False Colours (22 page)

‘Now, don’t be a pea goose!’ said the Dowager bracingly. ‘I should like to know what there is to cry about in that! I shall be very well satisfied if Cressy likes him well enough to marry him, for he’ll make her the kind of husband most of us wish for, and few of us have the good fortune to catch. Now, you be off, for whatever the. rest of ’em want you may depend upon it that Ripple’s thinking of nothing but his supper!’

Whatever secret longings Sir Bonamy may have been cherishing, he was far too well-mannered to allow these to appear. Lady Denville found him chatting urbanely with Lady Thatcham, who, under his benign influence, was fast coming to the conclusion that her husband’s freely-expressed contempt of him (and every other member of the Prince Regent’s set) was unjust. The game of speculation was coming to an end, with Cressy recovering some of her losses: a circumstance which she owed to the intervention of Cosmo, who had moved round the table to sit at her elbow. The stakes might be infinitesimal, but Cosmo could not bear to see her squandering her counters from what he called want of judgement, and what his disrespectful nephew later described as a want of huckstering instinct.

Informality was maintained at supper, for which lavish repast the Thatchams, in spite of demurring that a seven-mile drive lay before them, were persuaded to remain at Ravenhurst, but it did not extend to the dishes provided by Mr Dawlish, which ranged from lobsters to a succulent array of tarts, jellies and creams, upon which the younger members of the party regaled themselves with unabashed greediness. The Thatchams took their leave, Mr Edward Thatcham, gazing with youthful admiration at his hostess, informing her that he had spent the
jolliest
evening, and reverently kissing her hand. Lady Denville took her sister-in-law and Cressy up to bed; and Kit returned to the supper-room, where the three remaining gentlemen were sitting amongst the broken meats: Ambrose in the sulks, because his father had reproved him for allowing Kit to give him a glass of Fine Old Cognac; Cosmo delivering himself of a monologue, addressed to Sir Bonamy; and Sir Bonamy savouring the bouquet of his brandy, and nodding occasionally from an amiable wish to lead Cosmo into believing that he was attending to him. He turned his little round eyes towards Kit, and said: ‘Excellent supper! Very agreeable evening!’

‘Thank you, sir! But the credit goes to my mother,’ said Kit.

‘Very true! Very true! Wonderful woman! Never anyone like her, my boy!’ said Sir Bonamy, gustily sighing. He heaved himself round in his chair, groping in his pocket for his snuff-box. ‘In such high beauty, too! Doesn’t look a day older than when I first clapped eyes on her. Before your time, that was!’

Kit, recalling one of Fimber’s repeated admonitions, produced the snuff-box which had been placed by that worthy in his own pocket, opened it, and offered it to Sir Bonamy, saying: ‘Will you try some of my sort, sir?’

He knew immediately that in some way he had erred. Sir Bonamy’s unnervingly expressionless gaze remained riveted to the snuff-box for several seconds, before travelling upwards to his face. It remained fixed for several more seconds, but Sir Bonamy only said: ‘A pretty box, that. Purchased it in Paris, didn’t you, when you went there to meet your brother once?’

‘I believe I did,’ acknowledged Kit, not a muscle quivering in his face.

Sir Bonamy helped himself to a pinch. ‘One of Bernier’s,’ he said. ‘You showed it to me when you came home.’

He had, apparently, no further observations to make; but when, much later, he visited Kit in the huge room which was traditionally the bedchamber occupied by the Earls of Denville, Kit’s dismay was not attended by surprise. Fimber had just eased him out of his coat; but Sir Bonamy had already escaped from the restriction of his corsets, and his rigidly starched shirt-points, and was attired in a dressing-gown of thick brocade, of such rich colouring and such voluminous cut that his appearance, at all times impressive, was almost overpowering. ‘Came to have a word with you!’ he announced.

Fimber, his face wooden, withdrew into the dressing-room; and Kit, feeling that his sheet-anchor had vanished, said: ‘Why, certainly, sir! Is something amiss?’

‘That snuff of yours is
dry!
’
said Sir Bonamy, staring very hard at him.

‘Good God, sir, is it? I do most humbly beg your pardon!’

