So that’s Hookey’s latest, is it? thought the Colonel. Too angelic for my taste!
Caro Lamb recognised him, and summoned him to her side. He went at once, and was soon engaged in a light, swift give and take of badinage with her. His manners were too good to allow of his attention wandering, his gaze did not stray from the changeful little face before him; nor, when Caro presently flitted from him to another, did he do more than glance in Barbara’s direction. She was lying back in her chair, laughing up into Lavisse’s face, bent a little over her. There was a suggestion of possessiveness in Lavisse’s pose, and his left hand was resting on Barbara’s bare shoulder. Repressing a strong inclination to seize the slim Belgian by the collar and the seat of his elegant kneebreeches and throw him out, the Colonel turned away, and found himself confronting a sandy-haired ensign, who smiled and offered him a glass of wine. ‘You’re Colonel Audley, aren’t you, sir?’ he said. ‘Bab said you were coming. I’m Harry Alastair.’
‘How do you do?’ said the Colonel, accepting the glass of wine. ‘I believe I once met your brother George.’
‘Oh, did you? George is a Bad Man,’ said Harry cheerfully. ‘I heard today that the Life Guards are under marching orders, so he’ll be here pretty soon, I expect. But I say, what’s the news, sir? We are going to war, aren’t we?’
Colonel Audley did not think there was much doubt of that.
‘Well, I’m very glad to hear you say so,’ remarked his youthful interlocutor with simple pleasure. ‘Only, people talk such stuff that one doesn’t know what to believe. I thought you would probably know.’ He added in a burst of confidence: ‘It’s a great thing for me: I’ve never been in action, you know.’
Colonel Audley expressed a gratifying surprise. ‘I had thought you must have been with Graham,’ he said.
‘No,’ confessed Lord Harry. ‘As a matter of fact, I was still at Oxford then. Well, to tell you the truth, I only joined in December.’
‘How do you like it?’ asked the Colonel. ‘You’re with General Maitland, aren’t you?’
‘Yes. Oh, it’s famous sport! I like it above anything!’ said Lord Harry. ‘And if only we have the luck to come to grips with Boney himself—all our fellows are mad for the chance of a brush with him, I can tell you! Hallo, what’s Bab at now? She’s as wild as fire tonight! When George arrives they’ll set the whole town in a bustle between them, I daresay.’
A hot rivalry appeared to have sprung up between the men surrounding Barbara for possession of the flower she had been wearing tucked into her corsage. It was in her hand now, and as the Colonel glanced towards her she sprang lightly upon a stool, and held it high above her head.
‘No quarrelling, gentlemen!’ she called out. ‘He who can reach it may take it. Oh, Jack, my poor darling, you will never do it!’
Half a dozen arms reached up; the Lady Barbara, from the advantage of her stool, laughed down in the faces upturned to her. Colonel Audley, taller than any of that striving court, set down his wine glass and walked up behind her, and nipped the flower from her hand.
She turned quickly; a wave of colour rushed into her cheeks. ‘Oh! You! Infamous! I did not bargain for a man of your inches!’ she said.
‘A cheat! Fudged, by Jove!’ cried Captain Chambers. ‘Give it up, Audley, you dog!’
‘Not a bit of it,’ responded the Colonel, fitting it in his buttonhole. ‘He who could reach it might take it. I abode most strictly by the rules.’ He held out his hands to Barbara. ‘Come down from your perch! You invited me here tonight and have not vouchsafed me one word.’
She laid her hands in his, but drew them away as soon as she stood on the floor again. ‘Oh, you must be content with having won your prize!’ she said carelessly. ‘I warn you, it came from a hothouse and will soon fade. Dear Jack, I’m devilish thirsty!’
The young man addressed offered his arm; she was borne away by him into an adjoining salon. With a shade of malice in his voice the Comte de Lavisse said: ‘Hélas! You are set down, mon Colonel!’
‘I am indeed,’ replied Audley, and went off to flirt with one of the Misses Arden.
