False Colours

Ambrose, whose evil genius prompted him to quiz his cousin, was disposed of without finesse; and when Kit was able to exchange a private word with Cressy he told her not to waste a thought on an unpleasant, but evanescent annoyance. ‘I fancy we shall hear no more about it,’ he said.

Twelve

He was permitted to dwell in this hopeful belief for rather less than twenty-four hours. Upon the following afternoon, driven indoors by a shower of rain, he was playing billiards with Cressy when Norton entered the room, and asked him in an expressionless voice if he might have a word with him.

‘Yes, what is it?’ Kit replied.

Norton coughed, and directed a meaning look at him. Unfortunately, Kit was watching Cressy, critically surveying the balls on the table, her cue in her hand. Their disposition was not promising. ‘What a very unhandsome way to leave them!’ she complained. ‘I don’t see what’s to be done.’

‘Try a cannon off the cushion!’ he recommended. A second cough made him say, rather impatiently: ‘Well, Norton? What do you want?’

‘If I might have a word with your lordship?’ Norton repeated.

Kit glanced frowningly at him. ‘Presently: you are interrupting the game.’

‘I beg your lordship’s pardon!’ said Norton, his meaning look becoming almost a glare. ‘A Person has called to see your lordship.’

‘Very well. Tell him I am at present engaged, and ask him to state his business!’

Cressy, who had raised her eyes from the table to look at the?butler, said: ‘Do go, Denville! I’ll concede this game to you?gracefully and happily, having already been beaten all hollow!’ She smiled at Norton. ‘I collect the business is urgent?’

‘Well, yes, miss!’ replied Norton gratefully.

By this time, Kit, his attention fairly caught, had realized that Norton was trying to convey an unspoken message to him. Since he had been assured by Fimber that the butler had no suspicion that he was not his noble master, he was puzzled to know why he was trying to warn him. He thrust his cue into the rack, made his apologies to Cressy, and preceded Norton out of the room. ‘Well? Who is it?’ he asked, as soon as the butler had shut the door behind him. ‘What’s his business with me?’

‘As to that, my lord, I shouldn’t care to say: the Individual being unwilling to divulge it to me.’ He met Kit’s questioning look woodenly, but added a sinister rider. ‘I should perhaps mention, my lord, that the Individual in question is not of the male sex.’

Not by so much as the flicker of an eyelid did Kit betray his feelings. He asked curtly: ‘Her name?’

‘She calls herself Alperton, my lord,’ responded Norton, at once disclaiming responsibility and revealing to the initiated the social status of the visitor. ‘Mrs Alperton – not a young female, my lord.’ His gaze became fixed on some object over Kit’s shoulder as he made his next tactfully worded disclosure. ‘I thought it best to show her into the Blue saloon, my lord, Sir Bonamy and Mr Cliffe being in the library, as is their custom at this hour, and her not being willing to accept my assurance that you were not at home to visitors, but declaring to me her intention of remaining here until it should be convenient to you to receive her.’

It was now apparent to Kit that when he entered the Blue saloon he would be facing guns of unknown but almost certainly heavy calibre. His first alarming suspicion that some Cyprian whom Evelyn had taken under his protection had had the effrontery to present herself at Ravenhurst had been banished by the information that Mrs Alperton was not a young female; and relief at the knowledge that he would not be confronted by a female quite so intimately acquainted with Evelyn made it possible for him to nod, and to say coolly: ‘Very well, I’ll see her there.’

Norton bowed. ‘Yes, my lord. Would you wish me to tell the postboy to wait?’

‘Postboy?’

‘A job-chaise, my lord, and one pair of horses.’

‘Oh! Send him round to the stables: they’ll look after him there.’

Norton bowed again, and led the way across the hall, and down a wide passage to the door leading into the Blue saloon. He held it open, and Kit walked into the room, his face schooled to an impassivity he was far from feeling.

His visitor was seated on a small sofa. She greeted him with a basilisk stare, and said, with terrible irony: ‘Well, there! And so you was at home, after all, my lord!’

He advanced slowly into the middle of the room. His first thought was: Ewe-mutton! no bread-and-butter of Evelyn’s! his second, that, incredible though it seemed, Mrs Alperton was a member of a certain sisterhood of elderly females known inappropriately as Abbesses. For this uncharitable belief her attire was largely responsible. His notions of feminine apparel were vague; had he been asked to describe what his mother was wearing that day he would have been unable to do so; but it struck him forcibly that Mrs Alperton’s dashing and colourful raiment would never have been worn by a respectable, middle-aged female, and far less by a lady of quality. In spite of an elaborate array of metallic yellow locks, visible beneath a white satin cap, worn under a dome-crowned hat turned boldly up at the front, and with an ostrich plume curled over the brim to brush her forehead, he assessed her years at fifty. In fact, she was within a few months of Lady Denville’s age; but although it was easy to see that in her youth she must have been a very prime article indeed, an over-lavish use of cosmetics, coupled with an addiction to spirituous liquors, had sadly ravaged a once-lovely countenance. Captious persons might consider that the size and brilliance of her eyes was marred by an avaricious gleam, but only those who had a predilection for slender women could have found fault with her well-corseted and opulent figure.

Whatever might have been her opinion of Mrs Alperton’s taste, any woman would have recognized that she had taken great pains over her toilet, and thought it proper to wear, on a visit to a nobleman’s seat, her bettermost dress and pelisse. Kit merely hoped, very devoutly, that he could succeed in getting rid of her before any of his guests set eyes on her; for a lilac pelisse, embellished with epaulets and cords, and worn over an open-bosomed robe of pink satin, struck him with horrifying effect. Pink kid half-boots and gloves, a lilac silk parasol, and a number of trinkets completed her costume; and she had lavishly sprayed her person with amber scent.

Kit paused by the table in the middle of the room, and stood looking down at her. ‘Well, ma’am?’ he said. ‘May I know what brings you here?’

Her bosom swelled. ‘May you know indeed! Of course, you haven’t a notion, have you? Oh, not the least in the world! Standing there, as proud as an apothecary, and holding up your nose at one which has kept company with gentlemen of the highest rank! And I’ve had grander servants than that niffy-naffy butler of yours waiting on me like slaves, my lord! I’m here to tell you that you can’t jaunter about breaking a poor, innocent female’s heart! Not without paying for it! Oh, dear me, no!’

‘Whose heart have I broken?’ asked Kit. ‘Yours, ma’am?’

‘Mine! That’s a loud one!’ she exclaimed. ‘If I didn’t break it for the Marquis, who treated me like a princess, never grudging a groat he spent on me, besides a handsome present when we parted, as part we did, and not a hard word spoken on either side, him knowing what was due to a lady –’ She stopped, unable to find the thread of her argument, and demanded: ‘Where was?I?’

‘You were saying,’ supplied Kit helpfully, ‘that you did not break your heart for the Marquis.’