Reprise Part 6

"Constance has a copy. I gave a few to my very particular friends," Dammler admitted. "So Mr. Seville was telling me.He has a copy," Prudence topped him, knowing how much he loathedSeville.

He glowered. "I believe Hettie filched a few and gave them to her friends. I did not give one to Seville." "Nice chap, Seville. He and the baroness are coming to us at Finefields. He will be there when you are, Miss Mallow. You know him I take it?" Malvern asked, in all his naive innocence of the man's former relations.h.i.+p with her. "We are old friends. I look forward to having the pleasure of the baroness's acquaintance," she replied very civilly. She noticed Dammler's shoulders tense, and waited for what outrage he would come out with. "You won't findhis equal elsewhere. Constance need not fear having a duplicate of him on her hands," was all he said. "He outcla.s.ses us all in gold," Malvern said, misunderstanding the remark, and a.s.suming it referred to the man's wealth, one of the few things Malvern knew of him. "We won't have another baroness in her own right there, either. His wife holds the t.i.tle herself, quite a rare thing. It was the gold that attracted her to Seville, I expect."

This was a perfect opportunity for Prudence to remind Dammler that despite his digs she had meant to marry him for money, she had spurned an offer from the golden Seville, sought after by a t.i.tled lady. She toyed with the wording of it, but decided in the end to let it pa.s.s as it would sound so odd to Malvern. Dammler looked at her, and was surprised at the resignation on her face. Why was she not goading him, reminding him she had rejected Seville. They looked at each other, some question in the air, but Malvern, unaware of it, spoke on.

"Ah, there is Seville now. I'll just say how do you do to him-remind him he is to come to us." He arose and walked away, and Dammler had either to go, too, or find himself alone, face to face with Prudence. He regarded her warily, and she looked back with the same careful expression. She was the first to divert her eyes. He took the empty seat beside her.

Dammler had been arguing with himself the past days that he had been too hard on Prudence. She had said she was sorry, and after he had said some pretty vile things to her, too. The book wasn't really so bad. Everyone was saying the villain was the best character in it. He was tired of making up to girls he didn't care a peg for, just to make her jealous, and Constance was beginning to take the notion he was serious about her. He had no desire to fall into her clutches, but most of all he missed Prue's company. Her desk was waiting in the study. For hours a day he sat at his own, pretending to write, but more often than not looking at the empty chair across from him, wis.h.i.+ng she were in it.

When at last he spoke, he used an avuncular tone, to show his lessened hostility without giving a hint of any continued pa.s.sion. "You're running with a pretty fast crowd, the Malverns."

"Yes, your old set in fact."

"Iam better able to deal with them."

"I know it well, but my uncle will be there to protect me."

"Clarence will be busy painting Harold."

"That's a relief."

It was no relief to Dammler. "Leaving you free to continue yourasuivre flirtation with the Nabob."

"That flirtation was terminated when he got married. Unlikesome people, I do not consider other peoples' spouses fair game."

"Malvernlikes you to make up to his wife-insists on it, in fact."

"I trust that even in the Malvern menage adultery is not demanded of unmarried females. I shall be safe enough."

"You have no conception what goes on there! That is no real marriage between Seville and the baroness, for example. He'll be hanging out for a girl."

"You don't have to feel responsible for me. We're nothing to each other now. I'm twenty-five years old, and can look after myself."

"Nothingto each other? No residue of hatred and disgust remains?"

"I was speaking for myself. Apparently you feel differently."

"I do feel differently!"

He wouldn't be sick with apprehension inside to think of her going to Finefields without him if he didn't still love her. She gave him a reproachful look, thinking he said he hated her. All his recent behavior supported the idea. "Isaid I'm sorry! I would undo it if I could, but I can't." She arose, close to tears. Allan jumped up after her. "And I must say, Allan, I think you are very childish to carry on as you have been, making fun of me..."

"That's pretty good, making fun ofyou! What about what you have done tome!"

