Chapter Eight #3
He had arrived at no satisfactory answer to this problem when he became an unsuspected witness of an episode which brought all his festering resentment to a head.
Having ridden to Undershaw on the flimsiest excuse, the first sight to meet his eyes, as he dismounted in the stableyard, was Damerel’s big gray being led into the stable by Aubrey’s groom.
Fingle said, with the hint of a dour smile, that his lordship had ridden in not five minutes earlier, bringing with him a book for Mr Aubrey.
Oswald vouchsafed no reply to this, but he looked so thunderous that the hinted smile grew into a broad grin, as Fingle watched him stride off towards the house.
Ribble, opening the door to Oswald, rather thought that Miss Venetia was in the garden; but when Oswald asked ominously after Lord Damerel he shook his head. He had not seen his lordship that day.
‘Oh, indeed?’ said Oswald. ‘Yet his horse is in the stables!’
Ribble did not seem to be surprised, but he looked a little worried, and replied after a moment’s pause that his lordship very often walked up to the house through the garden, entering it by way of the door Sir Francis had had made in the ante-room which led to his library.
Ribble added, as Oswald gave a snort of indignation: ‘His lordship frequently brings Mr Aubrey books, sir, and stays talking with him for quite a while – about his studies, I understand.’
There was a troubled note in his voice, but Oswald did not hear it, or realise that Ribble was trying to reassure himself.
He thought him a gullible old fool, and turned on his heel, saying that if Miss Lanyon was in the garden he would look for her there, since he had come to visit her, not Mr Aubrey.
He strode off, seething with anger. Even Edward Yardley, who had been permitted to enter Undershaw for years, never did so except through the front door, yet this buccaneering stranger was apparently free to walk in whenever he chose, and without the least ceremony.
There was no sign of Venetia either in the gardens or the shrubbery, but just as Oswald was about to follow Damerel’s example, and go into the house through the ante-room door, he bethought him of the orchard.
She was not there either, but Oswald heard her voice, raised in laughing protest, and coming from an old barn, which had once housed cattle, and had been used of late years as a storehouse for the gardener’s tools and a workshop for Aubrey, who occasionally amused himself with carpentry.
There was no mistaking the voice that spoke in answer to hers, and when he heard it Oswald fell into such a fever of suspicious rage that without so much as considering the impropriety of his conduct he went stealthily up to the barn, and paused beside the big double-door, out of sight, but well within hearing of whatever might be going on inside the barn.
A cautious peep revealed no glimpse of Venetia, but it did show him Damerel’s backview, as he stood in the middle of the floor with his head tilted back, as though Venetia were some way above him.
This puzzled Oswald, unfamiliar with the barn, but, in fact, Venetia had mounted by means of a short ladder into the open loft which covered half the barn, to rescue a litter of hungry kittens, whose parent, absent from her duties for a day and a night, was presumed to have met with an untimely end.
Damerel had located her by the simple expedient of calling her name, and had been instantly summoned to her assistance.
‘For that ladder is not at all steady, and I had as lief not climb down it carrying the kittens,’ she explained.
‘Is that what you have in that basket?’ he asked. ‘How the deuce did they get up there?’
‘Oh, they were born here! It’s the kitchen-cat: she always comes here to have her kittens. But I’m afraid something must have happened to her this time, and the poor little things are starving. That I cannot bear, though if they can’t lap yet I suppose they will have to be drowned.’
‘Well, that fate will be preferable to starvation,’ he said. ‘Hand over the orphans!’
She knelt on the edge of the loft, and reached the basket down to his upstretched hand. He grasped it, and set it down on the floor, and looked up again, rather wickedly smiling. ‘Shall I hold the ladder for you, my dear delight?’
‘Certainly not!’ said Venetia firmly.
‘But you said it was unsteady!’
‘It is, but if I could come up it I can come down it.’
‘Do!’ he said cordially. ‘I shall have a stiff neck if I’m obliged to converse with you at that level. Or shall I come up?’
She looked down at him with laughter in her eyes, but said severely: ‘No, you will not come up! Odious creature! You know very well I can’t come down that ladder while you stand there watching me!’
‘Can’t you? Oh, that’s easily remedied!’ he retorted, and removed the ladder, and laid it down.
It was this impish action which drew the protest from her which Oswald heard. ‘Fiend!’ she said. ‘Do put it back, and go away!’
‘Not I!’ he replied, grinning up at her.
‘But it is most unchivalrous of you!’ she complained.
