Devil's Cub by Georgette Heyer Read Free Book Online Page B

my lord!” Sophia murmured, casting down her eyes.
    His smile was indulgent. “Well, child, what?” he said.
    “I did not think to meet you,” Sophia explained, for her sister’s benefit.
    The Marquis pinched her chin. “You’ve a short memory, my love.”
    Miss Challoner with difficulty suppressed a chuckle. My lord disdained the art of dissimulation, did he? Faith, one could not help liking the creature.
    “Indeed, I don’t know what you mean,” Sophia pouted. “We came expressly to meet Eliza Matcham and her brother. I wonder where they can be got to?”
    “Confess you came to meet me!” the Marquis said. “What, was I really forgotten?”
    There was a toss of the head for this. “La, do you suppose I think of you all day long, sir?”
    “Egad, I hoped I had a place in your memory.”
    Miss Challoner broke in on them. “I think I have just seen Miss Matcham cross the end of this walk,” she remarked.
    His lordship glanced down at her impatiently, but Sophia said at once: “Oh, where? I would not miss her for the world!”
    Miss Matcham, with her brother James, was soon overtaken, and Miss Challoner at once perceived that their mission was to engage her in talk while the Marquis and Sophia lost themselves. This friendly office was frustrated by the exasperating behaviour to their quarry, who refused to be separated from her sister.
    Since neither the Marquis nor Sophia put themselves to the trouble of including her in their conversation, and Miss Matcham was wholly engaged in keeping the hem of her muslin gown from getting wet on the grass, she had ample opportunity to observe her sister’s lover. A very little time was enough to convince her that love, as she understood it, was felt by neither. Her sister, she thought, would bore his lordship in a week, and as she listened to him, and watched him, she found herself wondering again how Sophia could imagine that he felt any more than a passing fancy for her. Certainly he wanted the chit; he was of the type that would go to any lengths to get what he wanted, and, unless she was much mistaken, Miss Challoner was sure that once the prize was won, he would cease to desire it. Then woe betide Sophia with her artless ideas of shaming him into marriage. Why, thought Mary, one could never shame my Lord Vidal, because he did not care what was said of him, and had already given the world to understand, beyond possibility of mistake, that he would do exactly as he pleased on every occasion. Scandal! Mary almost laughed aloud. Lord, he would carry off anything with that insolent high-bred manner of his, while as for being afraid of public opinion, he’d raise those black brows of his in faint surprise at such a notion.
    These reflections occupied her mind till the expedition broke up. Prom something the Marquis said to Sophia in a low voice at parting she gathered that a future assignation had been made, but Sophia did not tell her where it was to be. Her smiles vanished with the Marquis, and on the way home she complained ceaselessly of her sister’s lack of tact in remaining at her side all the morning.
    As for the Marquis, finding himself with time on his hands, he strolled round to Half Moon Street to visit the most congenial of his relatives.
    Although it was past noon, he found this worthy still attired in a dressing-gown, and without his wig. The remains of breakfast stood upon the table, but my Lord Rupert Ala-stair seemed to have finished this repast, and was smoking a long pipe, and reading his letters. He looked up as the door opened, and made a grab at his wig, which lay conveniently on the sofa beside him, but when he saw his nephew he relaxed again.
    “Oh, it’s you, is it?” he said. “Here, what the devil do you make of this?” He tossed over the sheet of paper he had been perusing, and tore open another of his letters.
    Vidal laid down his hat and cane and came to the fire, running his eye over the note he held. He grinned. “Ain’t it plain