Джорджетт Хейер - The Talisman Ring

Sir Tristram Shield, arriving at Lavenham Court in the wintry dusk, was informed at the door that his great-uncle was very weak, not expected to live many more days out. He received these tidings without comment, but as the butler helped him to take off his heavy-caped driving coat, he inquired in an unemotional voice: “Is Mr Lavenham here?”

“At the Dower House, sir,” replied the butler, handing the coat and the high-crowned beaver hat to a footman. He nodded austere dismissal to this underling, and added with a slight cough: “His lordship has been a little difficult, sir. So far his lordship has not received Mr Lavenham.”

He paused, waiting for Sir Tristram to inquire after Mademoiselle de Vauban. Sir Tristram, however, merely asked to be conducted to his bedchamber, that he might change his dress before being admitted to his great-uncle’s presence.

The butler, as well aware as everyone else at the Court of the reason of Sir Tristram’s sudden arrival, was disappointed at this lack of interest, but reflected that Sir Tristram, after all, had never been one to show what he was thinking. He led the way in person across the hall to the oak stairway and went with Sir Tristram up to the Long Gallery. Here, on one side, portraits of dead Lavenhams hung, and, on the other, tall, square-headed mullioned windows looked south over a well-timbered park to the Downs. The silence of the house was disturbed by the rustle of a skirt and the hasty closing of a door at one end of the Gallery. The butler had a shrewd suspicion that Mademoiselle de Vauban, more curious than Sir Tristram, had been waiting in the Gallery to obtain a glimpse of him. As he opened the door into one of the bedchambers he cast a glance at Shield, and said: “His lordship has seen no one but the doctor, sir—once, and Mamzelle Eustacie, of course.”

That dark, harsh face told him nothing. “Yes?” said Shield.

It occurred to the butler that perhaps Sir Tristram might not know why he had been summoned into Sussex. If that were so there was no saying how he might take it. He was not an easy man to drive, as his great-uncle had found more than once in the past. Ten to one there might be trouble.

Sir Tristram’s voice interrupted these reflections. “Send my man up to me, Porson, and inform his lordship of my arrival,” he said.

The butler bowed and withdrew. Sir Tristram walked over to the window, and stood looking out over the formal gardens to the woods beyond, still dimly visible through the gathering twilight. There was a sombre frown in his eyes, and his mouth was compressed in a way that made it appear more grim than usual. He did not turn when the door opened to admit his valet, accompanied by one footman carrying his cloak-bag, and another bearing two gilded candelabra, which he set down on the dressing-table. The sudden candlelight darkened the prospect outside. After a moment Shield came away from the window to the fireplace and stood leaning his arm along the high mantelshelf, and looking down at the smouldering logs. The footman drew the curtains across the windows and went softly away. Jupp, the valet, began to unpack the contents of the cloak-bag, and to lay out upon the bed an evening coat and breeches of mulberry velvet, and a Florentine waistcoat. Sir Tristram stirred the logs in the grate with one top-booted foot. Jupp glanced at him sideways, wondering what was in the wind to make him look so forbidding. “You’ll wear powder, sir?” he suggested, setting the pounce-box and the pomatum down on the dressing-table.

“No.”

Jupp sighed. He had already learned of Mr Lavenham’s presence at the Dower House. It seemed probable that the Beau might come up to the Court to visit his cousin, and Jupp, knowing how skilled was Mr Lavenham’s gentleman in the arrangement of his master’s locks, would have liked for his pride’s sake to have sent his own master down to dinner properly curled and powdered. He said nothing, however, but knelt down to pull off Sir Tristram’s boots.

Half an hour later Shield, summoned by Lord Lavenham’s valet, walked down the Gallery to the Great Chamber, and went in unannounced.

The room, wainscoted with oak and hung with crimson curtains, was warmed by a leaping fire and lit by as many as fifty candles in branching candelabra. At the far end a vast fourposter bed was set upon a slight dais. In it, banked up with pillows, covered with a quilt of flaming brocade, wearing an exotic bedgown and the powdered wig without which no one but his valet could ever remember to have seen him, was old Sylvester, ninth Baron Lavenham.

Sir Tristram paused on the threshold, dazzled momentarily by the blaze of unexpected light. The grimness of his face was lessened by a slight sardonic smile as his eyes took in the magnificence and the colour about him. “Your deathbed, sir?” he inquired.

A thin chuckle came from the fourposter. “My deathbed,” corroborated Sylvester with a twinkle.

Sir Tristram walked across the floor to the dais. A wasted hand on which a great ruby ring glowed was held out to him. He took it, and stood holding it, looking down into his great-uncle’s parchment-coloured face, with its hawk-nose, and bloodless lips, and its deep-sunk brilliant eyes. Sylvester was eighty, and dying, but he still wore his wig and his patches, and clasped in his left hand his snuffbox and laced handkerchief.

Sylvester returned his great-nephew’s steady look with one of malicious satisfaction. “I knew you’d come,” he remarked. He withdrew his hand from the light clasp about it, and waved it towards a chair which had been set on the dais. “Sit down.” He opened his snuffbox and dipped in his finger and thumb. “When did I see you last?” he inquired, shaking away the residue of the snuff and holding an infinitesimal pinch to one nostril.

Sir Tristram sat down, full in the glare of a cluster of candles on a torchère pedestal. The golden light cast his profile into strong relief against the crimson velvet bed curtains. “It must have been about two years ago, I believe,” he answered.

Sylvester gave another chuckle. “A loving family, ain’t we?” He shut his snuffbox and dusted his fingers with his handkerchief. “That other great-nephew of mine is here,” he remarked abruptly.

