“I take you for a scheming, designing hussy!”

“That’s enough. Get out! Out this instant, or I shall call for help.”

“Seville never offered to marry you. He offered you a carte blanche, didn’t he?”

"No."

“Yes, and you regret you didn’t accept it, too.”

“Is it so incomprehensible to you that a gentleman should want to marry me?”

“He no more intended marrying you than he intended flying to the moon. It is known all over town he has offered for Baroness McFay.”

“He offered for me first.”

“Offered to make you his mistress. With his flowers and diamond necklaces. Did he say ‘Will you do me the honour to be my wife?’ or did he not?”

“Yes. No, I don’t know. I don’t recall his exact words. How should I?”

“But you recall hailing him on Bond Street? Telling him you should love to go to Bath with him. That cannot have slipped your very convenient memory.”

“My memory is not deficient, Lord Dammler. I remember very well meeting Mr. Seville on Bond Street. I also remember meeting you there one night, in your cups, and dragging a redhead along with you. I remember as well seeing you making a fool of yourself at the opera with a blond lightskirt, and though I hadn’t the dubious pleasure of seeing you at Finefields, I make no doubt you were equally attentive to your brunette. Certainly you wasted no time on your work.”

“I was working like a dog!”

“Ah, well, when lovemaking becomes a chore, it is time to move on to the next woman. You will be all out of complexions, and have to turn to grey-haired ladies next, like the Prince of Wales.”

“Don’t think to get out of it by dragging up my past.”

“Past? You are confused in your tenses, milord.”

“The fact is, you were alone in your bedroom at midnight with that scoundrel of a Seville.”

“It’s none of your concern if I was in my bed with him! You have no right to come charging in, demanding explanations. I am alone in my bedroom past midnight with you, but I assure you I have no intention of losing my virtue.”

“You cannot lose that which you lack to begin with.”

“I doubt you have any to lose. Honi soit qui mal y pense, Dammler, if I may borrow your phrase. Now perhaps you will be kind enough to leave.”

“I will leave, and you may tell your lover I will call on him tomorrow. This is not the end of it.”

“If you bother Mr. Seville with these absurd accusations, I’ll…"

“Kill me?” he asked. “You might as well, but first I’ll have the exquisite pleasure of putting a bullet through that jackrabbit’s liver.”

He turned and departed, closing the door quietly behind him. Prudence sat on the chair and cried into her lap, from worry and fatigue and nervousness.

Next door, Seville had heard enough to send him into a state of shock. Dammler was out to kill him, and all because of a misunderstanding. The girl has assured him she was not under Dammler's protection. How the devil was he to know? He sat on the edge of the bed, his hand on his brow. He recalled the conversation to himself, looking for a respectable escape. His chief consolation was that the silly chit still thought he had meant marriage. He must convince Dammler of the same thing. Now what had he said to Lady Melvine? Hinted at the truth, but not quite stated it. He’d have to get to her and convince her she had misunderstood him. Dammler couldn’t call him to account for making the girl an offer in form. No insult in that. Dashed compliment-and what if the Baroness heard it? Then there was this night’s work to straighten out. Knighton-get him to tell Dammler how sick the mother was. Wouldn’t think he’d been making up to Miss Mallow with the mother dying in the next room. He wasn’t that big a gudgeon.

His instinct for self-preservation warned him to flee. To get into his carriage that very night and bolt for London. Give Dammler a chance to cool down. Miss Mallow could soothe his ruffled feathers if she weren’t such a goose cap. Crazed about her. Yes, and she could get him to marry her, too, if she were half as smart as everyone said she was. Trying to bam her he wasn’t playing parlour games with Lady Malvern. Why the deuce was he, if he was so crazed about Miss Mallow?

Half an hour later, Seville came to a decision. He would write Knighton a line, mentioning that Dammler was here and concerned about Mrs. Mallow. Thus Dammler would learn the old lady was really sick, then he would pen a note to Miss Mallow couched in such respectful terms as were bound to lead Dammler to know there was never any impropriety in his thoughts. A deft mention of their former association

“Though you declined the offer to be my wife, I hope we may always be friends.” Something of that sort. She’d be bound to show it to Dammler. By Jove, he couldn’t afford a duel with the papers all ready for the Baroness to sign. Slip out the back door at dawn, and be halfway to London before Dammler knew he was gone.

