“Ivo, did you, or did you not make violent love to her, and tell her that if she played the coquette with you after you were married it would be very much the worse for her?” Serena demanded.

“Oh, not then!” he replied coolly. “That was later! God knows what she thought I had in store for her, little fool!”

“Oh, how I wish she had slapped your face!” raged Serena.

“So did I wish it!” he retorted. “Lord, Serena, I even made her think I should be such a jealous husband that she would do better to marry a Bluebeard! I ran the gamut of impatience, jealousy, intemperate passion, veiled threats, and nothing I could do or say outweighed my coronet!”

“In her mother’s eyes!”

“Oh, yes! I don’t deny that woman had a good deal to do with it! But make no mistake about it, Serena!—until I convinced Emily that she would not enjoy all that stuff by half as much as she had thought she would, I could have been as brutal as I chose, and she would still have married me!”

She gave a gasp. “Delford! Ivo, you—you fiend! When she told me about that visit—the pomp and the ceremony you overwhelmed her with—the people you filled the house with—the formality you insisted on—I thought that either she was exaggerating to impress me, or that you had run mad!”

He grinned at her. “You never saw such a party! I had the state apartments opened, and shut my own rooms up, and dug out the gold plate, and—”

“How you can stand there and boast to me—! No wonder Emily stared at me when I told her you had no turn for ceremony!”

“Grandeur she wanted, and grandeur I gave her—full measure, and brimming over! Lady Laleham revelled in it, but Emily didn’t. That was when I saw the scales begin to tip. Then she was ill—by the bye, Serena, that was the best thing I’ve ever heard Gerard say! I told him Emily had been suffering from an attack of influenza, and damme if he didn’t rip back at me that it was more likely an attack of the Marquis of Rotherham! I never thought the boy had it in him to land me such a doubler!”

“Or to elope with Emily?” she demanded. “Was that your doing too? I can believe you capable even of that!”

“No, it never entered my head that he had enough spirit for such a stroke as that. All I did was to try whether I could sting him into coming here, and enacting his tragedy to Emily. He prated about the attachment that had existed between them, and for anything I knew it might have been true. If it was true, and he had enough courage to come here in defiance of me, I thought he might be the very thing that was wanted to weigh the scales completely down against that damned coronet. I gave him a couple of days’ grace, and then sent Emily a letter, calculated—as you so correctly pointed out to me, my clever one!—to scare her out of her wits. I can’t say I expected an elopement, though.”

“And if you had? Do you expect me to believe that you would not still have used the wretched boy in that unprincipled way?”

To her seething anger, he appeared to consider this quite dispassionately for a moment or two. “No, I couldn’t have helped him to a Gretna Green marriage,” he decided.

“This is something indeed! No doubt, if I had not frustrated that crazy scheme, you would now be posting north to do it yourself!”

“What I should be doing at this moment, if you had not wrecked everything with your damned meddling, would be thanking God for deliverance!” he returned trenchantly. “What I thought to find here was Emily playing Juliet to Gerard’s Romeo! His heroics may not appeal to me, but they are just the thing to put a little spirit into her! All she needed to make her cry off by the time her mother sent her here, was someone to support her! The fool that I was, I believed I could rely on you to scotch what you must have seen was the worst marriage ever! Very free you are with your condemnations of what I did, you shrew! Reserve some of your censure for your own behaviour! Instead of telling the chit she had better go hang herself than cling like a damned limpet to a man you knew would make her a hellish husband, you did all you could to persuade her I had all the amiable qualities which no one knows better than you I have not! By the time Gerard burst in on me, I knew you were failing me, but that you were ranged on the side of the Laleham harpy I never dreamed! What was in that red head of yours, my sweetest scold? Spite?”

Quick as a flash she struck at him, but he was quicker still, and caught her wrist in mid-air. “Oh, no, you don’t! You’ll hit me when I choose to let you, and at no other time, Serena! Why did you try to push me into that marriage? Answer me, damn you!”

“I never pushed you into anything!” she replied pantingly. “Wiser men than you have fallen in love with pretty featherheads! You to talk to me of spite! It never entered my head that you had offered for Emily because you wanted to be revenged on me, and hoped I should be hurt! You have gone your length, Rotherham! I may be every one of the things you are so obliging as to call me, but the only thought I had was to save you from the humiliation of being twice jilted! You may let me go: I would not touch you, any more than I would touch a toad!”

