Cressida (24 page)

There was a slit, she immediately noted, in Rossiter’s left sleeve, from which a red stain was slowly spreading, but he himself seemed quite unaware of this. It was Addison, she saw, who was pushing the attack, displaying the brilliant foil-work that had made him one of Angelo’s favourite pupils; but, try as he might, he was having no success in penetrating Rossiter’s guard. Rossiter’s own style was serviceable, stubborn, and of an iron endurance; and she realised after a time the strategy that lay behind it—to anticipate Addison’s every move, to hold him off until he began to tire and, in a moment of fatigue or lost concentration, left himself open to Rossiter’s own attack.

The pounding upon the door, she was aware, had ceased now; the two rogues, evidently wanting no part of the deadly battle they could hear going forward on its other side, had apparently taken themselves off. She thought, in desperation, of overturning the candelabrum upon the table, which was the room’s only illumination, since the curtains had been drawn against the dusk outside; but in this case, too, she could not be certain that in the confusion of the moment in which she did so a fatal hit might not be made. She saw hopefully that, in spite of the fact that it was Rossiter’s shirt that bore that spreading stain, it was Addison who was now obviously tiring; he was breathing in short, harsh gasps, and the speed and daring of his attack had lessened. Rossiter’s own face was grim, wary, and implacable, as he parried that attack with a wrist and arm that seemed as flexible and tireless as the steel with which he fought.

And then, suddenly, his rapier flashed in a lightning lunge in high carte; a long, reddening slash appeared in Addison’s right sleeve near the shoulder; and the blades disengaged. Addison’s dropped to the floor with a clatter as he stood, gasping, his face as white as his shirt, clutching his sword arm in his left hand.

‘Enough?” panted Rossiter, his face still grim and unforgiving. He strode forward quickly, dropping his own rapier, and, seizing Addison’s arm, ripped the sleeve up quickly and examined the wound. “I told you I shouldn’t kill you,” he said then coolly, drawing his handkerchief from his pocket and binding it over the wound. “I admire your skill, by the way—but you lack staying power. We always found it so with the French—”

“Damn you, don’t patronise me!” said Addison thickly. He sank down into a chair, his face colourless. “Can’t stand the sight of blood—never could,” he said, shuddering. “Give—brandy—”

“Your own blood, you mean,” Rossiter said unsympathetically. “The sight of mine didn’t appear to trouble you particularly.”

He strode over to the sideboard, poured brandy from a decanter into a glass, and brought it over to his vanquished foe. At the same moment Cressida, who was in a state of such relief over Addison’s defeat, anxiety concerning the wound that Rossiter had himself received, and fury with both of them for having frightened her almost out of her wits with their obstinate male insistence upon settling their differences at sword’s point, that she had not yet recovered herself sufficiently to say a word, became aware of a renewed disturbance of some sort in the hall outside the locked door. Apprehension that Addison’s disreputable henchmen had returned sent her eyes flying to Rossiter’s. He glanced up.

“What the devil—!” he exclaimed. “Women’s voices? Is that Lady Con?”

He walked over to the door, took the key from his pocket, unlocked it, and flung it open.

The next moment Lady Constance and Kitty, both talking at once, and followed by Captain Harries, who appeared to be attempting to restrain them, tumbled pell-mell into the room.

All three of the newcomers checked in astonishment at the tableau presented to them as they entered the room —the disarranged furniture, the rapiers lying discarded upon the floor, and Addison, very pale, seated beside the table with a glass of brandy in his shaking left hand and his right arm bound with a blood-soaked handkerchief, while Rossiter, also displaying the stains of combat, and Cressida, most unwontedly discomposed, stood staring at them in disbelief.

It was Lady Constance who first, majestically, gave voice to her own thoughts.

“You see, ” she said to Captain Harries, as if putting a definite end to an argument that had been going on between them for some time, “I was
quite
right to come with you. I had a premonition I should be needed, and it was far more agreeable than remaining at home, with Kitty having the vapours because you would not agree to take
her.
Cressy, my dear,” she went on, stepping firmly into the room, “I do not know
what
has been happening here, but I can see that it has all been very distressing for you. In
my
day,” she said, directing a disapproving glance at Rossiter, “gentlemen did not settle their disagreements in the presence of ladies. ”

“In
your
day,” Rossiter retorted, with some heat and a disapproving glance of his own towards Cressida, “ladies did not thrust themselves into affairs that did not concern them.”

