Free Duplicate Death by Georgette Heyer

drawing-room. "Dan!" he said eagerly.
    "Bloody little pansy!" remarked Lord Guisborough, drawn into brief fellowship with Mr. Harte.
    "Dan!" Sydney repeated. "I wondered if you'd be here! I've been trying to get hold of you all day!" He glanced at Cynthia, jealousy in his face, and said curtly: "How do you do? Dan, I rang you up five times, but your man said you were out!"
    Seaton-Carew, like many before him, had grown tired of the exigencies of intimacy with his young friend. Moreover, he disliked having his tete-a-tetes interrupted. He said, rather brutally: "Yes, that's what I told him to say. What the hell's the matter anyway?"
    Sydney flushed vividly, and stammered: "I haven't seen anything of you for days! I was afraid you were ill, or something!"
    "Well, I'm not. Do, for God's sake, stop barging in where you ought to be able to see you're not wanted!"
    The flush died, leaving Sydney's face very white. "I see!" he said, in a low, shaking voice. "That's how it is, is it? When Cynthia's around you've no use for me!"
    "Oh, shut up!" Seaton-Carew said roughly. "I've had enough of your scenes! Either behave like a reasonable being or get out! Making a damned exhibition of yourself - I'm fed up with it!"
    "You mean you're fed up with me!"
    "All right, I mean that!" Seaton-Carew said, exasperated.
    Cynthia gave a nervous giggle, glancing towards the front drawing-room, where people were beginning to assemble. "For goodness' sake!" she whispered. "Mummy will have a fit!"
    For a perilous moment it looked as though Sydney might so far forget himself as to strike Seaton-Carew. He stood staring at him, his eyes burning in his white face, and his fists clenching involuntarily. His chest heaved with something like a sob; he began to say something, in a trembling, almost inaudible voice, and was mercifully interrupted.
    "Cynthia darling! How sweet you look! Oh, Dan! How lovely!"
    Lady Nest Poulton, a little wisp of a woman, with great eyes in a heart-shaped, haggard face, came up to the group in a cloud of chiffon; and Sydney, recollecting his surroundings, turned rather blindly away.
    "Charming frock! Dreadful young man!" murmured Lady Nest, with her fleeting, appealing smile. "You know Godfrey, don't you? Yes, of course you do!" She hesitated for the fraction of a second, and added: "And Mr. Seaton-Carew, Godfrey, whom you've met."
    Her husband, a stockily-built man, with a square, impassive countenance, favoured Seaton-Carew with an unsmiling stare, bowed infinitesimally, and turned from him to speak to Cynthia. The smile wavered pathetically on Lady Nest's face; for a moment she looked nervous, her eyes shifting from him to Seaton-Carew, and away again; then she gave her empty tinkle of laughter, and flitted off to exchange over-affectionate greetings with a raddled brunette in petunia satin.
    Sydney Butterwick, plunging away from the group like a stampeded mustang, startled several persons by his mien, which they afterwards described as distraught. He seemed to be making for the door, but fortunately for the smooth conduct of the Bridge-party he encountered a fellow balletomane, who hailed him with delight, exclaiming: "Sydney! I saw you last night. What did you think? Will she be a ballerina assoluta? Did you count her fouettes? Though I thought she was definitely at her best in the pas de quatre."
    These words had the happy effect of checking Sydney in mid-career. He responded automatically to them, and in an impassioned discussion on arabesques, elevations, enchainements, ballerinas, and danseurs nobles, managed to recover himself. His eyes, and his twitching fingers, showed him to be still very much upset, but by the time his ecstatic acquaintance had deserted him for a middleaged diplomat who could well remember the stars of the Maryinsky Theatre, he had apparently recollected the impropriety of incontinently rushing from the house; and went up to Sir Roderick Vickerstown instead, to discover from him who was to be his