Lady Hathaway's House Party (15 page)

“I know why her husband didn’t show up, anyway,” Mr. Lucas said. “He was at the races in Doncaster. Was holding the bets for a bunch of the fellows up from London.”

“Oh dear!” Kay’s hand flew to her mouth. She thought George would pick Honey up at the inn that morning, and foresaw her return to Ashbourne. She assumed the whitening around Belle’s gills was for the same reason, but Belle was thinking something quite different. ‘He’s hiding out in London. The duel was fought at Hounslow Heath.’ Hiding out! He was no more hiding out and had no more killed a man in a duel than she had herself. It was more lies to deceive her.

“I think I’ll go for that ride now,” Belle said, arising. This too was taken as pique at Mrs. Traveller’s probable return, and with another guest to inhibit advice, Kay had no option but to let Belle go, and to warn Ollie when he got back to get rid of Mrs. Traveller somehow. Send her off to Doncaster in his own carriage if necessary. She had come in a hired rig from the inn.

Belle went to the stables and first thought she would ride in solitude back to the same place she had gone with Oliver, through the forest and the fields to the river. A good gallop would get rid of some of her excess of emotions. Then she remembered Arnold, and decided to try Oliver’s jealousy a little with her own highly unsatisfactory flirt. About the only point presently in Arnold’s favor was that Oliver was still jealous of him.

She turned to the road and went down it toward the village at a good pace. She had gone nearly the three miles before she saw Arnold’s carriage, and she hailed it. He stopped and said in a shamefaced way that he hadn’t thought she would like to go back to Dr. Hutchison’s again, and he had gone early so he would be free to do something with her later if she liked. She knew he was shamming, but didn’t know quite why he kept looking over his shoulder behind him, back toward the village.

“Your husband was there with that woman,” he told her, when she asked what he was looking for. “Really, he’s the strangest man, Belle. I think you should be rid of him. I said ‘Good morning’ and he nearly bit my head off. ‘What’s good about it?’ he said. I was only trying to be civil. And he was giving her money too. They came out of the bank together. Now, I know he said he was going to settle up her account at the inn, but he was giving her
bills
— plenty of them.”

This would have engendered no anger, or at least no surprise, had she not learned from Mr. Lucas that George Traveller had been in no duel, required no large sum to flee the country. The money was obviously being given to Honey to reimburse her for her fruitless trip from London. Probably to allow her to go somewhere to meet him on the sly while George was safely away at the races. To Belwood, for all she knew. Nothing seemed beyond him.

And how happy she was that he had been caught red-handed again. She had seen him go to the woman’s room, Arnold had seen him pay her off, and Mr. Lucas’ untimely arrival had revealed that he lied about the duel. He was a very unfortunate libertine. It would hardly have gone worse for him if someone had sat down and planned it. Caught out at every turn. There would be some pitching about of objects and kicking of furniture as a result of all this bad luck.

"He'll be coming along any time now,” Arnold warned her, peering over his shoulder again in trepidation. “I think I’d better get along back to Ashbourne. We won’t want him to see us together.”

“Afraid of him, Arnold?”

“Yes! That is—I wouldn’t want him to get the wrong idea, that there’s anything between us.”

“Oh no, we wouldn’t want him to get the
wrong
idea!” she shot back. “It wouldn’t do for him to think you had been making up to me behind his back, saying you wished I were free to marry you!”

Arnold looked about the empty road in absolute terror, lest the trees hide a listener. “You know that’s impossible, Belle. He’ll never let you go. He’s as jealous as a bear. There was never anything between us. I mean—we always knew you were married.”

“I never hid it from you, certainly!”

“I mean Miss Mickles—”

“You
mean,
Arnold, but are ashamed to say, that you’ve changed your mind about me because you’re afraid of Avondale.”

“I’m not afraid of anybody! It’s just that he’s your husband, and a duke, and besides, he’s a lot bigger than I am."

“You’d better run back to Ashbourne and hide, then.”

“I’ve got a better idea,” he admitted shamelessly. “I’m going back to Amesbury. You don’t want to come with me, do you?” It was clear as day he didn’t want her to go, and she was strongly tempted to say she did want to. How should she get home else?

