‘Go on!’ said Damerel encouragingly, as Oswald broke off. ‘No need for me to rescue Miss Lanyon from a situation which she was plainly not enjoying? Is that what you mean?’
‘Damn you, no!’ Oswald sought for words to express the hopeless tangle of his thoughts; none came to him, only the age-old cry of youth: ‘You don’t understand!’
‘You may ascribe the astonishing guard I have so far kept over my temper to the fact that I do,’ was the rather unexpected reply. ‘Patience, however, was never numbered amongst my few virtues, so the sooner we part the better. I am very sorry for you, but there’s nothing I can do to help you to recover from these pangs, and your inability to open your mouth without going off into rodomontade does rather alienate my sympathy, you know.’
‘I don’t want your damned sympathy!’ Oswald flung at him, intolerably stung. ‘Onething you can do, my lord! You can stoptrying to give Venetia a slip on the shoulder!’ He saw the flash in Damerel’s eyes, and hurried on recklessly: ‘W-walking into her house as though it were your own, cajoling her with your man-of-the-town ways, c-cutting a wheedle with her because she’s too innocent to know it’s all a rig, and you’re bamboozling her! T-talking to me as ifIwas the loose-screw! I m-may have lost my head butImean honestly by her! And you needn’t think I don’t know it’s uncivil to say things like this to you, because I do, and I don’t care a rush, and if you choose to nab the rust you may do so – in fact, I hope youwill! – And I don’t care if you tell my father I’ve been uncivil to youeither!’
Damerel had been looking a little ugly, but this sudden anticlimax dispelled his wrath, and made him laugh. ‘Oh, I won’t proceed to such extreme measures as that!’ he said. ‘If there were a horse-pond at hand –! But there isn’t, and at least you’ve made me a speech without any high-flown bombast attached to it. But unless you have a fancy for eating your dinner with your plate on the mantelpiece for the next few days don’t make me any more such speeches!’
Oswald gave a gasp of outrage. ‘Only dismount, and we’ll try that!’ he begged.
‘My deluded youth, that is beingmore childish valourous than manly wise: I’m sure you’re full of pluck, and equally sure that it would be bellows to mend with you in rather less than two minutes. I’m not a novice, you see. No, keep your mouth shut! It is now my turn to make a speech! It will be quite short, and, I trust, quite plain! I’ve borne with you because I haven’t forgotten the agonies of first love, or what a foolImade of myself at your age; and also because I perfectly understand your desire to murder me. But when you have the infernal impudence to tell me I can stop trying to seduce Miss Lanyon you’ve gone very far beyond the line of what I’ll take from you! Only her brother has the right to question my intentions. If he choosesto do it I’ll answer him, but the only answer I have for you is contained in the toe of my boot!’
‘Her brother isn’t here!’ Oswald retorted swiftly. ‘If he were it would be a different matter!’
‘What the devil – Oh, you’re talking of her elder brother, are you? I wasn’t.’
‘Aubrey?’ exclaimed Oswald incredulously. ‘That scrubby little ape? Much good he could do – even if he tried! What does he know about anything but his fusty classics? If he thought about it at all he wouldn’t have the least notion what sort of a game you’re playing!’
Damerel gathered up his bridle, saying dryly: ‘Don’t despise him on that head! Neither have you the least notion.’
‘I know you don’t mean marriage!’ Oswald retorted.
Damerel looked at him for a moment, an oddly disquieting smile in his eyes. ‘Do you?’ he said.
‘Yes, by God I do!’ As Crusader moved forward, Oswald wrenched his own horse round, staring after Damerel in sudden dismay. He stammered: ‘Marriage?You and Venetia? She wouldn’t – shecouldn’t!’
There was undisguised revulsion in his voice, but the only response it drew from Damerel was a laugh, as he turned Crusader in through the gateway of the Priory, and cantered away down the long weed-grown avenue.
Oswald could hardly have been more shocked had Damerel openly declared the most dishonourable of intentions. He was left a prey to doubt and disbelief, and with no other course open to him than to ride tamely home to Ebbersley. It was a long, dull ride, and with only the most humiliating reflections to occupy his mind he very soon became so sunk in gloom that not even the knowledge that his last words at least had flicked Damerel on the raw would have done much to elevate his spirits.
Marston, gathering up Damerel’s discarded coat and breeches,looked thoughtfully at him, but offered no comment, either then or much later, when he found Imber, an expression of long-suffering on his face, decanting a bottle of brandy.
