Anne Barbour by Escapades Four Regency Novellas Page A

wiping grimy fingers on her already stained muslin skirt.
    “Lord yes,” he muttered. “I remember now. She gets the place smelling like a French—that is, it’s always rather stultifying.” The young man, after a dubious glance at the dirt-streaked surface of the bench, lifted the tails of his elegantly cut riding coat and perched instead on the relatively clean corner of a potting table.
    Sally eyed him suspiciously. “What are you doing back in Somerset, Charlie? Come down from London on a repairing lease, have you?”
    A shadow crossed his attractive features, but his grin crinkled as engagingly as ever. He sketched a bow from his seated position. “I came just to see you. Yes, truly,” he added in response to her expression of unrelieved skepticism. “I have a proposition for you.”
    Sally rose precipitously from her seat and began to reascend the ladder. “The answer is no. Or rather,” she amended, “absolutely, irrevocably, and never in this world, no.”
    Charlie, too, shot upward and, plucking her from the ladder, replaced her on the bench. He remained standing above her to prevent any more such attempts at flight.
    “You haven’t even heard what I have to say,” he said, a look of hurt dismay in his eyes that did little to diminish the mischief sparkling in their black depths.
    “Stop bamming me, Charles George Darracot. If you think I am going to lend myself to another of your hair-brained schemes, you’ve gone barmy. Do you recall,” she asked, her foot tapping ominously on the earthen surface of the greenhouse floor, “the last time you ‘had a proposition’ for me? You left me standing knee-deep in a duck pond at two o’clock in the morning while you hared off to Brighton with that brazen little lightskirt.”
    “Sally!” Charlie’s voice was filled with shocked reproach. “She was not a lightskirt, that is, not precisely, and she ...”
    “I rest my case,” said Sally, attempting once more to rise. Charlie, however, possessed himself of her hands and drew her down again on the bench to sit beside him, the pristine folds of his riding coat forgotten. His expression turned serious.
    “Sally, listen. Are you, or are you not, my best friend?”
    “Of course, but ...”
    “And have I, or have I not, always come to your assistance when you needed me?”
    There was a moment’s silence.
    “Yes, I suppose,” said Sally in a small voice, “but, Charlie ...”
    “All right, then. Just listen. I think you’ll find my, er, plan of great interest.”
    Sally felt her insides clench warily, but she returned his gaze without comment.
    Charlie’s eyes fell before hers, and he stared at his hands for a moment before speaking.
    “Have you ever heard of a tontine?”
    “A what?” Sally looked at him blankly.
    “A tontine. It’s a sort of wager, or rather ...”
    He broke off and ran long fingers through his disordered locks.
    “I’d better begin at the beginning. It all started a long time ago, when I was at Oxford.”
    “Oxford!” Sally’s voice rose in startled query. “Charlie, is this going to take very long? I really do have a great many things ...”
    “No, it won’t take long,” he replied testily, “if you’ll just let me continue.” He drew a deep breath. “As I was saying, one pretty latish evening during my last year there, a bunch of us were sitting about in Fremont Major’s rooms. I won’t say we hadn’t been at the brandy barrel, but we weren’t jug bitten, or anything of the sort. James Wentworth was complaining that his mother was already on the lookout for a suitable parti for him. And he only nineteen for God’s sake. Then Freddie Bremerton chimed in to say that his bride had been chosen for him when he was still in his cradle. Pretty bitter about it he was, too.
    “Before long, we were all in full cry against a system that forces a chap to marry just when he gets out in the world and has a chance at a little jollification.”
    “If you think it’s