Chapter Five

 

Arrived at the low back gate in his path, Denzell vaulted over it, and hurried up to his quarry, a touch out of breath, but blue eyes quizzing her from their misty depths.

‘How could you be so unkind—Miss Chaceley? Visiting the place—and then leaving before I could so much as catch a glimpse of you!’

Verena found her own breath catching in her throat, as if she had been running as hard as he. Her pulses were flurried, and it was all she could do to maintain the outward cool reserve that must distance him.

‘Good morning, Mr Hawkeridge,’ she managed, refusing to be drawn into responding to his provocative speech.

He grinned, bowing, as he flung aside the folds of a greatcoat that hung open. He had obviously seized it and thrown it on all anyhow in his haste to follow her, and taking no time at all to find his hat, for his head was uncovered.

‘Good morning, Miss Chaceley. May I escort you home?’

She blinked, saying stupidly, ‘Thank you, I know my way.’

‘No, do you?’ he countered, on a spurious note of surprise. ‘Why, then you must have come this way before.’

The spurt of laughter could not be contained. She controlled it.

‘You are absurd, sir.’

‘I know,’ said Denzell, and the grin vanished. ‘It has become a habit with me. And for that you should take pity on me, Miss Chaceley, and indulge me just a little.’

‘What, by allowing you to escort me home?’

His face lit. ‘You are so quick, ma’am.’

Again, Verena was obliged to bite down on a quivering lip. ‘And you, sir, are remarkably slow.’

‘How so?’

Verena drew a breath. ‘What does it take to convince you, Mr Hawkeridge?’

He raised his brows. ‘Of what, Miss Chaceley?’

Disconcerted, she snapped, ‘You know perfectly well.’

Denzell eyed her for a moment, his gaze roving her features under the bronze bonnet. He had succeeded in rattling her, but that was not what he wanted. Yet if that was what it took to shake her out of that infuriating façade, then what choice had he? There was only frankness left.

‘I don’t know what it takes,’ he said. ‘I can only suggest that we pursue the matter until we find out.’

‘We?’

A slow grin entered his face. ‘Why, I think so. Though I admit that for you, Miss Chaceley, it seems to be a case of willy-nilly.’

She almost laughed out again. Really, the man was too much. In spite of herself she warmed to him, saying in a friendly way that she had not meant at all, ‘In that case, I will be on my way, and you may do just as you please.’

‘How magnanimous,’ he murmured, turning to keep pace beside her as she began to plough across the uneven ground.

A hidden dent under a pocket of snow undid her, catching the heel of her boot. She gasped as her step faltered. But Denzell put out an instant hand, grasping her arm.

‘Steady!’

She straightened, glad of his support. The gratitude in her smile, as she turned to him, was genuine. ‘Thank you.’

His lips quivered at the edges. ‘That will teach you to try and run from me.’

Verena’s laughter bubbled up, but she nevertheless drew her arm from out of his grip, retorting, ‘It ought rather to teach you not to trouble me.’

Denzell’s features at once became serious, and his gaze held hers. ‘Do I trouble you?’

A flurry of confusion was set up in Verena’s chest. The automatic rebuttal came out before she could stop it.

‘No!’

‘I wish I might!’

Verena became aware of a tattoo battering in her bosom. She thrust down the burgeoning emotions, unaware for the moment that, though her features were composed, her eyes gave away more than she would have wished.

‘Mr Hawkeridge, pray leave off this incessant badgering,’ she said in the severest tone she could muster. ‘I am aware that you are passing the time in a fashion which you apparently find agreeable, but believe me, sir, it is not agreeable to me.’

‘Because you will not allow it to be so,’ he hit back, out of a sudden frustration that welled up inside him.

Verena’s instinct was to slam back at him, but she controlled it. She knew it for the truth, but that did not make his saying it any better. She could feel the tremor in her own voice, and only hoped that it did not reach his ears under the calm manner in which she answered him.

‘That, sir, is no concern of yours.’

‘I am all too well aware of it.’

‘Then I think we understand each other. Good day, Mr Hawkeridge.’

Denzell watched her walk away, cursing himself for that instant’s foolish show of revolt. Chaste stars, but her control was ten times more effective than his own!

How little she gave away. And how swiftly she covered over every tiny lapse. It was maddening.

