Free Black Sheep by Georgette Heyer Page A

melancholy.”
    Abby’s brow was wrinkled. “Yes, but—Did Rowland know of—of the elopement ?’’
    “Oh, lord, yes!” He met her astonished look with a smile of pure derision. “Come, come, ma’am! Where have your wits gone begging? Celia was an heiress! Consider, too, the scandal that would have attended a rupture of the engagement! People must have talked ,and nothing could have been more obnoxious to a Wendover or a Morval! The affair had to be hushed up, and you must own that a very neat thing they made of it, between the four of them!”
    “ Four of them?”
    “That’s it: your father, Celia’s father, my father, and Rowland,” he explained.
    “Respectability!” she ejaculated bitterly. “Oh, how much I have detested that—that god of my father’s idolatry! Did your father worship at the same altar?”
    “No, what he worshipped was good ton. I wasn’t good ton at all, so he was glad of the chance to be rid of me, and I can’t say I blame him. I was very expensive, you know.”
    “From what I have heard, your brother was even more expensive!” she said. “I wonder he didn’t get rid of him! ”
    He smiled. “Ah, but Humphrey was his heir! Besides, his debts were those of honour: quite unexceptionable, particularly when contracted in clubs of high fashion! He was used to move in the first circles, too, which I—er—didn’t!”
    “No doubt he would have taken no exception to his son’s ruinous career!”
    “Oh, that doesn’t follow at all! Being badly under the hatches himself, he would probably have taken the most violent exception to it. However, he died before Stacy came of age, so we shall never know. Judging by my own experience, Stacy might have got himself into Dun territory at Oxford, but he could scarcely have gone to pigs-and-whistles—unless, of course, he was a regular out-and-outer, which, from what you’ve told me, he don’t seem to be.”
    “Were you up at Oxford?” she asked curiously.
    “No, I was down from Oxford— sent down!” he replied affably.
    She choked, but managed to say, after a brief struggle: “What—whatever may have been your youthful f-follies, sir, I must believe that you have outgrown them, and—and I cannot think that you would wish your nephew—the head of your house!—to—to retrieve his fortunes by seducing a girl—oh, a child! —into a clandestine marriage!”
    “But if the poor fellow is rolled-up what else can he do?” he asked.
    She said through gritted teeth: “For all I care, he may do anything he chooses, except marry my niece! Surely— surely you must perceive how—how wrong that would be!”
    “I must say, it seems mutton-headed to me,” he agreed. “He’d do better to fix his interest with a girl who is already in possession of her fortune.”
    “Good God, is that all you have to say?” she cried.
    “Well, what do you expect me to say?” he asked.
    “Say! I—I expect you to do something!”
    “Do what?”
    “Put an end to this affair!”
    “How?”
    “Speak to your nephew—tell him—oh, I don’t know! You must be able to think of something!”
    “Well, I’m not. Besides, why should I?”
    “Because it is your duty! Because he is your nephew!”
    “You’ll have to think of some better reasons than those. I haven’t any duty to Stacy, and I don’t suppose I should do it if I had.”
    “Mr Calverleigh, you cannot wish your nephew to sink himself so utterly below reproach!”
    “Wish? I haven’t any feelings in the matter at all. In fact, I don’t care a straw what he does. So if you are looking to me to rake him down, don’t!”
    “Oh, you are impossible!” she cried, starting up.
    “I daresay, but I’m damned if I’ll preach morality to oblige you! A nice cake I should make of myself! I like the way your eyes sparkle when you’re angry.”
    They positively flashed at this. One fulminating glance she cast at him before turning sharply away, and walking out of the room.
    The Leavenings were