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She could not help laughing. His eyes began to dance; he said outrageously: ‘You must let me tell you that in all my experience of heiresses I have never till to-day encountered one who did not give me a nightmare. You have restored my faith in miracles, Miss Taverner!’
‘If you expose yourself any further, Miss Taverner will ask to have her carriage spoken for immediately,’ observed the Earl.
‘Not at all,’ she replied. ‘I am happy to think I do not give Captain Audley nightmares.’ She moved towards the door. ‘You will have so much to say to each other! I will leave you.’
She was gone on the words. Captain Audley closed the door behind her and turned to look at the Earl. ‘Julian, you dog! you’ve kept her mighty dark! Are you engaged to her?’
‘No,’ said Worth. ‘I am not.’
‘You must be mad!’ declared the Captain. ‘Don’t tell me you mean to let all that wealth and beauty slip through your fingers! I have a very good mind to try for her myself.’
‘Do so, by all means.You won’t succeed, but it may keep you out of mischief.’
‘Ah, don’t be too sure!’ grinned the Captain. ‘You know nothing about it, my boy.’
‘I know a great deal about it,’ retorted Worth.‘I am her guardian.’
‘Well, upon my word!’ exclaimed Captain Audley. ‘Am I to understand you would forbid the banns?’
‘You are,’ said Worth.
The Captain perched himself on the edge of the table. ‘Very well, Gretna Green let it be! My dear fellow, you’re in love with her yourself ! Shall I go away again?’
Worth smiled. ‘Your vulgarity is only equalled by your conceit, Char
les. Tell me now, how have things been with you?’
‘All in good time,’ said the Captain. ‘First you shall tell me whether I am to hold off from the heiress.’
‘Not at all; why should you? I think you may be quite useful to me. The heiress has a brother.’
‘I am not the least interested in her brother,’ objected the Captain.
‘Possibly not, but I have a considerable interest in him,’ said Worth. He looked the Captain over meditatively. ‘I think, Charles – I am nearly sure – that you are going to become very friendly with young Peregrine, if he will let you. Unfortunately, he does not like me, and his prejudice may extend to you as well.’
‘Alas, alas! Why do you want him to like me?’
‘Because,’ said the Earl slowly, ‘I need someone to be in his confidence whom I can trust.’
‘Good God! why?’ demanded the Captain in lively astonishment.
‘Peregrine Taverner,’ said Worth, with a certain deliberation, ‘is an extremely wealthy young man, and if anything were to happen to him his sister would inherit the greater part of his fortune.’
‘Very well, let us by all means drown him in the lake,’ said the Captain gaily. ‘Plainly, he must be disposed of.’
‘He is being disposed of,’ said the Earl, without the least trace of emotion in his level voice. ‘For the past five days he has been inhaling poisoned snuff.’
Fifteen
THE ARRIVAL OF CAPTAIN CHARLES AUDLEY WAS A HAPPY circumstance, for the departure to London on that day of Mr Brummell, Lord Petersham, and both the Marleys had produced all the inevitable languor attendant on the breaking-up of a party. The Taverners, with Miss Fairford and Lord Alvan-ley, were engaged to remain at Worth over the week-end, but although an Assembly at a neighbouring town, where some militia were quartered, a day’s hunting, and a card-party were promised, there was an insipidity, a flatness, that was hard to shake off. The appearance, however, of Captain Audley banished every feeling of regret for the absence of four of the original members of the party. His gaiety was infectious, and his manners, for all their oddity, were so generally charming as to render him always acceptable. His having but just come from the Peninsula made him first in consequence; the ladies hung on his lips, and the gentlemen, in a quieter fashion, were very ready to hear all the information he could give them of the state of affairs in Spain. The only respect in which he fell short of the female expectations at least was his refusal to describe the act of dashing gallantry to which it was felt that his wound must have been due. He would not talk of it, insisted that the wound was not the result of any noble action at all, and beyond learning that it had been incurred at the affair of Arroyo del Molinos upon the twenty-eighth day of October, and that he had been lying in hospital ever since (which Lady Albinia and Mrs Scattergood were aware of already), they could discover nothing about it. But on any other subject he was ready to converse, and his arrival was soon felt to be an advantage. He paid unblushing court to Miss Taverner, was kind to Miss Fairford, quizzed his aunt and cousin, took Peregrine secretly over to a dingy tavern in the nearest town to witness a cock-fight, and was voted in less than no time to be a most amiable young man. He was not above being pleased; he could derive as much enjoyment from making up a pool of quadrille to oblige his aunt as from playing whist for pound points; and found as much to amuse him at the local Assembly as he would have found at Almack’s.
‘You are blessed with the happiest nature, Captain Audley,’ Miss Taverner said smilingly. ‘Whatever you do, you are pleased to be doing, and your spirits infect everyone else with the same liveliness.’
‘If I could not be pleased in such company I must be an insufferable fellow!’ he replied warmly.
‘You are certainly a flatterer.’
‘Only so modest a creature as yourself could think so.’
