Джорджетт Хейер - Faro’s Daughter

“Miss Grantham’s parentage, I need hardly ask, is respectable?” said Ravenscar, in a matter-of-fact voice.

“Oh, yes! The Granthams are related to Amberley, I believe they are some sort of cousins: I am not precisely informed Deb’s father was a military man, but he sold out.” Lord Mablethorpe looked up with a disarming smile. “Well, the truth is, he was a gamester, I suppose. His birth was respectable but from all I can discover he was not quite the thing. But he is dead, after all, and his sins are not to be visited upon Deb There is also a brother. I have not met him yet, but there is talk of his getting leave: he is stationed somewhere in the south. He is a military man too, and was at Harrow, so you see there is nothing to take exception to there.” He paused, waiting for his cousin to make some comment. Ravenscar, however, said nothing. His lordship drew a breath. “And now that I have explained it to you, Max, I wish—that is, I should be very much obliged to you if you would speak to my mother I...”

“I?” said Ravenscar. “What would you have me say to her?”

“Well, I thought you could make her understand that it is not such a bad match after all!”

“No, I don’t think I could do that,” replied Ravenscar. “I doubt if anyone could.”

“But, Max—”

“I should wait until I had come of age, if I were you.”

“But if Mama could only be brought to consent, I should not have to wait! And there is that fellow, Ormskirk, to be thought of! I want Mama to give her consent, so that Deb need have no scruples. Then the engagement could be announced, and I daresay there would be no trouble about advancing me some of my fortune.”

“Impossible!”

“But, Max, if you and Uncle Julius both agreed to it—”

“What makes you think that we should?”

“But I have explained it all to you!” said his lordship impatiently.

Mr Ravenscar got up, and stretched his long limbs. “Wait until you are of age,” he said. “You may then do as you please.”

“I did not think you would behave so shabbily!” exclaimed Adrian.

Ravenscar smiled. “But surely you know that I am abominably close-fisted?”

“It is not your money,” Adrian muttered. “I suppose the truth is that you are as bad as Mama, and don’t wish me to marry Deb!”

“I won’t conceal from you that I am not enthusiastic over the match. You had better approach your Uncle Julius.”

“You know very well he is as bad as Mama! I made sure you would help me to talk Mama over! I have always depended upon you! I did not think you would fail me in the most important thing in my life!”

Ravenscar walked round the table, and dropped a hand on to Adrian’s shoulder, gripping it for an instant. “Believe me, I don’t mean to fail you,” he said. “But you must wait! Now I am going to exercise those greys of mine. Come with me!”

It spoke volumes for the love-sick state of Adrian’s mind that he shook his head, saying disconsolately: “No, I think I won’t. I have no heart for it now. I must be going. If you knew Deb better you would soon change your mind!”

“Then you must hope for a closer acquaintanceship between us,” said Ravenscar, moving to the fireplace, and jerking the bell-pull beside it.

Adrian rose. “Anyway, I shall marry her!” he said defiantly.

Ravenscar accompanied him out into the hall. “By all means, if you are still of the same mind in two months’ time,” he agreed. “My compliments to my aunt, by the way.”

“I don’t suppose I shall tell her that I have been with you,” replied Adrian, sounding much like a thwarted schoolboy.

“That will teach me a lesson,” said his cousin.

Adrian was never sulky for many minutes at a time. A reluctant grin put his scowl to flight. “Oh, damn you, Max!” he said, and departed.

Mr Ravenscar returned to his breakfast-parlour, and stood for a moment or two, leaning his arm on the mantelpiece, and looking fixedly out of the window. His thoughts were not kindly towards Miss Grantham, and as they dwelled upon her his expression grew a little ugly. Very clever of the wench to set the convenient Mr Kennet to tell her pathetic story to Adrian! So she would not have him announce his betrothal to her until he came of age? Well, that was clever too, but not quite clever enough. Miss Grantham should have the honour of trying a fall with one Max Ravenscar, and maybe she would learn something from that encounter.

“You rang, sir?”

Mr Ravenscar turned his head. “Yes, I rang. Send word to the stables, please, that I want the greys brought round in half an hour.”

Miss Grantham, sleeping late into the morning, did not leave her room until past eleven o’clock. The servants, in green baize aprons and shirt-sleeves, were still sweeping and dusting the saloons, and Miss Grantham presently found her aunt in her dressing-room, seated before a table on which her toilet accessories were inextricably mixed with bills, letters, pens, ink, and wafers.

