Выбрать главу

One glance at Mr Luttrell’s rigidly disapproving countenance; one glimpse of Pen’s scarlet cheeks and over-bright eyes, were enough to give Sir Richard a very fair notion of what had been taking place in the parlour. He closed the door, saying in his pleasant drawclass="underline" “Ah, good-morning, Mr Luttrell! I trust the—er—surprising events of last night did not rob you of sleep?”

A sigh of relief escaped Pen. With Sir Richard’s entrance the reeling world seemed, miraculously, to have righted itself. She left the window-seat, and went instinctively towards him. “Sir, Piers says—Piers thinks—” She stopped, and raised a hand to her burning cheek.

Sir Richard looked at Piers with slightly raised brows. “Well?” he said gently. “What does Piers say and think?”

Mr Luttrell got up. Under that ironical, tolerant gaze, he too began to blush. “I only said—I only wondered how Pen comes to be travelling in your company!”

Sir Richard unfobbed his snuff-box, and took a pinch. “And does no explanation offer itself to you?” he enquired.

“Well, sir, I must say it seems to me—I mean—”

“Perhaps I should have told you,” said Sir Richard drawing Pen’s hand through his arm, and holding it rather firmly, “that you are addressing the future Lady Wyndham.”

The hand twitched in Sir Richard’s, but in obedience to the warning pressure of his fingers Miss Creed remained silent.

“Oh, I see!” said Piers, his brow clearing. “I beg pardon! It is famous news indeed! I wish you very happy! But—but why must she wear those clothes, and what are you doing here? It still seems very odd to me! I suppose since you are betrothed it may be argued that—But it is most eccentric, sir, and I do not know what people may say!”

“As we have been at considerable pains to admit no one but yourself into the secret of Pen’s identity, I hardly think that people will say anything at all,” replied Sir Richard calmly. “If the secret were to leak out—why, the answer is that we are a very eccentric couple!”

“It will never leak out through me!” Piers assured him. “It is no concern of mine, naturally, but I can’t help wondering what should have brought you here, and why Pen had to get out of a window. However, I don’t mean to be inquisitive, sir. It was only that—having known Pen all my life, you see!”

It was Miss Creed’s turn now to give Sir Richard’s hand a warning pinch. In fact, so convulsive was her grip that he glanced down at her with a reassuring little smile.

“I am afraid I cannot tell you our reasons for coming here,” he said. “Certain circumstances arose which made the journey necessary. Pen’s attire, however, is easily explained. Neither of us wished to burden ourselves with a duenna upon a mission of—er—extreme delicacy; and the world, my dear Luttrell, being a censorious place, it was judged expedient for Pen to pretend to be, instead of my affianced wife, my young cousin.”

“To be sure, yes! of course!” said Piers, mystified, but overborne by the Corinthian’s air of assurance.

“By now,” said Sir Richard, “we should be on our way back to London, had it not been for two unfortunate circumstances. For one of these, you, I must regretfully point out to you, are responsible.”

“I?” gasped Piers.

“You,” said Sir Richard, releasing Pen’s hand. “The lady to whom you, I apprehend, are secretly betrothed, has, in a somewhat misguided attempt to avert suspicion from the truth informed her parent that Pen is the man with whom she had an assignation in the spinney last night.”

“Yes, Pen told me that. Indeed, I wish she had not done it, sir, but she is so impulsive, you know!”

“So I have been led to infer,” said Sir Richard. “Unhappily, since I am for the present compelled to remain in Queen Charlton, her impulsiveness has rendered our situation a trifle awkward.”

“Yes, I see that,” owned Piers. “I am very sorry for it, sir. But must you remain here?”

“Yes,” replied Sir Richard. “No doubt it has escaped your memory, but a murder was committed in the spinney last night. It was I who discovered Brandon’s body, and conveyed the news to the proper quarter.”

Piers looked troubled at this, and said: “I know, sir, and I do not like it above half! For, in point of fact, I first found Beverley, only you told-me not to say sol’

“I hope you did not?”

“No, because it is so excessively awkward, on account of Miss Daubenay’s presence in the spinney! But if she has said that she went there to meet Pen—”

“You had better continue to preserve a discreet silence, my dear boy. The knowledge that you also were in the spinney would merely confuse poor Mr Philips. You see, I have the advantage of knowing who killed Brandon.”

“I think,” said Pen judicially, “we ought to tell Piers about the diamond necklace, sir.”

“By all means,” agreed Sir Richard.

The history of the diamond necklace, as recounted by Miss Creed, made Mr Luttrell forget for a few moments his graver preoccupations. He seemed very much more the Piers of her childhood when he exclaimed: “What an adventure!” and by the time he had described to her his surprise at receiving a visit from Beverley, whom he had known but slightly up at Oxford; and had exchanged impressions of Captain Horace Trimble, they were once more upon very good terms. Sir Richard, who thought that his own interests would best be served by allowing Pen uninterrupted intercourse with Mr Luttrell, soon left them to themselves; and after Piers had once more felicitated Pen on her choice of a husband—felicitations which she received in embarrassed silence—the talk soon returned to his own difficulties.

She listened to his enraptured description of Miss Daubenay with as much patience as she could muster, but when he begged her not to divulge her sex to the lady for fear lest her nice sense of propriety might suffer too great a shock, she was so much incensed that she was betrayed into giving him her opinion of Miss Daubenay’s morals and manners. A pretty squabble at once flared up, and might have ended in Piers’ stalking out of Pen’s life for ever had she not remembered, just as he reached the door, that she had engaged herself to further his pretensions to Lydia’s hand.

It took a few moments’ coaxing to persuade him to relax his air of outraged dignity, but when it was borne in upon him that Lydia had summoned Pen to her side that morning, he did seem to feel that such forward conduct called for an explanation. Pen waved his excuses aside, however. “I don’t mind that, if only she would not cry so much!” she said.

Mr Luttrell said that his Lydia was all sensibility, and deprecated, with obvious sincerity, a suggestion that a wife suffering from an excess of sensibility might prove to be a tiresome acquisition. As he seemed to feel that the support of Lydia was his life’s work, Pen abandoned all thought of trying to wean him from his attachment to the lady, and announced her plans for his speedy marriage.

These palpably took Mr Luttrell aback. Lydia’s refusal to elope with him he regarded as natural rather than craven, and when Pen’s false-abduction scheme was enthusiastically described to him he said that she must be mad to think of such a thing.

“I declare I have a good mind to wash my hands of the whole affair!” said Pen. “Neither of you has the courage to make the least push in the matter! The end of it will be that your precious Lydia will be married to someone else, and then you will be sorry!”

“Oh, don’t suggest such a thing!” he begged. “If only my father would be a little conciliating! He used to like the Major well enough before they quarrelled.”

“You must soften the Major’s heart.”

“Yes, but how?” he asked. “Now, don’t, pray, suggest any more foolish abduction schemes, Pen! I daresay you think them very fine, but if you would but consider the difficulties! No one would ever believe we had not planned it all, because if she eloped with you she would not then wish to marry me, now, would she?”