The Reluctant Widow (4 page)

“I know of no reason why you should be expected to oblige me,” he answered. He took his snuffbox from his pocket, and opened it. “You still have the advantage of me,” he remarked easily. “May I know your name?”

“My name is Rochdale,” she replied after a second’s hesitation. “Elinor Rochdale.” His hand remained poised above his open box; he looked up quickly, and repeated in an expressionless tone, “Rochdale.”

She was conscious of a heightening of the color in her cheeks. She said defiantly, “Of Feldenhall!”

He inclined his head in a gesture betokening nothing more than an indifferent civility, but she was very sure that he knew her history. She watched him inhale his snuff, and suddenly said, “You are correct in what you are thinking, sir: I am the daughter of a man who, between unlucky speculation and the gaming table, came to ruin, and shot himself.” If she had expected to embarrass him, she was doomed to disappointment. He restored his snuffbox to his pocket, remarking merely, “I should not have supposed it to have been necessary for Miss Rochdale of Feldenhall to pursue the calling of a governess, whatever her father’s misfortunes may have been.”

“My dear sir, I have not a penny in the world but what I have earned!” she said tartly. “I can readily believe it, but you are not, I fancy, without relatives.”

“Again you are correct! But I am the oddest creature! If I must be a drudge, as you have described me, I prefer to receive a wage for my labors!”

“You are certainly unlucky in your relatives,” he commented.

“Well,” she said candidly, “I cannot quite blame them, after all. It is no light matter to have a penniless girl foisted onto one, I am sure. And one, moreover, to whose name a disagreeable stigma is attached. You yourself know something of what it means to be whispered about. You should be able to understand my resolve not to cause either my relatives or my friends embarrassment. You will say that I might have called myself by some other name! I might perhaps have done so had I had less pride.”

“I should not say any such thing,” he answered calmly. “I will agree, however, that you have a great deal of pride—and some of it false.”

“False!” she exclaimed, quite taken aback.

“Certainly. It has led you to exaggerate the consequences of your father’s death.” “You cannot know the circumstances that led to it,” she said in a low voice. “On the contrary. But I have yet to learn that you were in any way concerned in them.” “Perhaps you are right, and I have allowed myself to be too much mortified. My first experience of how the world must look upon our affairs was an unhappy one. You must know that I was betrothed to a certain gentleman at the time of my father’s death who—who was excessively relieved to be released from his obligations.” She lifted her chin, adding, “Not that I cared a button for that, I assure you!”

He remained entirely unmoved. “How should you, indeed?”

She would have spurned any expression of pity, but she felt irrationally annoyed by this unfeeling response, and said rather sharply, “Well, it is no very pleasant thing to be jilted, after all!”

“Very true, but the knowledge that you were well rid of a bad bargain must soon have allayed your chagrin, I imagine.”

A reluctant twinkle came into her eye. “I have not the most distant guess, my lord, why the extreme good sense of your remarks should put me out of charity with you, but so it is!” she said. “You will do well to conduct me to your decent inn before I am provoked into answering you in a style quite unsuited to our different degrees!”

He smiled. “Why, I am sorry if I have vexed you, Miss Rochdale. But I cannot conceive that

expressions of sympathy on my part could in any way benefit you, or, in fact, be acceptable to you.”

She began to draw on her gloves. “How odious it is in you always to be so precisely right! Do your friends in general feel themselves to be remarkably foolish when they are with you?”

“As I am fortunate in having a good many friends, I believe not,” he replied gravely. She laughed, and rose to her feet. As she did so, a bell pealed vigorously, as though pulled by a very urgent hand. It startled her, and she turned her eyes toward Carlyon in a look of dismayed inquiry. He had risen when she did, and he moved toward the door, saying, “That is doubtless my cousin. You will not wish to meet him. Do not be alarmed! I will not let him come into this room.”

“It is his own house, after all!” she said, amused. “I suppose he will not eat me!” “Unlikely, I think. But he will probably be drunk, and I should be loath to subject you to any more annoyance than you have already suffered.”

