Gwendolen Page 18
"I'm sorry—sorry—sorry!" Lyndale's voice said above her. “I have made a mull of it—haven't I? I've gone too fast—taken far too much for granted—"
"You needn't think," Gwendolen said, mastering her sobs with difficulty and speaking with what dignity she could muster while she attempted ineffectually to release herself from those encircling arms, "that it is you who have made me cry, my lord. I am only crying because I am angry—and disappointed that Papa and Mama should have conspired with you against me—"
"Well, I'm afraid I rather dragooned them into it, you know," his lordship said apologetically, but making no move whatever to release her. "In the first place, I've offered them Brightleaves and your father's horses, and in the second place, they've had such a deuce of a time of it lately, what with all those broken engagements, that you can scarcely blame them for jumping at the chance to see two of their daughters married in one fell swoop. I made out a very good case for myself with them, I must say," he went on, with a sudden note of anxiety in his voice that for some reason made the tears well up in Gwendolen's eyes all over again. "Much better than I've done with you. I told them straight off that I'd been in love with you ever since I almost ran you down in the cursed lane and you came climbing up that bank looking at me like glorious murder—only, of course, I'd come to Gloucestershire to ask Jane to marry me, and what a devil's hank that put me in! I couldn't in honour draw back when I'd gone so far—but let me tell you, I was never so happy in my life as when I saw that she wanted the match no more than I. If I could have offered her young Frenchman half my fortune to take her off my hands, I'd have done it—but one can't manage matters quite so highhandedly as that—"
"No!" said Gwendolen, suddenly regaining her spirit and determinedly freeing herself from Lyndale's embrace. "Of course one can't do that! But it was quite all right, I daresay, for you to lure my young sister here with a promise of marriage that you had no intention of keeping, and to plot with Neil to bring me here so you could oblige me to marry you—"
"I thought you would want to," said his lordship simply, which piece of brazen effrontery so incensed Gwendolen that she was quite without words for a moment.
"Do you mean to imply, my lord," she said icily, when she had got her breath back, "that I encouraged you in any way? I deny it!"
"Well, you didn't cast out lures to me, if that's what you mean," Lyndale acknowledged. "You were the soul of propriety. But your eyes weren't, you know."
"My eyes!"
"Yes. One can't very well help what one's eyes say, and yours were always talking to me; in fact, they told me the first time I met you that you were almost as interested in me as I was in you." Gwendolen opened her mouth to utter an outraged denial, but Lyndale stopped her with an upflung hand. "Come—be honest with me!" he said. "Am I speaking the truth or not?"
His eyes met hers. She felt her defences crumbling and turned hastily away.
"Why I should be honest with such a black-souled cur as you I don't know!" she said with asperity. "But—yes, it's true! Only of course I couldn't let you—or even myself—know because of Jane—"
"Jane—Jane—Jane!" said the Marquis. "I wish I'd never laid eyes on the girl! Even better, I wish you'd never had a sister of any kind, for they've got devilishly in the way of my courtship, I can tell you! If it hadn't been for them, and for my feeling I should have to settle them before I settled with you, I shouldn't have been obliged to embark on this absurd plot in the first place."
Gwendolen, who had for some reason felt that it behooved her to place as great a distance as possible between herself and the Marquis, once she had made her dangerous admission concerning her feelings, found at this moment that Lyndale definitely had other ideas on the matter, for while he had been speaking, he had followed her across the room and now contrived to gather her—quite against her will, of course—once more into his arms.
"No—you mustn't!" she gasped, a good deal shaken but still manning her defences after his lordship had taken most unfair advantage of their close proximity to kiss her. "I won't be married in such a—such a hugger-mugger way! In the middle of the night, in an inn—"
"But with your papa and mama very properly in attendance —don't forget that!" Lyndale reminded her. "Not even the busiest gabblemonger can find matter for scandalbroth in that.'* He held her off at arm's length for a moment and regarded her severely. "After all the trouble I've taken to marry you in the proper style, I do think you might be more grateful!" he said. "Besides apologising to me for all the aspersions you've cast upon my character—"
"I don't think you have any character! To make up such an abominable plot—you might have known it would come all to pieces! If you really are in 1-love with me," Gwendolen went on, looking very attentively at the third button of his lordship's coat instead of into his face as she spoke, "why couldn't you have c-courted me properly—?"
"And run the risk, meanwhile, of Campaspe's behaving so outrageously that you and your entire family would say I had compromised her and ought to marry her? Or see you float off into an entanglement with another naval gentleman who happened to put you in mind of Lord Nelson? No, thank you!" said Lyndale emphatically. "You know what Shakespeare says —'If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly,' or words to that effect—"
He broke off, as a confused babble of sound that had been steadily rising behind the door to the parlour reached a kind of climax and then halted abruptly as the door opened and Lady Otilia came into the room.
