‘I’ve seldom been here myself. But I prefer the nearer prospect.’
‘Do you? Just green trees?’
‘No, a green girl. That is why I’ve remained here. Had you forgotten?’
‘I don’t think I am green. It’s true I only know what I’ve read in books, but I’ve read a great many books – and I think you areflirtingwith me.’
‘Alas, no! only trying to flirt with you!’
‘Well, I wish you will not. I conjecture that you came into Yorkshire to ruralise. Isn’t that what they call it, when you find yourselfcleaned-out?’
‘Notso very green!’ he said, laughing. ‘That’s it, fair fatality!’
‘If but one half the stories told about you are true you must beveryexpensive,’ she observed reflectively. ‘Do you indeed keep your own horses on all the main post-roads?’
‘I had need to be a Dives to do that! Only on the Brighton and Newmarket roads, I fear. What other stories do they tell of me? Or are they unrepeatable?’
She allowed him to guide her to a stone bench, under an elm tree, and sat down on it, clasping her hands loosely in her lap. ‘Oh, no! None that were told me, of course.’ She turned her face towards him, her eyes brimming with mischief. ‘It was alwaysWe could an if we wouldwhenever we tried – Conway and I – to discover why you were the Wicked Baron. That was our name for you! But no one would tell us, so we were obliged to resort to imagination. You wouldn’t believe the crimes we saddled you with! Nothing short of piracy would do for us until Conway, who was always less romantic than I, decided thatthat must be impossible. I would then have turned you into a highwayman, but even that wouldn’t do for him. He said you had probably killed someone in a duel, and had been forced to flee the country.’
He had been listening to her in amusement, but at that his expression altered. He was still smiling, but not pleasantly, and although he spoke lightly there was a hard note in his voice. ‘But how acute of Conway! I did kill someone, though not in a duel. My father.’
She was deeply shocked, and demanded: ‘Who said that to you?’ Then, as he merely shrugged, she said: ‘It was an infamous thing to have said! Idiotish, too!’
‘Far from it. The news of my elopement caused him to suffer a stroke, from which he never recovered. Didn’t you know that?’
‘Everyone knows it! And also that he died nearly three years later, of a second stroke. Were you accountable forthat? To be sure, it was unfortunate you didn’t know he was likely to suffer a stroke, and so were the unwitting cause of it, but if you think he would not have succumbed to it sooner or later you can know very little about the matter! My father had a stroke too:hiswas fatal. It was not brought about by any shock, and it couldn’t have been averted.’ She laid an impulsive hand on one of his, saying earnestly: ‘Iassureyou!’
He looked at her, queerly smiling, but whether he mocked himself or her she could not tell. ‘It doesn’t keep me awake o’ nights, my dear. Not much love was lost between us at the best of times.’
‘I didn’t love mine either. In fact, I disliked him. You can’t think how comfortable it is to be able to say that and not fear to be told that I cannot mean it, or that it was my duty to love him! Such nonsense, when he never pretended to care a button for any one of us!’
‘Yours seems to have given you little reason to love him, certainly,’ he remarked. ‘Honesty compels me to say, however, that mine had a poor bargain in his only son.’
‘Well, if I had an only son – or a dozen sons, for that matter! – I would find something better to do for him when he was in a scrape than cast him off!’ declared Venetia. ‘Would notyou?’
‘Oh, lord, yes! Who am I to throw stones? I might even make a push to stop him getting into the scrape – though if he were to be half as infatuated as I was I daresay I should fail,’ he said reflectively.
After a short pause, during which he seemed to her to be looking back across the years, and with no great pleasure, she ventured to ask: ‘Did she die?’
His eyes came back to her face, a little startled. ‘Who? Sophia? Not that I know of. What put that into your head?’
‘Only that no one seems to know – and you didn’t marry her – did you?’
‘Oh, no!’ He saw the troubled look, and grimaced. ‘You want to know why, do you? Well, if such ancient history interests you, she was not, at the time of Vobster’s death, living under my protection. Oh, don’t look so dismayed!’
‘Not dismayed – not that!’ she stammered.
‘Ah, you feel compassionate? Wasted, my dear! Our mutual passion was violent while it lasted, but soon wore itself out. Fortunately we were saved from dwindling into a state of mutual boredom by the timely appearance on our scene of an accomplished Venetian.’
‘An accomplished Venetian!’
‘Oh, of the first stare! Handsome, too, and all in print. Air and address were quite beyond my touch!’
‘And fortune?’ she interpolated.
‘That, too. It enabled him to indulge the nattiest of whims! He drove and rode only gray horses, never wore any but blackcoats, and always, summer or winter, with a white camellia in his buttonhole.’
‘Good God, what a quiz! How could she – Lady Sophia – have liked him?’