The servant must have been nearer at hand than either of them knew, for before Carlyon could reach the door voices were heard in the hall, a hasty footstep sounded, and a tall, slender young gentleman fairly burst into the room, exclaiming in accents of heartfelt relief, “Oh, Ned, thank God you are here! I had nearly rid home, only that Hitchin told me in the very nick of time that you had driven over here! I am in the devil of a pucker! In fact, I don’t know what’s to be done, and I thought I had best come to you at once, even if you are not quite pleased with me!”

One glance at this fair-headed, fresh-faced youth, with his open blue eyes and tanned cheeks, had been enough to convince Miss Rochdale that whoever else he might be, he was not Carlyon’s dissolute cousin. A second glance was needed to enable her to discern an indefinable likeness in him to Carlyon, for it was not marked. He was plainly in considerable agitation, and he looked more than a little scared. Her experience of Carlyon, brief as it was, prevented her from feeling any surprise at his damping response to the young man’s impetuous speech.

“Yes, certainly it was the best thing to do,” he said. “But I cannot believe there is any occasion for all this commotion, Nicky. What have you been doing?” His young brother heaved a large sigh, and smiled blindingly at him. “Oh, Ned, you always make a fellow feel there is nothing so desperately bad after all! But indeed there is! I’m excessively sorry, but I have killed Eustace Cheviot!”

Chapter III

A shocked silence fell upon the room. Carlyon stood perfectly still, staring at his brother under suddenly frowning brows. Nicky returned his gaze, deprecatingly, but not unhopefully. He put Miss Rochdale strongly in mind of a puppy who, having chewed up his master’s shoes, was doubtful of winning approval.

It was Carlyon who broke the silence. “The devil you have!” he said slowly. “Yes,” Nicky said. “And I know you won’t like it, Ned, but indeed I never meant to do it! You see, it was—well, you know how he—”

“Just a moment, Nicky! Let me have this from the start! What are you doing in Sussex?” “Oh, I’ve been rusticated!” Nicky explained. “I was on my way home when—” “Why?” interrupted Carlyon.

“Well, it is nothing very bad, Ned. You see, there was a performing bear.” “Oh!” said Carlyon. “I see.”

Nicky grinned at him. “I knew you would! Keighley was with me—just kicking up a lark, you know! And, of course, when I saw that bear—well, I had to borrow it, Ned!” “Of course,” Carlyon agreed dryly.

“The Bagwig said I stole it, but that’s fudge! As though I would do such a thing! That made me as mad as fire, I can tell you! Well, I don’t mind his abusing me like a pickpocket for setting the brute on to tree two of the Nobs—it did, Ned! It was the most famous thing you ever saw in your life!”

“I dare say, but I didn’t see it.”

“No, and I wish you might have done so, for I do think you must have enjoyed it. Well, there it was, and of course I expected I should have to fork out my knocking-in money, or some such thing, and I didn’t care a fig for that. But then, as I say, the Dean would have it I had stolen the bear, in spite of my telling him that I had only borrowed it, and I fired up at last, and said I’d no need to steal bears, because if you knew I wanted one you would very likely give me one—”

“It is the last thing in the world I would give you.” “Well, I don

’t want one; I should not know what to do with it. But I dare say my saying that put him in a worse pet, for the long and the short of it is that I am rusticated for the rest of the term. But I don’t think the Bagwig was so very angry, you know, because for one thing he don’t like one of the Nobs the bear chased, and for another, I’ll go bail he had a twinkle in his eye, for I saw it. He’s a great gun!”

“Very well, and what happened next?”

“Oh, then, of course, I had to come down! Keighley drove me to London in his new phaeton. He has the prettiest pair of bays, Ned! Regular sixteen-mile-an-hour tits, and—” “Never mind that! I want to hear the rest of this story.”

“Oh, yes! Well, from London I had to come the rest of the way on the stagecoach to Wisborough Green—”

“Why, in heaven’s name?”

“Oh, pockets to let! To tell you the truth, when I’d paid my fare I’d only a couple of benders left.”

“That I can well believe, but could you not have gone to Mount Street?” “Yes, but I thought very likely John would be there, and you know what he is, Ned! He would have been prosing on and on, and I don’t mind if you take me to task, but I won’t have John preaching sermons to me, because he’s not my guardian, after all, and it only makes me mad!”

“You are quite out of luck: John is at home.”

