Sylvester Read online

  To her astonishment, and, indeed, indignation, he gave the oddest laugh.

  As she glared at him he said in the strangest voice she had yet heard: ‘Have I? Well – if that’s so, I will make reparation! Will you do me the honour, Miss Marlow, of accepting my hand in marriage?’

  Thus Sylvester, an accomplished flirt, making his first proposal.

  It never occurred to Phoebe that he had shaken himself off his balance, and was as self-conscious as a callow youth just out of school. Still less did it occur to her that the laugh and the exaggerated formality of his offer sprang from embarrassment. He was famed for his polished address; she had never, until this day, seen him lose his mastery over himself. She believed him to be mocking her, and started up from her chair, exclaiming: ‘How dare you?’

  Sylvester, burningly aware of his own clumsiness, lost no time in making bad worse. ‘I beg your pardon! you mistake. I had no intention – Phoebe, it was out before I well knew what I was saying! I never meant to ask you to marry me – I was determined I would not! But –’ He broke off, realising into what quagmires his attempts to explain himself were leading him.

  ‘That I do believe!’ she said hotly. ‘You have been so obliging as to tell me what you think of me, and I believe that too! You came to Austerby to look me over, as though I had been a filly, and decided I was not up to your weight! Didn’t you?’

  ‘What next will you say?’ he demanded, an involuntary laugh shaking him.

  ‘Didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes. But have you forgotten how you behaved? How could I know what you were when you tried only to disgust me? It wasn’t until later –’

  ‘To be sure!’ she said scathingly. ‘Later, when I first made you a victim, embroiling you in my improper flight from Austerby, and next wounded your pride as I daresay it was never wounded before, then you began to think I was just the wife that would suit you! The fervent offer which you have been so flattering as to make to me springs, naturally, from the folly that led me to thrust myself into your affairs, and so make it necessary for you to undertake a journey under circumstances so much beneath your dignity as to be posively degrading! How green of me not to have known immediately how it would be! You must forgive me! Had I dreamt that my lack of conduct would attach you to me I would have assumed the manners of a pattern of propriety whenever you came within sight of me! You would then have been spared the mortification of having your suit rejected, and I should have been spared an intolerable insult!’

  ‘There was no insult,’ he said, very pale. ‘If I phrased it – if it sounded to you as though I meant to insult you, believe that it was not so! What I said to you before, I said because the crazy things you do convinced me you were not the wife that would suit me! I wanted never to see you again after that night at the Castlereaghs’ – I thought so, but it wasn’t so, because when I did see you again – I was overjoyed.’

  Not a speech worthy of a man who made love charmingly, but Sylvester had never before tried to make love to a lady seething with rage and contempt.

  ‘Were you indeed?’ said Phoebe. ‘But you soon recovered, didn’t you?’

  Nettled, he retorted: ‘No, I only tried to! Stop ripping up at me, you little shrew!’

  ‘Phoebe, don’t you mean to change your dress?’ said Tom, entering the room at this most inauspicious moment. ‘Keighley took your valise up –’ He broke off, dismayed, and stammered: ‘Oh, I b-beg pardon! I didn’t know – I’ll go!’

  ‘Go? Why?’ Phoebe said brightly. ‘Yes, indeed I mean to change my dress, and will do so immediately!’

  Tom held the door for her, thinking that if only Sylvester, interrupted in the middle of an obvious scene, would drop his guard, grant him an opening, he could tell him just how to handle her. He shut the door, and turned.

  ‘Good God, Thomas! This sartorial magnificence! Are you trying to put me to the blush?’ said Sylvester quizzingly.

  Twenty-seven

  They left Dover just after eleven o’clock, by which time Miss Marlow had quarrelled with both her escorts. Emerging from her bedchamber in the guise of a haughty young lady of fashion she encountered Tom, and instantly asked him whether he had recovered the money he had left in his portmanteau. Upon being reassured on this point she asked him if he would hire a chaise for their conveyance to London. ‘No,’ said Tom, never one to mince his words. ‘I’ve got a better use for my blunt!’

  ‘I will repay you, I promise you!’ she urged.

  ‘Much obliged! When?’ said Tom brutally.

  ‘Grandmama –’

  ‘Mighty poor security! No, I thank you!’

  ‘If she will not do it I’ll sell my pearls!’ she declared. ‘That would make me cut a fine figure, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Tom, I don’t wish to travel at Salford’s expense!’ she blurted out.

  ‘That’s easily settled. Sell your pearls, and pay him!’

  She said stiffly: ‘If you won’t do what I particularly wish, will you at least request the Duke to tell you how much money he has expended on my behalf since we left Abbeville?’

  ‘When I make a cake of myself it will be on my own account, and not on yours, Miss Woolly-crown!’ said Tom.

  Two vehicles had been provided for the journey. One was a hired postchaise, the other Sylvester’s own phaeton, and to each was harnessed a team of four horses. They were job horses, but they had been chosen by Keighley, and therefore, as Master Rayne pointed out to his uncle, prime cattle. When Tom brought his haughty charge out of the inn he found Master Rayne seated already in the phaeton, and Sylvester standing beside it, drawing on his gloves. He went up to him, exclaiming: ‘Are you driving yourself all the way to London, Salford?’

  ‘I am,’ replied Sylvester. ‘I would offer to take you with me, but I’m afraid Keighley must have that seat.’

  ‘Yes, of course, but you don’t mean to take Edmund too, do you? Had you not better let him come with us in the chaise?’

  ‘My dear Thomas, my only reason for telling Keighley to bring my phaeton to Dover was to save that brat as much travelsickness as I could! He is invariably sick in closed carriages, and never in open ones. Will you accompany Miss Marlow? I hope she will not find the journey too fatiguing: we are a little late in starting, but we should reach town in time for dinner.’ Tom, though strongly of the opinion that Sylvester, in his present humour, would be happy to part with his nephew on any terms at the end of the first stage, raised no further demur, but went back to hand Phoebe up into the chaise.

  For the first five miles not a word was uttered within this vehicle, but at Lydden, Phoebe (recovering a trifle, in her faithful friend’s opinion, from the sullens) asked Tom where he meant to put up in London.

  ‘At Salford’s house. He has invited me to spend a few days there. As long as I choose, in fact.’

  ‘Good gracious!’ said Phoebe. ‘What an honour for you! No wonder you were so unwilling to oblige me! I must be quite beneath your touch!’

  ‘You’ll precious soon wish you were beneath my touch, if you don’t take care, my girl!’ said Tom. ‘If you’ve any more pretty morsels of wit under your tongue, reserve ’em for Salford! He’s far too well bred to give you your deserts: I ain’t!’

  Silence reigned for the next mile. ‘Tom,’ said Phoebe, in a small voice.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I didn’t mean to say that. It was a horrid thing to say! I beg your pardon.’

  He took her hand, and gave it a squeeze. ‘Pea-goose! What’s the matter?’ He waited for a moment. ‘I know I walked smash into a turn-up between you and Salford. What are you trying to do? Break your own silly neck?’

  She withdrew her hand. ‘Excuse me, Tom, if you please! It would be quite improper in me to repeat what passed between us. Pray say no more!’

  ‘Very well,’ said Tom. ‘But don’t you choke yourself with pride, Phoebe!’ At