‘I’ll drop a word of warning in your ear, my boy!’ said Sir Bonamy, ignoring this interpolation. ‘I don’t know what sort of wheedle you’re trying to cut, and I don’t ask you to tell me, because it’s no affair of mine, but if you want to bamboozle people into thinking you’re young Denville, don’t offer ’em dry snuff, and don’t use two hands to open your box!’

‘So that was it!’ said Kit. ‘I was afraid I had betrayed myself, but I didn’t know how!’

‘Damme, Kit, Evelyn set himself to copy Brummell’s way of handling a snuff-box! One hand only, and no more than a flick of the thumb-nail to open it! You remember that!’

‘I will, sir,’ Kit promised. ‘Thank you! You must feel that I owe you an explanation—’

Sir Bonamy checked him with an upraised hand. ‘No, I don’t!’ he said hastily. ‘I’ve told you already it’s no affair of mine! I’d as lief it wasn’t, too, because it looks to me like a damned havey-cavey business.’

‘It isn’t quite as havey-cavey as it must seem,’ Kit told him.

‘If it’s
half
as havey-cavey as it seems I don’t want to have anything to do with it!’ replied Sir Bonamy, not mincing matters. ‘And from what I know of you and Evelyn—not that I came here to pull a crow with you, for I didn’t! What’s more, you won’t goad me into it, my boy, so don’t think it! If Evelyn hasn’t been able to wind me up in all the years he’s been trying to do it, it stands to reason you can’t.’

‘But I don’t wish to, sir!’ expostulated Kit mildly.

‘Now I come to think of it,’ conceded Sir Bonamy, ‘
you
never did take so much pepper in your nose at the sight of me as that whisky-frisky brother of yours, so I dare say that’s true. As a matter of fact, that’s what made me suspicious: you shouldn’t have looked as if you was glad to see me! Ought to have known better: civil enough, young Denville, but pokers up a trifle!’

‘Does he? I’ll comb his hair for it!’ said Kit. He smiled. ‘In any event I shouldn’t have done so: I’m by far too grateful to you for coming to support us! I knew, too, that I’d nothing to fear even if you did recognize me.’

‘No, no, nothing at all!’ Sir Bonamy assured him. ‘But I’m not as young as I was, Kit, and it’s no use thinking, if you’ve got hold of a wolf by one ear, that I’m going to grasp the other, because I won’t do it! So don’t you tell me anything! If your mother wishes me to know the whole she’ll tell me fast enough, bless her!’ He added uneasily: ‘No need to edge her on to tell me, mind!’

Kit reassured him on this head; and he went off, feeling that he had done as much for his young friend as could have been expected of any man of his years and elevated position.

Lady Denville, when informed next day of this interlude, not only went into a peal of laughter, but showed a regrettably mischievous desire to devise some way of entangling her hapless adorer in an imbroglio which she proudly claimed to be of her own making.

‘No, Mama!’ said Kit firmly. ‘You’ll do no such thing! We’re devilish obliged to the old court card, and I won’t have him roasted! No one could blame him for wanting to steer clear of this affair: if we save our groats without kicking up the very deuce of a scandal it’s more than I’d bargain for!’

‘I won’t do anything you don’t like, dearest,’ she promised. ‘But you mustn’t be so downhearted!’

‘Not downhearted! Henhearted!’

‘No, no, Kit!’ she protested, dismayed to hear him make such an admission. ‘Never
that!
Besides, why should you be? I own that there may be
difficulties
ahead, and, of course, our situation is often
most
awkward, but we shall come about!’

‘What makes you think so, love?’ he asked, regarding her in affectionate exasperation.

‘One always does—and particularly when one thinks one is quite knocked up. Only consider how many times
I
have been in the briars! I have
always
contrived to bring myself home, even when my case appeared to be desperate! Now, why are you laughing, wicked one? It’s
perfectly
true! The thing is that it’s no use for us to fret ourselves over what can’t be helped. Depend upon it, something will happen, or I shall have a notion suddenly, which will bring us off prosperously. I very often do, you know—really
nacky
ones!’

‘I know you do,’ he said. ‘All I beg of you is that you won’t have one without telling me!’

‘Dearest, how can you be so foolish? I shall be
obliged
to tell you, because if I do think of a clever scheme you will have to bear your part in it.’

‘That’s exactly what I’m afraid of,’ he said frankly.

