Bath Tangle

22

When Major Kirkby rode over the Bridge into Laura Place shortly before three o’clock, he was surprised not to see Fobbing waiting there with Serena’s phaeton, and still more surprised to be informed by Lybster that the Lady Serena had gone off on a picnic expedition. Lady Spenborough, added Lybster, was in the drawing-room, and had desired him to show the Major upstairs. He observed that the Major had hitched his horse’s bridle over the railings, and said that he would send my lady’s footman to take charge of the animal.

He then led the Major upstairs, announced him, and went away, shaking his head. In his view, there was something smoky going on, some undergame of which he could not approve.

Fanny jumped up from the sofa, as the door shut behind Lybster, and moved impulsively towards the Major, exclaiming: “Oh, Hector, I am so glad you have come! I am in the most dreadful worry!”

“My dear, what is it?” he asked quickly, catching her hands. “Fanny, you are trembling! My darling—!”

She gave a gasp, and disengaged her hands, casting an imploring look up at him. “Hector—no! You must not—I should not have—! Oh, my love, remember!”

He walked away to the window, and stood staring out. “Yes, I beg your pardon! What has happened to distress you, my dear?”

She blew her nose, and said rather huskily: “It’s Serena. She has quite taken leave of her senses, Hector!”

He turned his head. “Good heavens, what has she done? Where is she?”

“That,” said Fanny distractedly, “is what is so agitating, for I don’t know! I mean, anything might have happened to her, and if she has not been murdered by footpads, or kidnapped by Mr Goring—for what, after all, do we know of him?—she may be halfway to Wolverhampton by this time!”

“Halfway to Wolverhampton?” he repeated, startled. “Fanny, for heavens’ sake—! Why should Serena go to Wolverhampton? Who is Mr Goring?”

“Oh, he is Mrs Floore’s godson, or some such thing! I daresay a very worthy young man, but so very dull and respectable!”

He could not help laughing. “Well, if he is dull and respectable, he will hardly have kidnapped Serena!”

“No, I don’t suppose it is as bad as that, but what if she doesn’t catch them before they reach Gloucester? She can’t ride all night, and there she will be, miles and miles from Bath, and no luggage, but only Mr Goring, and her reputation quite lost. You had better read her letter!”

“Indeed, I think I had!” he said.

She dragged it from her reticule, and gave it to him. “She says I am to tell you what has happened, so you may as well see just what she says. Hector, I am quite vexed with Serena!”

He had unfolded the sheet of paper, and was rapidly running his eyes down it. “Emily—Gerard—Gretna Green! Good God! What’s this? Oh, I see! Monksleigh hired the chaise to take him to Wolverhampton. My dear, Serena doesn’t say she means to go there!”

“She is equal to anything!” said Fanny despairingly.

He went on reading the letter, frowning a little. When he reached the end of it, he folded it, and gave it back to Fanny without a word.

“What am I to do?” she asked. “What can I do?”

“I don’t think either of us can do anything,” he replied. “If I thought it would be of the least use, I would ride after her, but either she is already on her way back, or she must be far beyond my reach. Fanny, does she often do things like this?”

“Oh, thank goodness, no! In fact, I’ve never before known her to ride off with a strange man—well, the merest acquaintance, at all events!—and not even take Fobbing with her! Of course, it is very wrong of Gerard and Emily to elope, but it is not Serena’s business to take care of Emily! And, I must say, if the wretched girl fears that her odious mother will push her into marrying Lord Rotherham unless she runs away with Gerard, I cannot wholly blame her! How Serena can believe that Emily could ever be happy with such a man as Rotherham is something that quite baffles me. Hector!”

“Do you think that Serena is greatly concerned with Emily’s happiness?” he asked slowly. “It seems to me that it is Rotherham’s happiness which interests her.” He took the letter out of her hand, and unfolded it again. “I can’t and I won’t allow them to serve Ivo such a trick! It is unthinkable that he should be twice jilted, and this time for such a Bartholomew baby as Gerard—a silly boy that is half flash and half foolish, and his own ward besides!” He lowered the paper, and looked at Fanny. “If you ask me, my love, Emily might have eloped with Serena’s blessing had Rotherham not been in question! Lord, what a tangle!”

