Джорджетт Хейер - The Nonesuch

But Miss Trent had not been reared in this accommodating morality. She was as much revolted by a libertine as by a prostitute, and she would as soon have contemplated becoming such a man’s mistress as his wife.

By the time Tiffany returned to Staples Miss Trent had regained sufficient command over herself to be able to meet her with at least the semblance of composure. There was a stricken look in her eyes, but Tiffany, very full of her own concerns, did not notice it. She was in sparkling good-humour, for on their way home she and Courtenay had met Lady Colebatch and Lizzie, tooling along the road to the village in a dowdy landaulette. “And Lady Colebatch asked us if we cared to dine at Colby Place this evening—just Courtenay and me! It is not a party—only the Mickleby girls and Arthur, and Jack Banningham! So I may, Ancilla, mayn’t I? Oh, she said she would be glad to see you, if you liked to go with us! But I daresay you won’t, for all we mean to do is to play games, and there won’t be any strangers there, so there can’t be any objection to my going without you! Now, can there?”

“No, none, if Courtenay goes with you.”

“Dear Ancilla!” Tiffany said, embracing her. “Shall you accompany us? You need not, you know!”

“Then I won’t,” said Miss Trent, faintly smiling.

Courtenay, who had entered the room in Tiffany’s wake, cried out at this. Miss Trent pleaded a headache, which made Tiffany say instantly: “I thought you were not looking quite the thing! Poor Ancilla! You will be glad of a quiet evening, I daresay: you should go to bed, and I’ll bring some lemon peel to put on your temples!”

Miss Trent declined this; so Tiffany, all eager solicitude, offered to find the pastilles her aunt burned whenever she too had the headache; or to mix a glass of hartshorn, and water for her to drink.

“Thank you, Tiffany, no!” said Miss Trent firmly. “And I don’t want a cataplasm to my feet either! You know I never quack myself!”

Tiffany was rather daunted by this; but after searching her memory for a moment, her brow puckered, she pronounced triumphantly: “Camphorated spirits of lavender!” and ran out of the room, calling to old Nurse.

Miss Trent raised her brows enquiringly at Courtenay. “Why is she so anxious to render me bedfast? If you know of any reason, pray don’t keep it from me!”

He grinned. “Well, I don’t—except that Lady Colebatch said that she was going to invite Lindeth as well, and I rather fancy Tiffany means to lift her finger. So, of course, she don’t want a chaperon!”

“Means to do what?”demanded Miss Trent.

His grin broadened. “Lift her finger! That’s what she told me she’d do when she wanted to bring Lindeth back to heel; but for my part I think she’s mistaken her man! She thinks he must be in flat despair because she’s been flirting with that court card of a cousin of his, and turning a cold shoulder on him, but I think he don’t care a rush! In fact,—but mum for that!”

“Mum indeed for that!” said Miss Trent, roused to speak with unusual earnestness. “I do beg ofyou,—”

“Oh, no need for that!” declared Courtenay virtuously. “I told Mama I wouldn’t stir the coals, and no more I will. Unless, of course, she comes the ugly,” he added, after a thoughtful pause.

Miss Trent could only hope that her charge would refrain. Her humour at the moment seemed sunny, but there was no depending upon its continuance; and although she and her cousin rarely quarrelled when they rode together, each favouring much the same neck-or-nothing style, and Courtenay admitting that with all her faults Tiffany was pluck to the backbone, at all other times they took a delight in vexing one another.

However, they presently set off together in perfect amity, in Courtenay’s phaeton, each agreeing that since the party was no dress affair this conveyance was preferable to the rather outdated carriage drawn by a pair of horses kept largely for farmwork which was the only other closed vehicle available during Mrs Underhill’s absence from home. Miss Trent, whose opinion of young Mr Underhill’s ability to drive a team was not high, noted with relief that he had only a pair harnessed to his phaeton, reflected that the moon was at the full, thus rendering it unlikely that he would drive into a ditch, and retired to grapple with her own melancholy problem.

Not the least perplexing feature of this, as she soon discovered, was her inability to think of the rake whose love-children were to be foisted cynically on to an unsuspecting society and of the delightful man whose smile haunted her dreams as one and the same person. It was in vain that she reminded herself that charm of manner must necessarily form the major part of a rake’s stock-in-trade; equally in vain that she lashed herself for having been so stupidly taken in. From this arose the horrifying realization that however tarnished in her eyes might be Sir Waldo’s image her love had not withered, as it ought to have done, but persisted strongly enough to make her feel more miserable than ever in her life before.

