‘Ay, that’s a challenge. He must answer that!’ whispered Sir Raymond Orton.
‘I can at least tell you, cousin, that a portrait of me hangs in the pink salon at Barham. A very damnable likeness of me as a child, taken with my late lamented brother,’ said my lord softly.
‘A hit!’ Mr Belfort confided to Prudence. ‘That’s a hit!’
She sat in an attitude of negligent attention, an arm flung over the back of the chair, and her calm face inscrutable. She nodded, and was conscious of Fanshawe’s eyes upon her.
Rensley banged his fist down on the table. ‘It’s not the pink salon!’ he declared. ‘There is no pink salon!’
Mr Belfort was of the opinion that this was a bad check.
‘In my day,’ said his lordship, undisturbed
, ‘it was pink.’
‘Faugh, what do you know of it? You’re trying to brazen it out with a bare-faced lie!’
Mr Fontenoy spoke grudgingly. ‘There was a pink salon,’ he said. ‘Lady Barham used it.’
My lord swept round to face him. ‘Ah, you remember then?’ he said eagerly. ‘A pink salon in the west wing! There was an oriole window, and my mother’s broidery table set there!’ He became rapt in reminiscences.
This produced a sensation. Mr Belfort thought the old gentleman scored a decided hit there.
Rensley was discomfited for a moment, but recovered.
‘Oh, you’ve been in the house in your youth! That’s all there is to that. You were a groom there, I dare swear, and you got into the house!’
Mr Belfort wagged a solemn head. ‘Ay, that’s a possibility, y’know.’
My lord’s eyes glinted. Very sweet was his voice, dangerously sweet. ‘It’s more than you can claim to have done, my dear cousin,’ he said gently. ‘I’ll swear you never set foot in it till my brother died!’
Rensley’s jaw dropped; he grew purple in the face. ‘Damn your impudence!’ he spluttered.
Lord March interposed. ‘Enough of that. Did you set foot in it, Rensley?’
The old gentleman was indignant. ‘Certainly he did not!’ he said, before Rensley could reply. ‘There was never a Rensley dared show his face on our land! What had we to do with them?’ Almost he snorted.
His daughter’s eyes widened a little; Mr Belfort sniggered.
Rensley bit back a hot answer. Came a look of cunning into his face. ‘So you never met me when we were boys, my Lord Barham?’ he said.
‘Only once,’ said my lord. He dwelt lovingly on a pleasant memory. ‘How hard I punched your nose then,’ he said dreamily.
There was a roar of laughter, hastily suppressed. Mr Rensley strode to the door. ‘Don’t think I’ve done with you, my fine gentleman!’ he said savagely, and slammed out of the room.
The old gentleman smiled affectionately upon the assembled company. ‘Very like an encounter I had once with a Margrave,’ he said pensively. ‘I was acting as one of his lackeys at the time.’
‘Tare an’ ’ouns, a lackey ?’ gasped Clevedale.
‘Certainly,’ said my lord, with some hauteur. ‘Why not? There was a lady in the case.’ He smoothed a wrinkle from his satin sleeve. ‘She was the Margrave’s mistress,’ he remarked.
Quite a number of people drew nearer. March thrust his arm in my lord’s, and walked away with him. ‘Let’s hear that tale, Barham,’ he said. ‘Which Margrave?’
Fourteen
My Lord Barham Becomes Mysterious
The old gentleman was left undoubtedly a victor; there could be no gainsaying it. Poor Rensley came off badly from a battle of wits. The world shook its head sadly over the startling disclosures of my lord’s past history, but it was prepared to look indulgently on those shocking lapses. Had his lordship betrayed only the faintest sign of discomfiture, shown the slightest shame, the world might have decided to turn a cold shoulder on him. But my lord was far from showing either shame or discomfiture. So far, indeed, that his attitude was one of pride in his chequered career. He carried all off with a high hand. He said majestically that there was nothing he had not done, and such was the power of the man’s eye that the world began to perceive clearly that he had nothing at all to be ashamed of.