Joan Smith Read Online Free PDF Page A

least,” Peter agreed.
    The place, though small and modest, was set up “dashed conveniently,” just as Nick had described it. The glory of at last shaking free of his mother was an even stronger inducement, and with Nick’s warning ringing in his ears that it would be picked up in two minutes, Lord Clappet laid down his blunt and became a paying tenant for the Season.
    While this transaction was going forth, Luten drove to Berkeley Square to set his sister’s mind at ease. “Could you not have talked him out of Newmarket?” Maggie asked.
    “It’s best to put a hundred miles between him and the female,” Luten decreed.
    “Yes, but if he is bitten with the racing bug while he is there, it is hardly better than the other. It is all Nicolson’s fault. He is the one turning Peter’s head in this direction . ”
    “Peter could be worse occupied. I’ll soon be going up that way myself, and will keep an eye on him. At least there was no serious attachment to the woman Mrs. Rolfe spoke of. It was a passing fancy—a few days’ flirtation. He had the sense to cry off when she turned grasping.”
    “I don’t see why children must take so long to grow up,” she complained, but was soon complaining of the speed with which Peter had changed from a beautiful, docile child to a headstrong young man. Her whining did much to hasten Lord Luten from her saloon and into the sunlight.
     

Chapter Four
     
    It was nearing noon the next day before Mrs. Rolfe conveyed to Lady Clappet the news of her son’s two recent visits to Mrs. Harrington. Her voice throbbed with sympathy and her eyes gleamed with delight as she reenacted the melodrama: Clappet’s desire for secrecy and the hussy’s insistence that he should tell his mother all. The morning’s visit had new plot thickenings to conjure over.
    Scarcely a minute after the dame had left the door of Berkeley Square, a hastily scribbled, tear-stained epistle was being trotted around to Luten’s doorway in Belgrave Square. As he was not home, however, several more hours of weeping occupied the widow before her brother stood before her, elegantly attired in those black vestments considered suitable for a night on the town.
    “What is it now?” he asked testily. “I wish you would find yourself a new husband and surrogate father for Peter. I am becoming demmed tired of these summonses, Maggie.”
    “It has happened!” she wailed, dissolving into a fresh burst of tears on the hard sofa.
    Her Blue Saloon at eventide was gloomy. The walls were, hung in a dark blue patterned paper that soaked up the light of three elegant lamps, without much brightening the chamber.
    “I assumed some new tribulation had sought you out. I cannot for the life of me understand how every affliction finds you, so well as you hide yourself in this cave.”
    “It’s Peter,” she breathed through the folds of her moist handkerchief.
    “What?”
    “Peter and that woman. He lied to you, Luten. My own flesh and blood turned out a liar and a womanizer. I doubt I will endure this blow. When he comes back, he will find me stretched under the elms of Hanch House with his father.”
    “In the meanwhile, can you revive yourself sufficiently to tell me what is going on?”
    “He has been back to her, after promising it was over. Last night, and again this very morning after he left me.”
    “He told me he was at the Daffy Club!” Luten exclaimed, harking back to the morning’s visit. He remembered the pale face, the dark circles under Peter’s eyes, but he couldn’t remember any signs of lying.
    “Oh, can human heart bear it!” Lady Clappet sighed. “Last night the hussy urged him to tell me about her. It is marriage, no less, she has in her eye, you see. Why else would she ask him to tell me? Then this very morning as Nettie Rolfe was leaving the door to bring me the dreadful news, he went again. She overheard him say, for of course she lingered in the hallway when she knew he was there, that he