An Infamous Army (14 page)

"That is it, in a nutshell."

Her eyes began to dance. "Kiss me, Charles: I'll marry you," she said.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Colonel Audley was very late for breakfast. He came into the parlour to find his brother standing by the window, glancing through the Gazette de Bruxelles, and his sister-in-law with her chair already pushed back from the table. She looked searchingly at him as he entered, for she had heard the front door slam a minute earlier and knew that he had been out riding again. Her heart sank; she had never seen quite that radiant look on his face before. "Well, Charles," she said. "You've been out already?"

"Yes." He held out his hands to her. "Wish me joy!" he said.

She let him take her hands, but faltered: "Wish you joy? What can you mean?"

"Lady Barbara has promised to be my wife," he answered.

She snatched her hands away. "Impossible! No, no, you're joking!"

He looked down at her, half laughing, half surprised. "I assure you I am not!"

"You scarcely know her! You cannot mean it!"

"But, my dear Judith, I do mean it! I am the happiest man on earth!"

The dismay she felt was plainly to be read in her face. He drew back. "Don't you intend to wish me joy?" he asked.

"Oh, Charles, how could you? She will never make you happy! You don't know -"

"She has made me happy," he interrupted. "She is fast - a flirt!"

"You must not say that to me, you know," he said, quite gently, but with a note that warned her of danger. The Earl, who had lowered his paper at the Colonel's first announcement, now laid it down, and said in his calm way: "This is very sudden, Charles."

"Yes."

Judith would have spoken again, but Worth engaged her silence by the flicker of a glance in her direction. "Your mind is, in fact, quite made up?" he said.

"Quite!"

"Then of course I wish you joy," said Worth. "When do you mean to be married?"

"Nothing is decided yet. I must see her grandfather. She is her own mistress, but I don't want to - It is not as though I were a very eligible parti, you know."

"You are a great deal too good for her!" exclaimed Judith.

He turned his head, and said with a smile: "Oh no, Judith! It is she who is a great deal too good for me. When you know her better you will agree."

She replied as cheerfully as she was able: "I do wish you very happy, Charles. I will try to know Lady Barbara better."

He looked at her in rather a troubled way as she went out of the room. But when he had closed the door behind her the trouble vanished from his eyes, and he walked back to the table, and sat down at it, and began to eat his breakfast.

The Earl watched him for some moments in silence. Presently he said: "Is your engagement to be publicly announced, Charles?"

"Why, I suppose so! There is no secret about it, you know."

"It is very wonderful," Worth observed. "What did she find in you to like so well?"

The Colonel grinned. "I don't know."

"You would not, of course," Worth said dryly. "Forgive my curiosity, but does Lady Barbara mean to follow the drum?"

"She would, I think, and like it very well. Women do, you know - have you ever met Juana, Harry Smith's wife?"

"I have not met Juana, nor have I met Harry Smith.""He's a rifleman: a rattling good fellow, mad as a coot! He went out to America with Pakenham, more's the pity! He married a Spanish child after Badajos: it's too long a story to tell you now, but you never saw such a little heroine in your life! I believe she would go with Harry into action if he would let her. I have seen her fording a river with the water right up to her horse's girths. She will sleep out in the open by a camp fire, wrapped up in a blanket, and never utter a word of complaint. Bab is made of just that high-spirited stuff."

"I hope you may be right," said Worth, unable to picture the Lady Barbara in any such situations.

Not very far away, in the Rue Ducale, Lady Vidal shared this mental inability and did not scruple to say so. She had looked narrowly at her sister-in-law when she had come in to breakfast, and had not failed to notice the flame in Barbara's eyes and the colour in her cheeks. "What have you been doing?" she asked. "You look quite wild, let me tell you!"

"Oh yes! I am quite wild!" Barbara answered. "I have taken your advice, Gussie! There! Aren't you pleased?"

"I wish I knew what you meant!"

"Why, that I am engaged to be married, to be sure!" Her brother's attention was caught by these words.

"What's that? Engaged? Nonsense!"

Lady Vidal exclaimed: "Bab! Are you serious? It is Lavisse?"

"Lavisse?" repeated Barbara, as though dragging the name up from the recesses of her memory. "No! Oh no! My staff officer!"

"Are you mad? Charles Audley? You cannot mean it!"

"Yes, I do - today, at least!"

Augusta said bitterly: "I never reckoned stupidity among your faults. Good God, Bab, how can you be such a fool? With your looks and birth you may marry whom you please: the lord knows you've had chances enough! and you choose a penniless soldier! I will not believe it of you!"

"Charles Audley?" said Vidal. He looked at his sister over frowningly, but not displeased. "Well, I must say I am surprised. A very good family - perfectly eligible!"

Augusta broke in angrily: "Eligible! A penniless younger son with no chance of inheriting the title! Pray, how do you propose to live, Bab? Do you see yourself in the tail of an army, sharing all the discomforts of a campaign with your Charles?"

"I might, I think," said Barbara, considering it. "It would be something new - exciting!"

