Джорджетт Хейер - Friday’s Child

“You can have no notion how glad I am to discover that you favour a milder-tempered bridegroom, Miss Wantage,” said Mr Tarleton, keeping his face prim. “Er — must your future husband be a veryyoung gentleman?”

She had forgotten herself in talking of Sherry’s friends; Mr Tarleton’s last words recalled her to a sense of her surroundings. She started, almost afraid that she might have betrayed herself, and blushed vividly, saying in a hurried way: “It is all nonsense! I do not know how we come to be talking of such absurdities. Tell me about the chestnuts General Crawley says you are meaning to buy from him! Do you mean to drive them in your curricle? Are they sweet-goers? I was used to drive a high-stepping grey, in a phaeton, you know — very free and fast, and with the lightest of mouths! I won a race once — a private race, I mean,” she added, a stricken expression entering her eyes for an instant at the memory this conjured up.

“So you are a whip!” Mr Tarleton exclaimed. “I might have guessed it indeed! But, come, this is famous! The chestnuts you speak of are a match pair — beautiful steppers! If I purchase them from the General, may I hope that you will honour them, and me, by driving them?”

The stricken look vanished. Hero turned impulsively towards him. “Oh, would you teach me to handle a pair? Gil — the particular friend who taught me to drive my phaeton — would not let me drive his curricle, but I have a great desire to! That is, if Lady Saltash will permit me to.”

Mr Tarleton assured her that her ladyship would have no objection to such a harmless pastime, and so indeed it proved. Lady Saltash chuckled and gave permission; and very soon it became quite an accepted thing for Mr Tarleton to drive up to the house in Camden Place any fine morning and to take up his eager pupil. They drove about the country in the immediate vicinity of the town, and Hero had such a real aptitude that it was not long before she was acquitting herself creditably enough for her to wish that Mr Ringwood could see her progress. While she held the reins in her hands she could almost forget the trouble that lay in her heart. She was often merry, always entirely natural, never dreamed that anyone so elderly as her companion could be falling in love with her, thought him one of the kindest men she had encountered, and so treated him in a confiding way that completed his downfall. Mr Tarleton felt himself to be growing daily younger in her presence, began to think seriously of matrimony, and racked his brains to think how best to make his suit attractive to so youthful, so unconventional, and so romantic a lady. A still, small voice within him, whispering that he would regret this madness, he resolutely ignored. It occurred to him that he had hitherto led the most humdrum of lives, and that to indulge in a little madness would be a welcome relief.

UPON LEAVING GRILLON’S HOTEL, SHERRY BETOOK himself home to Half Moon Street, meeting on the way Lord Wrotham, who was driving his sulky down Piccadilly towards St James’s Street. The Viscount hailed him and he drew up. His restless, handsome countenance betrayed no pleasure in the encounter, however; and he greeted his friend with a scowl and a curt: “Well, what?”

“Oh, the devil! are you in the sullens again?” retorted Sherry. “What a fellow you are, George! I’ve a deuced good mind not to tell you something you’d give a deal to hear!”

George shrugged his shoulders. “Do as you please! I don’t know what should have happened to put you in spirits. When last I saw you — ”

“Never mind that!” interrupted Sherry. “If you wanted to pick a quarrel with me, you should have done it then, for by God, I was in the humour to quarrel with anyone who offered! Change my mind now. Thought you’d like to know the Beauty is back in town.”

George made as if to give his horse the office to start. “If you have come to smash up to me merely to tell me that, you have wasted your time! She might be in Jericho for aught I care!”

“Point is she ain’t in Jericho. She’s on her way to Bath with my mother. I am escorting the pair of them there tomorrow.”

The rigid look was wiped suddenly from Lord Wrotham’s face. “What?” he ejaculated.

“True as I stand here! But that ain’t what I wanted to tell you. Severn did come up to scratch.”

George’s brilliant eyes were now fixed on his face, in an expression of painful eagerness. “Do you tell me she refused him?”

“That’s it. Said she had liked the notion of being a duchess, but when she thought of having to live with Severn all her life, she couldn’t stomach it. Can’t say I blame her.”

“I don’t believe it!”

“Well, you may do so. I’ve known Bella Milborne all my life. Very truthful girl — a dashed sight too truthful, I used to think, when we were youngsters! Besides, she told me not to repeat it. Thinks Severn wouldn’t wish to have it known he’d been rejected. Deuce take it, I never thought I should live to feel sorry for the Incomparable, but there’s no getting away from it: she’s looking downright peaky! Told me she was in disgrace with Mrs Milborne, and her father and my mother were the only people to have been kind to her. Told me something else, too, and I’ll swear she meant it!”

