Джорджетт Хейер - Cousin Kate

“Oh, my God, what a muttonhead! What a damned, well-meaning clunch!” exclaimed Philip bitterly.

“Yes, but there’s nothing to say the boy wasn’t shot in the neck,” said Mr Templecombe. “And if it weren’t for the doctor’s continued presence at Staplewood, there’d be a good deal less scandal-broth brewed! Lady Broome says he’s there on Sir Timothy’s account, but that won’t fit! We all know he was sent for when Torquil took the smallpox, and dashed nearly slipped his wind, and that was before Sir Timothy got to be so feeble! Well, there’s a nasty ondit being whispered over the tea-cups: daresay you know what it is!”

“I can guess! That Delabole is Minerva’s lover? I don’t think it’s true, but true or not it was bound to be said,” replied Philip indifferently.

“Yes,” agreed Mr Templecombe. “The thing is she ain’t over and above popular, dear boy! And another thing that has people in a puzzle—well, it has me in a puzzle too!—is why the devil she brought Miss Malvern to Staplewood. Seems an odd start!” Receiving no answer to this, he said, with a shrewd glance at Philip: “Very agreeable girl, ain’t she?”

“Very,” agreed Philip.

“Got a great deal of countenance,” persevered Mr Templecombe.

“Yes.”

“Oh, very well!” said Mr Templecombe, incensed. “If you don’t choose to tell me you’re tail over top in love with her, it’s all one to me! I may not be one of the tightish clever ’uns, but I’ve got eyes in my head, and I know what’s o’clock!”

Kate lay awake for a long time after she had blown out her candle that night, trying to think what she ought to do; but although she had longed all the evening for the opportunity to consider her problems in the seclusion of her own room, she found herself quite unable to pursue any very consecutive or useful line of thought. When she tried to think dispassionately about Philip’s proposal, and to weigh in the balance the possible advantages to him of the marriage against the certain disadvantages, her mind refused to remain fixed, but strayed into foolish recollections: how he had looked when he had first met her; how his smile transformed his face; what he had said to her in the rose-garden; what he had said in the shrubbery; what he had said in his curricle; and what he had looked like on all these occasions. The mischief was that no sooner had his image imposed itself on her mind’s eye than she was wholly unable to banish it, which was not at all conducive to impartial consideration. She came to the conclusion that she was too tired to think rationally, and tried to go to sleep. When she had tossed and turned for half an hour, she told herself that it was the moonlight which was keeping her awake, and she slid out of bed to draw the blinds across the unshrouded windows. Every night Ellen shut the windows, and drew the blinds; every night, when Ellen had left her, she flung up the windows, and swept back the blinds; and every morning Ellen, who had a deeply inculcated belief in tie baneful influence of the night air, and seemed to be incapable of understanding that her young mistress had become inured to it during the years she had spent in the Peninsula, remonstrated with her, and prophesied all manner of ills which were bound to spring from admitting into the room the noxious night airs. Failing to convince Ellen that she could not sleep in a stuffy room, Kate had adopted the practice of opening her windows when Ellen had carefully closed the curtains round the bed, and withdrawn to her own airless and tiny bedchamber.

The wind had died with the sun, and it was a hot, June night, so still that Kate could almost have supposed that a storm was brewing. But the sky was cloudless, with the moon, approaching the full, sailing serenely in a sky of dark sapphire. Nothing seemed to be stirring abroad: not even an owl hooted; and the nightingales, which had enchanted Kate when she had first come to Staplewood, had been silent for several weeks. Kate stayed for a moment by one of the windows, gazing out upon the moonlit gardens, wondering if Philip had yet returned from Freshford House, and listening for the sound of horses trotting up the avenue. Ghostly in the distance, the stable-clock struck the hour. She listened to it, counting the strokes, and could hardly believe it when it stopped at the eleventh, for it seemed to her that she had been lying awake for hours. She had never felt less like sleeping; and, after one look at the crumpled bedclothes, drew a chair to the window, and sat down, wishing that a breeze would get up to relieve the oppressiveness of the atmosphere. The house was wrapped in silence, as though everyone in it but herself was asleep. She concluded that Lady Broome must be better, until her ears caught the sound of someone coming on tiptoe along the gallery, and guessed that the doctor was on his way to take a last look at his patient. Or had he done so, and was he creeping back to his quarters in the West Wing? It had seemed to her that the footsteps were coming from the direction of her aunt’s bedchamber. A board creaked outside her door, and the footsteps stopped. She waited, her eyes widening, and her breathing quickened. Someone was listening, no doubt for some sound to betray that she was still awake. There was a nerve-racking pause, and then she heard a faint grating noise, as of someone cautiously inserting a key into the lock of her door. She was out of her chair in a flash, and had reached the door and wrenched it open before Sidlaw, wearing a drab dressing-gown, and a nightcap which imperfectly concealed the curl-papers with which she had screwed up her sparse grey locks, could turn the key in the wards. For a moment they confronted each other, Kate’s eyes flashing with wrath, and Sidlaw obviously discomposed. The key had been jerked out of her hand, and lay on the floor. She stooped to pick it up, and Kate said, in a dangerously calm voice: “Thank you! I’ll take that!”

