False Colours

Only one person had ever called him that. Still half-asleep, he responded automatically, murmuring: ‘Eve . . .!’

‘Wake up, you gudgeon!’

He opened his eyes, and blinked into the laughing face of his twin, illuminated by candlelight. For a moment he stared; then a slow smile crept into his eyes, and he said, a little thickly, and stretching out his hand: ‘I knew you couldn’t have stuck your spoon in the wall!’

His hand was taken by his twin’s left one, and strongly grasped.

‘I thought you would,’ Evelyn said. ‘What brought you home? Did you know I’d damned nearly done so?’

‘Yes. And that you were in some kind of a hank.’

The grasp tightened on his hand. ‘I hoped you wouldn’t guess that. Oh, but, Kester, it’s good to see you again!’

‘Yes,’ agreed Kit, deep, if drowsy, affection in his smile. ‘Damn you!’ he added.

‘I’m sorry: I’d have sent you word if I hadn’t been knocked senseless,’ said Evelyn penitently.

Emerging from the last clinging remnants of sleep, Kit became aware of some awkwardness in the clasp on his hand. He then saw that it was being held by Evelyn’s left one, and that his right lay in a sling. ‘So you did suffer an accident!’ he remarked. ‘Broken your arm?’

‘No: my shoulder, and a couple of ribs. That’s nothing!’

‘How did you do it?’

‘Took a corner too fast, and overturned the phaeton.’

‘Cawker!’ said Kit, sitting up. He released Evelyn’s hand, yawned, stretched, cast off his nightcap, vigorously rubbed his head, and then, apparently refreshed by these activities, said: ‘That’s better!’ and swung his legs out of bed.

Evelyn, lighting all the candles with which Lady Denville lavishly provided every bedroom in the house, said: ‘You must have made a pretty batch of it tonight! It took me five minutes to wake you.’

‘If you knew what sort of an evening I have been spending, or just half the things I’ve been yearning to do to you, you skirter, you’d take damned good care not to set up my bristles!’ said Kit, shrugging himself into an elegant dressing-gown. ‘When I think of the bumble-bath I’ve been pitched into, and what I’ve endured, all for the sake of a crazy, rope-ripe –’

‘Well, if that’s not the outside of enough!’ exclaimed his twin indignantly. ‘I didn’t pitch you into a bumble-bath! What’s more, I’ll have you know that’s my new dressing-gown you’re wearing, you thieving dog!’

‘Don’t let such a trifle as that put you in a tweak!’ retorted Kit. ‘The only things of yours which I am not wearing are your boots!’

These amenities having been exchanged, the dressing-gown securely fastened, and his feet thrust into a pair of Morocco slippers, Kit advanced, to grasp his brother’s left shoulder, and turn him towards the light thrown by a branch of candles on the dressing-table. ‘Let me look at you!’ he said roughly. His eyes keenly scanned Evelyn’s face; he said: ‘You’ve been in pretty queer stirrups, haven’t you? Still out of frame! And not because of a few broken bones! Eve, why didn’t you tell me the worry you were in?’

Evelyn put up his hand to pull Kit’s from his shoulder. He said, wryly smiling: ‘It’s no bread-and-butter of yours, Kester. Did Mama tell you?’

‘Yes, of course. As for it’s being no bread-and-butter of mine?–’

‘How is she?’ interrupted Evelyn.

‘Very much herself!’

‘Bless her! At least I knew she wouldn’t get into a stew!’

‘She isn’t in a stew, because I told her I knew you weren’t dead; but she was in the deuce of a twitter when I reached London,’ said Kit, with some severity.

Evelyn cocked a quizzical eyebrow at him. ‘No, was she? Well, that’s a new come-out! Her spirits worn down by anxiety, I collect? Doing it much too brown, Kester! I’ve never known Mama to be in a worry for more than ten minutes at a time!’

‘No,’ Kit admitted, ‘but this was something out of the way! Why the devil didn’t you send her a message?’

‘I couldn’t: I was out of my senses for days, and when I did come to myself I wasn’t in any case to be thinking of sending messages. If you’d ever suffered a deep concuss

ion, you’d know what I felt like!’

‘So that was it! Here, sit down! What we need is some brandy: I’ll go and fetch up the decanter!’