"You have performed a miraculous recovery! Don't let on your heart is broken, and you making up to Lady Malvern and Miss Grenfell and any girl you come across."

"We were not discussinghearts , only pride," he answered, greatly relieved that they were fighting, clearing the air to get on with the reconciliation.

"Your pride can stand a few knocks."

"Now I am proud, as well as a lecher and a plagiarist, am I?"

"Yes, if you weren't bloated and consumed with pride, you wouldn't have made such a fuss over my book."

"I should like to know how it is possible to be both bloated and consumed at the same time," he said, choosing the least objectionable subject of argument, the semantic one. Such an argument was almost a form of lovemaking between these two bibliophiles, and the one he felt he had the best chance of winning.

"You have consumed it and it bloated you," she insisted mulishly. She knew less, but was as cagey a ratiocinator as her opponent.

He could hardly suppress a smile. "It's pointless arguing with you," he said, but he felt the point was all but gained. He turned away to consider a more conciliating line of talk. His face was stiff with disapproval, but he was happier inside than he'd been in days.

Mr. Seville chose this inauspicious minute to leave Lord Malvern and advance to Prudence. "I hear I will be seeing you at Finefields?" he said to her.

She knew well enough this was a bone in Dammler's throat, and wished the man at Jericho. "I believe my uncle wishes to go," she replied.

"Lovely. We'll get our heads together and talk about old times."

Dammler was pressing his lips with the effort of remaining still. As things had been progressing so satisfactorily between Dammler and herself, Prudence desired to be away from Seville. She made an excuse and left, rather abruptly.

"We are becoming very high and mighty these days," Seville remarked to Dammler, with a disparaging look after her. They had been fighting, the two of them. The romance was off, and Seville said to ingratiate himself with the gentleman, "You were well rid of her. She'd have got you to marry her if she could. Tried it on me, you know. The likes of her-it was not marriage I had in mind, you may be sure. Nor yourself either, I expect, my lord?"

"I beg your pardon?" Dammler asked in a drawl that would have alerted his close friends to disaster. A pulse in his temple beat; he could feel it. He had hated Seville for several months-had always suspected the fellow was up to no good with Prudence, and this was confirmation.

"Offered her acarte blanche and she had the impertinence to broadcast it as an offer of marriage. Fortunately for me, she declined."

"That's what I thought you meant," Dammler said, smiling with satisfaction, just before he drew back his arm and landed Seville a blow on the nose. Caught unaware, Seville reeled against the wall, while the blood spouted like a small fountain.

The two were in a quiet corner, but the racket made by a full grown man hitting the wall with considerable force alerted those nearby to the interesting scene. A little throng of people gathered around them. "Well?" Dammler asked. "I expect that as youcall yourself a gentleman, you will demand satisfaction. I am eager enough to kill you that I will accept your challenge, without prejudice, as the legal gentlemen say. Meaning, as I know you are not swift to understand, I do not consider you an equal."

"By Jove!" Seville said, pulling a handkerchief out to staunch the flow. "Not a dueling matter. She is nothing to either of us."

"I say you are a coward, sir. Is that nothing to you?" There were enough gentlemen of the first stare present that Seville must face up to the inevitable and accept a challenge. "My second, Lord Alvanley, if you will be so kind?" He looked to one of the crowd, a fellow-member of the Four Horse Club.

"Mr. Elmtree," Dammler named his second, not knowing until the words were out that he had chosen as poorly as a man well could. Still, it was better to keep it in the family.

Seville tipped his head back, still with the handkerchief to it, and walked away, with Alvanley at his heels to inquire of him what the devil had happened.

Dammler sought out Lord Petersham to make apologies for the fracas, and escaped with the minimum of fuss. He spoke to Hettie before leaving, asking her to take Prudence home, as he had to see Elmtree.

"Allan, they are saying something of a duel! It can't be true. Have you challenged someone?"

"Seville, but don't tell Prudence."

"Is she the cause?"

