He caught the gleam under her long lashes, and laughed. ‘No.’
‘Don’t you want to—dear Charles?’
‘Yes, very much.’
‘Oh, this is a pistol held to my head! If I want to be kissed I must also be married. Is that it?’ she asked outrageously.
‘That is it, in a nutshell.’
Her eyes began to dance. ‘Kiss me, Charles: I’ll marry you,’ she said.
Seven
Colonel Audley was very late for breakfast. He came into the parlour to find his brother standing by the window, glancing through the Gazette de Bruxelles, and his sister-in-law with her chair already pushed back from the table. She looked searchingly at him as he entered, for she had heard the front door slam a minute earlier and knew that he had been out riding again. Her heart sank; she had never seen quite that radiant look on his face before. ‘Well, Charles,’ she said. ‘You’ve been out already?’
‘Yes.’ He held out his hands to her. ‘Wish me joy!’ he said.
She let him take her hands, but faltered: ‘Wish you joy? What can you mean?’
‘Lady Barbara has promised to be my wife,’ he answered.
She snatched her hands away. ‘Impossible! No, no, you’re joking!’
He looked down at her, half laughing, half surprised. ‘I assure you I am not!’
‘You scarcely know her! You cannot mean it!’
‘But, my dear Judith, I do mean it! I am the happiest man on earth!’
The dismay she felt was plainly to be read in her face. He drew back. ‘Don’t you intend to wish me joy?’ he asked.
‘Oh, Charles, how could you? She will never make you happy! You don’t know—’
‘She has made me happy,’ he interrupted.
‘She is fast—a flirt!’
‘You must not say that to me, you know,’ he said, quite gently, but with a note that warned her of danger.
The Earl, who had lowered his paper at the Colonel’s first announcement, now laid it down, and said in his calm way: ‘This is very sudden, Charles.’
‘Yes.’
Judith would have spoken again, but Worth engaged her silence by the flicker of a glance in her direction. ‘Your mind is, in fact, quite made up?’ he said.
‘Quite!’
‘Then of course I wish you joy,’ said Worth. ‘When do you mean to be married?’
‘Nothing is decided yet. I must see her grandfather. She is her own mistress, but I don’t want to—It is not as though I were a very eligible parti, you know.’
‘You are a great deal too good for her!’ exclaimed Judith.
He turned his head, and said with a smile: ‘Oh no, Judith! It is she who is a great deal too good for me. When you know her better you will agree.’
She replied as cheerfully as she was able: ‘I do wish you very happy, Charles. I will try to know Lady Barbara better.’
He looked at her in rather a troubled way as she went out of the room. But when he had closed the door behind her the trouble vanished from his eyes, and he walked back to the table, and sat down at it, and began to eat his breakfast.