"I have no patience with such folly!"

Vidal interposed to say in his heavy fashion: "It is not a brilliant match - by no means brilliant! I could wish him wealthier, but as for his being penniless - pooh! I daresay he has a very respectable competence."

"Then Bab will have to learn to live upon a competence," said Augusta. "I hope, my dear love, that you have not forgotten the terms of your late husband's will?"

"Oh, who cares! With a handsome fortune I had never enough money, so I may as happily live in debt on a mere competence."

This ingenious way of looking at the matter had the effect of pulling down the corners of Vidal's mouth. He began to read his sister a homily, but she interrupted him with a little show of temper, and ran out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

Lady Vidal remarked that if one thing were more certain than another it was that the engagement would be of short duration.

"I hope not," replied Vidal. "Audley is a very good sort of fellow, very well-liked. If she throws him over it will go hard with her in the eyes of the world. What I fear is that a sensible man will never bear with her tantrums. I wish to God she had stayed in England!" He added with an inconsequence Augusta found irritating: "We must ask him to dine with us. I wish you will write him a civil note."

"By all means!" she returned. "The more Bab sees of him the sooner she'll be bored by him. He may dine with us tonight, if he chooses, and accompany us to Madame van der Capellan's party afterwards."

The civil note was accordingly sent round by hand to the British Headquarters, where it found Colonel Audley in the company of the Prince of Orange and Lord Fitzroy Somerset.

The Colonel took the note, and tore it open with an eagerness which did not escape the Prince. That young gentleman, observing the elegance of the hot-pressed paper and the unmistakably feminine character of the handwriting, winked at Lord Fitzroy, and said: "Aha! The affair progresses!"

The Colonel ignored this sally, and moved across to a desk and sat down at it to write an acceptance of the invitation. The Prince strolled after him, and perched on the opposite side of the desk, swinging his thin legs. "It is certainly an assignation," he said.

"It is. An invitation to dinner," replied the Colonel, rejecting one quill and choosing another.

"And it was I who set your feet on the road to ruin! Fitzroy, Charles is in love!"

Lord Fitzroy's small, firm mouth remained grave, but a smile twinkled in his eyes. "I thought he seemed a little elated. Who is she?"

"The Widow!" answered the Prince. "What widow?"

The Prince flung up his hands. "He asks me what widow! Mon Dieu, Fitzroy, don't you know there is only one? The Incomparable, the Dashing, the Fatal Barbara!"

"I am not a penny the wiser," said Lord Fitzroy, his quiet, slightly drawling voice in as great a contrast to the Prince's vivacity as were his fair locks and square, handsome countenance to the Prince's dark hair and erratic features. "You forget how long it is since I was in England. Charles, that's my pen, and it suits me very well without your mending it. What's more, it's my desk, and I've work to do."

"I shan't be more than a minute," replied the Colonel. "Have you noticed how devilish official he's become lately, Billy? It's from standing in the Great Ian's shoes, I suppose."

"You shall not divert me," said the Prince. "I observe an attempt, but it is useless. When do you announce your approaching marriage?"

"Now, if you like," said the Colonel, dipping his pen in the ink, and drawing a sheet of paper towards him.

The Prince's jaw dropped. He stared at Colonel Audley and then laughed. "Oh yes, I am very stupid! I will certainly swallow that canard!"

"If he's going to conduct his flirtations on Government paper, I demand to know the identity of the Fatal - what did you say her name was, Billy?"

"Barbara! The disastrous Lady Barbara Childe!" answered the Prince dramatically.

"Barbara Childe? Oh, I know! Bab Alastair that was. Is she accounted fatal?"

"But entirely, Fitzroy! A veritable Circe - and I delivered Charles into her power!"

The Colonel looked up. "Yes, you did, so you shall be the first to know that she is going to become my wife."

The Prince blinked at him. "Plait-il?"

Colonel Audley sealed his letter, wrote the direction, and got up. "Quite true," he assured the Prince, and went out to deliver his note to the waiting servant.

The Prince turned an astonished countenance towards Lord Fitzroy, and said, stammering a little, as he always did when excited "B - but it's - it's n - not possible! Scores of men have offered for Lady Bab, and she refused them all!"

"Well, she's chosen a very good man in the end," responded Fitzroy, seating himself at the desk.

"My poor Fitzroy, you do not understand! It is most remarkable - eclatant!"

"I see nothing very remarkable in two persons falling in love," said Fitzroy with unaltered calm. "Did I happen to mention that I was busy?"

"I am your superior officer," declared the Prince. "I command that you attend to me, and immediately treat me with respect."

Lord Fitzroy promptly stood up, and clicked his heels together. "I beg your Royal Highness's pardon!"

His Royal Highness made a grab at a heavy paperweight on the desk, but Lord Fitzroy was quicker. The entrance into the room of a very junior member of the staff put an end to what promised to be a most undignified scene. Lord Fitzroy at once released the paperweight, and the Prince, acknowledging the newcomer's salute, departed in search of a more appreciative audience.