Free Friday's Child by Georgette Heyer Page B

his fiery stares at Mr Fakenham. “It was you who told me so!” he cried accusingly. “Now, upon my soul, Ferdy—”
    “All a mistake!” said Ferdy feebly. “Never at my best before noon!”
    “Well, as a matter of fact, that’s what I did do,” said Sherry, with a candour bordering, in the opinion of his friends, on the foolhardy. “Only she wouldn’t have me.”
    “She refused you!” Wrotham cried, his haggard countenance suddenly radiant.
    “That’s what I’m telling you. It’s my belief she’s got better game in view than either of us, George. If she can bring him up to scratch, she’ll have Severn, you mark my words!”
    “Sherry!” thundered the distraught lover, springing to his feet and clenching his fists, “one word of disparagement of the loveliest, the most divine, the most perfect woman, and I call you out to answer for it!”
    “Well, you won’t get me out,” responded the Viscount.
    “Am I to call you a coward?” demanded Wrotham.
    “No, no, George, don’t do that!” begged Ferdy, much alarmed. “Can’t call poor Sherry a coward because he don’t want to go out with you! Be reasonable, old fellow!”
    “Oh, lord, let him call me what he likes!” said the Viscount, quite disgusted. “If I weren’t going to be married today, damned if I wouldn’t draw your claret, George! It’s time someone let a little of that hot blood of yours!”
    “What’s more,” said Mr Ringwood severely. “Sherry never said a word you could take amiss. Suppose she does mean to marry Severn? What of it? No harm in that, is there? Dare say she’s taken a fancy to be a duchess. Anyone might!”
    “I will not believe that she could be so worldly!” Wrotham said, striding over to the window, and staring out into the street.
    His long-suffering friends, relieved to see that his rage had, for the moment, abated, returned to the consideration of the problem confronting Sherry. Their discussion presently attracted Lord Wrotham’s attention, and he came away from the window, and quite mildly asked the Viscount to explain how he came to be marrying a totally unknown damsel. Sherry very obligingly favoured him with a brief resume of his elopement; and Lord Wrotham, convinced at last that he had relinquished all pretensions to the hand of the Incomparable Isabella, warmly shook him by the hand, and offered him his felicitations.
    “Yes, that’s all very well,” said Mr Ringwood, “but it don’t help us to find a likely bishop for this special licence.”
    “It’ll have to be a Fleet marriage, Sherry,” said Mr Fakenham mournfully.
    “No,” said Mr Ringwood. “Won’t do at all. Not legal.”
    At this point, Lord Wrotham shocked the company into silence by saying that he was acquainted with a bishop. He explained this extraordinary lapse by adding apologetically that his mother had been as thick as thieves with the fellow any time these past ten years; and, being still under the revulsion of feeling brought about by the realization that the Viscount was no longer one of his rivals, offered to introduce him to this cleric.
    The Viscount at once closed with the offer, and proceeded to enlist the services of Mr Ringwood. Mr Ringwood, learning that his task was to escort his friend’s bride on a tour of the milliners’ and mantua-makers’ shops which graced the town, and to dissuade her from purchasing garments unsuited to her station, goggled at the Viscount in dismay. His expostulations went quite unheeded. The Viscount assured him that he would deal famously with Miss Wantage; and, after appointing a rendezvous with Lord Wrotham, bore him off in his phaeton to Grillon’s Hotel.

Chapter 5
     
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    Miss Wantage, in spite of her natural terror at being left without support in such a formidable place as Grillon’s Hotel, had passed a peaceful night, the unaccustomed excitement of the previous day having made her tired enough to