Faro's Daughter by Georgette Heyer Read Free Book Online

not pique myself upon my imagination, it is sufficiently acute to enable me to picture the result of any well-meant interference on my part.
    The coup de grace must be delivered by Miss Grantham herself.’
    ‘Admirable!’ murmured his lordship. ‘I am struck by the similitude of our ideas, Ravenscar. You must not suppose that this had not already occurred to me. Now, to be plain with you, I regard your entrance upon our little stage as providential—positively providential! It will, I trust, relieve me of the necessity of resorting to the use of a distasteful weapon. Instinct prompts me to believe that you have formed the intention of offering the divine Deborah money to relinquish her pretensions to the hand of your cousin.’
    ‘Judging from the style of the establishment, her notions of an adequate recompense are not likely to jump with mine,’ said Mr Ravenscar.
    ‘But appearances are so often deceptive,’ said his lordship sweetly. ‘The aunt—an admirable woman, of course!—is not, alas, blessed with those qualities which distinguish other ladies in the same profession. Her ideas, which are charmingly lavish, preclude the possibility of the house’s being run at a profit, in the vulgar phrase. In a word, my dear Ravenscar, her ladyship is badly dipped.’
    ‘No doubt you are in a position to know?’ said Mr Ravenscar.
    ‘None better,’ replied Ormskirk. ‘I hold a mortgage or the house, you see. And in one of those moments of generosity, with which you are doubtless familiar, I—ah—acquired some of the more pressing of her ladyship’s debts.’
    ‘That,’ said Mr Ravenscar, ’is not a form of generosity with which I have ever yet been afflicted.’
    ‘I regarded it in the light of an investment,’ explained hi; lordship. ‘Speculative, of course, but not, I thought, without promise of a rich return.’
    ‘If you hold bills of Lady Bellingham’s, you don’t appear to me to stand in need of any assistance from me,’ said M: Ravenscar bluntly. ‘Use ’em!’
    A note of pain crept into his lordship’s smooth voice. ‘My dear fellow! I fear we are no longer seeing eye to eye Consider, if you please, for an instant! You will appreciate, am sure, the vast difference that lies between the surrender: from—shall we say gratitude?—and the surrender to—we shall be obliged to say force majeure .’
    ‘In either event you stand in the position of a scoundrel, retorted Mr Ravenscar. ‘I prefer the more direct approach.
    ‘But one is, unhappily for oneself, a gentleman,’ Ormskirk pointed out. ‘It is unfortunate, and occasionally tiresome, but one is bound to remember that one is a gentleman.’
    ‘Let me understand you, Ormskirk!’ said Mr Ravenscar. ‘Your sense of honour being too nice to permit of your holding the girl’s debts over her by way of threat, or bribe, or what you will, it yet appears to you expedient that someone else—myself, for example—should turn the thumbscrew for you?’
    Lord Ormskirk walked on several paces beside Mr Ravenscar before replying austerely: ‘I have frequently deplored a tendency in these days to employ in polite conversation a certain crudity, a violence, which is offensive to persons of my generation. You, Ravenscar, prefer the fists to the sword. With me it is otherwise. Believe me, it is always a mistake to put too much into words.’
    ‘It doesn’t sound well in plain English, does it?’ retorted Ravenscar. ‘Let me set your mind at rest! My cousin will not marry Miss Grantham.’
    His lordship sighed. ‘I feel sure I can rely on you, my dear fellow. There is positively no need for us to pursue the subject further. So you played a hand or two at piquet with the divine Deborah! They tell me your skill at the game is remarkable. But you play at Brooks’s, I fancy. Such a mausoleum! I wonder you will go there. You must do me the honour of dining at my house one evening, and of giving me the opportunity to test your skill. I am