Джорджетт Хейер - Venetia

“Oh, he did, did he?” retorted Damerel, regarding her with grim appreciation. “He’s an insufferable coxcomb, but as for you, fair torment—!”

“Well, I see nothing to take exception to in Sir Lambert!” she declared. “Only wait until you learn how very kind he is! You see, the offer I spoke of was from Mama!”

“What?”

“I don’t wonder you are astonished: I was myself—but so very much touched! Only think, Damerel! She invites me to go back with them both to Paris, and to remain with them for as long as I like—and with Sir Lambert’s full approval! I own, I can’t help but be tempted: I have always longed to travel, you know, and Mama talks of going to Italy in the spring. Italy! I don’t think I can resist!”

“Venetia, you are doing it very much too brown!” he said, breaking in on this without ceremony. “I know your mama! She would no more invite you to take up residence in her hotel than she would shave off her eyebrows!”

Quite prepared for this scepticism, Venetia said anxiously: “Oh, Damerel, do you think she didn’t mean it after all?”

“I think she never so much as dreamed of inviting you to visit her, my love!”

“But she did!” Venetia assured him. “It was because I told her of my scheme to set up house with Aubrey. She was quite as horrified as ever you were, and said I might as well bury myself. She says it wouldn’t do for me to live with her in England, but that abroad people are not so strait-laced, so that—But read her letter for yourself!”

Looking thunderstruck, he took the letter she had extracted from her reticule, and spread it open. He cast her a suspicious glance, and then lowered his eyes to Lady Steeple’s charmingly written missive. He read it, heavily frowning, twice, before he again looked at Venetia. He was still suspicious, but she could see that he was shaken. “Venetia, how the devil did you persuade her to write this?” he asked.

“Well, you see what persuaded her to write it!”

“That is exactly what I do not see! Aurelia Steeple in a fret because you told her—Oh, for the Lord’s sake, Venetia, don’t ask me to swallow that fling! I don’t know what you’ve been doing, but if this isn’t a hoax I hope you know that under no circumstances must you join that manage!”

She said apologetically: “No, I fear I don’t. I see that it wouldn’t be a wise thing to do if my ambition were to become one of those tonnish females whom my aunt describes as being of the first consideration, but as it isn’t—”

“Stop talking like the greenhead you are!” he said sternly. “You know nothing about the Steeples’ world! Well, I do know—none better!—and if I thought that this was anything but a hum—” He stopped abruptly, raising his head a little.

“Well?” she prompted.

He lifted his finger, and she too heard the sound that had reached his ears. A carriage was approaching the house. “Aubrey!” Damerel said. His eyes went back to her face, “What reason do you mean to give him for being here? You won’t regale him with this!” He handed back Lady Steeple’s letter to her as he spoke.

She was wishing Aubrey a hundred miles away, and could have screamed with vexation, but she replied with seeming calm: “But, my dear friend, I couldn’t take such a step without first discovering what his sentiments are!”

“If that is all—”

She smiled. “His sentiments, Damerel, not his opinions! For anything I know he might prefer to lodge with the Appersetts than to join me in London.” Her smile wavered. “I don’t think I am very necessary to him either,” she said.

He was on his feet now, standing over her, grasping her wrists, and almost jerking her up out of her chair. “Venetia, I would give my life to spare you pain—disillusionment—all the things you don’t realize—have no knowledge of!—My life! What an empty, fustian thing to say! I could scarcely have hit upon a more worthless sacrifice!” he said bitterly.

There was a murmur of voices in the hall, footsteps were approaching. “Damn Aubrey!” Damerel said under his breath, releasing Venetia’s wrists.

But it was not Aubrey. Setting the door wide, Imber announced in a voice of doom: “Mr. Hendred, my lord!”

Mr. Hendred walked into the room. He was looking pale, tired, and very angry; and after bestowing one brief glance on Venetia he addressed himself stiffly to Damerel. “Good-evening! You must allow me to apologize for making so belated an arrival! I do not doubt, however, that you were expecting to see me!”

“Well, I suppose I ought to have done so, at all events,” replied Damerel. “You have quite a knack of arriving in what might be called the nick of time, haven’t you? Have you dined?”

Mr. Hendred shuddered, momentarily closing his eyes. “No, sir, I have not dined! Nor, I may add—”

“Then you must be devilish sharp-set! said Damerel curtly. “See to it, Imber!”

