False Colours (43 page)

‘Tomorrow, love,’ he answered, smiling tenderly down at her.

‘Ah, yes, but after that?’

‘As soon as I can contrive it. That’s something I must discuss with your father. If the abominable Albinia could be cajoled into thinking she would enjoy a trip abroad—But we won’t pin our hopes to that chance! Stewart, I’m persuaded, would give me leave in August.’

She said, resolutely smiling: ‘Not so very long, then! We shall leave for Worthing almost immediately. I suppose, you couldn’t—No, of course not!’

He shook his head. ‘I’ve still something to do, love, and I’ve lingered too long already.’

‘Cressy, my dear, forgive me if I run away!’ interposed Lady Denville. ‘I have suddenly remembered that I have something
most
important I must say to Evelyn, before he goes back to Pinny!’

Evelyn, instantly and accurately interpreting this as an excuse hurriedly conjured up to leave Kit alone with his prospective bride, responded without hesitation. Sir Bonamy was a little harder to move, but it was not long before he grasped that her ladyship was trying to convey a silent message to him, and no time at all after that, before complete enlightenment dawned upon him. ‘Oh!’ he said, hoisting himself to his feet: ‘Yes, yes, my pretty! To be sure! I’ll bid you goodnight, my dear Miss Stavely! It’s been a tiring day, you know—devilish tiring!’

‘Yes, indeed!’ said Kit, perceiving that his love was once more in dire straits. ‘Eve, wait for me!’

‘Why, Kester, of course! What’s an hour to me? Don’t hesitate to wake me if I should happen to have fallen asleep!’ responded his twin, strategically retiring in Sir Bonamy’s wake, and closing the door behind him.

It was not, however, many minutes before Kit joined him. ‘Hell-hound!’ Kit said, entirely without rancour. ‘Eve, I racked my brains to hit upon a way to speed
your
affair, but it can’t be done! The only way to enable us to get there with both feet is for me to marry Cressy before you allow my uncle even to know that Miss Askham exists.’

‘I might have guessed you’d stab me in the back!’ said Evelyn mournfully. ‘First you tried to usurp my place; then you stole my bride—Kester, remember my shoulder, remember I’m the head of the family, you unnatural brute!’

‘
Will
you be serious?’ demanded Kit wrathfully.

‘I swear I will be, if only you won’t talk balderdash! Good God, you great gudgeon, I haven’t yet so much as made the smallest push even to fix Patience’s interest!’

‘I know that, but I know you too, twin! However, it can’t be helped, and if you join Mama in Brighton presently you won’t be so far off that you can’t visit the Askhams, will you?’

‘No, Kester, I shan’t. So, now that that’s off your mind, let us consider
your
affairs! I’ve an uneasy conviction that you should have been in Vienna days ago. Yes?’

‘Yes,’ Kit admitted, ‘I don’t think Stewart will cut up stiff, however, so don’t tease yourself! I made my godfather’s death my excuse for wanting leave of absence, and couldn’t have hit on a surer card! He almost
ordered
me not to hesitate to extend my furlough, if I found myself unable to settle my affairs as soon as I’d thought I should. So, as I hadn’t the smallest notion where you were, or how long it would be before you reappeared, I took the precaution of writing to him, before I left London, telling him that I’d found things in the deuce of a tangle! Never mind that! What I was going to tell you when Cressy came into the room, was that the moment I’ve settled things with Stavely, I’m going to post off to present my uncle with my moving story. That ought to make all tidy!’

‘Make all tidy—! You’d ruin yourself with him!’

‘Not a bit of it!’ said Kit cheerfully. ‘You think that because you can’t deal with him no one can, but that’s where you’re out! You leave him to me—but for God’s sake, don’t forget the part you played in the epic! Perhaps I’d better write it down for you.’

‘Perhaps you had,’ agreed Evelyn. ‘After all, there’s no saying what I might do, when you aren’t here to—Listen! That’s not Fimber’s step!’

He got up, as a knock fell on the door, and prepared to slip behind the bed-curtains. Kit strode over to the door, and opened it, to find Sir Bonamy standing outside, his nightcap already on his head, and his uncorseted form swathed in his gorgeous dressing-gown. ‘Oh, it’s you, sir!’ Kit said. ‘Come in! Is there anything amiss?’

‘No, no, I wouldn’t say there was anything
amiss!
’
replied Sir Bonamy. ‘The thing is—’ He broke off, as his eyes fell upon Evelyn. ‘I thought you was alone!’ he told Kit. ‘Well, well, never mind! It wasn’t important!’

Evelyn, stunned by the monstrous figure presented by Sir Bonamy
en deshabille
,
said faintly: ‘Don’t go on my account, sir! Or shall I go?’

‘No, no! I haven’t anything private to say! I dare say you’ll think it of no consequence—well, no more it is! Just one of those trifling things one gets to thinking about in the middle of the night! Ay, and worse! Damme, if I didn’t dream I was
eating
it last night! Never had such a nightmare in my life! I thought I’d have a word with you, Kit, before you go off to Vienna. Well, you’ve been very civil—
very
civil and amiable, and you’ve a deal of influence with your mother, and if you would just drop a word in her ear I should be devilish obliged to you! Mind, I don’t mean I shan’t like being married to her, because, in a great many ways, I rather think I shall. But not if she means to give me biscuits and soda-water!’

