Gwendolen Read online

  She drifted out of the room on a flutter of her exotic draperies, while Campaspe sat gazing at her elder sister in despair.

  "She will tell everyone!" she exclaimed tragically. "Gwen, what are we to do? Jane can't marry this—this Bluebeard!"

  Gwendolen smiled. "Oh no, Cammie—that is coming it much too strong!" she cried. "There is no reason in the world for you to call Lord Lyndale a Bluebeard. As far as I have ever heard, he hasn't had so much as one other wife, far less murdered her, even though one does hear it rumoured that he engaged in every activity from brigandage to hunting with sultans and sheikhs while he was in that outlandish part of the world. And of course Jane can marry him if she wishes to—"

  "But she doesn't wish to!" Campaspe interrupted mutinously. "She is in love with Alain; you know that quite as well as I do!"

  "I know she fancied she was in love with him when she left here to go to London," Gwendolen corrected her. "Alain de Combray is a very agreeable and attractive young man, but, after all, one meets a great many attractive and agreeable young men in London during the Season, and perhaps Alain does not seem quite such a paragon to Jane now. And you know he hasn't a penny to bless himself with, apart from the wages he receives as the Duke's secretary."

  "Jane is not mercenary!" said Campaspe hotly. "That would not weigh with her in the least—not when she has given her heart!"

  Gwendolen could have wished that her young sister was not such an avid reader of lending-library novels, for she felt that, whether Jane had forgotten young M. de Combray or not in the giddy whirl of her first London Season, she, Gwendolen, was going to have a difficult time of it to prevent her romantically inclined youngest sister from building the affair up into a high tragedy, with embarrassing results for everyone concerned. She herself was rather inclined to believe that Jane, swayed by the pressing attentions of an older, more experienced lover and influenced by what must certainly have been Lady Priscilla's decided approval of the match, had allowed herself to be persuaded into acceptance of it; for she knew her sister's docile, conformable temper.

  On the other hand, however, Jane had from childhood been constant in her affections, and Gwendolen could not forget her sister's first blushing confession, made almost six months ago now, of her partiality for young M. de Combray, whom she had met at the Assemblies at Cheltenham during the winter. There had been no question of an engagement, for Alain de Combray, whose family had lost everything in France during the Revolution, was not in a position to think of taking a wife —added to which, the mere fact of his being French, to say nothing of his being in the Duke's employ, would have been sufficient to make him persona non grata to Mr. Quarters.

  Jane had therefore not even confided her preference for young M. de Combray to her mother, had behaved towards him with exemplary propriety whenever she had met him in public (although this had not prevented one or two brief, tear-stained private meetings of a more passionate nature), and had meekly allowed herself to be swept off, as the Beauty of the family and the only unengaged daughter, to London for the Season by Lady Priscilla.

  One might, Gwendolen thought in slight vexation, know better how matters stood if Jane had been more communicative in her letters; but, as she had never mentioned either Lord Lyndale or Alain de Combray in any of them, one was left very much in the dark.

  CHAPTER TWO

  GWENDOLEN SUCCEEDED, HOWEVER, in curbing Campaspe's ill-advised desire to inform Lady Otilia of the attachment that had existed between Jane and M. de Combray by dint of persuading her that they ought to do nothing until they had had the opportunity to discuss the matter with Jane herself later that day. Then, feeling the need to be alone for a time to think over the whole perplexing matter, she cried off both from accompanying her mother to call on the Rutledges and from accepting Campaspe's not very pressing invitation to accompany her on a visit to young Lieutenant Fairhall at the Manor, just beyond the village. She was well aware, at any rate, that Neil Fairhall would far rather have Campaspe to himself for half an hour than be obliged to engage in polite conversation with her elder sister; and Lady Otilia, too, would be happier spreading her hints of future glories for the house of Quarters without the constraint that would be occasioned by her daughter's obvious lack of sympathy with such premature disclosures.

