Again he seemed to hesitate. A warm hand once more clasped his. ‘P-please let m-me!’ Horatia begged.
His fingers closed round hers. ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Is it because you want to gamble with me? Is that why you offer me your friendship?’
‘N-no, though that w-was what I wanted, to begin with,’ Horatia admitted. ‘But now that you’ve told me all this I feel quite d-differently and I won’t be one of those horrid p-people who believe the worst.’
‘Ah!’ he said, ‘but I am afraid Rule would have something to say to that, my dear. I must tell you that he is not precisely one of my well-wishers. And husbands, you know, have to be obeyed.’
It was on the tip of her tongue to retort that she did not care a fig for Rule either, when it occurred to her that this was scarcely a proper sentiment, and she replied instead: ‘I assure you, sir, Rule d-does not interfere with my f-friendships.’
They had come by this time to the Hercules Pillars Inn by Hyde Park, and only a comparatively short distance remained between them and Grosvenor Square. The rain, which was now coming down in good earnest, beat against the windows of the coach, and the daylight had almost vanished. Horatia could no longer distinguish his lordship with any clarity, but she pressed his hand and said: ‘So that is quite decided, isn’t it?’
‘Quite decided,’ said his lordship.
She withdrew her hand. ‘And I will be v-very friendly and set you down at your house, sir, for it is raining much too hard for you to ride your horse. P-please tell my coachman your direction.’
Ten minutes later the coach drew up in Half-Moon Street. Horatia beckoned up her groom and bade him ride his lordship’s horse on to its stable. ‘And I n-never thanked you, my lord, for rescuing me!’ she said. ‘I am truly very much obliged.’
Lethbridge replied: ‘And so am I, ma’am, for having been granted the opportunity.’ He bowed over her hand. ‘Till our next meeting,’ he said, and stepped down on to the streaming pavement.
The coach moved forward. Lethbridge stood for a moment in the rain, watching it sway up the road towards Curzon Street and then turned with the faintest shrug of his shoulders and walked up the steps of his house.
The door was held for him by the porter. He said respectfully: ‘A wet evening, my lord.’
‘Very,’ said Lethbridge curtly.
‘I should tell your lordship that a – a person has called. He arrived but a short time ahead of your lordship, and I have him downstairs, keeping an eye on him.’
‘Send him up,’ Lethbridge said, and went into the room that overlooked the street.
Here he was joined in a few moments by his visitor, who was ushered into the room by the disapproving porter. He was a burly individual, dressed in a frieze coat, with a slouch hat grasped in one dirty hand. He grinned when he saw Lethbridge and touched his finger to his forelock, ‘Hoping all’s bowman, your honour, and the leddy none the worse.’
Lethbridge did not reply, but taking a key from his pocket unlocked one of the drawers of his desk and drew out a purse. This he tossed across the room to his guest, saying briefly: ‘Take it, and be off with you. And remember, my friend, to keep your mouth shut.’
‘God love yer, may I shove the tumbler if ever I was one to squeak!’ said the frieze-clad gentleman indignantly. He shook the contents of the purse out on to the table and began to tell over the coins.
Lethbridge’s lip curled. ‘You can spare yourself the pains. I pay what I promised.’
The man grinned more knowingly than ever. ‘Ah, you’re a peevy cull, you are. And when I works with a flash, why, I’m careful, see?’ He told over the rest of the money, scooped it all up in one capacious paw, and bestowed it in his pocket. ‘Right it is,’ he observed genially, ‘and easy earned. I’ll let myself out of the jigger.’
Lethbridge followed him into the narrow hall. ‘No doubt,’ he said. ‘But I will give myself the pleasure of seeing you off the premises.’
‘God love yer, do you take me for a mill ken?’ demanded the visitor, affronted. ‘Lordy, them as is on the rattling lay don’t take to slumming kens!’ With which lofty but somewhat obscure remark he took himself off down the steps of the house and slouched away towards Piccadilly.
Lord Lethbridge shut the door and stood for a moment in frowning silence. He was aroused from his abstraction by the approach of his valet, who came up the stairs from the basement to attend him and remarked with concern that the rain had wetted his lordship’s coat.
