April Lady - Georgette Heyer

"Well, if you meant to kick up such a dust as this I'm dashed sorry you didn't tell him!" said Dysart. "I always knew you had more hair than wit, but it seems to me it's worse than that! Queer in your attic, that's what you are, Nell! First you plague the life out of me to raise the recruits for you—and where you thought I could lay my hand on three centuries the lord knows! Then when I hit on a way of doing the thing neatly you've no more sense in your cockloft than to cry rope on me; and now, when I hand you a roll of soft you ain't even grateful, but start reading me a damned sermon! And when I think that I came posting back to town the instant the thing came off right because I knew you'd fall into a fit of the dismals, or go off on some totty-headed start, if I didn't, I have a dashed good mind to let you get yourself out of your fix as best you can!"

"It is all my fault!" she said mournfully, wringing her hands. "I was in such desperate straits, and begged you so foolishly to help me—"

"Now, don't put yourself in a taking over that!" he interrupted. "I don't say I was best pleased at the time—and now that all's right I don't mind owning to you that there was a moment when I thought I was at a stand—but I'm not complaining. There's no saying but what if you hadn't kept on teasing me to dub up the possibles I mightn't be standing here today pretty well able to buy an abbey!"

"Dysart, no!"

"Well, no, it ain't as much as that," he acknowledged. "As a matter of fact I had thought it would be more. Still, it's enough to keep me living as high as a coach-horse for a while, and that will be a pleasant change, I can tell you! Lord, Nell, I was so monstrously in the wind that I'd not much more than white wool left to play with! Six thousand and seven hundred pounds is what I've made out of it! And that's not counting my debt to you, and the monkey I owed Corny!"

She grasped the back of a chair for support, for her knees were shaking under her. From out a white face her eyes stared up at her beloved brother in horror; she felt as though she were suffocating, and could only just manage to say: "Don't! Dy—oh, Dy, you could not! Not money gained in such a way!"

The thought of his sudden affluence had banished the frown from his brow, but at this it descended again. "Oh?" he said ominously. "And why could I not?"

"Dysart, you must know why you cannot!" she cried hotly.

"That's where you're out, my girl, because I don't know! And there's something else I don't know!" he said grimly. "Perhaps you'll be so obliging, my lady, as to tell me what you did with the blunt you won at Doncaster last year? Very pretty talking this is from a chit who backed three winners in a row! You weren't blue-devilled then, were you? Oh, no! you were in high croak!" He shot out an accusing finger at her. "And don't you try to tell me you didn't go to Doncaster, because I was there myself! Cardross took you to stay at Castle Howard, with the Morpeths, and you drove over from there with a whole party of people! It's no use denying it: why, I remember how you told me that the only thing you didn't like at Castle Howard was the old Earl, because there was so much starch in him that he frightened you to death! Now, then! How do you mean to answer that, pray?"

Utterly bewildered, she stammered: "But—but—I don't understand! What has that to say to anything? I remember perfectly! But—" She broke off suddenly, and gave a gasp. "Oh, can it be possible that—? Oh, Dy, dearest, dearest Dy—did you win that money?"

"Well, of course I did!" he replied, in the liveliest astonishment. "How the devil else was I to do the trick?"

She sank down on the sofa, wavering between tears and laughter. "Oh, how stupid I have been! I thought— Oh, never mind that! Dy, has the luck changed at last? Tell me how it was! Where have you been? How— Oh, tell me everything!"

"Chester, for the King's Plate," he replied, eyeing her uneasily. She seemed to him to be in queer stirrups, and he was just about to ask her if she felt quite the thing when a happy explanation occurred to him. "I say, Nell, you haven't sprained your ankle, have you?" he demanded, grinning at her.

"Sprained my ankle? No!" she answered, a good deal surprised.

"What I mean is—in the family way?"

She shook her head, colouring. "No," she said sadly.

"Oh! Thought that must be it." He saw that her face was downcast, and said bracingly: "No need to be moped! Plenty of time yet before you need think of setting up your nursery. I shouldn't wonder at it if you were like Mama."

"Yes, that is what she thinks, but— Oh, never mind that! Tell me how this all came about!"