“Yes, I know he is: Hitchin told me so. I wish he were not, for he is bound to pull a long face over what has happened, and say I had no business to have done it, just as though he would not have done it himself, which I know he must have, for with all his prosy ways he’s a right one, isn’t he, Ned?”

“Yes; and what is it that he must have done?”

“I was coming to that. I thought, when I reached Wisborough Green, that I would go into the Bull and borrow old Hitchin’s gig to take me up to the Hall. And Jem said he was in the coffee room, and I went in, and he was, and that damned fellow, Eustace, was there too. Everything would have been all right and tight had it not been for that, Ned!” “Was anyone else in the coffee room?”

“No, only Hitchin and me. Well, I was quite civil to Eustace, and he was too—to me, I mean. And Hitchin said I might borrow the gig, and while the nag was being harnessed would I have some supper? I was devilish hungry, I can tell you, and Hitchin had a rare ham there, so I said I would. And that’s when it all began. Because while I was eating the ham, there Eustace sat, grumbling himself into a fit of the sullens. You know how he does! I wasn’t paying much heed to him, and I would not have, only that he started on you, Ned.” He broke off, and his boyish countenance hardened. Miss Rochdale, curiously watching him, thought that he ground his teeth. “He said such things there was no bearing it!” “No, I see. Was he foxed, Nicky?”

Nicky gave this his consideration. “Well, he wasn’t as drunk as a wheelbarrow,” he explained. “Just a trifle bosky, you know. He always is. I warned him I’d not sit by while he abused you, but it was all to no purpose. He said—well, that’s no matter! I knocked him down—and so would John have done!”

“Yes, never mind that! Go on!”

“He never could bear to have his cork drawn, and I did—landed him a regular facer! He was ready to murder me! Picked himself up and came at me, and before you could turn round we were at it, milling away! I floored him again, and the table went over in the flurry, and all the plates and things were on the ground, and the big knife Hitchin used to carve the ham. By God, Ned, Eustace is a shocking loose screw! Do you know, he snatched up that knife and tried to stab me with it? We had the devil of a struggle, and there was Hitchin, trying to help me wrench the knife out of his hold, and only getting in the way, and—Oh, God, Ned, I don’t know how it happened, and I swear I never meant to do it! I had hold of the knife, and suddenly he let go, and whether he tripped, or it was Hitchin trying to grasp him—though I don’t mean to say it was anyone’s fault but mine!—but however it was he fell forward, and before I knew—before I had time to move—!” He broke off, covering his face with his hands.

“In fact, it was an accident?”

“Yes, it was an accident. Of course it was an accident! Why, is it likely I would—” “No, certainly not. But there is no need to be so agitated, if that is what happened. The case is not desperate.”

“Oh, Ned, do you think so indeed? Shall I have to stand my trial? Will they say I murdered Eustace? For I suppose that is what I have done, though I did not mean to.” “Nothing of the sort! Don’t be silly, Nicky! As for standing your trial, it won’t come to that. You will have to face a coroner’s inquest, but Hitchin’s evidence must clear you of blame.” “Oh, yes!” Nicky said naively. “Hitchin told me not to put myself in a pucker, because if it had been ten times as bad he would swear the devil out of hell for one of us!” “I dare say he may have said so, but you will do better not to repeat it.” “No, of course not. Besides, he has only to tell the truth, for it happened exactly as I have told you. And it is not that I am sorry he’s dead, because I’m not, but I never thought it would have been so horrid! When I think of the way that knife slid into Eustace I feel quite sick!” “No useful purpose is served by your thinking of it any more.”

“No. Well, I will not, but I can tell you, Ned, it almost makes me wish I had not been rusticated at all!”

At this point, Miss Rochdale, who had all the time been standing by the table, listening with gradually increasing appreciation to young Mr. Carlyon’s artless recital, was betrayed into uttering a sound between a choke and a gasp. It brought Carlyon’s head round quickly. He said, “We are both of us forgetful of our manners. You will allow me to introduce my brother Nicholas to you, Miss Rochdale. Nicky, you do not know Miss Rochdale, I think.” “Oh, no! I beg pardon! I did not immediately perceive—How do you do?” Nicky stammered, making his bow.