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Sir Bruce Wayne alighted from the chaise, wishing briefly, and not for the first time, that he was not one of the foremost peers of the realm and thus incapable of indulging in a hearty stretch after hours cooped up in the carriage.
“We shall stop here,” he said. The hostelry in front of him was a charming one, set at the end of a broad village street with two great elms standing silent sentinel behind it and roses rambling carelessly across the red brick frontage. It was not, however, a posting inn, which did not incline the two postilions in its favour.
One of them said, “Begging your pardon, sir, but if we was to drive on another mile or two we’d likely find a decent house for your honour. ‘Sides, your destination can’t be far now.”
“My good man, you have no more idea of where we are than I have. We shall stop here.”
Warm candlelight suddenly flared in the darkness of the evening, further disposing Sir Bruce in favour of breaking his journey here, and the welcome sounds of an inn-keeper’s bustle met their ears as the door was thrown open in response to the carriage’s arrival.
“Good evening, sir, and welcome!” That it was perhaps rather late to be entertaining customers did not occur to the landlord: he knew Quality when he saw it, and this tall gentleman in his many-caped driving coat, his high crowned beaver hat, and his rich blue coat worn open over a Venetian-cut waistcoat was certainly of that distinguished echelon. “Pray, won’t you step inside? We might be a small town but I’ll wager you won’t find a better port between here and London.”
“Thank you, that sounds most appealing,” Sir Bruce said, giving the order for the postilions to take the two horses and the chaise around to the modest stables at the rear of the building and then following the landlord into the inn. “Tell me this, first: what is the time?”
The landlord gave him a surprised look. “Why, it lacks but ten minutes to the hour.”
“Which hour?”
“Nine o’clock, sir!”
“Ah, is that indeed so?” Bruce remarked, mentally consigning the ill-kept country roads to the devil. “Dare I hope I am somewhere in the neighbourhood of Melbury Place?”
“Melbury Place?” repeated the landlord, assisting Bruce out of his coat and placing it, his gloves and his hat tenderly in the cloakroom by the front door. “Yes, sir, it lies not ten miles away as the crow flies, though the roads are a tad tricky, you might say.”
“Having been wending my way through the maze of lanes for most of the afternoon,” Bruce said a trifle acidly, “I should probably use a more forceful epithet. I imagine it will take me about an hour to reach the place; I had clearly best dine here. Or am I too late for dinner?”
The landlord fervently assured him that this was not at all the case, and promised that if my lord would but step into the coffee-room dinner would be served shortly. Just as he indicated the door to this room along the passage, however, a qualm struck him and he faltered, “I am sorry I cannot offer a private parlour, your honour, but there’s only Mr Wally in the coffee-room, after all.”
“Then if Mr Wally takes no exception to my presence, I shall be quite alright. I wonder if I should put up here for the night.”
“They do keep early hours up at the Place, sir,” the landlord said helpfully. “Was the Squire expecting you?”
“He was, and I trust still is. I suppose any sane host would likely take such a late arrival amiss?”
The landlord scratched his nose. “Well, sir, as to that, and begging your honour’s pardon, the Squire is a tad persnickety in his ways – in a manner of speaking – and folks round here do say he’s quite a testy gentleman when something’s put his back up – no disrespect meant, I’m sure!”
Bruce nodded. “Thus concluding that I would not endear myself to mine host by appearing half famished on his doorstep at the dead of night, I will stay here.”
Mentally resolving to have the best sheets instantly arranged in the best and larger of the two guest bedchambers, the landlord led the way into the coffee-room. It had only one occupant, a red-headed youth sitting by the window embrasure with a bottle of brandy in front of him and a glass in his hand. The landlord, casting a rather worried glance at the bottle, murmured that he was sure Mr Wally wouldn’t mind company, and took himself off to bestir the cook.
Mr Wally blinked at Bruce, and inclined his head with great dignity. He then resumed his scrutiny of the moon-washed street beyond the window.
