Presently the Marquis came in. He flung his greatcoat over a chair, and kicked the smouldering logs to a small blaze. ‘That’s better,’ he said briskly.
‘You have made it smoke,’ remarked Miss Marling in a voice of long suffering.
He looked down at her with a hint of a smile. ‘You’re hungry, and devilish cross, Ju.’
Her bosom swelled. ‘You have treated me abominably,’ she said.
‘Fiddle!’ replied the Marquis.
‘You let me be jolted and bumped till the teeth rattled in my head. You thrust me into your odious chaise as though I were a mere piece of baggage, and you have not the civility to stay with me.’
‘I never drive when I can ride,’ said his lordship indifferently.
‘I make no doubt at all that had I been Mary Challoner you would have been glad enough to have borne me company!’
The Marquis was snuffing one of the candles, but he looked up at that, and there was a glint in his eye. ‘That, my dear, is quite another matter,’ he said.
Miss Marling told him roundly that he was the rudest creature she had ever met and when he only laughed, she launched into a speech of some length.
He interrupted her to say: ‘My good cousin, do you wish to catch up with our two runaways, or not?’
‘Of course I do! But must we travel at this shocking speed? They cannot reach Dijon for two or three days, and we’ve time enough, I should have thought, to come up with them.’
‘I want to overtake them to-night,’ Vidal said grimly. ‘They are not three hours ahead of us now.’
‘What! Have we gained on them so fast? Then I take it all back, Vidal, every word. Let us go on at once!’
‘We’ll dine first,’ answered his lordship.
‘How,’ demanded Juliana tragically, ‘can you suppose that I could think of food at such a time?’
‘Do you know,’ said the Marquis gently, ‘I find you excessively tedious, Juliana. You complain of the speed at which I choose to travel; you talk a great deal of damned nonsense about my incivility and your sensibilities; you spurn dinner as though it were poisoned; you behave, in short, like a heroine out of a melodrama.’
Miss Marling was prevented from replying by the entrance of two serving-men. Covers were laid, and chairs placed at the table. The men withdrew, and Miss Marling said carefully: ‘You have a vast deal to say in my dispraise, Vidal. Pray, is it to be expected that I should feel no agitation? To be sure, I am sorry I complained of the speed, but to be left hour upon hour alone in a jolting chaise is enough to try the patience even of a Mary Challoner.’
‘No,’ said his lordship. A reminiscent smile softened his mouth for a brief moment. ‘Come and sit down.’
She came, but told him that a glass of wine to revive her was all that was needed.
The Marquis shrugged. ‘Just as you please, cousin.’
Miss Marling sipped her wine, and watched his lordship carve the capon. She shuddered, and said that she wondered at him. ‘For my part,’ she added, ‘I should have thought any gentleman of the least sensibility would have refrained from – from gorging when the lady in his company –’
‘Ah, but I’m not a gentleman,’ said the Marquis. ‘I have it on the best of authority that I am only a nobleman.’
‘Good gracious, Vidal, who in the world dared to say such a thing?’ cried his cousin, instantly diverted.
‘Mary,’ replied his lordship, pouring himself out a glass of wine.
‘Well, if you sat eating as though nothing mattered save your dinner I’m not surprised,’ said Juliana viciously. ‘If I were not so angry with her, the deceitful, sly wretch, I could pity her for all she must have undergone at your hands.’
‘Seeing me eat was the least of her sufferings,’ answered the Marquis. ‘She underwent much, but it may interest you to know, Juliana, that she never treated me to the vapours, as you seem like to do.’
‘Then I can only say, Vidal, that either she had no notion what a horrid brutal man you are, or that she is jus
t a dull creature with no nerves at all.’
For a moment Vidal did not answer. Then he said in a level voice: ‘She knew.’ His lip curled. He glanced scornfully at his cousin. ‘Had I carried you off as I carried her you would have died of fright or hysterics, Juliana. Make no mistake, my dear; Mary was so desperately afraid she tried to put a bullet through me.’