‘Miss Abingdon, that is the unkindest thing you have yet said to me!’
‘No. I know you would not!’ she said quickly. She rose and held out her hand. ‘I must go back to the house. But you?’
‘In about twenty minutes’ time,’ said Lord Stavely, ‘I shall drive up to the front door, with profuse apologies and excuses!’
‘Oh, shall you indeed do that?’ giggled Miss Abingdon. ‘It must be close on midnight! Papa will be so cross!’
‘Well, I must brave his wrath,’ he said, raising her hand to his lips.
***
Her hand clung to his; Miss Abingdon jerked up her head and stood listening. In another instant Lord Stavely had also heard what had startled her: footsteps which tried to be stealthy, and a voice whose owner seemed to imagine himself to be speaking under his breath: ‘Do you go that way, Mullins, and I’ll go this, and mind, no noise!’
‘Papa!’ breathed Miss Abingdon, in a panic. ‘He must have heard me: I tripped on the gravel! Depend upon it, he thinks we are thieves: Sir Jasper was robbed last month! What am I to do?’
‘Can you reach the house without being observed if I draw them off?’ asked his lordship softly.
‘Yes, yes, but you? Papa will very likely have his fowling piece!’
‘Be sure I shall declare myself before he fires at me!’ He picked up the bandboxes and gave them to her.
She clutched them and fled. Lord Stavely, having watched her disappear round a corner of the shrubbery, set his hat on his head and sauntered in the opposite direction, taking care to advertise his presence.
He emerged from the shrubbery into the rose garden, and was almost immediately challenged by an elderly gentleman who did indeed level a fowling-piece at him.
‘Stand! I have you covered, rogue!’ shouted Sir Walter. ‘Mullins, you fool, here!’
Lord Stavely stood still, waiting for his host to approach him. This Sir Walter did not do until he had been reinforced by his butler, similarly armed, and sketchily attired in a nightshirt, a pair of breeches, and a greatcoat thrown over all. He then came forward, keeping his lordship covered, and said with gleeful satisfaction: ‘Caught you, my lad!’
‘How do you do, sir?’ said Lord Stavely, holding out his hand. ‘I must beg your pardon for presenting myself at this unconscionable hour, but I have been dogged by ill fortune all day. A broken lynch-pin and a lame horse must stand as my excuses.’
Sir Walter nearly dropped his piece. ‘Stavely?’ he ejaculated, peering at his lordship in amazement.
Lord Stavely bowed.
‘But what the devil are you doing in my garden?’ Sir Walter demanded.
Lord Stavely waved an airy hand. ‘Communing with Nature, sir, communing with Nature!’
‘Communing with Nature?’ echoed Sir Walter, his eyes fairly starting from his head.
‘Roses bathed in moonlight!’ said his lordship lyrically. ‘Ah – must Mullins continue to point his piece at me?’
‘Put it down, you fool!’ commanded Sir Walter testily. ‘Stavely, my dear fellow, are you feeling quite the thing?’
‘Never better!’ replied his lordship. ‘Oh, you are thinking that I should have driven straight up to the house? Very true, sir, but I was lured out of my chaise by this exquisite scene. I am passionately fond of moonlight, and really, you know, your gardens present so charming a picture that I could not but yield to temptation, and explore them. I am sorry to have disturbed you!’
Sir Walter was staring at him with his jaw dropping almost as prodigiously as the butler’s. ‘Explore my gardens at midnight!’ he uttered, in stupefied accents.
‘Is it so late?’ said his lordship. ‘Yet I dare say one might see to read a book in this clear light!’
Sir Walter swallowed twice before venturing on a response. ‘But where’s your carriage?’ he demanded.
‘I told the post-boys to wait in the lane,’ replied his lordship vaguely. ‘I believe – yes, I believe I can detect the scent of jasmine!’
‘Stavely,’ said Sir Walter, laying an almost timid hand on his arm, ‘do but come up to the house, and to bed! Everything is prepared, and this night air is most unwholesome!’
‘On the contrary, I find that it awakens poetry in my soul,’ said Lord Stavely. ‘I am inspired to write a sonnet on roses drenched with moonshine.’
