CHAPTER XXVIII
"This is a real pleasure to me," Peckover remarked, determined to get on flirting terms without wasting precious time in preliminary small-talk.
"This lovely day?" Ulrica responded, with an obvious pretence of misunderstanding his drift. "Yes, it is quite a treat."
"I meant," he pursued, with a stimulating glance at the fresh, pretty face, highly provocative now with a roguish smile, "a walk with you. I've been longing for this moment ever since I first set eyes on you."
Her glance of amused surprise suggested that she thought he was plunging in medias res with a vengeance. "Clearly," she commented, "patience is one of your virtues."
"I don't know about patience," he replied. "If I've waited a long time for my chance, it has not been exactly patience, but because I couldn't get it sooner."
"Everything comes to him who waits," Ulrica observed with a careless laugh, to show she was not taking him too seriously.
"I hope you don't mind the change?" he suggested.
"In the weather?" she asked mischievously.
"Bother the weather! No. From Quorn to me."
"That remains to be seen," she answered. "So far, I have no objection to it."
"Same here. Lady Ormstork is a proper old grandee, but, well, naturally she's not exactly my idea of an afternoon's fun."
"I dare say not," Ulrica said dryly.
"Now you are," he declared boldly.
She ignored the compliment together with the amorous look which accompanied it. "I have often wondered how you and dear old Ormstork were getting on;" she remarked with self-possessed blandness. "One hears of such curious matches nowadays."
For a moment Peckover hardly realized the drift of the remark. Then he stopped dead. "Why, you don't mean to say," he gasped, "you thought I was making love to the old gal?"
She looked intensely amused at his face of disgust. "Lady Ormstork is not bad looking for her age," she suggested wickedly. "You must admit she is rather handsome."
"I dare say," he returned, not certain how far she was in earnest. "It never occurred to me to take stock of her."
Ulrica kept her countenance steady, but her eyes were dancing. "Then your devotion was purely Platonic?" she observed.
"You may call it what you like," he replied, playing for safety. "As I wasn't taking any."
"Ah, then, I suppose it was devotion to your friend, Lord Quorn," she pursued, the corners of her mouth twitching with mischief. "Of course. He saved your life, didn't he? And you—yes; how generous of you."
"Oh, bother my life," Peckover exclaimed with an impatient laugh. They had covered a good deal of ground without getting on very far towards the end he had in view, and any moment now Quorn might run them down.
"I expect poor old Quorn is feeling rather sick by now," he remarked pointedly, "at your giving him the slip and going off with me."
"You don't think he'll be jealous?" she asked with a laugh.
"Shouldn't be surprised."
"There is no real reason why he should be," she said.
"Nor no reason why he shouldn't be—if you like," he rejoined insinuatingly.
"I don't understand you, Mr. Gage," she said, looking at the same time as though she understood him perfectly.
"If you liked me half as well as I like you," he explained bluntly, under the compelling spur of her charms.
"You think it would matter to Lord Quorn?"
"You ought to know best," he returned. "I know it would matter a lot to me. The question is, which do you prefer?"
"Oh, his lordship, of course," she answered mockingly.
"Because he is a lord?"
"Naturally."
"I see," said Peckover catching her tone. "Is that your own original idea or Lady Ormstork's?"
"It is certainly Lady Ormstork's," was the evasive answer.
"But not yours. Not altogether," he urged wickedly. "You might have room in your heart for a little fondness for me?"
She laughed. "Why should I?"
"It would be such a treat," he pleaded.
"You are very, what Lady Ormstork calls, unconventional," she said quizzingly.
"Does that mean nice?"
"It may."
"You can't tell unless you give a fellow a chance," he said amorously, as his arm, extended behind her, somewhat unnecessarily, to put aside a bough, remained there. "Ulrica!" he murmured.
"Mr. Gage!"
"Percival—Percy," he suggested with empressement. "Ulrica, time's short, so don't let's quibble about trifles. You're the loveliest girl I've ever set eyes on," he continued with glib passion, "and I'm desperately in love with you. I've been dying to tell you so all the time, but never could till this blessed chance came along. Ulrica, say you're a little fond of me, in return."
"Mr. Gage!" Ulrica's expression was compounded of indignation, scorn and amusement. But perhaps the last was the only sentiment that was genuine. "It is not necessary," she protested, "to overdo the part like this."
"The part?"
"Lady Ormstork's little scheme," she said coolly. "You need not take the trouble to make it quite so life-like."
"Oh, it's no trouble," he assured her promptly. "It is a pleasure."
"I understood," she observed laughingly, "that the idea was to put it into Quorn's head that he ought to be jealous."
"That's it," Peckover replied readily. "And I'm doing my very best to give him cause for jealousy."
"It is very spirited of you," she said, with her provocative, mischievous twinkle. "But you need not act quite so hard, need you? At any rate till he sees us."