Bruce returned the civility with a slight bow but made no attempt to engage Mr Wally in conversation. It was clear the young gentleman had some heavy cares weighing down his brow; moreover, it would have been apparent to someone far less acute than Bruce that Mr Wally was drowning his troubles in brandy. He might have been any age between twenty-five and nineteen, and leanings towards dandyism were betrayed by the intricate but not entirely successful arrangement of his cravat, and by the majestic starched points of his shirt-collar, which almost grazed his cheekbones. There was little of the dandy, however, in his figure; long limbs and sturdy shoulders suggested he would be more at home in physical activity on a farm than he would be in the tightly-laced ballrooms of town.
In a short time the landlord presented his noble guest with a simple but very tolerable repast, and himself waited upon him. Sir Bruce pronounced the fare to be excellent, admired the burgundy, and refused the port, and at last the satisfied landlord withdrew with a humble bow and left the two gentlemen to their own devices.
For some minutes Bruce had been aware that the young man by the window was subjecting him to an intense and admiring scrutiny, and prompted the conversation by saying,
“I call it the Nonchalant. It is not very difficult, once you acquire the knack of it.”
“Huh?” said the young gentleman, starting.
“My cravat,” Bruce explained.
The young man flushed vividly and begged pardon.
“Not at all,” said Bruce. “Would you like to sit down?”
“Well – thank you,” he stammered, and made his way over with dignified care. He brought his glass and bottle with him and set both down on the table. “My name,” he said, “is West.”
“Mine is Wayne,” replied Bruce, and they exchanged bows. Only a true teetotaller would have described young Mr West as drunk. He could, by taking only reasonable pains, walk in a straight line and speak clearly, and if his potations had the effect of loosening what was already a very chatty tongue, at least he was perfectly clear on all important matters. When Bruce, for instance, touching briefly on the country through which he had driven, said he was sure it would be excellent hunting ground, Mr West’s eyes brightened and he became quite animated as he expounded on the subject with a great deal of lucidity. Then, a few minutes later, the cloud descended abruptly and he heaved a heavy sigh.
“But that is all at an end! I shall probably be lucky to ever brush down a good hunter, let alone ride one.”
“As bad as that?” Bruce asked sympathetically.
Mr West nodded and poured himself some more brandy. “I’m eloping with an heir,” he announced gloomily.
If Bruce was startled by this confidence, he did not show it. His lip did quiver a little, but he merely said, “Indeed?”
“Yes,” sighed Mr West, fortifying himself with another gulp of brandy. “Gretna Green,” he added, and drooped even more dejectedly.
“Forgive me for prying,” Bruce said, “but do you think this is a wise step to take?”
“No, of course I don’t!” replied Mr West. “But what else is a fellow to do? I can’t very well draw back now, surely you must see that?”
“I expect it would be difficult,” Bruce agreed. “When one has persuaded an heir to elope –”
“No such thing,” Mr West interrupted. “I may have said it would be a great lark to do it, kick up some dust and ruffle some feathers, and the like, but I never thought Dick would actually think I meant it! Anyway, I can’t back out now, or he’ll just find another plan that’s bound to be twice as mad and liable to get him killed besides. But that’s Dick all over. Stubborn as a mule, mischievous as a monkey, and completely wild to boot! Let him take a notion into his head and he has three dozen plans inside of a minute and will never listen to reason. I could never really manage him. Mind, though,” he said suddenly, as if aware he was not painting his betrothed in a flattering light, “I’m not one to back out! Of course I’m devoted to him, we’ve been best friends since childhood. If he’s in strife it’s my duty to help him escape, I swore to it, but damn, I don’t want to fly to the Border! Must it be right now, too?”
“The moment is inconvenient?” Bruce guessed, exerting quite a bit of effort to prevent his grin from showing.
Mr West shook his head disconsolately. “My uncle has invited me to Yorkshire for the grouse shooting!” he said bitterly. “Only think of what a splendid time I could have had! I’ve never shot grouse before. All my friends will be there, too, and Uncle Barry has the best land!”
“You could not, I suppose, postpone the elopement until the shooting season?”
