Mistress Wilding - Rafael Sabatini

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unfortunate you should have separated,” he condoled.

      “But … but, Mr. Wilding, I … I trusted to your honour. I accounted you a gentleman. Surely … surely, sir, you will not let it be known that … I came to you? You will keep my secret?”

      “Secret!” said he, his eyebrows raised. “'Tis already the talk of the servants' hall. By to-morrow 'twill be the gossip of Bridgwater.”

      Air failed her. Her blue eyes fixed him in horror out of her stricken face. Not a word had she wherewith to answer him.

      The sight of her, thus, affected him oddly. His passion for her surged up, aroused by pity for her plight, and awakened in him a sense of his brutality. A faint flush stirred in his cheeks. He stepped quickly to her, and caught her hand. She let it lie, cold and inert, within his nervous grasp.

      “Ruth, Ruth!” he cried, and his voice was for once unsteady. “Give it no thought! I love you, Ruth. If you'll but heed that, no breath of scandal can hurt you.”

      She swallowed hard. “As how?” she asked mechanically.

      He bowed low over her hand—so low that his face was hidden from her.

      “If you will do me the honour to become my wife …” he began, but got no further, for she snatched away her hand, her cheeks crimsoning, her eyes aflame with indignation. He stepped back, crimsoning too. She had dashed the gentleness from his mood. He was angered now and tigerish.

      “Oh!” she panted. “It is to affront me! Is this the time or place …”

      He cropped her flow of indignant speech ere it was well begun. He caught her in his arms, and held her tight, and so sudden was the act, so firm his grip that she had not the thought or force to struggle.

      “All time is love's time, all places are love's place,” he told her, his face close to her own. “And of all time and places the present ever preferable to the wise—for life is uncertain and short at best. I bring you worship, and you answer me with scorn. But I shall prevail, and you shall come to love me in very spite of your own self.”

      She threw back her head, away from his as far as the bonds he had cast about her would allow. “Air! Air!” she panted feebly.

      “Oh, you shall have air enough anon,” he answered with a half-strangled laugh, his passion mounting ever. “Hark you, now—hark you, for Richard's sake, since you'll not listen for my own nor yours. There is another course by which I can save both Richard's life and honour. You know it, and you counted upon my generosity to suggest it. But you overlooked the thing on which you should have counted. You overlooked my love. Count upon that, my Ruth, and Richard shall have naught to fear. Count upon that, and when we meet this evening, Richard and I, it is I who will tender the apology, I who will admit that I was wrong to introduce your name into that company last night, and that what Richard did was a just and well-deserved punishment upon me. This will I do if you'll but count upon my love.”

      She looked up at him fearfully, yet with flutterings of hope. “What is't you mean?” she asked him faintly.

      “That if you'll promise to be my wife …”

      “Your wife!” she interrupted him. She struggled to free herself, released one arm and struck him in the face. “Let me go, you coward!”

      He was answered. His arms melted from her. He fell back a pace, very white and even trembling, the fire all gone from his eye, which was now turned dull and deadly.

      “So be it,” he said, and strode to the bell-rope. “I'll not offend again. I had not offended now”—he continued, in the voice of one offering an explanation cold and formal—“but that when first I came into your life you seemed to bid me welcome.” His fingers closed upon the crimson bell-cord. She guessed his purpose.

      “Wait!” she gasped, and put forth her hand. He paused, the rope in his, his eye kindling anew. “You … you mean to kill Richard now?” she asked him.

      A swift lifting of his brows was his only answer. He tugged the cord. From the distance the peal of the bell reached them faintly.

      “Oh, wait, wait!” she begged, her hands pressed against her cheeks. He stood impassible—hatefully impassible. “… … if I were to consent to … this … how … how soon … ?” He understood the unfinished question. Interest warmed his face again. He took a step towards her, but by a gesture she seemed to beg him come no nearer.

      “If you will promise to marry me within the week, Richard shall have no cause to fear either for his life or his honour at my hands.”

      She seemed now to be recovering her calm. “Very well,” she said, her voice singularly steady. “Let that be a bargain between us. Spare Richard's life and honour—both, remember!—and on Sunday next …” For all her courage her voice quavered and faltered. She dared add no more, lest it should break altogether.

      Mr. Wilding drew a deep breath. Again he would have advanced. “Ruth!” he cried, and some repentance smote him, some shame shook him in his purpose. At that moment it was in his mind to capitulate unconditionally; to tell her that Richard should have naught to fear from him, and yet that she should go free as the winds. Her gesture checked him. It was so eloquent of aversion. He paused in his advance, stifled his better feelings, and turned once more, relentless. The door opened and old Walters stood awaiting his commands.

      “Mistress Westmacott is leaving,” he informed his servant, and bowed low and formally in farewell before her. She passed out without another word, the old butler following, and presently through the door that remained open came Trenchard, in quest of Mr. Wilding who stood bemused.

      Nick sauntered in, his left eye almost hidden by the rakish cock of his hat, one hand tucked away under the skirts of his plum-coloured coat, the other supporting the stem of a long clay pipe, at which he was pulling thoughtfully. The pipe and he were all but inseparable; indeed, the year before in London he had given appalling scandal by appearing with it in the Mall, and had there remained him any character to lose, he must assuredly have lost it then.

      He observed his friend through narrowing eyes—he had small eyes, very blue and very bright, in which there usually abode a roguish gleam.

      “My sight, Anthony,” said he, “reminds me that I am growing old. I wonder did it mislead me on the score of your visitor?”

      “The lady who left,” said Wilding with a touch of severity, “will be Mistress Wilding by this day se'night.”

      Trenchard took the pipe from his lips, audibly blew out a cloud of smoke and stared at his friend. “Body o' me!” quoth he. “Is this a time for marrying?—with these rumours of Monmouth's coming over.”

      Wilding made an impatient gesture. “I thought to have convinced you they are idle,” said he, and flung himself into a chair at his writing-table.

      Nick came over and perched himself upon the table's edge, one leg swinging in the air. “And what of this matter of the intercepted letter from London to our Taunton friends?”

      “I can't tell you. But of this I am sure, His Grace is incapable of anything so rash. Certain is it that he'll not stir until Battiscomb returns to Holland, and Battiscomb is still in Cheshire sounding the Duke's friends.”

      “Yet were I you, I should not marry just at present.”

      Wilding smiled. “If you were me, you'd never marry at all.”

      “Faith, no!” said Trenchard. “I'd as soon play at 'hot-cockles,' or 'Parson-has-lost-his-cloak.' 'Tis a mort more amusing and the sooner done with.”

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      Ruth

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