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‘Your – w-what?’ gasped Miss Abingdon, recoiling.
‘Don’t be alarmed!’ he begged. ‘Though I shrink from owning to it, I think I must be your papa’s odious friend. But I assure you, Miss Abingdon, his and my meddling sister’s schemes come as a complete surprise to me!’
Miss Abingdon swallowed convulsively. ‘D-do you m-mean to tell me, sir, that you are Lord Stavely?’
‘Yes,’ confessed his lordship. He added: ‘But though I may be a dead bore, I am not really so very old!’
‘You should have told me!’ said Miss Abingdon, deeply mortified.
‘I know I should, but I could not help nourishing the hope that I might not, after all, be the odious old man you and Tom have described in such daunting terms.’
She turned her face away, saying in a stifled tone: ‘I would never . . . Oh, how could you let me run on so?’
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bsp; ‘Don’t mind it!’ he said, taking one of her hands in a comforting clasp. ‘Only pray don’t elope to Gretna just to escape from my attentions!’
‘No, no, but –’ She lifted her head and looked at him under brows which he guessed rather than saw to be knit. ‘But how can you be a friend of my papa?’ she asked.
‘To tell you the truth, I didn’t know that I had the right to call myself so,’ he replied. ‘He and my family have been upon terms any time these twenty years, I suppose, and I know that he is a close friend of my sister and her husband.’
Miss Abingdon still appeared to be dissatisfied. ‘Then how did you come to visit me?’
‘If I must answer truthfully,’ said his lordship, ‘I found it impossible to refuse your parent’s repeated invitations with the least degree of civility!’
She seemed to find this understandable. She nodded, and said: ‘And you haven’t come to – I mean, you didn’t know –’
‘Until this evening, ma’am,’ said his lordship, ‘I did not know that you existed! My sister, you see, though quite as meddlesome as your father, has by far more tact.’
‘It is the most infamous thing!’ declared Miss Abingdon. ‘He made me think it had all been arranged, and I had nothing to do but encourage your advances! So naturally I made up my mind to marry Tom rather!’ She gave a little spurt of involuntary laughter. ‘Was ever anything so nonsensical? I thought you had been fifty at least, and very likely fat!’
‘I am thirty-five, and I do not think I am fat,’ said his lordship meekly.
She was still more amused. ‘No, I can see you are not! I am afraid I must seem the veriest goose to you! But Papa once thought for a whole month that he would like me to marry Sir Jasper Selkirk, and he is a widower, and has the gout besides! So there is never any telling what absurdity he may have taken into his head, you see.’ A thought occurred to her; she turned more fully towards his lordship, and said: ‘But how comes it that you are acquainted with Tom, and why are you so late? We were expecting you would arrive to dine, and Papa was in such a fume! And Aunt made them keep dinner back until the chickens were quite spoilt!’
‘I cannot sufficiently apologize,’ said Lord Stavely. ‘A series of unfortunate accidents delayed me shockingly, and when I did at last reach Shropshire I found that your papa’s directions were not quite as helpful as I had supposed they would be. In fact, I lost my way.’
‘It is a difficult country,’ agreed Miss Abingdon. ‘And of course Papa can never direct anyone properly. But how came you to meet Tom?’
‘He was awaiting a chaise at the Green Dragon, where, being then so late, I stopped to dine. We fell into conversation, as one does, you know, and he was good enough to confide his intentions to me.’
‘He must have been drunk!’ interpolated Miss Abingdon.
‘Let us say, rather, that he was a trifle worried over the propriety of eloping with you. I did what I could to persuade him against taking so ill-advised a step; he – er – succumbed to the disorder from which he was suffering, and I came here in his stead.’
‘It was excessively kind of you, but I don’t at all know why you should have taken so much trouble for me!’
He smiled. ‘But I could not let you kick your heels in this shrubbery, could I? Besides, I had the liveliest curiosity to meet you, Miss Abingdon!’
She tried to see his face. ‘Are you quizzing me?’ she demanded.
‘Not at all. You will allow that one’s curiosity must be aroused when one learns that a lady is prepared to elope to escape from advances one had had not the least intention of making!’
‘It is quite dreadful!’ she said, blushing. ‘I wonder it did not give you the most shocking disgust of me! But indeed I did not think it would be improper to elope with Tom, because he is almost like a brother, you know – and it would have been such an adventure!’
She ended on a distinctly wistful note. Lord Stavely responded promptly: ‘If your heart is set on the adventure, my chaise is waiting in the lane: you have only to command me!’
Another of her gurgling laughs escaped her. ‘How can you be so absurd? As though I would elope with a stranger!’
