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The Marquis had poured a jugful of hot water into the washbasin. ‘Send him up, man, send him up!’ he said. He dipped his head into the basin, but raised it again to say: ‘My compliments to the lady, and I shall do myself the honour of joining her in half an hour.’
Downstairs in the private parlour Miss Morland had ordered breakfast for half-past nine. When the Marquis at last appeared she was drinking a cup of coffee, and looking as neat and as fresh as though she had had her maid with her, and several trunks of clothes.
The Marquis had been shaved, had had the creases pressed out of his coat, and had contrived to arrange his starched but crumpled cravat in decent folds, but he did not look very fresh. He was pale, and the reckless look had gone from his face, leaving it worried, and rather stern. He came into the parlour, and shut the door behind him, and paused with his hand still on the knob, looking across at Miss Morland with a mixture of remorse and bewilderment in his fine eyes.
Miss Morland’s colour rose, but she said calmly: ‘Good morning, sir. A very fine day, is it not?’
‘I have not noticed whether it is fine or not,’ replied Carlington. ‘I have to beg your pardon, ma’am. I have no very clear recollection of what occurred last night. I was drunk.’
‘Yes,’ said Miss Morland, a slice of bread and butter halfway to her mouth. ‘You explained that at the time. May I give you some coffee?’
He came to the table, and stood looking down at her in even greater bewilderment. ‘Miss Morland, drunk I may have been, but was I so drunk that I forced you to accompany me to this place?’
‘I came with you quite willingly,’ she assured him.
He grasped the back of the chair before him. ‘In God’s name, what induced you to commit so imprudent an action?’
‘You won me,’ she explained. ‘I was the stake set by my brother.’
‘I remember,’ he said. ‘I must have been mad, and he –’ He broke off. ‘Good heavens, ma’am, that you should have been subjected to such an indignity!’
‘It was not very pleasant,’ she agreed. ‘It seemed to me preferable to go away with you than to remain under that roof another hour.’ She paused, and raised her eyes to his face. ‘You have always treated me with a courtesy my brother does not accord me. Besides,’ she added, ‘you assured me that your intentions were honourable.’
‘My intentions!’ he exclaimed.
‘Certainly, sir,’ said Miss Morland, casting down her eyes to hide the gleam of mischief in them. ‘You informed my brother that you would take me to Gretna Green. We are on our way there now.’
The Marquis pulled the chair out from the table, and sank down into it. ‘Gretna Green!’ he said. ‘My dear girl, you don’t know – This is appalling!’
Miss Morland winced a little, but said in a considering voice: ‘A little irregular, perhaps. But if I do not mind that I am sure you need not. You have a reputation for doing odd things, after all.’
He brought his open hand down on the table. ‘If I have, the more reason for you to have refused to come with me on this insane journey! Were you mad, Miss Morland?’
‘Oh, by no means!’ she replied, cutting her bread and butter into thin strips. ‘Of course, it is not precisely what I should have chosen, but you offered me a way of escape from a house in which I was determined not to spend another night.’
‘You must have relatives – someone to whom –’
‘Unfortunately I have no one,’ said Miss Morland composedly.
The Marquis leaned his head in his hand, and said: ‘My poor girl, you do not appear to realize the scandal this escapade will give rise to! I must get you to some place where you will be safe from it.’
Miss Morland bit into one of her strips of bread and butter. ‘As your wife, sir, I shall expect you to protect me from slanderous tongues,’ she said blandly.
The Marquis raised his head, and said with a groan: ‘Helen, the notice of my engagement is in today’s Gazette!’
There was just a moment’s silence. The faintest tremor shook Miss Morland’s hand, and she grew rather white. But when she spoke it was in a voice of mild interest. ‘Dear me, then what can have possessed you to accept my brother’s stake?’
He looked at her with a queer hungriness in his eyes, and answered: ‘I have told you that I was drunk. Drunk, I only knew what I wanted, not what I must not do.’ He got up, and began to walk about the room. ‘No use talking of that. We are in the devil of a fix, my girl.’
‘May I ask,’ enquired Miss Morland, ‘who is the lady to whom you are so lately become engaged?’
‘Miss Fanny Wyse,’ he answered. ‘It is a long-standing arrangement. I can’t, with honour, draw back from it. That accursed notice in the Gazette – It is impossible for me to repudiate it.’
She regarded him rather inscrutably. ‘Are you attached to Miss Wyse, sir?’
‘It is not that!’ he said impatiently. ‘Our parents made this match for us when we were in our cradles. It has been an understood thing. Yesterday I made a formal offer for Miss Wyse’s hand, and she accepted me.’
‘I suppose,’ remarked Miss Morland thoughtfully, ‘that your excesses last night were in the nature of a celebration?’
