An Infamous Army (33 page)

Barbara coolly referred to this affair, enquiring: "How is the opulent Julie, Harry?"

"Lord, didn't I tell you? I got clear away. It was a near thing, I can tell you. All Charles's doing. He's a man of wide experience, Bab, I warn you!"

"Charles, how shocking! Spanish beauties?"

"Dozens of them!" said the Colonel.

"Depraved! What is this they are striking up? A waltz! I am yours, then."

He led her on to the floor. She gave a sigh as his arm encircled her waist. He heard it, and glanced down at her. "Why the sigh, Bab?"

"I don't know. I think it was voluptuous."

He laughed. "Abominable word!"

"You dance so delightfully!" she murmured. "Where have you been hiding these last days?"

"At Headquarters, when I was not laming my horses on these shocking roads. By the by, had you to create a scandal in my family?"

"It seemed as though I had to," she admitted. "Did it some to your ears?"

"Every word of it. You stirred up a great deal of unhappiness, Bab."

"What, by permitting poor bored Perry to gain little experience? Nonsense! I behaved charmingly him. Oh, you are recalling that I said I would be a sister to him! Well, so I was, until his ridiculous wife chose to challenge me. I won that encounter, however, and will sheathe my sword now, if you like."

"I wish you had never drawn it, Bab. Lady Taverner wasn't a worthy foe."

"Ah, that's charming of you! Well, I will engage to get him out of my clutches. I don't see him tonight: is he not coming?"

"No. He is going back to England."

"Going back to England? He told me nothing of this!"

"It has only quite lately been decided. Brussels does not agree with Lady Taverner. I am charged with a message from Peregrine: his apologies for not being able to take his leave of you in person."

She was staring at him. "It is your doing, in fact!" He nodded.

Her breast heaved. "Insufferable!" The word burst from her. "My God, I could hit you!"

"Why, certainly, if you like, but I don't recommend you to do so in such a public place as this."

She wrenched herself out of his hold, and walked swiftly off the dancing floor. He followed her, and took her hand, and drawing it through his arm held it them firmly. "Calm yourself, Bab. If you want to quarrel with me you shall. I daresay Sir Charles would be pleased to lend us his morning-room for the purpose."

"You are right!" she said, in a low, furious voice. "This quarrel will not keep!"

He led her out of the ballroom and across the hall to a small parlour. There was no one in it, but the candles had been lit in the wall-sconces. The Colonel shut the door, and remained with his back to it, watching Barbara with a grave look in his eyes.

She went with long, hasty steps to the table in the centre of the room, and there faced him. When she spoke it was plain that she was making an effort to control her voice. "I desire to understand you. Did you think I had fallen in love with that youth?"

"Of course not. It was he who fell in love with you."

She made a contemptuous gesture. "An affair of great moment, that!"

"It was an affair of very great moment to him, and to his wife."

"What are either of them to you?"

"Not very much, perhaps. That does not signify. I couldn't let you come between any husband and his wife."

"Unfortunate! It is one of my pastimes!"

He was silent, his mouth shut hard, his arms folded across his chest. She said angrily: "You have made me ridiculous! You dared - you dared to bundle Peregrine out of the country without a word to me! Do you wish me to confess myself in the wrong? Very well, I behaved after the fashion of my family, badly! But not so badly that it was necessary to set the Channel between Peregrine and my charms! As though I would not have given him up at a word from you!"

"You are unreasonable," he replied. "Was there not a word from me? I seem to remember that you promised to set all to rights. I trusted you, but you broke your word to me. Is it for you to reproach me now? You took Perry from his wife out of spite. That makes me feel sick, do you know? If I thought that you knew what unhappiness - but you didn't! It was mischief - thoughtlessness! But, Bab, you cannot undo that kind of mischief merely by growing cool towards the poor devil you've made to fall in love with you! To see you, to hear your voice, is enough to keep that passion alive: The only course for Peregrine to follow was to go away."

Her lip curled. "This is decidedly in the tragic manner! Well! It is at least comforting to know that the scandal Peregrine's flight will create will be of your making. But I have an odd liking for creating my own scandals. You will agree that I am sufficiently adept to require no assistance."

He moved away from the door, and came towards her. "My God, where are we drifting? Is that the sum of your ambition, to create a scandal?"

"Oh, certainly! Did I not inform you of it, two months ago?"

"You don't mean what you say. Don't try to make me angry too! This wretched business is over. There is no need to discuss it, believe me!"

"You know very well that there is. You have given me a taste of high-handedness which I don't care for. I dare say you would like me to cry meekly on your shoulder and promise not to offend again."

"I would like to believe that you had a heart!"

"Oh, I have, and bestow little bits of it here and there in a most generous fashion."

"Was I the recipient of one of those little bits?"

