Limbury coughed in a still more deprecating manner, and disclosed that he had been obliged to leave Mr Carleton in the hall. Encountering an astonished stare from Miss Wychwood, he explained this extraordinary lapse by saying: 'I was on the point, Miss Annis, of conducting him upstairs to the drawing-room, as I hope I have no need to tell you, when he stopped me by asking me in his – his forthright way if there was any danger of his finding Miss Farlow there.' He paused, and a slight quiver disturbed the schooled impassivity of his countenance, which Miss Wychwood had no difficulty in interpreting as barely repressed sympathy for a fellow-man faced with the prospect of encountering her garrulous cousin. He continued smoothly: 'I was obliged to tell him, Miss Annis, that I believed Miss Farlow to be occupied with some stitchery there. Upon which, he desired me to carry his message to you, and said that he would await your answer in the hall. What would you wish me to tell him, miss?'
'Well, I am very busy, but no doubt you are right in thinking he has come to consult with me on some business connected with Miss Lucilla,' she replied. 'I had better see him, I suppose. Pray show him in!'
Limbury bowed and withdrew, reappearing a minute later to usher Mr Carleton into the room. Miss Wychwood rose from the chair behind her desk, and came forward, holding out her hand, and with a faint questioning lift to her brows. Nothing in her demeanour or in her voice could have given the most acute observer reason to suspect that her pulses had quickened alarmingly, and that she was feeling strangely breathless. 'For the second time today, how do you do, sir?' she said, with a faintly mocking smile. 'Have you come to issue some further instructions on how I am to treat Lucilla? Ought I to have asked your permission before permitting her to spend the day with the Stinchcombes? If that is the case, I do beg your pardon, and must hasten to assure you that Mrs Stinchcombe has promised to see her safely restored to me!'
'No, my sweet hornet,' he retorted, 'that is not the case! I've no wish to see her, and I don't care a straw for her present where abouts, so don't try to stir coals, I beg of you!' He shook hands with her as he spoke, and continued to hold hers in a strong grasp for a moment or two, while his hard, penetrating eyes scanned her countenance. They narrowed as he looked, and he said quickly: 'Did I hurt you this morning? I didn't mean to! It was the fault of my unfortunate tongue: pay no heed to it!'
She drew her hand away, saying as lightly as she could: 'Good God, no! I hope I have too much sense to be hurt by the rough things you say!'
'I hope so, too,' he said. 'If my tongue is not to blame, what has happened to cast you into the doldrums?'
'What in the world makes you think I have been cast into the doldrums, Mr Carleton?' she asked, in apparent amusement, sitting down, and inviting him with a slight gesture to follow her example.
He ignored this, but stood looking down at her frowningly, in a way which she found disagreeably disconcerting. After a short pause, he said: 'I can't tell that. Suffice it that I know something or someone has thrown a damp on your spirits.'
'Well, you are mistaken,' she said. 'I am not in the doldrums, but I own I am somewhat out of temper, because I can't make my wretched accounts tally!'
His rare smile dawned. 'Let me see whether I can do so!'
'Certainly not! That would be to acknowledge defeat! I wish you will sit down, and tell me what has brought you here!'
'First, to inform you that I am returning to London tomorrow,' he replied.
Her eyes lifted swiftly to his face, and as swiftly sank again. She could only hope that they had not betrayed the dismay she felt, and said at once: 'Ah, you have come to take leave of us! Lucilla will be very sorry to have missed you. If only you had told us that you were going back to London she would certainly have stayed at home to say goodbye to you!'
'Unnecessary! I don't expect to be absent from Bath for very many days.'
'Oh! She will be glad of that, I expect.'
'Doubtful, I think! Lucilla's sentiments upon this occasion don't interest me, however. Will you be glad of it?'