"Really, my lord," she said, regarding with some disapproval the tableau before her, showing her her eldest daughter clasped firmly in the marquis's embrace, "this is most improper, you know, to say nothing of the fact that you are keeping us all waiting! Here I have been having the most dreadful time of it, with Campaspe absolutely refusing to marry Neil Fairhall and Mr. Quarters roaring at her—for which I can scarcely blame him, for it is almost dawn and we had a most disagreeable journey in the rain—only fortunately Neil stood up to him and said Campaspe needn't marry him if she didn't wish to, so then, of course, she said she would, which is just like Campaspe. And now that that is settled, here you are dawdling and keeping poor Mr. Broadfute waiting—"
"Not dawdling," Lyndale said firmly. "Of that. Lady Otilia, you cannot accuse me. I have used every moment since I walked into this room in attempting to persuade your daughter to marry me—"
Gwendolen, by now grasping at straws and again ineffectually attempting to disengage herself from his lordship's arms, was heard to say something in a muffled voice to the effect that they had all thought it was Miss Courtney he wished to marry.
"Miss Courtney! Nonsense!" said Lady Otilia roundly. "She is engaged to marry the Duke. I heard of it only this evening—or last evening, I expect I should say by this time—while you were at the ball."
At any other time Gwendolen would have been so much interested in the news that Miss Courtney, obviously despairing at last of Lyndale, had astoundingly managed to induce the aging Duke of Tardiff to make her his Duchess that everything else would have flown straight out of her head; but now her only reaction to it was a feeling of slight annoyance with her mama for seeing fit to introduce a matter of such small importance into the conversation. It seemed to her that there was only one thing in the world that really mattered at that particular moment, and that was whether Lyndale would look at her again with the expression in his very blue eyes that had been there just before he had kissed her. Of course he would not look at her like that while her mother was in the room, so it appeared that there was only one thing to be done.
"Mama," she said firmly to Lady Otilia, "go away.”
"Go away!" Lady Otilia stared at her as if she had suddenly lost her senses. "Why should I go away?" she demanded. "You are not married yet, you know, Gwendolen! It would be most improper!"
"No, I am not married yet,” Gwendolen agreed, but yielding not an inch. "And what is more to the point, I have not been proposed to, either."
"I see,” she said simply, and turned her gaze upon Lyndale. “I trust, my lord, that you will be expeditious," she said to him. "On the one hand, we women, of course, cherish these romantic occasions, but on the other hand, it is growing very late."
She then made a stately exit from the room. Lyndale, regarding his love with a quizzical expression upon his face, lost no time in leading her to a chair and going down upon one knee before her.
"Miss Quarters—Gwendolen," he pronounced punctiliously, "may I humbly request you to do me the honour of bestowing upon me your hand and heart in marriage?"
Gwendolen frowned. "Well? Haven't I done it properly?" his lordship demanded. "I must say, you don't look very pleased.”
"Quite properly," said Gwendolen, but still looking dissatisfied. "I daresay, like Mama, I am over-romantic—"
"You would prefer, I expect," said Lyndale agreeably, as he rose from his kneeling position, "that I do it like this"—and before she knew where she was he had raised her to her feet and swept her into an embrace that threatened imminent peril to her ribs. "Don't you know," said his lordship's voice presently, sounding quite different now both to her and to himself, probably because he had never kissed anyone before in a way that had had such an extremely satisfactory but definitely upsetting effect upon him, "that I love you—I want you—I can't do without you? If you would like me to put on a turban and a white robe and bear you off into the night on one of my Arabian steeds to satisfy your romantic inclinations, I am your man; but as it is still raining devilish hard outside and the mares are in Leicestershire, would you settle instead for a simple English ceremony presided over by Mr. Broadfute?"
Being Lady Otilia's daughter, there is little doubt that Gwendolen found his lordship's first offer an alluring one, but being also—as had been borne in upon her strongly during that disturbing kiss—very much in love, she was quite willing, even eager, to accept the second, with the result that in a very few minutes she was standing beside the Marquis in the parlour while Mr. Broadfute, now quite half asleep but with a beaming smile upon his face, prepared to read the marriage service over them.
"Gwen is the elder, so I daresay it is only proper she should be married first," said Campaspe in a loud whisper to her own betrothed, whose hand she was holding very tightly in case he might somehow get away again and she would be obliged to go and five in a harem. "She seems quite resigned to having Lyndale, but after all he has been living in Morocco. Do you think one will be enough for him?"
"One what?" asked young Lieutenant Fairhall, who was not thinking very clearly himself at the moment, being highly involved with a dazed feeling of happiness combined with a terrified sensation that all this was not really happening to him and he would probably wake up at any moment.
"One wife, of course!" said Campaspe impatiently.
Lieutenant Fairhall, lending his mind to the question thus propounded, cast a sapient glance at the Marquis of Lyndale's face as he looked down at his bride, and after no more than a moment's consideration gave it as his emphatic opinion that one would definitely be quite enough.
THE END
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LADY PAMELA
A Regency Novella
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CHAPTER ONE
LADY PAMELA FRAYNE, descending the elegant staircase of her grandfather’s Berkeley Square town house, wore a somewhat preoccupied expression. She had just come from a consultation with the housekeeper, had an appointment within the hour-with a famous Bruton Street modiste, and wished, before she left, to inquire after her grandfather’s gout.
