Regency Buck (Alastair-Audley Tetralogy 3)

She came to a halt beside a chair, and grasped the back of it with both hands. ‘Your behaviour, your manner –’

‘Both abominable,’ he said. ‘I beg pardon, insufferable was the word. I offer you my apologies.’

‘Your way of speaking of a gentleman who is my cousin –’

‘Whom, if you please, we will leave out of this discussion.’

She gripped the chair-back more tightly still. ‘Your indelicacy, the total want of proper feeling that could prompt you to taunt me with an episode in the past which covered me, and still covers me, with shame –’

He held out his hand to her. ‘That was ill-done of me indeed,’ he said gently. ‘Forgive me!’

She was silenced, and stood looking across at him in a frowning way for several minutes. At last she said in a more mollified voice: ‘I daresay I may seem to be conceited. If you say so no doubt it is so: you should be a judge. But I can assure you, Lord Worth, that my conquests, as you are good enough to call them, have not led me to suppose that every gentleman of my acquaintance, including yourself, is desirous of marrying me.’

‘Of course not,’ he agreed.

She said uncertainly: ‘I am sorry to have lost my temper in what you may have thought to have been an unlady-like manner, but you will allow the provocation to have been great.’

‘I will allow it to have been impossible to withstand,’ said his lordship. ‘Come, shall we shake hands on it?’

Miss Taverner walked slowly across the room and put her hand reluctantly into his. He bent, and somewhat to her surprise lightly kissed it. Releasing it again he said: ‘I have one more thing to say to you before we forget this conversation. It is my wish that you will not mention, either to Mr Taverner or to anyone else, this suspicion you have had of Perry’s having been poisoned.’ She looked questioningly at him, half-frowning. ‘You can do no good by giving voice to such a suspicion; you may do harm.’

‘Harm! Do you think – is it possible that I may have been right?’ she asked in quick alarm.

‘Extremely unlikely,’ he replied. ‘But since this indisposition of his has overtaken him under my roof I prefer not to be suspected of making away with him.’

‘I shall not speak of it,’ she said in a troubled way. ‘I should not spread such a rumour without positive proof of its truth.’

He bowed, and moved away from her towards the door. Before he had reached it he looked back, and said casually: ‘By the by, Miss Taverner, can you lay your hand on the lease of your house? I believe I gave it into your charge.’

‘It is in my desk at home,’ she said. ‘Do you wish for it?’

‘Blackader writes of some point to be argued. It will be necessary for me to glance at the lease. If a servant were sent to London, could your housekeeper, or some such person, find it, and give it to him to bring to me?’

‘Certainly,’ she said. ‘Hinkson, Perry’s new groom, can be sent for it.’

‘Thank you, that will be best, no doubt,’ he said.

A hasty step sounded at this moment outside the room, and a gay voice called: ‘In the library, is he? I will find him: do not give yourself the trouble of coming with me, my dear ma’am! I have not forgot my way about.’

The Earl raised his brows in quick surprise. ‘This is something quite unexpected,’ he remarked, and opened the door, and held out both his hands. ‘Charles! What the devil?’

A tall young man in Hussar uniform, with a handsome, laughing countenance, and his right arm in a sling, gripped one of the Earl’s hands in his own left one. ‘My dear fellow! How do you do? By Gad, it’s famous to see you again! You observe I have got my furlough, thanks to this!’ He indicated his useless arm.

‘How is it?’ Worth asked. ‘Do you feel it as much as ever? When did you come out of hospital? There does not look to be a great deal amiss with you from what I can see!’

‘Lord, no! nothing in the world! I’m come home to try my luck with the heiress. Where is she? Does she squint like a bag of nails? Is she hideous? They always are!’

The Earl stood back. ‘You may judge for yourself,’ he said dryly. ‘Miss Taverner, little though he may have recommended himself to you, I must beg leave to present my brother, Captain Audley.’

Captain the Honourable Charles Audley started, and gazed at Miss Taverner with an expression of mingled dismay, admiration, and incredulity in his bright eyes. He said: ‘Good God! is it possible?’ and strode forward. ‘Madam, your most obedient! What can I say?’

‘You have said too much already,’ remarked the Earl in a tone of amusement.

‘True, very true! There is no getting away from it, indeed; Miss Taverner, you did not hear me; you were not attending!’

‘On the contrary, I heard you very plainly,’ said Judith, unable to withstand his smile. She held out her hand. ‘How do you do? I am sorry to see your arm in a sling. I hope no lasting injury?’

‘Not to my arm, ma’am; none incurred in the Peninsula,’ he said promptly, taking her hand and kissing it.