Джорджетт Хейер - The Corinthian

“You had best go back to the house with all possible speed,” Piers said, applying a wafer to the folded letter, and handing it to her. “Mind, now! that letter must not fall into the wrong hands!”

“If anyone tries to take it from you, you must swallow it,” put in Pen.

“Swallow it, sir?”

’Pay no heed to my friend!” said Piers hastily. There! Be off with you, and remember that I depend upon your fidelity!”

Lucy curtseyed herself out of the room. Piers looked at Pen, still hugging her knees on the window-seat, and said severely: “I suppose you flatter yourself you have been helpful!”

Impish lights danced in her eyes. “Oh, I have! Only think if you had had to turn back to fetch the love-birds, which very likely you would have had to do if I had not reminded the abigail about them!”

He could not help grinning. “Pen, if she does bring them, I’ll—I’ll turn back just to wring your neck! Now I must go to arrange for the hire of a chaise, and four fast horses.”

“Where will you find them?” she asked.

“There is a posting-house at Keynsham where they keep very tolerable cattle. I shall drive over there immediately.”

“Famous! Go where you are known, and let the news of your wanting a chaise for midnight spread all over the countryside within three hours!”

He checked. “I had not thought of that! The devil! This means I must go into Bristol, and I can ill spare the time, with so much to attend to.”

“Nothing of the sort!” said Pen, jumping up. “Now I will be helpful indeed! I will drive to Keynsham with you, and I will order the chaise.”

His brow cleared. “Oh Pen, will you? But Sir Richard! Will he not object, do you think? Of course, I would take every care of you, but—”

“No, no, he will not object, I assure you! I shall not tell him anything about it,” said Pen ingenuously.

“But that would not be right! And I should not wish to do anything—”

“I will leave a message for him with the landlord,” promised Pen. “Did you walk into the village, or have you a carriage here?”

“Oh, I drove in! The gig is in the yard now. I confess, if you feel it would not be wrong of you to go with me, I should be glad of your help.”

“Only wait while I get my hat!” Pen said, and darted off in search of it.

Miss Creed and Mr Luttrell, partaking of midday refreshment in Keynsham’s best inn, and exhaustively discussing the details of the elopement, were neither of them troubled by doubts of the wisdom of the gentleman’s whisking his betrothed off to Scotland at a moment when that lady had become entangled in a case of murder. Indeed, Mr Luttrell, a single-minded young man, was in a fair way to forgetting that he had ever had Beverley Brandon to stay with him. He had left his mother trying to write a suitable letter to Lady Saar, and if he thought about the unfortunate affair at all it was to reflect comfortably that Lady Luttrell would do everything that was proper. His conversation was confined almost exclusively to his own immediate problems, but he digressed several times animadvert on Pen’s unconventional exploits.

“Of course,” he conceded, “it is not so shocking now that you are betrothed to Wyndham, but I own it does surprise me that he—a man of the world!—should have countenanced such a prank. But these Corinthians delight in oddities, I believe! I dare say no one will wonder at it very much. If you were not betrothed it would be different, naturally!”

Pen’s clear gaze met his steadily. “I think you make a great bustle about nothing,” she said.

“My dear Pen!” He gave a little laugh. “You are such a child! I believe you haven’t the smallest notion of the ways of the world!”

She was obliged to admit that this was true. It occurred to her that since Piers seemed to be well-informed on this subject she might with advantage learn a little from him. “If I were not going to marry Richard, would it be very dreadful?” she asked.

“Pen! What things you do say!” he exclaimed. “Only think of your situation, travelling all the way from London in Wyndham’s company, without even your maid to go with you! Why, you must marry him now!”

She tilted her chin. “I don’t see that I must at all.”

“Depend upon it, if you do not, he does. I must say, I think it excessively strange that a man of his years and—and milieu—should have wished to marry you, Pen.” He realized his speech was scarcely complimentary, and hastened to add: “I don’t mean that precisely, only you are so much younger than he is, and such a little innocent!”

She pounced on this. “Well, that is one very good reason why I need not marry him!” she said. “He is so much older than I am that I dare say no one would think it in the smallest degree odd that we should have taken this journey together.”

