Cousin Kate Read online

  She laughed. ‘Neither Sir Timothy nor Torquil suffers from an infectious complaint, Mr Nidd!’

  ‘Dutch comfort, Miss Kate! Next you’ll be telling me that the nevvy’s in queer stirrups!’

  ‘Indeed I shan’t tell you anything of the sort!’ said Kate indignantly.

  ‘Nor I wouldn’t credit it if you did! I can see with my own ogles that he’s in prime twig! But, lordy, this’ll make Sarey look blue! You know what she is, miss: no sooner did she read your letter, saying as how your cousin was the most beautiful young man you’d ever beheld, than she got to thinking what a good thing it would be if you and he was to make a match of it. Which there’s no denying it would be, if he was quite stout. But if he’s ticklish in the wind it won’t do, Miss Kate!’

  She said earnestly: ‘Mr Nidd, pray don’t encourage Sarah to think there is the least possibility of my marrying Torquil! It is too absurd! Sarah must have forgotten that I am four-and-twenty! There are five years between Torquil and me – and I haven’t the smallest inclination to set my cap at him! He is certainly beautiful, but I can conceive of few worse fates than to be married to him! He is nothing more than a spoiled schoolboy, and his temper is shocking! Pray let us be done with that nonsense!’

  ‘I’m agreeable, miss,’ said Mr Nidd affably. ‘Not but what it’ll come as a disappointment to Sarey, because there’s no denying that it would have been a spanking thing for you. However, what can’t be cured must be endured, and it’s as plain as a pack-saddle that the nevvy’s nutty on you! Now, if he was to offer for you –’

  ‘I should be very much surprised!’ Kate interrupted. ‘I’m not on the catch for a husband, Mr Nidd, and I shall be much obliged to you if you won’t make plans for me! Let us rather talk about your own affairs! I do, most solemnly, beg that you will go back to London! I don’t mean that I’m not deeply grateful to you for having come to Market Harborough, for I am – more grateful than I can tell you! – but Sarah must by this time be in a perfect stew! And if I were to dash off a note to her, you could take it to her, couldn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, Miss Kate, and I could take it to the Post Office too. I got a notion I won’t go back yet, because I ain’t easy in my mind, and I’m not wishful to leave you here! It sticks in my gullet that you ain’t had any of Sarey’s letters, nor she any of yours, barring the first of ’em. It don’t smell right to me, missy, and that’s the truth!’

  ‘It – it doesn’t smell right to me either,’ confessed Kate. ‘But until I have spoken to my aunt about it, I – I would liefer not discuss it! If it was she who was responsible, she must have had some good reason, even – even if I can’t think what it can have been.’

  ‘No, nor me neither!’ said Mr Nidd acidly. ‘And, if you ask me, she’ll find herself in a proper hank, when she starts in to explain what her reason was! Don’t you try to sell yourself a bargain, miss, because you ain’t a paperskull, no more than what I am, and you know well she can’t have had a good reason! Mark me if she ain’t playing an undergame!’

  Kate got up, and went to the window, and began to twist the blind-cord round her finger. ‘I know, but –’

  ‘The best thing you can do, miss, is to come back to Sarah!’ said Mr Nidd. ‘Lor’, wouldn’t she jump out of her skin with joy! Yes, and what’s more, if she knew you was with us again she’d come home herself, ah, and in an ant’s foot, too! Then p’raps we’d get some wittles fit to eat! All you got to do, miss, is to pack your traps, and leave it to me to settle the rest. You wouldn’t object to travelling on the stage, would you? I’d take good care of you.’

