April Lady

‘Lending my countenance to an engagement of which I disapprove?’ he said quizzically.

‘Not more than you have done already, in saying that they may be married when he returns from Brazil!’ she urged. ‘I am persuaded she would be very sensible of your kindness in granting her that indulgence; and then, you know, there would be no need for her to meet him without our knowledge.’

He looked sceptical, but shrugged, and said: ‘Very well: you may do as seems best to you.’

‘Thank you! I will tell her, and I do hope it may comfort her a little.’

But Letty, informed of the treat in store, betrayed no enthusiasm for it; nor, when Nell represented to her the impropriety of her meeting Mr Allandale in secret, did she return any very satisfactory answer. She sat beside Nell in the carriage looking the embodiment of discontent, but grew rather more cheerful at Osterley. She was always susceptible to admiration, and she received so many compliments on her appearance in a new and dashing dress of pale lemon-coloured crape worn over a slip of white sarsnet, that Nell soon saw, to her relief, that she had abandoned her die-away air, and was prepared to enjoy herself.

Shortly after noon the porter at Cardross House opened the door to the Viscount Dysart. His lordship, who was dressed for travel, in breeches and top-boots, trod briskly into the hall, and demanded his sister. Upon learning that she had gone off on an expedition of pleasure with the Lady Letitia, he looked first thunderstruck, and then wrathful, and exclaimed: ‘Gone to Osterley? Well, hell and the devil confound it! Did she leave any message for me?’

No, the porter said apologetically, he did not think her ladyship had left a message, unless, perhaps, with Farley.

The Viscount turned an impatient and an enquiring look upon Farley, who had appeared from the nether regions, and was bowing to him with stately civility. ‘Did her ladyship say when she would be back?’ he demanded.

‘No, my lord – merely that she had no expectation of being late. I understand it is an al fresco party: something, doubtless, in the nature of a pic-nic.’

‘Well, if that don’t beat all hollow!’ said the Viscount involuntarily, and in accents of disgust.

‘I fancy that his lordship has not yet gone out, my lord, if you would care to see him? Mr Kent was with him, but –’

‘No, no, I won’t disturb him, if he’s got his man of business with him!’ interrupted Dysart, with aplomb. ‘In fact, there’s no need to tell him I called: came to see her ladyship on a private matter!’

‘Just so, my lord,’ said Farley, accepting with a wonderful air of unconsciousness the handsome douceur which the Viscount bestowed on him.

‘I’ll step up to her ladyship’s dressing-room, and write a note to her,’ said Dysart. ‘And you’d better give me my hat again! I don’t want his lordship to catch sight of it.’

However, the porter undertook to keep the hat hidden from his master’s eyes, so Dysart, quite unembarrassed, told him to see that he did, and, declining escort, went off up the broad stairway.

‘As bold as Beauchamp, that’s what he is,’ remarked the porter, carefully setting the hat down under his huge chair. ‘Down as a hammer, up like watch-boy! Got some new bobbery on hand from the look in his ogles. Ah, well! he ain’t one of the stiff-rumped sort, that’s one thing, and it don’t matter to him if he’s swallowed a spider: you won’t catch him forgetting to tip a cove his earnest! There’s plenty as wouldn’t give me more than a borde for hiding their tiles, but you mark my words if he don’t fork out a hind-coachwheel! What did he drop in your famble, Mr Farley?’

But Farley, revolted by such vulgar curiosity, merely withered him with a stare before retiring again to his own quarters.

Twenty minutes later the Viscount came lightly down the stairs again, pausing for a moment on the half-landing to make sure the coast was clear. Encouraged by a nod and a wink from the porter, he descended the last half-flight, and handed over a sealed billet. ‘Give that to her ladyship, will you, George?’

‘Yes, my lord. Thank you, my lord!’ said the porter, as a large and shining coin followed the billet.

‘And if you want a sure thing for the King’s Plate at Chester tomorrow,’ added the Viscount, setting his high-crowned beaver on his head, and pulling on his gloves, ‘put your blunt on Cockroach!’