‘
D-does
she?’ asked Evelyn, in a shaking voice.

‘Of course she doesn’t!’ said Kit.

‘I wouldn’t say that,’ said Sir Bonamy. ‘You remember her telling me I ought to live on biscuits and soda-water?’

‘I can’t say I do, sir, but if she did she was only funning, I promise you!’

‘Ah, but you never know what notions a female will take into her head! What’s more, they always get their own way! Ask Evelyn, if you don’t believe me! You ain’t much in the petticoat-line yourself, I fancy.’

‘N-not very much, sir!’ acknowledged Kit. ‘I’ll take your word for it, however, and—and won’t fail to speak to Mama!’

Sir Bonamy, much moved, shook him warmly by the hand, and thanked him with heartfelt sincerity, saying that he could now seek his bed without dreading a recurrence of his hideous nightmare. He then surged out of the room, just as Lady Denville, looking like a water-nymph, in a dressing-gown composed of layer upon layer of diaphanous material dyed every shade of green, emerged from her own bedchamber. He shrank instinctively, but she positively recoiled, gasping: ‘Great heavens—!
Bonamy!
’

Overcoming his discomposure, he said, putting a bold face on it: ‘Not wearing my corsets! I know you don’t like ’em: you told me so!’

Recovering from her initial shock, she floated up to him, laying a fragile hand on his arm, and saying: ‘Dearest friend, you must be mistaken! How
could
I have said such a thing?’

‘No, I’m not,’ asserted Sir Bonamy, fixedly regarding her. ‘You begged me to give up strait-lacing!’

‘I must have been mad!’ said her ladyship.

‘And,’ continued Sir Bonamy, hope in his eyes, ‘you said I creaked!’

‘Now,
that
,’
conceded her ladyship, ‘I
do
recall! But don’t give it another thought, my dear! I have grown
perfectly
accustomed to it!
Never
abandon your Cumberland corset, I beg of you!’

‘You know what, my pretty?’ said Sir Bonamy, care wiped from his brow. ‘You’ve taken a weight off my mind! Damme, I
am
the happiest man alive! Bless you, my lovely one!’

Lady Denville, emerging unruffled from an overwhelming embrace, dismissed him in the kindest way to his allotted bedchamber, and joined her sons, saying, as she entered the room: ‘
Poor
Bonamy! I am quite shocked to think that I never before realized how much he
needs
me to take care of him!’

‘I don’t th-think he realizes it either, M-mama!’ said Kit.

‘No, not
yet
,
but I promise you he will! Naturally, it came as a dreadful shock to him, but
already
he is beginning to grow more cheerful!’ She added, as this drew wails from her distressingly afflicted sons, each of whom was clinging to a heavily carved bedpost: ‘Wicked ones, wicked ones, you are
not
to laugh at him!’

‘Only give me leave to tell him you won’t f-feed him on biscuits and soda-water!’ gasped Kit.

At that, her own enchanting ripple of laughter bubbled up. ‘Oh, poor lamb! As though I could be so inhuman! I should think it would kill him! Tell him that I shan’t interfere in
any
way! I shall, of course, but he will never know it, so you needn’t scruple to say that, dearest!’

It was Evelyn who laughed the most at this, and inevitably, he whose laughter quite suddenly vanished. He said vehemently: ‘Don’t do it, Mama, don’t do it! You can’t! You must know you can’t!’

She replied quite seriously: ‘That is exactly what I thought myself, when I made up my mind that I
would
do it! But, do you know, my dear one, the more I think about it the more I believe that I shall positively
enjoy
being married to Bonamy! That’s what I came to tell you, because I know you don’t like it, and I haven’t been able to snatch a word with either of you since it happened! And suddenly it occurred to me that I shan’t be a Dowager after all! You can’t think what a relief that is to me!’ She drew his handsome head down, and kissed him. ‘So now you’ll let Fimber take you back to Pinny, my dearest, and you won’t worry about anything, because there is nothing more you
can
worry about! Kit came to the rescue, just as he—just as he—’ Her voice cracked, and she turned swiftly to hug her younger son convulsively. ‘Oh, my darling!’ she said. ‘
Thank you!
I’m not going to say another
word
,
because I should cry if I did, and I look
hideous
,
when I do that! Good night, my precious ones!’

The twins were left confronting one another. ‘You’ll grow accustomed to it, Eve,’ said Kit, faintly smiling. ‘She
will
enjoy being married to him!’

‘Yes,’ said Evelyn. He raised his eyes to Kit’s, and a reflection of Kit’s smile glimmered in them. ‘I don’t propose to embarrass you, Kester, by enlarging on what our beloved parent said—or, mercifully, left unsaid!’

‘Well, thank God for that!’ said Kit.

‘Just so! I do hope we shall never be obliged to
say
anything to each other!’

‘Why the devil should we?’

‘I haven’t the least idea. Give the bell a tug, Kester! I’m, going to bed! In the words of our future father-in-law, it’s been a tiring day!’

‘
Devilish
tiring!’ instantly responded his twin.