This sad little speech brought the tears to Harriet’s eyes, and she took one of Belinda’s hands in hers, and clasped it, saying: ‘No, no, do not say so! The Duke and I will always stand your friends, I promise!’
‘Yes, but it is not the same,’ said Belinda unanswerably.
The Duke could only reiterate his determination to find Mr Mudgley. Belinda smiled gratefully at him, but without conviction, and, catching Gideon’s eye, he rose to take his leave.
‘Well,’ said Gideon, as they walked towards Bridge Street together, ‘she is certainly a nonpareil, Adolphus, and I think you are wasting your time. She is destined to become a Covent Garden nun.’
The Duke compressed his lips, returning no answer. Captain Ware glanced quizzically down at him. ‘I have offended you, Adolphus?’
‘No. I expected you to say something of the sort. You have never the least sympathy for those born in less easy circumstances than yourself – witness your contempt of Matt!’
Captain Ware blinked. ‘Phew! What can I do to atone?’
‘Find Mudgley for me!’ said the Duke tartly.
‘Yes, your Grace!’ said Captain Ware, in servile accents.
This made the Duke laugh. He slid a hand in his cousin’s arm, pressing it slightly, and saying: ‘I have learnt some few things in this week that I never knew before, you see, Gideon. Did you ever think how it would be to be without a single relative in the world?’
‘I did not, I own. I thought you had done so, however, and envied those in that happy state.’
‘I have discovered my mistake,’ replied the Duke.
Gideon could not help smiling at this. He said: ‘I hope you will still think so when my father arrives in Bath!’
This event took place that evening, just as Nettlebed had brought sherry and Madeira into the private parlour, drawn the blinds and made up the fire. The door was suddenly opened, and Lord Lionel stalked into the room, before the trembling waiter had had time to announce him.
His lordship, having passed through every stage of anxiety, was suffering from the inevitable reaction, and looked to be in anything but a conciliatory mood. His eagle-glance swept past his son and became fixed upon the Duke. ‘Ha!’ he ejaculated explosively. ‘So you have seen fit to inform us of your whereabouts, Sale! Extremely obliging of you! And now perhaps you will have the goodness to explain the meaning of this caper?’
The Duke, rising quickly from his seat by the fire, fancied that he could detect fresh lines on his uncle’s face. He went forward, holding out his hands, and saying: ‘Dear sir, I am so very glad to see you! Forgive me!’
Lord Lionel champed upon an invisible bit. With all the air of a man constrained against his will, he took the outstretched hands, and gripped them. ‘I want none of your cajolery, Sale!’ he announced, his penetrating gaze searching the Duke’s face. ‘I do not know what the devil you mean by behaving in this way. I am very angry with you, very angry, indeed! How dared you, sir?’
The Duke smiled up at him. ‘Indeed, I don’t know how I dared! But I did not mean the fools to worry you with my capers!’
‘Let me tell you that I have better things to do than to worry over your conduct!’ said his lordship inaccurately. ‘Are you quite well, Gilly? Yes, I see that you are. It would have served you right if I had found you laid down on your bed with one of your sickly turns, let me tell you! Where have you been, and what the devil are you doing in this place? Let me have a plain answer, if you please!’
‘Oh, I have been in all manner of places, sir, trying to discover if I am a man, or only a duke!’ responded the Duke.
‘Balderdash!’ pronounced his lordship comprehensively. He released the Duke’s hands, and discovered Nettlebed’s presence in the room. His exacerbated feelings found a certain measure of relief in the utterance of a severe rebuke to him for having left Sale House without notice or permission. He then turned his attention to his son, and having condemned his manners and morals in a few blistering sentences, felt a good deal better. He eyed the real culprit measuringly. ‘I know very well when you have been in mischief, sir!’ he said grimly. ‘Don’t think to fob me off, or to hide behind Gideon, for I mean to have the truth! If you were but five years younger –’
‘No, no!’ protested the Duke, his face alive with laughter. ‘You never flogged me after I was sixteen, sir!’
‘I collect,’ said Lord Lionel, with a fulminating glance cast at his son, ‘that you mean to tell me that it was I who drove you into this nonsensical affair?’
