Venetia (19 page)

“He wasn’t. Unless I am much mistaken, it’s T who am responsible for today’s outburst, not you. The silly young nod-cock has been wanting to murder me from the moment he first clapped eyes on me.”

She turned her eyes towards him. “Yes, he has. Oh dear, I do trust he won’t do anything foolish!”

He smiled. “That’s past praying for, but it isn’t his own life he is planning to end! Don’t look so concerned! From what I have seen of him I’d wager a handsome sum on the certainty that before he reaches Ebbersley the worst of his present pangs will be over, and he will be deriving great satisfaction from a vision of my lifeless corpse stretched on the ground—at a distance of twenty yards. Or even of his own. Lord, yes, of course his own! That would ensure a lifetime of remorse for you, my cruel fair, and for me the execration of all. I should be obliged to fly the country, and serve me right! Even my seconds would shun me, for if I didn’t fire before the drop of the handkerchief, or something equally dastardly, you may depend upon it that I should in some way or other cut a very contemptible figure, while
he
won their pity and admiration by his unshakeable calm and noble bearing.”

She could not help laughing, but she said rather anxiously: “I know that’s what he meant, when he said you should hear from him, but
surely
he wouldn’t do anything as silly as that? For when he thinks it over— No, that’s just what he
won’t
do! If he sends you a challenge,
must
you accept it?”

“What, accept a challenge from a whelp who hasn’t yet cut his milk teeth? No, you absurd girl! I most emphatically must
not
!”

“Well, thank goodness for that!” she said, relieved. “Not but what he deserves a sharp lesson! He very nearly made me drop these unfortunate kittens, mauling me about in that detestable way! There is
nothing
I dislike more!”

“I agree that he needs a lesson. I should rather suppose it to have been his first attempt. He ought, of course, to have got rid of the livestock,” said Damerel, taking the basket out of her hand, and setting it down, “for while you were preoccupied with their safety what could he expect but a rebuff? Once they were disposed of he should have taken you in his arms, like
this,
and not as though he were a bear, bent on hugging you to death. Nor am I in favour of dabbing kisses all over a girl’s face. If you cannot persuade her, by a ruse, to look up, you should make her do so, with a hand under her chin—
thus,
my clear delight!”

She had offered no resistance, and she lifted her face now without the urge of his hand. She was blushing a little, but she looked up into his eyes very willingly, her own shyly smiling.

He too was smiling, but as he stared down at her she saw the smile fade, and an intent, searching look take its place. He was still holding her, but he seemed to stiffen. She heard the sharp intake of his breath, and, the next instant, Aubrey’s voice, shouting his name, and then she was no longer in his arms, and he had turned away to answer Aubrey’s call. She looked doubtfully at him, for it had seemed to her that it had not been Aubrey’s voice which had made him refrain from kissing her but some change in his own mind.

Aubrey came limping between the trees towards them. “What the deuce are you doing here?” he asked. “Ribble said you had been asking for me.”

“Very true, but as he thought you were in the library and I knew you were not I abandoned the quest. I only wanted to give you Reid’s
Intellectual Powers,
and I left it on your desk.”

“Oh, good! Thank you! I was in the gunroom, as Ribble might have guessed, if he ever took the trouble to think. By the by, I found that passage: it
was
Virgil, but in the
Georgics,
not the fourth
Eclogue.
Come up to the house, and I’ll show you!”

“I’ll take your word for it. I can’t stay now. I have an uneasy feeling, moreover, that if I linger I may be called upon to drown a litter of kittens and I prefer to leave that task to you!”

“Is that what brought you here?” enquired Aubrey, of his sister. “Yes, I remember now: you said something about it at breakfast, didn’t you?” He cast a cursory glance at the orphans, and added: “Give ‘em to Fingle: he’ll drown ‘em for you.”