An expression of acute nausea crossed Mr. Hendred’s countenance, but before he could master his spleen enough to decline, with civility, this offer of hospitality, Venetia, less charitable emotions vanquished by compassion, started forward, saying: “No, no! My uncle can never eat when he has been travelling all day! Oh, my dear sir, what can have possessed you to have come chasing after me in this imprudent way? I wouldn’t have had you do such a thing for the world! So unnecessary! so foolish! You will be quite knocked-up!”

“Foolish?” repeated Mr. Hendred. “I reached London last night, Venetia, to be met with the intelligence that you had left town by the mail-coach, with the expressed intention of coming to this house—where, indeed, I find you! So far as I can discover, you took this disastrous step because of a quarrel with your aunt—and I must say, Venetia, that I credited you with too much sense to refine anything whatsoever on what your aunt may have said in a distempered freak!”

“My dear, dear uncle, of course I didn’t!” Venetia said remorsefully, coaxing him to a chair. “Do, pray, sit down, for I know very well you are fagged to death, and have that horrid tic! There was no quarrel, I promise you! My poor aunt was quite overset by first seeing my mother at the theatre, and then discovering that I had been so ungrateful as to make a mull of her efforts to bring me into fashion by walking on my father-in-law’s arm all the way from the Pulteney Hotel to Oxford Street. She gave me a rare scold, and I didn’t blame her in the least: I knew she would! But as for leaving town because of it, or parting from her in anger—Sir, she cannot have told you that! She knew what my reason was: I made no secret of it to her!”

“Your aunt,” said Mr. Hendred, expressing himself with determined restraint, “is a woman of great sensibility, and is subject, as you must be aware, to irritation of the nerves! When her spirits become overpowered, it is hard for her to compose herself sufficiently to render a coherent or even a rational account of whatever may have occurred to cast her into affliction. In fact,” he ended, with asperity, “you cannot make head or tail of anything she says! As for knowing what your reason was, I don’t know what you may have seen fit to tell her, Venetia, but so far as I understand it you could think of nothing better to do than to beguile her with some farrago about wishing Damerel to strew rose-leaves for you to walk on!”

Damerel, who had resumed his seat, had been staring moodily into the fire, but at these words he looked up quickly. “Rose-leaves?” he repeated. “Rose-leaves?” His eyes went to Venetia’s face, wickedly quizzing her. “But, my dear girl, at this season?”

“Be quiet, you wretch!” she said, blushing.

“Exactly so!” said Mr. Hendred. Scrupulously exact, he added: “Or her purpose may have been to discourage you from indulging in such wasteful habits. I was unable to discover which—not that it signifies, for a more foolish story I never heard! What you told your aunt is of no consequence. What is of the first consequence to me is that you, my dear niece, a girl—and do not tell me that you are of age, I beg of you!—a girl, I say, residing in my house, under my protection, should have been allowed to run off, unattended, and with the expressed intention of seeking shelter under this of all imaginable roofs! And you call it foolish and unnecessary of me to exert myself to prevent your ruin and my own mortification?”

“No, no!” she said soothingly. “But are you not forgetting that I have a brother living under this roof, sir? I told your servants that I had been sent for because he was ill, and surely—”

“I have neither forgotten Aubrey, nor am I here to lend you countenance!” he interposed sternly. “I am here, as well you must know, to save you from committing an act of irremediable folly! I make no excuse, Damerel, for speaking thus plainly, for you already know my mind!”

“By all means say what you choose,” shrugged Damerel. “We are perfectly in accord, after all!”

Venetia, watching her uncle press his finger-tips to one temple, rose, and went quietly out of the room. She was not absent for many minutes, but when she returned her uncle told her that he had been discussing with Damerel her visit to the Steeples. “I have no hesitation in assuring you, my dear niece, that what his lordship has already told you is perfectly true. No stigma whatsoever attaches to you, and although any regular intercourse between you and Sir Lambert and Lady Steeple would be most undesirable, nothing could be more unbecoming—I may say improper—than for a daughter to cut her mother’s acquaintance! I do not conceal from you that on that painful subject I have never found myself in agreement, either with your aunt, or with your late parent. In my opinion, the policy of secrecy which was insisted on was as ill-judged as it was absurd!”