“What else did she tell you?” demanded George.

Sherry grinned up at him. “Wouldn’t you like to know? Think I’m going to betray a lady’s confidence? I’m not!”

George drew a deep breath and sat staring straight between his horse’s ears. After a moment he recollected the first of Sherry’s disclosures, and transferred his intent gaze to his face again. “You said she was on her way to Bath with your mother!”

“Well, why the devil shouldn’t she be?”

“But you said you was going there too!”

“So I am. My mother’s afraid of highwaymen, or some such flummery.”

George frowned at him. “She can hire outriders!”

“That’s what I told her, but nothing will do for her but to have me to go with her.”

George’s eyes were beginning to kindle. “Oh, indeed? It’s something new, by God it is! for you to be dancing attendance on your mother, Sherry! And let me tell you now that if you are meaning to have a touch at Isabella again — ”

“Go and take a damper, you fool!” retorted Sherry. “I’m a married man! What’s more, if I did mean to have a touch at her, I wouldn’t tell you she was on her way to Bath!”

Mollified, George begged pardon, explaining that he was so worn down that he hardly knew what he was saying. Sherry accepted this, and would have taken his leave had not George detained him to say: “I wouldn’t go to Bath, if I was you, Sherry. You don’t like the place. If Lady Sheringham would allow me to take your — ”

“Well, she wouldn’t,” interrupted Sherry. “Besides, I’ve got a fancy to go there.”

“Why?” demanded George suspiciously.

“What the deuce has it to do with you? Tired of London. Not been feeling quite the thing. Need a change.”

“Yes! You will drink the waters, no doubt!” said George sardonically.

“I might,” agreed Sherry. “No saying what I may not do — except one thing! Make yourself easy: I don’t mean to make love to the Incomparable!”

And with this, he strode on down Piccadilly, leaving George in a good deal of consternation.

George drove slowly on, turned down into St James’s Street, and had almost reached Ryder Street, where he lodged, when he bethought himself of Mr Ringwood. After all, it was Gil who had taken Kitten down to Bath, and it must be for Gil to decide what was now to be done. He turned his sulky and drove back in the direction of Stratton Street. Sherry had rounded the corner of Half Moon Street by this time, and was out of sight. George drove up to Mr Ringwood’s lodging called a loafer to hold his horse, and sprang down from the sulky.

The door of Mr Ringwood’s lodging was opened to him by the retired gentleman’s gentleman who owned the house, who conveyed to him the intelligence that Mr Ringwood was out of town.

“Out of town!” exclaimed George indignantly. “What the devil ails him to be out of town, I should like to know?”

The owner of the house, being accustomed to the vagaries of the Quality, and knowing this particular member of the Quality of old, showed no surprise at this unreasonable explosion, but said civilly that Mr Ringwood had gone into Leicestershire for a day’s hunting, and was not expected to return until the morrow.

“Confound him!” muttered George. “Taken his man with him, I suppose?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“He would!” said George savagely. “Now what am I to do?”

Mr Ford, not deeming that any answer was expected of him, discreetly held his peace. George stood glowering for a few minutes, and then said, with all the air of a man who has taken a momentous decision: “I’ll leave a note for him!”

Mr Ford bowed, and at once ushered him into Mr Ringwood’s parlour. George sat down at the desk in the window, cast Cocker, the Racing Chronicle, and several copies of the Weekly Dispatch on to the floor, drew forward the ink-well, found, after considerable search amongst a litter of bills and invitations, a sheet of notepaper, and dashed off a hurried letter.

Dear Gil, [he wrote] The devil’s in it now, and no mistake, for Sherry’s off to Bath tomorrow with his mother and Miss Milborne. I see nothing for it but to post down there ahead of him, to warn Lady Sherry, in case she does not desire to see him. I shall leave town tonight. Yours, etc., Wrotham.

His lordship then folded this missive, affixed a wafer to it, wrote Mr Ringwood’s name on it in arresting characters, propped it up against the clock on the mantelpiece, and departed. He felt that in going to apprise Hero of her husband’s approaching visit to Bath, he would be acting with extreme propriety; and the circumstance of this particular deed of friendship’s happening to coincide with his own paramount desire to repair to Bath was nothing more (he told himself) than a happy chance.