Free The Quiet Gentleman by Georgette Heyer

doing the punctilio, you know!’
    Thus dismissed, Martin bowed grandly, and left the house, closely followed by Mr Warboys, who said helpfully, as they mounted their hacks: ‘No sense in getting into a miff, dear boy! Come about again presently, I daresay! Very unlucky chance your brother should have been riding in this direction, but not a bit of good staying there to outface him! Corkbrained thing to do! The devil of it is he’s a dashed handsome fellow. Good address too, besides the title.’
    ‘If he thinks I will permit him to trifle with Marianne – !’ said Martin, between his teeth.
    ‘No reason to think he means to do so,’ said Mr Warboys soothingly. ‘Seemed very taken with her!’
    Martin turned his head sharply to look at him, so menacing an expression in his dark eyes that he was thrown into disorder. ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘Well, now you come to ask me,’ said Mr Warboys, with the air of one making a discovery, ‘I don’t know what I mean! Spoke without thinking! Often do! Runs in the family: uncle of mine was just the same. Found himself married to a female with a squint all through speaking without thinking.’
    ‘Oh, to hell with your uncle!’ Martin said angrily.
    ‘No use saying that, dear boy. The old gentleman took a pious turn years back. Won’t go to hell – not a chance of it! Aunt might – never met such a queer-tempered woman in my life!’
    ‘ Will you stop boring on and on about your relatives?’ said Martin savagely.
    ‘Don’t mind doing that: no pleasure to me to talk about them! But if you think you’re going to have a turn-up with me, old fellow, you’re devilish mistaken!’
    ‘Saphead! Why should I?’
    ‘There ain’t any reason, but whenever you take one of your pets,’ said Mr Warboys frankly, ‘it don’t seem to signify to you whose cork you draw! All I say is, it ain’t going to be mine!’
    Meanwhile, Sir Thomas, having ushered the Earl into one of his saloons and furnished him with a comfortable chair, and a glass of Madeira, had arrived at a more precise understanding of the service which had been rendered to his daughter. He chuckled a good deal over it, rubbing his hands together, and ejaculating: ‘Cow-handed little puss! I shall roast her finely for this, I can tell you! All’s well that ends well – though I’ll wager her Mama will have something to say to her giving her groom the slip! But there! she is our only chick, my lord, and we don’t care to be too strict, and that’s the truth! Yes, the Almighty never saw fit to give us another, and though I shan’t deny we did wish for a son – for there will be no one to inherit the baronetcy when I’m gone, you know – it was not to be, and, damme, we wouldn’t exchange our naughty puss for all the sons in creation!’
    Gervase said what was proper, and sipped his wine, watching Sir Thomas, as he bustled about, casting another log on to the fire, altering the position of a screen to exclude a possible draught, tugging at the bell-rope to summon a servant to bring in the ratafia-wine for Miss Marianne. He was a stout little man, with a shrewd pair of eyes set in a round face whose original ruddy complexion had been much impaired by a tropical climate. He was dressed without much pretension to fashion in a blue coat and buckskin breeches, but he wore a large ruby-pin in his neckcloth, and another set in a ring upon his finger, so that he was clearly a person of affluence, if not of taste. The Earl was at a loss to decide from what order of society he had sprung, for although the cast of his countenance was aristocratic, with its aquiline nose, and finely-moulded lips, and his voice that of a well-bred man, his manners lacked polish, and he had a rough, colloquial way of expressing himself. His wife, on the other hand, had the appearance and the manners of a gentlewoman, and the style in which his house had been furnished was as elegant as it was expensive. That he had at some period during