“I have,” he replied. “But on second thoughts I have decided—with your permission, of course—to send them instead to your lawyer.”
“I am sure I do not know who is to look after my affairs for me,” said Miss Taverner.
“That will be a task for your husband,” he answered.
“I have not got a husband,” said Miss Taverner pettishly.
“Very true, but that can soon be remedied. Now that you are free from my shackles your suitors will flock to the house.”
“You are extremely good, but I have no wish to marry any of them. I confess I did not like it at the time, but lately I have been glad that you refused your consent to them all. Which puts me in mind, Lord Worth, of what I wish to say to you.” She drew a deep breath, and embarked on the speech she had prepared. “I have not always appeared to be sensible of the care you have bestowed on me, but I know now that it has been unceasing. I am deeply grateful for your kindness during the past—”
“My what?” demanded the Earl.
She said stiffly: “Your many kindnesses.”
“But I thought I was the most odious, provoking, detestable creature alive?”
She regarded him with a smouldering eye. “Yes, you are!” she said. “Civility compelled me to try at least to thank you for the services you have rendered me, but if you will have none of it, I assure you I do not care! You put me in the horridest situation when you encouraged my cousin to make off with me; you had not the common courtesy to call to see how I did yesterday; you wrote me instead the most odious letter (and I daresay if he had not been away you would have told Mr. Blackader to do it to save you the trouble!); and now you come to visit me in one of your disagreeable moods, and try to make me lose my temper! Well, I shall not do it, but I shall take leave to tell you, my lord, that however glad you may be to be rid of your ward you cannot be as glad as I am to be rid of my guardian!”
His eyes were alight with laughter. “I am very sorry to have put you in a horrid situation,” he said. “I did not come to see you yesterday because you were still my ward then; I had no idea of writing you an odious letter (and Mr. Blackader is not away); and I am not in one of my disagreeable moods. But I am very glad to be rid of my ward.”
“I know that,” said Miss Taverner crossly.
“I imagine you might, but do you know why, Clorinda?”
“I wish you will not call me by that name!”
He took her hands in his. She made a half-hearted attempt to pull away, and averted her face. “I shall call you just what I choose,” said the Earl, smiling. “Are the recollections that name conjures up still so painful?”
“You used me abominably!” said Miss Taverner in a very small voice.
“It is very true,” said the Earl. “I did use you abominably, and I have been waiting ever since to do it again. Now, Miss Taverner, you are not my ward, and I am going to do it again!”
Every feeling of propriety should have prompted Miss Taverner to resist. She did indeed blush rosily, but although her hands moved in the Earl’s it was only to return the clasp of his fingers. For a moment he held her so, looking down into her face; then he let go her hands and swept her into his arms.
Mrs. Scattergood, quietly coming into the room just then, stood transfixed on the threshold, gazing in blank amazement at the spectacle of her charge locked in the Earl of Worth’s embrace. He was standing with his back to the door, and Mrs. Scattergood, recovering from her astonishment just in time, whisked herself out of the room again before her presence had even been suspected.
“Now do you know why I am glad to be rid of my ward?” demanded the Earl.
“Oh,” said Miss Taverner foolishly, “I was afraid you meant me to marry your brother!”
“Were you indeed? And was all the determined flirting I have been watching between you merely to show me how willing you were to oblige me? Nonsensical child! I have been in love with you almost from the first moment of setting eyes on you.”
“Oh, this is dreadful!” said Miss Taverner, shaken by remorse. “I disliked you amazingly for weeks!”
The Earl kissed her again. “You are wholly adorable,” he said.
“No, I am not,” replied Miss Taverner, as soon as she was able. “I am as disagreeable as you are. You would like to beat me. You said you would once, and I believe you meant it!”
“If I only said it once I am astonished at my own forbearance. I have wanted to beat you at least a dozen times, and came very near doing it once—at Cuckfield. But I still think you adorable. Give me your hand.”
She held it out, and he slipped a ring on the third finger. “You see, I had got a birthday present for you, Clorinda.”
Miss Taverner raised the hand shyly to touch the Earl’s cheek. He caught it, and pressed it to his lips. She blushed, and said: “I thought—after Cuckfield—I had no power to attach you any more. You made me so unhappy! There was no continued observance, none of that distinguishing notice which had become, insensibly, so necessary to my comfort!”
“That I should have given you one moment’s pain!” he said. “But your words to me at Cuckfield, the tone in which you uttered them, convinced me that nothing could avail to banish that disgust of me which our first meeting had given you.”
She smiled saucily up at him. “You must be so well aware of how little delicacy of principle I have that I need have no scruple in telling you that it is many weeks since I have recalled that first meeting without feeling a strong desire of having your shocking conduct repeated. But after Cuckfield all seemed at an end! I had offended beyond forgiveness. And then the mortification of being found by you in the Yellow Drawing-room that miserable evening! Shall I ever forget my dismay at what you must have been thinking!”
“That evening?” he said, holding her closer. “Shall I ever forget the look that came into your eyes when you opened them, and saw me; or the way your hand clung to mine! Till then I had thought my case to be hopeless. But you begged me not to leave you! Had Prinny not been standing at my elbow I must have thrown every consideration of honour to the winds, and spoken then! But his being there compelled me to remain silent, and by the time he was gone all the impropriety of speaking to you while I was still your guardian had been recollected. I had come, moreover, straight from delivering Peregrine into my captain’s hands! I shall not allow the evils of your situation to have been comparable to mine!”
“There was a constraint,” she agreed. “I was sensible of it even when you forgave me for my conduct at Cuckfield. It was not until you knocked my cousin down that I dared to entertain the notion that your affection had re-animated towards me. But your expression then! No mere indignation at my cousin’s villainy, I was persuaded, could have brought that look into your face! I thought you were going to kill him!”
“I had momentarily forgotten your presence. You must forgive me for having given way to impulse.”
“Oh,” said Miss Taverner archly, “there can be no need for apology when you consider how much I am in the habit of staying in towns where a prize-fight is to take place! To own the truth, I had not the least objection to seeing you knock my cousin down. I would have liked to have done it myself. And until then, you know, I had never suspected that you could knock a man down.”
“Never suspected that I could knock a man down?” repeated the Earl, a good deal surprised.
“No, how should I? I was used to think you were just a dandy. But Captain Audley once said you had the most punishing left imaginable, and although I did not know what he meant at the time, it occurred to me when you hit my cousin that frightful blow that perhaps that was it. For you did use your left hand, did you not?”