He sighed, turning a trifle disconsolately for home. He hardly knew now why he was persisting. She did not want anything to do with him. Why, then, should he force himself upon her notice in this ruthless fashion?

And yet…and yet she had warmed to him. Briefly, yes. But she had laughed at his sallies as she had the other night, never mind that she had damped down upon her mirth. Given time, he could succeed with her, he was sure of it.

Only, why bother? He must leave for Tuttingham soon, in any event. He had set out to beguile the time, just as Verena Chaceley had accused. But she had proved so intriguing that some other motive seemed to have set in, and Denzell was not at all sure he knew what it was. He was not at all sure, moreover, that he liked it.

What, was he so set up in his own conceit that he could not endure—just as Ossie had said—to be thwarted in his interest in a female? It was a chastening thought.

However, it did not serve, he discovered later, to deter him from renewing his explorations into Miss Chaceley’s hidden interior. At the Lower Rooms on the following evening, whither Denzell repaired with his hosts, telling himself that he would ignore Verena if she turned up, he no sooner caught sight of her exquisite beauty—radiant, if statuesque, in a gold-spangled muslin gown that seemed to make her loose tresses glow in the candlelight—than he straight away abandoned his resolve.

Deuce take it, she was intolerably beautiful. How the devil could a man be expected to keep his distance, when everything she was beckoned to his deepest desires? Oh, but that was fustian. Everything she was? He did not know what she was. How could he, when she would open nothing of herself to his sight?

A thought struck him. The brother, now. Why not investigate there? Had not Unice spoken favourably of him, of his animation? Might he not then be more forthcoming than Verena herself? He could hardly be less so. But how to beard the boy?

His ingenuity was not called upon, as it turned out, for as he glanced about the company in the large room, he discovered that the mother having been ousted from the boy’s side, he was being quizzed by none other than Unice Ruishton herself.

‘Unice, present me at once,’ he said, coming up smilingly and holding out his hand. ‘Or better still, go away and allow me to present myself. Hawkeridge, dear sir, and delighted—’ leaning towards the boy with a confidential air ‘—to welcome a like-minded spirit in this aged desert.’

Adam shook hands, grinning. ‘Adam Peverill, sir.’

Unice looked from one to the other of them. She had chosen to beard the boy for Verena’s sake, feeling that the bud of a possible friendship with her might be reinforced if she showed interest in the family. It might serve Denzell quite as well. Finding herself already excluded from the conversation, she shrugged and left them. She could quiz Denzell later for the gist of their conversation.

‘Yes, yes, I know who you are,’ Denzell was saying. ‘I was commiserating with your sister only the other day on giving place to a newer, brighter star.’

The young man shook his head, saying in a deprecating way, ‘I could never compete with Verena. Mama says she gets at least half her looks from her paternal side, although Mama is—was—herself very handsome...’

Denzell ignored the conscious way he corrected himself, and the stammer as he petered out. Capital! The youth was clearly loose-tongued.

‘You are then her half-brother, I take it?’

There was reserve in his voice now, but he answered readily enough. ‘Yes, on Mama’s side.’ He gave a light laugh—forced, Denzell thought. ‘There is little beauty in the Peverill family.’

‘But you have taken your colouring from the other side, I think,’ Denzell said, glancing at the burnished glow of the boy’s hair that was cut to rest on his collar. Keep it casual. Keep him relaxed.

‘That is true.’

The lad was not at all bad-looking, he thought, and he dressed to advantage. The suit was all of a piece in tones of brown, if rather too tight-fitting. Denzell, himself attired once more in his claret coat, but ringing the changes with black satin breeches and the cloth waistcoat with the embroidered lapels once more, thought that the boy would do very well in a few years when he gained a man’s figure.

He smiled at him in a friendly way. ‘So you are on a visit? Don’t you find this place intolerably slow?’

Adam shrugged. ‘Oh, well. It is not much different from Fittleworth, I suppose. Except that there are far more of us in the younger bracket.’

‘Fittleworth? Is that far?’

‘Sussex. It is near Petworth.’

‘Has not one of the racing men a stud there?’

‘Yes, but we don’t race. We hunt, though. My father is the Squire, and so he is Master in the area.’