She stared up at him. “But, Hector, it isn’t possible! She told me months before she met you again that she had only once cared for anyone, and that he was you! And when you met—oh, Hector, you cannot doubt that she was in love with you again on that instant!”

He said ruefully: “I did not doubt it any more than I doubted my own feelings, Fanny.”

“Hector, I am persuaded you are mistaken! She could not love Rotherham! As for him, I have never seen a sign that he regretted the breaking of the engagement: indeed, far otherwise! He doesn’t care the snap of his fingers for her—well, has he not shown that he doesn’t, if we had needed showing? He has no tenderness for her, not even solicitude! He—”

“Do you think that Serena desires to be treated with solicitude, Fanny?” he asked, “It has sometimes seemed to me that nothing vexes her more.”

“Oh, no no!” she protested. “Not vexes her! She doesn’t like one to cosset her, but—” She stopped uncertainly. “Well, perhaps—But Rotherham does not even admire her beauty! Do you recall what he said when he dined here, and she was looking quite ravishing? He said she looked like a magpie—and that is precisely the sort of thing he always does say to her! Indeed, I am sure you are refining too much upon what she has written in that letter! Though she does not regret it, I believe she thinks that she didn’t use him well, which is why she must feel it so particularly, now that it seems as though he will be jilted a second time. For, of course, it was quite shocking to have cried off almost at the last moment. I can’t think how she had the courage to do it!”

“She doesn’t lack courage, Fanny,” he replied. He glanced at Serena’s letter again, and then laid it down on the table at Fanny’s elbow. “I suppose she will bring that foolish girl back. If they outwit her—I wonder? But they won’t! To own the truth, I can’t imagine her being outwitted by anyone!” He sighed faintly, but said with determined cheerfulness: “There is nothing to be done, my dear. We can only trust to this man, Goring, to take care of her. I had better leave you. If she returns in time for dinner, as she promises, will you send me word by your footman? If she does not—”

“If she does not,” said Fanny resolutely, “I shall set out myself!”

“Fanny, Fanny!” he said, half laughing. “No, my darling, you will not!”

“I must!” said Fanny tragically. “It is my duty, Hector! I know I shan’t find Serena, but as long as I am not in this house, I can prevaricate, and say I was with her! And I beg of you, Hector, don’t leave me here alone! I know Lord Rotherham will come here, and even when there is nothing on my conscience he puts me in a flutter! He will fix his eyes on my face, and ask me the most stabbing questions, and I shall betray all!”

“But, Fanny—!”

“Don’t—don’t, I implore you, say that I have only to decide what I shall tell him!” Fanny begged. “You must know that I am not at all clever, and when Rotherham bends that look upon me I become utterly bird-witted! Hector, I cannot be your wife, but I shall be your mother-in-law, and you cannot leave me to Rotherham’s mercy!”

He dropped on his knees beside her chair, gathering her hands in his, and kissing them again and again. “Fanny, Fanny, don’t!” he said unsteadily. “If you look at me like that, how can I—? Dearest, most foolish Fanny, there is no reason to think Rotherham will come to Bath today! I ought not to remain! Besides, I can’t keep your footman walking my horse up and down outside for the rest of the day!”

“Tell John to take him back to the stables!” she urged him. “Pray, love, don’t take away your support! If I must remain alone here, wondering what has become of Serena, and thinking every knock on the door to be Rotherham’s, my senses will become wholly disordered!”

He was not proof against such an appeal. He thought it not very likely that Rotherham would arrive in Bath that day, but he remained with Fanny, with a backgammon-board as chaperon.

And Fanny was quite right. Not very long after five o’clock, Lybster opened the drawing-room door, and announced Lord Rotherham.