“You can’t go without me!”

“I’m leaving today,” he insisted.

“The ball is tonight. You can’t leave before that. What excuse will you give?”

“I don’t know. I can say Mama wants me back.”

“Oh Arnold, you
baby.”

“Dash it, Belle, he’s looking for an excuse to ram my teeth down my throat, and he ain’t going to find one. Now are you coming or not?”

“Everyone will know you didn’t get any letter from your mother. You’ll be a laughingstock.”

“Well,” he said, rethinking his predicament, “I ain’t going to let him see me hanging around you anyway.” He had his team whipped up and dashed back to Ashbourne.

Disgusted with him, Belle turned around and followed his cloud of dust back to Ashbourne too, to try to talk him out of leaving. She almost wished Oliver would beat him up. It would serve him right. All his bravado at Amesbury about showing Avondale a thing or two. He was scared stiff, and well he might be, she thought with a little smile. It was entirely possible that all Oliver’s bad luck might be vented on more than inanimate objects this time.

Chapter Eleven

With such an unsatisfactory bit of a ride, Belle planned to go out again after luncheon, and remained in her riding habit. Oliver did not return in the hour specified, and as she had no notion of being discovered sitting around doing nothing as though she were waiting for him when he finally got back, she decided to go for a walk to pass the time before luncheon. She set off through the park, wanting solitude, but as the drive from the main road was a meandering one, designed to give various views of the house as it snaked along, she suddenly found herself on the drive. She had been walking for upwards of half an hour and decided to follow the driveway home. She heard wheels approaching from behind, and as she turned she recognized Lady Dempster’s carriage bolting toward her. The harpy had it stopped with a gleeful face that announced even before her words that she had some gossip to impart.

“My dear, you have a generous husband!” was her opening remark, delivered through the window of her carriage. She knew she had been badly used by the Avondales. It had eventually got through to her that they had been making fun of her, and she was eager to repay the debt.

“Aren’t I lucky?” Belle asked, still determined not to mind what this woman said or did.

“I don’t know about that. That depends on the direction of his charity. A thousand pounds to Mrs. Traveller is more generosity than I would consider lucky if he were my husband.”

“A good thing he’s not your husband then,” Belle replied sharply, but the blow was severe. A thousand pounds! More, much more than would have been required, even if there had been a duel and a trip abroad required. But there had been no duel. It was just pocket money for Honey. It wasn’t only herself that was showered with his things. She thought his particular garish taste might be more suited to Mrs. Traveller than herself. That bonnet she had watched him throw into the fire, for instance. Surely
that
creation had inadvertently been handed to the wrong woman.

“A pity he isn’t. I think I could handle him a little better than you do.”

“Do you think so, ma’am? I think you overestimate yourself,” she answered, and turned to walk away.

“I think
you
underestimate Mrs. Traveller,” Lady Dempster called after her fleeing form, and called up to her driver to get on home. If Arnold Henderson was not with Belle, his presence must be accounted for.

Mrs. Dempster’s coach was soon whipping past Belle, with its occupant bestowing a smirk on the pedestrian as she went by. Belle had decided she would go and find Arnold and tell him she would leave with him, at once. She wouldn’t go to the ball, to be laughed at by everyone when Lady Dempster had spread her story about. There were some limits to what humankind could stand, after all.

She had gone no more than a dozen yards when she heard more wheels coming behind her. She hoped it would be the Delfords, but knew in her heart it was Avondale. Fate couldn’t withhold one single blow. It would be him. She knew it perfectly well, and when the wheels slowed as the carriage approached her, she turned around to see him descend smiling from the carriage to hurry after her on foot.

“Would you like a drive back to the house?” he asked.

“No, I’m in a mood for walking,” she answered.

Oliver had hardly known what to make of Belle’s performance at breakfast, but he knew this particular mood was not auspicious for his welfare.

“I’ll walk with you, then. Sorry I’m so late getting back. I don’t bank in this little village, and had some trouble getting money. I told you about the duel—that the Travellers must go abroad.”

“Yes, you told me. How much did it cost you, Oliver?”

