Cousin Kate Read online

  ‘Well, I’m sure, miss – !’ said Sidlaw, bridling. ‘If I’d known you was awake, I would have brought it in to you, but not hearing a sound, and not wishing to wake you out of your first sleep, I thought it best to slip it into the lock on the outside.’

  ‘Indeed?’ said Kate, still standing with her hand imperatively outstretched.

  Sidlaw reluctantly surrendered the key, plunging at the same time into an unconvincing account of having found it earlier in the day, but having forgotten to restore it to Kate’s door until this very moment, when she had suddenly remembered it. ‘I’ve been so taken-up with her ladyship, miss, that I’m sure it’s no wonder the key slipped my memory!’

  ‘And I expect you found it in a most unexpected place, having hunted for it for weeks!’ said Kate, with false affability, and a glittering smile. ‘I won’t embarrass you by asking where it was. Goodnight!’

  She shut the door, not waiting for a response, and audibly locked it, resolving to afford no one the chance of abstracting the key again, but to keep it in her pocket all day.

  However, it was a large, oldfashioned key, and when, next morning, she put it into the pocket which hung round her waist, and was reached through a slit in her petticoat, it knocked uncomfortably against her leg whenever she moved, so she was obliged to put it in her reticule instead, until she could find a safe hiding-place for it.

  She found only Torquil in the breakfast-parlour, and he seemed to have finished eating, and to be waiting for her to appear, for he had no sooner responded to her cheerful greeting than he said impulsively: ‘You aren’t angry with me, coz, are you?’

  More important considerations had thrust so far to the back of her mind the recollection of his conduct on the previous day that she had almost forgotten it, and replied, in surprise: ‘Angry with you? No – why should I be? Oh – ! You mean because you fired at that poor, friendly dog, and missed hitting me by inches? No, I’m not angry, though I own that I was vexed to death at the time! Good-morning, Pennymore!’

  ‘I knew you wouldn’t be!’ said Torquil, ignoring the butler, who was setting a tea-pot down before Kate, and a dish of the hot scones she liked. ‘Matthew said you were all on end, and ready to come to dagger-drawing with me, but I knew that was a clanker!’

  ‘Dr Delabole exaggerates, but I was certainly very much shocked,’ she replied, with reserve. ‘The dog was not a stray, but a truant, and hardly more than a puppy: you had no business to be firing at him, you know!’

  ‘He had no business to be in the park! Besides, I don’t like dogs! And I didn’t miss you by inches! You shouldn’t have moved!’

  ‘Well, never mind!’ she said placably. ‘Have you heard how your mother does this morning?’

  ‘No, and I don’t – Oh, yes! Matthew said she had had a restless night, I think: I wasn’t attending particularly! He’s with her now. But that’s not important! I didn’t mean to frighten you yesterday, Kate! And if you were frightened I’m sorry for it! There!’

  He uttered this apology with the air of one putting considerable force upon himself, and she was obliged to laugh, which made him look black. However, his brow cleared, and his eyes lost their dangerous sparkle, when she begged him not to ring a peal over her before she had finished her breakfast, and he said, with a little giggle: ‘You are such a funny one, coz! I wish you will marry me! Why won’t you? Don’t you like me?’

  ‘Not enough to marry you,’ she answered calmly. ‘And, let me tell you, Torquil, if there is one thing I dislike more than quarrelling over the breakfast-cups, it is having offers of marriage made to me over them! You should remember that if I did marry you you would find yourself leg-shackled to a haggish old woman while you were still in your prime!’

  ‘Yes,’ he said naïvely, ‘but Mama says that if I’m married to you she’ll let me go to London!’

  Her eyes danced appreciatively. ‘That is certainly an object,’ she agreed.

  ‘And you would be Lady Broome, you know, because when my father dies Staplewood will be mine, and the title, too, of course. I shouldn’t think it will be long before he pops off the hooks, either, because he’s pretty well burnt to the socket now.’

  She felt no desire to laugh at this speech, which was uttered in a voice of total unconcern; and replied coldly: ‘It so happens that I have no wish to be Lady Broome. Pray don’t say any more on this head! Believe me, you don’t appear to advantage when you speak of your father in that callous style!’

  ‘Oh, pooh! Why shouldn’t I? I don’t care a rush for him, or he for me!’

  The entrance of the doctor put an end to any further remarks of this nature. Pointedly turning her shoulder on Torquil, Kate enquired after her aunt’s condition. Dr Delabole said that he had hoped that her fever might have abated itself by today, but that it had been a particularly violent catching, aggravated by colic. She had suffered a disturbed night, and was still a little feverish, and disinclined to talk. ‘So I think you should not visit her until she feels rather more the thing,’ he said. ‘I have great hope that a change of medicine will put her in better cue. Torquil, my dear boy, do you care to drive with me into Market Harborough to procure it?’

  ‘Not if you mean to handle the reins!’ said Torquil rudely.

  ‘No, no!’ said the doctor, laughing indulgently. ‘I shall be happy to sit at my ease while you do the work. I know you are a better whip than I am – almost as good a fiddler as Mr Philip Broome! And where, by the way, is Mr Broome? I didn’t hear him come in last night, so no doubt he has overslept this morning!’

  ‘Lord, no! he never does so!’ said Torquil. ‘He was getting up from the table when I came into the room! I daresay he’s with my father.’

  He then began to argue with the doctor about which horse should be harnessed to which vehicle; and Kate got up, and left the parlour while the respective merits of the whisky and the more fashionable tilbury were still being discussed.

  There was no sign of Philip in any of the rooms on the entrance-floor, so that unless he had retired upstairs to the library, he had either gone out, or was indeed sitting with his uncle. Kate, who had been longing to see him ever since she had awakened from an uneasy sleep, felt just a little ill-used. If he was anxious to see her, as surely he should have been, if he was really in love with her, he need not have come down to breakfast at an hour when he must have known she would not be present, she thought, forgetting that it was just possible that he might have wished to avoid meeting her in the presence of Torquil and the doctor. If he had gone out, or was visiting his uncle, it looked very much as if he were avoiding her; which must surely mean that he was trying to find a way of escaping his engagement. Kate, whose overnight lucubrations had led to an uneasy sleep, infested with worrying dreams, was hoping, without realizing it, for reassurance. She did not find it in the library, which was as empty as the saloons; and it was in a despairing mood that she came slowly down the stairs again, trying to persuade herself that it behoved her to make everything easy for Philip by telling him that, after thinking the matter over, she had come to the conclusion that she did not love him enough to marry him.

  This melancholy resolve brought tears to her eyes, and although she resolutely wiped them away, she was obliged to keep one hand on the baluster-rail, because her vision was still blurred. It cleared miraculously when she heard herself hailed by Mr Philip Broome, who appeared (as it seemed to her) from nowhere, and came up the stairs two at a time, exclaiming: ‘Kate! I was coming in search of you! What’s this Pennymore has been telling me? No, don’t answer me! We can’t talk on the stairs! Come down to the Red saloon, where we can be private!’

  There was nothing at all lover-like, either in this imperious command, or in the ungentle grasp round her wrist; but the depression lifted from Kate’s heart. As he almost dragged her down the stairs, she uttered a protest, which he most uncivilly disregarded, pulling her in