These Old Shades (Alastair-Audley Tetralogy 1)

‘My dear boy, he’s head over ears in love with her!’

‘I know that – I’m not blind, Fan. But he’s been in love before.’

‘You are most provoking, Rupert! Pray what has that to do with it?’

‘He’s not married any of ’em,’ said my lord.

Fanny affected to be shocked.

‘Rupert!’

‘Don’t be prudish, Fanny! That’s Edward’s doing, I know.’

‘Rupert, if you are minded to be unkind about dear Edward –’

‘Devil take Edward!’ said Rupert cheerfully.

Fanny eyed him for a moment in silence, and suddenly smiled.

‘I am not come to quarrel with you, horrid boy. Justin would not take Léonie as his mistress.’

‘No, damme, I believe you’re right. He’s turned so strict you’d scarce know him. But marriage – ! He’d not be so easily trapped.’

‘Trapped?’ cried my lady. ‘It’s no such thing! The child has no notion of wedding him. And that is why he will want her to wife, mark my words!’

‘He might,’ Rupert said dubiously. ‘But – Lord, Fanny, he’s turned forty, and she’s a babe!’

‘She is twenty, my dear, or near it. ’Twould be charming! She will always think him wonderful, and she’ll not mind his morals, for she’s none herself; and he – oh, he will be the strictest husband in town, and the most delightful! She will always be his infant, I dare swear, and he “Monseigneur”. I am determined he shall wed her. Now what do you say?’

‘I? I’d be pleased enough, but – egad, Fanny, we don’t know who she is! Bonnard? I’ve never met the name, and it hath a plaguey bourgeois ring to it, damme, so it has! And Justin – well, y’know, he’s Alastair of Avon, and it won’t do for him to marry a nobody.’

‘Pooh!’ said my lady. ‘I’ll wager my reputation she does not come of common stock. There’s some mystery, Rupert.’

‘Any fool could tell that,’ Rupert said frankly. ‘And if you asked me, Fan, I’d say she was related to Saint-Vire.’ He leaned back in his chair and looked for surprise in his sister. It did not come.

‘Where would be my wits if I’d not seen that?’ demanded Fanny. ‘As soon as I heard that ’twas Saint-Vire who carried her off I felt positive she was a base-born child of his.’

Rupert spluttered.

‘Gad, would you have Justin marry any such?’

‘I should not mind at all,’ said my lady.

‘He won’t do it,’ Rupert said with conviction. ‘He’s a rake, but he knows what’s due to the family, I’ll say that for him.’

‘Pho!’ My lady snapped her fingers. ‘If he loves her he’ll not trouble his head over the family. Why, what did I care for the family when I married Edward?’

‘Steady, steady! Marling has his faults, I’m not saying he hasn’t, but there’s no bad blood in his family, and you can trace him back to –’

‘Stupid creature, could I not have had Fonteroy for the lifting of a finger? Ay, or my Lord Blackwater, or his Grace of Cumming? Yet I chose Edward, who beside them was a nobody.’

‘Damn it, he’s not base-born!’

‘I would not have cared, I give you my word!’

Rupert shook his head.

‘It’s lax, Fanny, ’fore Gad, it’s lax. I don’t like it.’