Free Friday's Child by Georgette Heyer

thing!"
    “Well, I’ve done it,” replied the Viscount, a shade sulkily.
    Mr Fakenham made a helpful suggestion. “You want Gretna Green, Sherry. Post-chaise-and-four.”
    “Good God, no! It’s bad enough without that!”
    “You can get married in the Fleet,” offered Mr Fakenham.
    The Viscount arose in his wrath. “I tell you it isn’t that kind of an affair at all! I’m going to be married in a church, all right and tight, and I want a special licence!”
    Mr Fakenham begged pardon. Mr Ringwood gave a slight cough. “Sherry, old boy—don’t want to pry into your affairs—wouldn’t offend you for the world!—You ain’t thinking of marrying the lodge-keeper’s daughter, or anything of that kind?”
    “No, no! She’s a Wantage—some sort of a cousin, but they don’t own her. Father went through all his blunt, and kicked up a dust of some kind. Before my time. The point is, she’s as well born as you are. Mrs Bagshot brought her up: she’s another of her cousins. You must know the Bagshots!”
    Mr Fakenham was suddenly roused to animation. “If she’s a Bagshot, Sherry, I wouldn’t marry her! Now there’s a horrible thing! Do you know that woman has brought out a third one? For anything we know she’s got a string of ’em—and each one worse than the last! Cassandra was bad enough, but have you seen the new one? Tallow-faced girl called Sophy?”
    “Lord, yes, I’ve known the Bagshots all my life! Hero’s not like them, I give you my word!”
    “Who?” asked Ferdy, his attention arrested.
    “Hero. Girl I’m going to marry.”
    Ferdy was puzzled. “What do you call her Hero for?”
    “It’s her name,” replied Sherry impatiently. “I know it’s a silly name, but damme, it ain’t as silly as Eudora! Besides, I call her Kitten, so what’s the odds?”
    “Sherry, where is this girl?” asked Mr Ringwood.
    “She’s at Grillon’s. Couldn’t think of anywhere else to take her. Told ’em she was on her way to school, and her abigail broke her leg getting down from the chaise. Best I could think of.”
    “Did she, though?” said Ferdy, interested. “Dare say she didn’t wait for the steps to be let down. I had an aunt—well, you remember her, Sherry! Old Aunt Charlotte, the one who—”
    “For God’s sake, Ferdy, will you go and put your head under the pump?” cried the exasperated Viscount. “There wasn’t any abigail!”
    “But you said—”
    “He made it up out of his head,” explained Mr Ringwood kindly. “Ought to have been an abigail.”
    “Yes, by Jove, and that’s another thing I shall have to arrange!” exclaimed Sherry. " 'Pon my soul, there’s no end to it! Where the deuce does one find abigails, Gil?”
    “She’ll find one,” Mr Ringwood said. “Bridegroom don’t have to engage the abigails. Butler and footmen, yes. Not abigails.”
    His lordship shook his head. “Won’t do at all. She wouldn’t know how to go about it. I tell you, she’s the veriest chit out of the schoolroom. Not up to snuff at all.”
    Mr Ringwood eyed him uneasily. “Dear old boy, you haven’t run off with a schoolgirl, have you?”
    A rueful grin stole into the Viscount’s eyes. “Well, she ain’t quite seventeen yet,” he admitted.
    “Sherry, there’ll be the devil of a dust kicked up!”
    “No, there won’t. That old cat of a Bagshot woman don’t care a rap for the poor little soul. If it hadn’t been for me, she’d have packed her off to be a governess at some rubbishing school in Bath. Hero! Chit who used to go bird’s-nesting with me! I couldn’t have that, damme if I could! Besides, if I must marry someone, I’d as lief marry Hero as anyone.”
    This heresy was too much for his cousin, who uttered in shocked accents: “Isabella!”
    “Oh, well, yes, of course!” said Sherry hastily. “But I can’t marry her, so it might as well be Hero. But that’s neither here nor there. Where do I get a special licence, Gil?”
    Mr Ringwood shook his head.