Venetia Read online

  ‘Well, you need not say it as though you supposed I wished him to come!’ said Venetia indignantly. ‘I was never more thankful for anything than the chance that brought you into the room at just that moment!’

  ‘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.’

  ‘He thanked 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. I did tell him it was no such thing, but he didn’t believe me, and now see 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 in your husband!’

  ‘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 as that it 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!’

  ‘Now I 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!’

  ‘I didn’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 the first respectability!’

  They had emerged by this time from the rose-garden through an 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.’

  ‘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 are flirting with 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 yourself cleaned-out?’

  ‘Not so very green!’ he said, laughing. ‘That’s it, fair fatality!’

  ‘If but one half the stories told about you are true you must be very expensive,’ 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 always We could an if we would whenever 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 that that 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 for that? 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: his was 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