“No, because if we waited there would be no sense in eloping at all: Dick will be tied up to the old goat his uncle means him to marry. Also, the moon’s full now, so we must go.”
“Ah, I see. And who is this old goat? Is he very old?”
“I don’t know, but he must be old, don’t you think, if he is a friend of Sir Walter?”
Bruce paused in lifting his glass to his lips. “Sir Walter?”
“Dick’s uncle. Well, Sir Walter’s wife Harriet is Dick’s late father’s sister, so really Sir Walter is his aunt’s husband.”
“Oh,” said Bruce, sipping his cognac. “I collect he does not look favourably upon your suit?”
“No, and my father does not either. Says we are too young, and should not suit. So I shall very likely be cut off without a shilling and obliged to enter a counting-house or some such thing, since you had better be certain Sir Walter will disinherit Dick. But of course he doesn’t care! He says he never wanted his uncle to settle all his property on him after his parents died and Sir Walter and Lady Cooper took him in, but that’s all very well for him to say, plus he has no notion of how hard it is to hire a chaise for a night journey!” Mr West said, gesticulating wildly. “He says he’d be happy to run away and disguise himself as a farmhand, or join a travelling musicians’ company, or become a smuggler, or something, and I might not wish to marry him but it’s always been my job to make sure he doesn’t get into too much trouble.”
“I take it Dick is a man of considerable resourcefulness,” Bruce said with a great deal of amusement, carefully nudging the bottle out of range of Mr West’s animated gestures.
“You’ve no notion of the pranks he’s thought up,” Mr West confided gleefully, but then remember to be affronted. “This is different, though. So I had to hire a chaise, and let me tell you that was no easy task – I couldn’t hire one from the George, or from the Sun, they’re too close and my father would hear about that in a matter of minutes! So I went out of town, and then had to think of a way to meet. I couldn’t very well have the postilions riding up to my window at midnight to collect me. Luckily old Robinson is fond of us, so I told the post-boys to meet me here at half-past ten, and Dick thinks everyone should be asleep by hast-past eleven at the latest and wants to meet at midnight in the shrubbery.” Here Mr West shuddered. “Midnight in the shrubbery! Sometimes I wonder just how much of the devil’s mischief that boy has in him.”
He picked up the bottle as he spoke, poured himself another tot, downed it, and tried to pour another. Some of the liquor spilled out of the glass onto the table and Mr West scowled direfully at it before replacing the bottle with exaggerated care on the table.
“As someone who has participated in any number of similarly wild activities, though I must admit I have never been quite adventurous enough to elope at midnight, might I suggest not drinking so much brandy a few hours before leaving?”
Mr West stared austerely at Bruce – or at a point an inch or two to the left of his ear – and said, enunciating carefully, “Hah! If you think I’m foxed, I’m not. I have a very hard head.”
“I’m sure you do,” said Bruce, finally allowing the grin to sweep free as Mr West turned away defiantly to pour himself another glass. “Is Dick very attached to you?”
“Well, he damned well should be, considering the number of scrapes he’s pulled me into! We’ve known each other since he came here as a child. All the same, he never would have taken this notion of eloping into his head if that damned fool of an uncle hadn’t invited his friend to stay and flat-out told Dick he had to marry the man. I must admit, I was shocked when I heard, for the man must be fifty at least and a dead bore! And Dick’s never clapped eyes on him! I quite saw that as a gentleman and his oldest friend I had to help him escape, though I never thought then that my uncle would invite me to the north.”
“But surely Dick’s uncle has no actual power to compel his nephew to marry?”
“As to that, I’m not sure. The legal havey-cavey stuff has never been my area, you know, but I know that Dick feels obliged to his uncle and aunt for taking him in and so, if he feels eloping to be the only way, it is my duty to assist him,” Mr West finished grandly, the gentle swaying in his seat only slightly spoiling the effect. “’Sides,” he added ungallantly, “I suppose I won’t mind being married.”
“Well, I dare say you know best, but I cannot help but think eloping is a mistake,” Bruce replied, gently moving the bottle out of Mr West’s reach. “Perhaps this dead bore does not want to marry Dick.”