“For shame! Have you
no
sensibility?” Damerel said lightly. He held out his hand to Venetia. “I must go. He’s right, you know: you’ll never rear them!” He kept her hand in his for a moment, and then, as though yielding to compulsion, raised it to his lips and kissed it. Their eyes met only fleetingly, but she saw in his the answer to the question in her heart, and the tiny doubt that had disturbed her happiness vanished.

It struck Fingle, however, covertly observing Damerel as he saddled up for him, that his lordship was looking uncommonly grim. He had generally a pleasant word and a smile for anyone who performed a service for him, but he seemed to have nothing to say on this occasion beyond a curt Thank you when he took the bridle in his hand, and swung himself into the saddle. He did not forget to bestow his usual
douceur
upon Fingle, but no smile went with it: he seemed to be thinking of something else, and nothing so very agreeable either, to judge by the frown on his face, thought Fingle.

Damerel rode slowly back to the Priory, for a considerable part of the way with a slack rein, allowing the gray to walk. The frown did not lift from his brow; rather it deepened; and it was not until Crusader, startled by the sudden uprising of a pheasant, stopped dead, throwing up his head and snorting, that he was jerked out of his abstraction. He admonished Crusader, but leaned forward to pat his neck as well, because he knew the fault was his. “Old fool!” he said. “Like your master—who is something worse than a fool.
Would she could make of me a saint, or I of her a sinner—
Who the devil wrote that? You don’t know, and I’ve forgotten, and in any event it’s of no consequence. For the first part it’s too late, old friend, too late! And for the second—it was precisely my intention, and a rare moment this is to discover that if I could I would not!
Come
up!”

Crusader broke into a trot, and was kept to it, until, rounding a bend in the lane that brought the main gates of the Priory within view, Damerel saw a solitary horseman, walking his horse, and ejaculated: “Damn the boy!”

Young Mr. Denny, looking over his shoulder, braced himself, and wheeled about, and took up a position in the centre of the lane with the evident intention of disputing the right of way if his quarry should try to elude him. The set of his jaw was pugnacious, but he also looked to be suffering a considerable degree of embarrassment, which, indeed, he was.

Impetuosity had betrayed him into a false position from which he could see no way of extricating himself with credit. Leaving Undershaw on the crest of his fury he had indulged for a time in very much the sort of imaginings which Damerel had described to Venetia; but even such wrath as his could not be maintained at fever-heat for long. Thanks to Damerel’s dawdling return to the Priory his had subsided into resentment some time before the gray horse came into sight, and for a full half hour he had been trying to make up his mind what to do, and without once allowing it to wander into the realm of fancy. From the moment when it occurred to him that the humiliation he had suffered was the direct result of his own misconduct the affair had been too serious for grandiose dreams. He suddenly perceived that Damerel had played the part he had imagined for himself: it was the villain who had rescued the lady from the hero. So appalling was this realization that for several minutes he could see no other solution to his troubles than instant flight from Yorkshire, and a future spent in obscurity, preferably at the other end of the world. His next and more rational impulse was to abandon his plan of challenging Damerel to a duel; and he had actually started for home when another hideous thought entered his head: he had addressed fatal words to Damerel, and if he did not make them good Damerel would believe that he had failed to do so because he was afraid. So he turned back again, because whatever else Damerel might say of him he was determined he should never be able to say that he had no more pluck than a dunghill cock. The challenge must be delivered, but try as he would Oswald could not recapture his eagerness. An uneasy suspicion that persons more familiar with the Code of Honour than himself would condemn his action as grossly improper nagged at him; and when he placed himself in Damerel’s path he would have given everything he possessed to have been a hundred miles away.

Damerel pulled the gray up, and surveyed his youthful foe sardonically. “All that is needed to complete the picture is a mask and a pair of horse-pistols,” he remarked.

“I have been waiting for you, my lord!” said Oswald, gritting his teeth.

“I see you have.”

“I imagine your lordship must know why! I said—I told you that you should hear from me!”

“You did, but you’ve had time enough to think better of it. Try for a little wisdom, and go home!”

“Do you think I’m afraid of you?” Oswald demanded fiercely. “I’m not, my lord!”

