Джорджетт Хейер - Penhallow

“You little devil, I don’t believe you love me at all!” he said, half-laughing, half-hurt.

She leaned swiftly forward to plant a quick, firm kiss upon his mouth. “Yes, then, I do, my dear, but you’re a bad one for a poor girl to trust in. A clean-off rascal you are, love, aren’t you now?”

He dragged her across his knees, so that her dark head lay on his arms. “I swear I’ll marry you, Loveday!”

She made no attempt to free herself from the rough grip upon her, but said softly: “No.”

His hand, which had been stroking one of her thighs through the thin stuff of her dress, tightened on her firm flesh. “You’re driving me mad! I’m not going on like this!”

“We must be patient,” she said. “Give over, Bart-love! you’ll have me bruised black and blue. Let me sit up like a decent woman, now do!”

He released her, and she began to straighten her dress, and her dishevelled hair. “You’ll get me turned off without a character, my dear, that’s what you’ll do. We’ve got to be careful.”

“To hell with that! I’m my own master, and I’ll do as I choose. If the Guv’nor won’t give me Trellick Farm, I’ll cut loose and make a living on my own! I could do it.”

“No, but you shan’t then,” she said, taking one of his hands between hers and fondling it. “There’s never one as would employ you, love. You with your wildness, and your high-up airs, and the crazy notions you do be taking into your head! The poorhouse is where we’d end, and you promising to set me up in style at Trellick!”

He grinned, but said" I’m damned useful to Ray. He’d be willing to employ me up at the stud-farm.”

“He would not, then, and well you know it. You tell Raymond you’re planning to marry Loveday Trewithian, and see what! Besides, there’s nothing he could do for us, whatever he chose, while your father’s alive.”

“Well, then, I’ll set up as a trainer on my own.”

“Not without some money you won’t, love. Leave the Master give old Penrose his notice to quit, and put you into Trellick, and you may put up the banns the first Sunday after.”

“I can’t wait!”

She sighed. “Why won’t he set you up the way he said he would, Bart?”

“What’s the good of asking why my father won’t do a thing? I don’t know — daresay he doesn’t either. He talks a lot of rot about my not being ready for it, but that’s not it.

“Seeming to me,” she said thoughtfully, “he’s set on keeping you here under his thumb, my love, the same as he has Mr Raymond. But he’ll not last for ever, not the way he’s carrying on, and so they all say.”

“Well, I’m sick of hanging about, meeting you in odd corners. I’d rather have it out with the old man, and be damned to him!”

“Wait!” she counselled him. “There’s plenty of things can happen yet, and now’s not the time to say anything to him that he wouldn’t be pleased to hear. He put himself in a fine taking over the letter he had from Mr Aubrey, by what my uncle told me. Wait, love!”

“I don’t believe you mean to marry me,” he said sulkily.

She leaned towards him, till her arm touched his. “Yes. I do mean. You know I do! And I will be a good wife to you, even if I’m beneath your station, my darling Barty. But there’s not one of your brothers, nor your father neither, would leave you marry me, if they could stop it. We must be sensible. If it were found out you were keeping company with me before you’ve twopence to call your own, they’d send me packing, and manage it so that you couldn’t come next or nigh me.”

That made him laugh; and he hugged her to him, and pinched her cheek. “You don’t know me if you think any one of them could manage anything of the kind! Besides, why should my brothers care what I do?”

“Your brother Conrad would,” she insisted. “Bart, I do be afraid of Conrad. He looks at me as though he’d like to see me dead.”

“What rot!” he scoffed. “Con? Why, you silly little thing, Loveday, Con’s my twin!”

“He’s jealous,” she said.

But Bart only laughed again, because such an idea was so alien to his own nature as to be ridiculous to him. If Conrad looked darkly, he supposed him to be out of sorts, and gave the matter not another thought. When Loveday suggested that Conrad might divulge their secret to Penhallow, he replied without an instant’s hesitation: “He wouldn’t. Even Eugene-wouldn’t do that. We don’t give each other away to the Guv’nor.”

Her fingers twined themselves between his. "Jimmy would,” she said, under her breath.

“What?” he exclaimed.

“Hush, my dear, you’ll have one of the girls over hearing you, and telling my uncle on me! Jimmy wouldn’t make any bones about carrying tales to your father.”

“If I catch the little bastard’s nose in my affairs, I’ll twist it off!” swore Bart. “He carry tales to my father! Let me see him snooping round us, that’s all! You needn’t worry, my sweet! He’s a damned sight too scared of me to pry into my business.”

“He’d do you a mischief if he could,” she said in a troubled tone.

“Rot, why should he?”

She lacked the words to be able to explain her own vague intuition to him, and sat tongue-tied, twisting the corner of a little muslin apron she wore. He would not, have understood her had she had the entire English vocabulary at her command, for he had a very simple mind, and such twisted thoughts as flourished in Jimmy’s crafty brain he would neither have believed in nor comprehended. He sat looking at Loveday’s downcast face with a puzzled frown, and presently asked: “You haven’t said anything to him, have you?”

She lied at once. She was ashamed to confess to him that her pride in her conquest had made her boast to Jimmy that she was soon to be married to a Penhallow. Besides, it was certain that he would be roused to quick wrath, and she was afraid of his anger, which, although it might be of short duration, quite possessed him while it lasted, and made him do things which afterwards he was sorry for. She said: “Oh, no! But he’s sly, Jimmy is, and there’s little goes on in this house he doesn’t know about. We did ought to be careful, Bart, love.”

“I want you,” he said. “I don’t care a damn for Jimmy, or anyone else. I’m going to have you.”

“Get Trellick, and there’s no one can stop us marrying,” she said. “I won’t have you, love, else.”

Her caressing tone robbed her words of offence. She was passionately in love with him, but she had a native caution, born of her circumstances which he lacked. She had the more subtle mind, too, and he was aware of it, sometimes a little puzzled by it but on the whole respectful of it. He said: “Well, I’ll try to get the Guv’nor to see reason. But if he won’t...”

“We’ll think of something else,” she said quickly.

His hold round her waist tightened; he forced her head up with his free hand, and stared down into her face, a little smouldering light glowing at the back of his eyes. “It won’t make any difference! Or will it? Come on, out with it, my girl! Would you turn me down, if the old man chucked me out? I believe you would!”

Her lips invited him to kiss her. He did not, and she said: “You silly! Don’t I love you fit to die? There won’t never be anyone else for me, my dear.”

He was satisfied at once. She herself could hardly have told whether she had spoken the truth or not, for she meant to have him, and to make him a good wife, too, and had not so far considered the possibilities of defeat. But without being consciously critical of him she was in no way blind to his faults, and she knew that his autocratic temper, as much as his dislike of submitting to any form of discipline, would make him a very unsatisfactory man to employ. As his own master, with his own farm, he would, she thought, do very well, for he understood farming, was generally popular with the men under him, and would, besides, be largely guided by herself.