Page 46 of The Society Catch
‘Nothing is the matter. I have just got rather a lot on my mind. The new foal? Yes, excellent news, she is one of the Starlight line so I have high hopes of her. I must see about a bonus for Hickling.’
‘And for Giles,’ Hebe teased.
‘Nonsense. He is eating us out of house and home, it was time he earned his keep.’
Giles, who was making substantial inroads into the roast goose, raised a quizzical eyebrow at his friend but did not say anything.
Hebe rolled her eyes expressively at Joanna and announced, ‘Well, Joanna, I can see we must bear all the burden of the conversation ourselves. Let us discuss hemlines.’
Even this dire threat did not appear to register with the men who spoke when spoken to, assisted the ladies punctiliously to whichever dish they required and otherwise remained silent.
‘They are communicating with each other you know,’ Hebe said in exasperation when she and Joanna retired to the Panelled Chamber, leaving Giles and Alex to their port.
‘I have seen them do it before,’ she continued, sinking ontoachaise longueand putting her feet up on the footstool which Joanna fetched. ‘They lapse into long silences, occasionally make eye contact and grunt. Then the next day they have apparently planned a journey, or decided what to do about poachers or announce they are going to a prize fight. I challenged Alex about it once. He just said that when men know each other really well, as he and Giles got to do in the army, then they don’t need to talk. Or prattle, as he rather unkindly put it.’
‘Then what are they planning now?’ Joanna asked.
‘I do not know. I just hope it isn’t…’
The door opened and the men walked in. ‘Would you mind if we play billiards?’ Alex said.
‘No, of course not.’
Alex got as far as the door before turning. ‘Oh yes, I almost forgot. I will have to go up to Town tomorrow. Some slight matter of business.’
‘I thought I would go with him,’ Giles added. ‘We will be back on Wednesday.’
‘No.’ Hebe said with such emphasis that Joanna jumped. ‘No, you will not do anything so foolish, either of you.’
‘What?’
Hebe turned to her, anger sparkling in her eyes. ‘Ask them why they are going.’
‘But Alex said, a matter of business.’
‘Ask them what business.’
Joanna had never seen Hebe so furious. More out of anxiety to keep her calm than a desire to interrogate her host she said, ‘Please explain, Alex. Hebe seems rather upset.’
Alex’s face wore the darkly severe expression which had led others to describe him as looking like a member of the Spanish Inquisition. ‘We have to talk to a man, that is all.’
‘Which man?’ Hebe asked Joanna between gritted teeth.
Feeling as though she was caught up in the midst of a farceJoanna dutifully repeated, ‘Which man?’ and was met by two equally stony and uncommunicative faces.
‘Nothing you need worry about,’ Alex said, fatally misjudging his wife for once.
‘In that case Joanna and I are coming with you.’
‘I forbid it.’ A shiver of awed excitement ran down Joanna’s back. Alex in a towering rage was a force to be reckoned with.
‘And I forbid you to fight duels,’ Hebe snapped back.
‘I am not…’
‘But Giles is, is he not? And you are going to stand his second. And if he kills that wretched Carstairs the pair of you will have to leave the country. And if you think I am going to have a baby all by myself, Alex Beresford…’
‘I am not going to kill him,’ Giles said, managing to get a word in between the furious married pair.