“I can see no reason why you should be,” said Damerel. “You must know that there’s not the least possibility of my accepting a challenge from you.”

Oswald flushed. “I know nothing of the sort! If you mean to say I’m unworthy of your sword I’ll take leave to tell you, sir, that I’m as well-born as you!”

“Don’t rant! How old are you?”

Oswald glared at him. There was a derisive gleam in the eyes which scanned him so indifferently, and it filled him with a primitive longing to smash his fist between them. “My age is of no consequence!” he snapped.

“On the contrary: it is of the first consequence.”

“
Here
it may be! I don’t regard that, and you need not either! I have been about the world a little, and visted places where—” He stopped, suddenly recollecting that he was talking to a man who had travelled widely.

“If you have visted places where men of my years accept challenges from boys who might well be their sons you must have strayed into some pretty queer company,” remarked Damerel.

“Well, anyway, I’m reckoned to be a fair shot!” said Oswald.

“You terrify me. On what grounds do you mean to issue this challenge?”

The angry young eyes held his for an instant longer, and then looked away.

“I won’t press you for an answer,” said Damerel. “Wait!” Oswald blurted out, as Crusader moved forward. “You shan’t fob me off like that! I know I ought not to have— I never meant—I don’t know how I came to— But there was no need for
you
to
—
”

“
Go
on!” said Damerel encouragingly, as Oswald broke off. “No need for me to rescue Miss Lanyon from a situation which she was plainly not enjoying? Is that what you mean?”

“Damn you, no!” Oswald sought for words to express the hopeless tangle of his thoughts; none came to him, only the age-old cry of youth: ‘‘You don’t understand!”

“You may ascribe the astonishing guard I have so far kept over my temper to the fact that I do,” was the rather unexpected reply. “Patience, however, was never numbered amongst my few virtues, so the sooner we part the better. I am very sorry for you, but there’s nothing I can do to help you recover from these pangs, and your inability to open your mouth without going off into rodomontade does rather alienate my sympathy, you know.”

“I don’t want your damned sympathy!” Oswald flung at him, intolerably stung. “
One
thing you can do, my lord! You can stop trying to give Venetia a slip on the shoulder!” He saw the flash in Damerel’s eyes, and hurried on recklessly: “W-walking into her house as though it were your own, cajoling her with your man-of-the-town ways, c-cutting a wheedle with her because she’s too innocent to know it’s all a rig, and you’re bamboozling her! T-talking to me as if I was the loose-screw! I m-may have lost my head but
I
mean honestly by her! And you needn’t think I don’t know it’s uncivil to say things like this to you, because I do, and I don’t care a rush, and if you choose to nab the rust you may do so—in fact, I hope you
will
!
—
And I don’t care if you tell my father I’ve been uncivil to you
either
!”

Damerel had been looking a little ugly, but this sudden anticlimax dispelled his wrath, and made him laugh. “Oh, I won’t proceed to such extreme measures as that!” he said. “If there were a horse-pond at hand—! But there isn’t, and at least you’ve made me a speech without any high-flown bombast attached to it. But unless you have a fancy for eating your dinner with your plate on the mantelpiece for the next few days don’t make me any more such speeches!”

Oswald gave a gasp of outrage. “Only dismount, and we’ll try that!” he begged.

“My deluded youth, that is being
more childish valourous than manly wise:
I’m sure you’re full of pluck, and equally sure that it would be bellows to mend with you in rather less than two minutes. I’m not a novice, you see. No, keep your mouth shut! It is now my turn to make a speech! It will be quite short, and, I trust, quite plain! I’ve borne with you because I haven’t forgotten the agonies of first love, or what a fool
I
made of myself at your age; and also because I perfectly understand your desire to murder me. But when you have the infernal impudence to tell me I can stop trying to seduce Miss Lanyon you’ve gone very far beyond the line of what I’ll take from you! Only her brother has the right to question my intentions. If he chooses to do it I’ll answer him, but the only answer I have for you is contained in the toe of my boot!”