Fanny was taken by surprise, neither she nor the Major having heard a knock on the street door. She had just lifted a pile of backgammon pieces, and she gave such a violent start that she dropped them, and they went rolling over the floor in several directions. The Major met her agonized look with a reassuring smile, and was near to bursting into laughter, so comical was her expression of dismay.

Rotherham, pausing halfway across the room, glanced keenly from one to the other of them, bent to pick up a piece that had come to rest against his foot, and said: “How do you do? I am afraid I have startled you, Lady Spenborough!”

“No—oh, no!” Fanny said, blushing, and rising to her feet. “That is, yes! I wasn’t expecting to see you! Oh, pray don’t trouble about those stupid pieces!”

He dropped three of them on to the board, and shook hands. “I understand Serena is out,” he said, turning to offer his hand to the Major. “When does she return?”

The look Fanny cast at the Major was eloquent. I told you so! said her eyes. He came at once to the rescue. “It would be a bold man who would dare to prophesy!” he said smilingly. “She has gone off on an expedition, with a party of her friends, and there’s no saying when they will get back to Bath.”

“Where has she gone to?”

To Fanny’s deep admiration, the Major replied without hesitation: “I believe there was some notion of trying to get as far as to the Wookey Hole.”

“I wonder you let her.”

This remark, though it sounded more of a comment than a criticism, shook the Major slightly. Fanny sprang loyally into the breach. “She will be sorry to have missed you. What a pity you did not advise us of your coming to Bath!”

“Oh, she won’t miss me!” said Rotherham. “I’ll wait for her—if I shall not be in your way?”

“No, no, not at all!” said Fanny, in a hollow voice. “Pray, won’t you sit down?”

“Thank you.” He chose a chair opposite to the sofa. “Don’t let me interrupt your game!”

“We had just finished. Do you—do you make a long stay in Bath?”

“I can’t tell. Has Miss Laleham also gone to the Wookey Hole?”

“I don’t know—that is, I forget whether—Oh, I expect she has!” said Fanny, feeling herself being driven into a corner. She knew that that unnerving gaze was fixed on her, and began with slightly trembling hands to put the backgammon-pieces into their box.

“By the by, has my eldest ward been seen in Bath?” asked Rotherham abruptly.

The Major was just in time to catch one of the pieces which, slipping from between Fanny’s fingers, rolled across the board to the edge. “Oh, thank you! So clumsy! G-Gerard, Lord Rotherham? I haven’t seen him. Did you expect to find him here?”

“I wasn’t sure. That’s why I asked you.”

Fanny found herself obliged to look up, and was lost. The compelling eyes held hers, but they were not frowning, she noticed. A rather mocking smile lurked in them. “I accept without question that you haven’t seen him, Lady Spenborough. Has anyone?”

“Are you talking of a boy called Monksleigh?” interposed the Major. “Yes, I’ve seen him. Serena introduced him to me. He said he was staying with friends outside the town.”

“He lied, then. Has he too gone to the Wookey Hole?”

“No, indeed he hasn’t!” Fanny said quickly. “He—he has left Bath, I believe!”

“Oh, my God, why did I never thrust some jumping-powder down his throat while there was still time to cure him of cow-heartedness?” exclaimed Rotherham, in accents of extreme exasperation. He got up abruptly. “He heard I was coming, and fled, did he? I wish you will stop fencing with me, Lady Spenborough! Sooner or later I am bound to discover what has been going on here, and I’d as lief it was sooner! I’ve already been refused admittance in Beaufort Square, where I learned that Miss Laleham will not be in until late this evening, that Mrs Floore is out, visiting friends, and that Lady Laleham is expected in Bath this afternoon. Now I find that Serena too is not expected back until late, and that that ward of mine has taken himself off in a hurry, which makes nonsense of the whole! Having had the spirit to come here, why the devil couldn’t he—” He stopped suddenly, his brows snapping together: “Good God, did she send him packing?”

Fanny cast another of her imploring looks at the Major, but he too had risen, and his eyes were on Rotherham’s face. “Am I to understand that you knew young Monksleigh to be in love with Miss Laleham?” he asked bluntly.

