She was ushered into the saloon, but after a few minutes the footman came back, and desired her to follow him. She was conducted up one pair of stairs to his lordship’s private room, and announced.
The Earl was standing at a table by the window, dipping a sort of iron skewer into what looked to be a wine-bottle. On the table were several sheets of parchment, a sieve, two glass phials, and a pestle and mortar of turned boxwood.
Miss Taverner stared in considerable surprise, being quite unable to imagine what the Earl could be doing. The room was lined with shelves that bore any number of highly glazed jars and lead canisters. They were all labelled, with such queer-sounding names as Scholten, Curacao, Masulipatam, Bureau Demi-gros, Bolongaro, Old Paris. She turned her eyes inquiringly towards his lordship, still absorbed in his bottle and skewer.
“You must forgive me for receiving you here, Miss Taverner, but I am extremely occupied,” he said. “It would be fatal for me to leave the mixture in its present state, or I would have come to you. Have you left Maria Scattergood downstairs, may I ask?”
“She is not with me. I came alone, sir.”
There seemed to be a fine powder in the wine-bottle. The Earl had extracted a little with the aid of the skewer and dropped it into the mortar, and had begun to mix it with what was already there, but he paused at Miss Taverner’s words, and looked across at her in a way hard to read. Then his gaze returned to the mortar, and he went on with his work. “Indeed? You honour me. Will you not sit down?”
She coloured faintly, but drew forward a chair. “Perhaps you may think it odd in me, sir, but the truth is I have something to say to you I do not care to say before Mrs. Scattergood.”
“I am entirely at your service, Miss Taverner.”
She pulled off her gloves and began smoothing them. “It is with considerable reluctance that I have come, Lord Worth. But my cousin, Mr. Taverner, advised me—and I cannot but feel that he was right. You are after all our guardian.”
“Proceed, my ward. Has Wellesley Poole made you an offer of marriage?”
“Good heavens, no!” said Judith.
“He will,” said his lordship coolly.
“I have not come about my own affairs, sir. I desire to talk to you of Peregrine.”
“Life is full of disappointments,” commented Worth. “Which spunging house is he in?”
“He is not in any,” said Judith stiffly. “Though I have little doubt that that is where he will end if something is not done to prevent him.”
“More than likely,” agreed Worth. “It won’t hurt him.” He picked up one of the phials from the table and delicately poured a few drops of what it contained on to his mixture.
Judith rose. “I see, sir, that I waste my time. You are not interested.”
“Not particularly,” admitted the Earl, setting the bottle down again. “The intelligence you have so far imparted has not been of a very interesting nature, has it?”
“It does not interest you, Lord Worth, that your ward is got into a wild set of company who cannot do him any good?”
“No, not at all; I expected it,” said Worth. He looked up with a slight smile. “What has he been doing to alarm his careful sister?”
“I think you know very well, sir. He is for ever at gaming clubs, and, I am afraid—I am nearly sure—worse than that. He has spoken of a house off St. James’s Street.”
“In Pickering Place?” he inquired.
“I believe so,” she said in a troubled voice.
“Number Five,” he nodded. “I know it: a hell. Who introduced him to it?”
“I am not perfectly sure, but I think it was Mr. Farnaby.”
He was shaking his mixture over one of the sheets of parchment. “Mr. Farnaby?” he repeated.
“You know him, sir?”
His occupation seemed to demand all his attention, but after a moment he said, ignoring her question: “I gather, Miss Taverner, that you consider it is for me to—er—guide Peregrine’s footsteps on to more sober paths?”
“You are his guardian, sir.”
“I am aware. I fulfilled my part to admiration when I put his name up for the two most exclusive clubs in London. I cannot remember having done as much for anyone else in the whole course of my existence.”
“You think you did well for Perry when you introduced him to a gaming club?” demanded Judith.
“Certainly.”
“No doubt you will still be thinking so when he has gamed the whole of his fortune away!”
“On one point you may rest assured, Miss Taverner: while I hold the purse-strings Perry will not game his fortune away.”
“And after? What then, when he has learned this passion for gaming?”
“By that time I trust he will be a little wiser,” said the Earl.
“I should have known better than to have come to you,” Judith said bitterly.
He turned his head. “Not at all. You were quite right to come to me. The mistake you made was in thinking that I did not know of Perry’s doings. He is behaving very much as I supposed he would. But you will no doubt have noticed that it is not causing me any particular degree of anxiety.”
“Yes,” said Miss Taverner, with emphasis. “I have noticed it. Your anxiety is kept for whatever it is that you are so busy with.”
“Very true,” he agreed. “I am mixing snuff—an anxious business, Miss Taverner.”
She was momentarily diverted. “Snuff! Do all those jars contain snuff?”
“All of them.”
She cast an amazed, rather scornful glance round the shelves. “You have made it a life-study, I conjecture.”
“Very nearly. But these are not all for my own use. Come here.”
She came reluctantly. He led her round the room, pointing out jars and bottles to her notice. “That is Spanish Bran: it is generally the most popular. That is Macouba, a very strongly scented snuff, for flavouring only. This is Brazil, a large-grained snuff of a fine, though perhaps too powerful flavour. I use it merely to give tone to my mixture. In that bottle is the Regent’s own mixture. It is scented with Otto of Roses. Beside it is a snuff I keep for your sex. It is called Violet Strasbourg—a vile mixture, but generally much liked by females. The Queen uses it.” He took down the jar, and shook a little of the snuff into the palm of his hand, and held it out to her. “Try it.”
An idea had occurred to her. She raised her eyes to his face. “Do many ladies use snuff, Lord Worth?”
“No, not many. Some of the more elderly ones.”
She took a pinch from his hand and sniffed it cautiously. “I don’t like it very much. My father used King’s Martinique.”
“I keep a little of it for certain of my guests. Quite a pleasant snuff, but rather light in character.”
She dusted her fingers with her handkerchief. “If a lady wished to take snuff for the purpose of being a little out of the way, which would she choose, sir?”
He smiled. “She would request either Lord Petersham or Lord Worth to put her up a special recipe to be known as Miss Taverner’s Sort.”
Her eyes gleamed. “Will you do that for me?”
“I will do it for you, Miss Taverner, if you can be trusted to treat it carefully.”
“What must I do?”
“You must not drench it with scent, or let it become too dry, or leave your box where it will grow cold. Good snuff is taken with the chill off. Sleep with it under your pillow, and if it needs freshening send it to me. Don’t attempt anything in that way yourself. It is not easily done.”
“And a snuff-box to match every gown,” said Miss Taverner thoughtfully.
“By all means. But learn first how to handle your box. You cannot do better than to observe the methods of Mr. Brummell. You will notice that he uses one hand only, the left one, and with peculiar grace.”
She began to draw on her gloves again. “I shall be very much obliged to you, sir, if you will have the kindness to make me that recipe,” she said. She realized how far she had drifted from the real object of her visit, and led the conversation ruthlessly back to it. “And you will stop Perry going to gaming hells, and being for ever with this bad set of company?”