The Masqueraders Read online

  ‘And me in peril!’ cried the affronted Miss Grayson.

  Sir Anthony raised his eyes from the chicken and looked coolly across at her. ‘Oh, were you in peril?’ he inquired. ‘I came merely to put an end to an indiscretion, as I thought.’

  ‘Peril! At the hands of such a Monster!’ Miss Grayson was indignant. ‘I wonder, sir, that you need ask.’

  Sir Anthony poured wine for himself and Mr Merriot. ‘My dear Letty,’ said he, ‘you have so frequently assured us that Mr Markham is a model of all the virtues that I did you the honour to respect your judgment.’

  Miss Grayson turned scarlet, and looked as though she were about to cry. ‘You didn’t, Tony! You are just being – disagreeable. And he’s not a model of virtue! He is an odious brute, and – and so are you!’

  ‘Tut, child, the gentleman’s hungry, and will be the better for his chicken,’ said Mr Merriot.

  ‘I am not a child!’ flashed Miss Grayson, and was off in a swirl of skirts to Miss Merriot’s side. From the shelter of Miss Merriot’s arm she hurled a tearful defiance. ‘And I would sooner go to Gretna with that Monster than marry you, Sir Tony!’

  Sir Anthony remained unmoved. ‘My dear Letty, if this piece of absurdity was to escape my attentions, believe me it was not in the least necessary. So far as I am aware I have never asked you to marry me. Nor have I the smallest intention of so doing.’

  This pronouncement brought Miss Grayson’s head up from Kate’s shoulder. In round-eyed astonishment she gazed at Sir Anthony, busily engaged with the wing of a chicken.

  ‘I have to suppose,’ said Miss Merriot sharply, ‘that the gentleman is an original.’

  Mr Merriot turned away to hide a laughing face. ‘These family arrangements – !’ he said.

  ‘But – but Papa says –’ began Miss Grayson. ‘Why, Tony, don’t you want to marry me?’

  ‘I do not,’ said Sir Anthony.

  Miss Grayson blinked, but she did not seem to be offended. ‘Why don’t you?’ she asked with naive curiosity.

  At that Sir Anthony looked up, and there was a twinkle in his eyes. ‘I suppose, Letty, because my taste is at fault.’

  ‘Well!’ Miss Grayson digested this in silence. She disengaged herself from Kate’s arm, and went slowly to the table. Sir Anthony rose at her approach, and received one little hand in his large one. ‘Tony, will you tell Papa?’ she asked.

  ‘I have told him, my dear.’

  ‘How did he take it?’ asked Miss Grayson anxiously.

  ‘Philosophically, child.’

  ‘I am so glad!’ said Miss Grayson, with a relieved sigh. ‘If you don’t want to marry me, Tony, I can go home with a quiet mind. And I can even forgive you for being so disagreeable.’

  ‘And I,’ said Sir Anthony, ‘can finish my dinner.’

  Three

  My Lady Lowestoft

  Miss Merriot called ‘Come in!’ to a scratching on the door. Came Mr Merriot into the big bedroom, and walked across to the fireplace where Kate stood. Mr Merriot cocked an eyebrow at Kate, and said: – ‘Well, my dear, and did you kiss her good-night?’

  Miss Merriot kicked off her shoes, and replied in kind. ‘What, are you parted from the large gentleman already?’

  Mr Merriot looked into the fire, and a slow smile came, and the suspicion of a blush.

  ‘Lord, child!’ said Miss Merriot. ‘Are you for the mammoth? It’s a most respectable gentleman, my dear.’

  Mr Merriot raised his eyes. ‘I believe I would not choose to cross him,’ he remarked inconsequently. ‘But I would trust him.’

  Miss Merriot began to laugh. ‘Be a man, my Peter, I implore you.’

  ‘Alack!’ sighed Mr Merriot, ‘I feel all a woman.’

  ‘Oh Prue, my Prue, it’s a Whig with a sober mind! Will you take it to husband?’

  ‘I suppose you will be merry, Robin. Do you imagine me in love on two hours’ acquaintance? Ah, you’re jealous of the gentleman’s inches. Said I not so?’

  ‘My inches, child, stand me in good stead. I believe it’s the small men have the wits. My compliments on the sword-play.’

  ‘At least the old gentleman taught me a trick or two worth the knowing,’ placidly said the lady, and pulled up her coat sleeve to show a stained shirt. ‘The last glass went down my arm,’ she said, smiling.

  Her brother nodded. ‘Well, here’s been work enough for an evening,’ he remarked. ‘I await the morrow. Give you good-night, child, and pray dream of your mammoth.’

  ‘In truth I need a mammoth to match me,’ said Madam Prudence. ‘Pray dream of your midget, Robin.’

  She went away humming a snatch of an old song. It was apparent to her that her brother frowned upon the morrow, but she had a certain placidity that went well with her inches, and looked upon her world with calm untroubled eyes.

  The truth was she was too well used to a precarious position to be easily disturbed, and certainly too used to an exchange of personality with Robin to boggle over her present situation. She had faith in her own wits: these failing her she had a rueful dependence on the ingenuity of her sire. Impossible to tread the paths of his cutting without developing an admiration for the gentleman’s guile. Prudence regarded him with affection, but some irony. She admitted his incomprehensibility with a laugh, but it did not disturb her. She danced to his piping, but it is believed she lacked the adventurous spirit. Now Robin might fume at the mystery with which the father chose to wrap himself about, but Robin enjoyed a chequered career, and had an impish dare-devilry that led him into more scrapes than the old gentleman devised. Withal he surveyed the world with a seriousness that Prudence lacked. He had enthusiasms, and saw life as something more than the amusing pageant Prudence thought it.

  It seemed he had taken this last, unlucky venture to heart. To be sure, he had had a closer view of it than his sister. She supposed it was his temperament made him enthusiastic for a venture entered into in a spirit of adventure only, and at the father’s bidding. She remembered he had wept after Culloden, with his head in her lap at the old house in Perth – wept in a passion of fury and heartbreak, and dashed away the tears with an oath, and a vow that he hated lost causes. To Prudence it was a matter of indifference whether Stewart Charles or German George sat the throne; she suspected her sire of a like indifference, discounting heroics. They were swept into this rebellion for – God knew what cause; they were entangled in its meshes before they knew it. That was Mr Colney’s way. He made a fine speech, and it seemed they were all Jacobites. A year before they were entirely French, at Florence; before that there was a certain gaming house at Frankfort, whose proprietor of a sudden swept off his son and daughter to dip fingers in a pie of M. de Saxe’s making.

  French, German, Jacobite – it was all one to Prudence. But this England was different. She conceived a fondness for it, and found it homelike. Doubtless it was the mother in her, that big, beautiful, smiling creature who had died at Dieppe when Robin was a child.

  She remarked on it to Robin next morning, before their departure for London.

  Robin laughed at her; he was busy with the painting of his face. ‘Lord, my dear, you’re the very picture of English solidity,’ he said. ‘Do you ride with the mountain?’

  ‘So I believe,’ said Miss Prudence. Her eye fell on John, packing away Master Robin’s razors. ‘La, child, have you shaved? And you with not a hair to your chin!’

  This drew a grim smile from the servant. ‘You’d best have a care, the pair of you,’ he said. ‘We’re off to put our heads in a noose. The gentleman with the sleepy eyes sees things, I’ll warrant you.’

  ‘What, do you shy away from the mountain?’ Robin said. ‘I might engage to run in circles round it.’

  The man looked upon his young master with rough affection. ‘Ay, you’re a cunning one, Master Robin, but th