Charity Girl by Georgette Heyer

caught his first, callow fancy, to the high flyer who had almost ruined him; and he had frequently officiated at far from respectable parties in Arlington Street. But he had never known the Viscount to drive up to the door, in broad daylight, with an unattended Young Female sitting beside him. His first impression, that the Viscount had brought home with him a country lightskirt, was dispelled by a second, covert look at Miss Steane: for one thing, she was no lightskirt; and for another the Viscount never seemed to take to very young females. To Aldham's experienced eye she was more like a girl just broken out of the schoolroom – though what the Viscount was doing with any such was a problem beyond his power to solve.
       But when he had been favoured with a glib explanation of her presence in the curricle he accepted it without even mental reservation. It was just like my Lady Emborough, he thought, to saddle my lord with a chit of a girl, with instructions to conduct her to her home in Hertfordshire, just as though it had been on the way from Hazelfield to London. And very much embarrassed the young lady was, by the looks of her! So he received her with a fatherly smile, and ushered her into the narrow hall of the house, saying that he would fetch up Mrs Aldham directly to wait upon her.
       The Viscount lingered on the flagway to exchange words with the second of his chief mentors and well-wishers, the expression on whose face, compound of sorrow and censure, caused him to say: 'Yes, you've no need to look at me like that – as though I didn't know as well as you do that this is a rare case of pickles!'
       'My lord,' said Stebbing very earnestly, 'when I heard you tell Miss you was going to take her into Hertfordshire I was that comfumbuscated I pretty near fell off my seat, because it looked to me like you was going to take her to Wolversham!'
       'No, I did think of doing so, but it wouldn't answer,' replied the Viscount.
       'No, my lord – as I would have taken the liberty of telling your lordship! As I beg leave to do now, for I wouldn't be able to sleep easy in my bed if I didn't, and it don't signify if you choose to turn me off, because – '
       'Of course it doesn't signify! You wouldn't go!' retorted the Viscount.
       The corners of Stebbing's grim mouth twitched involuntarily, but he refused to be beguiled. He said: 'My lord, I've known you do some hey-go-mad things in your time, but you've never till this day done anything so cockle-brained as to make me think you must be short of a sheet! Which I do! My lord, you're never going to take Miss to Inglehurst!'
       'But I am,' asserted the Viscount. 'Unless you can suggest where else I can take her?' He paused, regarding his henchman with mockery in his eyes. 'You can't, can you?'
       'You hadn't ought to have brought her to London at all!' muttered Stebbing.
       'Very likely not, but it's a waste of time to lay that in my dish now! I did bring her to London, and must now abide the consequence. Even you must own that to abandon her here would be the action of a damned ugly customer – which I am not, however hey-go-mad you may think me!' He saw that Stebbing was deeply troubled, and smiled, dropping a hand on his shoulder, and slightly shaking him. 'Stubble it, you old rumstick! To whom else should I turn for help in this hobble than to Miss Hetta? Bless her, she's never yet failed me! Good God, you should know how often we've rescued one another from scrapes!'
       'When you was children!' Stebbing said. 'That was dif ferent, my lord!'
       'Not a bit of it! Stable the grays now, and tell the postilions I shall be needing them to carry me to Inglehurst within the hour. I'll take my own chaise, but I shall have to hire horses: Ockley can be depended on to choose the right type, but warn him that I mean to return tonight. That's all!'
       He gave Stebbing no opportunity to utter any further protests, but turned on his heel,