For on one point her resolution was fixed: there could be no question of marriage with him, even if marriage was what he had in mind, which, in the light of Lindeth’s revelations, now seemed doubtful. But when she thought it over she could not believe that he meant to offer her a less honourable alliance. A libertine he might be, but he was no fool, and he must be well aware that she was no female of easy virtue. She wondered why he should wish to marry her; and came to the dreary conclusion that he had probably decided that the time had come for him to marry, and hoped that by choosing a penniless nobody to be his wife he would be at liberty to continue to pursue his present way of life, while she, thankful to be so richly established, turned a blind eye to his crim. cons.,and herself behaved with all the propriety which he would no doubt demand of the lady who bore his name.

By the time Tiffany and Courtenay returned from Colby Place her headache was no longer feigned. Only a sense of duty kept her from retiring to bed hours earlier; and she could only feel relief when Tiffany, instead of prattling about the party, yawned, shrugged up her shoulders, said that it had been abominably insipid, and that she was fagged to death. An expressive grimace from Courtenay informed Miss Trent that he had a tale to disclose; but as she felt herself to be quite incapable of dealing with Tiffany’s problems at that moment she did not stay to hear what the tale was, but went upstairs with her wayward charge.

Tiffany put in no appearance in the breakfast-parlour next morning. Her maid told Miss Trent that she was suffering from a headache: a statement interpreted by Nurse as “in one of her dratted miffs.” So Courtenay, cheerfully discussing an enormous breakfast, was able to regale Miss Trent with the history of the previous night’s entertainment.

“Lindeth wasn’t there,” he said, cracking his second egg. “Told Lady Colebatch he was already engaged. Deepest regrets: all that sort of flummery! But,ma’am, Patience wasn’t there either! She had a previous engagement too, and if you can tell me what it could have been but Lindeth’s being invited to the Rectory, it’s more than anyone else can! Because Arthur Mickleby and his sisters were at Colby Place, and Sophy and Jack Banningham, and the Ashes, so where did Lindeth go if it wasn’t to the Rectory? Plain as a pikestaff! But what must Mary Mickleby do but—no, it wasn’t Mary! it was Jane Mickleby, and just the sort of thing she would do!—well, she said, with that silly titter of hers, that she was sure no one could give the least guess as to why Patience and Lindeth were both engaged on the same evening. And, if you ask me,ma’am,” concluded Courtenay, in a very fair-minded spirit, “she didn’t say it only to pay off a score with Tiffany, but because she’s as cross as crabs herself that Lindeth never showed the least preference for her! But, however it may have been, you should have seen Tiffany’s face!”

“I am thankful I did not!” responded Miss Trent.

He chuckled. “Ay, so you may be! Lord, what a ninny-hammer she is! It’s my belief she’d never had the least suspicion that Lindeth had a tendre for Patience—and, I must say, I felt quite sorry for her!”

“That was kind of you,” said Miss Trent politely.

“Well, I think it was,” owned Courtenay. “For I don’t like her, and never did! But she’s my cousin, after all, and I’m dashed if I wouldn’t as lief have her for a cousin as an antidote like Jane Mickleby!” He paused, his fork spearing a vast quantity of ham, halfway to his mouth and said, in portentous accents: “But that wasn’t the whole!”

Miss Trent waited with a sinking heart while he masticated this Gargantuan mouthful. “Well?”

“Arthur!” he pronounced, a trifle thickly. He washed down the ham with a gulp of coffee, and handed her his cup to be replenished. “Mighty cool to her!”

“Very likely. She didn’t speak of his sisters as she ought.”

“I know that, but I’ve got a notion there was more to it than that. Seemed to me—Well, you know what cakes he, and Jack, and Greg have been making of themselves over that chit, ma’am?”

“Yes?”

“Seemed to me they weren’t. Don’t know why, but I daresay Jack will tell me, even if Greg don’t. Not that they were uncivil, or—or—Dashed if I know what it was! Just struck me that they weren’t any of ’em so particular in their attentions. Good thing! For,” said Courtenay, about to dig his teeth into a muffin, “they were getting to be dead bores!”