The Launching of Roger Brook

daring to turn his face to hers. 'I—I think you're adorable. And have no fear. I'll make an honest woman of you. We'll have to wait until I'm old enough to marry, but I'm willing to wait as long as need be, if you are.'

'Roger,' she said, in a much firmer voice. 'Come here. Come back and sit beside me.'

He turned then, and was staggered to see that she had already tidied her hair, smoothed out her skirts, and was sitting there, a picture of demure amusement, quietly laughing at him.

'Don't you—don't you mind?' he faltered.

'Of course not, you silly fellow. 'For me, it wasn't the first time.'

'D'you mean you've done that sort of thing before?' he said incredulously, his relief struggling with a sudden new-born jealousy.

'Why not?' she shrugged. 'It has just as much attraction for a woman as a man, and it's absurdly unfair that men should love where they list while girls are supposed to go through life like marble images.'

'Who was it with?' he demanded truculently.

' Tis none of your business. Yet I don't mind telling you. In London I favoured one of my beaux far above the rest. Old Aunt Sophie was so exhausted from sitting up for me to all hours on rout seats and stiff-backed gilded chairs that she slept most afternoons. My little fool of a cousin, Dorothea, took some evading but two or three times a week I managed to give her the slip and go out shopping with my maid. Jenny was a sensible gel and easily bribeable, so I used to send her to do my shopping and spend the time pleasuring my lover in his rooms in Jermyn Street.'

Quite illogically, in view of his recent act, Roger was frankly horrified. 'D'you really mean that you actually went to a man's rooms of your own free will and let him seduce you?'

'Well, what if I did,' she shrugged. 'I see no reason why you should look so shocked about it. But as a matter of fact, he didn't seduce me. I'd lost all I had to lose last spring, before I went to London.'

Roger's new feeling of jealousy returned with redoubled force at the thought that someone in the neighbourhood had been the first to enjoy Georgina's charms, and the not unnatural assumption that on that first occasion she must have been forced to it against her will, made him positively seethe with anger.

'Tell me his name,' he cried. 'Tell me his name, and, by heaven, I'll kill him.'

'You won't; and you couldn't if you tried, my littlest gallant. 'Twas Captain Coignham.''

Roger's eyes almost popped from his head. 'What!' he gasped, 'Not the highwayman?'

'Yes, indeed. I know of no other.'

He groaned. 'Oh, Georgina; and I've warned you so often that 'tis dangerous for you to ride alone in the forest.'

His fervid imagination swiftly conjured up a wild scene of the screaming Georgina being dragged from her horse, pulled in among the bushes, brutally raped and left dishevelled and swooning. Yet his morbid curiosity got the better of him and he could not resist adding: 'It must have been simply terrible for you; but how did it happen?'

' 'Twas not so terrible,' she smiled reminiscently. 'We came face to face no great distance from the Queen's Elm. I've always felt that jewellery was made to be worn, not kept locked up in a box. I had that day a fine sapphire ring on my finger and a diamond aigrette in my hat. He greeted me most polite, but bade me hand them over. I parleyed with him a little and begged him to let me at least keep the ring, since it had been my mother's. He declared that I could keep both the ornaments if I was willing to ransom them with a kiss a- piece. He was a personable fellow, well groomed and of good address, so I considered the saving of my jewels cheap at the price. We both dismounted and he gave me the first kiss. 'Twas a long one and the fellow knew his business. Then he picked me up in his strong arms and carried me through the trees to a mossy bank, as he said, to give me the other in surroundings more suited to my beauty. Call me a brazen hussy if you will, but I've not a shadow of regret over that sunny day last spring when I came upon Captain Coignham in the forest. 'Twas a fine romantic way to lose one's maidenhead.'

Roger remained silent for a few moments. He had often heard of the notorious highwayman but never seen him. Georgina's story of the encounter was so unlike anything he had expected that he found the grounds for anger cut from beneath his feet. The fellow was reputed handsome and, despite his monstrous impertinence, appeared to have behaved with the utmost civility; while Georgina had clearly proved his willing victim. Roger was wondering now if, in view of her previous adventures, he was still called on to pledge himself to her. Convention demanded that any girl a gentleman took to wife should go to her bridal chamber as spotless as an angel; no matter what pranks she might get up to later if the couple decided to go their separate ways, providing only that she cloaked her amours with a reasonable decency in order to protect his name.

Yet, he reflected, she had not been called upon to tell him anything, and he had made his avowal before she had spoken. Even if she was not the languorous, golden-haired creature of his dreams she was still one of the loveliest people he had ever set eyes on, and her soft embrace so recently enjoyed had given her a new enchantment for him. More, where would he ever find a girl whose interests tallied so closely with his own; in all their many hours together he had never known a dull moment in her company. The episode with the highway­man was a misfortune that might have happened to any imprudent girl and, once seduced, the affair with the London buck could be excused by the unconventional way in which she had been brought up, coupled with her zest for any form of daring and adventure. With sudden resolution he decided that convention could be damned, and that in any case a gentleman must stick by his word, so, from every point of view he should go through with it.

'A penny for your thoughts, Roger,' she said softly.

'I was just wondering,' he replied with a smile, 'how soon we can get married. I fear we won't be allowed to until I'm seventeen, but that isn't very long to wait. The devil of it is, though, that I've got no money.'

'Oh, Roger, you darling,' she sighed. 'You haven't really been thinking of marrying me, have you?'

'Of course. That is unless you've promised yourself to the fellow in London?'

She shrugged her shoulders airily. 'What, Harry! Lud, no! He's married already; and even if he weren't I wouldn't have him. He's devilish handsome, but a hopeless wastrel.'

'You'll promise to forget him, then. And we'll consider it a settled thing. God alone knows what the future holds for me, but as soon as I'm in any situation to do so I'll speak to your father.'

Taking his hand she drew him down beside her, and said seriously: 'Roger, m'dear, I'm deeply sensible of the honour that you do me. More especially since I've been unmaidenly enough to declare myself a piece of shop-soiled goods. But I've no intention of pledging myself to any man as yet.'

'But you can't go on like this,' he protested. 'After taking three lovers while barely seventeen, 'tis over-time already that you became respectable.'

'Tour,' she corrected, with a little laugh. 'I met the wickedest, handsomest young spark that ever I did see at the Lansdowne House Ball, and we met again while attending old Q's water-party at Richmond. He tumbled me in a punt and I simply could not bring myself to resist him.''

'Georgina!' he suddenly wrung his hands, 'how could you! It needs but such looseness through another season for your name to become a byword. Then none will marry you.'

She shook her dark curls. 'Dear Roger! You don't understand. What if I have had four lovers? I hope to have forty more, should I find forty men that please me. Nay, I'll take a hundred before I die, and the finest and handsomest men in the realm among them. As for marriage, set thy fears for me at rest. Do'st thou not realise that I am an heiress?'

'Your father is reputed a warm man, I know,' he nodded.

'He is far richer than you think. This place and the house in Bedford Square represent but a small fraction of his fortune.'

'How so? I have heard it said that old Mr. Thursby died in good circumstances, but never that he left your father great riches.'

'True, but papa has brains, and has made a mint of money for himself. 'Tis his interest in engineering and machinery—the very things people count him crazy foi—that have brought him his wealth.'

'You have never told me of this before.'

'I did not know it myself until he presented me during the season to the Duke of Bridgewater, who, it seems, is one of his partners in a company. 'Twas His Grace who made the first canal, to supersede the system by which coal was carried on pack horses from his mines at Worsley to Manchester. But 'twas Mr. Josiah Wedgwood who first interested papa in such schemes.'