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‘I am glad that you have not got raven hair, and an air of consequence,’ he said. ‘I am going to take you home, my dear.’
Her fingers tightened involuntarily on his.
‘Oh no!’ she whispered. ‘Oh, please do not!’
He held her hand comfortingly.
‘Not to marry Mr Poulton, I promise you.’
‘But if you take me home they will try to make me!’
‘You have my word for it that they will not.’
‘But – but why won’t they?’ demanded Miss Wetherby, bewildered.
‘Because I shall tell your mamma that I don’t want you to marry Mr Poulton,’ said the Earl coolly.
‘Mamma won’t attend to you! Why should she?’
‘Because –’ the Earl broke off. ‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘Believe me, you shall not again be asked to marry Mr Poulton.’
Miss Wetherby’s candid blue eyes searched his.
‘I don’t understand how you mean to stop Mamma and Charlton,’ she said. ‘But if you say I must – I will go home.’
It was rather a woebegone figure that the Earl presently handed into his chaise, and at the end of the long drive back to London, when the horses were pulled up outside a house in Mount Street, Miss Wetherby said wistfully:
‘Shall I ever see you again? You have been so very kind to me!’
‘You will see me tomorrow,’ promised the Earl.
‘But you will be on your way to Bath!’
‘I am not going to Bath. I am coming to pay a call in Mount Street.’
‘Oh!’ gasped Miss Wetherby, her brow clearing as though by magic.
‘And you will speak to Mamma?’
‘Immediately.’
‘Then I think,’ said Miss Wetherby, ‘that I will slip in by the door in the area, so that Mamma need not see me in Harry’s clothes.’
‘That would be very shocking.’ The Earl chuckled. ‘Er – how did you trifle with that lady?’
Miss
Wetherby blushed.
He opened the area gate for her, kissed her hand, and watched her go down the steps and softly open the door at the bottom. When she had disappeared from sight, he turned, and mounted the steps to the front door, and knocked.
Half-an-hour later Miss Wetherby, anxiously awaiting events in her bedchamber, heard Mamma’s wide skirts rustling on the stairs, and braced herself to face the inevitable scene.
Lady Charlton came in without ceremony, and, to her daughter’s amazement, engulfed her in a fervent embrace.
‘Dearest, sweetest child!’ she cried. ‘Oh, was there ever anything so – to be sure, it was very wrong of you to – but there – we shall not speak of it! Reveley, of all people in the world! I hardly know whether I am on my head or my heels!’
‘Mamma, I must tell you that it is useless to ask me to marry Mr Poulton.’
