“Ah yes, Hawkeridge, is it not?” mused Sir John Frinton, the elegant old roué who led the Wellsian gentry. “I fancy I knew your father.”
“Indeed?” responded Denzell, smiling. “I will not say that I have often heard him speak of you, Sir John, for I am sure you will refuse to believe me.”
The old gentleman laughed. “I should. It is far more likely that you will have heard your mother speak of me.” He twinkled atDenzell’s surprised look. “You need not look at me so, my young friend. I have been, in my day, quite as much a devil of a fellow as are you — with the ladies.”
Denzell grinned. “I don’t doubt it, sir. But unless my friend Osmond has been giving me away, I cannot see how —”
“My dear boy,” interrupted the elder man, “you must not think that we are all of us unacquainted with your exploits, merely because we no longer have the energy to show our faces in town. We contrive to keep up with the world, you know, despite being quite out of it.”
“Oh, indeed?” Denzell muttered, faintly grim. The scandalmongers had been at it again, had they? He should be used to the tattling tongues of the old tabbies by now, but it could not but gall him to find himself a subject for speculation even in this out-of-the-way place. “And who is your particular informant, sir, or shouldn’t I ask?”
In fact, there was no need to ask, for at that moment he saw a rather sturdy dame, alarmingly garbed in lilac and yellow with a heavily feathered turban, moving in on Unice, her interested glance flicking in his direction. Sir John’s wry smile was all the intimation needed that this was the local gossip whom Unice had mentioned at breakfast.
The inflection of distaste in his voice had been noted. Sir John’s smile grew.
“There is a price to be paid, my young friend, if you pursue the path you are treading, as I know.”
Denzell eyed him. Yes, he had heard of this man, now he came to think of it. There was that about him that stirred a vague memory. The air of elegance exuded by the grey silk suit of ditto; with its fine embroidered waistcoat; the white toupée, the powder and paint, now so outmoded as to be ridiculous; and the wry, twinkling humour.
But Sir John Frinton had ever been a rake, according to Lady Hawkeridge, which Denzell himself was not. His own flirtations were harmless enough. He frowned at the man. “Even when it is merely a pleasant game?”
Sir John nodded, the teasing gleam in his eye pronounced. “Even then. To those with an ear for tittle-tattle, motive has no meaning. But you may easily stop it, you know.”
“May I, sir? How?”
“Take a wife, my dear boy, take a wife.”
Denzell burst out laughing. “Sage advice, sir, and of course I must do so in time. But I shall indulge myself a little more yet, despite such wagging tongues as your — what the devil is the woman’s name?”
“Mrs Felpham. And I’ll wager there is not one item about you that is in the public domain of which she has not already made herself mistress.”
“I would not take you, Sir John,” Denzell responded, grinning. “There cannot be the least doubt of it. Oh, deuce take it,” he added in an under-voice, “now I am for it.”
He had just caught sight of Unice heading his way, with the wretched gossip in tow. Her quiet, dead-leaf muslin gown, despite the disadvantage of her shorter stature, looked remarkably well against the overpowering Mrs Felpham.
Denzell turned instinctively for help to his companion. “Sir John —”
But the old man, with an adroitness that Denzell envied, had melted away. With an inward sigh, he braced himself to counter a series of impertinent questions that he could see forming behind the eager eyes drinking him in from within a raddled countenance, yellow with age and the ruthless application of cosmetics.
As he fielded the probing of Mrs Felpham with practised charm, he found himself wondering at Unice and Osmond’shaving decided to settle here. To be sure, it was close to Unice’s parental home in a more easterly part of Kent, and Osmond having no estates of his own — his small fortune deriving from the will of a favoured uncle — it had been prudent of him to purchase an affordable house and invest the remainder of his capital to provide a reasonable income. But to seek a home amongst this elderly and valetudinarian company was not what he himself would have chosen.
“Regretting your visit already, are you?” murmured Osmond’s teasing tones in his ear, the instant Unice had borne Mrs Felpham away.
Denzell turned to his friend, resplendent in a suit of purple cloth, and spoke his mind in a disgusted under-voice.
“Deuce take it, Ossie, how can you bear it? That woman for one. Not to mention an old bore of a playwright — Richard Cumberland, is it? — and your ancient nabob Martin Yorke, to name but two trials I have already undergone. It is small wonder that you come posting up to town at every opportunity.”
Osmond grinned. “I suppose your opinion has nothing to do with the fact that you find Verena Chaceley to be absent from the company?”
A reluctant laugh was drawn from Denzell. “On the contrary,” he admitted, “it has everything to do with it. Were my beautiful maiden of the snow here, I am sure I should be in raptures over the entire population. But in truth, I cannot blame her for absenting herself.”
“No doubt if she had known you were to appear, she would not have done so,” said Osmond ironically. “Don’t know what you’re complaining about, however. Everyone is in such a flutter over you, I should think even your appetite for attention must be satisfied.”
Denzell grinned. “Indeed, dear boy, I am quite set up in my own conceit. According to Sir John Frinton, my fame goes before me in these parts.”
“Ha! Nothing special about you, Hawk. Anyone new is welcome here, if they had a hunchback and a crippled leg.”
“I thank you. Now that you have thoroughly deflated my pretensions, let us, for pity’s sake, extract Unice from that busybody of a female and leave this place forthwith. The light of my life is clearly not coming here tonight, and I have no mind to spend the rest of the evening in this insipid fashion for nothing.”