Something between panic and indignation seized her: panic because a proposal was clearly imminent, and she was as far as ever from knowing how she was to respond to it; indignation because she was unaccustomed to dealing with sledge-hammer tactics, and strongly resented them. He was an impossible creature, and the only fit place for any female crazy enough to consider becoming his wife for as much as a second was Bedlam. Indignation made it possible for her to say, with a tiny shrug, and in a voice whose indifference matched his own: 'Why, certainly, Mr Carleton! I am sure we shall both of us be happy to see you again.'
'Oh, for God's sake – !' he uttered explosively. 'What the devil has Lucilla to do with it?'
She raised her brows. 'I imagine she has everything to do with it,' she said coldly.
He apparently managed to get the better of his spleen, for he gave a short laugh, and replied: 'No, not everything, but certainly a good deal. I am going to London to try if I can discover amongst my numerous cousins one who will be willing to take charge of her until her come-out next year.'
Her eyes flashed, colour flooded her cheeks, and she said, in a shaking voice: 'I see! To be sure, it is stupid of me to feel surprise, for you have repeatedly informed me that you consider me to be totally unfit to take care of Lucilla. Alas, I had flattered myself into thinking that your opinion of my fitness had undergone a change! But that, of course, was before you flew up into the boughs when you learned that Denis Kilbride had accompanied Lucilla to Laura Place! I perfectly understand you!'
'No, you do not understand me, and I shall be grateful to you if you will stop ripping up grievances and flinging them in my teeth!' he said savagely. 'My decision to remove Lucilla from your charge has nothing whatsoever to do with that episode! I don't deny that I thought, at the outset, that you were not a fit person to act as her chaperon. I thought it, and I said it, and I still think it, and I still say it, but not for the same reason! I find it intolerable that anyone as young and as beautiful as you are should set up as a duenna, behaving as though you were a dowager when you should be going to balls and assemblies for the pleasure of dancing till dawn, not to spend the night talking to the real dowagers, and keeping a watchful eye on a silly chit of a girl only a few years younger than you are yourself !'
'Lucilla is twelve years younger than I am, and I frequently dance the night through –'
'Don't try to humbug me, my girl!' he interrupted. 'I was cutting my wisdoms when you were sewing samplers! I know very well when dancing comes to an end at the New Assembly Rooms. Eleven o'clock!'
'Not at the Lower Rooms!' she protested. 'They – they keep it up till midnight there! Besides, there are private balls, and – and picnic parties, and – and all manner of entertainments!' She perceived by the curl of his lip that he was not impressed by this list of Bath gaieties, and said defiantly: 'And in any event if I choose to chaperon Lucilla it is quite my own concern!'
'On the contrary! It is mine!' he said.
'I acknowledge that you have the right to do as you think best for Lucilla, but you have no right to dictate to me, sir! And, what is more,' she added wrathfully, 'you need not try to ride rough-shod over me, so don't think it!'
That made him laugh. 'I am more likely to box your ears!'
She was spared the necessity of answering by the appearance on the scene of Miss Farlow, who peeped into the room at that moment, saying: 'Are you here, dear Annis? I just looked in to tell you that I am obliged to – Oh! I didn't know you had a visitor! I do trust I don't intrude! If I had had the least suspicion that you were not alone I shouldn't have dreamt of disturbing you, for it is of no consequence, only that I find myself obliged to run into the town to purchase some more thread, and so I just popped in to ask you if you happen to need anything yourself. Oh, how do you do, Mr Carleton? I daresay you are wishing me at Jericho so I won't stay another moment! I shall just look into the nursery before I go out, Annis, because we think poor Baby is cutting another tooth, and I mean t
o ask dear Lady Wychwood if she would wish me to purchase some teethingpowder, though I daresay she has some by her, or, if she hasn't, you may depend upon it Nurse will have brought some from Twynham. Well! I mustn't interrupt you for another instant, must I? Of course, I shouldn't have come in if I had known that Mr Carleton was with you, no doubt to consult with you about Lucilla. So, if you are quite sure there is nothing I can do for you in Gay Street – not that I am not perfectly ready to go further, as I hope I need not assure you!'
