My lord flung up a hand. “You interrupt me at every turn! Allow me to speak!” The tone was not that of a request; John looked helplessly at Robin, who held up a finger. It was quite plain to Robin that his father was greatly annoyed to think that anyone but himself had had a hand in the management of the affair.
“I have said I was disregarded,” my lord continued. “It is very true! tragically true! Do you suppose that I had not foreseen the apprehension of my daughter? It is possible you could think I had not made my plans in preparation of this?” He paused a moment. Robin, who had thought precisely this, held his piece. My lord, satisfied that he was not going to venture to speak, swept on. “It was, from the first moment of deviation from my original schemes a contingency to be expected. I expected it. It happens. My daughter is arrested; my servant, not yet lost to all sense of what is due to me, sets off to apprise me of it. He meets Sir Anthony Fanshawe. He should never have done such a thing!”
John was moved to answer. “’Deed, and how could I help it, my lord?” he said indignantly.
“Of course you could have helped it. In your place should I have fallen into the arms of Sir Anthony? Certainly not! Sir Anthony — I excuse him only because he has not had the inestimable advantage of being trained by me from childhood — must needs meddle — must needs put a clumsy finger into a pie of my making! And John! Does he inform Sir Anthony that it is unwise, nay, dangerous to meddle in my affairs?”
“Yes, my lord,” said John unexpectedly. “I did.”
“You put me out with these senseless interruptions!” said his lordship tartly. “You aided and abetted him in a flamboyant, noisy rescue! I — Tremaine of Barham — ”
“I thought it would come,” murmured Robin.
My lord paid no heed. “I — Tremaine of Barham — had a score of subtle schemes for Prue’s release. I shall not divulge them now. They have been overset by folly and conceit!”
Robin straightened in his chair. “By what, sir?”
“Conceit!” pronounced my lord. “A vice I detest! You flatter yourselves that you could carry this through without my assistance. My daughter, as I understand, is riding all over the country like a hoyden with a man who has not yet obtained my consent to be affianced to her. The impropriety holds me speechless! The Honourable Prudence Tremaine is whisked off like a piece of baggage, smuggled away to the house of a woman of whom I know nothing, as though she were in sooth a criminal flying for her life!”