Джорджетт Хейер - Pistols For Two and Other Stories

She blushed, and her gaze fell. ‘I don’t know yours either, sir,’ she said, trying to speak lightly.

‘I am Giles Wrexham. And you?’

It meant nothing to her; she replied: ‘Ruth Welborne. I have not been in hiding, only, when I met you before I was still in mourning for my father, and so, you see, I have not till now gone into society. Did you indeed look for me?’

‘Everywhere!’ he declared, still grasping her hands. ‘I had abandoned hope! Where do you live? Let me not lose you again!’

She gave a little laugh. ‘How absurd you are! In Harley Street, with my uncle, who was kind enough to take me into his family when my father died.’

He had never encountered a Welborne; from the direction it seemed probable that her uncle might be a banker, or a merchant, or an Indian nabob. His brain fleetingly acknowledged the possibility, and discarded it as a matter of no consequence. ‘But what, in God’s name, are you doing at a Pantheon masquerade?’ he demanded. ‘In such company, too! Do you tell me that your uncle brought you here?’

‘Oh, no, no!’ she said quickly. ‘Indeed, I do not think that he or my aunt knew just how it would be, for they do not go into society much.’

‘Then how comes it about that you are here?’

She did not seem to resent the question, but it was a moment before she answered it. She said then, with a little difficulty: ‘It was a party of Sir Godfrey Claines’s contriving. He is the man in the purple domino. A cousin of his, a Mrs Worksop, invited me, and my aunt wished me not to refuse. You see, sir, I—I have not the advantage of fortune, and my aunt has three daughters of her own, the eldest of whom she will bring out next year. It would not be reasonable to suppose that she would desire to be saddled with me under such circumstances.’

‘I understand you!’ he said, tightly holding her hands.

She had lowered her eyes, but she raised them at that, and said: ‘Ah, you are not to be thinking that I have met with unkindness! It is not so! I was bred in the country, and perhaps I am missish in not liking—But I was never more thankful in my life, sir, than when you came to my rescue just now!’

He released her hands at last. ‘Go and put on your cloak!’ he said, smiling down at her. ‘I will take you back to your uncle’s house.’

‘Mrs Worksop!’ she faltered. ‘Ought I not—’

‘No. She did not take such care of you that you owe her a particle of civility.’

‘Your sister! I collect that she too is present. I must not—’

‘It is of no consequence,’ he interrupted. ‘If she is here, it is not under my protection! Come, do as I bid you! Do you think I mean to let you slip through my fingers again?’

‘Surely I must be dreaming!’ Ruth said, as the hack drew to a standstill. ‘I thought I should never see you again, and now—! But how can it be? You do not know me!’

‘I am very sure that I do. As for my own mind, I knew that the instant you opened your dear eyes, that day in Bond Street, and looked up into my face.’

‘It was so with you too!’ she said wonderingly.

He kissed her hand, and let it go. ‘It was so. Come, we must get out of this musty coach, and brave your uncle and aunt!’

‘Good heavens, you will not tell them—? They must think you mad! Pray do not—!’

‘No, not tonight,’ he said reassuringly, assisting her to alight.

‘I fear my aunt may be much displeased with me,’ she said. ‘Should you perhaps leave me now?’

‘No. Nor, I fancy, will your aunt be displeased,’ he replied.

The master of the house, they were informed by the servant who admitted them, was still at his club, but Mrs Welborne was at home, and in the drawing-room.

They found her deep in the pages of the newest marble-backed novel from the Circulating Library. Taken unawares, she looked up in surprise, and exclaimed: ‘Good God, Ruth, what in the world brings you home so soon? I declare, you are the most vexatious—’ She stopped short, her gaze travelling past Ruth to Mr Wrexham. One instant she sat with her jaw dropping, then she cast aside her novel and sprang up, a look compound of amazement and delight transfiguring her sharp countenance. ‘Oh—! Surely I cannot be mistaken? Is it not—Mr Wrexham!’

He bowed. ‘Yes, I am Wrexham, ma’am,’ he said. ‘I made the acquaintance of Miss Welborne a month and more ago, in Bond Street, as she may have told you.’

Her face was a study. ‘In Bond Street! You were the gentleman who—? Good God, Ruth, why did you not inform me? I am sure, sir, that had we but known my husband would have called on you to convey the sense of his obligation!’

Mr Wrexham, inured to flattery, and never famed for his social graces, cut her short, saying in his incisive way: ‘It is of no consequence, ma’am. What is of consequence is that I have brought Miss Welborne home this evening because I found her where no young lady of quality should be, and being subjected to such embarrassment as, I am persuaded, you would not wish her to be obliged to endure.’

‘No, indeed! I am sure, if I had had the least notion—’

‘Just so, ma’am. I am sure that I need not enlarge upon this topic. May I beg that you will give me leave to call tomorrow to see how Miss Welborne does?’

She was wreathed in smiles. ‘We shall be most happy, sir!’

‘Thank you. I shall hope to have the felicity of finding Mr Welborne at home, for there is something I wish to say to him.’

‘He shall be at home!’ declared Mrs Welborne.

He bowed again, and turned from her to Ruth, who had been listening in bewilderment to her aunt’s affability. He held out his hand, and she put hers into it, as though compelled. He raised it to his lips. ‘Have I your permission to visit you tomorrow?’ he asked, smiling into her wondering eyes.

The smile was reflected in them. ‘If you please, sir!’ Ruth said, blushing adorably.