The frown cleared. ‘So I perceive,’ Lethbridge said. ‘But it was undoubtedly worth it.’
Eight
It was past five o’clock when Horatia arrived in Grosvenor Square, and upon hearing the time from the porter, she gave a small shriek of dismay, and fled upstairs. In the upper hall she almost collided with Rule, already dressed for the opera. ‘Oh, my l-lord, such an adventure!’ she said, breathlessly. ‘I am horribly l-late, or I would tell you now. Do p-pray forgive me! I w-won’t be above a moment!’
Rule watched her vanish into her own room, and proceeded on his way downstairs. Apparently having very little dependence on his wife’s notions of time, he sent a message to the kitchens that dinner was to be set back half an hour, and strolled into one of the saloons to await Horatia’s reappearance. The fact that the opera began at seven did not seem to worry him in the least, and not even when the hands of the gilt clock on the mantelpiece stood at a quarter to six did he betray any sign of impatience. Below stairs the cook, hovering anxiously between a couple of fat turkey poults on the spits and a dish of buttered crab, called down uncouth curses on the heads of all women.
But by five minutes to six the Countess, a vision of gauze, lace, and plumes, took her seat at the dinner-table opposite her husband, and announced with a winning smile that she was not so very late after all. ‘And if it is G-Gluck, I d-don’t mind m-missing some of it,’ she remarked. ‘But I m-must tell you about my adventure. Only fancy, M-Marcus, I have been held up by highwaymen!’
‘Held up by highwaymen?’ repeated the Earl, somewhat surprised.
Horatia, her mouth full of buttered crab, nodded vigorously.
‘My dear child, when and where?’
‘Oh, by the Halfway House when I was c-coming home from Laney’s. It was f-full daylight too and they t-took my purse. But there wasn’t much in it.’
‘That was fortunate,’ said the Earl. ‘But I don’t think I entirely understand. Was this daring robbery effected without any opposition being offered by my heroic servants?’
‘W-well, Jeffries had not brought his p-pistols, you see. The coachman explained it all to me afterwards.’
‘Ah!’ said the Earl. ‘Then no doubt he will carry his goodness far enough to explain it all to me as well.’
Horatia, who was in the act of serving herself from a dish of artichokes, looked up quickly at that, and said: ‘P-please don’t be disagreeable about it, Rule. It was m-my fault for staying so long with L-Laney. And I don’t think Jeffries could have d-done anything even with a b-blunderbuss because there were a n-number of them, and they all shot pistols!’
‘Oh!’ said Rule, his eyes narrowing a little. ‘How many, in fact?’
‘W-well, three.’
His lordship’s brows rose. ‘You begin to interest me rather profoundly, Horry. You were held up by three men –’
‘Yes, and they were all m-masked.’
‘I thought perhaps they might be,’ said his lordship. ‘But do you tell me that the only thing you lost to these – er – desperadoes – was your purse?’
‘Yes, but one of them t-tried to pull a ring off my finger. I d-dare say they would have taken everything I had only that in the very n-nick of time I was rescued. W-was not that romantic, sir?’
‘It was certainly fortunate,’ said the Earl. ‘May I ask who they were who performed this gallant deed?’
‘It was Lord L-Lethbridge!’ replied Horatia, bringing out the name with a slightly defiant ring.
For a moment the Earl did not say anything at all. Then he reached out his hand for the decanter of claret, and refilled his glass. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘So he too was in Knightsbridge? What a singular coincidence!’
‘Yes, w-wasn’t it?’ agreed Horatia, glad to find that her announcement had not provoked any signs of violent disapproval.
‘Quite – er – providential,’ said his lordship. ‘And did he put all these armed men to flight single-handed?’
‘Yes, quite. He c-came g-galloping up, and the highwaymen ran away.’
The Earl inclined his head with an expression of courteous interest. ‘And then?’ he said gently.
‘Oh, th-then I asked him if he would d-drive home with me, and I must tell you, Rule, he was not at all inclined to at f-first, but I insisted, so he d-did.’ She drew a breath. ‘And p-perhaps I ought to tell you, also, that he and I have d-decided to be friends.’
Across the table the Earl’s calm eyes met hers. ‘I am of course honoured by this confidence, my dear. Am I expected to make any remark?’