He hardly hesitated an instant. That damned hedgebird of a Henderson had seen him give Honey a wad of bills, and Lady Dempster had been nosing around the bank, but he had no way of knowing she had kept the clerk talking till she got a look at the bill he held from Avondale, with the sum scribbled on it. “A hundred pounds,” he said.

“Is that all? I thought it would take ten times that much.”

“No, they are only going to Ireland. It doesn’t cost that much.” It was coincidence. It
must
be coincidence, mentioning ten times the hundred, exactly the sum given. She couldn’t possibly know. But she was awfully angry about something. It was his being late—that was it. He tried to apologize again for his tardiness.

“I’m really sorry I missed our ride, but we can ride after lunch. I see you haven’t changed from your habit. Or have you ridden at all?”

“Yes, I went for a ride this morning.”

“Where did you go?”

“I rode out and met Arnold.”

“I see,” he answered testily, and wished to say a good deal more. “I wish you wouldn’t do that,” he added in accents of repressed violence. The hedgebird had told her about the wad of bills. That’s what she was upset about.

“You have mentioned your dislike of my seeing him in public, but then when you pay off your woman in the middle of a public village yourself, you can hardly object to
my
having an innocent conversation by the roadside, can you?”

“He told you!”

“Oh, yes, he tells me everything. We are on very intimate terms, but not such intimate terms as allow him to pay my bills.”

Avondale stopped walking. A liverish hue suffused his face, and his jaws squared into determined angles.
We are on very intimate terms . . . .

“I’m going to settle that bastard’s hash once and for all,” he declared. He waved forward his carriage, which had been following them at a walk, and jumped in, telling the driver to “spring them.” The team bolted forward, and Belle was left standing alone in the road, staring after him, helpless. He would go after Arnold and kill him. She lifted up her skirts and ran after the carriage as fast as she could, but had no hope of overtaking a bang-up team of four matched bays.

Arnold, after considering in the safety of his room the impossibility of deserting Belle, had slunk off to the rose garden to await her return, and to urge her once again to come with him that afternoon. He had had a letter from Mama at last, and no one need know it contained only strictures regarding excessive drinking, and thanking his hostess, and such routine commands. He had decided to say she had a cold. Surely an only son would not be expected to enjoy himself at a party when his mama had a cold!

He was there in the garden when Avondale’s carriage swept past, and over the top of the yew hedge his head had been recognized. Lady Dempster had been let off at the front door, but as she had seen in the distance a carriage approaching, which was soon recognized as Avondale’s, she hung around to tease him about the thousand pounds. She got around the corner to the rose garden just in time to see the encounter. To see Avondale leap from the moving carriage and dash forward toward Henderson. To see Arnold with terror in his eyes turn and try to make it through the French doors. To see Avondale reach out a long arm and grab him by the scruff of the neck and turn him around, his toes just dangling on the ground.

Belle came panting up too late to see Oliver’s jump from the carriage. By the time she arrived on the scene, it had progressed too far for her to control her husband’s temper. It had got beyond her control or his own. She could only stand and stare.

“See here, Avondale!” Henderson croaked, and Oliver let him drop.

He landed on his feet and staggered against the glass doors.

“Get away from that glass door, you sniveling son of a bitch,” Avondale growled at him, and pulled him with one arm out onto the grass, where he landed a hard blow at his chin. Henderson was ridiculously easy to fell. He never stood up from the one blow. Avondale had still enough violence left that he wanted to hit him another dozen times, and reached down to drag him to his feet again.

“Stop it! Stop it, Oliver!” Belle shouted, and tried to run forward, but Lady Dempster was desirous of more entertainment, and held her back.

Avondale had to vent his anger in useless words. “I don’t want to see you hanging around my wife. If I hear of you speaking to her again, I’ll break your spine. Get up and fight, you goddam whelp!”

Arnold lifted his head from the grass, but at these threats thought it wise to become unconscious, and let the head fall again with a little thud.

“Famous! Bravo, Avondale!” Lady Dempster cackled, clapping her gloved hands noiselessly. The thousand pounds slipped her mind in her joy at such a spectacle as the lofty Duke of Avondale cursing and brawling like a chairman.