“Yes, my lord. To Meering,” replied Mr Bridges. “Mr Drelincourt desired me to hire a post-chaise for him, and set off at two o’clock. If your lordship had come twenty minutes ago, you’d have caught him.”
Lethbridge dropped the guinea into his hand. “I may still catch him,” he said, and ran lightly down the steps of the house.
Hailing a hackney, he had himself driven back to Half-Moon Street. His household found itself goaded into sudden activity; a footman was sent off to the stables to order my lord’s light post-chaise and four to be brought round immediately, and my lord went upstairs, calling to his valet to bestir himself, and lay out a travelling dress. In twenty minutes his lordship, now clad in a coat of brown cloth, with his sword at his side, and top-boots on his feet, came out of the house again, gave his postilions certain pithy instructions, and climbed up into the chaise, a light carriage very like a sedan, slung on whip springs over very high wheels. As the equipage rounded the corner into Piccadilly, heading westwards, his lordship leaned back at his ease, calm in the knowledge that no hired post-chaise and four could hope to reach Meering, even with an hour’s start, before being overtaken by him.
Chapter Sixteen
Mr Drelincourt, as it happened, had no idea that Lord Lethbridge could be on his heels.
Not dreaming that anybody, least of all my Lord Lethbridge, had discovered his theft of the brooch, he saw no need to make haste down to Meering, and put off starting on his journey until after luncheon. Mr Drelincourt, though lavish in dress and some other matters, was very careful how he spent money on small items. The hiring of a chaise to carry him thirty-three miles into the country cost him a pang, and to pay, on top of that, possibly as much as four or five shillings for lunch at an inn would have seemed to him a gross extravagance. By lunching at his lodgings he would not be put to the necessity of baiting on the road at all, for he thought he would arrive at Meering in time to dine with his cousin. He would put up for the night there, and if Rule did not offer him one of his own carriages for his return it would be a shabby piece of behaviour, and one which he did not at all anticipate, for Rule, to do him justice, was not mean, and must be well aware that the charges for a post-chaise would be lightened if it made the return journey empty.
It was in a pleasurable frame of mind that Mr Drelincourt set forward upon his journey. The day was fine, quite ideal for a drive into the country, and after he had let down the window in the door in front of him to order the postilions not to ride at such a rattling pace, he had nothing to do but to lean back and admire the scenery or indulge his imagination in agreeable reflection.
It was not to be supposed that there was any portion of the Drelincourt inheritance unknown to Mr Drelincourt. He had recognized the brooch in a flash, and could have recited unerringly the different pieces which comprised that particular set of jewels. When he had stooped so quickly to pick it up he had had no very clear idea in his head of what he meant to do with it, but a night’s repose had brought him excellent counsel. He had no doubt at all that Horatia had been concealed somewhere in Lethbridge’s house; the brooch proved that to his satisfaction, and ought to prove it to Rule’s satisfaction also. He had always thought Horatia a jade; for his part he was not in the least surprised (though shocked) to discover that she had taken advantage of Rule’s absence to spend the night in her lover’s arms. Rule, who was always too stupidly sleepy to see what was going on under his nose, would probably be greatly surprised, and even more shocked than his cousin, whose obvious and not too painful duty it was to appraise him of his wife’s loose conduct at once. There could be only one course open to his lordship then, and Mr Drelincourt was inclined to think that after so disastrous a venture into matrimony, he would hardly risk another.
Altogether the world seemed a better place to Mr Drelincourt this mild September day than it had seemed for several months.
Not in the general way a keen student of Nature, he was moved today to admire the russet tints in the trees, and to approve from the well-sprung chaise the bursts of fine country through which he passed.