Джорджетт Хейер - The Reluctant Widow

“No, but I dare say he may be dead by now,” said Nicky encouragingly. “There’s no harm done!”

“Yes, there is! There is a great deal of harm, for I was to have gone to Five Mile Ash as governess to Mrs. Macclesfield’s family, and now I do not know what is to become of me!”

“Oh, my brother will arrange everything!” Nicky assured her. “You have no need to be in a fret, ma’am. Ned always knows what one should do. Besides, you would not like to go as a governess, would you? You are not at all like any that my sisters had! I believe you are bamming me!”

She did not feel equal to arguing the matter with him. She untied the strings of her bonnet and removed it with a sigh of relief. Her soft brown ringlets were sadly crushed; she tried to tidy them, but was really too weary to care much for her appearance, and soon relapsed into immobility, her cheek propped on one hand, her eyes drowsily watching the flames in the hearth. She was roused presently by the entrance of Mr. Carlyon, who came in with a tray in his hands, which he set down on the table at her elbow.

“I think you should take a glass of wine, ma’am,” he said, pouring one out for her. “The housekeeper will have your bedchamber ready directly. Will you take a biscuit?”

She accepted it and sat sipping her wine and listening to a brief exchange of conversation between the two brothers until the housekeeper came in to fetch her to bed. She went very willingly, only wondering what John Carlyon could have told the housekeeper to make that comfortable woman accept her with such seeming placidity. She was conducted up a broad, shallow stairway to such a bedchamber as she had not occupied since her father’s death. A servant was passing a warming pan between the sheets of the bed; a fire had been kindled in the hearth, and her brushes and combs laid out upon the dressing table. The housekeeper assured herself that all was in order, desired Mrs. Cheviot to ring the bell if she should require anything, bade her a respectful good night, and withdrew.

Mrs. Cheviot, leaving the future to take care of itself, prepared to give herself up to the present luxury of a warm bed, and within half an hour was deeply and dreamlessly asleep.

Downstairs in the saloon, Mr. John Carlyon told his young brother severely that the best thing he could now do would be to go to bed. This suggestion having been indignantly spurned, he said, “There is nothing more for you to do, and Ned may not reach home until morning. He will not leave while Eustace is still alive, I dare say.”

“Well, I shall sit up till he comes,” Nicky said. “Good God, I could not sleep a wink! How can you think of it? But John, how came that lady to be with Ned at Highnoons? I have been puzzling my head over it. It seems very strange!”

“You had best ask Ned,” John replied uncom-municatively.

“Well, and so I shall, and, what is more, he will tell me!” said Nicky, rather nettled.

“Very likely.”

“At all events,” said Nicky, “the affair is not as bad as it might have been, is it? For if Eustace married that lady—”

“Not as bad as it might have been!” John exclaimed. “I do not know how it could well be worse! And all come about through a prank I wonder you should not be ashamed to think of perpetrating at your age!”

Nick retired to the chair by the fire and cast himself into it, saying, “Oh, fudge! There was nothing in that, I am sure! Why, when Harry was up, you know very well he—”

“Yes, I am aware that there was never anything to choose between you and Harry, more’s the pity! But at least Harry was never such a young fool that he would allow himself to be dragged into a quarrel with Eustace Cheviot!”

“John!” said Nicky despairingly. “I keep on telling you I stood it for as long as I might, but there was no bearing it! If he had abused me I would not have cared, but to hear him say such things of Ned was more than flesh and blood could stand! Besides, I never meant to do more than mill him down, after all!”

John grunted, but upon his young brother’s attempting to justify himself still further, interrupted to read him so stern a lecture on the subject of his volatility, thoughtlessness, and general instability of character that Nicky was silenced, and had to sit enduring in dumb resentment this comprehensive homily. When it came to an end, he hunched an offended shoulder and pretended to bury himself in the Morning Post, which lay providentially to hand. John went over to the desk and busied himself with some papers of his which were lying there.

It was rather more than an hour later, and the brothers had not exchanged any further conversation, when a firm tread was heard to cross the hall, and Carlyon entered the room.

Nicky sprang up. “Ned, what has been the end of it?” he asked anxiously. “I thought you would never come! Is Eustace dead?”

