“Oh, I have been in all manner of places, sir, trying to discover if I am a man, or only a duke!” responded the Duke.
“Balderdash!” pronounced his lordship comprehensively. He released the Duke’s hands, and discovered Nettlebed’s presence in the room. His exacerbated feelings found a certain measure of relief in the utterance of a severe rebuke to him for having left Sale House without notice or permission. He then turned his attention to his son, and having condemned his manners and morals in a few blistering sentences, felt a good deal better. He eyed the real culprit measuringly. “I know very well when you have been in mischief, sir!” he said grimly. “Don’t think to fob me off, or to hide behind Gideon, for I mean to have the truth! If you were but five years younger—”
“No, no!” protested the Duke, his face alive with laughter. “You never flogged me after I was sixteen, sir!”
“I collect,” said Lord Lionel, with a fulminating glance cast at his son, “that you mean to tell me that it was I who drove you into this nonsensical affair?”
“To tell you the truth, sir,” said the Duke, coaxing him into a chair by the fire, “I do not mean to tell you anything at all! Oh, no, don’t frown at me, and pray do not be so angry with me! You see I have taken no hurt, and I promise I will not cause you such anxiety again. Nettlebed, be so good as to tell them to lay covers for three, and fetch another wine glass for his lordship!”
“I do not dine here,” stated his lordship, his brows still alarmingly knit, “and nor do you, Gilly! I do not know why, when you have a house very conveniently placed, you must needs install yourself at a common inn: I daresay it is of a piece with all the rest! You will accompany me to Cheyney at once!”
Gideon leaned his shoulders against the wall, and waited with interest to hear what his cousin would reply to this command.
“Oh, no, do stay to dine with me!” said the Duke. “I must explain to you that I have guests staying at Cheyney—rather odd guests perhaps you may think!”
“Yes; I do think it!” said Lord Lionel. “I have already been to Cheyney, Sale! I am well aware that it no longer any concern of mine if you choose to fill your house with a parcel of vulgar tradesmen, and to give an overgrown schoolboy carte blanche to shoot every bird you have on the place, but I should be glad to know where you acquired your taste for low company!”
“The thing is,” replied the Duke confidentially, “that I haven’t a taste for low company, sir. I owed Mamble some degree of extraordinary civility, for I fear I did aid and abet his son to escape from him.”
“I do not know what you are talking about!” complained his lordship. “And if it is your notion of extraordinary civility to invite a man to stay in your house when you are not there to entertain him, I can only suppose that I have failed, in all these years, to teach you common courtesy! I am ashamed of you, Gilly!”
“But I couldn’t endure him, sir! It is very bad, but what was I to do, when he would toadeat me so, and there was no getting away from him? He means only to stay there for a day or two because I promised Tom he should have some shooting. Should you object very much to entertaining him for me?”
“I should!” barked Lord Lionel. “You will stop talking flummery to me, and come to Cheyney!”
The Duke poured out some sherry into the glass Nettlebed had just brought into the room, and handed it to his uncle. “No, I cannot spare the time to go to Cheyney now,” he said. “I am removing to the Christopher, however. Did you bring my baggage with you from London, dear sir?”
“Yes, I did, and it is awaiting you at Cheyney. Now, Gilly—”
“Then it must be sent to the Christopher tomorrow,” said the Duke calmly. “It is very tiresome! I am so sadly in need of a change of raiment!”
“Gilly!” said his lordship awfully,
“Yes, sir!”
Lord Lionel glared at him. “Gilly, what is the matter with you?” he demanded. “What made you do it, boy? Be a little plain with me, I beg of you!”
The Duke sat down beside him, and laid a hand on his knee. “It is very ridiculous,” he said, in his soft voice. “I found it a dead bore to be Duke of Sale, and I thought I would try how it would be to be nobody in particular.”
“Upon my word! I should have thought you would have had more sense.”
“But I hadn’t, sir.”
Lord Lionel gripped the hand on his knee. “Now, my boy, don’t be afraid to own the truth to me! Yon know I have nothing but your welfare at heart! If you went off on this start because of anything I may have said to you—in short, if you did not like the arrangement I had made for you, there was not the least need for you to have offered for Lady Harriet! I never had any desire to force you into what you had a distaste for. Indeed, if your mind misgives you—though it will be a damned awkward business!—I will see to it—”
“No, sir, I am very happy in my engagement,” the Duke interrupted. “Much happier than I ever thought to be! She is an angel!”
Lord Lionel was slightly taken aback. He stared at the Duke under his bushy brows, and remarked dryly: “This is a different tune from the one you sang at Sale, when I first broached the matter to you!”
“I was not then aware what a treasure you had chosen for me, sir. But I told you I had been learning some few things of late.”
Lord Lionel grunted. “Well, if you have learnt to have a little more common-sense, I am glad of it, but why you must needs run off without a word to anyone is past my understanding! If you had wanted to go out of town, I am sure it was quite your own affair, and you might have done so without question.”
Gideon spoke. “But not, sir, without Nettlebed, Chigwell, Borrowdale, Turvey, and the rest of his retinue.”
“You,” said Lord Lionel crushingly, “have behaved throughout in an insolent, heedless, and callous fashion, and may now have the grace to remain silent!”
“There is much in what you say, sir,” admitted Gideon, with a wry twist to his mouth.
“Well, well, that will do!” said his lordship, mollified. “There is no harm done, after all, and I shall not enquire too particularly into what Gilly has been doing. I am not one of those who expect a young man to lead the life of a saint! You are looking very well, Gilly, very well indeed, and that, I must own, makes up for everything!”
The Duke’s hand turned under his, and clasped it. “You are very much too good to me, sir, and I don’t know what I deserve for causing you so much anxiety.”
“Pooh! nonsense!” said his lordship testily. “I know your coaxing ways, boy! Don’t think to cozen me with them! But it is the outside of enough, when you give every idle gossiper in town cause to say that Gideon has murdered you! Not but what it was quite his own fault, and I have no sympathy to waste on him, none at all!”
“But I cannot have you so cross with Gideon,” said the Duke gently. “He is quite my best friend, you know, and, besides, what could he do when I had sworn him to secrecy? And when he heard that I was in a scrape he came to rescue me from it, so it is very hard that he should be scolded now!”
“What scrape have you been in?” demanded Lord Lionel.
“Well, I didn’t mean to tell you, sir, but I think you are bound to hear of it, for rather too many people know it. I was so foolish as to allow myself to be kidnapped, by some rascals who thought to hold me to ransom.”
“That is just what I had feared might happen!” Lord Lionel exclaimed. “All this rubbishing talk of finding out whether you are a man or only a duke, and you are no more fit to fend for yourself than a child in short coats! Well, I hope it may be a lesson to you!”
“Yes, sir,” said the Duke demurely, “but, as it chances, I did fend for myself.”
“Gilly, don’t tell me you let the villains bleed you!” exclaimed his lordship.