So Mr Peverill was alive. Then why was his wife living with her daughter in Tunbridge Wells? And how to phrase this innocuously enough that he did not put the boy on his guard?

‘So you have a decent inheritance.’ He grinned. ‘I know what that can be like. No doubt you have all the girls of Fittleworth on the hunt for you.’

Adam flushed, stammering, ‘No—at least—well, I am not much of a catch, you know. Not like Verena, though she has never shown the slightest preference for anyone. And we don’t entertain—very little, in any event. Not at all now that—’ He broke off in some confusion.

‘Of course not,’ Denzell agreed, with a leap of something in his chest. Verena had no lover! ‘With your mama away, recuperating, no doubt your father has no mind to it.’

The boy looked so conscious that Denzell was almost sorry for him. How readily he showed that this interpretation of the circumstances fell far short of the truth. And how little control he had in comparison with his sister. He was tempted to let the matter rest there, but something—he knew not what—drove him to pursue it. To his cost.

‘Do you find your mother in better heart now?’

An icy voice spoke behind him. ‘Yes, he does, Mr Hawkeridge.’

Denzell turned. Verena Chaceley was at his elbow, her features quite composed, but such a blaze of anger in her eyes that astonishment struck him to silence.

She paid him no further attention, but turned at once to speak to her brother. ‘Mama is asking for you, Adam.’

‘Is she? I mean—yes, of course. I will go to her at once.’

Too discomposed even to take his leave of the other gentleman, the young man departed. Verena’s glance returned to Denzell, scorching him, and her voice took on a metallic quality that was distinctly unnerving.

‘I do not know, Mr Hawkeridge, if you are indulging in vulgar curiosity, or if you have some other end in view, but I will thank you to keep out of the affairs of my family.’

Quite taken aback, Denzell stared at her for a moment in silence. Then, from sheer amazement, he laughed.

‘Bravo, Miss Chaceley! That is the first time I have heard anything on your lips other than polite inanities. Am I to take it that the thaw has set in?’

Without any warning, Verena’s anger dropped right out. There was delight in his tone. Dear heaven, but had she given herself away? Thaw? Then he supposed her to be melting towards him. Was it his mission to thrust through her cultivated control?

Denzell watched the fury vanish into consternation. She had forgotten her countenance. There was puzzlement, too. She did not know how to take him, that was certain. He could not help but smile.

‘There is far more to you than you would have us believe, is there not, Verena?’

He had used her name without thinking, not even noticing that he did so. But Verena noticed. She noticed also a quality of tenderness in his voice. It touched something within her. Something that seemed to thrust straight into her chest so that it seemed to burst asunder, depriving her of breath. It was powerful, frightening. All her control deserted her.

Her lips trembled. Her eyes misted. And everything was in her face. The spangled gown seemed to envelop an ethereal creature, vulnerable and confused.

Remorse gripped Denzell. Without any thought, he put out a hand. ‘Miss Chaceley—’

‘Don’t touch me!’

She stepped smartly back. The action purely instinctive, the words ripped from the panic within. She met his eyes, her own luminous, reproachful, matching the faint note of it in the husky voice with which she addressed him.

‘Does it amuse you, Mr Hawkeridge, to prick at the frailties of your fellows?’

He was silenced, shattered by the appalling reaction to this lightest of teasing quips. She had laughed before. How in the world was he to guess that she might break apart like this? What could he say?

But even as he watched, unable to utter a word—for what word might not worsen the work he had already done?—the mask was resuming as she turned from him to walk deliberately away into the thick of the throng.

He watched her for some time, conscious of the most wretched sensation somewhere deep inside himself. For all her outward appearance, however, the incident might never have been. Miss Verena Chaceley was once again the polite serene beauty, shutting him out.

At length he was accosted by his hostess, interested to know what he might have discovered from the Peverill boy. She was destined to disappointment.

‘Nothing very much,’ Denzell told her.

Unice looked up at him, struck by his manner. ‘Why, what is the matter, Denzell?’

He met her anxious gaze, conjuring up a smile. His answer came from the heart, without any previous consideration of the question, the decision ready-made.

‘The matter is that I must leave you tomorrow, Unice. I am going home.’