‘No, no, on the contrary! The ladder is clearly unsafe.’
She tried to make her mouth prim, but failed. ‘Do you know, my dear friend, that besides being most ungentlemanly you are shockingly untruthful?’ she enquired.
‘No, am I? Do you know how entrancing your face is when seen from this angle?’
She was still kneeling, resting her hands on the edge of the loft, and looking directly down at him. ‘Upside down? Well, of all the unhandsome things to say! Now, Damerel, you will be so very obliging as to stop behaving like a horrid schoolboy, and set the ladder up again?’
‘No, dear torment, I will not!’
‘Wretch! Do you mean to keep me a prisoner up here? I warn you, the instant your back is turned I shall jump down!’
‘Oh, don’t wait for that! Jump now!’ he said. ‘I’ll catch you!’
‘Thank you, I had as lief not be caught!’
‘What, are you afraid I’ll let you fall? Little craven! And you a Lanyon of Undershaw!’
‘Pooh!’ said Venetia, making a face at him. She then altered her position, drew her flounced skirt tightly round her ankles, swung her legs over the edge of the loft, and slid down into Damerel’s arms.
He caught her, and held her in a strong grip, but whatever might have been his next intention was frustrated by Oswald, who at this moment revealed his presence, starting forward with a wrathful imprecation.
His purpose was to command Damerel to unhand Venetia, and, if necessary, to wrest her from his grasp, but as Damerel, without showing the smallest sign of surprise, much less of discomfiture, had already set her on her feet, and released her, there was no need to do this.
He was unable, on the spur of the moment, to think of anything else to say, and stood glaring at Damerel instead.
Venetia had been startled by his sudden appearance, but she betrayed no more discomfiture than Damerel, merely saying: ‘Oh, is it you, Oswald? What a pity you should not have arrived just one minute earlier! You might have played the knight-errant to my damsel in distress. Would you believe it? – finding me engaged on an errand of mercy up there, Lord Damerel treacherously removed the ladder!’ She laughed at Damerel.
‘In fact, you remind me strongly of my brother Conway!’
‘And worse you cannot say of anyone, I collect!’ His lazy yet penetrating gaze rested on Oswald’s flushed countenance for a moment. There was a good deal of amusement in his eyes, but some not unkindly understanding as well. ‘I shall go and seek comfort of Aubrey,’ he said.
Oswald, standing in the doorway still, hesitated, but after a moment’s indecision, moved reluctantly aside to allow him to pass.
Venetia bent to pick up her basket. ‘I must take these unfortunate kittens up to the house. At least their eyes are open, so perhaps they will be able to lap.’
‘Wait!’ uttered Oswald.
She looked enquiringly at him. ‘Why?’
‘I must and will speak to you! That fellow –!’
‘If you mean Damerel, as I conclude you must, I wish you will say so, and not call him that fellow! It is not at all becoming in you to speak in such a way of a man so much older than you are, and particularly when you’ve no cause to do so.’
‘No cause!’ he exclaimed hotly. ‘When I find him here, f-forcing his improper attentions upon you!’
‘Fiddle!’
He flushed. ‘How can you say that? When I saw – and heard –’
‘You neither saw nor heard him forcing anything upon me. And you won’t,’ she added calmly.
‘You don’t understand! You –’
‘Yes, I do.’
He stared at her, rather nonplussed. ‘You know nothing about men of his stamp! You’ve let him hoax you with his curst cajolery into thinking he means no harm, but if you knew what his reputation is –’
‘Well, I do know, better than you, I daresay.’
‘The fellow’s a rake! No female is safe with him!’
She gave an involuntary laugh. ‘How very dreadful! Oswald, do, pray, stop talking fustian! You can’t think how absurd it is!’
‘It’s true!’ he said earnestly.
‘Yes, it’s true that he’s a rake, but I assure you there is no need to worry over my safety. I expect you mean it kindly, but I shall be very much obliged to you if you will say no more!’
He stared at her fiercely, and ejaculated: ‘You’re bewitched!’
The oddest little smile flickered in her eyes. ‘Am I? Well, never mind! It is quite my own affair, after all. Now I must take these kittens up to the kitchen, and see what can be done for them.’
He resolutely barred the way. ‘You shall hear me!’ he declared. ‘You hope to fob me off, but it will not do!’
She looked at him for a measuring instant, and then sat down on Aubrey’s bench, and folded her hands in her lap, saying, with resignation: ‘Very well: say what you wish, if nothing else will do for you!’