write to you, explaining why I was obliged to fail! I beg your pardon, sir!’
‘Humbug, you young rascal!’ Chacely said. ‘You forgot the engagement altogether!’
‘No, no!’ Kit protested.
‘But, Chacely, did you think he wouldn’t?’ asked one of the other gentlemen.
At this, the third gentleman added his mite to this badinage. It was evident that no suspicion that they were roasting Kit, and not Evelyn, crossed their minds: a circumstance which made Lady Denville say, when the door was shut upon them: ‘You see, Kit! I told you how it would be! I daresay that Newlyn and Sir John Streatley have been acquainted with you since you were in short coats, and if they never guessed the truth you may be easy!’
‘I am not at all easy,’ he retorted. ‘But as for you, love, I wonder how you dare address me as “wicked one”! Mama, you are incorrigible! Who the devil is that mooncalf you’ve enslaved?’
Her infectious ripple of laughter broke from her. ‘Isn’t he ridiculous, poor boy? But one must be kind to him: you see, he is a poet!’
‘Ah, that, of course, explains everything!’ said Kit cordially. ‘I expect you are his inspiration?’
‘Well, just at present I am,’ she acknowledged. ‘It won’t last – in fact, I think that at any moment now he will fall desperately in love with some chit – probably quite ineligible! – and forget that I ever existed. Which, I must own, will be in one way a great relief, because it is dreadfully tedious to be obliged to listen to poetry, even when it has been composed in one’s honour. But in another – oh, Kit, you won’t understand, but to be three-and-forty, and still be able to attach foolish boys, is such a comfort!’
‘Mama, you must never make such an admission again! No one would believe you to be a day older than three-and-thirty – if as much!’
This was true, but Lady Denville, after considering the matter, said: ‘No, but one must be reasonable, Kit, and everyone must know I can’t be a day younger than three-and-forty, when all the world knows that you and Evelyn are four-and-twenty! It is the most lowering reflection! But never mind that! What happened tonight, in Mount Street? I was in such a fret of anxiety all the evening I left my party early!’
‘Oh, was that the reason? I must tell you that I was knocked acock when I perceived that the sumptuous chair being carried down the street before midnight was yours!’
‘Yes, I don’t think I have ever left a party so early before – particularly when I was winning!’ she said naively.
‘No, were you? But I was very much shocked, Mama! What has become of your most handsome cavaliere servente? How comes it about that he permitted another – four others! – to squire you home tonight? Don’t tell me his passion has waned!’
She went into another ripple of laughter. ‘Oh, poor Bonamy! How can you be so unfeeling as even to think of his walking all the way from Albemarle Street? He must have dropped dead of an apoplexy, had he made the attempt! As for his passion, I have a melancholy suspicion that I share it with his cook: he was boring on for ever tonight about a way of serving teal with poivrade sauce! Now, stop funning, and tell me what happened at your party!’
‘Oh, a very handsome dinner, and the company – er – the pink of gentility! Not quite in my style, perhaps, but certainly of the first respectability!’
‘Were they excessively fusty?’ she said sympathetically. ‘I did warn you that they would be!’
‘You did, but you did not warn me, dear Mama, that two of the number are acquainted with Evelyn!’
‘No! Who, Kit?’
‘Mr Charles Stavely, who appears to be –’
‘Oh, him!’ she interrupted. ‘Very likely he may be, but so slightly that it is not of the least consequence!’
‘Very true, but if Evelyn doesn’t return in time to save me from Lucton I shall be totally undone. Is he one of Evelyn’s bosom-bows?’
‘Young Lucton? Good gracious, no! You don’t mean to say that he was invited to the party?’
‘That is precisely what I do mean to say, Mama! Furthermore, I apprehend that Evelyn has entered into some sort of an undertaking with him. What it may be I haven’t the least guess, and something seems to tell me that you haven’t either.’
She shook her head. ‘No, indeed! How excessively awkward for you!’
‘Yes, isn’t it?’ he agreed. ‘Particularly when one considers that he is coming to visit me tomorrow – to learn what is my decision! That’s what I call having a wolf by the ears!’
‘Most vexatious!’ she said sunnily. ‘But there’s no need to be in a worry, dearest! Perhaps Evelyn will have returned – or Fimber may know what it is that stupid creature wants. And if he doesn’t know, Brigg will say that you are not at home. I see no difficulty in evading Lucton.’
‘No, love, I’ve no doubt of that! But not even my abominable twin could agree to receive a man on a matter of business and then say that he was not at home!’
‘But, Kit, how foolish of you!’ she said reproachfully. ‘You should have fobbed him off!’
‘So I might have, if it had not been made very plain to me that he thinks himself pretty ill-used at having been fobbed off for over ten days already. Oh, well, I daresay I shall be able to brace it through! What has me in a far worse worry is that Miss Stavely has asked me to visit her tomorrow morning, to resume an interrupted discussion she had with Evelyn, on the day that he proposed to her.’