  Kate turned her head to bestow upon him a warm, smiling look. ‘I know you would, Mr Nidd – bless you! But I couldn’t, after all her kindness, leave my aunt in such a way! It would be beyond everything! I think I know why she – why she tried to stop me corresponding with Sarah. You see, she doesn’t want me to leave Staplewood, and I expect she must know that I couldn’t do so if I became estranged from Sarah. I’ve said from the start that I should leave, after the summer, and I’ve remained firm in that resolve. It was very wrong, of course, to tamper with my correspondence, but – but she is a woman who has been used to have her own way in everything, and – and once I’ve – well, brought her to book! – I’m persuaded she won’t do so any more. Now that I’ve seen you, and know that Sarah hasn’t given me up, I can be easy again, and be sure that if I found myself obliged to leave Staplewood, I shouldn’t find that Sarah had closed your doors against me! Dear Mr Nidd, your visit has been the greatest comfort to me, but I do, most earnestly, beg that you will go back to London!’

  As she spoke, the door opened, and she looked quickly over her shoulder, to see that Mr Philip Broome had entered the room. He said: ‘I’m sorry to interrupt you, Cousin Kate, but we stand in imminent danger of being scandalously late for dinner! Unless we set forward immediately, we shall fall under Minerva’s displeasure.’

  ‘Oh, good God, that would never do!’ she exclaimed, with would-be lightness. ‘Have I enough time to scribble a note to Mrs Nidd? I have been asking Mr Nidd if he will be so good as to take it to her, and I promise I won’t keep you waiting above ten minutes!’

  ‘By all means,’ he said, casting a glance round the room, and discovering a writing-table. He strode over to it, and pulled open two of its drawers. ‘Wonderful! Not only paper, but wafers as well, and a pen! And even ink in the standish! In general, when one wishes to write a letter in a posting-house, one finds that there is only a kind of mud at the bottom of the standishes. If you care to sit down here, Kate, I’ll take Mr Nidd down to inspect my horses. You will join us in the yard at your convenience.’

  She agreed gratefully to this suggestion; and although it was evident that Mr Nidd was much inclined to dig his heels in, he yielded, after staring pugnaciously at him, to the unmistakeable message in Mr Philip Broome’s eyes, accompanied as it was by the flicker of the smile of a conspirator.

  But as soon as Philip had closed the door, he said that he had told Miss Kate that he would be happy to take her letter to the Post Office, but he hadn’t made up his mind to go home, not by a long chalk he hadn’t.

  Leading the way down the stairs, Philip said, over his shoulder: ‘Does she wish you to do so?’

  ‘Yes, she does, sir, and it goes against the pluck with me to do it!’ said Mr Nidd, in a brooding tone. ‘I wouldn’t wish to offend you, Mr Broome, sir, but I been telling Miss Kate that the thing for her to do is to come back with me to London!’

  ‘I shouldn’t think she agreed to that,’ Philip commented.

  ‘No, sir, she didn’t,’ said Mr Nidd, nipping ahead to hold open the door into the yard. ‘After you, sir, if you please! – No, she said that she couldn’t leave her aunt in a bang, as you might say, being as how her ladyship had been so kind to her. Which, begging your pardon, I take leave to doubt!’

  ‘True enough. Her ladyship has been more than kind to her.’

  ‘Well, if you say so, sir – !’ replied Mr Nidd dubiously. ‘I didn’t cut my eye-teeth yesterday, nor yet the day before, and you don’t have to tell me you don’t cut no shams, because I knew from the moment I clapped my ogles on you that it was pound-dealing with you, or nothing! But, Mr Broome, sir, I’ll take the liberty of telling you to your head that I ain’t easy in my mind! It don’t smell right to me, somehow!’

  Philip did not immediately answer, but after a short pause he said: ‘Does it make you easier when I tell you that if any danger were to threaten Miss Malvern – which I don’t anticipate! – I should instantly bundle her into a chaise, and restore her to her nurse?’

  ‘You would?’ Mr Nidd said, regarding him with obvious approval.

  ‘Most certainly!’

  ‘Well, that’s different, of course!’ said Mr Nidd graciously. ‘If you mean to look after Miss Kate, there’s no call for me to kick my heels here!’

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