***

 

Denzell tossed off his wine and dumped the glass down unceremoniously onto the green baize table. He was beginning to loathe this incessant wining and gaming. Not that tonight’s game had been serious, not when he played with his particular cronies.

He was aware that his boredom had communicated itself to his friends, for there was silence about the table, and no one had offered to begin another rubber. Denzell was thankful for that at least. Chaste stars, but this Season was tedious!

Reaching out, he lifted the half-full bottle and poured himself another glass from one of the better offerings from the club’s cellars. He did not notice two of his companions exchanging significant glances. Despising the stuffy political correctness of both Brooks’s and White’s, Denzell and his cronies were in general to be found, on those evenings when no other interesting entertainment presented itself during the busy London season, enjoying the more convivial atmosphere of Boodle’s. Its aspect might be modest compared with those of its chief rivals, but within the arrangements were agreeable, promoting a relaxed and easy camaraderie among its habitués. They might enjoy its amenities in comfort, frock-coats, buckskins and top-boots being acceptable wear even in the evening.

It had offered tonight, to Denzell, a respite from the incessant round of socialising he was beginning to find irksome. Not to mention the females thrust into the ton for the picking: An insipid collection with a sameness that could only pall on his jaded spirit. Why it should seem so, why he should feel so bored, so restless, he could not imagine. Deuce take it, it was barely March. Yet he was conscious of a sense of frustrated irritation that grew ever stronger with the arrival of each new gilt-edged invitation.

Lounging like this—Denzell was in the dishabille of shirt-sleeves—with his three particular friends, about a gaming table in one of the smaller rooms, was at least less demanding than the rest. Yet the cards lay abandoned from the desultory game of whist. A moment later, however, he wished they had gone on playing.

‘Now, lookee, Hawk,’ said Mr Aldous Congleton suddenly, leaning across the table and wagging an admonishing bony finger, ‘ye’ve a deal of explaining to do.’

Denzell glanced across the table at the lean-featured face of his friend, with its long thin nose poking at him in a manner that filled him with dismay. Oh no. He had been expecting this. It had been too much to hope that his lack of interest in the current Season would pass unnoticed. He made no attempt to deflect the question, but the belligerence of his voice was intended as a warning.

‘Have I now?’

It did not deter Mr Congleton. He jerked the nose in a bird-like nod. ‘Ye have, Hawk. Been meaning to tackle ye this age.’

‘That’s right,’ agreed the deep voice of another gentlemen to Denzell’s left.

Mr Cyril Bedale, whose large bulk formed a stark contrast to the stick-like stature of Congleton, did not attempt to move from the chair where he was sprawling, his hands folded comfortably across the protrusion of his belly under a double-breasted waistcoat, for the moment unbuttoned.

‘Can’t expect to hoodwink your friends, old fellow,’ he observed in a tone not untinged with sympathy.

‘Indeed?’ Denzell said dangerously.

The word struck with stunning force in his own head. Indeed? He could almost hear her saying it. The recognition blanked out all his earlier antagonism, leaving him with an inward, groaning protest. Not again. If there was one thing more galling than the tinsel emptiness of this Season, it was the persistent, unwanted remembrance of a certain person whom he had several times over sworn that he would forget. And just at this moment, when his friends were making ready to quiz him on matters upon which he preferred to remain silent. Damnation!

He pushed the thoughts away. Very well. Certain people—unspecified—did not have a monopoly on keeping their countenance in public. He maintained his languid stance, allowing his glass to dangle in his fingers.

He was sitting leaning his forearm on one raised leg, which was supported on a rung of the chair occupied by Frederick Lord Rowner, the fourth member of the group, who had pushed himself back and was resting his booted feet on the seat of another chair filched from an adjoining table.

Before either of his two friends could pursue their queries, this gentleman, a puzzled frown gathering in his rather vacant, if handsome features, looked round at Denzell.

‘What must you explain, Hawk?’

‘It’s no use asking me, dear boy,’ Denzell told him lightly, and quite untruthfully. ‘I haven’t the remotest guess what they would be at.’

And if he had, he decided savagely, he was damned if he would explain a thing. Especially as he did not understand himself.

But Mr Congleton, his thin countenance drawn into lines of careful severity, rapped the table. ‘It won’t do, Hawk. Ye know perfectly well.’