He was presently singled out by his host, who wanted his opinion of the military situation. Lord Vidal was suffering from what his irreverent younger brother described as a fit of the sullens, but he was pleasant enough to Audley. His wife, her hard sense bent on promoting a match between an improvident sister-in-law and a wealthy (though foreign) nobleman, seized the opportunity to inform the Colonel that her family expected hourly to receive the tidings of Bab’s engagement to the Comte de Lavisse. The desired effect of this confidence was a little spoiled by her husband’s saying hastily: ‘Pooh! nonsense! I don’t more than half like it.’
Augusta said with a tinkle of laughter: ‘I doubt of Bab’s considering that, my dear Vidal, once her affections have been engaged.’
The Marquis reddened, but said: ‘The old man wouldn’t countenance it. I wish you will not talk such rubbish! Come now, Audley! In my place, would you remove to England?’
‘On my honour, no!’ said the Colonel. He correctly guessed ‘the old man’ to be the Duke of Avon, a gentleman of reputedly fiery temper, who was the Lady Barbara’s grandfather, and lost very little time in finding Lord Harry Alastair again.
There was no more friendly youth to be found than Lord Harry. He was perfectly ready to tell the Colonel anything the Colonel wanted to know, and it needed only a casual question to set his tongue gaily wagging.
‘Devil of a tartar, my grandfather,’ said Lord Harry. ‘Used to be a dead shot—daresay he still is, but he don’t go about picking quarrels with people these days, of course. Killed his man in three duels before he met my grandmother. Those must have been good times to have lived in! But I believe he settled down more or less when he married. George is the living spit of what he used to be, if you can trust the portraits. Bab and Vidal take after my great-grandmother. She was red-haired, too, and French into the bargain. And her husband—my great-grandfather, that is—was the devil of a fellow!’ He tossed off a glass of wine, and added, not without pride: ‘We’re a shocking bad set, you know. All ride to the devil one way or another. As for Bab, she’s as bad as any of us.’
The Lady Barbara seemed, that evening, to be determined to prove the truth of this assertion. No folly was too extravagant for her to throw herself into; her flirtations shocked the respectable; the language she used gave offence to the pure-tongued; and when she crowned an evening of indiscretions by organising a table of hazard, and becoming, as she herself announced, badly dipped at it, it was felt that she had left nothing undone to set the town by the ears.
She was too busy at her hazard table to notice Colonel Audley’s departure, nor did he attempt to interrupt her play to take his leave. But seven o’clock next morning found him cantering down the Allée Verte to meet a solitary horse-woman mounted on a grey hunter.
She saw him approaching, and reined in. When he reached her she was seated motionless in the saddle, awaiting him. He raised two fingers to his cocked hat. ‘Good morning! Are you in a quarrelsome humour today?’ he asked.
She replied abruptly: ‘I did not expect to see you.’
‘We don’t start for Ghent until noon.’
‘Ghent?’
‘Yes, Ghent,’ he repeated, not quite understanding her blank stare.
‘Oh, the devil! What are you talking about?’ she demanded with a touch of petulance. ‘Are you going to Ghent? I did not know it.’
‘Didn’t you? Then I don’t know what the devil I’m talking about,’ he said.
A laugh flashed in her eyes. ‘I wish I didn’t like you, but I do—I do!’ she said. ‘Do you wonder that I didn’t expect to see you here this morning?’
‘If it was not because you thought me already on my way to Ghent I most certainly do.’
‘Odd creature!’ She gave him one of her direct looks, and said: ‘I behaved very shabbily to you last night.’
‘You did indeed. What had I d
one? Or were you merely cross?’
‘Nothing. Was I cross? I don’t know. I think I wanted to show you how damnably I can conduct myself.’
‘Thank you,’ said the Colonel, bowing in some amusement. ‘What will you show me next? How well you can conduct yourself?’
‘I never conduct myself well. Don’t laugh! I am in earnest. I am odious, do you understand? If you will persist in liking me, I shall make you unhappy.’
‘I don’t like you,’ said the Colonel. ‘It was true what I told you the first time I set eyes on you. I love you.’
She looked at him with sombre eyes. ‘How can you do so? If you were in a way to loving me did not that turn to dislike when you saw me at my worst?’
‘Not a bit!’ he replied. ‘I will own to a strong inclination to have boxed your ears, but I could not cease to love you, I think, for any imaginable folly on your part.’ He swung himself out of the saddle, and let the bridle hang over his horse’s head. ‘May I lift you down? There is a seat under the trees where we can have our talk out undisturbed.’
