Ten minutes later Fletcher came to find him again, and said impassively: ‘Robert reports, my lord, that shortly before noon a travelling chaise passed out of Paris by the Port Royal. It contained an Englishman who spoke French very indifferently, and one lady.’
The Marquis’s hand clutched on his riding-whip. ‘Dijon!’ he said, with something of a snarl. ‘Damn his infernal impudence! Have the bay saddled, Fletcher, and send me a man to take a note to Miss Marling.’ He sat down at the writing-desk, and jabbed a quill in the standish. He scrawled one line only to his cousin. ‘They’re off to Dijon. I leave Paris in half an hour.’ Having given this to a lackey, he picked up his hat and went off to Foley, his grace of Avon’s banker.
When he returned, twenty minutes later, his light chaise was already awaiting him in the courtyard, and his groom was walking the bay up and down. A lackey was in the act of placing two band boxes in the chaise, but was checked by a thunderous demand to know what the devil he was about.
‘They belong to the lady, my lord,’ explained the lackey nervously.
‘Lady? What lady?’ said Vidal, astonished.
He was answered by the appearance of his cousin in the big doorway. Miss Marling had on a highly becoming hat, tied under her chin with pink ribands, and carried a feather-muff. Her face wore a look of mulish determination. ‘Oh, so there you are at last, Vidal!’ she said.
‘What in the fiend’s name brings you here?’ asked the Marquis, coming to her side. ‘There’s nothing for you to do in this coil.’
Miss Marling looked up at him defiantly. ‘I am coming with you.’
‘The devil you are!’ ejaculated his lordship. ‘No, my fair cousin. I don’t hamper myself with a petticoat on this journey.’
‘I am coming with you,’ repeated Miss Marling.
‘You’re not,’ said Vidal curtly, and beckoned to his groom.
Juliana caught at his wrist. ‘You shan’t go without me!’ she said in a fierce whisper. ‘You only care for your odious Mary, but she has run off with my Frederick, I’ll have you know, and I’ll come if I have to hire a post-chaise and travel alone! I mean it, Vidal!’
He looked down at her frowningly. ‘You do, do you? I doubt you won’t relish this journey overmuch.’
‘You’ll take me?’ she said eagerly.
He shrugged. ‘I’ll take you, but if I were your husband I’d soon school you, my girl.’ He handed her up somewhat urgently into the chaise, and said brusquely: ‘Does Tante know of this?’
‘Well, she was gone out, but I left a letter explaining as well as I could for the hurry I was in.’
‘Very well,’ Vidal said, and shut the door on her.
One of the lackeys put up the steps; the postillions were already in their saddles, and grooms stood to the horses’ heads. Vidal pulled on his gloves, gathered the bay’s bridle in his left hand, and mounted. ‘Port Royal!’ he said to the postillions, and reined the bay in hard to let the chaise pass out of the courtyard.
At the first post-stage Miss Marling insisted on descending from the chaise. While the horses were changed she favoured the Marquis with a pungent criticism of his manners, and the springs of the chaise. She said that never had she been so shaken and battered. She wondered that any man should be so brutal as to subject a lady to such discomfort, and declared that she vastly regretted having come on the journey.
‘I thought you would,’ replied his lordship. ‘Perhaps it’ll teach you not to meddle in my affairs.’
‘Your affairs?’ gasped Miss Marling. ‘Do you imagine that I care a pin for your affairs? I’ve come on my own, Vidal!’
‘Then don’t grumble,’ he returned.
Miss Marling stalked back to the chaise in high dudgeon. At the next halt she did not even look out of the window, but at the end of another twelve miles, she alighted once more, with her cloak held tightly round her against the sharp evening wind.
It was dusk and the landscape was dim, with a grey mist rising off the ground. The lamps on the chaise had been lit, and a comfortable glow came from the windows of the small inn.
‘Vidal, can we not stay here for the night?’ asked Miss Marling in a fading voice.
His lordship was speaking to one of the ostlers. He finished what he had to say, and then came leisurely towards his cousin. He had put on his greatcoat, an affair of buff-coloured cloth, with three capes at the shoulders. ‘Tired?’ he said.
‘Of course I am tired, stupid creature!’ replied Miss Marling.
‘Go into the inn,’ he commanded. ‘We dine here.’
‘I vow I could not eat a morsel.’
He did not pay any heed to this, but walked back to say something to his groom. Miss Marling, hating him, flounced into the inn, and was escorted by the landlord to a private parlour. A fire had been kindled in the grate, and Juliana drew up a chair and sat down, spreading her chilled fingers to the warmth.