Джорджетт Хейер - Regency Buck

“I did,” said the Earl, taking snuff.

“Then why,” demanded Miss Taverner, relieved, “did you say you wished me joy?”

“Merely to alarm you, Clorinda, and to teach you not to play tricks on me.”

“It was no trick, and you are abominable!”

“I humbly beg your forgiveness.”

She flashed an indignant look at him, and set her empty glass down on the table with a snap. The Earl offered her his snuff-box. “Will you try this mixture? I find it tolerably soothing to the nerves.”

Miss Taverner relented. “I am very sensible of what an honour that is,” she said, helping herself to an infinitesimal pinch. “I suppose you could do no more.”

“Not while I continue to occupy the post of guardian,” he agreed.

She lowered her gaze, and said in a hurry: “Did the Duke mention his plan of inviting me (and you too) to Bushey for Christmas?”

“He did,” said the Earl. “But I informed him that you would be spending Christmas at Worth.”

Miss Taverner drew in her breath sharply, inhaled far more of his lordship’s snuff than she had meant to, and sneezed. “But I am not!” she said.

“I am sorry if it should be repugnant to you, but you are certainly spending Christmas at Worth,” he replied.

“It is not repugnant, precisely, but—”

“You relieve my mind of a weight,” said his lordship satirically. “I was afraid it might be.”

“It is very obliging of you, but since you have refused your consent to the Duke’s paying his addresses to me he cannot now expect me to make one of his party. I should prefer to spend Christmas with Perry.”

“Naturally,” said the Earl. “I was not proposing that you should come to Worth without him.”

“But Perry has no notion of going to Worth!” protested Miss Taverner. “I daresay he has quite different plans in his mind!”

“Then he will put them out of his mind,” replied the Earl. “I prefer to keep Perry under my eye.”

He offered his arm, and after a slight hesitation she rose, and laid her hand on it, and allowed him to lead her back into the ballroom. It had occurred to her that she was by no means averse to going on a visit to Worth.

It was fortunate for Miss Taverner that, by reason of Christmas being at hand, she must soon be removed from the Duke of Clarence’s neighbourhood. He by no means despaired of winning her, and though momentarily cast-down, and inclined to be indignant at Worth’s refusing his consent, he was very soon consoling himself with the reflection that Miss Taverner would be free in less than a year from the Earl’s guardianship. He was sanguine, and, calling in Brook Street again, assured Judith that when she came to know him better she would perceive all the advantages of the match as clearly as he did himself.

Peregrine’s feelings upon being informed that he was to go to Worth were not at all complacent. He asserted that he should not go, thought it a great imposition, suspected the Earl of trying to fix his interest with Judith, and had a very good mind to write a curt refusal. However, the intelligence that Miss Fairford had received a most distinguishing invitation from Lady Albinia Forrest, the Earl’s maternal aunt, to make one of the party, quite put an end to his ill-humour. The Earl became immediately a very good sort of a fellow, and from having been disconsolately expecting a party insipid beyond everything, he was brought to look forward to it with no common degree of pleasure.

Judith also looked forward to it in the expectation of considerable enjoyment. She had an ambition to see Worth, which Mrs. Scattergood had described to her in the most eulogistic terms; the party was to be select, comprised for the most part of her most particular friends; and her only regret was that the greatest of her friends, Mr. Bernard Taverner, was not to be present. When she told him of the invitation and saw him look sadly out of countenance, she said impulsively that she wished he might be going with them. He smiled, but shook his head. “The Earl of Worth would never invite me to join any party of which you were a member,” he said. “There is no love lost between us.”

“No love lost!” she exclaimed. “I had thought you barely acquainted with him. How is this?”

“The Earl of Worth,” he said deliberately, “has been good enough to warn me against making your well-being my concern. He does me the honour of thinking me to stand in his way. What will be the issue I do not know. If he is to be believed, I stand in some danger of being put out of his way.” He gave a little laugh. “The Earl of Worth does not like to have his path crossed.”

She was staring at him in great astonishment. “This is beyond everything, upon my word! You cannot, I am persuaded, have properly understood him! Why should he threaten you? When have you met? Where did this conversation take place?”