She grew white, and said abruptly: "There has been mough of this. I warned you - did I not? - that you were making a mistake when you chose to invest me with all the virtues. Let me advise you to try your fortune with Miss Devenish. She would make you an admirable wife. You might be as possessive as you pleased, and she would love you for it. You can no longer persist in thinking me a suitable bride!"

"Every word you say seems designed to convince me that you are not!"

"Capital!" She did not speak quite steadily, but the smile still curled her lips. "The truth is, my dear Charles, that we have both of us been fools. I at least I should have known better, for I had the advantage of you in having been married before. I admit that I was a little carried away. But I am bored now, confoundedly bored!"

"I envy you!" he said harshly. "Boredom seems a little thing compared with what I have had to suffer at your hands!"

"Your mistake! Boredom is the most damnable of all sufferings!"

"No! The most damnable suffering is to have your faith in one you love slowly killed. But what should you know of that? You don't deal in love!"

"On the contrary, I deal in it most artistically!"

"I have another word for it," he said.

"The devil you have! There, it is off at last! You may have perceived that I have been tugging at your ring for the last ten minutes. It should, of course, have been cast at your feet some time ago, but the confounded thing was always too tight. Take it!"

He looked at her for a moment, then held out his hand without a word. She dropped the ring into it, turned sharply on her heel, and went out of the room.

It was some time before the Colonel followed her, but he went back into the ballroom presently, and sought out Miss Devenish. "Forgive me!" he said. "I have kept you waiting."

She looked up with a start. "Oh! I beg your pardon. I was not attending! What did you say?"

"Isn't this our dance?" he asked.

"Our dance - oh yes, of course! How stupid of me"' She got up, resolutely smiling, but he made no movement to lead her on to the floor. "What is it?" he said quietly.

She gave a gasp, and pressed her handkerchief to her lips. "Nothing! nothing!"

He took her arm. "Come into the garden. You must not cry here."

She allowed herself to be propelled towards the long, open window, but when they stood on the terrace she said in a trembling voice: "You must think me mad! It is the heat: my head aches with it!"

"What is it?" he repeated. "You are very unhappy, are you not? Can I do anything to help you?"

A deep sob shook her. "No one can help me! Yes, I am unhappy. Oh, leave me, please leave me!"

"I can't leave you like this. Won't you tell me what the trouble is?"

"Oh no, how could I?"

"If you are unhappy I am in the same case. Does that make a bond?"

She looked up, trying to see his face in the dusk. "You? No, that cannot be true! You are engaged to the woman you love, you -"

"No, not now."

She was startled. "Oh, hush, hush! What can you possibly mean?"

"My engagement is at an end. Never mind that: it is your unhappiness, not mine, that we are concerned with."

She clasped his hand impulsively. "I am so sorry! I do not know what to say! If there were anything I could do."

"There is nothing to be done, or said. Lady Barbara and I are agreed that we should not suit, after all. I have told you my trouble: will you not trust me with yours?"

"If I dared, you would think me - you would turn on me in disgust!"

"I can safely promise that I should not do anything of the sort. Come, let us sit down on this uncomfortably rustic bench!… Now, what is it, my poor child?"

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The news that Colonel Audley's engagement was at an end afforded curiously little satisfaction to his friends. They had all wanted to see it broken, and the crease smoothed from between the Colonel's brows, but the crease grew deeper, and a hard look seemed to have settled about his month. Occasionally the old, charming smile flashed out, but although he would talk lightly enough, laugh at the Headquarters' jokes, spar sometimes with his fellow-officers, and dance at the balls as willingly as he had ever done, those who knew him found his cheerfulness forced, and realised sadly that the gay hussar had vanished, leaving in his place an older man, who was rather aloof, often abstracted, and had no confidences to make. The young Prince of Nassau, entering shyly upon his very nominal duties or the Duke's staff, was even a little nervous of him, a circumstance which at first astonished Colonel Gordon. "Stern?" he repeated. "Audley? I think your Highness has perhaps mistaken the word?"

"Un peu severe," said the Prince.

"It's quite true," said Fremantle. "Damn the wench!" he added, giving his sash a vicious hitch. "I wish to God she would go back to England and give the poor devil a chance to forget her! If she had a spark of sensibility she would!"

"Perhaps she doesn't want him to forget her," suggested Gordon. "Do you think she means to get him back?"

"If she does she ain't going the right way to work. They're saying she'll have that Belgian fellow - what's his name? Bylandt's brigade: all teeth and eyes and black whiskers. Ugh!"

"Lavisse," said Gordon, apparently recognising the count from this description without any difficulty.

"That's it. Such a dog with the ladies! Well, they'll make a nicely-matched pair, and I wish them joy of one another."

"It must hit Charles pretty badly."

"Of course it does! Look at him! The Prince here says he looks stern. I daresay that's how it would strike anyone who didn't know him. He looks to me as if he were enjoying a taste of hell."