“I am sure I do. Permit me to inform you that her presence in this inn is due, not to her own choice, but to my forcible abduction of her. She is a lady of unimpeachable virtue, and I shall be obliged if you will forget that you have ever seen her in my company.”
“Sir,” said Mr. Comyn, a stickler for exactitude, “I never have seen her in your company, and I have therefore nothing to forget.”
“You’re a good fellow,” said his lordship, with unusual kindness. “I’ll trust you.” He sat himself down in the window, and favoured Mr. Comyn with a brief, unvarnished account of the happenings of the past two days.
Mr. Comyn listened with grave attention, and remarked at the end that it was an edifying story. He added that he was honoured by his lordship’s confidence, and begged to proffer his felicitations upon his approaching nuptials.
“Oh, go to the devil!” snapped the Marquis, exasperated.
Chapter IX
His lordship’s remarks to Miss Challoner on the impropriety and folly of addressing strangers in French inns were caustic and denunciatory, but had no visible effect upon the lady. She continued to eat her dinner, lending no more than a polite ear to his homily, and appeared to consider Mr. Comyn’s inability to speak French an adequate excuse. My lord speedily undeceived her. “You do not seem to me to comprehend the extreme delicacy of your situation,” he said.
Miss Challoner subjected a dish of sweetmeats to close inspection, and finally selected the best of them. “I do,” she replied. “I have had plenty of time for reflection, my lord, and I cannot but realize that I’ve not a shred of reputation left to me.”
The Marquis laughed. “You’re mighty cool over it, ma’am.”
“You should be glad of that,” Miss Challoner said serenely. “The task of conveying to Paris a female suffering from a series of strong hysterics would, I imagine, be vastly distasteful to you.”
“It would,” said the Marquis with conviction.
“Moreover,” pursued Miss Challoner, once more inspecting the dish of sweetmeats, “I cannot discover that a display of agitation on my part would achieve much beyond my own exhaustion and your annoyance.” She bit into a sugar plum. “Also,” she said meditatively, “you have upon several occasions threatened me with extreme violence, so that I should be excessively fearful of the results of driving you to distraction.”
The Marquis brought his open hand down upon the table, and the glasses jumped. “Don’t lie!” he said. “You are not in the least afraid of what I may do to you! Are you?”
“Not at the moment, sir,” she admitted. “But when you have broached your second bottle, I own to some qualms.”
“Let me inform you, ma’am, that I am not considered dangerous until the third bottle.”
Miss Challoner looked at him with a faint smile. “My lord,” she said frankly, “you become dangerous immediately your will is crossed. I find you spoiled, impetuous, and shockingly overbearing.”
“Thank you,” said his lordship. “Perhaps you prefer the sedate demeanour of your friend Mr. Comyn?”
“He seemed to be a gentleman of ordinary propriety, certainly,” concurred Miss Challoner.
“I, on the other hand, am a gentleman of extraordinary impropriety, of course.”
“Oh, not a gentleman, sir, a nobleman,” said Miss Challoner with irony.
“You hit hard, ma’am. Pray, was there anything else in Mr. Comyn that you found worthy of remark?”
“To be sure, sir. His manners were of the most amiable.”
“I’ve none at all,” said his lordship blandly. “Being a nobleman, ma’am, I don’t need ’em. Pray let me pass you this second, dish of comfits which has apparently escaped your notice.”
“Thank you,” said Miss Challoner.
The Marquis sipped his wine, watching her over the rim of his glass. “I think it only fair to warn you, ma’am, that this paragon is secretly contracted to a cousin of mine. In fact, his business in Paris, and I mistake not, is to elope with her.”
“Indeed?” Miss Challoner said innocently. “Your cousin is no doubt very like you?”
“Oh, just a family likeness, ma’am,” retorted his lordship. “She should be pleased with you,” he added thoughtfully.
“I cannot conceive why, sir.”
“She’d be pleased with any female who married me.”
Miss Challoner looked at him curiously. “She is so fond of you?”
“No, that ain’t the reason. Her mamma, my ambitious Aunt Fanny, intends her to be my bride—a prospect Juliana dislikes as much as I do.”
Miss Challoner said quickly: “Juliana?”
“My cousin.”
“Yes, I understand that, my lord. But what is her surname?”
“Marling,” said his lordship. “Now what’s to do?”
Miss Challoner jumped in her chair. “Your cousin! Juliana Marling! But I know her!”
“Do you?” said Vidal, not visibly excited. “A mad piece, ain’t she?”
“Oh, she was my very dearest friend!” Miss Challoner said. “But I never dreamed she was your cousin! We were at the same seminary, you see.”
“I’ll wager Juliana learned precious little there,” remarked Vidal.
“Not very much,” allowed Miss Challoner. “They nearly sent her away once, for—er—flirting with the drawing-master. She always said they only forgave her because her uncle was a duke.”
“Kissed the drawing-master, did she? She would!”
“Is she really going to marry Mr. Comyn?” inquired Miss Challoner.
“She says so. But she can’t run off with him now until our affair is settled. Egad, it’s providential that you know her!” He pushed back his chair and got up. “She’s staying with my cousin Elisabeth—bundled off too young to be out of Comyn’s way. I’ll go and pay my respects to her immediately we reach Paris, and tell her the whole story. She’s a rattle-pate, but she’s fond of me, and she’ll do as I bid her. She shall have met you in Paris, just as you were on the point of returning to England with—oh, an aunt, or some such thing. She will tell Tante Elisabeth that she has prevailed upon you to visit her for a week or two and you will go to the Hotel Charbonne surrounded by a positive fog of respectability. From whence, my dear, I shall presently elope with you—before, I trust, Tante has had time to discover the truth.”
Miss Challoner was thinking fast. If Juliana were in Paris, Juliana could help her to obtain a post in some genteel household. Knowing that lively damsel, she had no fear that she might be shocked at her friend’s extraordinary escapade. “Yes, my lord, that is a very good notion—some of it, but I believe you have not perceived the whole good of Juliana’s presence in Paris. You have said yourself, sir, that I shall be surrounded by a positive fog of respectability. I have only to pretend to my mother that Juliana was with you from the start of our journey, and my reputation is saved.”
He shook his head. “I fear not, Mary. It’s a good lie, but too many people would know it for a lie. Moreover, my dear, if I know aught of your mamma, her first care will have been to apprise my parents of your abduction, and to create as much stir as possible. I am well aware that she meant to try and force me into marriage with Sophia by some such method. Didn’t she?”
“Yes,” said Miss Challoner, flushing and shamefaced.
The Marquis touched her cheek with a careless finger as he passed her chair. “No need to look like that, child; I know. Happily, these plans will be delayed a little by the absence of both my parents from town. My father was to have left for the races at Newmarket upon the day I took my leave of him; and my mother was to have gone with him as far as Bedford, where she will be at this moment, staying with the Vanes. We have, therefore, at least a fortnight’s grace, I imagine, but certainly not longer. Write to your mother, apprising her of your betrothal: that should silence her.”
“And you?” she said, watching him as he wandered restlessly about the room. “Do you intend to write your father?”
An involuntary smile twisted his mouth. He refrained from telling her that it was not his libertine behaviour that would annoy his grace, but his honourable intention to marry. He said only: “No need: his grace is not likely to concern himself with my affairs.”
“I do not desire to speak with any disrespect of your father, sir, but from the little I have heard of him I take