“Then why is he coming to stay with the Coopers?” Mr West demanded. “I suspect Sir Walter has it all arranged; my father says he is the most meddlesome, managing, nit-picking old fool in the county.” He drained his glass boldly. “In all events, it’ll be fun to upset his plans!”
***
Half an hour later the landlord, coming to appraise Mr West of his hired chaise’s arrival at the front door, found that young man determinedly asleep with his head on the table.
“I don’t think,” Sir Bruce said, “that Mr West is in any fit state for travel.”
“Mercy me, I knew how it would be,” sighed Mr Robinson, looking in concern down at Mr West. “Whatever is the matter with him? When I saw him this evening I thought to myself: you’re up to some mischief, Mr Wally, or I don’t know a horse from a donkey! Now there’s a chaise and four outside all the way from Whitworth, come to collect him; what’s to be done?”
“You had better inform the postilions that Mr West is indisposed, and send them back to Whitworth,” said Bruce. “While you are at it, you may tell my own postilions to put the horses to and bring the chaise around the front. I have changed my mind, and wish to go to Melbury place tonight after all.”
“Your honour won’t be staying here?” cried the landlord in considerable dismay. “With the bed all made up and a hot brick in it!”
“Carry Mr West up to it,” Bruce recommended. “When he wakes tell him – no, I had best write a note.” Pulling out his pocket-book, Bruce wrote a few lines, tore the page, folded it up, and handed it to Robinson.
Fifteen minutes later, the post-boys having been furnished with more precise instructions by Robinson, the chaise was making its way down the narrow country roads towards Melbury Place. When the gates came into sight, Bruce told the postilions he would get down, and that they were to wait here.
They had long decided his eccentricity rivalled his wealth, but at this pronouncement they goggled at him like fish out of water. “It’s Melbury Place alright, sir.”
“I know, but I have decided I have quite the fancy to walk the garden paths under the moonlight,” he told them, and wandered off, leaving them gaping after him.
“He must be drunk as a wheelbarrow!” one said.
“Not him,” returned the other. “I suspicioned it from the start: he’s mad as a hatter.”
The maligned Sir Bruce, meanwhile, was walking down the drive towards the shrubbery at the east of the house. He trod carefully on the grass so as not to advertise his presence to the house, and under the bright moonlight was able to traverse the flower gardens and reach the shrubbery without incident. He chose a stone bench in an alcove and sat down to wait.
Not long after his arrival, Bruce’s sharp ears caught the faint sounds of someone’s approach and he stood up just as a tall, lithe figure appeared out of the shadows at a bend in the shrubbery walk. He carried a small valise but before Bruce could speak the newcomer exclaimed quietly,
“You’ll be pleased to see I didn’t break my neck on the windowsill, Wally, though if my aunt had delayed any longer in blowing out her candle I might have gone up the chimney instead! Did you order the chaise?”
Bruce took off his hat and revealed the face of a stranger to the man he hoped could only be the mysterious Dick, who responded by letting go of the valise and dropping instantly into a boxing stance.
“I mean no harm,” Bruce said quickly, holding up his hands. “I am Mr West’s deputy.”
“His deputy?” Dick echoed suspiciously, not moving.
“Yes. Will you sit down, so I can explain?”
Seeing Dick’s eyes narrow and sweep over him head to toe, Bruce smiled. “You have nothing to fear from me. I met Mr West at the Green Dragon, and can ask Mr Robinson to corroborate my story if that would set your mind at ease. How else could I have known you would be here?”
Dick at last relaxed his stance, and Bruce saw the irrepressible sparkle of mischief that drove Mr West to despair alight in the young man’s eyes. It had quite the opposite effect on Bruce.
“I suppose you have a point,” he said, consenting to sit down beside Bruce, “but you should know I have two knives hidden on my person.”
“A very wise precaution,” Bruce approved, “I myself have one in my boot.”
