‘Chance, indeed! I came for no other purpose than to remove him before he had driven Aubrey into a raging fever!’
‘You shouldn’t have permitted him to come up at all,’ said Venetia severely.
‘I know I shouldn’t. Unfortunately I said he might do so before I had his measure. By the time Imber came to conduct him upstairs, however, I had it!’
She laughed, but said in rather a worried voice: ‘I am afraid Aubrey was more hurt by that fall than I had thought. He doesn’t like Edward, but I never knew him fly out at him before.’
‘Perhaps he has never before encountered him after a bad shake-up and a sleepless night,’ suggested Damerel, holding open the door for her to pass into the garden. ‘To judge by the very improving discourse with which he favoured me, he said precisely what anyone with a grain of tact would have left unsaid.’
‘Yes, he did. As though he had been Aubrey’s father!’
‘Or his elder brother. He appears to think himself that already, for he thanked me for what he called my kindness to Aubrey.’
‘Hethanked you –? Now,that,’ said Venetia, her eyes kindling, ‘is coming it very much too strong! In fact, it is a great piece of impertinence, for the only person who ever said I should marry him was my father, and he can’t possibly suppose that I should be guided by Papa’s wishes! Well, it is my own fault for having allowed him to suppose that when my brother Conway returns I shall accept him. Ididtell him it was no such thing, but he didn’t believe me, andnowsee what comes of it!’
‘From what I have seen of that young man I should think persuading him to believe anything he did not choose to believe a labour of Hercules,’ he remarked.
‘Yes, but the truth is that I didn’t try very hard to convince him,’ she said frankly.
‘Are you telling me that you ever entertained for as long as five minutes the thought of accepting such a clodpole?’ he demanded. ‘Good God, the fellow’s a dead bore!’
‘He is, of course, but there’s no saying he wouldn’t be a good husband, for he is very kind, and honourable and – and respectable, which I believe are excellent qualities in a husband.’
‘No doubt! But not inyourhusband!’
‘No, I believe we should tease one another to death. The thing was, you see, that because he was Papa’s godson Papa permitted him to visit us, and so we grew to know him very well, and when he wished to marry me I did wonder (though it was not at all what I wanted) whether perhaps it might not be better for me to do so than to grow into an old maid, hanging on Conway’s sleeve. However, if Aubrey dislikes him as much asthatit won’t do. Oh dear, you have allowed your garden to grow into a wilderness! Only look at those rose-trees! They can’t have been pruned for years!’
‘Very likely not. Shall I set a man on to attend to them? I will, if it would please you.’
She laughed. ‘Not at this season! But later I wish you will: it might be such a delightful garden! Where are you taking me?’
‘Down to the stream. There’s a seat in the shade, and we can watch the trout rising.’
‘Oh, yes, let us do that! Have you fished the stream this year? Aubrey once caught a three-pounder in it.’
‘Oh, he did, did he?’
‘Yes, but he wasn’t poaching, I assure you! Croyde gave him leave – he does so every year. You don’t fish it yourself, after all!’
‘NowI know why I’ve had such poor sport each time I’ve taken my rod out! What a couple you are! First my blackberries, and now my trout!’ he said.
The laughing devil was in his eyes, but she was not looking at him, and replied without a trace of embarrassment: ‘What a long time ago that seems!’
‘And how angry you were!’
‘I should rather think I was! Well, of all the abominable things to have done!’
‘Ididn’t find it so!’
She turned her head at that, looking up at him in a considering way, as though she were trying to read the answer to a problem in his face. ‘No, I suppose not. How very odd, to be sure!’
‘What is?’
She walked on, her brow a little furrowed. ‘Wishing to kiss someone you never saw before in your life. It seems quite mad-brained to me, besides showing a sad want of particularity.’ She added charitably: ‘However, I daresay it is one of those peculiarities of gentlemen even of the first respectability which one cannot hope to understand, so I don’t refine too much upon it.’
He gave one of his sudden shouts of laughter. ‘Oh, not of thefirstrespectability!’
They had emerged by this time from the rose-garden throughan archway cut in the hedge on to the undulating lawns which ran down to the stream. Venetia paused, exclaiming: ‘Ah, this is a delightful prospect! Looking at the Priory from the other side of the river, one can’t tell that you have that distant view. I have never been here before.’