He executed this wily scheme, and saved his liver from perforation.

Chapter 17

When Dammler called on Seville the next morning, he was gone, and when he went to see if Miss Mallow also was gone, he found her in conference with Dr. Knighton, receiving instructions for the tending of her mother.

“Seville wrote me you were here,” Knighton said to him. "He was a big help to Miss Mallow last evening. Can you believe, the foolish fellow here at the inn didn’t call me, but had Miss Mallow sending around town for a physician. There is no accounting for such stupidity. I had mentioned I did not wish to be disturbed, but had no notion he would take me so literally. An emergency, of course, was quite a different matter. I have just been telling Miss Mallow her mother must not be moved for one or two days.”

Knighton soon took his leave and Dammler, somewhat calmer but still furious, said, “Your friend has turned tail and run. Did you warn him I was coming after him?”

“Don’t think he would be afraid of you,” she answered in a sneering way. “I had a note from him. You will find him in London, if you are intent on making a fool of yourself and a shambles of my reputation.”

“Your reputation needs no help from me to be made a shambles of.”

“Would you not convince everyone the affair between myself and Mr. Seville was dishonourable by calling him out?”

This aspect of the matter had already occurred to Dammler and he was regretting his rash statement, but having made it, he did not intend to retreat. Nor was he entirely convinced Seville was innocent. “No names need be mentioned. If anyone suspects, it will be a lesson for Seville to be wary in his dealing with you, and to avoid making the sort of offer he made.”

“For your information, Lord Dammler, Seville’s offer was not as you think. He mentions in his note, you see,” she handed it to him, “that though I declined the offer to be his wife, he hopes we will remain friends. And so we shall, too.”

Dammler took the letter, read it, and felt a great fool. Hettie, the blundering idiot, had misunderstood. “It does not excuse his being here last night,” he said, trying to save some small portion of his face.

“As to what passed last night, I should prefer to forget it. I must go to Mama now.”

“Your mother, does she prosper? She will be all right?”

“Yes, but loud, acrimonious discussions in the next room are not good for her.”

“Well I'm sorry, Prudence, but I misunderstood.”

“Yes, misunderstandings are likely to occur when we judge others by our own standards,” she replied bitingly. “Having nothing but lechery in your own mind, you naturally impute it to others.”

“I had no lechery in mind with regard to yourself.”

“I realize I am not your type, and thank God for it.”

He stood uncertainly, hoping to re-ingratiate himself before leaving, and seeing it would be hard going, with Prudence in the boughs. “You go on to Bath then?”

“In a few days.”

“I will be happy to stay and accompany you.”

“How very kind, but I should prefer to go without any disreputable companions and see if I can’t recover from the shame of having received an offer of marriage from an unexceptionable gentleman.”

He swallowed this with difficulty. “I only wanted to help you.”

“I find your help a sad hindrance, however,” she said airily, and succeeded at last in goading him to anger.

“Then I shall remove my hindering presence. I wish you good day, ma’am.”

Prudence nodded her head silently and watched him leave. I never thought to ask him how he came to be here, she remembered after he was gone. And how very badly he behaved, too, accusing me of carrying on with Seville. Behaved like a childish, jealous young hothead. And why should he have been so jealous, if he doesn’t care for me more than he knows? And I was the same- showing my jealousy of Lady Malvern and all his other flirts. Prudence hardly knew which of them had been the bigger fool, but she could not be entirely despondent. He seemed to be realizing slowly that he loved her more than as a mere sister.

With all her helps and hindrances gone, the two days before she might proceed to Bath passed slowly, despite the most solicitous concern on behalf of the management of “The George.” The three cases of food poisoning caused a slight stir in the local press. The event of the eminent Dr. Knighton’s presence made it more newsworthy, and when picked up by a journal in Bath, it was discovered that Lord Dammler, always of prime interest, had also been present, apparently on a visit to another young writer. The other writer was found out, and a brief interview with her added the information that she was on her way to Bath, and that she was working on a new book. When the story was finally published in Bath, it had become a large piece of human interest.