Without paying the least heed to her, he said abruptly: “I’ll recite one of my poems to you, shall I?”
“Certainly! pray do!” she invited cordially.
He sat staring ahead of him for several moments, and then struck his fist against his knee, and exclaimed pettishly: “No, I won’t! You wouldn’t appreciate it!”
“No, very likely I shouldn’t. Let us go for a walk instead!”
“I don’t wish to go for a walk! Where’s my cousin?”
“I don’t know. Probably with Sir Timothy.”
“Ay!” he said, his eyes kindling. “Bamboozling my father with his coaxing ways!”
“Nonsense!” she said impatiently. “He hasn’t any coaxing ways! Merely, he feels an affection for Sir Timothy which you, Torquil, do not!”
“What cause have I to feel affection for my father?” he demanded. “Always—always!—he yields to Mama! Or to Philip! Oh, yes, certainly to Philip! And you may depend upon it that Philip won’t recommend him to let me go!”
She was silent, not knowing what to say, because when she had asked Philip if he did not agree that Torquil would be better if allowed rather more freedom, he had shaken his head, and had said decidedly: “No, I don’t!”
Stung, she had said: “I can’t conceive what you have to gain by supporting your aunt in her determination to keep the poor boy cooped up here!”
“I have nothing to gain but one single object!” He broke off suddenly, and added curtly: “Which does not concern you!” Perceiving from her heightened colour and smouldering eyes that he had nettled her, he had laughed, and had said: “Oh, don’t nab the rust, Cousin Kate! What I have to gain doesn’t concern me either!”
In high dudgeon, she had turned on her heel, and left him. Thinking over his words, she could make nothing of them.
She was reluctant to believe that he harboured designs against Torquil’s life; and, even if he did, it was impossible to see how these could be furthered by Torquil’s continued residence at Staplewood, as closely guarded as he was.
She was thinking of this passage when Torquil’s voice intruded upon her reverie. “Have I nicked it, coz?” he asked jeeringly. “Have you spoken to Philip on this subject? What a goose-cap you are! I know what answer he gave you!” He sprang up, his face contorted. “I fell you I am surrounded by enemies!” he said violently.
“Are you?” she inquired politely. “I trust you don’t number me amongst them?”
“How can I tell? Sometimes I think—No! No, I don’t! Not you! But everyone else—Matthew, Philip, Badger, Whalley, my mother—even my father! They are all in a string!”
“Oh, fiddle!” she snapped, losing patience. “I wonder you will talk such moonshine, Torquil! You must know it don’t impress me!”
He muttered something under his breath. She did not hear what it was, but guessed it to be an objurgation, for he was looking furious, and plunged away from her, almost running across the lawn towards the lake. She made no attempt to stop him, but remained where she was, seated on a rustic bench below the terrace and thinking that there was perhaps something to be said for those who considered him to be too excitable to be allowed to run loose.
Presently she was joined by Mr Philip Broome, who came down the steps from the terrace, and, upon catching sight of her, walked towards the bench, saying, with a smile: “Ruining your complexion, Cousin Kate?”
“Oh, it was ruined long ago, in the Peninsula!” she said lightly.
“A demonstrably false observation!” he said, seating himself beside her. “No, don’t go! I want to talk to you.”
“Do you? Why?” she asked, looking surprised.
“Because you interest me and I find I don’t know very much about you.”
“Well, there isn’t very much to know. And it wouldn’t be any concern of yours if there were!” she said, with relish.
His eyes gleamed appreciatively. “Giving me my own again, cousin?”
She could not help laughing. “I couldn’t resist, sir! If I was impertinent I beg your pardon, but you needn’t have snubbed me so roughly!”
“I didn’t mean to. You said you couldn’t perceive what my object is in supporting Minerva—”
“And you told me it was no concern of mine!”
“Accept my apologies! I’ll tell you now that my only concern is to spare my uncle anxiety, and—possibly—grief. He is old, and very frail, and he has borne a great deal of trouble in his life. He was passionately devoted to his first wife, but she was of sickly constitution. Two of her children were stillborn, and the other three didn’t survive infancy. He wanted a son, you know: any man must want a son to succeed him! That’s why he married Minerva. Oh, I don’t say that he wasn’t petticoat-led! Minerva was a very beautiful girl, but she had only a small fortune. I was a child at the time, but—don’t eat me!—the on-dit was that although everyone admired her no one of rank offered for her. So she married my uncle, and presented him with—Torquil.”
She had listened to him in attentive silence, the echo of her father’s words in her ears, and for a moment she did not speak. Then she said hesitantly: “I am aware, of course, that Torquil is a disappointment to him. It could hardly be otherwise, for I suppose that no man wants a son who has to be kept in cotton, or—or who surfers from distempered freaks. But he may improve—indeed, my aunt tells me that he has improved! I collect that you think he might indulge in excesses, if he were allowed more freedom, and so cause Sir Timothy distress?”
“I think—” He checked himself, and said curtly: “Never mind that! How old are you, Kate?”
“I’m four-and-twenty—and that’s not a question you should ask of any female past the first blush of her youth, sir!”
“Yes, from things you have said I’d gathered as much. But when I first saw you I took you for a girl just emerged from the schoolroom.”
“Well, that was no less than the truth—only I was the governess, not the pupil! And I wish with all my heart that I didn’t look like a schoolgirl! Whenever I apply for a post I’m told that I’m too young!”
“I imagine you might be!” he said, amused. “I know your father is dead, but your mother?—”
“I am an orphan, sir.”
“I see. But you have other relations, surely?”
“Only Aunt Minerva. At least, I believe I have numerous relations, but I’ve never met any of them, and I don’t wish to! They behaved very shabbily to my mother, and quite cast her off when she eloped with Papa.”
“But you have friends?”
She sighed. “I’ve lost sight of all our friends in the regiment, and—and circumstances have prevented me from making new ones. I have my old nurse, however. And my aunt, of course.” She thought that he might suppose her to be repining, and added brightly: “She has proved herself to be very much my friend, you know! You don’t like her, but when she came to invite me to stay here I was almost in despair, and thinking of hiring myself out as an abigail! Only Sarah wouldn’t hear of it, which was why she wrote to my aunt. And although my aunt is so high in the instep—I mean,” she corrected herself hastily, “although you might suppose her to place herself on too high a form she has been so kind to me that I feel I can never repay her.”
“In fact, you are alone in the world,” he said. “I begin to understand: that is an unhappy situation for a girl.”
“Yes, but I am not a girl,” she pointed out. “You must not suppose, because I said I was in despair, that I am not very well able to take care of myself, for I promise you that I am! I told you once before that I didn’t come to batten on my aunt, but I think you didn’t believe me.”
“No, I didn’t, but I’ve changed my mind. Or, rather, I can’t blame you for succumbing to temptation. In your circumstances—which must, if you are obliged to earn your bread, be uncomfortably straitened—it would have been hard to have refused the offer of a home.”