The Launching of Roger Brook by Dennis Wheatley Page A

willing victim. Roger was wondering now if, in view of her previous adventures, he was still called on to pledge himself to her. Convention demanded that any girl a gentleman took to wife should go to her bridal chamber as spotless as an angel; no matter what pranks she might get up to later if the couple decided to go their separate ways, providing only that she cloaked her amours with a reasonable decency in order to protect his name.
    Yet, he reflected, she had not been called upon to tell him anything, and he had made his avowal before she had spoken. Even if she was not the languorous, golden-haired creature of his dreams she was still one of the loveliest people he had ever set eyes on, and her soft embrace so recently enjoyed had given her a new enchantment for him. More, where would he ever find a girl whose interests tallied so closely with his own; in all their many hours together he had never known a dull moment in her company. The episode with the highwayman was a misfortune that might have happened to any imprudent girl and, once seduced, the affair with the London buck could be excused by the unconventional way in which she had been brought up, coupled with her zest for any form of daring and adventure. With sudden resolution he decided that convention could be damned, and that in any case a gentleman muststick by his word, so, from every point of view he should go through with it.
    ‘A penny for your thoughts, Roger,’ she said softly.
    ‘I was just wondering,’ he replied with a smile, ‘how soon we can get married. I fear we won’t be allowed to until I’m seventeen, but that isn’t very long to wait. The devil of it is, though, that I’ve got no money.’
    ‘Oh, Roger, you darling,’ she sighed. ‘You haven’t really been thinking of marrying me, have you?’
    ‘Of course. That is unless you’ve promised yourself to the fellow in London?’
    She shrugged her shoulders airily. ‘What, Harry! Lud, no! He’s married already; and even if he weren’t I wouldn’t have him. He’s devilish handsome, but a hopeless wastrel.’
    ‘You’ll promise to forget him, then. And we’ll consider it a settled thing. God alone knows what the future holds for me, but as soon as I’m in any situation to do so I’ll speak to your father.’
    Taking his hand she drew him down beside her, and said seriously: ‘Roger, m’dear, I’m deeply sensible of the honour that you do me. More especially since I’ve been unmaidenly enough to declare myself a piece of shop-soiled goods. But I’ve no intention of pledging myself to any man as yet.’
    ‘But you can’t go on like this,’ he protested. ‘After taking three lovers while barely seventeen, ’tis over-time already that you became respectable.’
    ‘Four,’ she corrected, with a little laugh. ‘I met the wickedest, handsomest young spark that ever I did see at the Lansdowne House Ball, and we met again while attending old Q’s water-party at Richmond. He tumbled me in a punt and I simply could not bring myself to resist him.’
    ‘Georgina!’ he suddenly wrung his hands, ‘how could you! It needs but such looseness through another season for your name to become a byword. Then none will marry you.’
    She shook her dark curls. ‘Dear Roger! You don’t understand. What if I have had four lovers? I hope to have forty more, should I find forty men that please me. Nay, I’ll take a hundred before I die, and the finest and handsomest men in the realm among them. As for marriage, set thy fears for me at rest. Dost thou not realise that I am an heiress?’
    ‘Your father is reputed a warm man, I know,’ he nodded.
    ‘He is far richer than you think. This place and the housein Bedford Square represent but a small fraction of his fortune.’
    ‘How so? I have heard it said that old Mr. Thursby died in good circumstances, but never that he left your father great riches.’
    ‘True, but papa has brains, and has made a mint of money for himself. ’Tis