False Colours by Georgette Heyer Read Free Book Online Page B

something outrageous, or excuse himself far too early in the evening, which would be fatal! ’
    ‘If Evelyn does not return tomorrow,’ said Kit, with feeling, ‘I’ll wring his neck the instant I set eyes on him! And if he does return neither he nor you, my very dear Mama, will persuade me to take his place at this party! Nothing short of the direst necessity would induce me to do so!’
    ‘No, dear, and we must hope there won’t be any necessity,’ she agreed cheerfully. ‘But just in case there should be you won’t object to pretending you are Evelyn for a little while, will you? I mean, until he arrives, which I dare say he will, for even he couldn’t be quite so forgetful, do you think? But if he doesn’t it would be most unwise to let the servants know the truth.’
    ‘Good God, Mama, do you imagine they won’t recognize me?’
    ‘Well, the maidservants won’t, and the footmen won’t, and Brigg won’t either, because he is getting so short-sighted and deaf. We ought to engage a younger butler, but when Evelyn only hinted to him that he should retire on a very handsome pension he was thrown into such gloom that Evelyn felt obliged to let the matter drop.’
    ‘And what of Mrs Dinting?’ interposed Kit.
    ‘Why should she suspect anything? If you were to encounter her, you have only to greet her, as Evelyn would, quite carelessly, you know. Depend upon it, she won’t even wonder if you’re Kit, because she would never believe you would come home after all these months and not pay a visit to the housekeeper’s room to have a chat with her. Then, too, she will have been told that Evelyn is home, and why should she call it in question?’
    ‘Who is going to tell her this whisker? You?’
    ‘No, stupid! The servants will see that the candle that was set on the hall-table for Evelyn has gone, and the whole household will know that he has returned before you are even awake.’
    ‘Including Fimber! I collect he won’t recognize me either? Mama, do come out of the clouds! A man who valeted us both when we were striplings!’
    ‘I am not in the clouds!’ she said indignantly. ‘I was about to say, when you interrupted me, that we must take him into our confidence.’
    ‘Also Challow, your coachman, the second groom, all the stableboys,—’
    ‘Nonsense, Kit! Challow, perhaps, but why in the world should the others be told?’
    ‘Because, my love, there is a phaeton and four horses to be accounted for!’
    She thought this over for a moment. ‘Very true. Oh, well, we must trust Challow to do that! You can’t think he won’t be able to: recollect what convincing lies he was used to tell when Papa tried to discover from him what you had been doing whenever you had slipped away without telling anyone where you were going!’
    ‘Mama,’ said Kit, ‘I am going to bed! I haven’t given back—don’t think it!—but if I argue with you any more tonight I shall end with windmills in my head!’
    ‘Oh, poor boy, of course you must be fagged to death!’ she said, with ready sympathy. ‘Nothing is so fatiguing as a long journey! That accounts for your perceiving so many difficulties in the way: it is always so when one is very weary. Go to bed, dear one: you will feel much more yourself when you wake up!’
    ‘Full of spunk—not to say effrontery, eh?’ he said, laughing. He kissed her, and got up. ‘It’s midsummer moon with you, you know—but don’t think I don’t love you!’
    She smiled serenely upon him, and he went to retrieve his belongings from the half-landing, and to carry them into Evelyn’s bedroom.
    He was so tired that instead of applying his mind to the problems confronting him, as he had meant to do, he fell asleep within five minutes of blowing out his candle. He was awakened, some hours later, by the sound of the blinds being drawn back from the windows. He raised himself on his elbow, wondering, for a moment, where he could be. Then he remembered, and lay down again,