‘To tell you the truth, sir,’ said the Duke, coaxing him into a chair by the fire, ‘I do not mean to tell you anything at all! Oh, no, don’t frown at me, and pray do not be so angry with me! You see, I have taken no hurt, and I promise I will not cause you such anxiety again. Nettlebed, be so good as to tell them to lay covers for three, and fetch another wine-glass for his lordship!’
‘I do not dine here,’ stated his lordship, his brows still alarmingly knit, ‘and nor do you, Gilly! I do not know why, when you have a house very conveniently placed, you must needs install yourself at a common inn: I daresay it is of a piece with all the rest! You will accompany me to Cheyney at once!’
Gideon leaned his shoulders against the wall, and waited with interest to hear what his cousin would reply to this command.
‘Oh, no, do stay to dine with me!’ said the Duke. ‘I must explain to you that I have guests staying at Cheyney – rather odd guests, perhaps you may think!’
‘Yes, I do think it!’ said Lord Lionel. ‘I have already been to Cheyney, Sale! I am well aware that it is no longer any concern of mine if you choose to fill your house with a parcel of vulgar tradesmen, and to give an overgrown schoolboy carte blanche to shoot every bird you have on the place, but I should be glad to know where you acquired your taste for low company!’
‘The thing is,’ replied the Duke confidentially, ‘that I haven’t a taste for low company, sir. I owed Mamble some degree of extraordinary civility, for I fear I did aid and abet his son to escape from him.’
‘I do not know what you are talking about!’ complained his lordship. ‘And if it is your notion of extraordinary civility to invite a man to stay in your house when you are not there to entertain him, I can only suppose that I have failed, in all these years, to teach you common courtesy! I am ashamed of you, Gilly!’
‘But I couldn’t endure him, sir! It is very bad, but what was I to do, when he would toadeat me so, and there was no getting away from him? He means only to stay there for a day or two, because I promised Tom he should have some shooting. Should you object very much to entertaining him for me?’
‘Yes, I should!’ barked Lord Lionel. ‘You will stop talking flummery to me, and come to Cheyney!’
The Duke poured out some sherry into the glass Nettlebed had just brought into the room, and handed it to his uncle. ‘No, I cannot spare the time to go to Cheyney now,’ he said. ‘I am removing to the Christopher, however. Did you bring my baggage with you from London, dear sir?’
‘Yes, I did, and it is awaiting you at Cheyney. Now, Gilly –’
‘Then it must be sent to the Christopher to-morrow,’ said the Duke calmly. ‘It is very tiresome! I am so sadly in need of a change of raiment!’
‘Gilly!’ said his lordship awfully.
‘Yes, sir?’
Lord Lionel glared at him. ‘Gilly, what is the matter with you?’ he demanded. ‘What made you do it, boy? Be a little plain with me, I beg of you!’
The Duke sat down beside him, and laid a hand on his knee. ‘It is very ridiculous,’ he said, in his soft voice. ‘I found it a dead bore to be Duke of Sale, and I thought I would try how it would be to be nobody in particular.’
‘Upon my word! I should have thought you would have had more sense!’
‘But I hadn’t, sir.’
Lord Lionel gripped the hand on his knee. ‘Now, my boy, don’t be afraid to own the truth to me! You know I have nothing but your welfare at heart! If you went off on this start because of anything I may have said to you – in short, if you did not like the arrangement I had made for you, there was not the least need for you to have offered for Lady Harriet! I never had any desire to force you into what you had a distaste for. Indeed, if your mind misgives you – though it will be a damned awkward business! – I will see to it –’
‘No, sir, I am very happy in my engagement,’ the Duke interrupted. ‘Much happier than I ever thought to be! She is an angel!’
Lord Lionel was slightly taken aback. He stared at the Duke under his busy brows, and remarked dryly: ‘This is a different tune from the one you sang at Sale, when I first broached the matter to you!’
‘I was not then aware what a treasure you had chosen for me, sir. But I told you I had been learning some few things of late.’
