Lady John (22 page)

“No, Mamma,” Miss Casserley answered, dully.

“Here’s another caller for you, dearest. I shall join you in
just a few moments, sir. Please to make yourself comfortable in the meantime?
Perhaps my daughter will ring for some refreshment.” From the tone of
complacent condescension with which Lady Whelke urged the caller along to the
salon, Jane collected that the visitor was not someone her mamma regarded
highly.

The door opened and Quincy Haikestill entered, sober and
respectable in a brown broadcloth coat of plain cut and the most modest of
cravats.

“How do you do, sir?” Jane smiled weakly and her voice was a
trifle tremulous.

“My dear Miss Casserley, I came—that is, I called today to
inquire after your health. And your excellent mother’s as well, of course, I
trust I am not disturbing you? Your mother intimated that Lord Menwin was with
you.” Mr. Haikestill’s voice trembled meaningfully over the name, and his countenance
was rigidly disapproving.

“Yes, sir, he was with me, but he is gone now.” Unable to
contain her disgust entirely, Jane added, “He came to show me a snuffbox.”

From her tone Mr. Haikestill could have pardonably
understood that to offer such an article for the inspection of a lady was the
greatest possible impropriety. “A snuffbox?”

“For which he had paid over one hundred guineas!” Miss
Casserley added.

Now Mr. Haikestill began to understand that it was Lord
Menwin’s improvidence which was being discussed. “That is a prodigious sum, ma’am.
But I thought that you had told me that his lordship was financially
embarrassed?”

“He is!”
Overwhelmed at
last by her fate, Jane turned her head decorously away from Mr. Haikestill and
gave vent to the fullness of her feelings. She wept some several minutes before
Mr. Haikestill was overcome by his sympathy and moved to offer her his
handkerchief.

“Thank you,” Jane sniffled. Her blue eyes, rimmed now with
red, were so eloquent of misery that Haikestill was further emboldened. “I
think that this engagement does not make you happy,” he hazarded, and was
rewarded for his perspicacity by a fresh outbreak of tears. “Cannot you tell
your parents? Surely they would not force you to marry Lord Menwin?”

Miss Casserley was able only to mutter, “I cannot, I cannot.”
Whether this was meant to imply that she was unable to inform her parents of
her true feelings, or unable to continue in her engagement to Menwin, Mr.
Haikestill could not determine.

By and by, when Miss Casserley’s emotions seemed to have
spent themselves for the time being and she was sitting nearly upright again,
she apologized stiffly for her lamentable lack of control. “I assure you, sir,
that I am not accustomed to inflict my feelings on another,” she began, but Haikestill
cut her off.

“I am honored by your confidence in me, ma’am. I can see
that it would take great extremes of unhappiness to overcome your natural
reticence, but I earnestly entreat you to believe ...” The words seemed to dry
up in Haikestill’s mouth as he stared down at Miss Casserley, now cool and
austere, only the red rimming her eyes and an occasional shuddering breath
betraying the perturbation of a few minutes before. Mr. Haikestill was
resolved. “Miss Casserley,” he began forcefully. “I understand that I have no
right to say such a thing: indeed, I am fully conscious that I break every rule
of propriety in doing so. But I must say what I feel. I can only excuse myself
by telling you that the violence of my feelings overrules even my sense of what
is due to your consequence and my own, knowing that you are Another’s. But my
dear Miss Casserley, you must permit me to say how deeply, how greatly I esteem
you. And how I regret to see you plighted to one such as—” he paused direfully,
and the name was spat out: “Menwin.”

Far from being appalled by his presumption, Miss Casserley
regarded Mr. Haikestill with considerable warmth. “Oh, sir,” she sighed. She
drew her resolve from him and replied more fully.

“I am fully conscious of the honor you do me, dear sir. If
it were not that my parents had decreed me elsewhere I would answer you more
fully. As it is, I must look forward to a lifetime of unhappiness; it is my
duty to wed Lord Menwin. But Mr. Haikestill, I assure you that if that duty
were removed—”

“And if we were to present your parents with a
fait accompli?”
Haikestill asked gingerly, amazed
by his own temerity.

“A
fait accompli
? Such
as?” Jane encouraged breathlessly.