Horatia blurted out: ‘W-well, Lord Lethbridge t-told me you would not l-like it.’
‘Ah, did he indeed?’ murmured his lordship. ‘And did he give any reason for my supposed dislike?’
‘N-no, but he told m-me that he was not a p-proper person for me to know, and that m-made me excessively sorry for him, and I said I did not c-care what the world said, and I would know him.’
The Earl touched his lips with his napkin. ‘I see. And if – let us suppose – I were to take exception to this friendship – ?’
Horatia prepared for battle. ‘W-why should you, sir?’
‘I imagine that his lordship’s rare foresight prompted him to tell you my reasons,’ replied Rule a little dryly.
‘They seem to m-me very stupid and – yes, unkind!’ declared Horatia.
‘I was afraid they might,’ said Rule.
‘And,’ said Horatia with spirit, ‘it is no g-good telling me I m-mustn’t know Lord L-Lethbridge, because I shall!’
‘Would it be any good, I wonder, if I were to request you – quite mildly, you understand – not to make a friend of Lethbridge?’
‘No,’ said Horatia. ‘I l-like him, and I won’t be ruled by odious p-prejudice.’
‘Then if you have finished your dinner, my love, let us start for the opera,’ said Rule tranquilly.
Horatia got up from the table feeling that the wind had been taken out of her sails.
The work being performed at the Italian Opera House, of which his lordship was one of the patrons, was Iphigénie en Aulide, a composition that had enjoyed a considerable success in Paris, where it was first produced. The Earl and Countess of Rule arrived midway through the first act, and took their seats in one of the green boxes. The house was a blaze of light, and crowded with persons of fashion who, while having no particular taste for music, all flocked to the King’s Theatre, some with the mere intention of being in the mode, others for the purpose of displaying expensive toilets, and a few, like the Earl of March, who sat with his glass levelled at the stage, in the hope of discovering some new dancer of surpassing attractions. Amongst this frippery throng were also to be seen the virtuosi, of whom Mr Walpole, comfortably ensconced in Lady Hervey’s box, was of the most notable. In the pit a number of young gentlemen congregated, who spent the greater part of their time in ogling the ladies in the boxes. The Macaronis were represented by Mr Fox, looking heavy-eyed, as well he might, having sat till three in the afternoon playing hazard at Almack’s; by my Lord Carlisle, whose round youthful countenance was astonishingly embellished by a patch cut in the form of a cabriolet; and of course by Mr Crosby Drelincourt, with a huge nosegay stuck in his coat, and a spy-glass set in the head of his long cane. The Macaronis, mincing, simpering, sniffing at crystal scent-bottles, formed a startling contrast to the Bucks, the young sparks who, in defiance of their affected contemporaries, had flown to another extreme of fashion. No extravagance of costume distinguished these gentlemen, unless a studied slovenliness could be called such, and their amusements were of a violent nature, quite at variance with your true Macaroni’s notions of entertainment. These Bloods were to be found at any prize-fight, or cockfight, and when these diversions palled could always while away an evening in masquerading abroad in the guise of footpads, to the terror of all honest townsfolk. Lord Winwood, who was engrossed throughout the first act of the opera in a heated argument respecting the chances of his pet bruiser, the Fairy, against Mr Farnaby’s protégé, the Bloomsbury Tiger, at Broughton’s Amphitheatre next evening, was himself something of a Blood, and had spent the previous night in the Roundhouse, having been moved to join a party of light-hearted gentlemen at the sport of Boxing the Watch. As a result of this strenuous pastime his lordship had an interesting bruise over one eye, a circumstance that induced Mr Drelincourt to utter a squeak of horror on sight of him.
When the curtain presently fell on the first act the real business of the evening might be said to begin. Ladies beckoned from boxes, gentlemen in the pit went to pay their court to them, and a positive buzz of conversation arose.
Rule’s box was very soon full of Horatia’s friends, and his lordship, ousted from his wife’s side by the ardent Mr Dashwood, suppressed a yawn and strolled away in search of more congenial company. He was presently to be seen in the parterre, chuckling at something Mr Selwyn seemed to have sighed wearily into his ear, and just as he was about to move towards a group of men who had hailed him, he chanced to look up at the boxes, and saw something that apparently made him change his mind. Three minutes later he entered Lady Massey’s box.
