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‘Why are you here?’ he demanded. ‘What purpose can you have had in going apart with the Regent? Careless of your reputation I know you to be, but I had not thought it possible that you could behave with such imprudence!’
She was stung into replying: ‘How could I help going with him when he pressed me to as he did? What was I to say? Mrs Scattergood was in the card-room; you were not present. How could I know what I should do or say when no less a person than the Prince-Regent requested my company? These reproaches might have been spared! You cannot know the circumstances. Say no more! You may think me what you please: I am sure I do not care!’
‘No,
’ said the Earl with strong feeling, ‘I am well aware of that at least! But while I have authority over you I must and will censure such conduct.’
She managed to get up, though her knees still shook. ‘It does not signify talking. You are determined to despise me.’
There was a moment’s silence. ‘I determined to despise you?’ said the Earl in an altered tone. ‘What nonsense is this?’
‘I have not forgotten what you said to me that day – at Cuckfield.’
‘Do you imagine I have forgotten that day?’ said the Earl sternly. ‘Your opinion of me, which you so freely expressed, is not likely to be soon wiped from my memory, I assure you.’
She found to her dismay that tears were rolling down her cheeks. She averted her face, and said in a broken whisper: ‘My carriage – Mrs Scattergood – I must go home!’
‘A message shall be conveyed to Mrs Scattergood when she leaves the card-room,’ he said. ‘I will take you home as soon as you are sufficiently recovered.’ He paused, and added: ‘You must not cry, Clorinda. That is a worse reproach to me than any I have bestowed on you.’
‘I am not crying,’ replied Miss Taverner, groping in her reticule for her handkerchief. ‘It is just that I have a headache.’
‘I see,’ said the Earl.
Miss Taverner dried her eyes, and said huskily: ‘I am sorry you should have the troublesome office of taking me home. I am quite ready. But if only Mrs Scattergood could be fetched –’
‘To summon Mrs Scattergood from the card-table would give rise to the sort of public curiosity I am endeavouring to avoid,’ he replied. ‘Come! Your mistrust of me surely cannot be so great that you will not allow me to convey you a few hundred yards in your own carriage.’
She raised her head at that. ‘If I did indeed say that on that hateful day I beg your pardon,’ she added. ‘You have never given me – would never give me, I am persuaded – the least cause for mistrusting you.’ She saw the frown in his eyes, and wondered at it. ‘You are still angry.You don’t believe me when I say that I am sorry.’
He put out his hand quickly. ‘My dear child! Of course I believe you. If I looked angry you must blame circumstance, which has forced me to –’ He broke off, and smiled at her. ‘Shall we put the memory of that day at Cuckfield out of mind?’
‘If you please,’ whispered Miss Taverner. ‘I am aware – have been aware almost from the start – that I ought not to have driven myself from London as I did.’
‘Miss Taverner,’ he said, ‘I am seriously alarmed. Are you sure that you are yourself ?’
She smiled, but shook her head. ‘I am not sufficiently myself to quarrel with you to-night, provoke me how you may.’
‘Poor Clorinda! I won’t provoke you any more, I promise,’ he said, and drawing her hand through his arm, led her to the door into the Chinese Gallery and so out to her carriage.
Twenty-One
MR BRUMMELL, WHO HAD ELECTED TO STROLL ACROSS FROM his lodgings on the Steyne to the Earl of Worth’s house on the morning after the party at the Pavilion, set the red Pekin sweetmeat-box of carved lacquer down on the table with tender care, and sighed. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I am inclined to hazard the opinion that it is quite genuine. Ch’ien Lung. Pray remove it from my sight.’
The Earl restored the box to its place in the cabinet. ‘I found it in Lewes, of all unlikely places. Charles will not allow it to be worth a guinea.’
‘Charles’s opinions on old lac leave me supremely indifferent,’ said Brummell. He crossed one leg, beautifully sheathed in a pale biscuit-coloured pantaloon, over the other, and leaned his head against the back of the chair to look lazily up at Worth. ‘Well, I have seen the Great Man,’ he said. ‘You are quite out of favour, you know.’
The Earl gave a short laugh. ‘Yes, until he wants my judgment on a horse or a brand of snuff. Did you come to tell me that?’
‘Not at all. I came to tell you that he has taken a chill for which he apparently holds you responsible.’
‘I can only say that I hope it may prove fatal,’ replied the Earl.
‘He seems to think that probable,’ said Brummell. ‘I left him on the point of being cupped. I am not unreasonable; if he likes to make being cupped a hobby it is quite his own affair; but he had the deplorable bad taste to tell me how much blood he had had taken from him these thirty years. It will come to this, you know, that I shall be obliged to drop him. I begin to think that I made a great mistake to bring him into fashion at all.’
‘He doesn’t do you much credit, certainly,’ remarked the Earl with the glimmer of a smile.
‘On the contrary, he does me considerable credit,’ said Brummell. ‘You must have forgotten what he was like before I took him up. He was used to flaunt abroad in green velvet and spangles. Which reminds me, you will like to know that I punished him for you after you had left last night. He actually asked my opinion of that coat he was wearing.’ He inhaled a pinch of snuff, and delicately dusted his fingers. ‘I thought he was going to burst into tears,’ he said reflectively.