“So I’ve heard.”

“Seen him?”

“No.”

“You will,” said Sylvester. “I shan’t.”

“Why not?” asked Shield, looking at him under his black brows.

“Because I don’t want to,” replied Sylvester frankly. “Beau Lavenham! I was Beau Lavenham in my day, but d’ye suppose that I decked myself out in a green coat and yellow pantaloons?”

“Probably not,” said Shield.

“Damned smooth-spoken fellow!” said Sylvester. “Never liked him. Never liked his father either. His mother used to suffer from the vapours. She suffered from them—whole series of ’em!—when she wanted me to let her have the Dower House.”

“Well, she got the Dower House,” said Shield dryly.

“Of course she did!” said Sylvester snappishly, and relapsed into one of the forgetful silences of old age. A log falling out on to the hearth recalled him. He opened his eyes again and said: “Did I tell you why I wanted you?”

Sir Tristram had risen and gone over to the fire to replace the smoking log. He did not answer until he had done so, and then he said in his cool, disinterested voice: “You wrote that you had arranged a marriage for me with your granddaughter.”

The piercing eyes gleamed. “It don’t please you much, eh?”

“Not much,” admitted Shield, coming back to the dais.

“It’s a good match,” offered Sylvester, “I’ve settled most of the unentailed property on her, and she’s half French, you know—understands these arrangements. You can go your own road. She’s not at all like her mother.”

“I never knew her mother,” said Shield discouragingly.

“She was a fool!” said Sylvester. “Never think she could be a daughter of mine. She eloped with a frippery Frenchman: that shows you. What was his damned name?”

“De Vauban.”

“So it was. The Vicomte de Vauban. I forget when he died. Marie died three years ago, and I went over to Paris—a year later, I think, but my memory’s not what it was.”

“A little more than a year later, sir.”

“I dare say. It was after—” He paused for a moment, and then added harshly: “—after Ludovic’s affair. I thought France was growing too hot for any grandchild of mine, and by God I was right! How long is it now since they sent the King to the guillotine? Over a month, eh? Mark me, Tristram, the Queen will go the same road before the year is out. I’m happy to think I shan’t be here to see it. Charming she was, charming! But you wouldn’t remember. Twenty years ago we used to wear her colour. Everything was Queen’s Hair: satins, ribbons, shoes. Now”—his lip curled into a sneer—“now I’ve a great-nephew who wears a green coat and yellow pantaloons, and a damned absurd sugar-loaf on his head!” He raised his heavy eyelids suddenly, and added: “But the boy is still my heir!”

Sir Tristram said nothing in answer to this remark, which had been flung at him almost like a challenge. Sylvester took snuff again, and when he next spoke it was once more in his faintly mocking drawl. “He’d marry Eustacie if he could, but she don’t like him.” He fobbed his snuffbox with a flick of his finger. “The long and the short of it is, I’ve a fancy to see her married to you before I die, Tristram.”

“Why?” asked Shield.

“There’s no one else,” replied Sylvester bluntly. “My fault, of course. I should have provided for her—taken her up to London. But I’m old, and I’ve never pleased anyone but myself. I haven’t been to London above twice in the last three years. Too late to think of that now. I’m dying, and damme, the chit’s my grandchild! I’ll leave her safely bestowed. Time you was thinking of marriage.”

“I have thought of it.”

Sylvester looked sharply at him. “Not in love, are you?”

Shield’s face hardened. “No.”

“If you’re still letting a cursed silly calf affair rankle with you, you’re a fool!” said Sylvester. “I’ve forgotten the rights of it, if ever I knew them, but they don’t interest me. Most women will play you false, and I never met one yet that wasn’t a fool at heart. I’m offering you a marriage of convenience.”

“Does she understand that?” asked Shield.

“Wouldn’t understand anything else,” replied Sylvester. “She’s a Frenchwoman.”

Sir Tristram stepped down from the dais, and went over to the fireplace. Sylvester watched him in silence, and after a moment he said: “It might answer.”

“You’re the last of your name,” Sylvester reminded him.

“I know it. I’ve every intention of marrying.”

“No one in your eye?”

“No.”

“Then you’ll marry Eustacie,” said Sylvester. “Pull the bell!”

Sir Tristram obeyed, but said with a look of amusement: “Your dying wish, Sylvester?”

“I shan’t live the week out,” replied Sylvester cheerfully. “Heart and hard living, Tristram. Don’t pull a long face at my funeral! Eighty years is enough for any man, and I’ve had the gout for twenty of them.” He saw his valet come into the room, and said: “Send Mademoiselle to me.”

“You take a great deal for granted, Sylvester,” remarked Sir Tristram, as the valet went out again.

Sylvester had leaned his head back against the pillows, and closed his eyes. There was a suggestion of exhaustion in his attitude, but when he opened his eyes they were very much alive, and impishly intelligent. “You would not have come here, my dear Tristram, had you not already made up your mind.”

Sir Tristram smiled a little reluctantly, and transferred his attention to the fire.

It was not long before the door opened again. Sir Tristram turned as Mademoiselle de Vauban came into the room, and stood looking at her under bent brows.

His first thought was that she was unmistakably a Frenchwoman, and not in the least the type of female he admired. She had glossy black hair, dressed in the newest fashion, and her eyes were so dark that it was hard to know whether they were brown or black. Her inches were few, but her figure was extremely good, and she bore herself with an air. She paused just inside the door, and, at once perceiving Sir Tristram, gave back his stare with one every whit as searching and a good deal more speculative.

Sylvester allowed them to weigh one another for several moments before he spoke, but presently he said: “Come here, my child. And you, Tristram.”