The porter thanked him again, but with less fervour. A keen student of the Turf, he perceived that his lordship had taken to betting the long odds, and he could only regret his imprudence: if that was his new lay there would be a sad dwindling of the stream of heavy silver coins that fell from his hand.

Nell, eagerly deciphering the scrawl some hours later, in the privacy of her bedchamber, no sooner made herself

mistress of its contents than she read it a second time, more slowly, and with a knit brow, unable to decide whether she ought to be consoled by its message, or alarmed.

‘What the devil,’ wrote Dysart, without preamble, ‘is the use of setting up a squawk for me to come and see you if the next thing you do is to go jauntering off to a picnic? I can’t wait to see you, for I’m going out of town for a day or two, but you may as well stop fretting and fuming, because I have hit on a way of setting all to rights, and more besides. I shan’t tell you what it is because ten to one you would not like it, for I never knew anyone with more buffleheaded scruples. I daresay you would have tried to throw a rub in the way, had you been at home, so I am just as glad you are not. If that hog-grubbing mantua-maker of yours starts dunning you again before I get back to town tell her she shall be paid before the week’s out. Now, don’t be in a pucker, my dear Sister, for we shan’t fail this time, and don’t get to wondering if I’ve sold your precious sapphires, or anything else you doat on, for I have not. Your affectionate brother, Dysart. P.S. I greased Farley in the fist not to tell Cardross I was in the house, and your porter too – at least, I shall – so don’t go blurting it out to him like a ninny-hammer.’

Having read this twice, Nell’s spirits rose a little. There seemed to be no doubt that Dysart really had discovered a way of paying her debt, though what it could be she had not the remotest guess. It made her uneasy to read that she would not like it; but since he had been indignant with her for supposing that he would play the highwayman in earnest, and had now assured her that he had not taken her jewels, she did not think it could be anything very bad. He wrote with such certainty that her first sharp fear died: even Dysart would not have stated so positively that they would not fail this time had the matter rested on the turn of a card, or the fall of the dice. The worst would be if he had backed himself to perform some crazy exploit, and his going out of town made this appear rather probable. Nell knew that he had jumped his horse over that famous dinner-table because someone had betted heavily against his being able to perform the feat. She knew also that no dependence could be placed on his refusing a dangerous wager, because he was so much a stranger to fear that his anxious relatives had more than once entertained the unnerving suspicion that he was incapable of recognizing peril, even though it stared at him in the face. Vague but hideous possibilities began to suggest themselves to her, but before she had made herself quite sick with apprehension common sense reasserted itself, and she thought what a fool she was to suppose that even the most totty-headed of his cronies would offer him a wager the acceptance of which would put him in danger of breaking his neck.

For twenty-four hours she hung between hope and fear, and then a blow more crushing than any she had thought possible almost annihilated her. She had come in to find a message awaiting her that called for an immediate answer, and taking it upstairs with her, sat down at the tambour-top writing-table in her dressing-room to scribble a reply before ringing for Sutton to dress her for dinner. She had just signed her name and was about to shake the pounce-box over the single sheet of paper, when the door opened behind her, and Sutton’s voice said: ‘Oh, my lady!’

Sutton sounded agitated. Thinking that she must suppose herself to have been sent for long since (for the only thing that ever ruffled her stately calm was the degrading suspicion that she had fallen short of her own rigid standard), Nell said cheerfully: ‘Yes, I am come home, but I had not pulled my bell, so don’t be thinking you are late! The India mull-muslin with the short train will do very well for tonight.’

‘It’s not that, my lady!’ Sutton said. ‘It is the necklace!’

‘The necklace?’ Nell repeated uncomprehendingly.

‘The necklace of diamonds and emeralds which your ladyship never wears, and which we placed for safety in this very cupboard!’ said Sutton tragically. ‘Between the folds of the blue velvet pelisse your ladyship wore last winter, where no one would think to look for such a thing! Oh, my lady, it is more than an hour since I made the discovery, and how I have found the strength to keep me on my feet I know not! Never in all my years of service has such a thing happened to any of my ladies! Gone, my lady!’