"Certainly not! I called him a coward."

"Why on earth did you do such a thing-and at aball?"

"Because he is one, and this is where he happened to be."

"But that is no... You can't have just called him a coward out of the blue!"

"No, I saw red-but don't for G.o.d's sake tell Prue."

"Itis about her! It has something to do with Finefields, hasn't it? You forbid her to go."

"How should Iforbid her? Listen, Het, you'd better take her home before she hears something. There's bound to be a little talk."

"Alittle? My dear fool, there will be nothing else spoken of for a month. How exciting! Come to me as soon as you're finished with Clarence. I don't care what hour it is."

It was late. Elmtree was so delighted with the matter that he went to Berkeley Square with Dammler and stayed for two hours.

"A duel you say? That is very serious, Lord Dammler." He was torn between Nevvie and Lord Dammler, but for such an important occasion he deemed the full t.i.tle suitable.

"Yes, I consider it serious in the extreme that the man made your niece an improper offer-asked her to be his mistress. I'm sure you agree with me that an insult of that nature could not go unchallenged."

"I do agree! I would have run him through myself if I had had the least notion what he was up to. Sending her a diamond necklace-we ought to have known then he was up to no good. Imagine him taking Prue for such a dasher," he added, half pleased with the thought. He was coming to see a mistress was not an outcast in this high society, but had not yet tumbled to it that the mistresses were from the ranks of married ladies, or if single, they made no claims to respectability.

"It is of the greatest importance that he be made to pay for it. It is the only way her reputation may be saved. You may imagine what would be thought if he were to spread this tale around town with impunity."

"She'd be a byword. But you will not like to involve yourself in such a sc.r.a.pe-a lord. Of course you are to marry her-that makes it eligible for you to fight on her behalf."

"Marry her? Did she not tell you we are broken oft? There is to be no marriage."

"No marriage?" Clarence asked. A crafty look came into his snuff-brown eyes. He had come to see a duel was a thing to be prized. Lords and nabobs-all the go. How Sir Alfred and Mrs. Hering would stare to hear Dammler had called Seville out.

"No, but that is not to say I wish to hear her spoken of with disrespect."

"Certainly not. We can't allow that. Still, it seems to me, Lord Dammler, that as her uncle and guardian,I am the one ought to be looking out for her-fighting Seville."

"So you would have done, I'm sure," he lied blandly, "had Seville spoken so to you."

"Yes, yes, that's all well and good, but he spoke ofmy niece.I am still her closest male relative. The wedding is off-said so yourself. She is nothing to you now. It is for me to defend her fair name."

"You will be deeply involved, Clarence. My second. It will be your duty to meet with Lord Alvanley and arrange the time and place. He will call on you tomorrow, probably early in the morning."

A call from an out-and-outer like Alvanley was not underestimated. All the go, Alvanley-one heard his witticisms quoted everywhere, still Elmtree did not desire to be second to anyone in defending his niece's name. No actual thought of standing facing an opponent with a gun in his hand at dawn came to mar his visions. It was more the notion of getting rigged out in a black coat and das.h.i.+ng mysteriously through town buying up pistols, having a practice session at Manton's Shooting Gallery, mentioning casually to any n.o.ble bystander the purpose of being there that motivated him. "I was obliged to call Seville out-the chap they call The Nabob, you know," had a finer ring to it than "I was Lord Dammler's second." If Dammler wasn't even her fiance this week, it would sound less fine still. Even there would be an air of cowardice to it, having someone else do his dirty work.

"I am her uncle, and I'm your elder too, my boy," he told Dammler, being required to adopt quite a high tone, a new thing for him. He liked it immensely."You must be ruled by me in this, I think. I will take care of Seville, but you are welcome to be my second."

This was a catastrophe never in his wildest nightmares foreseen by Dammler. Already he knew Prudence would be displeased with the raffishness of a duel fought in her honor. How could he ever face her if, by his mismanagement, it was her uncle that was to be the one firing the shot? What reliance was to be placed on Clarence's doing it with any skill at all?

