Friday's Child by Georgette Heyer Read Free Book Online Page B

can, can’t they, Sherry?”
    The Viscount gave this his profound consideration. “No,” he pronounced finally. “She won’t do that. Don’t see how she could. I mean, only think, Hero! I’m not a dashed adventurer, eloping with an heiress! I’m devilish eligible! She’ll be obliged to swallow it with a good grace. Dare say she’ll look to you to find husbands for those insipid girls.”
    “Well, if you think I could, I would try very hard to do so,” said Hero seriously.
    “No one could find husbands for such a parcel of dowdies,” replied his lordship, with brutal candour. “Besides, I don’t like them, and I won’t have them in my house. Come along! We’ve wasted enough time. Someone will be bound to come looking for you, if we dawdle here much longer. Hi, Jason!”
    “Come now?” gasped Miss Wantage. “But I have nothing with me, Sherry! Must I not pack a portmanteau, or at least a bandbox?”
    “Now, will you have sense, Hero? Do you expect me to come driving up to the front door to pick you up? If you go back, and start packing a portmanteau you’ll be discovered.”
    “Oh, yes, but—You don’t think I should creep out of the house when it is dark, and join you here?”
    “No, I don’t,” replied his lordship. “I don’t want to kick my heels in this damned dull place for the rest of the day! Besides, there’s no moon, and if you think I’m going to drive up to town in the dark, you’re mightily mistaken, my girl! I can’t see what you want with a portmanteau. If the rest of your gowns are anything like the one you have on now, the sooner you’re rid of them the better! I’ll buy you everything you want when we get to London.”
    “Oh, Sherry, will you?” cried Miss Wantage, her cheeks in a glow. “Thank you! Let us go quickly!”
    The Viscount sprang down into the lane, and held up his hands. “Jump, then!”
    Miss Wantage obeyed him promptly. Jason, who had led the horses up to them, regarded her fixedly, and then turned an inquiring eye upon his master.
    “I’m taking this lady up to London, Jason,” announced the Viscount.
    “Ho!” said the faithful henchman. “Ho, you are, are you, guv’nor?”
    “Yes, and what’s more, I don’t want a word said about it. So no tattling in whatever boozing-ken you go to, mind that! And no tattling in the stables either!”
    “I can keep my chaffer close,” replied Jason, with dignity, “but it queers me what your lay is this time!”
    The Viscount tossed Miss Wantage up into the curricle, gathered the reins in his hand, and prepared to mount beside her. “I’m going to be married.”
    “You never!” gasped Jason. “But she ain’t the right one, guv’nor! Lor’, you must have had a shove in the mouth too many, and I never suspicioned you was lushy, so help me bob! Werry well you carries it, guv’nor! werry well, indeed! Gammoning me wot knows you you was sober as a judge, and all the time as leaky as a sieve! But what’ll you say when you comes about, me lord? A rare set-out that’ll be, and you a-blamin’ of me for letting you make off with the wrong gentry-mort!”
    “Confound your impudence, of course I’m sober!” said the Viscount wrathfully. “You keep your nose out of my affairs! What the devil are you laughing at, Hero?”
    “I think he’s so droll!” gurgled Miss Wantage. “What is a gentry-mort?”
    “God knows! The fellow can’t open his mouth without letting fall a lot of thieves’ cant. Not fit for your ears at all. Stand away from their heads! all’s right!”
    The curricle moved forward. Jason sprang nimbly up behind, and said over the top of the lowered hood: “I’m not a-going to keep me sneezer out o’your affairs, guv’nor. Be you ee-loping?”
    “Of course I’m not—Good God, so I am!” said his lordship, much struck.
    “Because if you be,” pursued Jason, “and if you don’t wish no one to know nothing about it, that young gentry-mort didn’t ought to be a-settin’ up