Джорджетт Хейер: The Talisman Ring

Sir Tristram, hearing these details from the butler, stayed only to cast his hat and coat on a chair, and went quickly up the stairs to the Great Chamber.

Both the valet and the doctor were in the room, the valet looking genuinely grieved and the doctor very sour. Sylvester was lying flat in the huge bed with his eyes shut, but when Tristram stepped softly on to the dais, he opened them at once, and whispered: “Damn you, you have kept me waiting!”

“I beg your pardon, sir.”

“I did not mean to die until tomorrow,” said Sylvester, labouring for breath. “Damme, I’ve a mind to make a push to last the night if only to spite that snivelling leech!... Tristram!”

“Sir?”

Sylvester grasped his wrist with thin, enfeebled fingers. “You’ll marry that child?”

“I will, Sylvester: don’t tease yourself!”

“Always meant Ludovic to have her ... damned young scoundrel! Often wondered. Do you think he was telling the truth—after all?”

Shield was silent. Sylvester’s pale lips twisted. “Oh, you don’t eh? Well, you can give him my ring if ever you see him again—and tell him not to pledge it! Take it: I’ve done with it.” He slid the great ruby from his finger as he spoke, and dropped it into Shield’s hand. “That Madeira was a mistake. I ought to have kept to the Burgundy. You can go now. Don’t let there be any mawkish sentiment over my death!”

“Very well, sir,” said Shield. He bent, kissed Sylvester’s hand, and without more ado turned and went out of the room.

Sylvester died an hour later. The doctor who brought the news to Shield, and to Beau Lavenham, both waiting in the library, said that he had only spoken once more before the end.

“Indeed, and what did he say?” inquired the Beau.

“He made a remark, sir—I may say, a gross remark!—derogatory to my calling!” said the doctor. “I shall not repeat it!”

Both cousins burst out laughing. The doctor cast a look of shocked dislike at them and went away, disgusted but not surprised by their behaviour. A wild, godless family he thought. They were not even profitable patients, these Lavenhams: he was glad to be rid of them.

“I suppose we shall never know what it was that he said,” remarked the Beau. “I am afraid it may have been a trifle lewd.”

“I should think probably very lewd,” agreed Shield.

“But how right, how fitting that Sylvester should die with a lewd jest on his lips!” said the Beau. He patted his ruffles. “Do you still mean to be married tomorrow?”

“No, that must be postponed,” Shield answered.

“I expect you are wise. Yet one cannot help suspecting that Sylvester would enjoy the slightly macabre flavour of a bridal presided over by his mortal remains.”

“Possibly, but I never shared Sylvester’s tastes,” said Shield.

The Beau laughed gently, and bent to pick up his hat and cane from the chair on which he had laid them. “Well, I do not think I envy you the next few days, Tristram,” he said. “If I can be of assistance to you, do by all means call upon me! I shall remain at the Dower House for some little time yet.”

“Thank you, but I don’t anticipate the need. I rely on Pickering. The charge of the estate would be better borne by him than by me. God knows what is to be done, with the succession in this accursed muddle!”

“There is one thing which ought to be done,” said the Beau. “Some effort should be made to find Ludovic.”

“A good deal easier said than done!” replied Sir Tristram. “He could not set foot in England if he were found, either. If he stayed in France he may have lost his head for all we know. It would be extremely like him to embroil himself in a revolution which was no concern of his.”

“Well,” said the Beau softly, “I do not want to appear unfeeling, but if Ludovic has lost his head, it would be of some slight interest to me to hear of it.”

“Naturally. Your position is most uncertain.”

“Oh, I am not repining,” smiled the Beau. “But I still think you ought—as trustee—to find Ludovic.”

During the next few days, however, Sir Tristram had enough to occupy him without adding a search for the heir to his duties. Upon the arrival of the lawyer, Sylvester’s will was read, a document complicated enough to try the temper of a more patient man than Shield. A thousand and one things had to be done, and in addition to the duties attendant upon the death of Sylvester there was the problem of Eustacie to worry her betrothed.

She accepted both her bereavement and the postponement of her wedding day with perfect fortitude, but when Sir Tristram asked her to name some lady living in the neighbourhood in whose charge she could for the present remain, she declared herself quite unable to do so. She had no acquaintance in Sussex, Sylvester having quarrelled with one half of the county and ignored the other half. “Besides,” she said, “I do not wish to be put in charge of a chaperon. I shall stay here.”

Sir Tristram, feeling that Sylvester had in his time created enough scandal in Sussex, was strongly averse from giving the gossips anything further to wag their tongues over. Betrothed or not, his and Eustacie’s sojourn under the same roof was an irregularity which every virtuous dame who thought the Lavenhams a godless family would be swift to pounce upon. He said: “Well, it is confoundedly awkward, but I don’t see what I can do about it. I suppose I shall have to let you stay.”

“I shall stay because I wish to,” said Eustacie, bristling. “I do not have to do what you say yet!”

“Don’t be silly!” said Sir Tristram, harassed, and therefore irritable.

“I am not silly. It is you who have a habit which I find much more silly of telling me what I must do and what I must not do. I am quite tired of being bien elevèe , and I think I will now arrange my own affairs.”

“You are a great deal too young to manage your own affairs, I am afraid.”

“That we shall see.”

“We shall, indeed. Have you thought to order your mourning clothes? That must be done, you know.”

“I do not know it,” said Eustacie. “Grandpère said I was not to mourn for him, and I shall not.”

“That may be, but this is a censorious world, my child, and it will be thought very odd if you don’t accord Sylvester’s memory that mark of respect.”

“Well, I shan’t,” said Eustacie simply.

Sir Tristram looked her over in frowning silence.

“You look very cross,” said Eustacie.

“I am not cross,” said Sir Tristram in a somewhat brittle voice, “but I think you should know that while I am prepared to allow you all the freedom possible, I shall expect my wife to pay some slight heed to my wishes.”

Eustacie considered this dispassionately. “Well, I do not think I shall,” she said. “You seem to me to have very stupid wishes—quite absurd, in fact.”

“This argument is singularly pointless,” said Sir Tristram, quelling a strong desire to box her ears. “Perhaps my mother will know better how to persuade you.”

Eustacie pricked up her ears at that. “I did not know you had a mother! Where is she?”

“She is in Bath. When the funeral is over I am going to take you to her, and put you in her care until we can be married.”

“As to that, it is not yet decided. Describe to me your mother! Is she like you?”

“No, not at all.”

“ Tant mieux! What, then, is she like?”

“Well,” said Sir Tristram lamely, “I don’t think I know how to describe her. She will be very kind to you, I know.”

“But what does she do?” demanded Eustacie. “Does she amuse herself at Bath? Is she gay?”

“Hardly. She does not enjoy good health, you see.”