Friday's Child (6 page)

For one dazed moment Miss Wantage could only gaze blankly up at him. “M-marry
me,
Sherry?” she stammered.

“Yes, why not?” responded his lordship. “This is, unless you have some objection, and considering the way you were ready to marry the curate I can’t for the life of me see why you should have!”

“No, no, I wasn’t ready to marry the curate!” protested Hero. “I told you that I would prefer to be a governess!”

“Well, never mind about that,” said his lordship. “It’s no use your saying that you’d prefer to be a governess to marrying me, because it’s absurd! No one would. Dash it, Hero, I don’t want to talk like a coxcomb, and I dare say I may want for principle, and have libertine propensities, and spend all my time in gaming hells, besides being the sort of ugly customer no woman of sensibility could stomach, but you can’t pretend that you wouldn’t be far more comfortable with me than at that curst school you keep on prosing about!”

Miss Wantage was far from wanting to pretend anything of the sort, but the notion of marrying one who had for a number of years appeared to her in much the same light as he appeared to his Tiger seemed so fantastic that she could neither credit him with any serious intentions, nor believe that such a dazzling change in her bleak future could really take place. “Oh, Sherry, don’t please!” she begged, a catch in her voice. “I know it’s a hum, but, please, I wish you will not!”

“It’s no such thing!” the Viscount said. “In fact, the more I think of it the more it seems to me an excellent plan.”

“But, Sherry, you love Isabella!”

“Of course I love Isabella!” responded Sherry. “Though, mind you, I don’t say I’d have offered for her if I hadn’t been so deuced uncomfortably circumstanced, for to tell you the truth, Hero, I’d as lief not be married. However, it’s no use thinking of that! Married I must be, and if I can’t have the Incomparable I’d as soon have you as any other. Sooner,” he added handsomely. “I’ m devilish fond of you, Hero. It’s my belief we should deal famously, for you don’t take pets, or go off into odd humours, and you won’t expect me to alter all my habits, and spend my time dancing attendance on you.”

“Oh, no, no!”

“Of course, I know it ain’t a love match,” pursued his lordship. “For my part, I’ve done with love, since Isabella cut up all my hopes. I dare say there is nothing that would please her more than to think that she had embittered my life, just as she seems like to do to poor George’s, but I’ll be damned if I mean to administer to her vanity by letting her know it!”

A sympathetic sigh from his companion brought his attention round to her. He surveyed her somewhat doubtfully, as an unwelcome thought occurred to him. “I wish you weren’t so devilish young!” he complained. “A pretty pickle we shall be in if you take it into your head to fall in love with some fellow or other after we’re tied up! Come to think of it, you’ re too young to be married at all. Damme, you’re nothing but a baby!”

“Augusta Yarford was married when she was only just seventeen, Sherry,” offered Miss Wantage hopefully.

“That’s a very different matter. She’d been out a couple of seasons, and if ever a girl was up to snuff it was Gussie Yarford! But you have never been into society at all, or met anyone besides your precious cousin Edwin, and some dab of a parson.”

“And you, Sherry,” she said, smiling shyly at him.

“Yes, but I don’t signify, any more than if I had been your brother.” A qualm seized him. “I suppose I ought not to do it,” he said, with a vague feeling of chivalry. “I don’t mind people calling me a libertine, but I’m damned if I’ll have them saying I took advantage of a chit not out of the schoolroom!”

Miss Wantage clasped her hands together in her lap, and said rather breathlessly: “Sherry, if you think I might suit, please—please do marry me, for I know I should like it above all things!”

“Yes, but you’ve no more notion of what it means than that sparrow,” said the Viscount bluntly. He thought this over for a moment, and added: “In fact, much less.”

“But I should like very much always to be with you, Sherry, because you are never cross with me, and I should enjoy such fun, and go to London, and see all the things I’ve only heard of, and go to parties, and balls, and not be scolded, or sent to that dreadful school, and—oh, Sherry, it wasn’t k-kind in you to put it into my head if you d-didn’t really mean it!”

The Viscount patted her shoulder in a perfunctory way, a slightly rueful grin quivering on his lips. Shatter-brained he might be, but the full implication of this artless speech was not lost on him. “Oh, lord!” he said.

Miss Wantage swallowed a sob, and said valiantly: “You were only funning. Of course I should have known that. I didn’t mean to tease you.”