‘Mullins, go and find his lordship’s chaise, and direct the postilions to drive up to the house!’ ordered Sir Walter, in an urgent under-voice. ‘Sonnets, eh, Stavely? Yes, yes, I have been a rhymester in my time, too, but just come with me, my dear fellow, and you will soon feel better, I dare say! You have had a long and a tedious journey, that’s what it is!’
He took his guest by the arm and firmly drew him towards the house. His lordship went with him unresisting, but maintained a slow pace, and frequently paused to admire some effect of trees against the night sky, or the sheen of moonlight on the lily-pond. Sir Walter, curbing his impatience, replied soothingly to these flights, and succeeded at last in coaxing him into the house, and upstairs to the chamber prepared for him. A suspicion that his noble guest had been imbibing too freely gave place to a far worse fear. Not until he was assured by the sound of my lord’s deep breathing that he was sleeping soundly did Sir Walter retire from his post outside his guest’s door and seek his own couch.
***
Lord Stavely and Miss Abingdon met officially at a late breakfast table. Sir Walter performed the introduction, eyeing his guest narrowly as he did so.
Lord Stavely, bowing first to Miss Maria Abingdon, apologized gracefully for having knocked the household up at such a late hour, and then turned to confront the heiress. For her part, she had been covertly studying him while he exchanged civilities with her aunt. She was very favourably impressed by what she saw. Lord Stavely was generally held to be a personable man. Miss Abingdon found no reason to quarrel with popular opinion. He had a pair of smiling grey eyes, a humorous mouth and an excellent figure. Both air and address were polished, and his raiment, without being dandified, was extremely elegant. He wore pantaloons and Hessians, which set off his legs to advantage; and Miss Abingdon noticed that his snow-white cravat was arranged in precise and intricate folds.
Miss Abingdon had surprised her aunt by choosing to wear quite her most becoming sprigged muslin gown. Miss Maria, who had despaired of detecting any such signs of docility in her niece, was further startled to observe that nothing could have been more demure than Annabella’s behaviour. She seemed quite to have recovered from her sulks, curtsied shyly to the guest, and gave him her hand with the most enchanting and mischievous of smiles. Really, thought Miss Maria, watching her fondly, the child looked quite lovely!
Lord Stavely talked easily at the breakfast-table, ably assisted by both ladies. Sir Walter seemed a trifle preoccupied, and when they rose from the table, and his lordship begged leave to wander out into the sunlit garden, he acquiesced readily, and scarcely waited for his guest to step out through the long window before hurrying out of the room in his daughter’s wake. He overtook her at the foot of the stairs, and peremptorily summoned her to his library. Shutting the door behind her, he said without preamble: ‘Annabella, you need not be in a pet, for I have changed my plans for you! Yes, yes, I no longer think of Stavely for you, so let us have no more tantrums!’
Miss Abingdon’s large blue eyes flew to his. ‘Changed your plans for me, Papa?’ she exclaimed.
He looked round cautiously, as though to be sure that his guest was not lurking in the room, and then said in an earnest tone: ‘My dear, it is the most distressing circumstance! The poor fellow is deranged! You would never credit it, I dare say, but I found him wandering about the garden at midnight, talking of sonnets, and moonlight, and such stuff!’
Miss Abingdon lowered her gaze swiftly and faltered: ‘Did you, Papa? How – how very
strange, to be sure!’
‘I was never more shocked in my life!’ declared Sir Walter. ‘I had not the least notion of such a thing, and I must say that I think Louisa Tenbury has not behaved as she should in concealing it from me!’
‘It is very dreadful!’ agreed Miss Abingdon. ‘Yet he seems quite sane, Papa!’
‘He seems sane now,’ said her parent darkly, ‘but we don’t know what he may do when the moon is up! I believe some lunatics are only deranged at the full of the moon. And now I come to think of it, they used to say that his grandfather had some queer turns! Not that I believed it, but I see now that it may well have been so. I wish I had not pressed him to visit us! You had better take care, my child, not to be in his company unless I am at hand to protect you!’
