Arabella Read online

‘My dear Miss Tallant, pray do not think of such a thing!’ shuddered her companion. ‘I only hope we may be spared any sort of accident!’

  Neither lady’s wish was destined to be granted her. No such excitement as a hold-up awaited them, but a little way short of the Marston turnpike the perch of the carriage broke, and the body fell forward upon the box. The Squire’s travelling carriage had stood too long in his coach-house.

  After the coachman had delivered himself of a long, self-exculpatory monologue, the groom was sent off to take counsel of the pike-keeper, half a mile down the road. When he returned, it was with the pleasing intelligence that no adequate assistance was to be hoped for in the next village: it must be sought in Grantham, five or six miles farther on, where a conveyance could no doubt be hired to fetch the ladies in while the perch was mended, or replaced. The coachman then suggested that his passengers, both of whom were standing by the roadside, should climb up into the carriage again to await deliverance, while the groom took one of the horses and rode on to Grantham. Miss Blackburn was meekly ready to follow this advice, but her charge thought poorly of it.

  ‘What! Sit in that horrid, draughty carriage all that time? I won’t do it!’ she declared.

  ‘But we cannot continue to stand in the rain, dear Miss Tallant!’ said Miss Blackburn.

  ‘Of course we cannot! Either way I am persuaded you would catch your death! There must be a house hereabouts which would lend us shelter! What are those lights over there?’

  They plainly shone from the windows of a residence set a little back from the road. The groom volunteered the information that he had noticed some lodge gates a few steps back.

  ‘Good!’ said Arabella briskly. ‘We will walk up to it, ma’am, and beg them to give us shelter for a little while.’

  Miss Blackburn, a timorous soul, protested feebly. ‘They would think it so strange of us!’

  ‘No, why should they?’ returned Arabella. ‘Why, when a carriage had an accident outside our gates last year, Papa sent Harry out at once to offer shelter to the travellers! We cannot shiver for an hour or more in that horrid carriage, ma’am, with nothing to do! Besides, I am shockingly hungry, and I should think they would be bound to offer us refreshment, would not you? I am sure it is dinner-time, and past!’

  ‘Oh, I do not think we should!’ was all Miss Blackburn had to say, and it seemed so stupid to Arabella that she paid no heed to it, but desired the groom to escort them to the lodge gates before riding off to Grantham. This he did, and the ladies, dismissing him there, trod up the short drive to the house, one of them murmuring disjointed protests, the other perceiving no reason in the world why she should not claim a hospitality anyone in Yorkshire would have been eager to offer.

  Four

  It was at about this moment that that erratic young sprig of fashion, Lord Fleetwood, fixed his friend, and host, Mr Beaumaris, with a laughing eye, and demanded in a rallying tone: ‘Well! You promise me a rare day with the hounds tomorrow – by the by, where do we meet? – but what – what, Robert, do you offer me for my entertainment this evening?’

  ‘My cook,’ said Mr Beaumaris, ‘is generally thought to be an artist in his own line. A Frenchman: I think you will like his way of dressing a Davenport chicken, while some trick he has of flavouring a Benton sauce –’

  ‘What, did you send Alphonse down, then, from London?’ interrupted Lord Fleetwood, momentarily diverted.

  ‘Alphonse?’ repeated Mr Beaumaris, his finely chiselled brows lifting a little. ‘Oh, no! this is another. I don’t think I know his name. But I like his way with fish.’

  Lord Fleetwood burst out laughing. ‘I expect if you discovered a cook with a way of serving game which you liked, you would send him off to that shooting-box of yours, and pay him a king’s ransom, only to kick his heels for three parts of the year!’

  ‘I expect I should,’ agreed Mr Beaumaris imperturbably.

  ‘But,’ said his lordship severely, ‘I am not to be put off with a cook! I came here in the expectation of finding fair Paphians, let me tell you, and all manner of shocking orgies – wine out of skulls, y’know, and –’

  ‘The lamentable influence of Lord Byron upon society!’ interpolated Mr Beaumaris, with a faint, contemptuous smile.

  ‘What? Oh, that poet-fellow that set up such a dust! Myself, I thought him devilish underbred, but of course it don’t do to say so. But that’s it! Where, Robert, are the fair Paphians?’

  ‘If I had any Paphians in keeping here, you don’t imagine, do you, Charles, that I would run the risk of being cut-out by a man of your address?’ retorted Mr Beaumaris.

  Lord Fleetwood grinned at him, but replied: ‘None of your gammon to me! It would take ten times my address to cut-out a – a – dash it, a Midas like you!’

  ‘If my memory does not err, all that Midas touched turned to gold,’ said Mr Beaumaris. ‘I think you mean Croesus.’

  ‘No, I don’t! Never heard of the fellow!’

  ‘Well, most of the things I touch have a disheartening way of turning to dross,’ said Mr Beaumaris, lightly, but with a note of bitter self-mockery in his languid voice.

  This was going a little too deep for his friend. ‘Humdudgeon, Robert! You can’t bamboozle me! If there are to be no Paphians –’

  ‘I can’t conceive why you should have supposed there would be,’ interrupted his host.

  ‘Well, I didn’t, but I can tell you this, my boy! – that’s the latest on-dit!’

  ‘Good God! Why?’

  ‘Lord, how should I know? Daresay it’s because you won’t throw your glove at any of the beauties who have been setting their caps at you any time these five years. What’s more, your chères-amies are always such devilish high-flyers, dear boy, it puts notions into the heads of all the old tabbies! Think of the Faraglini!’

  ‘I had rather not. The most rapacious female of my acquaintance.’

  ‘But what a face! What a figure!’

  ‘And what a temper!’

  ‘What became of her?’ asked his lordship. ‘I haven’t laid eyes on her since she left your protection.’

  ‘I think she went to Paris. Why? Had you a fancy to succeed me?’

  ‘No, by Jove, I couldn’t have stood the nonsense!’ said his lordship frankly. ‘She’d have had me rolled-up within a month! What did you have to give for those match-grays she used to drive all over town?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘To tell you the truth,’ confided Lord Fleetwood, ‘I shouldn’t have thought it worth it myself – though I’m not denying she was a curst fine woman!’

  ‘It wasn’t.’

  Lord Fleetwood regarded him, half-curious, half-amused. ‘Is anything worth while to you, Robert?’ he asked quizzically.

  ‘Yes, my horses!’ retorted Mr Beaumaris. ‘And, talking of horses, Charles, what the devil possessed you to buy one of Lichfield’s breakdowns?’

  ‘That bay? Now, there’s a horse that fairly took my fancy!’ said his lordship, his simple countenance lighting up with enthusiasm. ‘What a piece of blood and bone! No, really, Robert – !’

  ‘If ever I find myself with a thoroughly unsound animal in my stables,’ said Mr Beaumaris ruthlessly, ‘I shall offer him to you in the happy certainty that he will take your fancy!’

  Lord Fleetwood was still protesting with indignation and vehemence when the butler entered the room to inform his master, rather apologetically, that a carriage had broken down outside his gates, and the two ladies it bore were desirous of sheltering for a short time under his roof.

  Mr Beaumaris’s cool gray eyes betrayed no emotion, but his mouth seemed for an instant to harden. He said calmly: ‘Certainly. There should be a fire in the saloon. Tell Mrs Mersey to wait upon the ladies there.’ The butler bowed, and would have withdrawn, but Lord Fleetwood checked him, exclaiming: ‘No, no, too shabby by half, Robe