But Kitty, who obviously found this academic discussion of the proprieties quite beside the point, here drew everyone’s attention upon herself by flying across the room to Addison’s side and dropping to her knees beside his chair.

“You are hurt!” she exclaimed rather redundantly, as he was already quite aware of the fact, as was everyone else in the room.

Addison made a gesture of distaste, which—as the glass of brandy was still in his hand—had the unlucky effect of splashing some of its contents upon her frock. As she recoiled, he said savagely, “My apologies, ma’am!— though perhaps, more correctly, you should be offering me yours, since it is through your curst poor management that I find myself in this case! Perhaps on the next occasion you plan to elope you will manage to keep the matter to yourself, instead of allowing it to become the property of meddling outsiders!”

“But I
didn’t
—!” Kitty began, looking shocked at the violence of this attack from the ordinarily urbane Addison. “Indeed, it was not my fault, and I am quite ready to m-marry you tomorrow, no matter what Lady Constance may say—”

Addison gave a disagreeable laugh. “Charming of you—but, as your very astute guardians have long since guessed, marriage was never in the picture, my dear,” he said.

Kitty looked at him incredulously. “But you
can’t
mean—!” she faltered.

“On the contrary,” said Lady Constance briskly, “it is exactly what he has meant all along, you foolish, foolish girl. But now, if you please,” she when on, advancing upon Addison as Kitty, bursting into tears, jumped up and would have run from the room if she had not been restrained by Captain Harries, against whose broad shoulder she was able to sob out her disappointment and disillusionment very comfortably,
“now,
Addison, I shall have a look at your wound. You are looking very green, and that horrid, clumsy bandage you are wearing is obviously not stopping the bleeding. ”

As the rest of the company gazed respectfully, she untied the rough bandage Rossiter had made from his handkerchief and clicked her tongue disapprovingly over the deep wound in the flesh of the upper arm that was thus revealed.

“You will no doubt, ” she pronounced judicially, “be in a high fever by morning; it is bed for you at once, sir. Are there any servants in the house?”

“None,” articulated Addison with some difficulty, for he was looking decidedly faint at the renewed sight of the wound.

“Very well, then; Captain Rossiter and Captain Harries will help you upstairs to your bedchamber,” Lady Constance said decisively, as she replaced the bandage.

Cressida, recovering her voice for the first time, said indignantly that Rossiter was wounded, too.

“A mere scratch, it would seem,” declared Lady Constance, dismissing the unimpressive stain upon Rossiter’s shirt-sleeve with a glance. “You may, however, bathe it and put some Basilicum Powder on it, if there is any to be found in the house, as soon as he has helped Addison to bed. ”

She gestured imperatively to Captain Harries, who, obediently putting the weeping Kitty aside, came over and, with Rossiter’s aid, assisted Addison to his feet.

Addison stumbled off between them, with Lady Constance leading the way up the stairs and Cressida and Kitty following rather uncertainly behind.

In a bedchamber at the head of the stairs candlelight glowed softly over a scene of sybaritic luxury that reminded Cressida forcibly of some of the more colourful descriptions of Eastern seraglios in Lord Byron’s much admired poems. There were silken hangings and tasselled cushions, even a purple velvet robe flung with ostentatious carelessness across the bed; and Cressida, regarding this evidence of a totally unexpected romanticism in the astringent Addison, suddenly found herself on the verge of giving way to a fit of the giggles, like a schoolgirl.

No doubt, she told herself severely, it was the disordered state of her nerves that was causing this unseemly reaction to the sight of the scene prepared for Kitty’s—and then, by default, her own—seduction; but then her eyes caught Rossiter’s; she saw her own amusement mirrored in his; and her heart suddenly lightened in a most extraordinary fashion, as if all the terrors of the past hour had melted away like a summer morning mist.

Lady Constance, meanwhile, after glancing about the room with obvious distaste, ordered Rossiter and Harries to help Addison to bed, and herself departed, with Cressida and Kitty in tow, in search of bandages and medicaments. Having ruthlessly dismembered a fine linen sheet for the former purpose and resigned herself to nothing more restorative than hartshorn and Basilicum Powder for the latter, she returned to her patient, who was by this time propped up on the pillows in his gorgeous bed, looking more ghastly than ever.