“No, I wasn’t,” said his lordship. “Damme, why shouldn’t I marry you? I know you haven’t had time to fix your affections, but ten to one you never will, and in any event you won’t find me the sort of husband who’s for ever kicking up a dust over trifles. I shan’t interfere with your pleasures, as long as you keep ’em discreet, my dear. And you needn’t fear I shall be forcing my attentions on you. I told you I was done with love. A marriage of convenience, that’s what it will be! Dash it, it may not be as romantic as I dare say you’d have liked, but you can’t deny it will be more amusing than being a governess!”

Miss Wantage nodded fervently, her eyes like stars. “And I do think it is romantic,” she said.

“That’s because you know nothing about it,” replied Sherry cynically. “Never mind! You’ll enjoy cutting a dash in London, at all events.”

Miss Wantage agreed to this with enthusiasm. But the next instant a thought occurred to her which quenched the sparkle in her eyes. “Oh, how I wish we could! But they will never, never let us, Sherry!”

“Who’s to stop us?” he demanded. “That’s one thing my father didn’t put into the damned Trust! I can marry anyone I please, and no one can say a word.”

“But they will,” said Hero bodingly. “You know they will, Sherry! Your Mama wishes you to make a Brilliant Match, and she will do everything in her power to prevent your throwing yourself away upon me. I have no fortune, you see.”

“I know that, but it don’t signify in the least. Once the Trust ends, I shall have plenty for the pair of us.”

“Lady Sheringham will not think so. And Cousin Jane would pack me off to Bath tomorrow if she knew!”

“Hang it, I don’t see that, Hero, dashed if I do! She’ll say it’s a devilish good match: she’s bound to!”

“That’s just it, Sherry: she would say it was far too good for me! She would be so angry! Because, you know, she does hope that perhaps you might take a liking to Cassy, or even Eudora.”

“Well, I shan’t. Never could abide the sight of either of them, or of Sophy, for that matter, and it’s not likely I shall change at my time of life. However, there’s a good deal in what you say, Hero, and if there’s one thing I detest more than another it’s a parcel of women arguing at me, and having the vapours every five minutes, which is what would happen, sure as check! And if your cousin did pack you off to Bath I should be obliged to go there to rescue you, and I can’t bear the place. There’s only one thing for it: we must go off without saying a word about it to anyone. Once the knot’s tied, and we can do that fast enough if I get a special licence, they won’t say anything—or, at any rate, if they do, it won’t be to us.”

“Won’t it?” Hero asked doubtfully.

“No, because for one thing there’d be no sense in it, and for another we can show them the door,” said the Viscount.

“You don’t think Cousin Jane will say that I am under age, and have it put at an end? People can, can’t they, Sherry?”

The Viscount gave this his profound consideration. “No,” he pronounced finally. “She won’t do that. Don’t see how she could. I mean, only think, Hero! I’m not a dashed adventurer, eloping with an heiress! I’m devilish eligible! She’ll be obliged to swallow it with a good grace. Dare say she’ll look to you to find husbands for those insipid girls.”

“Well, if you think I could, I would try very hard to do so,” said Hero seriously.

“No one could find husbands for such a parcel of dowdies,” replied his lordship, with brutal candour. “Besides, I don’t like them, and I won’t have them in my house. Come along! We’ve wasted enough time. Someone will be bound to come looking for you, if we dawdle here much longer. Hi, Jason!”

“Come now?” gasped Miss Wantage. “But I have nothing with me, Sherry! Must I not pack a portmanteau, or at least a bandbox?”

“Now, will you have sense, Hero? Do you expect me to come driving up to the front door to pick you up? If you go back, and start packing a portmanteau you’ll be discovered.”

“Oh, yes, but—You don’t think I should creep out of the house when it is dark, and join you here?”

“No, I don’t,” replied his lordship. “I don’t want to kick my heels in this damned dull place for the rest of the day! Besides, there’s no moon, and if you think I’m going to drive up to town in the dark, you’re mightily mistaken, my girl! I can’t see what you want with a portmanteau. If the rest of your gowns are anything like the one you have on now, the sooner you’re rid of them the better! I’ll buy you everything you want when we get to London.”

“Oh, Sherry, will you?” cried Miss Wantage, her cheeks in a glow. “Thank you! Let us go quickly!”

The Viscount sprang down into the lane, and held up his hands. “Jump, then!”

