Acting on Impulse Read online

  He smiled rather grimly.

  “Suppose you cut out the fine talk, my girl, and come to grips? I don’t know why you should pretend you’d no idea I wanted to marry you. You’ve been in and out of my place for weeks. I’m not a fool, my girl, and I know what to make of that.”

  “Don’t call me that!” exploded Cicely. “I’m not your girl, and I won’t have such an—such an impertinence! I came to your farm because I was interested! We were just friends, as you very well know! I’ve never given you the right to talk to me like this!”

  “THINK so?” He rose and stood over her. “You were just playing, were you?—leading me on?”

  Cicely pushed back her chair and sprang up.

  “How dare you?” she cried. “How dare you say such a thing to me? Please—go! I am exceedingly sorry you should have made such a dreadful mistake—but to blame me? Why, I've never been anything but friends with you!”

  He came nearer.

  “Reckon a girl’s not friends with a man unless there is something more,” he drawled.

  Cicely backed to the wall.

  “Mr. Talbot, will you please go? If I were not alone here, you would not dare to speak to me in this way. I tell you, once and for all, I am not going to marry you. If you really care for me, you’ll go now.”

  “I’m not going. You’ve had your fun with me, and now you’ll pay for it.” He strode forward as he spoke, and gripped her by the shoulders.

  Panic seized Cicely, at the mercy of this dreadful person.

  “Bill!” she shrieked. “Bill, Bill, Bill!”

  From the garden came the sound of yelping barks. Bill showed no signs of coming to the rescue. Only he barked and barked in wild excitement.

  Talbot crushed Cicely against him. She could not even struggle under his iron hold. She was kissed roughly on her panting mouth, and then—

  Someone pushed open the cottage door.

  “You owe me a bob,” said a lazy, pleasant voice. “Get down, Bill!”

  “Richard!” sobbed Cicely. “Oh, Richard!”

  Still holding her with one arm, Talbot wheeled about. Cicely never quite knew what happened next. All that she remembered was that she was suddenly whisked from the farmer’s hold and deposited on the sofa. And Richard’s voice, dangerously sweet, was inviting Talbot to come outside. Then the two men seemed to disappear, shutting Bill into the cottage.

  Cicely crouched on the sofa, shivering still, and Bill snuffed and whined at the door with suppressed excitement.

  Then, after what seemed to Cicely countless ages, the door opened and Richard strolled in, calm and imperturbed. He passed the palm of his left hand across his knuckles and looked at his flushed cousin.

  “Has—has he—gone?” asked Cicely, in a very small voice.

  “Oh, yes!” said Richard.

  “Did—did—you—hurt him much?”

  “I hope so,” said Richard, and there was a short, uncomfortable pause.

  “How—how did you—find me?” she inquired, with would-be carelessness.

  “Process of deduction. What was that poisonous blighter doing in your cottage?”

  “Ha — having — tea,” said Cicely, nervously.

  “Where’s that fat fool—Maisie?”

  “Gone to—to see some friends.”

  “What does she mean by leaving you with a man like that?”

  “She—she doesn’t like him.”

  “Shows her good taste. Don’t you know better than to ask a brute like that to tea with you alone?”

  Cicely blinked away a tear.

  “I—I didn’t kn—know he—he’d—I always d—do ask my friends to tea!”

  “Your father’s house is rather different, isn’t it?”

  A muffled sob came from the sofa. Cicely was staring down at her hands, biting her lips. Richard went to her and sat with his arm about her shoulders. “Poor little kid! I won’t rag you any more. Don’t cry, Cis.”

  Cicely shed a few tears into his coat pocket, and sat up. She mopped her eyes with a diminutive handkerchief.

  “I—I am glad you came,” she sighed. “I n—never thought you would.”

  There was another pause.

  “Are—are you staying at the inn?”

  “I am.”

  “Are—are you going to stay for long?”

  “Looks as though I’d better,” said Richard drily.

  “Oh!” Cicely digested this. Then she spoke again. “P’raps you’ll be able to manage Timothy,” she said, hopefully. There was no answer.

  CICELY looked at him sideways. She sat for a moment, twisting a cushion-tassel. Richard said nothing at all, but watched her with that curious look in his eyes.

  A tiny smile came, shyly. And Cicely came to him and dived her hand into his waistcoat pocket.

  “What do you want, Cis?”

  “Diary,” said Cicely briefly.

  It was handed to her. She hesitated for a moment, not looking at him. Then she opened the book, and sucked the pencil. She scribbled diligently, and shut the book with a snap. Richard was watching her half-smiling, half-anxious. Cicely held out the book.

  “There you are! I’ve finished with it.”

  Richard took it. He slipped his arm round her once more. Cicely subsided meekly, and buried her face in his coat.

  Richard dropped a kiss on to the fluffy head.

  “Am I allowed to read what’s written here?” he asked.

  “If you—like,” said a muffed voice.

  He opened the book. The last entry was written in a round, sprawling hand. It was quite short.

  “Tuesday. Proposed to Cicely. Accepted.”

  THE END

  READING “A PROPOSAL TO CICELY”

  This one packs quite a punch, and even were it not only Georgette Heyer’s first published short story, but also her first published contemporary tale, there would still be a lot to examine in here. First, there is the suave, devoted Richard, whose chronicle of his many proposals to the firebrand Cicely is quite touching and sweet. But then you can’t help but think him a bit stalkery, too, unable to take no for an answer and all, and that is less sweet—but also more, somehow? (This is because romantical tales such as this have warped us all, of course, and our expectations of a fictional hero’s behaviour towards our heroine do not at all match what we would accept in real life.)

  Then we have Cicely, entitled and naïve, certainly, but a woman we cheer for, nonetheless—at first, anyway. When our story commences, she is terribly weary of her privileged life of wealth and beauty, and decides on a tree change as the cure. Not for her, the social whirl and a suitable marriage! For her, the countryside, and a light flirtation with what we’d call nowadays a “bit of rough.” In fostering the plebeian Talbot’s friendship and/or attachment to her, she is equal parts living dangerously and being determinedly egalitarian – when her friend and companion, the sensible if snobbish Maisie, objects to Talbot, Cicely doubles down on her efforts to befriend him, making herself free of his farm to simultaneously prove a point, give herself an illicit thrill, and, above all, alleviate her ennui.

  Which leads us, of course, to the almighty subject of class difference. This is, of course, a hallmark of Heyer, not just in her historical works but also in her contemporaries, especially in her arguably most challenging outing, 1930’s Barren Corn, in which a well-educated member of London’s rarefied gentry falls into mésalliance with the post-War equivalent of, in Victorian literary terms, a simple country maid, to the misery of all. (Including, it must sadly be admitted, many of the book’s readers.) Here, it manifests in Cicely’s utter disregard for Talbot as a man, or even as a person. To her he is a mere prop to her vanity, a sop to her boredom, and she is utterly astonished that he would presume to think of her as a potential mate, with their stations in life so very different, he a farmer and she a gentleman’s daughter. She takes it for granted that he will know his “place,” and that she could never be in any real danger from him, her “inferior.”