Regency Buck Read online

  Breakfast, upon the following morning, was enlivened by the appearance of Peregrine, who had driven back from Worthing so early on purpose to wish his sister many happy returns of her birthday. He thought himself a very good brother to have remembered the event, and would have bought her a present if Harriet had put him in mind of the date sooner. However, they would go out together after breakfast, and she should choose her own present, which would be a much better thing, after all. He admired the quilted parasol of shaded silk which Mrs Scattergood had given Judith, and said there was no need to inquire who had sent the huge bouquet of red roses which graced the table. ‘They come from Audley, I’ll be bound.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Miss Taverner, with a marked lack of enthusiasm. ‘I have had a letter from my uncle also.You may read it, if you choose. It is painful: one cannot but pity him. He seems to have known only part of what my cousin intended.’

  ‘Oh well, don’t let us be thinking of him now!’ said Peregrine. ‘We are very well rid of the pair of them. Only fancy, though! Worth told Sir Geoffrey the whole, when he saw him in town this week. Sir Geoffrey thinks Worth a very tolerable sort of a fellow.’ He poured himself out a cup of coffee. ‘Now, what would you like to do to-day? You have only to give it a name; I am quite at your disposal. Shall we drive over to Lewes? I believe there is a castle, or some such thing, to be seen there.’

  ‘Thank you, Perry,’ she said, touched by this handsome offer. ‘But Lord Worth is coming to see me this morning. I was thinking that you should stay at home with me. You will want to thank him for all that he has done.’

  ‘Oh, certainly!’ said Peregrine. ‘I shall be very glad to meet him, to be sure. I want to talk to him about my yacht, you know.’

  Shortly before noon Peregrine, who was seated in the window of the drawing-room, quizzing the passers-by, announced thatWorth was approaching. ‘My dear Ju,’ he said in tones of awe, ‘only look at the coat he is wearing! I wonder whether Weston made it? Do but look at the set of it across the shoulder!’

  Miss Taverner declined leaning out of the window to stare at his lordship, and begged her brother to draw in his head. Instead of doing anything of the kind Peregrine waved to attract Worth’s attention, and, upon the Earl looking up, was instantly struck by the exquisite arrangement of his cravat. He turned, and said impressively: ‘I do not care if he does give me one of his set-downs; I must know how he ties his cravat!’

  The Earl had knocked on the door by this time, and in a few moments his step was heard on the stairs. Peregrine went out to meet him. ‘Come up, sir! We are both here!’ he said. ‘How do you do? You are the most complete hand indeed, you know! My head, when I awoke! My mouth too! There was never anything like it!’

  ‘Was it very bad?’ inquired the Earl, leisurely mounting the last three stairs.

  ‘Oh, beyond anything! But I don’t mean to complain; I have had a famous time of it! But come into the drawing-room! My sister is there, and I have something very particular to say to you. Ju, here is Lord Worth.’

  Miss Taverner, who, for reasons best known to herself, had suddenly become absorbed in her embroidery, laid aside the frame and got up. She shook hands with the Earl, but before she could speak Peregrine was off again.

  ‘I wish you would tell me, sir, what you call that way of tying your cravat! It is devilish natty!’

  ‘I don’t call it anything,’ replied Worth. ‘It is a fashion of my own. You are none the worse for your adventure, Miss Taverner?’

  ‘Oh, a fashion of your own! That means, I daresay, that it will be all the crack in a week. Is it very difficult to do?’

  ‘Yes, very,’ said the Earl. ‘Is that the particular thing you wanted to say to me? I am highly flattered.’

  ‘Oh no, that was not it! You must know that I took a great fancy for the sea – never was upon a yacht before in my life, and had no notion what it could be like. Such a degree of comfort in so small a space! And then, sailing the vessel, you know! Evans thinks I have a natural aptitude for it. It was a pity I had to come ashore so soon, for there is a great deal about a ship I have not learned yet.’

  The Earl’s attention seemed to be fixed on Miss Taverner, but he turned his head at that, and said in some amusement: ‘Is there indeed? Well, I am happy to know that you are not going to challenge me to a duel (as you once did) for putting you on board my yacht.’

  ‘Challenge you to a duel! Good God, no! Of course, I don’t say that I should have gone aboard willingly if you had asked me to, because then I knew nothing of being at sea, but that is all changed now, and I am excessively grateful to you.’

  ‘Lord Worth,’ interposed Miss Taverner, ‘Perry and I feel we owe you an apology for not treating you with that degree of confidence, which –’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ objected Peregrine. ‘I never mistrusted him, Ju. It was you who did that. All I ever said of him was – But that don’t signify!’

  ‘All you ever said of me was that I was the most unamiable person of your acquaintance,’ said the Earl. He flicked open his snuff-box and offered it to Peregrine.

  Peregrine looked as though he could hardly believe his eyes, and blurted out: ‘You have never done that before, sir!’

  ‘I am in an unusually mellow mood to-day,’ explained the Earl.

  Peregrine took a pinch, and his sister, seizing the opportunity for speech afforded by him being slightly overcome by the honour of being invited to help himself out of the Earl’s box, said: ‘Lord Worth knows, I hope, that it is many months since I was foolish enough to mistrust him.’

  ‘LordWorth is much obliged to you, Miss Taverner,’ said the Earl.

  She raised her eyes rather shyly to his, and saw that he was still looking amused. She said with an admonitory glance at Peregrine: ‘Had we been more in the habit of attending to you perhaps none of the measures you have had to take for Peregrine’s safety would have been necessary. I think we do owe you an apology; and we are very grateful to you for your care, are we not, Perry?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ replied Peregrine, brushing some grains of snuff from his sleeve. ‘Extremely so, and I more than my sister, sir, because if you had not put me away as you did, I might never have taken it into my head to go for a cruise my whole life long. And that does not bear thinking of, for sailing a yacht, you know, has even curricle-racing beat to a standstill. I like it better, at all events.’

  ‘I hope you do it better,’ commented the Earl.

  ‘Well, I believe I shall,’ said Peregrine eagerly. ‘And that is what I wanted to ask you. Nothing will ever satisfy me until I may have a yacht of my own! Pray do not say no! I daresay that is what you mean to do, but only consider! If it does mean that I must have a larger allowance, you cannot object to that, surely! And Harriet would like it excessively! I told her how enchanted she would be, and she agreed to it at once. But you must give me an answer soon, if you please, because the case is that Evans knows of just such a vessel as would suit me – two-masted, fore-and-aft rigged: the neatest little craft imaginable, he says! She is lying in Southampton Water. I forget who owns her, but she is to be sold privately, and Evans says I could not do better than to snap her up before it becomes generally know. And Evans has a cousin who would be the very man to put in command of her. He says –’ ‘Peregrine,’ interrupted the Earl, ‘do you know where to find Evans?’

  ‘Why, he will be on board the Seamew, I suppose.’

  ‘No,’ said the Earl. ‘At the present moment he is somewhere in the town. Possibly at the Crown and Anchor, or, failing that, the Greyhound. I am sure you will be able to find him if you search Brighton carefully. And when you do find him, give him a message from me that I shall be obliged to him if he will kidnap you again, and take you for a long, long cruise.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Peregrine, with a grin, ‘he would not have to kidnap me, I can tell you! But can I have a yacht?’

  ‘You can have a dozen yachts,’ replied the Earl, ‘if only you will go away!’

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