“Yes, he is now. You should be in bed, Nicky. Did you see Miss Rochdale safely bestowed, John?”

“Is that her name? Yes, she went up to bed over an hour ago. You have been a thought highhanded that quarter, have you not?”

“I am afraid so indeed. There was really nothing else to be done, matters having been pushed to a crisis.”

“Ned, you know I am as sorry as I could be!” Nicky said. “I wouldn’t have put you in a fix for the world!”

“Yes, that is what you always say,” interposed John. “But you go from one scrape to another! Now it has come to this, that you may think yourself fortunate if you do not have to stand your trial for manslaughter!”

“I know,” Nicky said. “Of course I know that! And perhaps they won’t believe it was an accident.”

“My dear Nicky, none of this is likely to go beyond the coroner’s inquest,” Carlyon said. “You go up to bed, and don’t tease yourself any more tonight!”

Nicky sighed, and John, perceiving that he was looking pale and very tired, said roughly, “Don’t worry! We shall not let them hale you off to prison, Nick!”

Nicky smiled sleepily but gratefully at him, and took himself off.

“Incorrigible!” John said. “Did he tell you why he has been sent down?”

“Yes, there was a performing bear,” Carlyon answered absently.

“I suppose that is sufficient to explain all!”

“Well, it was sufficient to explain it all to me,” Carlyon admitted. “Once a performing bear had entered Nicky’s orbit the rest was inevitable. Have you been waiting up for me? You should not have done so.”

“You look fagged to death!” John said, in his brusque way. “Sit down, while I pour you a glass of wine!”

Carlyon took a chair by the fire, and stretched his booted legs out before him. “I am tired,” he owned. “I hope I may not be called upon to attend any more such deathbeds. But we shall brush through this very well if Hitchin does not let his loyalty run away with him.”

John handed him a glass of wine. “Oh, I don’t doubt we shall come about, but we should never have been put into such a situation! It is what I have been saying to you forever, Ned: you are by far too easy with Nick! There’s not an ounce of harm in the boy, but he is a great deal too wild. It is as I said a while back: he plunges into scrapes and then runs to you to extricate him.”

“Well, thank God he does run to me!” said Carlyon.

“Yes, that is all very well, but why you must needs encourage him to steal bears, and to—”

“My dear John, in what possible way can I be held to have encouraged Nick to do any such thing?” protested Carlyon.

“No, well, I did not mean that precisely, but I know as well as if I had been present that you have not told him how wrong he has been!”

“He knows that without my telling him.”

“He needs to be hauled well over the coals!”

“I expect you have done so already.”

“He does not attend to me as he does to you.”

“He might do so, however, if you would be more sparing of your homilies.”

John shrugged and said no more for a few moments. When he spoke again it was on another subject. “Who is this female to whom you married Cheviot?” he asked.

“She is a daughter of Tom Rochdale of Feldenhall.”

“That man! Good God! Then that is how she comes to be a governess! Poor thing! But what is now to become of her?”

“Well, I do not as yet know how Cheviot’s affairs may stand, but I dare say something may be saved from the wreck. He made his will in her favor.”

“Made his will in her favor?” John repeated incredulously. “Ned, was that his doing, or yours?”

“Mine, of course.”

“Well,” John said dubiously, “I suppose some compensation had to be made her, and, to be sure, I was never in favor of its coming out of your pocket. But ought not the estate to have gone to the next of kin?”

“Old Bedlington, for instance,” said Carlyon.

“Yes, I suppose so, for, after all, he is his uncle.”

“But I don’t want old Bedlington to be living within a stone’s throw of me,” said Carlyon.

“No, my God!” John agreed, struck by this eminently reasonable point of view. “I dare say he will kick up the devil of a dust, though.”

“I don’t think it. He had never any expectation of inheriting the estate.”

“You will have him down upon you as soon as he hears of this,” John said gloomily. “Depend upon it, he will blame you for the whole. I suppose he must be the only person alive who had a kindness for Eustace—and if he had known what we knew, even he might not have caressed and encouraged him so much!”

“I suppose his own son cannot be a source of much satisfaction to him,” Carlyon said, yawning.