April Lady Read online

  She shook her head, flushing.

  ‘You know, it queers me to know what you’ve been doing,’ said Dysart severely. ‘It sounds to me as though you’ve had a quarrel with him, and set up his back. It ain’t my business, but I call it a cork-brained thing to do!’

  ‘I haven’t – it isn’t that!’ she stammered.

  ‘You must have done something!’ he insisted. ‘I thought he doted on you!’

  Her eyes lifted quickly to his face. ‘Did you, Dy? Did you indeed think so?’

  ‘Of course I did! Well, good God, what would anyone think, when he no sooner clapped eyes on you than nothing would do for him but to pop the question? Lord, it was one of the on-dits of town! Old Cooling told me no one had ever seen him sent to grass before, no matter who set her cap at him. I thought myself he must be touched in his upper works,’ said the Viscount candidly. ‘I don’t say you ain’t a pretty girl, but what there is in you to make a fellow like Cardross marry into our family I’m dashed if I can see!’

  ‘Oh, Dysart!’ breathed Nell, trembling. ‘You’re not – you’re not roasting me?’

  He stared at her. ‘Have you got windmills in the head too?’ he demanded. ‘Why the devil should he have offered for you, if he hadn’t been head over ears in love with you? You aren’t going to tell me you didn’t know you’d given him a leveller!’

  ‘Oh – ! Don’t say such things! I did think, at first – but Mama told me – explained to me – how it was!’

  ‘Well, how was it?’ said the Viscount impatiently.

  ‘A – a marriage of convenience,’ faltered Nell. ‘He was obliged to marry someone, and – and he liked me better than the other ladies he was acquainted with, and thought I should suit!’

  ‘If that isn’t Mama all over!’ exclaimed Dysart. ‘It was a dashed convenient marriage for us, but if he thought it was convenient to be obliged to pay through the nose for you (which I don’t mind telling you my father made him do!), let alone saddling himself with a set of dirty dishes who have been under the hatches for years, he must be a regular cod’s head!’

  ‘Dysart!’ she cried, quite horrified.

  ‘Dirty dishes!’ he repeated firmly. ‘I can’t remember when my father last had a feather to fly with, and the lord knows I’ve never had one myself! In fact, it’s my belief we should have been turned-up by now if you hadn’t happened to hit Cardross’s fancy. It’s the only stroke of good fortune that ever came in our way!’

  ‘I knew – I knew he had made a handsome settlement!’

  Dysart gave a crack of laughter. ‘Ay, and towed my father out of the River Tick into the bargain!’

  She sprang up, pressing her hands to her hot cheeks. ‘Oh, and I have been so wickedly extravagant!’

  ‘No need to fret and fume over that!’ replied Dysart cheerfully. ‘They say his fortune knocks Golden Ball’s into flinders, and I shouldn’t be surprised if it was true.’

  ‘As though that should excuse my running into debt! Oh, Dy, this quite overpowers me! No wonder he said that!’

  He looked uneasily at her. ‘Said what? If you mean to have a fit of the vapours, Nell, I’m off, and so I warn you!’

  ‘Oh, no! Indeed, I don’t! Only it is such an agitating reflection – I didn’t tell you, Dy, but he said something to me which made me think he believes I married him for the sake of his fortune!’

  ‘Well, you did, didn’t you?’

  ‘No!’ she cried hotly. ‘Never, never!’

  ‘What, you don’t mean to tell me you fell in love with him?’ said the Viscount incredulously.

  ‘Of course I did! How could I help but do so?’

  ‘Of all the silly starts!’ said his lordship disgustedly. ‘What the devil should cast you into this distempered freak if that’s the way of it? What have you been doing to make Cardross think you don’t love him, if you do?’

  She turned away her face. ‘I – I was trying to be a conformable wife, Dy! You see, Mama warned me about not making demands, or – or hanging upon him, or appearing to notice it, if he should have Another Interest, and –’

  ‘Oh, so the blame lies at Mama’s door, does it? I might have known it! Never knew such a henwitted creature in my life!’

  ‘Oh, Dysart, hush! Indeed, she meant it for the best! You will not repeat it, but she was so anxious I shouldn’t suffer a mortifying disillusionment, as, I am afraid, she did!’

  ‘Did she though?’ said the Viscount, interested. ‘I didn’t know my father was pitching it rum in those days. I must say I should have thought even Mama could have seen that Cardross ain’t a bird of that feather. Never been a man of the town from anything I ever heard. How came you to swallow all that humdudgeon, Nell? Dash it, you must have known he was in love with you!’

  ‘I thought – I thought it was all consideration, because he is so very kind and gentlemanlike!’ she confessed.

  ‘Kind and gentlemanlike?’ repeated Dysart, in accents of withering scorn. ‘Well, upon my soul, Nell, seems to me you’re as big a ninnyhammer as Mama! To be taken in by one of her Banbury tales, when there was Cardross making a regular cake of himself over you! If that don’t beat the Dutch!’

  She hung her head, but said in a faint voice: ‘It was stupid of me, but there was more than that, Dy. You see, I knew about Lady Orsett. Letty told me.’

  ‘That girl,’ said the Viscount severely, ‘wants conduct! Not but what I shouldn’t have thought you needed telling, because everyone knew she was his chère amie for years. And don’t you put on any die-away airs to me, my girl, because, for one thing, it’s no use bamming me you didn’t know anything about my father’s light frigates; and, for another, Cardross’s way of life before you married him ain’t your concern! Lady Orsett’s got Lydney in tow now, so that’s enough flim-flam about her!’

  ‘Has she, Dy?’ Nell said eagerly.

  ‘So they say, I don’t know!’

  ‘Oh, if it were not for this dreadful debt how happy I should be!’ she sighed.

  ‘Nonsense! Make a clean breast of the whole to Cardross, and be done with it!’

  ‘I’d rather die! Don’t you understand, Dy? How could he believe me sincere, if I told him now, when I am in debt again, that I didn’t care a button for his fortune?’

  The Viscount checked the scoffing retort that sprang to his tongue. He did understand. After a thoughtful moment, he said: ‘He’d think it was cream-pot love, would he? Ay, very true: bound to! Particularly,’ he added, in a voice of censure, ‘if you’ve been treating him with a stupid sort of indifference, which I’ve a strong notion you have! Oh, well! we shall have to think of some way of raising the blunt, and that’s all there is to it!’

  Too grateful for his willingness to come to her aid to cavil at his freely-worded criticisms, Nell waited hopefully, confident that he would be able to tell her how to extricate herself from her difficulty. Nor was she mistaken. After a turn or two about the room, he said suddenly: ‘Nothing easier! I can’t think why I didn’t hit upon it at once. You must sell some of your jewellery, of course!’

  Her hand went instinctively to her throat. ‘The pearls Mama gave me? Her very own pearls? I could not, Dysart!’

  ‘No need to sell them, if you don’t care to. Something else!’

  ‘But I haven’t anything else!’ she objected. ‘Nothing of value, I mean.’

  ‘Haven’t anything else? Why, I never see you but what you’re wearing something worth a king’s ransom! What about all those sapphires?’

  ‘Dysart! Giles’s wedding-gift!’ she uttered.

  ‘Oh, very well! But he’s always giving you some new trinket: you must be able to spare one or two of ’em. He’ll never notice. Or if you think he might, you can have ’em copied. I’ll attend to that for you.’

  ‘No, thank you, Dy!’ she said, with despera