Faro's Daughter (6 page)

‘Oh, thank you! Yes, indeed I should like it of all things That is, if—but I don’t suppose—’ He stopped, looking a little, self-conscious. ‘I am glad I have found you at home,’ he said. ‘I particularly wanted to see you!’

‘What is it?’ Ravenscar asked.

‘As a matter of fact, I came to ask your advice!’ replied Adrian, in a rush. ‘At least, no, not that exactly,—for my mind is quite made up! But the thing is that my mother depends a good deal upon your judgement; and you’ve always been devilish good to me, so I thought I would tell you how things stand.’

There was nothing Mr Ravenscar wanted less than to hear his cousin explain his passion for Miss Grantham, but he said: ‘By all means! Are you coming to watch my race, by the way?’

This question succeeded in diverting Lord Mablethorpe for the moment, and he replied, with his face lighting up: ‘Oh, by Jove, I should think I am! But what a complete hand you are, Max! I never heard you make such a bet in your life! I suppose you will win. There is no one like you when it comes to handling the ribbons! Where will it be run?’

‘Oh, down at Epsom, I imagine! I left it to Filey to settle the locality.’

‘I hate that fellow!’ said Lord Mablethorpe, frowning. ‘I hope you will beat him.’

‘Well, I shall do my best. Do you go to Newmarket next month?’

‘Yes. No. That is, I am not sure. But I didn’t come to talk of that!’

Mr Ravenscar resigned himself to the inevitable, made himself comfortable in his chair, and said: ‘What did you come to talk of?’

Lord Mablethorpe picked up a fork, and began to trace patterns with it upon the table. ‘I hadn’t the intention of telling you about it,’ he confessed. ‘It is not as though you were my guardian, after all! Of course, I know you are one of my trustees, but that is quite a different thing, isn’t it?’

‘Oh, quite!’ agreed Ravenscar.

‘I mean, you are not responsible for anything I may do,’ said Adrian, pressing home his point with a little anxiety. ‘Not a bit.’

‘In any event, I shall come of age in a couple of months. It is really no concern of anyone’.

‘None at all,’ said Ravenscar, betraying no trace of the uneasiness his relative evidently expected him to feel. ‘In fact, you may just as well keep your own counsel, and have some ale.’

‘No, I don’t want any,’ said Adrian, rather impatiently. ‘As I said, I had no intention of telling you. Only you happened to visit—to visit Lady Bel’s house last night, and—and you met Her.’

‘I did not exchange more than half a dozen words with Lady Bellingham, however.’

‘Not Lady Bellingham!’ said Adrian, irritated by such stupidity. ‘I mean Miss Grantham!’

‘Oh, Miss Grantham! Yes, I played piquet with her, certainly. What of it?’

‘What did you think of her, Max?’ asked his lordship shyly.

‘Really, I don’t remember that I thought about her at all. Why?’

Adrian looked up indignantly. ‘Good God, you surely must at least have seen how—how very beautiful she is!’

‘Why, yes, I suppose she is tolerably handsome!’ conceded Ravenscar.

‘Tolerably handsome!’ ejaculated Adrian, in dumbfounded accents.

‘Yes, certainly, for one who is not in the first blush of youth A little too strapping for my taste, and will probably put or flesh in middle age, but I will allow her to be a well-looking woman.’

Adrian laid down the fork, and said, with a considerable heightened colour: ‘I had better make it plain to you at once Max, that—that I mean to marry her!’

‘Marry Miss Grantham?’ said Ravenscar, raising his brows. ‘My dear boy, why?’

This unemotional way of receiving startling tidings was damping in the extreme to a young gentleman who had braced himself to encounter violent opposition, and for a moment Adrian seemed to be at a loss to know what to say. After a slight pause, he said with immense dignity: ‘I love her.’

‘How very odd!’ said Ravenscar, apparently puzzled.

‘I see nothing odd in it!’

‘No, of course not. How should you, indeed? But surely someone nearer your own age-?’

‘The difference in our ages doesn’t signify in the least. You talk as though Deb were in her thirties!’

‘I beg pardon.’