Since his marriage he had not singled Lady Massey out in public, so that it was with triumph mixed with surprise that she held out her hand to him. ‘My lord! – You know Sir Willoughby, I believe? And Miss Cloke, of course,’ she said, indicating two of her companions. ‘How do you like the Iphigénie, sir? Lord Lethbridge and I are agreed that Marinozza is sadly out of voice. What do you say?’
‘To tell you the truth,’ he replied, ‘I only arrived in time to see her exit.’ He turned. ‘Ah, Lethbridge!’ he said in his soft, sleepy way. ‘What a fortunate rencontre! I apprehend that I stand in your debt, do I not?’
Lady Massey looked sharply round, but the Earl had moved to where Lethbridge stood at the back of the box, and Sir Willoughby Monk’s stout form obscured her view of him.
Lethbridge bowed deeply. ‘I should be happy indeed to think so, my lord,’ he said with exquisite politeness.
‘Oh, but surely!’ insisted Rule, gently twirling his eyeglass. ‘I have been held quite spell-bound by the recountal of your – what shall I call it? – your knight-errantry this very afternoon.’
Lethbridge’s teeth gleamed in a smile. ‘That, my lord? A mere nothing, believe me.’
‘But I am quite lost in admiration, I assure you,’ said Rule. ‘To tackle three – it was three, was it not? Ah yes! – to tackle three desperate villains single-handed argues an intrepidity – or should I say a daring? – you were always daring, were you not, my dear Lethbridge? – a daring, then, that positively takes one’s breath away.’
‘To have succeeded,’ said Lethbridge, still smiling, ‘in depriving your lordship of breath is a triumph in itself.’
‘Ah!’ sighed the Earl. ‘But you will make me emulative, my dear Lethbridge. More of these deeds of daring and I shall really have to see if I cannot – er – deprive you of breath.’
Lethbridge moved his hand as though to lay it on his sword-hilt. No sword hung at his side, but the Earl, watching this movement through his glass, said in the most friendly way imaginable: ‘Precisely, Lethbridge! How well we understand each other!’
‘Nevertheless, my lord,’ Lethbridge replied, ‘you must permit me to say that you might fin
d that task a difficult one.’
‘But somehow I feel – not entirely beyond my power,’ said his lordship, and turned back to pay his respects to Lady Massey.
In the box opposite the crowd had begun to grow thinner, only Lady Amelia Pridham, Mr Dashwood, and Viscount Winwood remaining. Mr Dashwood having borne the Viscount company on his adventures of the previous night, Lady Amelia was scolding them both for their folly when Mr Drelincourt entered the box.
Mr Drelincourt wanted to speak with his cousin Rule, and was quite put out to find him absent. Nor was his annoyance assuaged by the naughty behaviour of my Lady Rule, who, feeling that she had a score to pay off, chanted softly:
‘The Muse in prancing up and down
Has found out something pretty,
With little hat, and hair dressed high –’
Mr Drelincourt, reddening under his paint, interrupted this popular ditty. ‘I came to see my cousin, ma’am!’
‘He isn’t here,’ said Horatia. ‘C-Crosby, your wig is l-like the last verse of the song. You know, it runs like this: Five pounds of hair they wear behind, the ladies to delight, O! – only it doesn’t delight us at all.’
‘Vastly diverting, ma’am,’ said Mr Drelincourt, a little shrilly. ‘I quite thought I had seen Rule beside you in this box.’
‘Yes, b-but he has walked out for a while,’ replied Horatia. ‘Oh, and you c-carry a fan! Lady Amelia, only see! Mr Drelincourt has a fan m-much prettier than mine!’
Mr Drelincourt shut the fan with a snap. ‘Walked out, has he? Upon my word, you are monstrously used, cousin, and you a bride!’ He peered through the glass in the head of his cane at the boxes opposite, and uttered a titter. ‘What fair charmer can have lured him – Good God, the Massey! Oh, I beg pardon, cousin – I should not have spoken! A jest – the merest jest, I assure you! I had not the least intention – la, do but observe the creature in the puce satin over there!’