not to accept an offer that carried with it the promise of ease and social distinction. Kit’s own affections might be very thoroughly engaged, but it seemed incredible to him that Cressy, apparently impervious to Evelyn’s charm, had fallen in love with him. She certainly liked him, but it would take more than mere liking to overcome the revulsion she must surely feel if he told her how outrageously she had been deceived. It did not so much as cross his mind that she need never be told: he was going to tell her the whole truth just as soon as he could do it, with Evelyn’s knowledge, and when Cressy was no longer in the intolerable position of being a guest at Ravenhurst. The hoax, at no time acceptable to him, had begun to assume the colour of an unforgivable piece of chicanery. He would not have thought it surprising if Cressy, learning the truth, shook the dust of Ravenhurst from her feet with no more delay than would serve to put her grandmother in possession of the facts. Setting aside his own prospects, he thought there was scarcely a worse turn he could serve Evelyn. Such a break-up to the party would inevitably set tongues wagging, and wits to work; and though the Stavelys would be unlikely to repeat the story there was no dependence to be placed on the reticence of the servants. If only one amongst the score at Ravenhurst guessed the truth, the scandal, probably garbled out of recognition, would spread with the rapidity of a forest-fire. Better by far would it have been to have left Evelyn to make what excuses he could for his defection than to have set out to rescue him, and then to draw back from a task which proved to be harder and more distasteful than had been foreseen, leaving him in very much more serious straits. There was no intention of furthering his pretensions to Cressy’s hand in Kit’s head: loyalty to his twin might be strong, but it stopped short of helping Evelyn to marry, for expedience’s sake, the girl he himself loved. Evelyn would never expect that of him; but Evelyn would expect—only that was the wrong word to use for what each of them knew to be a certainty—that in all other predicaments his twin would stand buff.