Adrian eyed him with considerable resentment. ‘My mind is irrevocably made up, Max. I shall never love another woman I knew as soon as I saw her that she was the only one in the world for me! Of course, I don’t expect you to understand that, because you are the coldest fellow—well, I mean, you have never been in love!’

Ravenscar laughed.

‘Well, not in the way I mean,’ amended his lordship.

‘Evidently not. But what has all this to do with me?’

‘Nothing at all!’ replied Adrian, with emphasis. ‘Only that since you have met Deb I thought I would tell you. I do not wish to do anything secretly. I am not in the least ashamed of loving Deb!’

‘It would be very odd if you were,’ commented Ravenscar. ‘I apprehend that Miss Grantham has accepted your offer??

‘Well, not precisely,’ Adrian confessed. ‘That is, she will marry me, I know, but she is the most delightfully teasing creature-! Oh, I can’t tell you, but when you know her better you will see for yourself!’

Ravenscar set down his tankard. ‘When you say “not precisely”, what do you mean?’

‘Oh, she says I must wait until I come of age before I make up my mind—as though I could ever change it! She did not wish me to say anything about it yet, but someone told my mother that I was entangled—entangled!—by her and so it all came out. And that is “in part” why I have come to you, Max.’

‘Oh?’

‘My mother will listen to you,’ said Adrian confidently. ‘You see, she has taken an absurd notion into her head that Deb is not good enough for me. Of course, I know that her being in Lady Bel’s house is a most unfortunate circumstance, but she is not in the least the sort of girl you might imagine, Max, upon my word she is not! She don’t even like cards above a little! It is all to help her aunt.’

‘Did she tell you so?’

‘Oh no, it was Kennet who told me! He has known her since her childhood. Really, Max, she is the dearest, sweetest—oh, there are no words to describe her!’

Mr Ravenscar could have found several, but refrained.

‘She is not like any other woman I have ever met,’ pursued his lordship. ‘I wonder that you were not struck by it!’

‘Well, I have met rather more women than you have as yet had time to,’ said Ravenscar apologetically. ‘That might account for it.’

‘Yes, but I should have thought that even you—however, that’s neither here nor there! What I want you to understand, Max, is that I mean to marry Deb, whatever anyone may choose to say about it!’

‘Very well; and now that I understand that, what do you expect me to do about it?’

‘Well, Max, I thought I could talk to you so much more easily than to my mother. You know how it is with her. Just because Deb has been in the habit of presiding in a gaminghouse, she will not listen to a word I say! It is monstrously unjust! It is not Deb’s fault that she is obliged to be friendly towards men like Filey and Ormskirk: she cannot help herself! Oh, I can scarcely wait to take her away from it all!’

‘I see,’ said Ravenscar. ‘I must own that you have taken me by surprise. No doubt I quite mistook the matter, but I should have said that it was Ormskirk’s suit which the lady favoured, rather than yours.’

Adrian looked troubled. ‘No, no, you don’t understand! It is that which makes me so anxious—in short, Lady Bel is under an obligation to Ormskirk—a monetary obligation, you know—and Deb dare not offend him. It is an intolerable position for her! If only I had control of my fortune now, I would put an end to it on the instant!’

Mr Ravenscar experienced no difficulty at all in believing this, and could only be thankful that there were still two months to run of his cousin’s minority. ‘May I ask if the source of your information is again Mr Kennet?’ he inquired

‘Oh, yes! Deb will not say a word about it! But Kennet, knows all the circumstances.’

‘Miss Grantham is happy in the possession of so devoted friend,’ remarked Ravenscar ironically.

‘Well, yes, I suppose—except that—Well, he is not quite the sort of fellow who—But that will all be changed when we are married!’

‘Miss Grantham’s parentage, I need hardly ask, is respectable?’ said Ravenscar, in a matter-of-fact voice.

