Джорджетт Хейер - The Nonesuch

“Well, as you wish!” Julian said. “You must know better than I do! Shall we ask Miss Chartley to go with us? Would she care for it?”

“Patience! Good gracious, no!” exclaimed Tiffany. “What put such a notion as that into your head?”

“You don’t think she would like it? But she’s an excellent horsewoman, and I know she loves exploring ancient places, for she told me so.”

“Told you so? When?” demanded Tiffany.

“At Kirkstall, when we were wandering about the ruins. She knows almost as much as her father—do let us invite her to go with us!”

Miss Trent found herself digging her nails into the palms of her hands. It was irrational, but little as she wanted Tiffany to captivate Lindeth she could not help dreading the threatened tantrum. Since Courtenay was the one marriageable man whose devotion Tiffany neither desired nor demanded she was perfectly happy to include Miss Colebatch in the party, but that any one of her admirers should betray even the smallest interest in another lady invariably roused a demon of jealousy in her breast. She said now, with a glittering smile, well-known to her family: “Why? Do you like her so much?”

He looked at her in a little surprise. “Yes—that is, I like her, of course! I should think everyone must.”

“Oh, if you have a fancy for insipid girls—!” she said, shrugging.

“Do you think her insipid?” he asked. “She doesn’t seem so to me. She is very gentle, and persuadable, I agree, but not insipid,surely! She doesn’t want for sense, you know.”

“Oh, she has every virtue and every amiable quality! For my part, I find her prosy propriety a dead bore—but that’s of no consequence! Do, pray, invite her! I daresay she will be able to recite you the whole history of the Dripping Well!”

Even Julian could not mistake the rancour behind the smile. Miss Trent saw the slight look of shock in his face, and decided that she could not bear to hear her charge expose herself any more. She said quietly: “I am afraid it would be useless to invite Miss Chartley, sir. I know that Mrs Chartley wouldn’t permit her to go with us on such a long, fatiguing expedition. Indeed, I begin to wonder whether we should any of us attempt it.”

This alarming apostasy caused an instant throw-up. Miss Chartley was forgotten in the more urgent necessity of alternately abusing Miss Trent for chickenheartedness, and cajoling her into unsaying her words. But before he left Staples Julian had received from Tiffany an explanation of her spiteful outburst which quite cleared the cloud from his brow. She owned her fault so contritely that he longed to take her in his arms and kiss away her troubled look. He perfectly understood how provoking it must be to have Patience Chartley held up to her continually as a model; and he thought her penitence so candid and so humble that by the time he took his leave he had not only assured her that she was not in the least to be blamed for flying into a pet, but also that he didn’t care a rush whether or not Patience went with them to Knaresborough. Later, he tried to disabuse his cousin’s mind of whatever unjust thoughts it might harbour: not because Waldo referred to the matter, but because it seemed to him that he carefully avoided doing so. He said rather haltingly:

“I daresay it may have seemed odd to you that Miss Wield was—that she shouldn’t wish for Miss Chartley to accompany us on Friday.”

“What, after such a slip-slop as you made?” said Sir Waldo, laughing. “Not in the least odd! You did grass yourself, didn’t you? I hadn’t believed you could be such a greenhorn.”

Flushing, Julian said stiffly: “I don’t understand what you mean! If you imagine that Miss Wield was—was cross because I wished to invite Miss Chartley—it wasn’t so at all!”

“Wasn’t it?” said Sir Waldo, amusement lurking beneath his too-obviously assumed gravity. “Well, take my advice, you young cawker, and never praise one woman to another!”

“You are quite mistaken!” said Julian, more stiffly than ever.

“Yes, yes, of course I am—being so green myself!” agreed Sir Waldo soothingly. “So, for God’s sake, don’t stir any more coals to convince me of it! I am convinced—wholly!—and I detest brangles!”

Mr Underhill’s optimistic plan of making an early start on Friday morning was not realized. He was certainly up betimes; but in spite of his having hammered on his cousin’s door at an early hour, warning her to make haste, since it was going to be a scorching day, the rest of the breakfast-party, which included Sir Waldo and Lord Lindeth, had finished the handsome repast provided for them before Tiffany came floating into the parlour, artlessly enquiring whether she was late.