  She did not intend, however, to remain indoors with her troublesome thoughts on such a fine day, and when she had seen her mother and sister go off, and had called in the cook to discuss the menu for dinner—a task that Lady Otilia habitually delegated to her—she donned her oldest bonnet and a pair of stout shoes and left the house herself for a morning ramble through the lanes.

  For a time, thoughts of Jane occupied her mind, but, as was not unusual on those rare occasions when she found herself alone and at leisure, her mind soon reverted to Captain Henry Belville, R.N. Like Jane, the Captain left much to be desired as a correspondent, favouring a succinct style that might have done very well for his logbook but had its drawbacks as descriptive prose. But Gwendolen was accustomed to filling in the gaps in his accounts of his life at sea with her own imagination, and saw cannons belching smoke and flame, boarding-parties meeting with the clash and ring of glinting steel, and sails and rigging collapsing under a hail of shot, when perusing even the driest of his missives.

  She had lost herself now, as she strolled slowly along a narrow lane hedged with straight-set quick embroidered with wild rose and blackberry, in an agreeable dream of her coming reunion with her naval hero when a rapid beat of hooves behind her startled her abruptly out of her reverie. She glanced quickly over her shoulder and at the same moment saw, rounding a bend in the lane behind her with never a check in its breakneck pace, a smart curricle drawn by a magnificent team of chestnuts thundering down upon her. There was no time, she realised instantly, for the driver to rein in his horses before they would be upon her, and, with that realisation, her sense of self-preservation immediately took control. The lane was narrow, and ditched on either side, but self-preservation was regardless of such difficulties, and she found herself the next instant sliding in a most undignified manner down the grassy side of the ditch, to end up at the bottom, her bonnet askew, her dimity frock grass-stained and muddy, and her temper entirely out of control.

  She had got to her feet and was attempting to scramble up the rather steep side of the ditch when she became aware that the curricle had been halted and that the driver, a tall, dark-haired man in a smart box-coat of white drab, had thrown the reins to his groom and, jumping down from his seat, was now striding rapidly towards her. Their eyes met, hers flashing with indignation, his full of a kind of hard concern—but the next moment, to her astonished fury, the concern had quite vanished and an expression of definite amusement had sprung up instead in the very blue eyes that were surveying her.

  She ceased her efforts to climb the bank and gave him a scorching glance.

  "Yes, I daresay, it is very amusing—to you!" she said scathingly, "Is it your custom to run people down on the public roads, sir, for the pleasure of enjoying their discomfiture? You will permit me to say that I don't admire your taste in jests!"

  "No, I expect you don't—but it wasn't done with malice aforethought, you know!" the stranger said, but not in the least with the air of apologising for his actions, so that her wrath remained quite unmollified. "How the devil was I to know there would be anyone wandering along this lane? It must be half a dozen miles since I've met so much as a cow! Here—give me your hand," he commanded, reaching his own down to her.

  She took it reluctantly, and was drawn securely up the bank to the lane.

  "And someone, moreover," he continued on with what he had been saying before this interruption had occurred, "with her head so much in the clouds that she wouldn't hear a carriage approaching until it was upon her!" The blue eyes, again full of frank amusement, were surveying her with a mercilessly candid glance such as she never remembered to have received from any gentleman before. "You'd best straighten your bonnet," he advise
d her, with a directness that matched the glance, as she opened her mouth to speak. “I can see you're preparing to rake me down, and I doubt I shall be able to attend to you with proper gravity if I'm obliged to stand here looking at you while you present such a very peculiar spectacle!"

  With the wind quite taken out of her sails, and suddenly acutely conscious of her stained, crumpled frock and generally dishevelled appearance, Gwendolen seized the offending bonnet with both hands and set it firmly upon her head.

  "Sir—!" She gritted out from between set teeth. "Sir—! You are—"

  "Insufferable?" the stranger obligingly prompted her, as she struggled for words. "Impudent? Offensive?"

