The suave Fletcher showed some small signs of perplexity at that. “I will endeavour, my lord ...”
The Duchess had cast off her cloak, and seated herself by the fire. “Ah, bah, I do not want your ratafia, me. I will drink a glass of port with you, mon vieux.”
Lord Rupert scratched his head, tilting his wig slightly askew. “Oh, very well! But it’s not what I’d call a lady’s drink.”
“Me, I am not a lady,” announced her grace. “I have been very well educated, and I will drink port.”
Fletcher withdrew, quite impassive. His lordship remonstrated once more. “Y’know you mustn’t talk like that before servants, Léonie. Ton my soul—”
“If you like,” interrupted Léonie, “I will play piquet with you till Dominique comes!”
Dominic came an hour later. A sulky dashed up the street and stopped outside the house. Léonie flung down her cards, and ran to the window, pulling aside the heavy curtains, but was too late to catch a glimpse of her son. A groom was already driving the sulky away, and inside the house a door slammed, and Fletcher’s discreet voice sounded. A sharper one answered; a quick step trod in the hall, and Vidal came into the library.
He was pale, and his eyes were frowning and tired. Mud had generously splashed his breeches and plain buff coat, and his neckcloth was crumpled and limp. “Ma mère!” he said, surprise in his voice.
Léonie momentarily forgot her mission. She went to him, grasping the lapels of his coat. “Oh, you have not killed yourself! But tell me, Dominique, at once, did you get there in the time?”
His hands covered hers with a gesture rather mechanical.
“Yes, of course. But what are you doing here? Rupert, too? Is anything amiss?”
“Anything amiss,” exploded Rupert. “That’s rich! Ton my soul, that’s rich! Oh, there’s naught amiss, never fear! You’ve only killed that fellow Quarles and set the whole town in a roar.”
“Dead, is he?” said his lordship. He put Léonie from him, and walked to the table. “Well, I thought as much.”
“No, no, he is not dead!” Léonie said vehemently. “You shan’t say so, Rupert!”
“It don’t matter what I say,” responded my lord. “If he ain’t dead now he will be in a day’s time. You fool, Vidal.” The Marquis had poured himself out a glass of wine, but was looking down at the red liquid instead of drinking it. “Runners after me?”
“They will be,” his uncle said grimly. A heavy frown was gathering. The Marquis’s lips tightened. “Damnation!” His glance flickered to Léonie’s troubled face. “Don’t let it disturb you, madame, I beg.”
“Dominique, did you—did you, in effect, mean to kill him?” she asked, her eyes on his face. He shrugged, “Oh, since I fought at all, yes.”
“I do not mind you killing people when you have reason, you know, but—but—was there a reason, mon enfant?” said her grace.
“The fellow was drunk, and you knew it, Vidal!” Rupert said.
“Perfectly.” The Marquis sipped his wine. “But so was I drunk.” Again he looked towards Léonie. What he saw in her face made him say with a kind of suppressed violence: “Why do you look at me like that? You know what I am, do you not? Do you not?”
“Here, Dominic!” his uncle said, in a voice of protest. “You’re talking to your mother, boy.”
Léonie raised an admonishing finger. “Enough, Rupert. Yes, I know, my little one, and I am very unhappy for you.” She blinked away a tear. “You are too much my son.”
“Fiddle!” said Vidal roughly. He put down his glass, the wine in it unfinished. The clock on the mantelpiece chimed the hour, and he looked quickly round at it. “I must go. Why did you come? To tell me Quarles is as good as dead? I knew it.”
“No, not for that,” Léonie replied. “I think—I think there is a billet for you from Monseigneur.”
The Marquis’s laugh held a note of recklessness. “Be sure. I have it in my pocket. Inform him, madame, that I shall wait upon him in the morning.”
There was real trouble in Léonie’s face. “Dominique, you do not seem to me to understand at all. Monseigneur is enraged. He says you must leave the country, and, oh, my dear one, I beg you not to anger him any more! You should wait on him at once.”
“Who told him?” Vidal answered. “You, Rupert?”
“Fiend seize you, do you take me for a tale-bearer? You young fool, he saw it!”
The frowning eyes stared at him. “What the devil do you mean?”
“You’d no sooner got clear of the place—and a pretty turmoil you left behind you, I can tell you—than in walks Avon with Hugh Davenant.” Lord Rupert, apparently overcome by the recollection, mopped his brow with his fine lace handkerchief.
“What, at five o’clock in the morning?” demanded the Marquis.
“It wasn’t as much as that, not but what I thought myself ’twas the wine got into my head when I clapped eyes on him. He’d been at Old White’s all night, d’ye see, playing pharaoh, and the devil put it into his head to call in at Timothy’s, to see what sort of a hell it was that his precious son had honoured with his patronage. ‘And I perceive,’ said he, ‘that it is indeed something beyond the common.’ Now I put it to you, Vidal, isn’t it Avon all over to walk in pat like that?”
The frown was lifting. A gleam shone in the Marquis’s eyes. “Of course it was inevitable. Tell me it all.”
“Lord, I was so rattled, I don’t know what happened. There was young Comyn holding a napkin to the wound you’d blown through Quarles’s chest, and someone splashing water about, and Wraxall shouting for the porter to run for a surgeon, and the rest of us in the devil of a fluster, and all at once I saw Avon standing in the doorway with his glass held up to his eye, and Davenant gaping beside him. Well, you know how it is when your father is about. There was an end to the noise; everyone was watching Avon, save Comyn—I’d say that lad is a cool hand—who went on staunching the blood as calm as you please. If you ask me, Avon saw the whole at a glance, but he chose to look all round, mighty bland, and then down at Quarles. Then he says to Davenant: ‘I was informed, my dear Hugh, that Timothy’s was unlike other hells. And I perceive,’ says he—but I told you that bit. Of course, if I’d had my wits about me, I’d have left by the window, but I don’t deny I had a deal of champagne in me. Well, your father turned his infernal quizzing-glass towards me. I was waiting for that. ‘I suppose,’ says he, ‘I need not ask where is my son.’” Lord Rupert shook his head wisely. “Y’know, he’s devilish acute, Vidal; you must grant him that.”
“I do,” said his lordship, with the ghost of a laugh. “Go on, what next? I wish I had seen all this.”
“Do you, begad?” said his uncle. “You might have had my place for the asking. Well, I said you’d gone. Young Comyn took it up in that finicky voice of his. ‘I apprehend, sir,’ says he, that his lordship is by now upon the road to Newmarket.’ Avon turns his glass on him at that. ‘Indeed!’ says he, devilish polite. I fear my son has untidy habits. This gentleman’—and he points his quizzing-glass at Quarles—this gentleman—I think unknown to me—is no doubt his latest victim?’ I can’t give you his tone, but you know how he says things like that, Vidal.”
“None better. Oh, but I make him my compliments. He comes off with the honours. Did he make my apologies?”
“Well, now you mention it, I believe he did,” said Rupert. “But he divided the honours with that Comyn lad. We’d all lost our tongues. But Comyn says—which I thought handsome of him—‘As to that, sir, the late affair was in a sort forced upon his lordship. I believe, sir, no man could swallow what was said, though I am bound to confess that neither of the principals was sober.’ And I thought to myself, well, you must be damned sober, my lad, to get all that out without so much as a stammer.”