‘You’re hipped, and I know why,’ she said. ‘It was the lobster! I felt a trifle queasy myself, in the middle of the night, but I have some excellent powders, which Dr Ainslie gave me, so I swallowed one, and was right again in a trice. Come up to my dressing-room, poor boy, and I’ll mix one for you!’

‘No, Mama, it was
not
the lobster!’

‘Very well, dearest, I won’t tease you—though I assure you the powders aren’t in the least nasty. Don’t be in a worry, will you? When Evelyn comes home everything will be tidy again, remember!’

‘You know, Mama, we have been saying that since the start of this masquerade—and God knows I wish he would come home!—but does it ever occur to you that when he does we shall find ourselves in a worse hobble than ever?’

‘It
must
have been the lobster!’ exclaimed her ladyship.

He laughed, but said: ‘No, do, pray, consider, love! If Evelyn were to walk in today, what are we to do? I could disappear, but not even Ambrose would be deceived for more than half-an-hour—far less Lady Stavely! It’s one thing to hoax people for an evening, quite another to do so in such circumstances as these! At the outset, none of them knew me very well and Lady Stavely not at all. But they know me now! They couldn’t meet me at breakfast, and Evelyn at dinner, and not detect the difference between us!’

‘No, very true!’ she said, much struck. ‘That
is
very awkward! I wonder why it should not have occurred to me? We must lose no time in trying to hit upon a—Oh, but I see just how to overcome the difficulty! Evelyn must pretend to be you, of course!’

Mr Fancot, declaring that he had now received a settler, went off, dutifully trying to think of some way of entertaining his male guests. Like the Dowager, Sir Bonamy (except under the press of extraordinary circumstances) never left his bedroom until noon; so when Kit learned from Norton that Mr Cliffe had gone out with Mr Ambrose, to see how he had come on under the gamekeeper’s tuition, his thoughts turned, very naturally, to the ladies. His search for his aunt could not have been described as more than perfunctory; but he had the great good fortune, as he stood in the hall, wondering where to look for Miss Stavely, to see her coming down the wide staircase. She was charmingly dressed in a simple, high-necked gown of French muslin, but just as he was thinking how well she looked, he saw that there was a pucker between her brows, and a troubled expression in her eyes. He said quickly: ‘What is it, Cressy? Something has happened to vex you?’

She paused looking down at him, and hesitated for a moment before answering. Then the crease disappeared from her brow, and she smiled, and descended the last stairs, saying: ‘Well, yes! That is to say, it
has
vexed me, but not nearly as much as it has vexed Grandmama! I am afraid it has made her out of reason cross, but I
have
convinced her that it is absurd to lay the blame at poor God-mama’s door! Or at Papa’s! Neither of them would do such a thing! It is one of Albinia’s high pieces of meddling, of course—trying to clinch the matter! I collect you haven’t yet seen the London papers?’

He shook his head; and she held out to him the journal she was carrying. As he took it, he saw that it was folded open at a page largely devoted to social announcements and discreetly phrased
on-dit
s. He looked quickly up, his brows asking a question. She answered it only by wrinkling her nose distastefully, and indicating with her forefinger the paragraph to which she wished to draw his attention. It stated, after enumerating the various persons of consequence to be found recruiting nature at Worthing, that the Dowager Lady Stavely (a well-known summer visitor to that elegant resort) was this year absent from the scene, having taken her granddaughter, the Hon. Cressida Stavely, to Ravenhurst Park, the principal seat of the Earl of Denville, where they were being entertained by the noble owner, and his mother, the Dowager Countess. The writer of this titillating paragraph understood, coyly, that an Interesting Announcement was shortly to be expected from this quarter.

‘My mother never sent this to the paper!’ Kit exclaimed, flushing with annoyance. ‘Or anything that could have given rise to such a piece of impertinence!’

‘No, of course she did not! I haven’t the least doubt of its being Albinia’s doing—trying to force my hand! Furthermore,’ added Cressy, brooding darkly over it, ‘I shall own myself astonished if I don’t discover that she exerted herself to the utmost to persuade my father to insert a notice announcing that I had become engaged to marry the Earl of Denville! What a paper-skull she is! She should have known him better! You may imagine how much it has set up Grandmama’s bristles!’ She began to laugh. ‘I don’t know which has enraged her most: the detestably sly hint, or Albinia’s impudence in having presumed to take it upon herself to give the
Post
information about
her
movements!’