“Knew it?” Rotherham gave a short laugh, and strode over to the window. “What can one know of a bag of wind? He enacted me a ranting tragedy, but as to discovering whether there is one grain of sincerity among the fustian, you might as well try to milk a pigeon! Just playing off his tricks, was he?” he shrugged. “I should have guessed it!”

“No,” said the Major deliberately. “Far from it!”

“Hector!” The cry was startled our of Fanny.

Rotherham swung round. One swift glance at Fanny’s horrified face, and his eyes went to the Major’s, in a hard, questioning stare. “Well? Out with it!”

Fanny sprang up, with a rustle of silken skirts, and clasped her hands about the Major’s arm. “Hector, you must not! Oh, pray—!”

He laid his hand over her clutching fingers. “But I think I should,” he said gently. “Haven’t you said from the outset that nothing but misery could come of the marriage? Your ward, Marquis, according to our information, eloped this morning with your betrothed.”

“What?” Rotherham thundered, making Fanny wince. “Are you trying to hoax me?”

“On such a subject? Certainly not! They set out in a chaise-and-pair, and were bound, it is presumed, for Gretna Green.”

“By God, I’ve wronged that boy!” exclaimed Rotherham. “So that’s why I wasn’t permitted to enter Mrs Floore’s house! Gretna Green, indeed!” His brows drew together again. “Good God, they will never get there! I’ll swear all the money the young fool had was the fifty pounds I gave him! Why the devil couldn’t he have asked me for a hundred while he was about it? Of all the addle-brained cawkers—! Now he’ll find himself aground before he reaches Carlisle!”

Fanny’s hands fell from the Major’s arm. Fascinated, she stared at Rotherham.

“He appears only to have booked the chaise as far as to Wolverhampton,” said the Major, contriving by a superhuman effort to preserve his countenance. “Possibly—he has foreseen that he might find himself without a feather to fly with, and means to proceed thence by stagecoach.”

“God grant me patience!” ejaculated Rotherham wrathfully. “If ever I knew such a slow-top—! Does he know no better than to take a girl to Wolverhampton—Wolverhampton, my God!—and then to push her into a stagecoach? And I don’t doubt I shall be blamed for it, if all comes to ruin! How the devil could I guess he was such a cod’s head that he wouldn’t know better unless I told him?”

“Perhaps,” said the Major, who had sat down again, and was giving way to his emotion, “he f-felt there might be a little—awkwardness in applying to you for instruction!”

One of his sharp cracks of laughter broke from Rotherham. “He might, of course!” he acknowledged. Another thought brought back the frown to his brow. “What’s Serena doing in this?” he demanded. “You’re not going to tell me she has gone along to chaperon Emily?”

“No: to bring her back!” said the Major. “She has ridden in pursuit of them.”

“And you let her?”

“It was not in my power to attempt to stop her. I only learned of it this afternoon. It was far too late to try to catch her. I can only trust she’ll come to no harm.”

“Serena?” Rotherham’s lip curled. “You needn’t be anxious on her account! It isn’t she who will come to harm. So she means to bring Emily back, does she? I am obliged to her!”

He came slowly away from the window, a brooding look in his harsh face, his lips tightly gripped together. He saw that Fanny was watching him, and said curtly: “No doubt she will be home presently. I shouldn’t tease yourself about her, Lady Spenborough, if I were you: she’s very well able to take care of herself. I won’t wait to see her.”

He held out his hand, but before she could take it the Major had risen, and picked up from the table Serena’s letter. “You had better read what she wrote to Lady Spenborough,” he said. “I fancy it makes the matter tolerably plain.”

Rotherham took the paper from him, directing a searching glance at him from under his brows. Then he bent his gaze upon the letter, and began to read it, his face very grim. But he had not proceeded far before his expression changed. The set look disappeared, to be succeeded by one of mingled wrath and astonishment. He did not speak, until he came to the end, but he seemed to find it difficult to control himself. At last he looked up, and Fanny’s heart instantly jumped into her mouth, such a blaze of anger was there in his eyes. “I will wait to see Serena!” he said. “I must certainly thank her in person! So busy as she has been on my behalf!” He rounded suddenly on the Major: “And who the devil is this Goring she writes of?” he demanded.