‘Do I?’ Denzell drawled, wondering how he could find a way to turn the subject. It wanted only an opportunity.

‘That’s right,’ repeated Bedale, blinking somewhat owlishly. ‘And if you don’t, we do.’

Denzell dredged up a laugh, and cast up his eyes. ‘You’re foxed, Cyril.’

‘No, I ain’t. Only on the second bottle. Can’t be foxed yet.’

‘Never mind that,’ put in Congleton, once again rapping the table as he addressed himself this time to Lord Rowner. ‘Lookee, Freddy. When have ye ever known Hawk to absent himself from a ball, eh?’

‘What ball?’

‘He means Lady Breachwood’s party,’ Denzell explained, adding as he turned back again, ‘And why the devil shouldn’t I absent myself, Cong? Can you seriously suggest Lady Breachwood’s daughter to be an attraction?’

‘Lady Breachwood’s party?’ Freddy repeated before the other gentleman could reply. ‘Is that tonight?’ He glanced down in consternation at his own person, clad like the others in raiment quite unsuitable for a ball. ‘Lord, I think I accepted that one!’

Lord Rowner was known for his vagueness, and Congleton said so.

‘No one could be in the least surprised that you don’t turn up, Freddy—too late now, in any event—and everyone knows Cyril don’t dance. But Hawk? Now I ask ye, is it like him not to present himself where he is bound to meet every debutante on the town? Not to mention the Breachwood girl, though I grant ye, Hawk, she ain’t your style.’

‘How do you know what is my style, Cong?’

‘Ought to, damme. Been watching you at your tricks for years.’

Mr Congleton leaned across the table again, a smile of sly triumph under the pointing nose. ‘Ah, but there’s more to it than that. Got the whole tale from Ruishton in a letter.’

‘The devil you did,’ Denzell swore. What had Ossie told him? With Unice so close to her time, Osmond had put in no appearance in town this Season. But deuce take him for a confoundedly literary fellow! Why he must needs engage so avidly in the epistolary arts with Cong was a matter passing Denzell’s comprehension. What the devil did he mean by this base betrayal?

Honesty compelled him to toss away this thought. Ossie had thought the whole affair to be a matter upon which he might exercise his wit at Denzell’s expense. Could he reasonably blame his friend for that? It was in such terms that he had begun it—to his shame and regret. Only he had not known then with what he was dealing.

Still, willingly could he have strangled Ossie. The last thing he had wanted was for his cronies to get hold of the story. Bad enough that he had thought they were seeking a reason to explain his unutterable tedium. Disastrous that they should have already found it.

How could he turn it off? As he must. Make light of it. Could he bear to be the cause of her name being bandied about the gentlemen’s clubs? He would not have that on his conscience—not in addition.

‘I have no doubt at all,’ he said, ‘that Ossie has exaggerated the matter out of all recognition.’

‘Stuff,’ scoffed Bedale. ‘If I know Ossie, I’d wager he understated the case.’

Lord Rowner was looking confused. ‘Hey! What is all this? What case are you talking of?’

‘Pay no attention, Freddy. They’re both foxed.’

‘No, we ain’t,’ grinned Congleton. ‘And there’s no need thinking ye can turn it off. Ye see, Freddy, Ossie says our boy here tried a fall with a female he calls the Ice Maiden. Tried—and failed. Had to retire defeated after the first two rounds.’

‘What, Hawk? I don’t believe it!’

But Denzell was smiling in sudden relief—exaggerated relief, out of all proportion to the event. What had he been concerned about, after all? The matter was of no real interest to him. Not any more.

But if that was all Osmond had said, there was no harm done. He could admit it, pretend it meant nothing. Pretend? What was he thinking of? It did mean nothing.

Brushing aside the thoughts, he drained his glass and laid it down.

‘You may believe it, dear boy,’ he said on a wry grin, ‘because it is quite true. She wouldn’t look at me.’

‘Told you,’ said Congleton smugly. ‘Most beautiful girl in the world, too. Or so Hawk would have it. Ain’t that so, Hawk?’

‘Stunning,’ uttered Denzell, as the image of Verena Chaceley leaped into his mind. Unbidden—and irremovable. Verena laughing and golden, warm and vital against the winter world of white.