‘Oh, yes! The Granthams are related to Amberley, I believe they are some sort of cousins: I am not precisely informed Deb’s father was a military man, but he sold out.’ Lord Mablethorpe looked up with a disarming smile. ‘Well, the truth is, he was a gamester, I suppose. His birth was respectable but from all I can discover he was not quite the thing. But he is dead, after all, and his sins are not to be visited upon Deb There is also a brother. I have not met him yet, but there is talk of his getting leave: he is stationed somewhere in the south. He is a military man too, and was at Harrow, so you see there is nothing to take exception to there.’ He paused, waiting for his cousin to make some comment. Ravenscar, however, said nothing. His lordship drew a breath. ‘And now that I have explained it to you, Max, I wish—that is, I should be very much obliged to you if you would speak to my mother I’

‘I?’ said Ravenscar. ‘What would you have me say to her?’

‘Well, I thought you could make her understand that it is not such a bad match after all!’

‘No, I don’t think I could do that,’ replied Ravenscar. ‘I doubt if anyone could.’

‘But, Max—’

‘I should wait until I had come of age, if I were you.’

‘But if Mama could only be brought to consent, I should not have to wait! And there is that fellow, Ormskirk, to be thought of! I want Mama to give her consent, so that Deb need have no scruples. Then the engagement could be announced, and I daresay there would be no trouble about advancing me some of my fortune.’

‘Impossible!’

‘But, Max, if you and Uncle Julius both agreed to it—’

‘What makes you think that we should?’

‘But I have explained it all to you!’ said his lordship impatiently.

Mr Ravenscar got up, and stretched his long limbs. ‘Wait until you are of age,’ he said. ‘You may then do as you please.’

‘I did not think you would behave so shabbily!’ exclaimed Adrian.

Ravenscar smiled. ‘But surely you know that I am abominably close-fisted?’

‘It is not your money,’ Adrian muttered. ‘I suppose the truth is that you are as bad as Mama, and don’t wish me to marry Deb!’

‘I won’t conceal from you that I am not enthusiastic over the match. You had better approach your Uncle Julius.’

‘You know very well he is as bad as Mama! I made sure you would help me to talk Mama over! I have always depended upon you! I did not think you would fail me in the most important thing in my life!’

Ravenscar walked round the table, and dropped a hand on to Adrian’s shoulder, gripping it for an instant. ‘Believe me, I don’t mean to fail you,’ he said. ‘But you must wait! Now I am going to exercise those greys of mine. Come with me!’

It spoke volumes for the love-sick state of Adrian’s mind that he shook his head, saying disconsolately: ‘No, I think I won’t. I have no heart for it now. I must be going. If you knew Deb better you would soon change your mind!’

‘Then you must hope for a closer acquaintanceship between us,’ said Ravenscar, moving to the fireplace, and jerking the bell-pull beside it.

Adrian rose. ‘Anyway, I shall marry her!’ he said defiantly.

Ravenscar accompanied him out into the hall. ‘By all means, if you are still of the same mind in two months’ time,’ he agreed. ‘My compliments to my aunt, by the way.’

‘I don’t suppose I shall tell her that I have been with you,’ replied Adrian, sounding much like a thwarted schoolboy.

‘That will teach me a lesson,’ said his cousin.

Adrian was never sulky for many minutes at a time. A reluctant grin put his scowl to flight. ‘Oh, damn you, Max!’ he said, and departed.

Mr Ravenscar returned to his breakfast-parlour, and stood for a moment or two, leaning his arm on the mantelpiece, and looking fixedly out of the window. His thoughts were not kindly towards Miss Grantham, and as they dwelled upon her his expression grew a little ugly. Very clever of the wench to set the convenient Mr Kennet to tell her pathetic story to Adrian! So she would not have him announce his betrothal to her until he came of age? Well, that was clever too, but not quite clever enough. Miss Grantham should have the honour of trying a fall with one Max Ravenscar, and maybe she would learn something from that encounter.

‘You rang, sir?’

Mr Ravenscar turned his head. ‘Yes, I rang. Send word to the stables, please, that I want the greys brought round in half an hour.’

Chapter 4

Miss Grantham, sleeping late into the morning, did not leave her room until past eleven o’clock. The servants, in green baize aprons and shirt-sleeves, were still sweeping and dusting the saloons, and Miss Grantham presently found her aunt in her dressing-room, seated before a table on which her toilet accessories were inextricably mixed with bills, letters, pens, ink, and wafers.