Venetia Read online

  ‘She’d do better to be advised by my sister,’ said Aubrey, who had entered the room in time to hear this interchange. ‘Lord, what a dust Conway would kick up if he came home to find Mrs Gurnard had left Undershaw in a pelter!’

  The thought of Conway’s displeasure made Charlotte turn pale, and even seemed to give Mrs Scorrier pause. She contented herself with saying: ‘Well, we shall see,’ but although the smile remained firmly pinned to her lips the glance she cast at Aubrey was by no means amiable. Venetia could only pray that she would not offer him any further provocation.

  The prayer was not answered, and long before dinner came to an end it must have been apparent to anyone acquainted with Aubrey that he had decided for war. Upon entering the dining-room, and finding that she was expected to sit at the head of the table, Charlotte had hung back, stammering with instinctive good feeling: ‘Oh, pray – ! That is where you are used to sit, Miss Lanyon, is it not? If you please, I would by far rather not take your place!’

  ‘But I would far rather not take yours!’ returned Venetia. ‘I wish, by the way, that you will call me Venetia!’

  ‘Oh, yes! Thank you, I should be very happy! But pray won’t you –’

  ‘My dear Charlotte, Miss Lanyon will think you are quite gooseish if you don’t take care!’ said Mrs Scorrier. ‘She is very right, and you need have no scruples, I assure you.’ She flashed a particularly wide smile at Venetia, and added: ‘It is the fate of sisters, is it not, to be obliged to take second place when their brothers marry?’

  ‘Undoubtedly, ma’am.’

  ‘Doing it rather too brown, m’dear!’ said Aubrey, a glint in his eye. ‘You’ll still be first in consequence at Undershaw if you eat your dinner in the kitchen, and well you know it!’

  ‘What a devoted brother!’ remarked Mrs Scorrier, with a slight titter.

  ‘What a nonsensical one!’ retorted Venetia. ‘Do you like to sit near the fire, ma’am, or will you –’

  ‘Mrs Scorrier ought to sit at the bottom of the table,’ said Aubrey positively.

  ‘You mean the foot of the table: opposite to the head, you understand,’ said Mrs Scorrier instructively.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ replied Aubrey, looking surprised. ‘Did I say bottom? I wonder what made me do that?’

  Venetia asked Charlotte if she had enjoyed her visit to Paris. It was the first of the many hasty interventions she felt herself obliged to make during the course of what she afterwards bitterly described as a truly memorable dinner-party, for while Aubrey offered no unprovoked attacks he was swift to avenge any hint of aggression. Since he made it abundantly plain that he had constituted himself his sister’s champion, and won every encounter with the foe, Venetia could only suppose that Mrs Scorrier was either very stupid, or compelled by her evil genius to court discomfiture. She really seemed to be incapable of resisting the temptation to depress Venetia’s imagined pretensions, so the dining-room rapidly became a battlefield on which (Venetia thought, with an irrepressible gleam of amusement) line inevitably demonstrated its superiority to column. Unable to counter Aubrey’s elusive tactics, Mrs Scorrier attempted to give him a heavy set-down. Bringing her determined smile to bear on him she told him that no one would ever take him and Conway for brothers, so unlike were they. What unflattering comparisons she meant to draw remained undisclosed, for Aubrey instantly said, with a touch of anxiety: ‘No, I don’t think anyone could, do you, ma’am? He has the brawn of the family, I have the brain, and Venetia has the beauty.’

  After this it was scarcely surprising that Mrs Scorrier rose from the table with her temper sadly exacerbated. When she disposed herself in a chair by the drawing-room fire there was a steely look in her eyes which made her daughter quake, but her evident intention of making herself extremely unpleasant was foiled by Venetia’s saying that since it behoved her to write two urgent letters she hoped Charlotte would forgive her if she left her until tea-time to the comfort of a quiet evening with only her mama for company. She then left the room, and went to join Aubrey in the library, saying, with deep feeling, as she entered that haven: ‘Devil!’

  He grinned at her. ‘What odds will you lay me that I don’t rid the house of her within a se’ennight?’

  ‘None! It would be robbing you, for you won’t do it. And, indeed, love, you might consider Charlotte’s feelings a trifle! She may be a ninnyhammer, but she can’t help that, and her disposition, I am quite convinced, is perfectly amiable and obliging.’

  ‘So sweetly mawkish and so smoothly dull, is what you mean to say!’

  ‘Well, at least the sweetness is something to be thankful for! Do you wish to use your desk? I must write to Aunt Hendred, and to Lady Denny, and I haven’t had the fires lit in the saloon, or the morning-room.’

  ‘You haven’t had them lit?’ he said pointedly.

  ‘If you don’t wish to see me fall into strong hysterics, be quiet!’ begged Venetia, seating herself at the big desk. ‘Oh, Aubrey, what a shocking pen! Do, pray, mend it for me!’

  He took it from her, and picked up a small knife from the desk. As he pared the quill he said abruptly: ‘Are you writing to tell my aunt and the Dennys that Conway is married?’

  ‘Of course, and I do so much hope that with Lady Denny at least I shall be beforehand. My aunt is bound to read it in the Gazette – may already have done so, for that detestable woman tells me she sent in the notice before she left London! You’d think she might have waited a few days longer, after having done so for three months!’

  He gave the pen back to her. ‘Conway wasn’t engaged to Clara Denny, was he?’

  ‘No – that is, certainly not openly! Lady Denny told me at the time that they were both of them too young, and that Sir John wouldn’t countenance an engagement until Conway was of age and Clara had come out, but there’s no doubt that he would have welcomed the match, and no doubt either that Clara thinks herself promised to Conway.’

  ‘What fools girls are!’ he exclaimed impatiently. ‘Conway might have sold out when my father died, had he wished to! She must have known that!’

  Venetia sighed. ‘You’d think so, but from something she once said to me I very much fear that she believed he remained with the Army because he thought it to be his duty to do so.’

  ‘Conway? Even Clara Denny couldn’t believe that moonshine!’

  ‘I assure you she could. And you must own that anyone might who was not particularly acquainted with him, for besides believing it himself, and always being able to think of admirable reasons for doing precisely what suits him best, he looks noble!’

  He agreed to this, but said after a thoughtful moment: ‘Do I do that, m’dear?’

  ‘No, love,’ she replied cheerfully, opening the standish. ‘You merely do what suits you best, without troubling to look for a virtuous reason. That’s because you’re odiously conceited, and don’t care a button for what anyone thinks of you. Conway does.’

  ‘Well, I’d a deal rather be conceited than a hypocrite,’ said Aubrey, accepting this interpretation of his character with equanimity. ‘I must say I look forward to hearing what the reason was for this havey-cavey marriage. Come to think of it, what was the reason? Why the deuce didn’t he write to tell us? He knew he must tell us in the end! Too corkbrained by half!’

  Venetia looked up from the letter she had begun to write. ‘Yes, that had me in a puzzle too,’ she admitted. ‘But I thought about it while I was dressing for dinner, and I fancy I have a pretty fair notion of how it was. And that is what makes me afraid that the news will come as a shocking blow to poor Clara. I think Conway did mean to offer for Clara. I don’t mean to say that he was still in that idiotish state which made him such a bore when he was last at home, but fond enough of her to think she would make him a very agreeable wife. What’s more, I should suppose that there had been an exchange of promises, however little the Dennys may have suspected it. If Conway thou