The Launching of Roger Brook by Dennis Wheatley

he said incredulously, his relief struggling with a sudden newborn jealousy.
    ‘Why not?’ she shrugged. ‘It has just as much attraction for a woman as a man, and it’s absurdly unfair that men should love where they list while girls are supposed to go through life like marble images.’
    ‘Who was it with?’ he demanded truculently.
    ‘’Tis none of your business. Yet I don’t mind telling you. In London I favoured one of my beaux far above the rest. Old Aunt Sophie was so exhausted from sitting up for me to all hours on rout seats and stiff-backed gilded chairs thatshe slept most afternoons. My little fool of a cousin, Dorothea, took some evading but two or three times a week I managed to give her the slip and go out shopping with my maid. Jenny was a sensible gel and easily bribeable, so I used to send her to do my shopping and spend the time pleasuring my lover in his rooms in Jermyn Street.’
    Quite illogically, in view of his recent act, Roger was frankly horrified. ‘D’you really mean that you actually went to a man’s rooms of your own free will and let him seduce you?’
    ‘Well, what if I did,’ she shrugged. ‘I see no reason why
you
should look so shocked about it. But as a matter of fact, he didn’t seduce me. I’d lost all I had to lose last spring, before I went to London.’
    Roger’s new feeling of jealousy returned with redoubled force at the thought that someone in the neighbourhood had been the first to enjoy Georgina’s charms, and the not unnatural assumption that on that first occasion she must have been forced to it against her will, made him positively seethe with anger.
    ‘Tell me his name,’ he cried. Tell me his name, and, by heaven, I’ll kill him.’
    ‘You won’t; and you couldn’t if you tried, my littlest gallant. ’Twas Captain Coignham.’
    Roger’s eyes almost popped from his head. ‘What!’ he gasped, ‘Not the highwayman?’
    ‘Yes, indeed. I know of no other.’
    He groaned. ‘Oh, Georgina; and I’ve warned you so often that ’tis dangerous for you to ride alone in the forest.’
    His fervid imagination swiftly conjured up a wild scene of the screaming Georgina being dragged from her horse, pulled in among the bushes, brutally raped and left dishevelled and swooning. Yet his morbid curiosity got the better of him and he could not resist adding: ‘It must have been simply terrible for you; but how did it happen?’
    ‘’Twas not so terrible,’ she smiled reminiscently. ‘We came face to face no great distance from the Queen’s Elm. I’ve always felt that jewellery was made to be worn, not kept locked up in a box. I had that day a fine sapphire ring on my finger and a diamond aigrette in my hat. He greeted me most polite, but bade me hand them over. I parleyed with him a little and begged him to let me at least keep the ring, since it had been my mother’s. He declared that I couldkeep both the ornaments if I was willing to ransom them with a kiss a-piece. He was a personable fellow, well groomed and of good address, so I considered the saving of my jewels cheap at the price. We both dismounted and he gave me the first kiss. ’Twas a long one and the fellow knew his business. Then he picked me up in his strong arms and carried me through the trees to a mossy bank, as he said, to give me the other in surroundings more suited to my beauty. Call me a brazen hussy if you will, but I’ve not a shadow of regret over that sunny day last spring when I came upon Captain Coignham in the forest. ’Twas a fine romantic way to lose one’s maidenhead.’
    Roger remained silent for a few moments. He had often heard of the notorious highwayman but never seen him. Georgina’s story of the encounter was so unlike anything he had expected that he found the grounds for anger cut from beneath his feet. The fellow was reputed handsome and, despite his monstrous impertinence, appeared to have behaved with the utmost civility; while Georgina had clearly proved his