‘On the cut!’ said Imber. ‘I thought it wouldn’t be long before he was making indentures. He’s finished the Diabolino, what’s more, so if he doesn’t relish what was always good enough for his late lordship it’s no manner of use for him to blame me. I told him a se’ennight past how it was.’
‘I’ll take it to him,’ Marston said.
Imber sniffed, but raised no demur. He was an old man, and his feet hurt him. He always accepted Marston’s services, but thought poorly of him for undertaking tasks which lay outside his province. Quite menial tasks, some of them: he made nothing of fetching in logs for the fires, or even of sawing them up; and had been known, when Nidd was absent, to unsaddle his master’s horse, and rub him down. You wouldn’t have caught the late lord’s valet so demeaning himself, thought Imber, contrasting him unfavourably with that most correct of gentlemen’s gentlemen. Like master like man, he thought. Stiff-rumped the late lord had been; he knew what was due to his consequence, and always kept a proper distance. No one ever dared to take any liberties with him, any more than he ever talked to his servants in the familiar way the present lord used. As for arriving at the Priory without a word of warning, and accompanied only by his valet and his groom, and taking up a protracted residence there with more than half the rooms shut up, and not so much as a single footman to lend respectability to the household, imagination boggled at the very idea of his late lordship behaving so improperly. It all came of living in foreign parts, amongst people who like as not were little better than savages. That was what his present lordship had said, when he had ventured to give him a hint that the terms he stood on with Marston were unseemly in a gentleman of his position. ‘Marston and I are old friends,’ he had said. ‘We’ve been in too many tight corners together to stand on ceremony.’ It was no wonder that Marston thought himself above his company, and was too top-lofty to indulge in comfortable gossip about his lordship. He was pleasant enough, in his quiet way, but close as wax, and with a trick of seeming not to hear what he didn’t choose to answer. If he was so out of reason fond of his lordship why didn’t he speak up for him? instead of looking like a wooden image? thought Imber resentfully, watching him pick up the salver, and carry it away, down the stone-flagged passage that led to the front hall.
Damerel did not keep town-hours at the Priory; he allowed the Imbers to serve dinner at six o’clock; and, since Aubrey’s arrival, he had abandoned his tiresome habit of lingering in the dining-room over his port, but had carried it up to Aubrey’s room while Aubrey was confined to bed, and later had fallen into the way of drinking it in the library. Tonight, however, he had shown no disposition to leave the table, but sat lounging in his great, carved chair as though he meant to stay there all night.
Marston cast a measuring look at him before moving out of the shadowed doorway into the light of the candles on the table. He was staring fixedly ahead, lost in a brown study, the pupils of his eyes slightly blurred. He gave no sign that he had noticed Marston’s entrance, but that one look had sufficed to satisfy Marston that Imber had exaggerated. He had been dipping rather deep, perhaps, but he wasn’t as much as half-sprung: just a trifle concerned, certainly not castaway. It was only on very rare occasions that he was really shot in the neck, for he was one who could see them all out, as the saying went.
Marston set the decanter down, and went over to the big, open fireplace, and set another log on the sinking embers. The fine weather was still holding, but when the sun went down acreeping chill made one glad to see the curtains drawn across the windows and a fire burning in the hearth.
Marston swept the wood-ash into a pile, and rose from his knees. One of the candles had begun to gutter, and he snuffed it. Damerel lifted his eyes. ‘Oh, it’s you, is it?’ he said. ‘What’s happened to Imber? Fallen down the cellar stairs?’
Marston’s impassive countenance relaxed into a faint smile. ‘No, my lord.’
‘Did he tell you I was dead-beat?’ enquired Damerel, taking the stopper out of the decanter, and pouring some brandy into his glass. ‘He’s got his Friday-face on: enough to give one a fit of the blue devils!’
‘He’s old, my lord,’ Marston said, trimming another over-long wick. ‘If you were meaning to remain here it would be necessary to hire more servants.’
He spoke in his usual expressionless manner, but Damerel looked up from his glass, which he was holding cupped between his hands.
‘But I daresay we shan’t return here after the Second Autumn Meeting,’ Marston continued, his attention still on the candles. ‘Which reminds me, my lord, that it would be as well for me to write to inform Hanbury at what date you mean to arrive at the Lodge, and whether you will be bringing company with you.’
‘I haven’t thought about it.’
