Джорджетт Хейер: False Colours

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!”