Faro's Daughter by Georgette Heyer Read Free Book Online Page B

‘Oh, by Jove, I should think I am! But what a complete hand you are, Max! I never heard you make such a bet in your life! I suppose you will win. There is no one like you when it comes to handling the ribbons! Where will it be run?’
    ‘Oh, down at Epsom, I imagine! I left it to Filey to settle the locality.’
    ‘I hate that fellow!’ said Lord Mablethorpe, frowning. ‘I hope you will beat him.’
    ‘Well, I shall do my best. Do you go to Newmarket next month?’
    ‘Yes. No. That is, I am not sure. But I didn’t come to talk of that!’
    Mr Ravenscar resigned himself to the inevitable, made himself comfortable in his chair, and said: ‘What did you come to talk of?’
    Lord Mablethorpe picked up a fork, and began to trace patterns with it upon the table. ‘I hadn’t the intention of telling you about it,’ he confessed. ‘It is not as though you were my guardian, after all! Of course, I know you are one of my trustees, but that is quite a different thing, isn’t it?’
    ‘Oh, quite!’ agreed Ravenscar.
    ‘I mean, you are not responsible for anything I may do,’ said Adrian, pressing home his point with a little anxiety. ‘Not a bit.’
    ‘In any event, I shall come of age in a couple of months. It is really no concern of anyone’.
    ‘None at all,’ said Ravenscar, betraying no trace of the uneasiness his relative evidently expected him to feel. ‘In fact, you may just as well keep your own counsel, and have some ale.’
    ‘No, I don’t want any,’ said Adrian, rather impatiently. ‘As I said, I had no intention of telling you. Only you happened to visit—to visit Lady Bel’s house last night, and—and you met Her.’
    ‘I did not exchange more than half a dozen words with Lady Bellingham, however.’
    ‘Not Lady Bellingham!’ said Adrian, irritated by such stupidity. ‘I mean Miss Grantham!’
    ‘Oh, Miss Grantham! Yes, I played piquet with her, certainly. What of it?’
    ‘What did you think of her, Max?’ asked his lordship shyly.
    ‘Really, I don’t remember that I thought about her at all. Why?’
    Adrian looked up indignantly. ‘Good God, you surely must at least have seen how—how very beautiful she is!’
    ‘Why, yes, I suppose she is tolerably handsome!’ conceded Ravenscar.
    ‘Tolerably handsome!’ ejaculated Adrian, in dumbfounded accents.
    ‘Yes, certainly, for one who is not in the first blush of youth A little too strapping for my taste, and will probably put or flesh in middle age, but I will allow her to be a well-looking woman.’
    Adrian laid down the fork, and said, with a considerable heightened colour: ‘I had better make it plain to you at once Max, that—that I mean to marry her!’
    ‘Marry Miss Grantham?’ said Ravenscar, raising his brows. ‘My dear boy, why?’
    This unemotional way of receiving startling tidings was damping in the extreme to a young gentleman who had braced himself to encounter violent opposition, and for a moment Adrian seemed to be at a loss to know what to say. After a slight pause, he said with immense dignity: ‘I love her.’
    ‘How very odd!’ said Ravenscar, apparently puzzled.
    ‘I see nothing odd in it!’
    ‘No, of course not. How should you, indeed? But surely someone nearer your own age-?’
    ‘The difference in our ages doesn’t signify in the least. You talk as though Deb were in her thirties!’
    ‘I beg pardon.’
    Adrian eyed him with considerable resentment. ‘My mind is irrevocably made up, Max. I shall never love another woman I knew as soon as I saw her that she was the only one in the world for me! Of course, I don’t expect you to understand that, because you are the coldest fellow—well, I mean, you have never been in love!’
    Ravenscar laughed.
    ‘Well, not in the way I mean,’ amended his lordship.
    ‘Evidently not. But what has all this to do with me?’
    ‘Nothing at all!’ replied Adrian, with emphasis. ‘Only that since you have met Deb I thought I would tell you. I do not wish to