“I have never met him, but Lady Spenborough tells me he is Mrs Floore’s godson, and a most—er—sober and respectable young man,” replied the Major. “We must depend on him to bring her safely back.”

“Oh, we must, must we?” said Rotherham savagely. “She is a great deal more likely to bring him back—on a hurdle! Any man who lets Serena lead him into one of her damned May Games can’t be other than a bottlehead!” He broke off, jerking up his head, his eyes going swiftly to the window. The clop of a horse’s hooves, which had been growing steadily louder, ceased suddenly. Two quick strides took Rotherham back to the window. He flung it up, and looked down at the vehicle drawn up outside the house. There was a tense pause; then Rotherham said, leaning his hands on the window-sill, Serena’s letter crashed in one of them: “Her ladyship—in a hired hack!”

He shut the window with a slam, and turned. Fanny sprang up. “Serena? Oh, thank God! Oh, what a relief!”

She then shrank instinctively towards the Major, for the look Rotherham turned on her was bright and menacing. “Don’t thank God too soon, Lady Spenborough! Serena is in a great deal more danger now than she has been all day, believe me!”

“No, no, stop!” she cried. “What are you going to do to her?”

“Murder her!” he said, through shut teeth, and went hastily out of the room.

Fanny started forward, but the Major caught her arm. “No, my dear! Let be!”

“Hector, go after him!” she said urgently. “His face—Oh, he looked like a fiend! Heaven only knows what he may do in such a wicked passion! You must do something! Hector, it is your duty to protect Serena!”

“So I might, if I thought she stood in peril of her life,” he replied, laughing. “What I do think is that I should make a very bad third in that quarrel!”

Meanwhile, Rotherham, running down the stairs, reached the entrance floor just as Serena walked past Lybster into the house. Under the stiff, curling brim of her tall hat, her face was a little pale, and her eyes frowning in a look of fatigue. She laid her whip down on the table, and began to strip off her gauntlets. “Is her ladyship in, Lybster?”

“In the drawing-room, my lady. Also—”

“Ridden that short-backed mare of yours to a standstill, Serena?”

She looked round quickly. “Ivo! You here?”

“Yes, Serena, as you see!” he said, advancing upon her. “Not only here, but extremely anxious to have a few words with you!”

“Dear me, in the sullens again?” she asked, her voice light but her eyes watchful. “Are you vexed because Emily did not abandon our expedition on the chance that you might arrive in Bath today? How absurd of you!”

“My girl,” said Rotherham dangerously, “it will be just as well for you if you stop thinking me a bleater, whom you can gull by pitching me your damned gammon! Come in here!” He pushed open the door into the dining-room, and to Lybster’s intense disappointment pulled Serena into the room, and shut the door in the butler’s face. “Now, Serena! Now!” he said. “What the devil have you been doing? Don’t lie to me! I know what expedition yours was!” He unclenched his left hand, and showed her the crushed letter. “Do you recognize that? Then tell me the truth!”

She said indignantly: “So, not content with browbeating Emily, you have bullied Fanny into giving you my letter, have you? Well, if I find you’ve upset her, you will very speedily wish you had remembered with whom you would have to deal, if you came raging into this house! I am not a wretched schoolgirl, wilting under your frown!”

“You are ameddlesome vixen!” he told her angrily.

Her eyes flashed, but she choked back a pungent retort, struggled for a moment with herself, and finally said, in a voice of determined calm: “No. This is no moment for a turn-up, Rotherham. If you have read my letter, it may be for the best. Of course you are angry—though why you should make me your scapegoat God knows! Never mind that! I can stand a knock or two. Ivo, what a fool you have been! You may blame yourself for what happened today! Don’t vent your wrath on Gerard! I’ve sent him back to London with such a flea in his ear as he will not soon forget, I assure you!”