People who saw Lady Pamela only in Society, one of the chief ornaments of which she had been since her come-out three years before, were used to considering her rather scatter-brained, owing to her penchant for impulsive action.
She had been on the brink of marriage with numerous distinguished admirers when, to everyone’s surprise, her betrothal had suddenly been announced to Adolphus, Lord Babcoke, ten years her senior, whom she had known all her life. However, though certain unkind matrons remarked that it was probably Lady Pamela who had decided to marry Lord Babcoke, the engaged pair were undeniably very fond of each other, and the match was exceedingly suitable.
As Lady Pamela’s grandfather, Lord Nevans, always observed, she had a head on her shoulders when she chose to use it, in proof of which she had been holding the reins of his household with great skill and aplomb ever since the death of her mother two years before.
As she reached the hall below, the door of the breakfast-room suddenly opened and his lordship’s secretary shot out as rapidly, Lady Pamela thought, as though he might have been shot from a cannon.
“You poor man,” she said sympathetically. “What is it this time? Politics? The war? Or only that his gout is particularly bad?”
Young Mr Underdown, the latest in a long line of secretaries whose feet Lord Nevans, to do him justice, had always set firmly on the political or diplomatic ladder before he let them go. mopped his brow.
“I think it’s all of them Lady Pamela,” he said. “And your brother, if you don’t think it’s impertinent of me to say so—”
“Oh dear!” Lady Pamela put in, for Viscount Wynstanley, her younger brother and their grandfather’s heir, was always arousing his lordship’s disapproval.
“—and something missing from the Foreign Office box that was left on the hall table yesterday,” Underdown ended unhappily. “It’s my fault. Things like that should be kept locked up.”
“Fiddle!” said Lady Pamela. “That is, I don’t mean they shouldn’t be, but how can you do it when Grandpa will keep the keys himself and send tor papers in the middle of the night when he can’t sleep, then forget next morning where he put the keys?”
Underdown who, like every other secretary Lord Nevans had employed, was in love with Lady Pamela, appeared gratified by her sympathy.
“He’s so conscientious and it’s wicked of you to rake him down for something that is probably your own fault, Grandpapa,” Lady Pamela said later, as she sat with Lord Nevans at the breakfast table.
That famous political peer, looking very uncomfortable with his gouty leg propped on a footstool, glowered at her.
“Where’s your brother?” he demanded abruptly. “Do you know where he’s gone?”
“Wyn?” said Lady Pamela in surprise. “Is he gone out at this hour? It must be a prize-fight then, or something of the sort, for you know nothing else will get him out of bed before noon.”
“Yes, I do know,” said Lord Nevans grimly. “But it wasn’t a matter this time of getting him from bed. He wasn’t in it last night. Nor has he come in this morning. And there’s a document missing from my dispatch-box—”
“Grandpapa!” Lady Pamela broke in.
“You can’t think that Wyn—”
“Oh, can’t I! You know as well as I do that that young jackanapes is in Dun territory as deep as he can go, for all I bailed him out of the hands of the cent-per-centers no time ago. And that paper has to do with Wellington’s future plans. It’s worth any amount he likes to name, if he’s willing to sec it get into French hands.”
“But, Grandpapa, you know Wyn would never do anything dishonourable. He may be forever kicking up larks all over town, and getting into bad company, but he’d never tamper with your official papers.”
“Then who else has done it?” The angry flush faded from Lord Nevans’s face, to be replaced by a look of anxiety. “The lock on that box has been prised, Pamela. I haven’t shown it to Underdown or to anyone else. It’s my hope that the young cub was in his cups when he did it, and will replace the memorandum when he comes to his senses.
“But his not having appeared this morning looks very bad. You know the sort of man he has been associating with these past months. A set of rascally scrubs though some, like Cedric Mansell, bear honourable names.”
At the mention of the Honourable Cedric Mansell, the notorious second son of the Earl of Whiston, Lady Pamela frowned suddenly. She had never met the Honourable Cedric, for he had not for some years been received in the first rank of Society. An unpleasant incident involving marked cards had been only the first of several scandals attached to his name.
But she knew that, in spite of this, he had a certain influence over some of the
younger men who were flattered by his attentions. And a few words of her brother’s the night before, when he had come dashing up the stairs demanding the time of her, recurred uncomfortably to her mind.
“It’s just on ten,” she had told him, at which the Viscount had said with an air of relief that that was all right then, as his appointment was not till half after.
“I can’t tell you about it now,” he added importantly. “But Ceddie Mansell can put me in a way to make my fortune, so it’s vital I meet him tonight. If I miss him I shall have to go down to Whiston Castle.” And he had run on up the stairs.
Lady Pamela had attached little importance to the incident at the time, but her grandfather’s words put it in a different light.
She could not believe that Wyn, who was begging Lord Nevans to let him join Lord Wellington’s army in the Peninsula, would be a party to what his grandfather obviously believed was an attempt by Bonapartist agents to obtain a document of high value to them.
But Cedric Mansell might do so and it was possible he had duped Wyn into helping him obtain the memorandum, or – more likely – that he had some hold over young Lord Wynstanley by which he might force him to deliver the document to him.