  "All three!" she flashed. "If you were a gentleman—"

  "Well, I am, you know," the stranger remarked conversationally, "though I daresay I'm a bit out of practice just now. You see, I have returned to England only very recently, after upwards of a dozen years spent abroad, and one rather forgets all the little niceties—"

  "A—a dozen years!" Gwendolen repeated. A horrid suspicion suddenly entered her mind; she stood staring up into that bronzed face—surely too deeply tanned to be the result of any northern sun—and thought in despair, "Good God, it can't be! But I daresay it is! Jane's marquis! Oh, dear!"

  All the same, she was still really in too much of a flame to care whether this uncivil stranger was Lyndale or not. He was insufferable, and impudent, and offensive, she told herself, and if Jane preferred him to Alain de Combray, she had certainly more hair than wit.

  The Marquis—if it was the Marquis—was looking down at her now with a rather quizzically expectant expression in his eyes. There was a great deal in that bronzed face, ruggedly handsome in an almost classical style with its crisp, dark hair, straight nose, and well-cut mouth, that might well have found favour, she was obliged to admit, with other members of her sex who had not been subjected to such a rude introduction to him; but she herself could at the moment feel only resentment towards its owner. While she stood debating with herself whether she ought to find a way to discover his identity and reveal to him her relationship to Jane (it would certainly make for an embarrassing meeting if she was first introduced to him as Jane's sister at some social gathering, in the presence of others), the stranger took matters into his own hands by remarking, obviously in response to her last ejaculation of, “A dozen years!"—"Yes. Does that surprise you? I seem to have tipped you a settler, somehow, with that remark!"

  Gwendolen, having lived all her life under the same roof with a father of definite sporting proclivities, could not but be perfectly familiar with boxing cant; but she was still too disturbed to put on a ladylike pretence of having not the least idea what the stranger had meant by "tipping her a settler," and, throwing caution to the winds, said that he had.

  "You see," she said, "it told me who you were. Or should I say, who you are? At any rate," she went on, looking at him doubtfully, "I think it did-"

  "I'm Lyndale, if that's of any help to you," the stranger offered.

  He was regarding her with some curiosity now, she saw, as if he could not conceive in what way she might have become possessed of the knowledge of his intention to visit the neighbourhood; and it suddenly occurred to her that it could scarcely have entered his mind that the very dishevelled young lady standing before him, in a faded dimity frock and a squashed bonnet, was a relation of the beautiful and (thanks to Lady Priscilla's generosity) elegantly turned out Miss Jane Quarters whom he had known in London. To her intense annoyance, she found herself blushing like a schoolgirl.

  "I'm—well, I daresay I ought to tell you, or it will seem very odd to you when you meet me, as I am sure you must!" she said rather disjointedly. "I am Jane's sister—"

  "Jane's sister? Do you mean—Miss Jane Quarters?" It was now Lyndale's turn to look half puzzled, half incredulous, if that was the interpretation to be placed upon a sudden look of alertness in his blue eyes and the slight lifting of one dark eyebrow. "I see!" he said after a moment, without the least hint of discomposure. "Well, I have made a mull of it—haven't I? I gather you're not inclined to take kindly at the moment to having me in the family?"

  "That," said Gwendolen, retreating into a primness quite foreign to her nature under the influence of her companion's outrageous frankness, "is not my affair, my lord. It is Jane's, and my father's."

  "Yes, I daresay it is," Lyndale agreed. "But if I know females," he added (and Gwendolen had a sudden deep conviction that he did), "it's guineas to gooseberries you'll make it your affair, and do your best to paint me as black as Herod to your sister, only because I had the ill fortune to run you off the road."

  "The thought," said Gwendolen rather tartly, for it seemed to her that she detected a notable lack of distress in his lordship's voice over the possibility that she might be able to influence Jane against him, "scarcely seems to disturb you, my lord!"

  "Oh, it disturbs me, right enough!" Lyndale assured her. “A peaceful life is what I came to England for. Miss Quarters, and it wouldn't suit me in the least to find myself in the midst of tears and scenes. I'll tell you what," he offered, with an air of magnanimity, "let's go back and begin this all over again. You are walking along the lane, lost in thought; I come driving up at a sedate pace, become aware by some sixth sense that you are Miss Jane Quarters's sister, and halt my horses to enquire with the greatest civility whether I may take you up and deliver you at your front door—"

  "Well, you mayn't!" Gwendolen interrupted him baldly. "I should be obliged to ask you to come in, and there is no one there to receive you—besides which, it is only cold beef and raspberries for nuncheon! You had much better go straight on to Beauworth, where I daresay you are expected."