He was hardly aware of speaking as he added, ‘But not ice. A fairy princess…a snow maiden.’

And she had thawed towards him. Yes, she had. An inward groan shook him. She had—until that last horrible encounter. A moment that he had tried to rend from his memory, but that still pierced him with remorse. He had argued himself silly, declaring that he could not have known that a simple joke would upset her so. But it would not do. Had he not been witness to that earlier unwitting display of intense emotion? Had not Sir John Frinton warned him? He should have guessed. That he had not must be to his everlasting reproach.

Not that there was anything to be done about it. Not since he had been idiotic enough to have left the place so precipitately. Why he had done so, no amount of churning the matter in his mind could discover. He had made a stupid blunder, but it might have been mended. Another day, a simple apology and the thing would have been done..

It was no good wishing now that he had stayed to do it. The simple truth was that at the time all he had been able to think about was escape. What sense did that make? None at all. From what he was escaping he was at a loss to imagine. He knew that nothing Unice or Osmond could say had moved him from his determination.

The very next morning he had left, having chafed even at the delay occasioned by the necessary partaking of breakfast. A quick farewell, and he had driven away from Tunbridge Wells as if the devil himself were after him. The only conclusion he had been able to come to since was that he had taken leave of his senses.

He became aware that his friends were eyeing him, in a mixture of wonder and suspicion. The memories faded and he frowned.

‘What the devil are you all staring at?’

‘You said she is not ice,’ accused Bedale, ‘and then you went off into a dream.’

‘I did nothing of the kind.’

‘He said “fairy princess”,’ added Congleton. ‘And then he said “snow maiden”.’

Lord Rowner jerked up in his seat. ‘Snow? You’re talking of Christmas. You don’t mean that female you was chasing down at Tunbridge Wells?’

‘So ye do know about it,’ commented Congleton.

‘Only what Teresa says.’

‘Oh, the deuce!’ Were all those closest to him determined to undo him? ‘What the devil has my sister been saying?’

‘Says you’re obsessed,’ reported Freddy with devastating candour, provoking instant glee in the other two.

‘Aha, I knew it!’

‘Caught at last, Hawk!’

‘Says you talked of nothing else all through Christmas,’ pursued Freddy. ‘Says she thinks you’re in love with the girl.’

‘Chaste stars,’ Denzell exclaimed, outraged, ‘has Teresa run mad?’ In love? What an utterly stupid idea. And his sister was setting it about. ‘When I next see Teresa—’

Dropping his foot to the floor, he leaned forward to snatch up the bottle from the table and refill his glass yet again, his thoughts tumbling in confusion and fury.

That was a female all over. Merely because he had mentioned the matter once or twice, Teresa must needs take it into her head that he was in love with the wench. Oh, he knew he had said so to Ossie and Unice, but that was in jest. Just because Verena Chaceley chose to thrust her image into his head time and again did not mean that his heart was touched.

Deuce take it, even he could understand why that happened. It was that last look of her—that spangled gown, the honey locks: a fairy princess, broken. His heart contracted, but he flung the thought away. That could not be helped. It was done and he could not change it now.

It was hardly worth oversetting himself. Verena Chaceley was—had been, he reminded himself wistfully—lovely to look at, and quite uninterested in Denzell Hawkeridge. So what had he to do with Verena Chaceley? Because no female happened to have caught his interest this Season was no reason to imagine that his interest was already too caught up to be available to another. The whole idea was ludicrous in the extreme, and he would have something to say to Teresa.

Glancing around the circle of his friends, he discovered them to be quite of Teresa’s mind.

‘You need not look at me so,’ he snapped. ‘It’s nothing of the sort. In love, indeed!’

‘Well, ye can’t deny it explains a great deal,’ said Aldous Congleton.

‘That’s right.’ Cyril Bedale was moved to unravel his hands from his stomach and lean across to pat his friend’s arm. ‘No need to be ashamed of it, old fellow. Bound to happen sooner or later.’

‘Yes, but it has not happened,’ said Denzell in a harassed sort of way. ‘Merely because my sister chooses to take some romantical notion into her head—’

‘Then how do ye explain your conduct these many weeks?’ demanded Congleton. ‘Ye’ve not set up a single flirt since the Season began.’

