False Colours Read online

  That made Kit grin appreciatively, but the next sheet, however acceptable it might have been had it been addressed to himself, lowered his spirits still more. It was devoted to praise of Miss Stavely. No one, in Lord Brumby’s opinion, could be a more eligible bride. Her fortune was not large, but it was respectable; her lineage was impeccable; and from all he had seen and heard of her she was eminently fitted for the position offered her. His lordship ventured to predict for his nephew a future of domestic bliss, unattended by such youthful volatility as he had been obliged, in the past, to deprecate.

  He ended this missive with a brief paragraph which, under other circumstances, might well have encouraged optimism in Mr Fancot’s breast. ‘I must not conclude, my dear Denville, without informing you that I have received a very comfortable account of your brother from Stewart, who writes of him in such terms as must, I know well, afford you as much gratification as they afford me.’

  Mr Fancot, reading these lines in unabated gloom, put up his uncle’s letter, and went off to superintend the final preparations for an expedition of pleasure to Ashdown Forest.

  This, being attended by all the ills, including a shower of rain, which commonly beset al fresco entertainments, was spoilt for Kit from the outset by the inability of the Vicar’s daughter to ride. She was driven to the rendezvous in the landaulet, which also carried the picnic-hampers; and Miss Stavely, the doyenne of the party, bore her company: a graceful act of self-abnegation which would have confirmed Lord Brumby in his high opinion of her excellence, but which won no encomiums whatsoever from Mr Fancot.

  The dinner-party, which followed hard upon his return from this expedition, sent him to bed in a state of exhaustion. Lady Denville, in her praiseworthy desire to make the Dowager Lady Stavely’s visit to Ravenhurst agreeable, had been inspired to beg the pleasure of Lord and Lady Dersingham’s company to dinner; and this couple, whom she described to Kit as antiquated fogies who belonged to the Dowager’s set, had felt themselves obliged to accept her invitation. In the event, her inspiration was proved to be far from happy, as Sir Bonamy, when he learned of the high treat in store, correctly prognosticated. ‘Maria Dersingham?’ exclaimed that amiable hedonist, his eyes starting from their sockets. ‘No, no, my pretty! You can’t be serious! Why, she and the old Tartar here have been at outs these dozen years and more!’

  The truth of these daunting words was confirmed within five minutes of the Dersinghams’ arrival. Nothing could have been more honeyed than the civilities exchanged between two elderly and redoubtable ladies of quality; and nothing could have struck more terror into the bosoms of the rest of the company than the smiling remarks each subsequently addressed to the other. The only person to remain unaffected was Mrs Cliffe, whose unshakeable conviction that her sole offspring would shortly succumb to an inflammation of the lungs, contracted in Ashdown Forest during a shower of rain, occupied her mind to the exclusion of all other considerations; and the only two persons who derived enjoyment from the party were the contestants themselves, who showed signs of alarming revivification at every hit scored.

  It was in a state of prostration (as he informed Cressy, when he contrived to snatch a brief moment or two alone with her) that Kit retired to bed shortly after eleven o’clock. He was certainly very much too tired to tease his brain by trying to hit upon a solution to the problem that confronted him; and, in fact, fell asleep within a very few minutes of Fimber’s drawing the curtains round the enormous four-poster bed, and leaving the room.

  He was dragged up, an hour later, from fathoms deep, by a hand grasping his shoulder, and shaking it, and a voice saying: ‘Oh, do wake up, Kester! Kester!’

  Only one person had ever called him that. Still half-asleep, he responded automatically, murmuring: ‘Eve . . .!’

  ‘Wake up, you gudgeon!’

  He opened his eyes, and blinked into the laughing face of his twin, illuminated by candlelight. For a moment he stared; then a slow smile crept into his eyes, and he said, a little thickly, and stretching out his hand: ‘I knew you couldn’t have stuck your spoon in the wall!’

  His hand was taken by his twin’s left one, and strongly grasped.

  ‘I thought you would,’ Evelyn said. ‘What brought you home? Did you know I’d damned nearly done so?’

  ‘Yes. And that you were in some kind of a hank.’

  The grasp tightened on his hand. ‘I hoped you wouldn’t guess that. Oh, but, Kester, it’s good to see you again!’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Kit, deep, if drowsy, affection in his smile. ‘Damn you!’ he added.

  ‘I’m sorry: I’d have sent you word if I hadn’t been knocked senseless,’ said Evelyn penitently.

  Emerging from the last clinging remnants of sleep, Kit became aware of some awkwardness in the clasp on his hand. He then saw that it was being held by Evelyn’s left one, and that his right lay in a sling. ‘So you did suffer an accident!’ he remarked. ‘Broken your arm?’

  ‘No: my shoulder, and a couple of ribs. That’s nothing!’

  ‘How did you do it?’

  ‘Took a corner too fast, and overturned the phaeton.’

  ‘Cawker!’ said Kit, sitting up. He released Evelyn’s hand, yawned, stretched, cast off his nightcap, vigorously rubbed his head, and then, apparently refreshed by these activities, said: ‘That’s better!’ and swung his legs out of bed.

  Evelyn, lighting all the candles with which Lady Denville lavishly provided every bedroom in the house, said: ‘You must have made a pretty batch of it tonight! It took me five minutes to wake you.’

  ‘If you knew what sort of an evening I have been spending, or just half the things I’ve been yearning to do to you, you skirter, you’d take damned good care not to set up my bristles!’ said Kit, shrugging himself into an elegant dressing-gown. ‘When I think of the bumble-bath I’ve been pitched into, and what I’ve endured, all for the sake of a crazy, rope-ripe –’

  ‘Well, if that’s not the outside of enough!’ exclaimed his twin indignantly. ‘I didn’t pitch you into a bumble-bath! What’s more, I’ll have you know that’s my new dressing-gown you’re wearing, you thieving dog!’

  ‘Don’t let such a trifle as that put you in a tweak!’ retorted Kit. ‘The only things of yours which I am not wearing are your boots!’

  These amenities having been exchanged, the dressing-gown securely fastened, and his feet thrust into a pair of Morocco slippers, Kit advanced, to grasp his brother’s left shoulder, and turn him towards the light thrown by a branch of candles on the dressing-table. ‘Let me look at you!’ he said roughly. His eyes keenly scanned Evelyn’s face; he said: ‘You’ve been in pretty queer stirrups, haven’t you? Still out of frame! And not because of a few broken bones! Eve, why didn’t you tell me the worry you were in?’

  Evelyn put up his hand to pull Kit’s from his shoulder. He said, wryly smiling: ‘It’s no bread-and-butter of yours, Kester. Did Mama tell you?’

  ‘Yes, of course. As for it’s being no bread-and-butter of mine�–’

  ‘How is she?’ interrupted Evelyn.

  ‘Very much herself!’

  ‘Bless her! At least I knew she wouldn’t get into a stew!’

  ‘She isn’t in a stew, because I told her I knew you weren’t dead; but she was in the deuce of a twitter when I reached London,’ said Kit, with some severity.

  Evelyn cocked a quizzical eyebrow at him. ‘No, was she? Well, that’s a new come-out! Her spirits worn down by anxiety, I collect? Doing it much too brown, Kester! I’ve never known Mama to be in a worry for more than ten minutes at a time!’

  ‘No,’ Kit admitted, ‘but this was something out of the way! Why the devil didn’t you send her a message?’

  ‘I couldn’t: I was out of my senses for days, and when I did come to myself I wasn’t in any case to be thinking of sending messages. If you’d ever suffered a deep concuss