“Yes, you are!” growled Courtenay. “We’ve been waiting for you this age! What the deuce have you been about? You have had time enough to rig yourself out a dozen times!”

“That’s just what she does,” said Charlotte impishly. “First she puts one dress on, and decides it don’t become her, and so then she tries another—don’t you, cousin?”

“Well, I’m sure you look very becoming in that habit, love,” interposed Mrs Underhill hastily. “Though if I was you I wouldn’t choose to wear velvet, not in this weather!”

By the time Tiffany had eaten her breakfast, put on her hat to her satisfaction, and found such unaccountably mislaid articles as her gloves, and her riding-whip, the hour was considerably advanced, and Courtenay in a fret of impatience, saying that Lizzie must be supposing by now that they had forgotten all about her. However, when they reached Colby Place they found the family just getting up from the breakfast-table, and Lizzie by no means ready to set out. There was thus a further delay while Lizzieran upstairs to complete her toilet, accompanied by her two younger sisters, who were presently heard demanding of some apparently remote person what she had done with Miss Lizzie’s boots.

During this period Lindeth and Tiffany enjoyed a quiet flirtation, Sir Ralph gave the Nonesuch a long and involved account of his triumph over someone who had tried to get the better of him in a bargain, Courtenay fidgeted about the room, and Lady Colebatch prosed to Miss Trent with all the placidity of one to whom time meant nothing.

“Only two hours later than was planned,” remarked Sir Waldo, when the cavalcade at last set forth. “Very good!”

Miss Trent, who had been regretting for nearly as long that she had ever expressed a wish to see the Dripping Well, replied: “I suppose it might have been expected!”

“Yes, and I did expect it,” he said cheerfully.

“I wonder then that you should have lent yourself to this expedition.”

“One becomes inured to the unpunctuality of your sex, ma’am,” he responded.

Incensed by this unjust animadversion, she said tartly: “Let me inform you, sir, that I kept no one waiting!”

“But you are a very exceptional female,” he pointed out.

“I assure you, I am nothing of the sort.”

“I shall not allow you to be a judge of that. Oh, no, don’t look at me so crossly! What can I possibly have said to vex you?”

“I beg your pardon! Nothing, of course: merely, I’m not in the mood for nonsense, Sir Waldo!”

“That’s no reason for scowling at me!” he objected. “I haven’t been boring you to death for the past half-hour! Of course, I may bore you before the day is out, but it won’t be with vapid commonplaces, I promise you.”

“Take care!” she warned him, glancing significantly towards Miss Colebatch, who was riding ahead of them, with Courtenay.

“Neither of them is paying the least heed to us. Do you always ride that straight-shouldered cocktail?”

“Yes—Mrs Underhill having bought him for my use. He does very well for me.”

“I wish I had the mounting of you. Do you hunt?”

“No. When Tiffany goes out with the hounds she is her cousin’s responsibility, not mine.”

“Thank God for that! You would certainly come to grief if you attempted to hunt that animal. I only hope you may not be saddle-sick before ever we reach Knaresborough.”

“Indeed, so do I! I don’t know why you should think me such a poor creature!”

“I don’t: I think your horse a poor creature, and a most uncomfortable ride.”

“Oh, no, I assure you—” She broke off, checked by a lifted eyebrow. “Well, perhaps he is not very—very easy-paced! In any event, I don’t mean to argue with you about him, for I am persuaded it would be very stupid in me to do so.”

“It would,” he agreed. “I collect it didn’t occur to your amiable charge to lend you her other hack? By the bye, what made your resolution fail the other day?”

She did not pretend to misunderstand him, but answered frankly: “I couldn’t allow her to expose herself!”

He smiled. “Couldn’t you? Never mind! I fancy she contrived to charm Lindeth out of his disapproval, but the image became just a trifle smudged, nevertheless. I added my mite later in the day—which is why I am being treated with a little reserve.”

“Are you? Oh, dear, how horrid it is, and how very difficult to know what my duty is! Odious to be scheming against the child!”

“Is that what you are doing? I had no notion of it, and thought the scheming was all on my side.”

“Not precisely scheming, but—but conniving,by allowing you to bamboozle her!”

“My dear girl, how do you imagine you could stop me?”

Miss Trent toyed with the idea of objecting to this mode of address, and then decided that it would be wiser to ignore it.

“I don’t know, but—”