False Colours

‘I wasn’t thinking about your shoulder. The fact is, Eve, you can’t go anywhere until I’ve disappeared. How are you to get there? Challow can’t drive you there in the curricle, because for one thing, someone would be bound to see you, and recognize you; and, for another, he can’t take the curricle out secretly, you know.’

‘But he can take it out at your orders, and bring you here in it,’ Evelyn pointed out, an impish gleam in his eyes. ‘Then, dear twin, you can take my place here, in hiding, and I can go to Tunbridge Wells!’

‘Leaving my guests to fend for themselves! I would, if the matter were of no particular urgency, but as it doesn’t seem to be – no!’

Evelyn sighed. ‘I suppose not. But you’ll have to leave them, if you mean to go to Brighton in my stead.’

‘I don’t. I came to talk to you about that,’ Kit said. ‘Let’s sit down!’

He dragged Evelyn’s chair up to a wooden bench, and himself sat on the bench. ‘You won’t like this,’ he warned Evelyn, ‘but you’ve got to know it.’ He drew from his pocket the roll of bills Evelyn had given him, and handed it to him. ‘Here are your flimsies: they won’t be needed. The brooch was not counterfeit. I doubt whether any of Mama’s jewelry is – not even the necklace she says she sold on your behalf.’

Evelyn frowned at him, flushing slightly. ‘What the devil do you mean? She told me herself she had sold the brooch, and had had it copied!’

‘Yes, that’s what she told me. But she also told me that she had several times employed Ripple to sell trinkets for her, which I imagine you didn’t know.’

‘You may be very sure I didn’t.’

‘Well, the long and the short of it, Eve, is that Ripple never sold anything for her. He gave her the price of that brooch and what he told her was a copy of it.’

Evelyn stiffened, his hand closing on the roll of bills so tightly that his knuckles whitened. His eyes blazed for an instant, then he lowered them to his clenched hand, and opened his fingers. ‘Why didn’t you give him this, then?’

Kit shrugged, half-smiling. ‘You may be able to: I found I couldn’t.’

‘Kester, he had no right – !’

‘No.’

‘It is intolerable!’ Evelyn said, in a suffocating voice. ‘How much does Mama owe him?’

‘I don’t know. He wouldn’t tell me.’

‘He will tell me!’

‘He won’t, Eve. Or anyone. I think you had better hear what passed between us.’

Evelyn nodded, his lips compressed. But when Kit reached the end of his unquestioned recital, the white, angry look had left his face, and although he still frowned there was a softer light in his eyes. He did not speak immediately, but a rather bitter smile curled his lips, and presently he said: ‘My father left me one thing I forgot to mention last night – humiliation! I shan’t be rid of that until I’ve repaid Ripple.’

‘It isn’t in your power to repay him, twin.’

‘Not yet. But it will be – when I’m thirty, if not before. I must talk to him.’

‘Of course – but he bade me tell you it was none of your business, since it all happened during my father’s lifetime, when you couldn’t have rescued Mama. An

d further,’ Kit said, with a twinkle, ‘that he didn’t want to have you buzzing round him like a hornet.’

Evelyn laughed, but ruefully. ‘No, no, how could he think I would?’

‘Well, he knows you don’t like him! What’s more he told me that you hadn’t been able to wind him up in all the years you’d been trying to do it, so that it wasn’t likely I could!’

Evelyn pulled a grimace. ‘Not so bacon-brained, after all. I suppose I have tried to draw wool, now and now. I don’t dislike him precisely – or I shouldn’t, if he didn’t dangle after Mama, calling her his pretty, talking of his devotion, when even she knows how many mistresses he’s had in keeping! But I never suspected him of this! I own, I thought it was all a hum: that he pretended to feel an unalterable attachment to Mama because to be her most favoured cicisbeo added to his consequence.’

‘Yes, so did I,’ Kit agreed. ‘I think now, however, that he is devoted to her, in his way. Good-natured, too, and certainly generous – though he says himself that a few thousands here and there meant nothing to him.’

‘I must see him!’ Evelyn said, in a fretting tone. ‘He has placed me under an obligation, and however much I – I hate it, I am very sensible of it, and must tell him so, and make it plain to him that I hold myself responsible, in my father’s place, for Mama’s debts.’

‘You will do as you think right,’ Kit said equably. ‘We have also to consider, you, and Mama, and I, where you should go to until I am safely out of the country. You can’t remain cooped up here, and while Lady Stavely is known to be at Ravenhurst you can’t go to London, or to Brighton.’

‘It’s a pity I didn’t break my neck instead of my shoulder. That would have solved all our problems,’ remarked Evelyn. He turned his head to look at Kit, and added quickly: ‘No, no, I don’t mean that! Only funning, Kester!’