He sat down beside her. "Lord, it was the oddest thing! A fifteen to one chance, Nell! And I'd no more notion of laying my blunt on it than the man in the moon! Well, I didn't know the horse existed, and as for backing it—! Anyone would have laid you odds there was only one horse entered that could beat Firebrand, and that was Milksop. But what do you think happened to me?" She shook her head wonderingly, and he gave a chuckle. "Sort of thing that only comes to a man once in a lifetime. It was on Saturday night that it started. I thought I might take a look-in at the—well, it don't signify telling you the name of the place: you wouldn't know it! It's a club I go to now and again. Anyway, I called for a tankard there, drank it off, and damme if there wasn't a great cockroach in the pot!"

"Ugh!" exclaiming Nell, shuddering.

"Yes, I didn't like it above half myself," agreed the Viscount. "But the queer thing about it was that it wasn't dead! Seemed a bit lushy when I tipped it out on to the table, but, dash it, what could you expect? It got quite lively after a while, and so we matched it against a spider that—a friend of mine—picked off its web."

"Cockroaches and spiders?" interrupted Nell, aghast.

"Oh, lord, yes: dozens of 'em! The place is full of them!"

"But, Dysart, how very shocking! It must be a sadly dirty house!"

"Yes, I expect it is," he agreed. "In fact, I know it is, but that don't signify! The thing is, most of the company fancied the spider. Well, I did myself, to tell you the truth, for it was a stout-looking runner, with a set of capital legs to it. I didn't back it, of course, because the cockroach was my entry, but I never thought to see the cockroach win."

"And it did?" Nell asked anxiously.

"Won by half the length of the course!" said the Viscount. "That was the table. We had 'em lined up, and I must say I thought my entry was still a trifle bosky, and I daresay he was, but no sooner did I give him the office—with a fork—than off he went, in a fine burst, straight down the course for the winning-post! Mind you, the spider had it in him to beat him: devilish good mover, I give you my word! The trouble with him was that he was a refuser. If he didn't fold his legs up under him, he went dashing off in circles. Now, young Johnny Cockroach jibbed a trifle, but every time I used my persuader on him, off he went again at a slapping pace, and always straight ahead! You wouldn't have thought, to look at him, that he was such a good mover. A daisy-cutter, is what I thought, and so he was, but a regular Trojan, for all that!"

"Oh, Dy, how absurd you are!" Nell exclaimed, laughing. "And you won all that money on the creature?"

"No, no, of course I didn't! That was only funning! I didn't win much more than a pony on him."

"What happened to him?" Nell could not help asking.

"How should I know? Went back to his stable, I daresay: I wasn't paying much heed to him. Or to any of it, if it comes to that. Well, what I mean is, never thought another thing about it, once the race was won. There wasn't any reason why I should. But, Nell, when I went to bed on Sunday night, I pulled back the clothes, and damme if there wasn't a cockroach right in the middle of the bed! How I came to be such a gudgeon as not to see then what it meant still has me in a puzzle. I didn't. It wasn't till Monday that it fairly burst on me. I went just to see how they were betting their money at Tatt's, and who should be there but old Jerry Stowe? No, you don't know him—not the kind of fellow you would know, but he's a mighty safe man at the Corner, I can tell you. Did him a trifling service once: no great matter, but to hear him you'd think I'd saved his life! Well, the long and short of it was that he told me in my ear to put all my blunt on Cockroach for the King's Plate at Chester! That fairly sent me to grass, I can tell you! I hadn't even heard of the tit: didn't mean to bet on the race at all, because I've no fancy for an odds-on chance, and to my mind there wasn't a horse entered, barring Milksop, that could beat Firebrand. But, of course, as soon as Jerry tipped me the office that settled it: taking one thing with another, I could see Cockroach was a certainty. The only trouble was, how the deuce was I to raise enough mint-sauce to make the thing worth while?" He paused, frowning. The amusement was quenched in Nell's eyes, which were fixed on his face in painful enquiry. "Did something I've never done before, and never thought I should do," he said, shaking his head. "Too damned ramshackle by half! Mind, if I hadn't known the horse couldn't lose I wouldn't have done it!"