And Haikestill explained precisely what he had in mind. When
Lady Whelke entered the salon some minutes later, she found her daughter and
the visitor, Mr. Haikestill, deeply engaged in conversation. Lady Whelke
reserved her judgment on Mr. Haikestill, who seemed just short of shabby
genteel in his dress and in his manners. Still, she reasoned, had she not met
him at Tylmath House? Who was the Baroness Whelke to scorn one whom the Duchess
of Tylmath sponsored? Lady Whelke smiled and sailed forward to add her voice to
whatever was being discussed.

“We were speaking of holidays, Mamma,” Jane informed her. “I
spoke favorably of Devon, but Mr. Haikestill—M-Mr. Haikestill expresses a
preference for—for the Scottish mountains.”

Of course Lady Whelke had an opinion of her own, carefully
plagiarized from one she had heard the Countess of Jersey express only the week
before. Claire Whelke settled in to pronounce her views on the topic, and the tête-a-tête
between the caller and her daughter was successfully broken up.

o0o

Lord Menwin, on his departure from Hill Street, had had the
happy inspiration of seeking out a different jeweler from the one who had sold
him that unhappy snuffbox, and as a result he was able to sell the item with a
gratifying ten-guinea profit. That, Menwin reflected gloomily, was as much
profit as the entire day had brought. He retired to Brooks’ Club in St. James’s,
where he found the gloomiest corner possible in the bookroom, ordered a bottle
of Burgundy, and gave himself up to thought.

There was no doubt in his mind that all the charades and
plots masterminded by Judith Tylmath and her family were failing. Miss
Casserley appeared as unperturbedly disposed to have him to husband as ever
before. Downing the contents of his glass, Menwin considered the situation. The
more he considered, the less agreeable the future appeared. Lady Whelke had
begun of late to press for a date for the wedding, and even Lord and Lady
Mardries and his aunt Chloris had made discreet inquiries regarding the event.
While Menwin had not seen Olivia Temperer or any others of the Temperers since
the picnic to Richmond, he was fairly certain that Olivia’s impatience with
their charade must be as great as his own.

Over his fourth glass Menwin decided that there was only one
thing to be done: he must go to his grandfather and tell all. Explain
why
he could not marry Miss Casserley. Take
whatever abuse was hurled at his head (and Menwin was morally certain that
there would be a great deal of it) and resolve to live as frugally as possible
so as to reduce his debts as soon as possible. Then to Whelke House, to cry off
from his engagement to Miss Casserley. That was a truly painful idea; after
all, the announcement had been publicly made, and its termination must
therefore needs be also. Miss Casserley would consider herself jilted in the
eyes of the world, and whatever her private feelings, or lack of feelings
toward himself, Menwin reflected, she could not like to become so publicly
unbetrothed.

For a moment the thought made Menwin falter. Then another
thought, of marriage with Miss Casserley, and of a lifetime spent with her
beautiful, cold face smiling complacently across the breakfast table, turned
Menwin’s blood to ice and made him reach for the bottle again.

There was Olivia. Would she wish to marry an encumbered man
with a reputation as a jilter? Would some mud not cling to her if they married
too soon after his engagement was terminated?

Spirits sinking lower and lower, Menwin shifted in his
chair, reached for his glass, and was startled by a voice at his elbow that
shook him from his stupor.

“Damme, man, what’s to do? You look all despair.” Kit
Temperer drew a chair up and peered with cheerful solicitude at his friend.

Menwin regarded him with a bleary eye. “Go ’way,” he
muttered.

“Shan’t. You look in need of company, Matt. If you wanted
solitude you might as easily have gotten yourself foxed in the privacy of your
own home.” Then, as an elderly member peered disagreeably round at his noise,
Temperer rose and offered a hand to Menwin. “Come into the Game Room where we
can talk, Menwin.”

The look with which Lord Menwin favored Lord Christopher
would have sent a weaker man scurrying away. Temperer merely smiled and thrust
his hand down again. “Come along like a good fellow before they throw us both
out of the club for making a row.”

Distemperedly, Menwin rose and followed his friend.

“That’s the dandy. Now, what you need is a pot of coffee and
someone to talk with,” Kit prescribed. Having ordered the first of these
requisites, he settled back and prepared to offer the second. “Am I to assume
that your excessively Byronic manner has something to do with my sister Livvy?”

“Of course it has.” Menwin glowered.

“Had a turn up over some trifle? It ain’t like you to fall
into a fret over a quarrel with a member of the petticoat line, Matt—”

“Have the goodness, as it is your sister-at-law we are
discussing and not Harriette Willson or her like, to speak with a little less
jocularity, Christopher.”