“You have, have you? How much—how very much—I am obliged to you! Go on!”

“You are more obliged to me than you know! You may dismiss Gerard from your mind: Emily is no more in love with him than I am! Had you had enough sense to have come to Bath, without heralding your arrival in a letter anyone but an idiot would have known must scare the child out of what little wit—out of her wits!—she would never have spared Gerard a thought! She seized on him merely as a means of escape. Really, Ivo, you have handled this like the veriest whipster! You! You have the vilest temper in creation, but I’ve never known you lose it with a nervous young ’un! Couldn’t you guess that if you let Emily see it, she would behave exactly as would a filly you had spurred? She turned you into a positive ogre—and you could have made her adore you! Instead, you frightened her—and the devil’s own task I have had, all the way from Gloucester, to convince her she has been a goose! I can’t tell whether I’ve succeeded, but I can’t do any more! The rest is with you! Be gentle with her, and I think all may be well!”

“O God!” uttered Rotherham, in a strangled voice. “What have I ever done to be cursed with such a marplot as you, Serena? So you’ve convinced her that I’m not such a devil as I made her think! I thank you! And I thought that if there was one person I could depend upon to urge the wretched girl on no account to marry me, it was you! I might have guessed you would bullfinch me if you could!”

“Rotherham!” exclaimed Serena, grasping a chairback. “Are you telling me—are you daring to tell me—you meant to scare Emily into jilting you?”

“Of course I meant it!” he said furiously. “You think I’m clever in the saddle, do you? Much obliged to you! A pity you didn’t remember it earlier! Good God, Serena, you can’t have supposed that I wanted to marry that hen-witted girl?”

“Then why the devil did you offer for her?” she demanded.

“It only needed that!” he said. “Serena, I could break your damned neck!”

She stared at him in bewilderment. “Why? How was I to guess you had run mad? Anyone would think it was my fault you lost your head over a pretty face!”

“I never lost my head over any but one face, God help me! My temper, yes—once too often! I offered for Emily because you had become engaged to Kirkby! And if you were not a paperskull, you would have guessed it!”

“It’s a lie! I only wrote to tell you of my engagement after the notice of yours had appeared in the Gazette!” she said swiftly.

“And you thought that because you hadn’t told me of it I didn’t know? Well, I did know! You cannot live in a man’s pocket here, my girl, without setting tongues wagging! From three separate sources did I hear of your doings!”

“If you choose to listen to gossip—”

“No, I didn’t listen to it—until I knew who it was who had appeared in Bath! Then I did more than listen! I got the truth out of Claypole!”

“You didn’t so much as remember Hector!” she stammered.

“Of course I remembered him!” he said scornfully. “I remembered something else too!—that unknown person whose name you refused to divulge, when I first visited you here!”

“Unknown person?” she repeated blankly. “Oh, good God! Mrs Floore! I had not seen Hector then! Ivo, what a fool you were!”

“I was a fool,” he said grimly, “but not in believing that Claypole spoke the truth!”

“And you became engaged to Emily merely because I—Ivo, it is beyond words! To use a child very nearly young enough to be your daughter as a weapon of revenge on me—I wonder that you dare to stand there and tell me of such an iniquity!” Serena said hotly.

“It wasn’t as bad as that!” he said, flushing. “I meant then to marry her! If that curst Adonis of yours had won you, what did it signify whom I married? I must marry someone, and Emily was as good as another—better! I knew I could mould her into whatever shape I pleased; I knew she would be happy enough with what I could give her; I knew the Laleham harpy would jump at my offer. And I knew you would hate it, Serena! Oh, yes, infamous, wasn’t it? I did it because I was mad with anger—but I never meant to play the child false!”

“And what, most noble Marquis,” inquired Serena scathingly, “made you change your mind, and decide instead to be rid of her?”