She set her hand on his shoulder, but said, half mournfully: ‘This is the greatest imaginable folly, poor soldier.’
‘I love you most of all when you are absurd,’ said the Colonel, lifting her down from the saddle.
He set her on her feet, but held her for an instant longer, his eyes smiling into hers; then his hands released her waist, and he gathered up both the horses’ bridles, and said: ‘Let me take you to the secluded nook I have discovered.’
‘Innocent!’ she said mockingly, falling into step beside him. ‘I know all the secluded nooks.’
He laughed. ‘You are shameless.’
She looked sideways at him. ‘A baggage?’
‘Yes, a baggage,’ he agreed, lifting her hand to his lips a moment.
‘If you know that, I consider you fairly warned, and shall let you run on your fate as fast as you please.’
‘Faute de mieux,’ he remarked. ‘Here is my nook. Let me beg your ladyship to be seated!’
‘Oh, call me Bab! Everyone does.’ She sat down, and began to strip off her gloves. ‘Have you still my rose?’ she enquired.
He laid his hand upon his heart. ‘Can you ask?’
‘I began to think you an accomplished flirt. I hope the thorns may not prick you.’
‘To be honest with you,’ confessed the Colonel, ‘the gesture was metaphorical.’
She burst out laughing. ‘Your trick! Tell me what it is you want! To flirt with me? I am perfectly willing. To kiss me? You may if you choose.’
‘To marry you,’ he said.
‘Ah, now you are talking nonsense! Has no one warned you what bad blood there is in my family?’
‘Yes, your brother Harry. I am much obliged to him, and to you, and must warn you, in my turn, that I had an uncle once who was so much addicted to the bottle that he died of it. Furthermore, my grandfather—’
She put up her hands. ‘Stop, stop! Abominable to laugh when I am in earnest! If I married you we should certainly fight.’
‘Not a doubt of it,’ he agreed.
‘You would wish to make me sober and well-behaved, and I—’
‘Never! To shake you, perhaps, but I am persuaded your sense of justice would pardon that.’
‘My sense of justice might, but not my temper. I should flirt with other men: you would not like that.’
‘No, nor permit it.’
‘My poor Charles! How would you stop me?’
‘By flirting with you myself,’ he replied.
‘It would lack spice in a husband. I don’t care for marriage. It is curst flat. You do not know that; but I have reason to. Did Gussie tell you I was going to marry Lavisse?’
‘Most pointedly. But I think you are not.’
‘You may be right,’ she said coolly. ‘It is more than I can bargain for, though. He is extremely wealthy. I should enjoy the comfort of a large fortune. My debts would ruin you in a year. Have you thought of that?’
‘No, but I will, if you like, and devise some means of meeting the difficulty when it arises. Should you object very much to living in a debtors’ prison?’
‘It might be amusing,’ she admitted. ‘But it would become tiresome in time. Things do, you know.’ She began to play with her riding whip, twisting the lash round her fingers. Watching her, he saw that her eyes had grown dark again, and that she had gripped her lips together in a mulish fashion. He was content to look at her, and presently she glanced up, and said brusquely: ‘To be plain with you, Charles, you are a fool! Am I your first love?’
‘My dear! No!’
‘The more shame to you. Don’t you know—? Good God, can you not see that we should never deal together? We are not suited!’
‘No, we are not suited, but I think we might deal together,’ he answered.
‘I have been spoilt from my cradle!’ she flung at him. ‘You know nothing of me! You have fallen in love with my face. In fact, you are ridiculous!’
He said rather ruefully: ‘Do you think I don’t know it? I can discover no reason why you should look with anything but amusement upon my suit. I am a younger son, with no prospects beyond the Army—’
‘Gussie said that,’ she interrupted, her lip lifting a little.
‘She was right.’
She put her whip down; something glowed in her eyes. ‘Have you nothing to recommend you to me, then?’
‘Nothing at all,’ he replied, with a faint smile.
She leaned towards him; sudden tears sparkled on her lashes; her hands went out to him impulsively. ‘Nothing at all! Charles, dear fool! Oh, the devil! I’m crying!’