Lady Bellingham had been a very pretty woman in her youth, but there was little trace of a former beauty to be detected in her plump countenance today. A once pink-and white complexion had long been raddled by cosmetics; there were pouches under her pale blue eyes; her cheeks had sagged; and it could not have been said that a golden wig became her.

Some traces of hair-powder still clung to this erection, but the monstrous plumes she had worn in it on the previous evening had been removed, and a lace cap set in their place, with lilac ribbons tied under her little chin. A voluminous robe with a quantity of ruffles and ribbons, enveloped her stout form, and she wore, in addition, a trailing Paisley shawl, which was continually slipping off her shoulders, or getting its fringe entangled in the pins and combs which littered the dressing-table.

She looked up, when her niece entered the room, and said in a distracted way: “Oh, my dear, thank heavens you are come! I am in such a taking! I am sure we are ruined...”

Miss Grantham, who was looking very neat in a chintz gown, with her hair dressed plainly, bent over her to kiss her cheek. “Oh no! Don’t say so! I had some deep doings myself last night.”

“Lucius told me you had gone down six hundred pounds,” said Lady Bellingham. “Of course, it can’t be helped, but why would not Mr Ravenscar play faro? People are so tiresome! My love, nothing could be worse than the fix we are in. Just look at this bill from Priddy’s! Twelve dozen of Fine Hock at thirty shillings a dozen, and such nasty stuff as it is! Ditto of Claret, First Growth, at forty-two shillings the dozen—why, it is robbery, no less! Ditto of White Champagne, at seventy shillings—I cannot conceive how the half of it can have been drunk, and here is Mortimer telling me that we shall be needing more.”

Miss Grantham sat down, and picked up the bill from Priddy’s Foreign Warehouse and Vaults. “It does seem shocking,” she agreed. “Do you think we should buy cheaper wine?”

“Impossible!” said Lady Bellingham, with resolution. “You know what everyone says about the inferior stuff that Hobart woman gives her guests to drink! But that is not the worst!

Where is that odious bill for coals? Forty-four shillings the ton we are paying, Deb, and that not the best coal! Then there’s the bill from the coachmakers—here it is! No, that’s not it. Seventy pounds for green peas: it doesn’t seem right does it, my love? I dare say we are being robbed, but what is one to do? What’s this? Candles, fifty pounds, and that’s only for six months! Burning wax ones in the kitchen, if we only knew. Where is that?—oh, I have it in my hand all the time! Now, do listen, Deb! Seven hundred pounds for the bays and a new barouche! Well, I can’t think where the money is to come from. It seems a monstrous price.”

“We might let the bays go, and hire a pair of job horses,” suggested Miss Grantham dubiously.

“I can’t and I won’t live in squalor!” declared her aunt tearfully.

Miss Grantham began to gather up the bills, and to sort them. “I know. It would be horrid, but we should be spared these dreadful bills for repairs. What is K.Q. iron, Aunt Lizzie?”

“I can’t imagine, my love. Do we use that, too?”

“Well, it says here, Best K.Q. iron, faggotted edgeways-oh, it was for an axle-tree!”

“We had to have that,” said Lady Bellingham, comforted. “But when it comes to eighty pounds for liveries which are the most hideous colour imaginable, and not in the least what I wanted, we have reached the outside of enough!”

Miss Grantham looked up with an awed expression in her eyes. “Aunt, do we really pay four hundred pounds for a box at the opera?”

“I daresay. It is all of a piece! I am sure we have not used it above three times the whole season.”

“We must give it up,” said Miss Grantham firmly.

“Now, Deb, do pray be sensible! When poor dear Sir Edward was alive, we always had our box at the opera. Everyone did so!”

“But Sir Edward has been dead these dozen years, aunt,” Miss Grantham pointed out.

Lady Bellingham dabbed at her eyes with a fragile handkerchief. “Alas, I am a defenceless widow, whom everyone delights to impose upon! But I will not give up my box at the opera!”

There did not seem to be anything more to be said about this. Miss Grantham had made another, and still more shocking discovery. “Oh, aunt!” she said, raising distressed eyes from the sheaf of bills. “Ten ells of green Italian taffeta! That was for that dress which I threw, away, because it did not become me!”

“Well, what else is one to do with dresses which don’t become one?” asked her aunt reasonably.