Miss Abingdon, who, out of the tail of her eye, had seen Lord Stavely strolling in the direction of the rose garden, returned a dutiful answer, and proceeded without loss of time to follow his lordship.
She found him looking down at the sundial in the middle of a rose plot. He glanced up at her approach and smiled, moving to meet her. Her face was glowing with mischief, her eyes dancing. She said: ‘Oh, my lord, Papa says you are mad, and he does not in the least wish me to marry you!’
He took her hands and held them. ‘I know it. Now, what am I to do to convince him that I am in the fullest possession of my senses?’
‘Why, what should it signify?’ she asked. ‘I am sure you do not care what he may think! I don’t know how I kept my countenance! He says I must take care not to be in your company, unless he is at hand to protect me!’
‘I see nothing to laugh at in that!’ he protested.
She looked up innocently. ‘I am so very sorry! But indeed I did not think that you would care!’
‘On the contrary, it is of the first importance that your papa should think well of me.’
‘Good gracious, why?’
‘My dear Miss Abingdon, how can I persuade him to permit me to pay my addresses to you if he believes me to be mad?’
For a moment she stared at him; then her cheeks became suffused, and she pulled her hands away, saying faintly: ‘Oh! But you said you would not – you know you did!’
‘I know nothing of the sort. I said I would not press an unwanted suit upon you. Do not take from me all hope of being able to make myself agreeable to you!’
Miss Abingdon, no longer meeting his eyes, murmured something not very intelligible, and began to nip off the faded blooms from a fine rose tree.
‘I must study to please Sir Walter,’ said his lordship. ‘How is it to be done? I rely upon your superior knowledge of him!’
Miss Abingdon, bending down to pluck a half-blown rose, said haltingly: ‘Well, if – if you don’t wish him to believe you mad, perhaps – perhaps you had better remain with us for a little while, so that he may be brought to realize that you are quite sane!’
‘An excellent plan!’ approved his lordship. ‘I shall be guided entirely by your advice, Miss Abingdon. May I have that rose?’
Sir Walter, informed by the gardener of the whereabouts of his guest and his daughter, came into the rose garden in time to see Miss Abingdon fix a pink rose-bud in the lapel of Lord Stavely’s coat. His reflections on the perversity and undutifulness of females he was obliged to keep to himself, but he told Miss Abingdon, with some asperity, that her aunt was searching for her, and taking Lord Stavely by the arm, marched him off to inspect the stables.
Miss Abingdon found her aunt in a state of nervous flutter, having been informed by her brother of their guest’s derangement. ‘And I thought him such a sensible man! So handsome, too, and so truly amiable!’
‘Oh, my dear aunt, is he not the most delightful creature?’ confided Miss Abingdon, eyes and cheeks aglow. ‘Only fancy his wishing to marry me!’
Miss Maria started. ‘No, no, that is quite at an end! Your papa would never hear of it! And when I think that only yesterday you were vowing you would marry Tom Hatherleigh in spite of anything your papa could say, I declare I don’t know what can have come over you!’
‘Moon madness!’ laughed Miss Abingdon. ‘Just like Lord Stavely! Poor Papa!’
An excerpt from Georgette Heyer’s
Sylvester
or The Wicked Uncle
Sylvester stood in the window of his breakfast parlour, leaning his hands on the ledge, and gazing out upon a fair prospect. No view of the ornamental water could be obtained from this, the east front of Chance, but the undulations of a lawn shaved all summer by scythemen were broken by a cedar, and beyond the lawn the stems of beech-trees, outliers of the Home Wood, shimmered in wintry sunlight. They still held their lure for Sylvester, though they beckoned him now to his coverts rather than to a land where every thicket concealed a dragon, and false knights came pricking down the rides. He and Harry, his twin, had slain the dragons, and ridden great wallops at the knights. There were none left now, and Harry had been dead for almost four years; but there were pheasants to tempt Sylvester forth, and they did tempt him, for a succession of black frosts had made the ground iron-hard, robbing him of two hunting days; and a blusterous north wind would not have invited the most ardent of sportsmen to take a gun out. It was still very cold, but the wind had dropped, and the sun shone, and what a bore it was that he should have decided that this day, out of all the inclement ones that had preceded it, should be devoted to business. He could change his mind, of course, telling his butler to inform the various persons now awaiting his pleasure that he would see them on the following day. His agent-in-chief and his man of business had come all the way from London to attend upon him, but it did not occur to Sylvester that they could find any cause for complaint in being kept kicking their heels. They were in his employ, and had no other concern than to serve his interests; they would accept his change of mind as the caprice to be expected from a noble and wealthy master.