  "I daresay I am," his lordship said. "But I have an idea I'd find far better entertainment at—Brightleaves, is it?—than I shall at Beauworth. I've met my cousin, the Duke, only once, but he seems a tyrannical old file to me. What do you think of him yourself?"

  Gwendolen considered. *1t wouldn't be proper for me to say," she remarked at last, retiring into primness once more.

  "Wouldn't it? Why not?"

  "Because, my lord, we are not upon terms," Gwendolen was obliged to say, wondering how one could ever retain any decent reticence with a man who appeared totally incapable of abiding by the normal rules of polite conversation. She added hastily, seeing that he appeared on the point of saying, "Why not?" again, "The Duke wished to purchase Brightleaves several years ago, and he and Papa had words over it. They both have—very marked views, you see.”

  "Do they?" Lyndale appeared to consider this statement. “Does your father also have marked views about me?" he enquired after a moment, with an air of some interest.

  "About you? Oh, no!"

  "If we must be frank," Gwendolen thought, casting prudence to the winds, "I suppose I had as well go the whole length."

  She went on to say, "I shouldn't think, actually, that he cares tuppence whom Jane marries, as long as he isn't what he calls a scaly scrub. And I expect even he will think it is rather splendid, your being a marquis."

  "Do you?" Lyndale enquired.

  "I?" Gwendolen, wondering rather wildly for a moment if she was going to be led on by all this frank speaking to tell him about Alain de Combray, took herself firmly in hand, and after a moment said austerely that it made not the slightest degree of difference to her.

  "Of course," she admitted, "it is otherwise with Mama. But then it always is with mothers—don't you agree? I daresay she might even be better pleased if the gentleman to whom I am betrothed were a marquis; but to my mind any title of that sort can never be so glorious as the title of captain, on active service, in His Majesty's Navy."

  The appearance, round the bend in the lane, of a cart drawn by a small, obstinate-looking black horse, with a youth riding lazily on the shaft, interrupted the conversation at this point and caused Gwendolen to recollect the extreme impropriety of her standing there upon a public road in conversation with a gentleman
to whom, although he might be going to marry her sister, she had after all not been properly introduced. She replied with great dignity to the youth's bashful greeting and said to the Marquis that she would now bid him good-day.

  "Do you mean I really can't drive you to Brightleaves?" Lyndale demanded.

  "No, you may not!" Gwendolen said. "It wouldn't be in the least comme il faut. But I should love to be taken up behind that splendid team, once we have been properly introduced!"

  And she walked off down the lane.

  "What in heaven's name," she asked herself as she got herself safely out of Lyndale's sight around the turn in the road, “will Jane say when she learns I have had this completely incredible conversation with her young man? And not so young, either, if it comes to that—thirty-three or -four, I should imagine. She can't possibly wish to marry him, of course. Dear, good, proper Jane—she would suffer agonies of embarrassment whenever she went into company with him, never knowing what he would do or say next! I do think Aunt Pris could have done better than this for her, marquis or no marquis! Of course, he is attractive—but not at all in the style Jane admires."

  Lady Otilia had not yet returned when she reached the house, but Campaspe was there, having been driven from the Manor, after only a brief half hour with her beloved, by Lady Fairhall, who had the strictest ideas of propriety. Gwendolen at once dragged her upstairs to her bedchamber and told the whole story of her meeting with Lyndale.

  "He will never do for Jane," she said, shaking her head decidedly. "I daresay he would frighten her half out of her wits. Not that he doesn't appear quite a good-tempered sort of man—but still there is something extraordinary about him, as if he would do anything that came into his head if he felt like it. So I expect it will have to be Alain, after all."

  Campaspe said, "Didn't I tell you so?"—and added that, if it was Alain, Mama would never forgive them.