The Quiet Gentleman Read online

  She gave him her hand, charged him to deliver her compliments to the Dowager, and Sir Thomas escorted him to the front-door, and stayed chatting to him on the steps, while his horse was brought round from the stables.

  ‘There is no need for you to be giving a ball unless you choose,’ he said bluntly. ‘Puss will have enough of them in another month, and I daresay her Mama don’t care for her to appear at any bang-up affair until after our own ball in Grosvenor Square. We’ll send you a card. But come and visit us in a friendly way when you choose! I like to see young people round me, enjoying themselves, and I remember my old Indian ways enough still to be glad to keep open house.’ He chuckled. ‘No fear of our being dull in the country! If there’s any young spark for twenty-five miles round us whom you won’t find at Whissenhurst, one day or another, I wish I may meet him! But what I say to Mama is, there’s safety in numbers, and I can tell you this, my lord, we ain’t anxious to see our girl married too young! Sometimes I wonder what will become of us, when she sets up her own establishment! There were plenty of people to advise us to bring her out last Season, but, No, we said: there’s time and to spare! Hallo! is this your horse! Now, horseflesh is something I flatter myself I do understand! Ay, grand hocks! forelegs well before him! You’ll hear men praising cocktails, but what I say is, the best is always the best, and give me a thoroughbred every time!’

  Five

  It was some time before Martin returned to Stanyon, his friend having persuaded him, with the best intentions possible, to accompany him to his parental home. Mr Warboys, inured by custom to Martin’s tantrums, formed the praiseworthy scheme of allowing that young gentleman’s wrath time to cool before he again encountered his half-brother. In itself, the scheme was excellent, but it was rendered abortive first by the encomiums bestowed by Mrs Warboys, a fat and very nearly witless lady of forty summers, on the very pronounced degree of good-looks enjoyed by the Earl; and second by a less enthusiastic but by far more caustic remark uttered by Mr Warboys, senior, to the effect that Martin, his own son, and almost every other young aspirant to the Beauty’s favours could be thought to stand no chance at all against a belted Earl.

  ‘Unless Bolderwood is a bigger fool than I take him for,’ he said, ‘he will lose no time in securing St Erth for that chit of his!’

  Shocked by such a display of tactlessness on the part of his progenitors, Mr Warboys, junior, said: ‘Shouldn’t think St Erth has any serious intentions, myself!’

  It was perhaps not surprising that the cumulative effect of these remarks should have sent Martin Frant back to Stanyon in a mood of smouldering anger.

  Although he could not have been said to have received any particular encouragement from Sir Thomas, or from Lady Bolderwood, he was generally acknowledged to have been, before the arrival of his half-brother at Stanyon, the most likely candidate for Marianne’s hand. He had first known her when she was a schoolroom miss, and he a freshman at Oxford, his thoughts far removed from matrimony. Long before he had thought more about her than that she was a very good sort of a girl, pluck to the backbone, even if lacking in judgment, he had captured her maiden fancy. He was a handsome young man, whose magnificent background lent his careless, imperious ways a romantic aura. He was a stylish cricketer, a good shot, and a bruising rider to hounds, and his patronage could not but give consequence to a schoolgirl. Lady St Erth, whose discreet enquiries had early established the fact that the Beauty was heiress to something in the region of a hundred thousand pounds, from the outset smiled upon the friendship. Sir Thomas might have eaten his dinner at Stanyon every day of the week had he chosen to do so; and not only were his manners pronounced to be refreshingly natural, but he provided her ladyship with a subject for a pious lecture on the value of golden hearts that were hid under rough exteriors. Sir Thomas, cherishing no illusions on the substance of the Dowager’s heart, and unimpressed by her rank, visited Stanyon as seldom as common civility permitted, but was perfectly ready to extend his hospitality to Martin, whom he thought of as a wild colt, not vicious, but in need of breaking to bridle.

  By the time Martin awoke to the realization that his little madcap friend had become the toast of the neighbourhood, Marianne, courted on all sides, was no longer hanging admiringly upon his lips, or gazing worshipfully up into his face. Instead, she was flirting in the prettiest, most unexceptionable way with several other young gentlemen. The knowledge, not only that he was in love with her, but that she unquestionably belonged to him, then burst upon Martin, and caused him to conduct himself in a style which made one poetically-minded damsel, who would not have objected to finding herself the object of his jealous regard, say that he reminded her of a black panther. Mr Warboys, without putting himself to the trouble of deciding which of the more ferocious animals his friend resembled, stated the matter in simple, and courageously frank terms. ‘Y’know, old fellow,’ he once told Martin, ‘if you had a tail, damme if you wouldn’t lash it!’

  The tail, if not lashing, was certainly on the twitch when Martin reached Stanyon, but although some part of the time spent on his solitary ride home from Westerwood House had been occupied by him in dwelling upon his grievances, he also had time to reflect on the extreme unwisdom of quarrelling openly with his brother, and had no real intention of forcing an issue. Unfortunately, he had occasion to go into the Armoury, which was one of the broad galleries which flanked the Chapel Court, and was also used as a gunroom, and he found the Earl there.

  Gervase was in his shirt-sleeves, trying the temper of a pair of foils. He seemed to have been engaged in oiling his pistols, for these lay in an open case on a table near him, with some rags and a bottle of oil standing beside them. He looked up as Martin entered through the door at one end of the gallery, and it occurred to Martin for the first time that he was indeed a damnably handsome man – if one had a taste for such delicate, almost womanish features.

  ‘Oh! You here!’ Martin said, in no very agreeable voice.

  Gervase regarded him meditatively. ‘As you see. Is there any reason why I should not be here?’

  ‘None that I know of!’ Martin replied, shrugging, and walking over to a glass-fronted case which contained several sporting guns.

  ‘I am so glad!’ said Gervase. ‘So much that I do seems to anger you that I am quite alarmed lest I should quite unwittingly cause you offence.’

  The gentle irony in his tone was not lost on Martin. He wheeled about, and said trenchantly: ‘If that is so, let me advise you to leave Marianne Bolderwood alone!’

  Gervase said nothing, but kept his eyes on Martin’s face, their expression amused, yet watchful.

  ‘I hope I make myself plain, brother!’

  ‘Very plain.’

  ‘You may think you can come into Lincolnshire, flaunting your title, and your damned dandy-airs, and amuse yourself by trifling with Miss Bolderwood, but I shall not permit it, and so I warn you!’

  ‘Oh, tut-tut!’ Gervase interrupted, laughing.

  Martin took a hasty step towards him. ‘Understand, I’ll not have it!’

  Gervase seemed to consider him for a moment. He still looked amused, and, instead of answering, he lifted the second foil from where he had laid it on the table, set both hilts across his forearm, and offered them to Martin.

  Martin stared at him. ‘What’s this foolery?’

  ‘Don’t you fence?’

  ‘Fence? Of course I do!’

  ‘Then choose a foil, and see what you can achieve with it! All these wild and whirling words don’t impress me, you know. Perhaps your sword-play may command my respect!’ He paused, while Martin stood irresolute, and added softly: ‘No? Do you think you can’t creditably engage with such a dandified fellow as I am?’

  Martin’s eyes flashed; he grasped one of the hilts, exclaiming furiously: ‘We’ll see that!’

  ‘Gently! Don’t draw the blade through my hand!’ Gervase said, allowing him to take t