“Good Gad, Pen, he is not as old as that! What a strange girl you are! Don’t you wish to marry him?”

She stared at him with puckered brows. She thought of Sir Richard, of the adventures she had encountered in his company, and of the laughter in his eyes, and of the teasing note in his voice. Suddenly she flushed rosily, and the tears started to her own eyes. “Yes. Oh, yes, I do!” she said.

“Well! But what is there to cry over?” demanded Piers.

“For a moment I quite thought—Now, don’t be silly, Pen!”

She blew her nose defiantly, and said in somewhat watery accents: “I’m not crying!”

“Indeed, I can’t conceive why you should. I think Wyndham a very good sort of man—a famous fellow! I suppose you will become very fashionable, Pen, and cut the deuce of a dash in town!”

Pen, who could see no future beyond a life spent within the walls of her aunt’s respectable house, agreed to this, and made haste to direct the conversation into less painful channels.

Although Keynsham was situated only a few miles distant from Queen Charlton, it was close on the dinner-hour when Piers set Pen down at the George Inn again. By this time, a post-chaise had been hired, and four good horses chosen to draw it, the whole being appointed to arrive at a rendezvous outside the gates of Crome Hall at half-past eleven that evening. Beyond a certain degree of anxiety concerning the extent of the baggage his betrothed would wish to bring with her, and some fears that her flight might be intercepted at the outset, Mr Luttrell had nothing further to worry about, as his guide and mentor frequently assured him.

Pen would have liked to have been present at the fatal hour, but this offer Piers declined. They bade each other farewell, therefore, at the door of the George Inn, neither suffering the smallest pang at the notion that each was about to be joined in wedlock to another.

Having waved a last good-bye to her old playmate, Pen went into the inn, and was met by Sir Richard, who looked her up and down, and said: “Abominable brat, you had better make a clean breast of the whole! Where have you been, and what mischief have you done?”

“Oh, but I left a message for you!” Pen protested. “Did they not give it to you, sir?”

“They did. But the intelligence that you had gone off with young Luttrell merely filled me with misgiving. Confess!”

She twinkled up at him. “Well, perhaps you will not be quite pleased, but indeed I did it all for the best, Richard!”

“This becomes more and more ominous. I am persuaded you have committed some devilry.”

She passed into the parlour, and went to the mirror above the fireplace to pat her crisp, dishevelled curls into order. “Not devilry, precisely,” she demurred.

Sir Richard who had been observing her in some amusement, said: “I am relieved. Yes, I think the sooner you put on your petticoats again the better, Pen. That is a very feminine trick, let me tell you.”

She coloured, laughed, and turned away from the mirror. “I forgot. Well, it doesn’t signify, after all, for it seems to me that I have reached the end of my adventure.”

“Not quite,” he replied.

“Yes, I have. You do not know!”

“You look extremely wicked. Out with it!”

“Piers and Lydia are going to elope to-night!”

The laugh died out of his eyes. “Pen, is this your doing?”

“Oh no, indeed it is not, sir! In fact, I had quite a different plan, only I dared not tell you, and, as a matter of fact, Piers did not think well of it. I wanted to abduct Lydia, so that Piers could rescue her from me, and so soften her Papa’s heart However, I dare say you would not have approved of that.”

“I should not,” said Sir Richard emphatically.

“No, that’s why I said nothing to you about it. In the end Lydia decided to elope.”

“You mean that you bullied the wretched girl—”

“I did not! You are most unjust, sir! On my honour, I did not! I don’t say that I didn’t perhaps put the notion into her head, but it was all the Major’s doing. He threatened to take her to Lincolnshire to-morrow morning, and of course she could not support life there! Oh, here comes the waiter! I will tell you the whole story presently.”

She retired to her favourite seat in the window while the covers were laid, and Sir Richard, standing with his back to the mighty fireplace, watched her. The waiter took his time over the preparations for dinner, and during one of his brief absences from the parlour, Pen said abruptly: “You were quite right: he has changed, sir. Only you were wrong about one thing: he does not think I have changed at all.”

“I did not suspect him to be capable of paying you so pretty a compliment,” said Sir Richard, raising his brows.