‘I’m trying to avoid the matchmakers. With the new crop of debutantes just out, every bachelor who wants to remain so has to be careful. Besides, it isn’t true. I’ve been courting several chits.’

‘Ah, but with what sort of enthusiasm, old fellow?’ put in Cyril. ‘Abstracted, that’s what you’ve been. All noticed it. Haven’t we?’

Congleton nodded. ‘Noticed it from the first. Except Freddy, but he never notices anything.’

Desperation lent Denzell wit. Here was an opening. Let him, for pity’s sake, deflect attention from this appalling nonsense. At the same time, he decided, he would have a little of revenge on Freddy for putting the cat among the pigeons in that boneheaded fashion.

‘You’re in the right of it there, Cong,’ he agreed. ‘Freddy hasn’t even noticed that he’s about to enter parson’s mousetrap himself.’

‘Eh?’ said Lord Rowner, startled.

‘Well, you are going to marry Teresa, aren’t you?’

The other two gentlemen roared with laughter at Freddy’s astounded face. He blushed, blurting out, ‘How the deuce did you know that I am going to marry your sister?’

‘Come, come, dear boy,’ Denzell said. ‘This is Teresa we are talking about. If you must have it in words of one syllable, it is my sister who says you are going to marry my sister.’

‘But, dash it, I haven’t even popped the question!’

‘What has that to say to anything? If you don’t get a move on, I have every expectation that Teresa will pop it to you.’

This remark not unnaturally provoked a deal of hilarity in their colleagues, further embarrassing the unfortunate Lord Rowner, who would now be obliged to endure much chaffing.

‘If I were you, dear boy,’ Denzell advised him in a voice of mock kindness, ‘I should run away as fast as you can. I have never met a stronger-minded female than my own sister.’

Except, he found himself reflecting privately as his friends turned their teasing attentions upon poor Lord Rowner, for Miss Verena Chaceley. Did it not take a strong character to maintain that iron self-control?

A fleeting idea crossed his mind that it was this strength that had made him depart in such haste—running away, as he had advised Freddy to do. Only what had he to fear? Verena did not even like him, let alone wish to catch him in matrimony. Her iron will could give him no qualms.

But she was not iron beneath, came the unbidden protest from somewhere deep within him. Oh, she was not. He would swear to that. She was as soft as the snowflakes she had caught at that day to build the children’s snowman.

***

 

Verena awoke to the sound of violent knocking. Starting up in bed, she sat a moment, blinking in the dark, the shock reverberating in her head as the relentless rat-tat continued.

Abruptly the significance struck her. Nathaniel! Who else would come battering on the door in the middle of the night? He had come at last, just as she had known he must.

Even as the thought was forming in her mind, she had thrown off the covers. Sweeping aside the curtains, she flung out of bed, snatching up her flannel dressing-robe from the chair nearby with shaking fingers. There was a candle on the bedside table, together with a flint to light it, but she had no time to fiddle with that now. Mama must be stopped from going down.

Groping her way to the door, she dragged it open and became aware of voices in the hall below. Mrs Quirk had already opened the front door.

Verena flew for the staircase to the upper floor, almost bumping into Betsey’s bulk as the maid arrived at an uneven stumble at the bottom of the flight, armed with the oil lamp that always remained burning low against Mrs Peverill’s difficult nights. Verena saw her own confused anxiety matched in the maid’s illuminated features.

‘It must be him,’ Verena uttered in a harsh whisper, grasping at the woman’s arm. ‘Go down, Betsey. At all costs, you must prevent him from coming up.’

‘Who, Miss Verena?’ The maid’s tone was a trifle bleary still with sleep, but matching her urgency. ‘Who is it?’

‘Who? Who but Nathaniel!’

Betsey’s large hands gripped the oil lamp tighter. ‘Not the master!’

‘It must be. Go down, Betsey, for the love of heaven!’

The maid needed no further urging. With a terse, ‘He’ll not get by me!’ she was gone, lumbering off down the passage and clumping noisily down the stairs towards the voices below.

With automatic haste, Verena began ascending the second flight towards Mrs Peverill’s room. Then she halted. What if Betsey failed? And if Mama had managed to sleep through the knocking, why should she wake her—to this?

