Venetia Read online

  ‘Well, tell me all about yourself!’ invited Lady Steeple, picking up her hand mirror, and earnestly studying her profile. ‘You are excessively like me, but your nose is not as straight as mine, and I fancy your face is not quite a perfect oval. And I do think, dearest, that you are a fraction too tall. Still, you have turned out remarkably well! Conway is very handsome too, but so stiff and stupid that it put me in mind of his father, and I couldn’t but take him in dislike. What a mull he made of it in Paris! Should you have liked it if I had upset the Widow’s scheme? I daresay I might have, for she is such a respectable creature that it is an object with her to pretend she doesn’t know I exist! I had that from someone who knew it for a fact! I had a great mind to pay her a visit – to make the acquaintance of my future daughter-in-law, you know! It would have been so diverting! I forget why I didn’t go after all: I expect I was busy, or perhaps the Lamb – oh, no, I remember now! It was so hot in Paris that we removed to the château – my Trianon! The Lamb bought it, and gave it to me for a surprise-present on my birthday: the sweetest place imaginable! Oh, well, if Conway finds himself leg-shackled to an insipid little nigaude he is very well-served! Why aren’t you married, Venetia? How old are you? It is so stupid not to be able to remember dates, but I never can!’

  ‘More than five-and-twenty, ma’am!’ replied Venetia, a rather mischievous twinkle in her eyes.

  ‘Five-and-twenty!’ Lady Steeple seemed for a moment to shrink, and did actually put up her hand as though to thrust something ugly away. ‘Five-and-twenty!’ she repeated, glancing instinctively at the mirror with searching, narrowed eyes. What she saw seemed to reassure her, for she said lightly, ‘Oh, impossible! I was the merest child when you were born, of course! But what in the world have you been doing with yourself to be left positively on the shelf?’

  ‘Nothing whatsoever, ma’am,’ said Venetia, smiling at her. ‘You see, until I came to London a month ago, I had never seen a larger town than York, nor been farther from Undershaw than Harrogate!’

  ‘Good God, you can’t be serious?’ cried Lady Steeple, staring at her. ‘I never heard of anything so appalling in my life! Tell me!’

  Venetia did tell her, and although the thought of Sir Francis as a recluse made her break into her delicious laugh she really was horrified by the story, and exclaimed at the end of it: ‘Oh, you poor little thing! Do you hate me for it?’

  ‘No, of course I don’t!’ replied Venetia reassuringly.

  ‘You see, I never wished for children!’ explained her ladyship. ‘They quite ruin one’s figure, and when one is in the straw one looks positively hideous, and they look hideous, too, all red and crumpled, though I must say you and Conway were very pretty babies. But my last – what did Francis insist on naming him? Oh, Aubrey, wasn’t it, after one of his stupid ancestors? Yes, Aubrey! Well, he looked like a sick monkey – horrid! Of course Francis thought it was my duty to nurse him myself, as though I had been a farm-wench! I can’t think how he came by such a vulgar notion, for I do know that old Lady Lanyon always hired a wet-nurse! But it didn’t answer, for it made me perfectly ill to look at such a wizened creature. Besides, he was so fretful that it made me nervous. I never thought he would survive, but he did, didn’t he?’

  Within the shelter of her muff Venetia’s hands clenched till the nails dug into her palms, but she answered coolly: ‘Oh, yes! Perhaps he was fretful because of his hip. He had a diseased joint, you see. It is better now, but he suffered a great deal when he was younger, and he will always limp.’

  ‘Poor boy!’ said her ladyship compassionately. ‘Did he come with you to London?’

  ‘No, he is in Yorkshire. I don’t think he could care for London. In fact, he cares for nothing much but his books. He’s a scholar – a brilliant scholar!’

  ‘Good gracious, what a horrid bore!’ remarked Lady Steeple, with simple sincerity. ‘To think of being shut up with a recluse and a scholar makes me feel quite low! You poor child! Oh, you were the Sleeping Beauty! What a touching thing! But there should have been a Prince Charming to kiss you awake! It is too bad!’

  ‘There was,’ said Venetia. She flushed faintly. ‘Only he has it fixed in his head that he isn’t a Prince, but a usurper, dressed in the Prince’s clothes.’

  Lady Steeple was rather amused. ‘Oh, but that spoils the story!’ she protested. ‘Besides, why should he think himself a usurper? It is not at all likely!’

  ‘No, but you know what that Prince in the fairy tale is like, ma’am! Young, and handsome, and virtuous! And probably a dead bore,’ she added thoughtfully. ‘Well, my usurper is not very young, and not handsome, and certainly not virtuous: quite the reverse, in fact. On the other hand, he is not a bore.’

  ‘You have clearly fallen in love with a rake! But how intriguing! Tell me all about him!’

  ‘I think perhaps you know, him, ma’am.’

  ‘Oh, no, do I? Who is he?’

  ‘He is Damerel,’ replied Venetia.

  Lady Steeple jumped. ‘What? Nonsense! Oh, you’re shamming it! You must be!’ She broke off, knitting her brows. ‘I remember now – they have a place there, haven’t they? The Damerels – only they were hardly ever there. So you have met him – and of course he came round you – and you lost your heart to him, devil that he is! Well, my dear, I daresay he has broken a score of hearts besides yours, so dry your tears, and set about breaking a few hearts yourself! It is by far more amusing, I promise you!’

  ‘I shouldn’t think anything could be as amusing as to be married to Damerel,’ said Venetia.

  ‘Married to him! Heavens, don’t be so gooseish! Damerel never wanted to marry anyone in all his scandalous career!’

  ‘Oh, yes, he did, ma’am! He wanted once to marry Lady Sophia Vobster, only most fortunately she fell in love with someone else; and now he wants to marry me.’

  ‘Deluded girl! He’s been hoaxing you!’

  ‘Yes, he tried to hoax me into thinking he had only been trifling with me, and if it hadn’t been for my aunt’s letting the truth slip out he would have succeeded! That – that is why I’ve come to see you, ma’am! You could help me – if you would!’

  ‘I help you?’ Lady Steeple laughed, not this time so musically. ‘Don’t you know better than that? I could more easily ruin you, let me tell you!’

  ‘I know you could,’ said Venetia frankly. ‘I’m very much obliged to you for saying that, because it makes it much less awkward for me to explain it to you. You see, ma’am, Damerel believes that if he proposed marriage to me he would be doing me a great injury, because between them he and my Uncle Hendred have decided that I should otherwise make a brilliant match, while if I married him I should very likely be shunned by the ton, and become a vagabond, like himself. I should like that excessively, so what I must do is to convince him that instead of contracting a brilliant match I am on the verge of utter social ruin. I’ve racked my brains to discover how it can be done, but I couldn’t find any way – at least, none that would answer the purpose! – and I was in such a despair – oh, in such misery! And then, last night, when my aunt told me – she thought I should be aghast, but I was overjoyed, because I saw in a flash that you were the one person who could help me!’

  ‘To social ruin! Well, upon my word!’ cried her ladyship. ‘And all to marry you to Rake Damerel – which I don’t believe! No, I don’t believe it!’

  But when she had heard the story of that autumn idyll she did believe it. She looked oddly at her daughter, and then began to fidget with the pots on the dressing-table, arranging and rearranging them. ‘You and Damerel!’ she said, after a long silence. ‘Do you imagine he would be faithful to you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Venetia. ‘I think he will always love me. You see, we are such dear friends.’

  Lady Steeple’s eyes lifted quickly, staring at Venetia. ‘You’re a strange girl,’ she said abruptly. ‘You don’t know what it