Black Sheep Read online

  Startled, she looked quickly up at him, a question in her big eyes. 'Don't?'

  'Don't think yourself obliged to make conversation! That's not treating me as though I were your brother!'

  'Oh – !' She blushed, and turned her head away.

  'Is something troubling you?' he asked gently.

  'No – oh, no! Of course not! Look, there are two of the swans! If only we had brought some bread to throw to them! I do think swans are the most beautiful birds in the world, don't you? Or do you prefer peacocks?'

  'No,' he replied baldly, leading her to a conveniently placed bench. Sitting down beside her, he said: 'What is it, Fanny? Don't say you're not blue-devilled! That would be a bouncer – almost a plumper!'

  She gave a nervous little laugh. 'It's nothing. Well, nothing very much! Just that I'm at outs with Abby – at least, not pre cisely at outs with her, but –' She paused, and her eyes darkened. 'I thought – But people – grown-up people –' she said, betraying her youth, 'don't understand ! They don't care for anything but consequence, and propriety, and respectability, and – and eligibility, and whenever you wish to do anything they don't wish you to do, they say you are far too young, and will soon forget about it!'

  'Yes, and also that one day you will thank them for it!' he agreed sympathetically. 'And the worst of it is that, in general, they are right!'

  'Not always!'

  'No, but odiously often!'

  'When you are as old as I am – ! ' said Fanny, in bitter mimicry.

  'Don't tell me that Miss Abigail has ever uttered those abominable words!'

  'No. No, she hasn't done that, but she doesn't enter into my feelings, and I thought she would! I never dreamed she would be just like my uncle! Worldly, and – and prejudiced, and not thinking it signifies if you are unhappy, as long as you don't do anything your horrid uncle doesn't approve of !' She added, with strong indignation: 'And she doesn't even like him!'

  He said nothing for a few moments, but sat frowning ahead at the embattled wall beyond the moat. Fanny, pulling a handker chief out of her reticule, defiantly blew her nose. Oliver drew a resolute breath, and said, picking his words with care: 'If some one who is very dear to you – as you are to Miss Abigail – seems to be set on taking what you believe to be a false step, you must try to prevent it, don't you agree?'

  'Yes, but I am not taking a false step!' said Fanny. 'And I am not too young to know my own mind! I have always known it! And I won't let them ruin my life, even if I have to do something desperate!'

  'Don't!' he said. 'How could you be happy if you did what must pretty well break Miss Abigail's heart? Forgive me, Fanny, but I fancy I know what the trouble is, and I wish there was something I could do to help you.' He paused. 'Have you ever met my uncle? Not, I'm thankful to say, at all like your uncle! He's very kind, and very wise, and he once told me never to make important decisions hastily – not to do what couldn't be undone until I was perfectly sure that I should never wish to

  undo it.'

  'Of course not!' said Fanny simply. She got up. 'Are you rested? Would you care to stroll about the town for a little while? I don't think it is warm enough here, do you? We'll go through the Dean's Eye into Sadler Street: I expect you will like to see that.'

  Her confidences were at an end; and since she had so unmistakably drawn to the blinds against prying eyes there was nothing for him to do but to acquiesce. He won a laugh from her by saying that while he placed himself unreservedly in her hands he could not help feeling that they ran a grave risk of being clapped into prison for such irreverence; and expressed great relief when she explained that the Dean's Eye was merely an old gateway. This mild joke did much to restore her to ease; he set himself thereafter to divert her, and succeeded well enough to make her say, when they joined their elders at the Swan, to partake of an early dinner there before driving back to Bath, that she had spent a charming afternoon. A little ner vously, she added: 'And you won't regard anything I said, will you? It was all nonsense! I daresay you know how it is when one falls into a fit of the dismals: one says things one doesn't mean.'

  He reassured her, but could not refrain from saying: 'Even though I'm only a pretence-brother, will you tell me if ever you are in any kind of a hobble, or – or are not quite sure what you should do?'

  'Oh, thank you! You are very good!' she stammered. 'But there's no need – I mean, it was only being blue-devilled, as you said! Nothing is really amiss!'

  He said no more, but this speech, far from allaying his anxiety, considerably increased it. He wished grimly that he could know what had occurred to agitate her, but it was perhaps as well that his suspicion received no confirmation, since he had neither the right nor, as yet, the physical strength to deal appropriately with Mr Stacy Calverleigh, and would have found it impossible to control his instinct. For Mr Calverleigh, living in imminent danger of foreclosure, and seeing the shadow of the King's Bench Prison creeping inexorably towards him, had abandoned the hope of winning his heiress by fair means, and had decided (with a strong sense of ill-usage) that there was nothing for it but to elope with her.

  But Fanny, who had so enthusiastically pictured herself in such a romantic adventure, had suddenly been brought to realise that it was one thing to declare one's readiness to cast off the shackles of one's upbringing, and to divorce oneself from home and family, and quite another actually to do it.

  Stacy had urged his desperate proposal on her in Bath Abbey, a circumstance which made her feel nervous and uncom fortable at the outset. When he had appointed this rendezvous, she had been almost shocked. It was surely not at all the thing! But he had laughed at her scruples, calling her his adorable little prude, and she had agreed to the assignation – if only to prove to him that she was no prude. It had been made hurriedly, in Meyler's Library, and it had entailed some difficult, and what she could not but feel horridly deceitful, planning. However, she had done it, and had been rewarded for her hardihood by having her hands passionately kissed, and her bravery extolled. But she was feeling far from brave, and looked round nervously in dread of seeing someone she knew. It was not, of course, very likely that any resident of Bath would be found in the Abbey at an hour when no service was being held, but there was no telling but what someone might be entertaining a guest who wished to visit it. She whispered: 'Oh, pray take care!' and pulled her hands away. 'If I were to be recognised – ! I am in such a quake! I don't think anyone saw me on the way, but how can one be sure? Grimston went with me to Miss Timble's, and she will call for me later at Mrs Grayshott's, but, oh, Stacy, I was obliged to pretend to Miss Timble that I had mistaken the day for my singing lesson, and it made me feel a wretch !'

  'No wonder!' he agreed warmly. 'It is intolerable that we should be obliged to stoop to subterfuge: I feel it as acutely as you do, beloved! But since your aunt returned to Bath I've been granted no opportunity to snatch as much as five minutes alone with you. How can I talk to you at a concert, or in a ballroom? And talk to you I must!'

  'Yes – oh, yes! I have longed so much to be with you! If only I had a veil! Who are those people over there?'

  'Only a parcel of trippers,' he replied soothingly. 'Don't be afraid, my sweet one! There is no one here who knows you. We will sit down over there, where it is dark, and there's nothing of interest to attract the trippers. That I should be forced into stealing a meeting with you! It is of all things the most repugnant to me, but what other course is open to me? Only one! – to renounce you wholly, and that I cannot bear to do!'

  'Stacy, no!' she gasped, clutching his arm.

  He laid his other hand over hers, clasping it firmly. 'I shall never win your aunt's support: she has made that abundantly plain to me! She will take care that we never see one another, except in company, or as we have done today. Dearest, how can we go on in such a way?' He took her hand and mumbled kisses into its palm. 'If you knew how much I long to take you in my arms, to call you my own!'

  'I want that too,' she said shyly.