Venetia Read online

  ‘I think that was the nearest I ever came to being nailed,’ said Damerel, grinning at the recollection. ‘I’ve got you into a lot of scrapes in my time – But one grows older, Marston.’

  ‘Yes, my lord, but not so old that you won’t get me into a good few more, I daresay.’

  ‘Or myself?’ Damerel said. ‘You think I’m in one now, don’t you? You may be right: I’m damned if I know!’ He stretched out his hand for the decanter, and tilted it over his glass, slopping the brandy over the table. ‘Oh, lord! Mop it up, or Imber will be sure I’m tap-hackled! I’m not: merely careless!’ He slouched back again in his chair, relapsing for several minutes into brooding silence, while Marston found an excuse for lingering in carefully aligning the several pieces of plate set out on the sideboard. He contrived to watch Damerel under his eyelids, misliking the look in his face, and a little puzzled by it. He was taking this affair hard, and that was not like him, for he was an easy lover, engaging lightly in his numerous adventures, foreseeing at the start of each its end, and quite indiscriminating in his choice. He was a charming protector; he would indulge the most exacting of his mistresses to the top of her bent; but no one who had seen his unconcern at parting, or his cynical acceptance of falsity, could doubt that he held women cheap. This look of bitter melancholy was strange to Marston, and disturbing.

  Damerel lifted his glass again, and sipped meditatively. ‘The King of Babylon, or an Ethiopian?’ he said. ‘Which, Marston? Which?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that, sir, not being familiar with the King of Babylon.’

  ‘Aren’t you? He stood at the parting of the way, but which way he took, or what befell him, I haven’t the smallest notion. We need Mrs Priddy to set us right. Not that I think she would take a hopeful view of my case, or think that there was the least chance that the years that the locust has eaten could yet be restored to me. She would be more likely to depress me with pithy sayings about pits and whirlwinds, or to remind me that whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap. Would you care to reap any crop of my sowing, Marston? I’m damned if I would!’ He tossed off the rest of his brandy, and set the glass down, thrusting it away. ‘To hell with it! I’m becoming ape-drunk. I can give you a better line than any you’ll get from Mrs Priddy! Learn that the present hour alone is man’s – and don’t ask me when I mean to leave Yorkshire! I can’t tell you. My intention is to remain until Sir Conway Lanyon comes home, but who knows? I might fall out of love as easily as I fell into it: that wouldn’t amaze you, would it?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir,’ Marston said.

  ‘You’d best pray I may do so!’ Damerel said. ‘Even if I could set my house in order – How far have I gone into Dun territory? Do I owe you any blunt, Marston?’

  ‘Nothing worth the mention, my lord – since Amaranthus won at Nottingham.’

  Damerel burst out laughing, and got up. ‘You’re a fool to stay with me, you know. What makes you do it? Habit?’

  ‘Not entirely,’ Marston replied, with one of his rare smiles. ‘Serving you, my lord, has its drawbacks, but also its advantages.’

  ‘I’m damned if I know what they are!’ said Damerel frankly. ‘Unless you count being paid at irregular intervals and finding yourself in scrapes not of your making as advantages?’

  ‘No,’ said Marston, moving to the door, and holding it open. ‘But sooner or later you do pay me, and if you lead me into scrapes you don’t forget to rescue me from them – on one or two occasions at considerable risk to yourself. There is a nice fire in the library, my lord, and Nidd brought back the London papers from York half an hour ago.’

  Ten

  The intelligence that her son was at daggers drawn with Lord Damerel, and Venetia Lanyon head over ears in love with him, reached Lady Denny at third hand, and from the lips of her eldest daughter. Clara was a very sensible girl, no more addicted to exaggeration than her father, but not even her temperate account of what Oswald had confided to Emily, and Emily had repeated to her, could make her disclosures anything but disquieting in the extreme.

  It had been Oswald’s intention to have maintained an impenetrable silence on the events that had shattered his faith in women and transformed him, at one blow, from an ardent lover into an incurable misogynist; and had his parents, or even his two oldest sisters, had enough sensibility to enable them to perceive that the care-free youth who had ridden away from his home before noon returned at dinnertime an embittered cynic he would have refused to answer any of their anxious questions, but would have fobbed them off instead in a manner calculated to convince them that he had passed through a soul-searing experience. Unfortunately, the sensibilities of all four were so blunted that they noticed nothing unusual in his haggard mien and monosyllabic utterances, but talked throughout dinner of commonplaces, and in a cheerful style which could not but make him wonder how he came to be born into such an insensate family. His refusal to partake of any of the dishes that made up the second course did draw comment from his mama, but as she ascribed his loss of appetite to a surfeit of sugarplums, he could only be sorry that she had noticed his abstention.

  It was not until the following day that a chance remark made by Emily proved too much for his resolution. With all the tactlessness of her fifteen years she marvelled that he had not ridden off to visit Venetia, which goaded him into giving a bitter laugh, and saying that never again would he cross the threshold of Undershaw. As he added a warning to her to ask him no questions she at once begged him to tell her what had happened.

  He had no intention of telling her anything, but she was the most spiritually akin to him of all his family, and it was not long before he had confided some part at least of his troubles into her sympathetic ears, in a series of elliptical remarks which, while they conveyed no very accurate idea to her of the previous day’s events, appealed strongly to her romantic heart. She drank in all he said, filled in the gaps with the aid of an imagination quite as dramatic as his, and ended by recounting the whole to Clara, under the seal of secrecy.

  ‘But although I daresay it is all fustian, Mama, I felt obliged to say that I couldn’t think it right not to tell you,’ said Clara.

  ‘No, indeed!’ exclaimed Lady Denny, quite aghast. ‘Challenging Lord Damerel to a duel? Good God! he must be out of his mind! I never heard anything to equal it, and what your father will say I tremble to think of! Oh, it can’t be true! Ten to one it’s one of Emily’s Canterbury tales!’

  ‘I think it is not wholly that, Mama,’ said Clara conscientiously. ‘I fear there can be no doubt that Oswald has quarrelled with Lord Damerel, though whether he challenged him to a duel is another matter. You know how he and Emily exaggerate! I should have supposed it to have been impossible, but if it’s true that Lord Damerel is pursuing poor Venetia with his attentions it might be. Which is why I thought it my duty to tell you, because Oswald is certainly in one of his extravagant puckers, and when that happens one can’t depend on his behaving rationally. And if he should be so imprudent as to force a quarrel on Lord Damerel –’

  ‘Don’t speak of such a thing!’ begged Lady Denny, shuddering. ‘Oh dear, oh dear, why had that detestable man to come here? Setting us all in an uproar! Pursuing Venetia – Did you say he goes every day to Undershaw?’

  ‘Well, Mama, so Oswald told Emily, but I didn’t refine very much upon that, because he said also that Venetia is quite besotted, and encourages Lord Damerel to behave with the greatest impropriety, and that must be nonsense, mustn’t it?’

  But Lady Denny, far from being reassured, turned quite pale, and ejaculated: ‘I might have known what would happen! And what must Edward Yardley do at this of all moments but fall sick with chicken-pox! Not that I think he would be of the least use, but he might have prevented Damerel from living in Venetia’s pocket, instead of letting his mother send for Mr Huntspill every time she fancies his pulse is too rapid, and making as much fuss as if he had the small-pox!’