Lord Lionel grunted. ‘Well, if you have learnt to have a little more common-sense, I am glad of it, but why you must needs run off without a word to anyone is past my understanding! If you had wanted to go out of town, I am sure it was quite your own affair, and you might have done so without question.’
Gideon spoke. ‘But not, sir, without Nettlebed, Chigwell, Borrowdale, Turvey, and the rest of his retinue.’
‘You,’ said Lord Lionel crushingly, ‘have behaved throughout in an insolent, heedless, and callous fashion, and may now have the grace to remain silent!’
‘There is much in what you say, sir,’ admitted Gideon, with a wry twist to his mouth.
‘Well, well, that will do!’ said his lordship, mollified. ‘There is no harm done, after all, and I shall not enquire too particularly into what Gilly has been doing. I am not one of those who expect a young man to lead the life of a saint! You are looking very well, Gilly, very well indeed, and that, I must own, makes up for everything!’
The Duke’s hand turned under his, and clasped it. ‘You are very much too good to me, sir, and I don’t know what I deserve for causing you so much anxiety.’
‘Pooh! nonsense!’ said his lordship testily. ‘I know your coaxing ways, boy! Don’t think to cozen me with them! But it is the outside of enough, when you give every idle gossiper in town cause to say that Gideon has murdered you! Not but what it was quite his own fault, and I have no sympathy to waste on him, none at all!’
‘But I cannot have you so cross with Gideon,’ said the Duke gently. ‘He is quite my best friend, you know, and, besides, what could he do when I had sworn him to secrecy? And when he heard that I was in a scrape he came to rescue me from it, so it is very hard that he should be scolded now!’
‘What scrape have you been in?’ demanded Lord Lionel.
‘Well, I didn’t mean to tell you, sir, but I think you are bound to hear of it, for rather too many people know it. I was so foolish as to allow myself to be kidnapped, by some rascals who thought to hold me to ransom.’
‘That is just what I had feared might happen!’ Lord Lionel exclaimed. ‘All this rubbishing talk of finding out whether you are a man or only a duke, and you are no more fit to fend for yourself than a child in short coats! Well, I hope it may be a lesson to you!’
‘Yes, sir,’ said the Duke demurely, ‘but, as it chances, I did fend for myself.’
‘Gilly, don’t tell me you let the villains bleed you!’ exclaimed his lordship.
‘No, sir, I burned down my prison, and came off scatheless.’
Lord Lionel stared at him in great surprise. ‘Are you trying to humbug me, Gilly?’ he asked suspiciously.
The Duke laughed. ‘No, sir. I thought I had to bestir myself, for I didn’t know that Gideon was coming hotfoot to the rescue. They were not very clever villains, perhaps, which was fortunate. But they did me a great deal of good!’
‘Did you a great deal of good?’ exclaimed Lord Lionel. ‘What nonsense you talk, boy! How came it about? Tell me the whole!’
If the Duke did not comply exactly with this request, he told Lord Lionel enough to astonish and shock him very much. But it was evident that he was also pleased to think that his nephew had behaved with such spirit, and he forgot, in his interest in the affair, to enquire how Gideon had come by the knowledge that Gilly had been kidnapped. But he was not at all pleased to learn that nothing had been done to lay the villains by the heels, and roundly denounced such foolish clemency. ‘They must be brought to book!’ he declared. ‘You will inform the magistrates, Gilly: you should have done so before you left the district, of course!’
‘No, sir, I think not,’ the Duke replied tranquilly.
‘What you think is of no consequence!’ said his lordship. ‘A pretty state of affairs it would be if all such rascals were to go unpunished! You owe a duty to society, as I have been for ever telling you! Now, do not argue with me, I beg of you!’
‘Certainly not, sir: you know I can never bear to do so! I am very sorry for society, but my mind is quite made up. I beg your pardon, but I could not endure to have such a stupid story made known to the world!’
