Venetia Read online

  ‘Well, that fate will be preferable to starvation,’ he said. ‘Hand over the orphans!’

  She knelt on the edge of the loft, and reached the basket down to his upstretched hand. He grasped it, and set it down on the floor, and looked up again, rather wickedly smiling. ‘Shall I hold the ladder for you, my dear delight?’

  ‘Certainly not!’ said Venetia firmly.

  ‘But you said it was unsteady!’

  ‘It is, but if I could come up it I can come down it.’

  ‘Do!’ he said cordially. ‘I shall have a stiff neck if I’m obliged to converse with you at that level. Or shall I come up?’

  She looked down at him with laughter in her eyes, but said severely: ‘No, you will not come up! Odious creature! You know very well I can’t come down that ladder while you stand there watching me!’

  ‘Can’t you? Oh, that’s easily remedied!’ he retorted, and removed the ladder, and laid it down.

  It was this impish action which drew the protest from her which Oswald heard. ‘Fiend!’ she said. ‘Do put it back, and go away!’

  ‘Not I!’ he replied, grinning up at her.

  ‘But it is most unchivalrous of you!’ she complained.

  ‘No, no, on the contrary! The ladder is clearly unsafe.’

  She tried to make her mouth prim, but failed. ‘Do you know, my dear friend, that besides being most ungentlemanly you are shockingly untruthful?’ she enquired.

  ‘No, am I? Do you know how entrancing your face is when seen from this angle?’

  She was still kneeling, resting her hands on the edge of the loft, and looking directly down at him. ‘Upside down? Well, of all the unhandsome things to say! Now, Damerel, you will be so very obliging as to stop behaving like a horrid schoolboy, and set the ladder up again?’

  ‘No, dear torment, I will not!’

  ‘Wretch! Do you mean to keep me a prisoner up here? I warn you, the instant your back is turned I shall jump down!’

  ‘Oh, don’t wait for that! Jump now!’ he said. ‘I’ll catch you!’

  ‘Thank you, I had as lief not be caught!’

  ‘What, are you afraid I’ll let you fall? Little craven! And you a Lanyon of Undershaw!’

  ‘Pooh!’ said Venetia, making a face at him. She then altered her position, drew her flounced skirt tightly round her ankles, swung her legs over the edge of the loft, and slid down into Damerel’s arms.

  He caught her, and held her in a strong grip, but whatever might have been his next intention was frustrated by Oswald, who at this moment revealed his presence, starting forward with a wrathful imprecation.

  His purpose was to command Damerel to unhand Venetia, and, if necessary, to wrest her from his grasp, but as Damerel, without showing the smallest sign of surprise, much less of discomfiture, had already set her on her feet, and released her, there was no need to do this. He was unable, on the spur of the moment, to think of anything else to say, and stood glaring at Damerel instead.

  Venetia had been startled by his sudden appearance, but she betrayed no more discomfiture than Damerel, merely saying: ‘Oh, is it you, Oswald? What a pity you should not have arrived just one minute earlier! You might have played the knight-errant to my damsel in distress. Would you believe it? – finding me engaged on an errand of mercy up there, Lord Damerel treacherously removed the ladder!’ She laughed at Damerel. ‘In fact, you remind me strongly of my brother Conway!’

  ‘And worse you cannot say of anyone, I collect!’ His lazy yet penetrating gaze rested on Oswald’s flushed countenance for a moment. There was a good deal of amusement in his eyes, but some not unkindly understanding as well. ‘I shall go and seek comfort of Aubrey,’ he said.

  Oswald, standing in the doorway still, hesitated, but after a moment’s indecision, moved reluctantly aside to allow him to pass.

  Venetia bent to pick up her basket. ‘I must take these unfortunate kittens up to the house. At least their eyes are open, so perhaps they will be able to lap.’

  ‘Wait!’ uttered Oswald.

  She looked enquiringly at him. ‘Why?’

  ‘I must and will speak to you! That fellow – !’

  ‘If you mean Damerel, as I conclude you must, I wish you will say so, and not call him that fellow! It is not at all becoming in you to speak in such a way of a man so much older than you are, and particularly when you’ve no cause to do so.’

  ‘No cause!’ he exclaimed hotly. ‘When I find him here, f-forcing his improper attentions upon you!’

  ‘Fiddle!’

  He flushed. ‘How can you say that? When I saw – and heard –’

  ‘You neither saw nor heard him forcing anything upon me. And you won’t,’ she added calmly.

  ‘You don’t understand! You –’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  He stared at her, rather nonplussed. ‘You know nothing about men of his stamp! You’ve let him hoax you with his curst cajolery into thinking he means no harm, but if you knew what his reputation is –’

  ‘Well, I do know, better than you, I daresay.’

  ‘The fellow’s a rake! No female is safe with him!’

  She gave an involuntary laugh. ‘How very dreadful! Oswald, do, pray, stop talking fustian! You can’t think how absurd it is!’

  ‘It’s true!’ he said earnestly.

  ‘Yes, it’s true that he’s a rake, but I assure you there is no need to worry over my safety. I expect you mean it kindly, but I shall be very much obliged to you if you will say no more!’

  He stared at her fiercely, and ejaculated: ‘You’re bewitched!’

  The oddest little smile flickered in her eyes. ‘Am I? Well, never mind! It is quite my own affair, after all. Now I must take these kittens up to the kitchen, and see what can be done for them.’

  He resolutely barred the way. ‘You shall hear me!’ he declared. ‘You hope to fob me off, but it will not do!’

  She looked at him for a measuring instant, and then sat down on Aubrey’s bench, and folded her hands in her lap, saying, with resignation: ‘Very well: say what you wish, if nothing else will do for you!’

  It was not very encouraging, but there was so much that Oswald was burning to say, and had, indeed, several times rehearsed, that he was not at all daunted. He plunged, stammering a little, into a speech that began as worldly-wise advice from a man of wide experience to a singularly innocent and gullible girl, but very soon changed to a diatribe against Damerel, and an impassioned declaration of undying love for Venetia. It lasted for quite a considerable time, and Venetia made no attempt to check it. Nor did she laugh, for it was apparent to her that her youthful admirer had worked himself into a dangerously overwrought condition, and believed himself to be far more violently in love with her than she had guessed. She gathered from one or two of his utterances that he was persuaded that she had been in a fair way to returning his love until Damerel had cast his spell over her; and although she knew that she had never given him the smallest encouragement she was vexed with herself for not having perceived that a turbulent boy with a yearning for romance and a marked turn for dramatising himself was quite capable of exaggerating mere elder-sisterly kindness into something far warmer. So she let him talk himself out uninterrupted, thinking that since so many wild and tangled emotions had been festering in his bosom he would probably feel much better for being allowed to pour them forth, and even a little ashamed of himself. However, when he reached the stage of urging her to marry him, and outlining, in a rapture of fantasy, a wedding-trip that included the more remote parts of the globe, and would, at the lowest computation, take quite three years to accomplish, she judged it to be time to intervene, and to administer a damper calculated to make him fall out of love with her as suddenly as he had fallen into it.

  As soon as he paused, eagerly scanning her face to see what effect his eloquence had had on her, she rose,