He laughed. “Wouldn’t you? We’ll see that! Now, you listen to me, my girl! There’s nothing I should like better than to continue quarrelling with you, but thanks to your well-meant but cork-brained efforts on my behalf the tangle is now past unravelling, and must be cut! When I’ve done that, I’ll come back, and you may revile me to your heart’s content!”

“Don’t you dare set foot inside this house again!” she said.

“Try if you can keep me out!” he advised her, and let her wrist go, and strode out of the room, a little too quickly for Lybster, hovering in a disinterested fashion in the narrow hall. “What a rare day’s entertainment for you!” he said sardonically.

“I beg your lordship’s pardon?” said Lybster, the picture of bewildered dignity.

“You may well! Inform Lady Spenborough that I shall be dining here tonight!”

“Yes, my lord.”

Serena was in the doorway, her eyes flashing green fire. “You will on no account admit Lord Rotherham into this house, Lybster!”

“No, my lady,” said Lybster, moving to the street door, and opening it for Rotherham.

Serena turned towards the stairs. Fanny, on the first landing, whisked herself back into the drawing-room, and softly closed the door. “There! You heard what she said!” she whispered to Major Kirkby.

“Yes, and I heard what he said,” he replied.

Serena’s hasty steps sounded outside. Fanny looked anxiously towards the door, but Serena passed on, and up the next flight. “Oh, dear, I fear she is in one of her rages!” said Fanny. “What shall I do? Oh, what a dreadful day this is!”

He smiled. “No, I think not, love. If I were you, I would do what I am going to do: retire to change for dinner!”

“Hector, you don’t mean to leave me to dine with those two, she cried,” aghast.

“Not I! Do you think I have no interest in the outcome of this battle? I too am dining with you, my love!” he said.

23

Admitted into Mrs Floore’s house, Rotherham had barely time to hand his hat to the butler before a door opened at the back of the hall, and Lady Laleham came out, dressed in all the elegance of figured silk and lace, and wreathed in smiles. “Ah, dear Lord Rotherham!” she pronounced. “I knew you might be depended upon to call again! Such a sad mischance that you should have found no one at home when you came this afternoon! But you must not blame us, you know, for you forgot to tell Emily which day you meant to arrive in Bath! I hope I see you well?”

“My health, I thank you, ma’am, is excellent. I cannot, however, say as much for my temper, which has been exasperated beyond anything which I am prepared to endure!” he replied, in his harshest voice.

She laid the tips of her fingers on his arm, in a fleeting gesture of sympathy. “I know,” she said, considerably to his surprise. “Will you come into the morning-room? You will, I know, forgive my mother for not receiving you: she is elderly, and, alas, not capable of exertion!”

“The person I wish to see, Lady Laleham, is not your mother, but your daughter!”

“Exactly so!” she smiled, preceding him into the morning-room. “And here she is!”

He strode into the room, and paused, looking grimly at his prospective bride. She was standing beside a large wing-chair, one trembling hand resting on its back, her eyes huge in her white face, and her breathing uneven. She looked very young, very pretty, and very apprehensive, and she showed no disposition to come forward to greet her betrothed until her mother said, in a voice of honeyed reproof: “Emily dear!” After that, she advanced, and said: “How do you do?” putting out her hand.

“Effusive!” said Rotherham. “You must not behave as though I were your whole dependence and delight, you know!”

“She is a little tired,” explained Lady Laleham, “and she has been a very silly, naughty child, which she knows she must confess to you.”

His eyes went to her face, an arrested expression in them.

“L-Lady Serena said I n-need not t-tell, Mama!”

“We are very much indebted to Lady Serena, my love,” Lady Laleham returned smoothly, “but you will allow Mama to know best what you should do.” She met Rotherham’s fierce stare with perfect coolness, a faint smile on her painted lips. “The poor child is afraid that you will be very angry with her, Lord Rotherham, but I have assured her that where there is full confession there must always be forgiveness, particularly when it is accompanied by deep repentance.”