She said earnestly: “Gilly, no one can foist anyone on to you any more!”
He smiled a little ruefully. “Do you think so?”
“I know it. Only if you let them, and you will not.”
“Now I come to consider it,” he remarked, “even my uncle would not expect me to take my tutor with me on my honeymoon! Harriet, I think we should go to Paris! We could have the most diverting time! Should you care for it?”
“Yes, of all things,” she said, looking tenderly at him. “But first we must provide for Belinda!”
“So we must! I was forgetting about her. How vexatious it is! Are you sure you do not mind having her to stay with you until I have found Mudgley?”
“No, indeed!” she assured him.
He looked a little doubtful. “Yes, but I have just bethought me of your grandmother. What shall you tell her?”
“I shall tell her the truth,” Harriet replied. “For, recollect, she already knows that that horrid Lady Boscastle saw you in Hitchin with Belinda! And, if you do not very much object to it, Gilly, I shall tell her about your adventures, because I think she will be very much amused, and pleased.” She smiled a little. “Grandmama is not at all like Mama, you know, and she has been saying to me that although she likes you very well she would like you better still if you were not so very conformable and well-behaved! Of course I shall not tell her about Matthew! And I daresay she would like you to bring Tom to visit her, for she dearly loves anything that makes her laugh. She will be in whoops when she hears of the backward-race! I wonder, will he get into mischief here?”
“My God, I hope not!” exclaimed the Duke. “Perhaps I had best go back to the Pelican, for if he comes home from the theatre and does not find me heaven alone knows what he may take it into his head to do!”
“Perhaps you had,” Harriet said regretfully. “And I must go back to the drawing-room, or people will begin to wonder. Grandmama will let me bring her carriage to fetch Belinda in the morning. What shall you do then? Do you mean to remove to Cheyney?”
“Oh, no, I don’t wish to bury myself there! When Nettlebed has brought me my clothes, and I am fit to be seen again, I think I shall go to the Christopher. Do you attend the dress-balls? Will you stand up with me for all the country-dances?”
She laughed. “Oh, yes, but what will Tom do?”
“Good God, Tom! I must send off an express to his father. I fear he is shockingly vulgar, and will forgive me for my atrocious conduct merely because I am a Duke!”
She rose, and gave him her hand, saying playfully: “It will be well for you if he does, Gilly!”
He kissed her hand, and then her cheek. “Yes, very true! He sounds a terrifying person, and would no doubt make short work of a plain Mr. Dash of Nowhere in Particular. Thank God I am a Duke!”
Chapter XXI
When the news was broken to Belinda that she was to go to stay with a kind lady in Laura Place, she looked very doleful, and said that she would prefer to stay with Mr. Rufford, because ladies were always cross, and she did not like them.
“You will like this lady,” said the Duke firmly. “She is quite a young lady, and she is never cross.”
Belinda looked beseechingly at him. “Please, I would like to find Mr. Mudgley!” she said.
“And so you shall. At least, you shall if I can discover where he lives.”
Belinda sighed. “Mr. Mudgley would not let Mrs. Pilling put me in prison,” she said. “He would marry me instead, and then I should be safe.”
“I shall do my best to find him for you,” promised the Duke;
“Yes, but if you don’t find him I shall not know what to do,” said Belinda sadly.
“Nonsense! We will think of something for you,”
“Oh!” said Belinda. “Will you marry me, sir?”
“No, that he will not!” declared Tom, revolted.
“Why not?” asked Belinda, opening her eyes at him.
“He is not such a gudgeon as to be thinking of marrying, like a stupid girl!” Tom said contemptuously.
The Duke intervened rather hastily. “Now, Belinda, you know you don’t want to marry me!” he said. “You want to marry Mr. Mudgley!”
“Yes, I do,” agreed Belinda, her eyes filling. “But Uncle Swithin took me away from him, and Mr. Ware did not marry me either, so what is to become of me?”
“You will go with Lady Harriet, and be a good girl, while I try to find Mr. Mudgley.”
Belinda’s tears ceased to flow. She looked very much awed, and asked “Is she a lady, sir?”
“Of course she is a— Oh, I see! Yes, she is Lady Harriet Presteigne, and she will be very kind to you, and if you do as she bids you she will not let Mrs. Pilling send you to prison. And what is more,” he added, perceiving that she still seemed unconvinced, “she is going to fetch you in a very genteel carriage! In fact, a lozenge-carriage!”
“What is that?” asked Belinda.
“The crest on the panel—a widow’s crest.”
“I shall drive in a carriage with a crest on the panel?” Belinda said, gazing at him incredulously.
“Yes, indeed you will,” he assured her.
Tom gave a guffaw. “Stupid thing! He’s bamming you!”
Her face fell. The Duke said: “No, I am not. Tom, if you cannot be quiet, go away!”
“Well, I shall. I shall go out to see the sights. Oh, Mr. Rufford, there are some famous shops here! The waiter told me! Would you be so very obliging as to lend me some money—only a very little!—and I swear I will not get into a scrape, or do the least thing you would not like!”
The Duke opened his sadly depleted purse. “It will be no more than a guinea, Tom, for buy some cravats I must, and I am pretty well run off my legs.”
“What a lark!” exclaimed Tom. “Won’t you be able to pay our shot, sir? But Pa will do so, you know!”
The Duke handed him a gold coin. “I trust it will not come to that. There! Be off, and pray do not purchase anything dreadful!”
Tom promised readily not to do so, thanked him, and lost no time in sallying forth. The Duke then persuaded Belinda to pack her bandboxes, and went out to send his express to Mr. Mamble. By the time he had accomplished this, and returned to the Pelican, Belinda had finished her task, and was indulging in a bout of tears. He strove to reassure her, but it transpired that she was not weeping over their approaching separation, but because she had been gazing out of the window, and Walcot Street, which she knew well, put her so forcibly in mind of Mr. Mudgley that she now wished very much that she had never left Bath.
“Well, never mind!” said the Duke encouragingly. “You have come back, after all!”
“Yes, but I am afraid that perhaps Mr. Mudgley will be cross with me for having gone away with Uncle Swithin,” said Belinda, her lip trembling.
The Duke had for some time thought this more than possible, and could only hope that the injured swain would be melted by the sight of Belinda’s beauty. He did not say so to Belinda, naturally, but applied himself to the task of giving her thoughts a more cheerful direction. In this he was so successful that by the time Lady Ampleforth’s barouche set Harriet down at the inn, the tears were dried, and she was once more wreathed in smiles.
Having seen the carriage from the window, the Duke left Belinda to put on her bonnet, and ran down to meet his betrothed. She was looking much prettier, he thought, than on the previous evening. There was quite a colour in her cheeks, and she was wearing a very becoming hat of chip-straw, trimmed with lace and rosebuds. She gave him her hand, encased in a glove of lavender kid, and said with a mischievous smile: “Grandmama was excessively diverted. She would have come with me, I do believe, if she could have done so. But she does not go out very much now, and never before noon. And I must tell you, Gilly, that I thought it best not to tell Charlie that you had come to Bath, for I am sure he would roast you dreadfully if he knew the whole! Then, too, although he is the dearest of brothers, he could never keep a secret, you know.”