Miss Wantage obeyed him promptly. Jason, who had led the horses up to them, regarded her fixedly, and then turned an inquiring eye upon his master.

“I’m taking this lady up to London, Jason,” announced the Viscount.

“Ho!” said the faithful henchman. “Ho, you are, are you, guv’nor?”

“Yes, and what’s more, I don’t want a word said about it. So no tattling in whatever boozing-ken you go to, mind that! And no tattling in the stables either!”

“I can keep my chaffer close,” replied Jason, with dignity, “but it queers me what your lay is this time!”

The Viscount tossed Miss Wantage up into the curricle, gathered the reins in his hand, and prepared to mount beside her. “I’m going to be married.”

“You never!” gasped Jason. “But she ain’t the right one, guv’nor! Lor’, you must have had a shove in the mouth too many, and I never suspicioned you was lushy, so help me bob! Werry well you carries it, guv’nor! werry well, indeed! Gammoning me wot knows you you was sober as a judge, and all the time as leaky as a sieve! But what’ll you say when you comes about, me lord? A rare set-out that’ll be, and you a-blamin’ of me for letting you make off with the wrong gentry-mort!”

“Confound your impudence, of course I’m sober!” said the Viscount wrathfully. “You keep your nose out of my affairs! What the devil are you laughing at, Hero?”

“I think he’s so droll!” gurgled Miss Wantage. “What is a gentry-mort?”

“God knows! The fellow can’t open his mouth without letting fall a lot of thieves’ cant. Not fit for your ears at all. Stand away from their heads! all’s right!”

The curricle moved forward. Jason sprang nimbly up behind, and said over the top of the lowered hood: “I’m not a-going to keep me sneezer out o’your affairs, guv’nor. Be you ee-loping?”

“Of course I’m not—Good God, so I am!” said his lordship, much struck.

“Because
if
you be,” pursued Jason, “and
if
you don’t wish no one to know nothing about it, that young gentry-mort didn’t ought to be a-settin’ up there beside you like she is.”

“By Jove, he’s in the right of it!” exclaimed the Viscount, reining in suddenly. “We shall have half the countryside blabbing that they saw you driving off with me! There’s nothing for it: you’ll have to sit on the floorboards, and keep yourself hidden under the rug, Hero.”

Her experience of life not having engendered in Hero any expectation of having either her dignity or her comfort much regarded, she made no objection to this proposal, but curled up at the Viscount’s feet, and allowed him to cast the rug over her. Since his method of driving was of the style known as neck-or-nothing, she was considerably jolted, but she made no complaint, merely clasping her arms round the Viscount’s top-boots, and pressing her cheek against the side of his knee. In this fashion they covered the next few miles. The Viscount pulled up beyond the second tollgate, giving it as his opinion that they were now reasonably safe from any chance encounter with persons who might recognize them.

“I don’t mind staying where I am, if you think it would be better for me to do so, Sherry,” Hero assured him.

“Yes, but you’re giving me cramp in my left leg,” said the single-minded Viscount. “Get up, brat, and for the lord’s sake smooth your hair! You look the most complete romp!”

Miss Wantage did her best to comply with this direction, but without any marked degree of success. Fortunately, the exigencies of the particular mode of hairdressing affected by his lordship obliged him to carry a comb upon his person. He produced this, dragged it through the soft, tangled curls, tied the hood strings under Hero’s chin, and, after a critical survey, said that it would answer well enough. Miss Wantage smiled trustfully up at him, and the Viscount made a discovery. “You look just like a kitten!”

She laughed. “No, do I, Sherry?”

“Yes, you do. I think it’s your silly little nose,” said the Viscount, flicking it with a careless forefinger. “That, or the trick you have of staring at a fellow with your eyes wide open. I think I shall call you Kitten. It suits you better than Hero, which I always thought a nonsensical name for a girl.”

“Oh, it is the greatest affliction to me!” she exclaimed. “You can have no notion, Sherry! I would much rather you should call me Kitten.”

“Very well, that’s settled,” said Sherry, giving his horses the office to start again. "What we have to do now is to decide what the devil I’m to do with you when I get you to London.”

“You said you would buy me some new clothes,” Hero reminded him, not without a touch of anxiety.

“I’ll do that, of course, but the thing that’s worrying me a trifle is where you are to sleep tonight,” confessed Sherry. “We shan’t have time to be married today, you know.”