“We shall have to fetch a surgeon to him, of course,” she said, briskly taking command once more. “Captain Harries, will you be good enough to drive back to Welwyn at once and fetch the local man? Captain Rossiter will remain here and have his own wound—which I apprehend is not at all serious and therefore does not require
my
attention—tended to by you, my dear Cressy. Kitty, you will remain here with me. I shall require your assistance in dealing with Mr. Addison.’

Kitty, tear-stained and resentful, looked as if she would much rather have gone with Captain Harries, who obviously appeared to her as her only present anchor in the storm of events that had wrecked all her hopes; but Lady Constance, in the spirit of command that had fallen upon her, was plainly going to brook no opposition, so Kitty remained where she was. Captain Harries, equally obedient, went off down the stairs, and Cressida, commandeering a supply of Basilicum Powder and some strips of linen, led a still amused Rossiter across the hall to a second bedchamber.

“Is she always like this?” he demanded, as he sat down in a chair beside the washstand and watched her pouring water from the pitcher into the bowl. “Good God, I hadn’t suspected she could be such a martinet!”

“Nor had I,” Cressida confessed, for some reason avoiding his eyes out of a sudden, inexplicable feeling of violent shyness. “I expect she is—what one might call, 
rising to the occasion.
Just as
you
did,” she added in a much lower voice, industriously bending all her attention to the task of wetting a cloth with which to bathe his wound, “when you came to my rescue just now. I—I have been too much overset to thank you properly—”

There was no response. She was obliged to look up, and found that he was regarding her with a most extraordinary expression, which appeared to be compounded partly of amusement and partly of something far more unfathomable and disturbing, in his dark eyes.

“Gratitude—from
you,
Cressy?” he quizzed her. “Unnecessary, I should think! Is it possible that you hadn’t already formulated some brilliant scheme of your own for outwitting Addison and making your escape before I came upon the scene?”

Cressida, who had been about to roll up the torn sleeve of his shirt in order to lay bare his wound, halted in the act of doing so and picked up the bowl instead, as if it offered her some sort of protection from that disturbing expression in his eyes.

“Well,” she admitted, “I
was
considering throwing the contents of the pepper-pot into his eyes and escaping through the window while he was temporarily blinded. But I wasn’t
quite
sure I could run faster than those two horrid men—”

She paused indignantly, as Rossiter broke into a shout of laughter.

“Oh, Cressy, my darling,” he gasped, when he could speak again, “I’ll back you against a score of Addisons any day in the week! I was fit to murder him when I came in and saw what he had in mind; in fact, I was fit to murder you, too, for getting yourself into a scrape like that! But I ought to have known—”

He broke off, seeing that she was observing him with a very odd expression upon her own face, rather, he told her later, as if she had seen something explode and was waiting to see if it would do it again.

“Oh! What did you say?” she enquired faintly, after a moment. “You called me ‘my darling’—but you are engaged to Kitty—”

“I am not, at the present moment, engaged to Miss Chenevix or to anyone else,” Rossiter corrected her firmly. “But I am quite willing to be engaged to
you,
if given even half a chance. He rose abruptly, and Cressida found herself enveloped in an exceedingly urgent embrace that appeared to be quite unconscious of the drawbacks presented by bloodstains, precariously held basins filled with water, and the rather improper fact that they were alone together in another man’s bedchamber. Cressida hastily set the bowl down, which was the only one of the drawbacks she herself was aware of at the moment, thus allowing the embrace to tighten even more ruthlessly about her. “I am afraid,” Rossiter’s voice said over her head, “that Lady Con has betrayed you, Cressy. She told me—I can only hope correctly—that you were in love with me—”

“Well, I
am
,” said Cressida, developing a great interest in the top button of his shirt, so that it was obviously quite impossible for her to look up into his face. “Oh, Dev, I’ve
always
been—only I thought, all these years, that you wanted me to break off our engagement because you had had second thoughts about marrying a girl with no fortune—” She looked up at him, overcome by sudden indignation. “Well, how was I to imagine that you were only being noble?” she demanded. “You, of all men—