An Infamous Army (Alastair-Audley Tetralogy 4)

The idea was so novel that she blinked at him in surprise. ‘How can I?’

‘By behaving like the sensible woman I know you to be. Confess! didn’t you mishandle Peregrine shockingly?’

‘Yes, perhaps I did, but how could he be so faithless? I thought he loved me!’

‘So he does. But he is very young. In general, a boy goes through a number of calf loves before he marries, but in your case it was different. I expect you were his first love.’

‘Yes,’ whispered Harriet.

‘Well, that was charming,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Only, you see, this was bound to happen.’

‘Bound to happen?’

‘Yes, certainly. You have not been very well; he has been left to his own devices, and in circumstances where it would have been wonderful indeed if, at twenty-three, he had kept his head. This life we are all leading in Brussels is ruinous. Are you not conscious of it?’

‘Oh yes, a thousand times yes! I wish I were safely at home!’

‘I am glad to hear you say so, for that is what, if you will let me, I am going to advise you to do. Go home, and forget all this.’

‘He won’t go home!’

‘Yes, he will. Only you mustn’t reproach him just yet. Later, if you like, and still want to, but not now. He will be very much ashamed of himself presently, and wonder how he can have been such a fool.’

‘How can you know all this?’

He smiled. ‘I have been twenty-three myself. Of course I know. You may believe me when I tell you that this doesn’t signify. No, I know you cannot quite see how that may be true, but I pledge you my word it is.’

She sighed. ‘How kind you are! You make me feel such a goose! How shall I prevail upon Perry to take me home? What shall I say to him?’

‘Nothing. I am going to have a talk with him, and I think you will find him only too ready to take you home.’ He rose, and took out his card case, and, extracting a card, wrote something on the back of it with a pencil picked up from Harriet’s escritoire. ‘I’ll leave this with your butler,’ he said. ‘It is just to inform Peregrine that I am coming to call on him after dinner tonight. You need not mention that you have seen me.’

‘Oh no! But he is sure to be going out,’ she said mournfully.

‘Don’t worry! He won’t go out,’ replied the Colonel.

She looked doubtful, but it seemed that the Colonel knew what he was talking about, for Peregrine, the card with its curt message in his waistcoat pocket, retired after dinner to his study on the ground floor. Dinner had been an uncomfortable meal. When the servants were in the room a civil interchange of conversation had to be maintained; when they left it, Harriet sat with downcast eyes and a heavy heart, while Peregrine, making a pretence of eating what had been put before him, wondered what Colonel Audley was going to say to him, and what he was to reply.

The Colonel, who had dined at the Duke’s table, did not arrive until after nine o’clock, and by that time Peregrine had reached a state of acute discomfort. When the knock at last fell on the front door, he got up out of his chair and nervously straighten

ed his cravat. When the Colonel was shown into the room, he was standing with his back to the empty fireplace, looking rather pale and feeling a trifle sick.

One glance at his visitor’s face was enough to confirm his worst fears. This was going to be an extremely unpleasant interview. He wondered whether Audley would insist on satisfaction. He was not a coward, but the knowledge of having behaved very shabbily towards Audley set him at a disadvantage, and made him hope very much that the affair was not going to culminate in a meeting outside the ramparts in the chill dawn.

He tried, from sheer nervousness, to carry the thing off with a high hand, advancing with a smile, and saying with as much heartiness as he could muster: ‘Well, Charles! How do you do?’

The Colonel ignored both the greeting and the outstretched hand. He laid his hat and gloves down on the table, saying in a voice that reminded Peregrine unpleasantly of Worth’s: ‘What I have to say to you, Peregrine, will not take me long. I imagine you have a pretty fair notion why I am here.’

‘I—’ Peregrine stopped, and then said defiantly: ‘I suppose I have. Well, say it, then!’

‘I’m going to,’ said the Colonel grimly.

Peregrine squared his shoulders and set his teeth. At the end of three minutes he was bitterly regretting having invited the Colonel to speak his mind, and at the end of ten he would have been very glad if the ground had miraculously opened and swallowed him. The Colonel spoke with appalling fluency, and in the most biting of voices. What he said was so entirely unanswerable that after two stumbling attempts to defend himself Peregrine relapsed into silence, and listened with a white face to an exposition of his character which robbed him of every ounce of self-esteem.

When the Colonel at last stopped, Peregrine, who for some time had been standing by the window, with his back to him, cleared his throat, and said: ‘I am aware how my conduct must strike you. If you want satisfaction, of course I am ready to meet you.’

This handsome offer was not received quite as Peregrine had expected. ‘Don’t talk to me in that nonsensical fashion!’ said the Colonel scathingly. ‘Do you imagine that you’re a rival of mine?’

Peregrine winced, and muttered: ‘No. It isn’t—I didn’t—’