But Sylvester was not capricious, and he had no intention of succumbing to temptation. Caprice bred bad servants, and where the management of vast estates was concerned good service was essential. Sylvester had only just entered his twenty-eighth year, but he had succeeded to his huge inheritance when he was nineteen, and whatever follies and extravagances he had committed they had never led him to treat that inheritance as his plaything, or to evade the least one of its responsibilities. He had been born to a great position, reared to fill it in a manner worthy of a long line of distinguished forebears, and as little as he questioned his right to command the obedience of all the persons whose names were inscribed on his staggering payroll did he question the inescapability of the duties which had been laid on his shoulders. Had he been asked if he enjoyed his consequence he would have replied truthfully that he never thought of it; but he would certainly have disliked very much to have had it suddenly removed.
No one was in the least likely to ask him such a question, of course. He was generally considered to be a singularly fortunate young man, endowed with rank, wealth, and elegance. No bad fairy had attended his christening to leaven his luck with the gift of a hunchback or a harelip; though not above medium height he was well proportioned, with good shoulders, a pair of shapely legs, and a countenance sufficiently pleasing to make the epithet handsome, frequently bestowed on it, not altogether ridiculous. In a lesser man the oddity of eyes set with the suspicion of a slant under flying black brows might have been accounted a blemish; in the Duke of Salford they were naturally held to lend distinction; and those who had admired his mother in her heyday remembered that she too had that thin, soaring line of eyebrow. It was just as though the brows had been added with a paintbrush, drawn in a sleek line upwards towards the temples. In the Duchess this peculiarity was charming; in Sylvester it was less attractive. It gave him, when he was vexed, and the upward trend was exaggerated by a frown, a slight look of a satyr.
He was about to turn away from the window when his attenti
on was caught by a small, scampering figure. Emerging from the shelter of a yew hedge, a little boy with a cluster of golden curls set off across the lawn in the direction of the Home Wood, his nankeen-covered legs twinkling over the grass, and the freshly laundered frill of his shirt rucked up under one ear by a duffle coat, dragged over his little blue jacket by hurried and inexpert hands.
Sylvester laughed, throwing up the window. His impulse was to wish Edmund success in his adventure, but even as he leaned out he checked it. Though Edmund would not stop for his nurse or his tutor he would do so if his uncle called to him, and since he seemed to have made good his escape from these persons it would be unsportsmanlike to check him when his goal was within sight. To keep him dallying under the window would put him in grave danger of being captured, and that, reflected Sylvester, would lead to one of those scenes which bored him to death. Edmund would beg his leave to go off to the woods, and whether he gave it or withheld it he would be obliged to endure the reproaches of his widowed sister-in-law. He would be accused of treating poor little Edmund either with brutal severity, or with a heartless unconcern for his welfare; for Lady Henry Rayne could never bring herself to forgive him for having persuaded his brother (as she obstinately affirmed) to leave Edmund to his sole guardianship. It was of no use for anyone to tell Lady Henry that Harry’s will had been drawn up on the occasion of his marriage, merely to ensure, in the event of accident, which no one had thought more unlikely than Harry himself, that any offspring of the match would be safe under the protection of the head of his house. However stupid Sylvester might think her she hoped she was not so green as to imagine that his attorney would have dared to insert so infamous a clause except at his express command. Sylvester, with the wound of Harry’s death still raw, had allowed himself to be goaded into bitter retort: ‘If you imagine that I wished to have the brat thrust on to me you are even greener than I had supposed!’