"There are very strict rules in this matter, Mr. Elmtree," he said, matching his tone to Clarence's. "The etiquette of dueling states that the one to issue the challenge must fight the duel.I will fight, and you will be my second, if you agree. Lord Alvanley is Seville's second," he threw in, to show Elmtree that being a second was not below a lord, and therefore not so much below an amateur artist.

"I'll talk it over with Alvanley," Elmtree countered, not quite giving up on his scheme, but disliking to argue about rules and etiquette without a perusal of the rule book.

"He will confirm what I have said," Dammler said at once, then was overcome by a doubt. What if Elmtree, as her closest relative, took precedence? It was too awful to think of. He would override him. Hewould not let Clarence do it.

"We'll be in touch then," Clarence said, and finally, a bottle and many repet.i.tions later, he left, to bound up into his high perch phaeton and go home.

Chapter 9.

Dammler had a dozen timeswarned Clarence to silence in front of Prudence, but when her uncle smiled on her in the strangest way over their soft boiled eggs, when he castigated Seville (formerly one of his special pets) as a varlet and a scoundrel and predicted he would soon get his comeuppance, her suspicions were alerted. When he then asked her if anyone else had insulted her after Dammler left, she feared the worst.

She already knew there was trouble afoot. To be trundled off home early with Hettie, and to see people staring at her as she left had told her that much. She worried that Dammler had said something horrid about her; once she even got to wondering whether Clarence had ended up in a fight with him, but anything so farfetched as a duel had not crossed her mind. Strangely enough, she had not given a thought to Seville.

"No, Uncle. Did Dammler insult me? What did he say? Why did you go off with him?"

"We had things to arrange. You needn't worry you are disgraced in the least. We don't mean to let the commoner off with it."

"I must know, Uncle! What was said of me? Was there some argument?"

"Argument? Certainly not. That is to say, we had a little argument over which of us is to be the second, but..."

"Second what?" she asked, her worst fears far superseded by this telling word.

"It is all rules and etiquette, Prue. I'll look it up at the library and let you... No, I can't do that, either.

Well, well, never mind. You just run along and write another book, and never fear anyone else will call you a trollop." "He called me that! Uncle,who did such a thing?" Not Dammler. That, at least, was beneath him. She began to have some inkling of the truth at last. "What can you expect of a foreigner? Don't give it a thought. Dammler and I will call him to account." Mr. Seville, as English as roast mutton, was a foreigner to Uncle Clarence due to his name that hinted of Spain. "You are having a duel with Seville," she said in a dying voice. "Nonsense! Where did you get such an idea? If his second calls while I am out, ask him to step in and wait. Lord Alvanley is to come to me. You might show him my pictures while he waits. That will keep him amused. I want to have a look at that rule book. I thinkI am the one ought to be defending you." "Did you call him out?" Oh, but she knew it wasn't that. Dammler and his quick temper had done it. He had always been jealous of Seville. Clarence was to be his second, receiving a call from Seville's second.

And fool enough to walk out to the library with such a caller coming! Conversation with her uncle was never enlightening. She would have to go to Allan to find out what had happened. But first she must insure Clarence's staying home to meet with the second. Her mind was reeling, but it was a good mind, and soon she recalled that a duel might be averted by the proffering and acceptance of an apology. She pleaded with him to accept an apology.

"Widgeon! Seville can't apologize. I know that much. It was Dammler who called him a coward."

"But it was Seville who called me a trollop."

"Worse!" Clarence told her, smiling fondly on her.

"Oh!" She hardly dared ask what.

"That is only a part of it, however. When Seville refused to fight, Dammler called him a coward, and that

is what we are going to let on the duel is about, to save your face."

She recognized the hand of Dammler in this face-saving pretext, and realized, too, the inefficacy of it. The truth would soon be bruited about. "Just whatdid Seville call me?" she asked, steeling herself to hear the worst.