The Quiet Gentleman Read online

  ‘Cast herself into the Thames!’ echoed the Earl.

  ‘Yes, at Putney. She had meant to commit the dreadful deed at Battersea, but found the bridge there too crowded, and so was obliged to row herself to Putney. She was picked up by a passing boat, and afterwards married Mr Godwin, which quite turned her thoughts from suicide. Not that I should have thought it a preferable fate,’ said Miss Morville reflectively, ‘but, then, I am not at all partial to Mr Godwin. In fact, though I never met him – nor, indeed, Miss Wollstonecraft, either – I have often thought I should have liked Mr Imlay better than Mr Godwin. He was an American, with whom Miss Wollstonecraft had an unhappy connection, and although a great many harsh things have been said about him, Mama has always maintained that most of the trouble arose from Miss Wollstonecraft’s determination to make him an elm-tree round which she might throw her tendrils. Very few gentlemen could, I believe, support for long so arduous a role.’

  ‘I find myself, as always, in entire agreement with you, Miss Morville,’ he said gravely. ‘But do you wish me to suppose that a deranged mind was responsible for my accident?’

  ‘By no means. Martin has too little control over his passions, but he cannot be thought to be deranged. Indeed, I cannot account for your accident, except by a solution which I am persuaded is not the correct one.’

  He smiled slightly. ‘I have a great dependence on your discretion, Miss Morville. We shall say, if you please, that I was so heedless as to let Cloud set his foot in a rabbit-hole. Meanwhile, I think it would be well if I gathered up this cord, and stowed it away in my pocket.’

  She watched him do so in silence, but when he had untied the cord from about the tree, and had returned to her, she said: ‘I think you perfectly able to manage your own affairs, my lord, and I shall certainly not interfere in them. But, absurd though it may seem to you, this incident has made me feel apprehensive, and I do trust that you will take care how you expose yourself while you remain at Stanyon!’

  ‘Why, yes, to the best of my power I will do so,’ he answered. ‘But nothing will be gained through my noising this trick abroad: whoever was responsible for it knows that his design was frustrated, and he is not very likely to betray himself. I must suppose that everyone at Stanyon knew that I should return to the Castle by this road. Who, by the way, knew of your visit to the village?’

  ‘No one, and only Marianne and Lord Ulverston can have known that I went to Gilbourne House.’

  ‘That is no help at all. I never suspected Lucy of wishing to put a period to my life!’ he said, smiling.

  Eleven

  They began to walk slowly down the avenue in the direction of the Castle, the Earl assuring Miss Morville that apart from an aching skull he had sustained no injury from his fall. They had not proceeded far on their way when they heard the sound of an approaching vehicle, being driven towards them at a furious pace. ‘If this is Chard, springing my grays, I will very soon give him something else to alarm him out of his senses!’ said the Earl.

  But the four horses which almost immediately swept round the bend ahead of them were not grays, nor was Chard driving them. He sat perched up beside Lord Ulverston, who had the ribbons in his hands, and was encouraging his team to gallop down the avenue.

  The Earl drew Miss Morville on to the grass verge, but the Viscount had already perceived him, and was checking his horses. They pulled up, very much on the fret, and the Earl called out: ‘If I had guessed this was how you meant to use my bays I swear I would never have sold them to you, Lucy! Four-Horse Club, indeed! The veriest whipster!’

  ‘Good God, Ger, what a fright you have given us!’ the Viscount said indignantly. ‘I had just come in from tooling Miss Bolderwood about the country for an hour, when Cloud came bolting into the yard, in a lather, and with his legs cut about! I thought you must have put him at a regular stitcher, and taken a bad toss!’

  ‘I took a toss, but not at a stitcher. A common rabbit-hole was the cause of my downfall.’

  ‘A rabbit-hole? You?’ exclaimed Ulverston incredulously.

  ‘Don’t roast me! We all have our lapses!’

  ‘Where is this famous rabbit-hole?’

  ‘Oh, in the Park! I would not engage to point you out the precise one: there are so many of them!’

  ‘Exactly so! So many that you ride with a slack bridle, and your head in the clouds, and, when you part company, leave go of the rein! Gammon, dear boy, gammon!’

  ‘How badly are my horse’s legs cut?’ interrupted Gervase. ‘That is the worst feature of the business!’

  Chard, who had jumped down from the curricle, and had been listening to him with a puzzled frown on his face, said that he thought the injuries were hardly more than grazes. ‘I handed him over to Jem, me lord, not knowing what kind of an embarazo you was got into, and thinking you might need me more than the horse.’

  ‘Nonsense! Is it likely I could be in serious trouble?’

  ‘As to that, me lord, there’s no saying what trouble you could be in,’ replied his henchman bluntly. ‘All I know is I never knew your horse to come home without you before!’

  By this time, the Viscount had turned the curricle about, and was commanding Gervase to climb into it.

  ‘Certainly not! It is Miss Morville whom you shall drive, Lucy, not me!’

  ‘Take you both!’ said the Viscount. ‘You won’t mind being a trifle crowded, ma’am? Come, Ger, no playing the fool with me! I don’t know how you came to do it, but it’s as plain as a pikestaff you took a bad toss! Shaken to pieces, I daresay – your cravat is, at all events! Never saw you look such a quiz in my life!’

  Thus adjured, the Earl handed Miss Morville up into the curricle, and climbed in after her. The Viscount observed that it was a fortunate circumstance that they were none of them fat; Chard swung himself up behind, and the horses were put into motion.

  ‘Tell you another thing, Ger, about this precious tumble of yours!’ said the Viscount. ‘Can’t see how –’ He broke off, for the Earl, who had flung one arm across the back of the driving-seat, in an attempt to make more room for Miss Morville, moved his hand to his friend’s shoulder, and gripped it warningly. ‘Oh, well! No sense talking about it!’ he said.

  They were soon bowling through the archway of the Gate-tower. Miss Morville was set down at the Castle, but the Earl insisted on driving to the stables, to examine Cloud’s hurts. Here they found Theo, also engaged on this task. He came out into the yard at the noise of the curricle’s approach, and said, in his unemotional way: ‘Well, I am glad to see you safe and sound, Gervase! Pray, what have you been doing?’

  ‘Merely coming to grief through my own folly,’ replied Gervase, alighting from the curricle. ‘In the failing light I didn’t perceive a rabbit-hole, that is all!’

  ‘My dear St Erth, your horse never cut his knees stumbling into rabbit-holes!’ expostulated Theo. ‘I thought, when I saw him, you must have put him at a stone wall!’

  ‘Are they badly damaged?’

  ‘I hope not. He has done little more than scratch himself. Whether he will be scarred or not, I can’t tell. I’ve directed your man to apply hot fomentations.’

  The Earl nodded, and went past him into the stable, followed by Chard. Theo looked up at the Viscount with a questioning lift to his brows.

  ‘No good asking me!’ Ulverston said, correctly interpreting the look. ‘He don’t want it talked of, that’s all I know. Where’s that damned fellow of mine? Clarence! Hi, there, come and take the horses in, wherever you are!’

  His groom came running up. The Viscount relinquished the team into his care, and jumped down from the curricle. ‘Where’s young Frant?’ he asked abruptly.

  ‘Martin? I don’t know,’ Theo replied, a surprised inflexion in his voice.

  ‘Mr Frant went out with his gun a while back, my lord,’ offered Clarence.

  ‘Oh, he did, did he?