Lord Kit regarded Menwin with respect. “Regularly jug-bit,
ain’t you? No, no, man, don’t go away. I’ll be serious as churchmice if you
wish it. You haven’t quarreled with Livvy, then?”

“Of course I haven’t. I have only just come to my senses and
realized that I cannot rely upon your mother or sisters or any of this idiotish
playacting to release me from my engagement. As a man of honor, which I suppose
myself to be, I must tell Miss Casserley myself that I do not wish to marry
her.”

Lord Christopher permitted himself a long, low whistle of
appreciation. All the necessary and unpleasant results of this course of action
occurred to him at once; after a pause he asked Menwin if perhaps he would not
like to continue the idiotish playacting just a trifle longer.

Sipping the very hot, strong coffee which had been placed
before him, Menwin sighed deeply. “No use, Kit. I’m not cut out to be a
play-actor, and Jane Casserley evidently does not care to whom she is married,
and has decided it had as well be myself as any other. Meanwhile I am
permitting her, and my family, and her family, to continue in the notion that I
mean to wed her. Even if Olivia had not returned to England I think I must have
decided sooner or later that Miss Casserley and I could not suit each other. It’s
a Devil of a coil, Kit, but I’ve made up my mind. I intend to go to my
grandfather tomorrow, and then to Whelke. If my grandfather refuses to cover my
debts I shall only be in the same straights I was in five months ago—nothing
worse, thank God.” A wry smile cut through the blackness of Menwin’s brow. “Come
to think of it, I am a whole ten guineas richer than I was.”

Kit regarded him blankly but Menwin gave no explanation.

“And Olivia?”

“I don’t know what will become of us,” Menwin admitted. “Even
if she says now that she will stay with me—marry me despite my reduced
circumstances, put up with the calumnies and
on dits
which will inevitably follow us—I don’t know that I ought to permit her
to injure herself in that fashion.”

“I don’t know that you could stop her, Matt. After all, the girl
is of full age and a widow to boot; she never struck me as an indecisive female.
Perhaps a bit too willing to wait upon the pleasure of others, but I think she
always knows her own mind.”

“My only hope,” Menwin continued, quite as if he had not
heard anything Kit said, “is that my grandfather and Whelke will want to pass
the whole thing off as quietly as possible. Then, in a few months, I might
consider going to Olivia and—”

Kit sighed. “I can see there is no hope to dissuade you.
Well then, if you wish a friend to lend you countenance through your ordeal, I
shall hold myself ready tomorrow. Just send to the house and I will join you—before you go to Whelke’s.”

“I go to my grandfather’s first,” Menwin told him thickly.

“Very well, then. To Mardries’s. And wait in the hallway to
retrieve the corpse once your grandsire has done with you, fair enough?”

Kit fixed his friend with a wry,
insistent smile. After a moment Menwin smiled in return. “About ten o’clock
tomorrow, then. If I don’t have the Devil of a head. You are probably a better
friend than I deserve, Kit.”

“Indubitably,” Lord Christopher agreed. “Put it to Livvy’s
account. I would do a great deal for my sister-at-law.”

Menwin sipped again, gingerly, at his coffee. “So would I.”

At ten the next morning Menwin, with Lord Christopher, set
out from Green Street for Montagu Square. Both gentlemen, having made something
of a batch of it the night before, were a little bleary-eyed; not even a
curative breakfast of blood-rare beef and several tankards of ale could totally
alleviate the pounding headaches and feelings of doom to which these two were
subject. They were, however, dressed neat as ninepence, knowing the Earl of
Mardries for a high stickler.

“You’re certain that this is the course you want to pursue,
Matt?” Lord Kit inquired, low voiced. “You might give m’mother’s plan another
day or so, mightn’t you?”

Menwin regarded his companion with fellow feeling. “Coming
up chary, Kit? You needn’t accompany me, you know. Kind in you to do it, but—”

“I’m up at this indecent hour, dressed for a call, so I’d as
well make one,” Kit grumbled cheerfully. “I just hope that Mardries can keep
his voice to a dull roar. I’ve the most uncanny feeling that a loud noise will
split my head open entirely.” Menwin sympathized with him, and was privately
dreading the tongue-lashing he was quite certain he would receive from his
grandfather. The walk from Green Street to Montagu Square was, however,
blessedly brief enough so that Menwin had no real chance to reconsider; when
his heart had nearly failed him he found himself at Mardries’s door.