He set his hands on her shoulders, and gripped them, holding her eyes with his, “Years ago, Serena, you fancied yourself head over ears in love with a devilish handsome lad! I didn’t think then that he was the man for you—and when I saw you both together here, I was even more certain of it! But when I heard of his reappearance, and of the reception he got from you, I was shaken as I never was before, and hope to God I never shall be again! But the instant I saw the pair of you I knew that I had rolled myself up to no purpose at all! I don’t know what madness seized you, but I do know that you don’t love Kirkby, and never did, or will!”

She wrenched herself away. “Did you? Did you, indeed? Perhaps you thought I loved you!”

“No—but I knew that I still loved you! I could see you would break with Kirkby—Lord, Serena, if I hadn’t been in such a damned tangle myself I should have laughed myself into stitches! My poor girl, did you really think you could be happy with a man that would let you walk rough-shod over him? For how long did you enjoy having your own undisputed way? When did you begin to feel bored?”

“Let me tell you this, Rotherham!” she flung at him. “Hector is worth a dozen of you!”

“Oh, probably two or three dozen! What has that to say to anything?”

“It has this to say! I am pledged to him, and I shall marry him, so let me recommend you to lose no time in reinstating yourself in Emily’s good graces! How dare you talk to me like this? And to think I didn’t believe the things Emily poured out to me today!” She paused, almost choking. “You deliberately tried to make that girl cry off!”

“Well, how the devil else was I to get out of a marriage that was going to wreck the pair of us—and Emily, too, for that matter?”

“You made your bed—”

“—and we could all of us lie on it, I suppose?” he interjected witheringly.

She drew a breath. “Good God, had you no compunction? You had offered her a great position, a—”

“Yes, I had! And if you fancy that her mother forced her to accept my offer, you’re out, my girl! I never tampered with her affections: don’t think it! Had I thought she cared one jot for me it would have been a different story, but she didn’t! She wanted nothing from me but rank and fortune, and she made that abundantly plain!”

“Ivo, did you, or did you not make violent love to her, and tell her that if she played the coquette with you after you were married it would be very much the worse for her?” Serena demanded.

“Oh, not then!” he replied coolly. “That was later! God knows what she thought I had in store for her, little fool!”

“Oh, how I wish she had slapped your face!” raged Serena.

“So did I wish it!” he retorted. “Lord, Serena, I even made her think I should be such a jealous husband that she would do better to marry a Bluebeard! I ran the gamut of impatience, jealousy, intemperate passion, veiled threats, and nothing I could do or say outweighed my coronet!”

“In her mother’s eyes!”

“Oh, yes! I don’t deny that woman had a good deal to do with it! But make no mistake about it, Serena!—until I convinced Emily that she would not enjoy all that stuff by half as much as she had thought she would, I could have been as brutal as I chose, and she would still have married me!”

She gave a gasp. “Delford! Ivo, you—you fiend! When she told me about that visit—the pomp and the ceremony you overwhelmed her with—the people you filled the house with—the formality you insisted on—I thought that either she was exaggerating to impress me, or that you had run mad!”

He grinned at her. “You never saw such a party! I had the state apartments opened, and shut my own rooms up, and dug out the gold plate, and—”

“How you can stand there and boast to me—! No wonder Emily stared at me when I told her you had no turn for ceremony!”

“Grandeur she wanted, and grandeur I gave her—full measure, and brimming over! Lady Laleham revelled in it, but Emily didn’t. That was when I saw the scales begin to tip. Then she was ill—by the bye, Serena, that was the best thing I’ve ever heard Gerard say! I told him Emily had been suffering from an attack of influenza, and damme if he didn’t rip back at me that it was more likely an attack of the Marquis of Rotherham! I never thought the boy had it in him to land me such a doubler!”

“Or to elope with Emily?” she demanded. “Was that your doing too? I can believe you capable even of that!”

