Venetia by Georgette Heyer Read Free Book Online Page B

solitary walks,” Edward said, with a calm assumption of authority which she found so irritating that she was obliged to choke down a hasty retort. “You know,” he added, with a wry smile, “that I have never liked that custom of yours.”
    Oswald Denny visited her too, but the form his solicitude took was a dramatic assurance that if Damerel should dare to molest her he would know how to answer “the fellow”. The significant laying of his hand upon an imaginary sword-hilt was too much for Venetia’s gravity: she went into a peal of laughter, which provoked him to exclaim: “You laugh, but I’ve lived where they hold life cheap! I promise you I should have no compunction in calling this fellow out, were he to offer you the smallest affront!”
    After this Venetia was not at all surprised when, two days later, the Dennys’ barouche-landau disgorged Lady Denny at Undershaw. But it soon transpired that her ladyship’s object was not so much to warn her young friend to beware of encountering a notorious rake as to enjoy a comfortable gossip about him. She had actually spoken to him! Well, more than that: Sir John, meeting him by chance, had seized the opportunity to try if he could not win his support over some matter of parish business; and finding him perfectly amiable, had brought him back to Ebbersley, further to discuss the affair, and had ended by inviting him to eat luncheon there.
    “You may imagine my amazement when in they both walked! I must own, my love, that I was not quite pleased, for Clara and Emily were both sitting with me, and although Clara is not, I fancy, very likely to have her head turned, Emily is at just that age when girls fall in love with the most ineligible men. However, there’s no fear of that, as it turns out: the girls both declared there was never anything more disappointing, for he is quite old, and not at all handsome!”
    “ Old ?”Venetia exclaimed involuntarily. “Well, so he seemed to the girls,” Lady Denny explained. “He can’t be above forty, I suppose, if he’s as much as that. I am not perfectly sure—when he was a child he was scarcely ever at the Priory, you know, because Lady Damerel had the greatest dislike of Yorkshire, and never would come here, except when they had parties for the races. You wouldn’t remember, my dear, but she was a very proud, disagreeable woman—and I will say this for her son: he seems not to be at all top-lofty—not, of course, that he has the least occasion to hold up his nose! Except that the Damerels are a very old family, and this man’s father, though always perfectly civil, was said to have a great deal of self-consequence. There was nothing of that— to be seen—indeed, I thought his lordship had too little particularity! I don’t mean to say that his manners gave me a disgust of him, but he has an odd, abrupt way that is a trifle too careless to please me !As for the girls, they rated him very cheap—though I daresay they would not if he had behaved more prettily to them. He hardly spoke above a dozen words to them—the merest commonplace, too!”
    “How shabby!” said Venetia. “He is—I mean, he sounds to me quite odious !”
    “Yes, but I was thankful for it!” said her ladyship earnestly. “Only think what my feelings must have been had he proved to be a man of insinuating address! And for Sir John to declare that dearest Clara has not enough beauty to engage the interest of such a man as Damerel is not at all to the point, besides being a most unnatural thing to say of his own daughter! He would have been well-served if Damerel had thrown out lures to Clara, bringing him in upon us as he did! But all he will say is that he doesn’t choose to live on bad terms with his neighbours, and that it is a great piece of nonsense in me to suppose that Damerel is so ramshackle as to behave improperly to any female in Clara’s situation. Very pretty talking, when everyone knows he didn’t scruple to seduce a lady