If there was a tiny thought at the back of her mind that Mama might insist on speaking to Nathaniel, despite her daughter’s efforts to prevent it, she did not long allow it to worry her. Her determination was fixed. Nathaniel would not take Mama back!

A piercing whisper penetrated her thoughts: ‘Miss Verena! It’s all right, Miss Verena!’

All right? How could it be all right? Peering down, she saw the glow of the lamp moving up towards her.

‘Betsey?’ she called.

‘Yes, it’s I, Miss Verena,’ came the answer. ‘Don’t fret now.’

Bemused, Verena crept back down the stairs and met Betsey in the passage outside her own room. There was an intensity of relief in the maid’s voice and face, eerily lit by the shadowy spill of light from her lamp.

‘It ain’t him, Miss Verena, thank the Lord!’

Verena blinked dazedly. ‘Not Nathaniel?’

Betsey shook her head. ‘It’s that there Mr Ruishton, and he’s asking for you.’

‘Mr Ruishton? At this time of night!’ Then it struck her. ‘Dear heaven, it must be Unice! What has happened?’

Even as she spoke, urgent now with a growing dread—a different dread, but none the less painful—she was moving towards the head of the stairs, Betsey close behind her, holding high her lamp to light the way.

All thought of Nathaniel, of the principal worry of her life, left Verena in seconds. She had become so familiar with Unice these last few months, so fond of her, that the thought that something might have gone amiss concerned her deeply. The baby was not due for another two weeks or more. What could have happened?

‘Mr Ruishton!’ she called, seeing in the flickering light cast by Mrs Quirk’s own candle below the outline of Osmond’s figure waiting in the hall. ‘What has occurred?’

He broke into speech before she could reach the bottom of the stairs.

‘Miss Chaceley, I am sorry to disturb you at such an hour, but I did not know what else to do.’

As she moved forward, Betsey at her back, Verena saw at once, in the brighter glow, the distress of mind mirrored in Osmond’s features, pale with worry and fatigue.

‘Oh, what is it?’ she cried, grasping at his lapels. ‘Is she ill? Oh, heavens, tell me at once!’

‘No, no, she is not ill,’ he said, ‘Only she is before her time, and we are all at sixes and sevens, not having expected—’

‘Do you mean that the baby is coming?’

‘At any moment! She thought it had been indigestion last evening after dinner, but—oh, Lord, Miss Chaceley! My mother-in-law always comes to us, but she had not planned to be here for another week.’

Verena’s head was reeling as these words tumbled out. But their message was clear enough. ‘You would wish me to come to her?’

‘I should not ask it of you, I know, but there is only her maid and the midwife—’

‘Of course I shall come, Mr Ruishton,’ Verena said at once. ‘I have no experience in these matters, but—’

‘She will be comforted merely by your presence, Miss Chaceley, I know. Pray come. She is having a difficult time of it and I am...’ His voice failed, and he was obliged to draw a painful breath. ‘Miss Chaceley, I cannot lose her!’

Verena gripped his hands, for she could not speak. There was no thought at such a time for the company mask she still maintained towards him, although for Unice there had been some slight relaxation. It did not seem, however, as if he noted its lack.

Another voice chimed in, dissipating the sudden tension in the air.

‘That will be enough of that, young sir,’ said Betsey with all the authority of her years in service to a mistress who, like a child, needed more of a nurse than a maid. ‘You won’t lose her, not if I can help it.’

‘You’ll come, too?’ asked Osmond eagerly.

‘Try and stop me.’ In command now, Betsey grasped her younger charge’s arm. ‘Now then, Miss Verena, up we go and make ourselves fit to step abroad.’ Turning to the landlady, she added, ‘Mrs Quirk, you must keep watch for my mistress in case she wakes and tell her what is going forward.’

The landlady began to respond, but Betsey was already wagging a finger at Osmond, whose countenance, Verena saw, had lightened a little in relief.

‘As for you, young sir, do you go back to your wife at once. We’ll follow as soon as may be.’

‘Oh, Betsey,’ cried Verena, between tears and laughter. ‘You may bully me, but don’t bully poor Mr Ruishton.’ She put out a hand to Osmond. ‘Go back quickly. Assure Unice that we are close behind you.’

He grasped her hand and shook it. ‘Thank you. Thank you a thousand times.’