Lord Lionel had been about to scarify him soundly, but this utterance gave him pause. He frowned over it for a moment or two, and at last said grudgingly: ‘Well, there is something in what you say, but I cannot like it! And there is another thing, Gilly! I do not understand why you have engaged a new steward, without a word to anyone. You will naturally be enlarging your staff, but it will be better to leave such matters in Scriven’s hands. He is far more able to judge of what will suit you than you can possibly be. Not but what,’ he added fairly, ‘this man of yours seems to know his work very well and to be just the sort of fellow you should have about you. I have nothing to say against him, but in future I advise you to let Scriven attend to the hiring of your servants.’ He perceived that his son was struggling not to laugh, and directed one of his quelling glances at him. ‘Now, what do you find to amuse you in that, pray?’
‘Nothing, sir!’ gasped Captain Ware, wiping his eyes.
Lord Lionel found that his nephew was similarly affected. ‘Well, well, you are a couple of silly boys!’ he said indulgently. ‘So you wish to remain in Bath, do you, Gilly? You will be squiring Harriet to the balls at the Assembly Rooms, I daresay, and certainly it would not do for you to be driving out to Cheyney late at night. But you would be more comfortable in a set of lodgings, my dear boy, than in an hotel! There are some very tolerable ones to be had, and you may have your own servants to wait on you, and be sure of the beds!’
‘Thank you, sir, I shall do very well at the Christopher. It would not be worth the trouble of finding lodgings, for I only stay until Harriet goes to Ampleforth, you know. Shall you join me there, perhaps?’
‘No, no, you know very well that I detest hotels! I may as well stay at Cheyney for a few days. It is some time since I was there, and it will do no harm for me to see how things have been going on. Besides, it is quite improper for that fellow, Mamble, to be there without either of us in residence!’
The Duke felt a twinge of remorse. He said contritely: ‘It is too bad of me! I’m afraid you will dislike it excessively, sir!’
‘I daresay,’ said Lord Lionel dryly, ‘that I shall not dislike it as much as you would. I have not lived in the world for fifty-five years without learning how to deal with fellows of that stamp, I assure you. But how came you to fall in with him, and what is all this nonsense about aiding his son to escape from him?’
By this time, the waiter had come in, and began, under Nettlebed’s severe surveillance, to lay the covers for dinner. It was tacitly assumed that Lord Lionel would partake of this meal, which he did, even going so far as to say that the mutton was not so ill-cooked, and the burgundy – of its kind – quite potable. Nettlebed, who despised all the servants at the Pelican, would not permit the waiter to attend upon his master, bu
t received the various dishes from him in the doorway, so that the Duke was able to regale his uncle, uninterrupted, with the story of his dealings with Tom. It was not to be expected that his lordship would approve of such unconventional conduct, and he had no hesitation at all in prescribing the proper treatment for boys who played such pranks, but he listened appreciatively to the Duke’s part in them, putting several shrewd questions, and nodding at the answers as though he were well satisfied. Indeed, it was felt by both cousins that he had expressed a high measure of approbation when he said: ‘Well, Gilly, you are not such a fool as I had thought.’
Encouraged by this encomium, the Duke said in his meekest voice: ‘There is one other little matter which perhaps I should tell you, sir. I daresay you will be paying your respects to Lady Ampleforth?’
‘Certainly,’ said his lordship.
‘Then I think I had better tell you about Belinda,’ said the Duke guiltily.
His uncle lifted his brows at him. ‘Oho! So now we come to it, do we? I thought there was a petticoat in it!’
‘No,’ said Gideon lazily. ‘Adolphus has merely been playing the knight-errant. He has been ready to eat me for telling him he is wasting his time. I hope you may have better success with him.’
But Lord Lionel, when he had listened to as much of Belinda’s story as his nephew saw fit to impart, was rather amused. Schoolboys of plebeian parentage were to be deplored, but the intrusion into the Duke’s life of beautiful damsels he regarded as inevitable, and not in the least blameworthy. Whether he believed in the propriety of the Duke’s dealings with Belinda seemed doubtful, but all he said, and that in a tolerant voice, was: ‘Well, well, it has all been highly romantic, no doubt, and I consider that Harriet has behaved with great good sense. She is a well-trained girl, and will make you an excellent wife! But this Belinda of yours should now be got rid of, my boy.’