“No, it never entered my head that he had enough spirit for such a stroke as that. All I did was to try whether I could sting him into coming here, and enacting his tragedy to Emily. He prated about the attachment that had existed between them, and for anything I knew it might have been true. If it was true, and he had enough courage to come here in defiance of me, I thought he might be the very thing that was wanted to weigh the scales completely down against that damned coronet. I gave him a couple of days’ grace, and then sent Emily a letter, calculated—as you so correctly pointed out to me, my clever one!—to scare her out of her wits. I can’t say I expected an elopement, though.”

“And if you had? Do you expect me to believe that you would not still have used the wretched boy in that unprincipled way?”

To her seething anger, he appeared to consider this quite dispassionately for a moment or two. “No, I couldn’t have helped him to a Gretna Green marriage,” he decided.

“This is something indeed! No doubt, if I had not frustrated that crazy scheme, you would now be posting north to do it yourself!”

“What I should be doing at this moment, if you had not wrecked everything with your damned meddling, would be thanking God for deliverance!” he returned trenchantly. “What I thought to find here was Emily playing Juliet to Gerard’s Romeo! His heroics may not appeal to me, but they are just the thing to put a little spirit into her! All she needed to make her cry off by the time her mother sent her here, was someone to support her! The fool that I was, I believed I could rely on you to scotch what you must have seen was the worst marriage ever! Very free you are with your condemnations of what I did, you shrew! Reserve some of your censure for your own behaviour! Instead of telling the chit she had better go hang herself than cling like a damned limpet to a man you knew would make her a hellish husband, you did all you could to persuade her I had all the amiable qualities which no one knows better than you I have not! By the time Gerard burst in on me, I knew you were failing me, but that you were ranged on the side of the Laleham harpy I never dreamed! What was in that red head of yours, my sweetest scold? Spite?”

Quick as a flash she struck at him, but he was quicker still, and caught her wrist in mid-air. “Oh, no, you don’t! You’ll hit me when I choose to let you, and at no other time, Serena! Why did you try to push me into that marriage? Answer me, damn you!”

“I never pushed you into anything!” she replied pantingly. “Wiser men than you have fallen in love with pretty featherheads! You to talk to me of spite! It never entered my head that you had offered for Emily because you wanted to be revenged on me, and hoped I should be hurt! You have gone your length, Rotherham! I may be every one of the things you are so obliging as to call me, but the only thought I had was to save you from the humiliation of being twice jilted! You may let me go: I would not touch you, any more than I would touch a toad!”

He laughed. “Wouldn’t you? We’ll see that! Now, you listen to me, my girl! There’s nothing I should like better than to continue quarrelling with you, but thanks to your well-meant but cork-brained efforts on my behalf the tangle is now past unravelling, and must be cut! When I’ve done that, I’ll come back, and you may revile me to your heart’s content!”

“Don’t you dare set foot inside this house again!” she said.

“Try if you can keep me out!” he advised her, and let her wrist go, and strode out of the room, a little too quickly for Lybster, hovering in a disinterested fashion in the narrow hall. “What a rare day’s entertainment for you!” he said sardonically.

“I beg your lordship’s pardon?” said Lybster, the picture of bewildered dignity.

“You may well! Inform Lady Spenborough that I shall be dining here tonight!”

“Yes, my lord.”

Serena was in the doorway, her eyes flashing green fire. “You will on no account admit Lord Rotherham into this house, Lybster!”

“No, my lady,” said Lybster, moving to the street door, and opening it for Rotherham.

Serena turned towards the stairs. Fanny, on the first landing, whisked herself back into the drawing-room, and softly closed the door. “There! You heard what she said!” she whispered to Major Kirkby.

“Yes, and I heard what he said,” he replied.

Serena’s hasty steps sounded outside. Fanny looked anxiously towards the door, but Serena passed on, and up the next flight. “Oh, dear, I fear she is in one of her rages!” said Fanny. “What shall I do? Oh, what a dreadful day this is!”

He smiled. “No, I think not, love. If I were you, I would do what I am going to do: retire to change for dinner!”

“Hector, you don’t mean to leave me to dine with those two, she cried,” aghast.

“Not I! Do you think I have no interest in the outcome of this battle? I too am dining with you, my love!” he said.