He made a wry face. "Not much fun in waiting till he sees us. It occurs to me this is a little game it pays to play in earnest. That is," he added pointedly, "if both parties are agreeable."
"Ah, that's the question," she said tantalizingly.
"Won't you answer it?" he asked insinuatingly.
"H'm! I rather like you," she admitted. "You are breezy."
"Thanks," he replied. "Then I ought to be in request on a warm day like this."
"Lord Quorn," she said with provoking irresponsiveness, "is breezy. But with him it blows from a rather different quarter. And he is apt to be a little gusty."
"Ah, yes. Dare say he would be," Peckover agreed, recalling certain squally passages in their intercourse. "Well, after all, a change of air ought to be grateful. Does you good."
Ulrica laughed. "With the wind chopping about there is likely to be a storm coming."
"Is there?" he returned. "Then let us take advantage of the fine weather while it lasts."
He was about to give a practical suggestion of how they might make the best of the sunny hours, with his arm only prevented from encircling her waist by a vigorous repulsive action on Ulrica's part, followed by a suggestion that the conditions did not exactly lend themselves to waltzing, when suddenly a man emerged from the bushes and stood in front of them. It was not the Lord Quorn they were expecting, but the real Quorn who had sighted them while prowling about the grounds, and now confronted them with an expression of jealous irritation on his now chronically aggrieved face.
"Hullo, my cunning little puppet," he exclaimed rudely. "Enjoying yourself this fine morning?"
"Trying to," replied Peckover, betwixt resentment and politic submissiveness.
"That's right," said Quorn with a distinctly objectionable sneer. "Poaching on the preserves of the person who calls himself Lord Quorn, it strikes me."
"Who is this rude person?" asked Ulrica, not knowing whether to be amused or alarmed.
"Oh, he's all right," Peckover assured her uneasily.
"Yes," responded Quorn with dismaying suggestiveness. "I am particularly all right. About the only man on the place who is all right, it strikes me."
Peckover, reduced to an apprehensive and gloomy silence, noticed that Quorn's eyes were fixed on Ulrica with a look of unmistakable and more than passing admiration. The aggressive manner was softening too, clearly for the lady's benefit, and indeed Miss Buffkin showed signs of a temptation to laugh at the embarrassment of her cavalier.
"Right you are," Peckover said, nodding to Quorn as pleasantly as the situation permitted, and at the same time trying to get a chance of winking at Ulrica to intimate thereby that she need not take the new-comer seriously. "Well, we must be getting up to the Towers now."
But Quorn showed no intention of budging from their path. His eyes were still fixed in the same resolute admiration on the fascinating Ulrica, and it was manifest that the spell of her beauty was holding him more strongly every moment.
"You run off to the Towers, old man," he ordered Peckover, with a wave of the arm, while his eyes never left the object of their attraction. "You're wanted up there at once. I'll escort the lady."
There was a note of determination in his voice that Peckover had not noticed before. Doubtless it was derived from the enchantment of Miss Buffkin's personality. Peckover dared not disobey. Happily a ruse suggested itself to him. He nodded to Ulrica; "See you again presently," and made off down the winding path.
Scarcely had Quorn time to pull himself together in his overmastering admiration, and frame the preamble of a rough flirtation, when Peckover came rushing back with apprehensive face.
"Well, what's the matter now?" Quorn demanded, upset by the interruption.
"Lions on the prowl," Peckover announced in a loud whisper.
"Lions?" cried the exasperated Quorn. "What do you mean. You must be dr——" Then the meaning flashed upon him, and he grew white. "Not Leos?" he demanded hoarsely.
Peckover nodded warningly. "Both of 'em. Looking nasty. They'll be round the corner in a moment."
Lord Quorn had decided before that moment elapsed not to stay to test the truth of the statement. With an exclamation which savoured less of good manners than of abject, if wrathful, fear, he sprang without a word of leave-taking or excuse into the bushes and disappeared.
Then Peckover winked at the astounded Miss Buffkin.
"That was clever of you," she remarked with a puzzled laugh. "How did you do it?"
"Superior power of intellect," was his somewhat vague and unsatisfying explanation. "Mind can start muscle any day. Never mind that poor chap. Where did we leave off?"
"You wouldn't," she replied significantly. "If I remember rightly."
"No more I won't," Peckover exclaimed, with boldness increased by his late coup. "Wasn't I just——? I don't mind beginning again, if you don't."
His impudence made her burst out laughing. "You are absurd. And you are not treating your friend well."
"P'raps not," he returned. "But when I look at you I feel called upon to treat myself well. Besides, he'll never miss it."
"Miss what?" she asked, innocently or by design falling into his trap.
"A kiss," he answered. "You'll let me have one, Ulrica?"
Miss Buffkin was saved the trouble of dealing with the—perhaps embarrassing—request, by the appearance of Gage, who came up somewhat heated and resentful, followed by Lady Ormstork, whose face wore the look which dowager peeresses wear when their plans, matrimonial and financial, succeed.