“It took place,” said Mr. Taverner, “in a certain tavern known as Cribb’s Parlour, upon the day that Perry went out to fight Farnaby. I found his lordship there in close conversation with Farnaby himself.”

“With Farnaby! Good God! what can you mean?”

He took a short turn about the room. “I do not know. I wish that I did. It was not my intention to speak of this to you, but lately I have thought that his lordship has been making headway with you. However little I may relish the office of informer, it is only right that you should be put upon your guard. What Worth’s business with Farnaby may have been I have no means of knowing. It must be all conjecture. To see them with their heads together was to me something of a shock, I own. I impute nothing; I merely tell you what I saw. The Earl, perceiving me, came across the room to my side; what passed between us I shall not repeat. It was enough to assure me that Worth regards me as a menace to whatever scheme he may have in mind. I was warned not to meddle in your concerns. Whether I am very likely to be intimidated by such a threat I leave it to yourself to decide.”

She was silent for a moment, frowning over it. She could not but perceive that there might be some jealousy at work here, on both sides perhaps. She said presently in a tone of calm good sense: “It is very odd, indeed, but I must believe you to be mistaken, in part at least. Lord Worth, being Perry’s guardian, may easily have conceived it to be his duty to inquire more fully into the cause of that projected meeting.”

He looked at her intently. “It may have been so, yet I shall not conceal from you, Judith, that I neither like nor trust that man.” She made a gesture as though to silence him. “You do not wish me to speak. Perhaps I should not; perhaps I am wrong. I will only beg of you to take care how you put yourself in his power.”

She returned his look a little sternly, but as though pulling over what he had said. “Lord Worth told me to trust him,” she said slowly.

“That is easily said. I do not tell you to trust me. Mistrust me, if you please: I shall continue to do what I can to serve you.”

His frank, manly way of speaking induced her to stretch out her hand to him. “Why, of course I trust you, cousin,” she said, “even though I think you are mistaken.”

He kissed her hand, and said no more, but left her very soon to ponder over it, to recall incidents, words, that might guide her understanding. Lately, it had seemed to her as though Worth too might become a suitor to her hand, yet no man had it in his power to compel her into marriage, and she could see no reason for fearing him. Her cousin she believed to be strongly attached to her, and allowance must be made for the very natural jealousy of a man deeply in love. Neither man could like the other: it had been apparent from the first. She supposed each must find it easy to mistrust the other. She put the matter out of mind, yet was still worried by it.

A few days would now bring Christmas upon them; the Taverners, accompanied by Mrs. Scattergood and Miss Fairford, were to travel into Hampshire, to Worth, upon the twenty-third of December, and every moment before their departure seemed to Miss Taverner to be occupied in writing graceful notes of acknowledgment for the shower of gifts that descended upon her. The most elegant trifles were sent for her acceptance: she was in despair, half-inclined to return them all, but dissuaded from it by her chaperon, who inspected each offering with the strictest regard for propriety, and pronounced all to be in the best of taste, quite unexceptionable, impossible to decline!

Amongst the collection of snuff-boxes, etuis, china figures, and fans that arrived for his sister, the tokens Peregrine had received made, he complained, a meagre show. Some handkerchiefs, hemmed for him by Lady Fairford, a brace of partridges from Sussex, where Mr. Fitzjohn had retired for the month, a locket with his Harriet’s eye painted on ivory, a small jar of snuff from which the sender’s card was missing, and a fob from his cousin made up the sum of his presents. However, he was in raptures over the locket, and very well satisfied with the rest. The handkerchiefs must always be useful; the birds could be roasted for dinner; the fob was added to his already large collection; and the snuff was no doubt a capital mixture. Like a great many other young gentlemen, Peregrine never stirred out without his box, and inhaled a vast quantity of snuff without having very much taste for it, or discrimination in the sorts he chose. Brown rappee was the same to him as Spanish bran; he could detect very little difference. As for this elegant, glazed jar which had been sent him he liked it excessively, and only wished he might know the donor. A prolonged search amongst the litter of cards, notes, and silver-paper wrappings which surrounded his sister failed to discover the missing card; he had to resign himself to its being lost.