Mrs Welborne, much affected, rang for the servant to show Mr Wrexham out of the house. When he had gone, Ruth, looking doubtfully at her aunt, said in her soft voice: ‘I hope you are not vexed with me, ma’am? Indeed, I—’

‘Vexed with you?’ cried Mrs Welborne, embracing her with unaccustomed fervour. ‘Dearest Ruth, what nonsensical notions you do take into your head! Dear, dear child, I know that when you are rich and fashionable you will not forget your cousins! They say he has never yet attached himself to any female, and you may imagine the caps that have been set at him! Ruth, is it possible—? Why, you innocent puss, that was Wrexham of Lyonshall!’

Mr Wrexham, returning to Grosvenor Square just before midnight, learned, with vague surprise, that he was awaited by her ladyship in the drawing-room. He found, in fact, that he was awaited not only by her ladyship, but by his sister, and a well set-up young man in scarlet regimentals, who had a crop of fair, curly hair, a pair of serious blue eyes, set in an open countenance, and a general air of one about to engage in a Forlorn Hope. Both he and Letty rose at Mr Wrexham’s entrance. The gentleman eased his black cravat, and was seen to draw a deep breath; the lady burst into tempestuous speech.

‘Good heavens, Giles, where can you have been this age? We have been waiting for you these two hours! Giles, this is Edwin!’

‘How do you do?’ said Mr Wrexham, holding out his hand.

Mr Ledbury’s orbs showed a tendency to start from their sockets. He coloured richly, and grasped the outstretched hand. ‘How—how do you do?’ he stammered. ‘I have long been wishful of meeting you, sir!’

‘Have you?’ said Mr Wrexham abstractedly. He opened his snuff-box, and offered it to his guest. His eyes took in the facings to that scarlet jacket. ‘In the 40th are you?’

Mr Ledbury acknowledged it. Almost stunned by the honour done him in being invited to help himself to snuff from Mr Wrexham’s own box, he took too large a pinch, and fell into a fit of sneezing. This left the field open to Letty, and she at once said: ‘You must know, Giles, that but for my entreaties this visit would have been paid you more than a month ago! No sooner did I divulge to Edwin what had passed between you and me this morning than he declared his unshakeable resolve to wait upon you immediately! We stayed only to dine with his sister.’

‘Did you?’ said Mr Wrexham. ‘I can only offer my apologies for having been absent from home. What do you want with me?’

Letty stared at him. ‘Giles, are you quite well?’ she gasped.

‘I was thinking of something else,’ he apologized, a tinge of colour mounting to his cheek. ‘Did you say you had been awaiting me for two hours? Were you not at the masquerade, then?’

Mr Ledbury, mastering his paroxysm, said: ‘Sir, it is on that head that I was resolved to have speech with you this very night! When I learned that you had taken the scheme in such aversion, nothing, believe me, would have prevailed with me to continue with it! In this determination my sister was steadfast in upholding me. It was only in response to my earnest representations that she was induced, at the outset, to take part in the scheme.’

‘These masquerades are not at all the thing, you know,’ said Mr Wrexham.

Mr Ledbury blushed more vividly still. ‘Sir, from the circumstance of my having been employed since the age of fifteen, first in the Peninsula, and later in America, returning thence only just in time to take part in the late conflict at Waterloo, I have never been on the town, as the saying is. Had I suspected that any impropriety would attach to my escorting Miss Wrexham to such a function, I must have been resolute in refusing to lend myself to the project.’

‘Letty’s notion, was it?’ said Mr Wrexham, with what none of his listeners could feel to be more than tepid interest.

His mother and sister gazed at him in uneasy astonishment. Mr Ledbury, emboldened by his mild aspect, plunged into a recital of his ambitions, his present circumstances, and his future expectations. Mr Wrexham, lost in dreams of his own, caught such phrases as ‘eldest son’,—‘my father’s estate in Somerset’, and soon interrupted the flow, saying: ‘I wish you will not talk so much! It is time you had your company: you had a great deal better exchange into another regiment, but I cannot discuss that with you at this hour!’

Mr Ledbury, transported to find his Letty’s brother so much less formidable than he had been led to expect, delivered himself of a rehearsed peroration. In the maximum number of words he conveyed to Mr Wrexham. the intelligence that, if it were possible, he would prefer Letty to renounce all claim to her inheritance. This noble speech at last jerked Mr Wrexham out of his abstraction, and caused him to retort with considerable acerbity: ‘Happily, it is not possible! I wish you will go away, for I am in no mood for these heroics! Come and talk to me tomorrow morning! You wish to marry my sister: very well, but you must transfer! She will make you the devil of a wife, but that, I thank God, is no concern of mine!’

With these words of encouragement, he inexorably ushered his guest off the premises, barely allowing him time to take a punctilious leave of Lady Albinia, and a fond one of Letty. When he returned to the drawing-room, he found his mother and sister with their heads together, but whatever they were so earnestly discussing remained undisclosed. ‘Giles,’ said Letty anxiously, ‘did you perfectly understand? Edwin has offered for me!’

‘I dare say an estimable young man, but he uses too many words,’ commented Mr Wrexham. ‘Do you think he would like to transfer into a cavalry regiment?’

Alarmed, she laid her hand on his arm. ‘Giles, are you sure you are well?’

‘Perfectly!’ he said, lifting her hand, and gripping it. ‘I was never better!’

She cried sharply: ‘Giles! You have found her!’

‘I have found her! The sweetest face I ever beheld, Letty! Mama, I hope you do not mean to succumb to the vapours, for I wish you to make a call of ceremony in Harley Street tomorrow!’

‘His attentions,’ said the widow, fixing a pair of large, rather anxious brown eyes on her cousin’s face, are becoming most marked, I assure you, Honoria!’