Miss Wychwood stemmed the flow at this point by saying firmly: 'No, Maria, there is nothing you can do for me, thank you. Mr Carleton has come to talk privately to me about Lucilla's affairs, and I am afraid you are interrupting us! So pray go away to do your shopping without any more ado!'
She had been in a state of seething fury when Miss Farlow had come into the room, but the expression on Mr Carleton's face had turned fury into amusement. He looked as though it would have afforded him the maximum amount of pleasure to have wrung Miss Farlow's neck, and this struck Miss Wychwood as being so funny that a bubble of laughter grew in her which she had the greatest difficulty in suppressing.
The door was hardly shut behind Miss Farlow when he demanded, in the voice of one driven to the extreme limit of his patience: 'How you can endure to have that prattle-bag living with you is beyond my comprehension!'
'Well, I must confess that it is beyond mine too,' she answered, allowing her mirth to escape her.
'What the devil possessed her to come in babbling about thread and teething powder when she must have known you were not alone?'
'Rampant curiosity,' she replied. 'She must always discover whatever may be going on in the house.'
'Good God! Send her packing!' he said peremptorily.
'I wish I might! But since the world thinks that I should sink myself beneath reproach if I didn't employ a respectable female to act as my chaperon I fear I can't. It would be too brutal to dismiss her, for she means well, and what possible reason could I give for getting rid of her?'
'That you are about to be married!'
She was growing accustomed to his abrupt utterances, but this one came as a shock to her. She stared at him with startled eyes, and only managed to say faintly: 'Pray don't be absurd!'
'I am not being absurd. Marry me! I'll engage myself to keep you safe from all such pernicious bores as your cousin.'
'You are being absurd!' she declared, in a much stronger voice. 'Marry you to escape from poor Maria? I never heard anything to equal it! You must be out of your mind!'
'No – unless to be deep in love is to be out of one's mind! I am, you see. After all these years, to have found the woman I had come to think didn't exist – !' He saw that she was looking at him in considerable astonishment, and exclaimed, with a rueful crack of laughter: 'Oh, my God, what a mull I'm making of it! I deserve that you should refuse ever to speak to me again, don't I?'
'Yes,' she said candidly.
'I can't make elegant speeches. I wish I could! If I could find the words to tell you what's in my heart – !' He broke off, and took a quick turn about the room.
'Do you always find it impossible to make elegant speeches?' she asked. 'I can't bring myself to believe that, sir. You must have made many pretty speeches in your time – unless report has wronged you.'
'To the incognitas? That's a very different matter!' he said impatiently. 'A man don't form a connection with a convenient with the same feelings as he has when he forms a lasting passion for the one woman in the world he wishes to make his wife!' He came to a sudden stop in his agitated perambulation, and directed a look of fierce enquiry at her, saying incredulously: 'Good God, are you holding it against me that I have frequently had some high-flyer in keeping?'
This blunt reference to his checkered career, coupled as it was with his cool acceptance of her understanding of the meaning of such terms as he had used to describe his mistresses, pleased rather than shocked her, and certainly did him no harm in her eyes. Contrasting his attitude with her brother's, she thought it was as refreshing as it was unusual, and, insensibly, she warmed to him. The abominable Mr Carleton was not one either to credit unmarried ladies with an innocence very few of them possessed, or to subscribe to the convention that prohibited a gentleman from mentioning in their presence any subject that could bring a blush to their cheeks. She liked this, but saw no reason why she should say so. Instead, she said, with unruffled composure: 'By no means, sir! Your past life concerns no one but yourself. But if I were to accept your extremely obliging offer your future life would also concern me, and, at the risk of offending you, I must tell you that I have no ambition to marry a rake.'
