Cousin Kate Read online

  He possessed himself of her hands, and held them in a hard grip. ‘I am proposing to you, Kate! Will you marry me?’

  Her hands instinctively clung to his; a happiness she had never known before flooded her being; but she said foolishly: ‘Oh, no! Don’t! You can’t have considered – Oh, dear, how improper this is!’

  Mr Philip Broome, after one swift glance round, dragged her roughly into his arms and kissed her. For a delirious moment Kate yielded, but every precept that Sarah had drummed into her head shrieked to her that she was violating every canon of propriety, and behaving without delicacy or conduct. She made a desperate attempt to thrust him away, uttering an inarticulate protest. He released her with unexpected alacrity, ejaculating: ‘I might have known it!’ and set his horses in motion again. ‘That’s what comes of proposing in a curricle! Straighten your bonnet, Kate, for the lord’s sake!’

  She had suffered a severe shock at being so brusquely repulsed, but she now saw that Mr Philip Broome had not experienced a change of heart. A couple of people had come round a sharp bend in the lane, and were advancing slowly towards them. From their attire, Kate judged them to be members of the farming fraternity; and from the circumstances of the young man’s arm being round the girl’s waist, and his head bent fondly over hers, it seemed safe to assume that they were a courting couple. They were wholly absorbed in each other, and cast no more than cursory, incurious glances at the curricle.

  ‘Phew!’ whistled Philip, as soon as the curricle was out of earshot. ‘It’s to be hoped they didn’t see!’

  ‘Yes, it is!’ Kate agreed warmly. ‘And if they did, it serves me right for behaving like a – like a straw-damsel !’

  Thirteen

  Mr Philip Broome burst out laughing. ‘Oh, Kate, you enchanting rogue! Where did you learn that? Not from Mr Nidd, I’ll swear!’

  In consternation she said: ‘No, no! It was very bad of me to have said it! The thing is I couldn’t think of a more genteel way of putting it, and for some reason or other the expression stuck in my memory, and – and sprang to my tongue! I heard one of Papa’s men say it – oh, years ago, and asked Papa what it meant. He burst out laughing too. But he did tell me, and warn me not to say it, so I have no excuse, and I beg your pardon.’

  ‘You may say anything you please to me, my love. I hope you will.’

  She had been smiling, but these words brought her back to earth, and she said, in a troubled voice: ‘I don’t think – I don’t think you ought to make me an offer!’

  ‘No, it’s quite improper, of course,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Before addressing myself to you, I ought to ask permission of your father, or your mother, or your guardian; but as you haven’t a father, or a mother, or a guardian, I do trust you’ll overlook the irregularity! Something seems to tell me that if I were to apply to Minerva she would send me to the rightabout! Do you feel you could, without sinking yourself beneath reproach, tell me if you could bring yourself to marry me?’

  ‘Not – not without sinking myself beneath reproach!’ she answered sadly.

  Taken aback, he demanded: ‘Now, what the devil – ?’

  She resolutely raised her eyes to his face, and managed to say: ‘I believe you haven’t understood my circumstances. You shouldn’t be proposing to a female of no fortune, or to one whose relations don’t own her! Your family must surely oppose such an unequal match! You see, I haven’t sixpence to scratch with. I am a pauper !’

  ‘I call that a very grandiloquent way of putting it!’ he objected. ‘As for saying you haven’t sixpence to scratch with – ! Well, that’s the outside of enough! A shockingly ungenteel expression, let me tell you, my little love, and one that I never thought to hear on your lips!’

  Kate was betrayed into retorting: ‘Considering you have just heard a much more shocking expression on my lips, you can’t have felt surprised! What a complete hand you are, Cousin Philip!’

  ‘And what an abominable little gypsy you are, Cousin Kate!’ he said affably. ‘Let us be serious for a minute! You’re talking the most outrageous fustian I ever listened to in my life, you know – and that does surprise me, because you’re not at all addlebrained! If your relations don’t own you, so much the better! They sound to me a very disagreeable set of persons. As to mine, I have no closer relations than my uncle Timothy, and you can’t suppose that he would oppose the match! I almost wish he would, if it were within his power to cut me out of the succession. I daresay my more remote relations don’t care a pin what I do: I know I don’t give a pin for their opinions! Finally, my little pea-goose, I understand your circumstances a great deal better than you seem to understand mine! I’m not a rich man, Kate. I can’t offer you the consequence of a large country estate, a mansion in Berkeley Square, and a handsome fortune. I am possessed of what I have been used to consider a comfortable independence. My wife will be able to command the elegancies of life, but not its extravagances. Broome Hall doesn’t compare with Staplewood, you know. I should describe it as commodious rather than stately, and my fortune won’t run to a town-house – at least, not a permanent one.’

  He spoke apologetically, and was obviously sincere. Kate’s ever-lively sense of humour got the better of her, and she said, in the voice of one suffering a severe disappointment: ‘Not?’

  ‘Not!’ said Philip firmly. ‘You would have to be content with a furnished house for a few weeks during the Season!’

  Kate sighed audibly. ‘Well,’ she said, making a reluctant concession, ‘as long as it is in the best part of town – !’

  ‘I thought,’ said Philip, glancing appreciatively down into her dancing eyes, ‘that we were going to be serious, my sweet wit-cracker?’

  ‘Yes, so did I, and so I would have been, if you hadn’t talked such fustian! Dear sir, when my father was serving, we lived for the most part in billets, which ranged from a very dirty, draughty cottage on the Spanish and Portuguese border, to rooms in a palatial, and even more draughty, château, north of Toulouse. When Papa sold out, and we settled in London, we lived in lodgings which varied with Papa’s fortunes. To be sure, at the outset, when it was high tide with him, we had an elegant set of rooms in Clarges Street; but we ended in far from elegant rooms in Thames Street. Poor Papa could never manage to be beforehand with the world for more than a few weeks at a stretch. You see, he was a gamester, and whenever he had a run of luck nothing would do for him but to – er – waste the ready as fast as he could! I can’t tell you how many times he has come home, and emptied guineas into my lap, or how many expensive trinkets he has given me! He had a great many faults, but no one could accuse him of being clutchfisted. He was the most generous man imaginable, and a great dear, but not – not at all reliable!’

  ‘Something of this I have learnt from Minerva. Did he leave you in debt, my poor child?’

  ‘Oh, yes, but nothing to signify!’’ said Kate sunnily. ‘Not gaming debts! He was very punctilious in all matters of play and pay. I sold my trinkets, and one or two other things, to pay the tradesmen’s bills, and came off all right.’

  ‘But without sixpence to scratch with?’ he suggested.

  She smiled. ‘True! But I had the good fortune to please Mrs Astley, and she hired me to be governess to her children. And Sarah was there, in the background, ready to shelter me at a moment’s notice. I wish you might see the house she persuaded Mr Nidd to buy for his wagons, and horses, and stable-hands! It is close to the Bull and Mouth, in the City, and was used to be an inn. It is the quaintest, most delightful place imaginable! It had fallen into a shocking state of disrepair, but Mr Nidd and Joe furbished it up, and turned one side of the yard into a snug home for the family. When I left Mrs Astley, I lived with the Nidds until my aunt came to sweep me off to Staplewood. They were so kind to me, Joe, and his father, and the grandsons!’ Her eyes filled, and she was obliged to flick away the sudden tears. She continued hurriedly: ‘I was spo