“Well, we have always called her Nurse.”
“No doubt! But it won’t do for me to copy you. What is her name?”
“Priddy. The underservants call her Mrs. Priddy, though I can’t think why, for she has never been married.”
“Mrs. Priddy she shall be. You won’t tell me I rank above the underservants in her esteem!” An irrepressible chuckle made him glance down at her; he saw the brimming merriment in her eyes, and demanded: “Now what? Do I rank above them?”
“I don’t think so,” she answered cautiously. “At least, I never heard her say, even of the laundrymaid, that she would be eaten by frogs!”
He gave a shout of laughter. “Good God, does that fate await me?”
Encouraged by the discovery that he shared her enjoyment of the absurd she laughed back at him, saying: “Yes, and also that your increase will be delivered to the caterpillar.”
“Oh, I’ve no objection to that! The caterpillar is welcome to my increase!”
“No, how can you be so unnatural? Increase must mean your children!”
“Undoubtedly! Any side-slips of mine the caterpillar may have with my good-will,” he retorted.
“Poor little things!” she said, adding thoughtfully, after a moment: “Not that it is at all easy to perceive what harm one caterpillar could do them.”
“Do you know that you are a very strange girl?” he asked abruptly.
“Why? Have I said something I ought not?” she said rather anxiously.
“On the contrary: I’m afraid it was I who did that.”
“Did you?” She wrinkled her brow. “Side-slips? Well, that was quite my fault for mentioning your children at all, when I know you are not married. Have you — No.”
His lips twitched, but he said gravely: “Not to my knowledge.”
That drew a responsive twinkle from her. “Yes, I was going to ask you that,” she admitted. “I beg your pardon! The thing is, you see, that I so seldom talk to anyone but Aubrey that I forget to take care what I say when I go into company.”
“Don’t set a guard on your tongue on my account!” he said, ushering her into the dining-room. “I like your frankness—and detest damsels who blush and bridle!”
She took the chair Imber was holding for her. “Well, I don’t think I did that, even in my salad days.”
“A long time ago!” he said, quizzing her.
“Well, it is, for I’m five-and-twenty, you know.”
“I must take your word for that, but do enlighten me! Do you hold my sex in dislike, or have you taken a vow of celibacy?”
“I wish you won’t make me laugh just as I am drinking soup! You nearly made me choke! Of course not!”
“What a set of slow-tops the Yorkshire bucks must be! This soup seems to be made entirely of onions. I don’t wonder at your choking. And as far as I can see,” he said, levelling his quizzing-glass at the various dishes set out on the table, “there is worse to come. What the devil is that mess, Imber?”
“Veal, my lord, with a sauce Bechermell—Mrs. Imber not being prepared for company,” replied Imber apologetically. “But there is the raised mutton pie, and a brace of partridges for the second course, with French beans and mushrooms, and—and a dish of fruit, which Mrs. Imber hopes you will pardon, miss, for his lordship not being partial to sweetmeats she hadn’t a cream nor a jelly ready to serve, and, as you know, miss, such things take time.”
“I am astonished poor Mrs. Imber should have been able to dress half as many dishes,” instantly responded Venetia. “With such an upset in the house she can’t have had a moment to spare! Pray tell her that I am particularly partial to veal, and quite detest jellies!”
Damerel was regarding her with a smile in his eyes. He said, as Imber bore off the empty soup-plates: “Everything handsome about you!—your face, your name, and your manners! Tell me about your life! Why did I never see you before? Do you never come to London?”
She shook her head. “No, though perhaps I shall when Aubrey goes to Cambridge next year. As for telling you about my life—why, there’s only one answer to that, and it’s A blank, my lord!
“Am I to understand that you pine in thought? I hope you don’t mean to tell me you have a green and yellow melancholy, for that I’ll swear you have not!”
“Good gracious, no! Only that I have no history! I have passed all my life at Undershaw, and done nothing worth the telling. I wish you will tell me some of the things you have done!”
He looked up quickly from the dish he was serving, his eyes hardening. She met that searching stare with a little enquiring lift to her brows, and saw his lips curl into the sneer which had made her liken him to the Corsair. “I think not,” he said dryly.
“I said some of the things you have done!” she exclaimed indignantly. “You can’t have spent your whole life getting into idiotish scrapes!”
The ugly look vanished as he burst out laughing. “Most of it, I assure you! What is it you wish to know?”
“I should like to know about the places you have been to. You have travelled a great deal, haven’t you?”
“Oh, yes!”
“I envy you that. It is a thing I always longed to do. I daresay I never shall, because single females are so horridly restricted, but I still indulge myself with planning tours to all the strange places I’ve only read about.”
“No, no, don’t do it!” he begged. “Such dreams, believe me, are the seeds from which the eccentric springs! You would end, like that ramshackle Stanhope woman, queening it over hordes of evil-smelling Bedouins!”
“I promise you I should not! It sounds very disagreeable— and quite as boring as the life I’ve known! You refer, I collect, to Lady Hester: did you ever meet her?”
“Yes, at Palmyra, in—oh, I forget!—’13? ’14? It doesn’t signify.”
“Have you visited Greece, as well as the Levant?” she interrupted.
“I have. Why? Can it be that you are a classical scholar?”
“No, I am not, but Aubrey is. Do, pray, tell him about the things you must have seen in Athens! He has only Mr. Appersett to talk to about what he most cares for, and although Mr. Appersett—he is the Vicar, you know!—is a fine scholar he has not seen, with his own eyes, as you have!”
“I’ll tell Aubrey anything he may want to know—if you, mysterious Miss Lanyon, will tell me what I want to know!”
“Well, I will,” she replied handsomely. “Though what there is to tell you, or why you should call me mysterious has me in a puzzle!”
“I call you mysterious because—” he paused, amused by the look of innocent expectancy in her eyes—”Oh, because you are five-and-twenty, unwed, and, so far as I can discover, unsought!”
“On the contrary!” retorted Venetia, entering into the spirit of this. “I have two admirers! One of them is excessively romantic, and the other is—”
“Well?” he prompted, as she hesitated.
“Worthy!” she produced, and went into a peal of mirth as he dropped his head into his hands.
“And you a nonpareil!”
“No, am I? The truth is that there is no mystery at alclass="underline" my father was a recluse.”
“That sounds to me like a non sequitur.”
“No, it’s the very hub of the matter.”
“But, good God, did he shut you up as well as himself?”
“Not precisely, though I have frequently suspected that he would have liked to have done so. My mother died, you see. He must have loved her quite desperately, I suppose, for he fell into the most deplorable lethargy, and became exactly like Henry I: never smiled again! I can’t tell how it was, because he would never have her name mentioned; and, besides that, I was only ten years old at the time, and not at all acquainted with either of them. In fact, I can scarcely remember what she looked like, except that I am sure she was pretty, and wore beautiful dresses. At all events, Papa was utterly thrown into gloom by her death, and until I was seventeen I think I never exchanged a word with anyone beyond our own household.”