He did not seem to be at all offended; rather, he seemed to be amused. He heard her out in appreciative silence, but when she came to an end, he adjured her not talk like a ninnyhammer. 'Which, dear love, I know well you are not! You should know better than to suppose I should continue in that way of life if I were married to you. I shouldn't even wish to! No man who had the inestimable good fortune to call you his wife would ever desire any other woman. If you don't know that, there is nothing I can do or say to convince you!'
She felt her cheeks growing hot, and instinctively pressed her hands to them. 'You are very obliging, sir, but – but sadly mistaken, I fear! I am not the – the paragon you seem to think me!' she stammered. 'I – I know that I am generally held to be quite pretty, but –'
'If ever I heard such a whisker!' he interjected. 'Generally held to be quite pretty? You are generally held to be a diamond of the first water, my girl! And don't tell me you don't know it, for I am a hard man to bridge, and I give you fair warning that you'll catch cold if you try to gammon me!'
She smiled. 'That I can well believe! Try, in your turn, to believe me when I say that I don't admire my kind of – oh, beauty, for want of a better word!'
'There isn't one,' he said. 'I have a wide experience of beauties, but during the course of a misspent career I have never set eyes on a woman as beautiful as you are.'
She tried to laugh, and said: 'It is clearly midsummer moon with you! I think you have fallen in love with my face, Mr Carleton!'
'Oh, no!' he responded, without hesitation. 'Not with your face, or with your elegant figure, or your graceful carriage, or with any of your obvious attributes! Those I certainly admire, but I didn't fall in love with any of them, any more than I fell in love with Botticelli's Venus, greatly though I admire her beauty!'
She knit her brows, in honest bewilderment. 'But you know nothing about me, Mr Carleton! How could you, on so short an acquaintance?'
'I don't know how I could: I only know that I do. Don't ask me why I love you, for I don't know that either! You may be sure, however, that I don't regard you as a valuable piece to be added to my collection!'
This acid reference to Lord Beckenham's determined courtship drew a smile from her, but she said: 'You have paid me so many extravagant compliments, that I need not scruple to tell you that yours is not the first offer I have received.'
'I imagine you must have received many.'
'Not many, but several. I refused them all, because I preferred my – my independence to marriage. I think I still do. Indeed, I am almost sure of it.'
'But not quite sure?'
'No, not quite sure,' she said, in a troubled tone. 'And when I ask myself what you could give me in exchange for my liberty, which is very dear to me, I – oh, I don't know, I don't know!'
'Nothing but my love. I have wealth, but that's of no consequence. If it were – if you were purse-pinched – I would never offer you any of my possessions as inducements. If you marry me, it must be because you wish to spend your life at my side, not for any other reason! There are many things I can give you, but I don't mean to dangle them before you, in the hope that you might be bribed into marrying me.' His eyes gleamed. 'You would send me to the rightabout in two shakes of a lamb's tail if I did, wouldn't you, my dear hornet? And I wouldn't blame you!'
'It
would certainly be carrying incivility to the verge of insult!' she said, trying for a lighter note. 'There's no saying, however, that you might be able to bribe me by promising never to snap my nose off !'
He smiled, and shook his head. 'I never make empty promises!'
She could not help laughing, but she said: 'A grim warning, in fact! I begin to suspect, sir, that you already wish you hadn't made me an offer, and are now trying to frighten me into refusing it!'
'You know better!' he said. 'Could I frighten you? I doubt it! It would be an easy matter to promise never to be out of temper, but I mean you to find me as good as my word, and the deuce is in it that I have an untoward disposition, and a hasty temper!'
'Yes, I have noticed that!'
'You could hardly have failed to!' He hesitated, and then said roughly: 'I've several times hurt you – snapping your nose off, as you say – but never without wishing that I hadn't done so. But when I'm put out my tongue utters cutting things before I can check it!'
'What an admission to make!'
'Shocking, ain't it? It cost me something to make it, but I like pound dealing, and I won't attempt to fob myself off on to you with court-promises.' She did not reply to this, and, after a moment, he said: 'Have I made you take me in dislike? Be frank with me, my dear!'