“Well, I’m sure, miss!—” said Sidlaw, bridling. “If I’d known you was awake, I would have brought it in to you, but not hearing a sound, and not wishing to wake you out of your first sleep, I thought it best to slip it into the lock on the outside.”

“Indeed?” said Kate, still standing with her hand imperatively outstretched.

Sidlaw reluctantly surrendered the key, plunging at the same time into an unconvincing account of having found it earlier in the day, but having forgotten to restore it to Kate’s door until this very moment, when she had suddenly remembered it. “I’ve been so taken with up with her ladyship, miss, that I’m sure it’s no wonder the key slipped my memory!”

“And I expect you found it in a most unexpected place, having hunted for it for weeks!” said Kate, with false affability, and a glittering smile. “I won’t embarrass you by asking where it was. Goodnight!”

She shut the door, not waiting for a response, and audibly locked it, resolving to afford no one the chance of abstracting the key again, but to keep it in her pocket all day.

However, it was a large, old-fashioned key, and when, next morning, she put it into the pocket which hung round her waist, and was reached through a slit in her petticoat, it knocked uncomfortably against her leg whenever she moved, so she was obliged to put it in her reticule instead, until she could find a safe hiding-place for it.

She found only Torquil in the breakfast-parlour, and he seemed to have finished eating, and to be waiting for her to appear, for he had no sooner responded to her cheerful greeting than he said impulsively: “You aren’t angry with me, coz, are you?”

More important considerations had thrust so far to the back of her mind the recollection of his conduct on the previous day that she had almost forgotten it, and replied, in surprise: “Angry with you? No—why should I be? Oh!—You mean because you fired at that poor, friendly dog, and missed hitting me by inches? No, I’m not angry, though I own that I was vexed to death at the time! Good morning, Pennymore!”

“I knew you wouldn’t be!” said Torquil, ignoring the butler, who was setting a teapot down before Kate, and a dish of the hot scones she liked. “Matthew said you were all on end, and ready to come dagger-drawing with me, but I knew that was a danker!”

“Dr Delabole exaggerates, but I was certainly very much shocked, she replied, with reserve. “The dog was not a stray, but a truant, and hardly more than a puppy: you had no business to be firing at him, you know!”

“He had no business to be in the park! Besides, I don’t like dogs! And I didn’t miss you by inches! You shouldn’t have moved!”

“Well, never mind!” she said placably. “Have you heard how your mother does this morning?”

“No, and I don’t—Oh, yes! Matthew said she had had a restless night, I think: I wasn’t attending particularly! He’s with her now. But that’s not important! I didn’t mean to frighten you yesterday, Kate! And if you were frightened I’m sorry for it! There!”

He uttered this apology with the air of one putting considerable force upon himself, and she was obliged to laugh, which made him look black. However, his brow cleared, and his eyes lost their dangerous sparkle, when she begged him not to ring a peal over her before she had finished her breakfast, and he said, with a little giggle: “You are such a funny one, coz! I wish you will marry me! Why won’t you? Don’t you like me?”

“Not enough to marry you,” she answered calmly. “And, let me tell you, Torquil, if there is one thing I dislike more than quarrelling over the breakfast-cups, it is having offers of marriage made to me over them! You should remember that if I did marry you you would find yourself leg-shackled to a haggish old woman while you were still in your prime!”