She was in his arms, and raised her face for his kiss. Her hands gripped his shoulders; her mouth was eager, and clung to his for a moment. Then she put her head back, and felt him kiss her wet eyelids.
‘Oh, rash,’ she murmured. ‘I darken ’em Charles—my eyelashes! Does it come off?’
He said a little unsteadily: ‘I don’t think so. What odds?’
She disengaged herself. ‘My dear, you are certainly mad! Confound it, I never cry! How dared you look at me just so? Charles, if I have black streaks on my face, I swear I’ll never forgive you!’
‘But you have not, on my honour!’ he assured her. He found his handkerchief, and put his hand under her chin. ‘Keep still: I will engage to dry them without the least damage being done.’ He performed this office for her, and held her chin for an instant longer, looking down into her face.
She let him kiss her again, but when he raised his head, flung off his arms, and sprang up. ‘Of all the absurd situations I ever was in! To be made love to before breakfast! Abominable!’
He too rose, and caught and grasped her hands, holding them in a grip that made her grimace. ‘Will you marry me?’
‘I don’t know, I don’t know! Go to Ghent: I won’t be swept off my feet!’ She gave a gurgle of laughter, and burlesqued herself: ‘You must give me time to consider, Colonel Audley! Lord, did you ever hear anything so Bath-missish? Let me go: you don’t possess me, you know.’
‘Give me an answer!’ he said.
‘No, and no! Do you think I must marry where I kiss? They don’t mean anything, my kisses.’
His grip tightened on her hands. ‘Be quiet! You shall not talk so!’
Her mouth mocked him bitterly. ‘You’ve drawn such a pretty picture of me for yourself, and the truth is I’m a rake.’
He turned from her in silence to lead up her horse. With the knowledge that she had hurt him an unaccustomed pain seized her. ‘Now you see how odious I can be!’ she said in a shaking voice.
He glanced over his shoulder, and said gently: ‘My poor dear!’
She gave a twisted smile, but said nothing until he had brought her horse to her. He put her into the saddle, and she bent towards him, and touched his cheek with her gloved hand. ‘Go to Ghent. Dear Charles!’
For a moment her eyes were soft with tenderness. He caught her hand and kis
sed it. ‘I must go, of course. I shall be back in a day or two and I shall want my answer.’
She gathered up the bridle. ‘I shall give it you—perhaps!’ she said, and rode off, leaving him still standing under the elm trees.
He made no attempt to overtake her, but rode back to the town at a sober pace, arriving at his brother’s house rather late for breakfast. His sister-in-law, regarding him with a little curiosity, asked him where he had been, and upon his answering briefly, in the Allée Verte, rallied him on such a display on matutinal energy.
‘Confess, Charles! You had an assignation with an unknown charmer!’
He smiled, but shook his head. ‘Not precisely—no!’
‘Don’t tell me you rode out for your health’s sake! You have not been alone!’
‘No,’ he replied, ‘I had the good fortune to meet Lady Barbara.’
She concealed the dismay she felt, but was for the moment too much nonplussed to say anything. The Earl filled what might have been felt to have been an awkward pause by enquiring in his languid way: ‘Is an early morning ride one of her practices? She is an unexpected creature!’
‘She is a splendid horsewoman,’ said the Colonel evasively.
‘Certainly. I have very often seen her at the stag hunting during the winter.’
‘Perry calls her a bruising rider!’ remarked Judith, with a slight laugh. She poured herself out some coffee, and added in a casual tone: ‘Is it true she is about to become engaged to the Comte de Lavisse?’
The Colonel raised his brows. ‘What, does gossip say so?’
‘Oh yes! That is, his attentions have been so very particular that it is regarded as quite certain. I suppose it would be a good match. He is very wealthy.’
‘Very, I believe.’
This response was too unencouraging to allow of Judith’s pursing the subject any further. The Colonel started to talk of something else, and as soon as he had finished his breakfast, went away to order his servant to pack his valise. He was soon gone from the house, and although Judith was sorry he was obliged to accompany the Duke of Ghent, she was able to console herself with the reflection that at least he would be out of Barbara Childe’s reach.