A hastily-stifled burst of mirth met this sally and Bruce smiled in response. The moonlight, while bright, swept a monochromatic blanket over the garden and its occupants; Dick’s hair was very dark and straight, his eyes light and twinkling, but further than that Bruce could not discover.
“It’s not very polite to make me laugh at a midnight rendezvous when we are in danger of being exposed,” Dick chided through a grin. “Now, tell me, if you please, who you are and what happened to Wally.”
“Mr West,” said Bruce diplomatically, “is indisposed. He was good enough to confide his plans to me and to – ah – charge me with his deepest regrets.”
One thin eyebrow rose. “Indeed? He was perfectly well yesterday!”
“His disorder attacked him unawares,” replied Bruce, firmly repressing the smile hiding in the corner of his mouth.
“Was he drunk?” demanded Dick. “If he didn’t want to elope with me he could have said so!”
“No, he was quite determined not to draw back,” Bruce said. “He told me he had sworn an oath to rescue you from trouble?”
“Yes,” agreed Dick, “though I must admit it didn’t specify elopement. It was mainly to make sure that whatever scrape we tumbled into, we’d get each other out of. I’d just fallen into the river at the bottom of the garden, you see, trying to walk across a rope strung over it, and Wally, bless him, jumped in after me even though I didn’t really need rescuing. It was his fault, anyway – he dared me to.”
“I see,” Bruce said, helpless against Dick’s impish charm. “May I venture to ask if you love him?”
Dick considered this with his head to one side like a bird. “Well, I am very fond of him – he is my oldest friend – but I am not in love with him, and I daresay I would never have thought of marrying him if things hadn’t been so desperate. I would rather have joined the travelling circus; there was one passing by last week that I was determined to run away with, but then my mare had a colicky foal and I couldn’t leave them. Honestly, it seems no one on this whole estate knows anything about colic, and by the time the foal was out of danger the troupe had moved on. I would have disguised myself as any number of tradespeople, or run away to the coast to join a smuggling ship, but I get seasick sometimes and Wally was being a spoilsport, telling me I was as good as asking to be hanged, so I told him the only way to escape being married to this horrid old man was to elope.”
“So Mr West informed me,” Bruce said, voice shaking only slightly at this list of options, “but I must confess I was rather surprised to hear your uncle could do such a thing.”
“You don’t know my uncle,” Dick said darkly. “Me, the last Grayson, being ordered to marry a man I’ve never met? He makes the most fantastic schemes, and then forces everyone to fall in with them. If they don’t, oh how he blusters and rages and prophesises an attack of the gout which could cripple him or a spasm which could confine him forever to his armchair! Aunt Harriet lives in fear of ever truly going against his wishes in case such an eventuality occurs, which I have no patience for.”
A hiss of breath from his companion softened the flash of anger, and Dick turned impetuously towards him. “No, you must not be thinking he is cruel! He isn’t, he doesn’t even hold grudges; Uncle Walter is just accustomed to having his own way. He thinks this marriage is a famous idea, since I am twenty-two and have yet to make any sort of match or alliance. He truly wants to provide for me, since I have no parents to do so.”
The innocent spirit of this explanation quite robbed Bruce of his breath. “You are…remarkable,” he only said, and Dick shrugged.
“I do not see how, but you are kind for saying so. Reckless is a more apt description, I think. Well, when the threat of disobedience is being sent to my other aunt in Bath, to be scolded and cossetted and kept indoors unless a chaperone accompanies me and playing two-penny whist and listening to that revolting little pug wheeze at me,” he said in tones of strong revulsion, “what else could I do?”
“I certainly agree, that is not to be thought of!” Bruce commiserated. “Yet I cannot help but think that eloping to Gretna Green is not the wisest course of action.”
“You don’t think so?” Dick asked doubtfully.
“These Border marriages are not quite the thing,” he said apologetically. “Then, too, unless you are in love with Wally, you might not be happy.”
“There is that, I suppose,” acknowledged Dick, “but think of how boring it would be if I ended up as an old crotchety bachelor!”
“If you will not think me terribly impertinent for saying so,” Bruce said, unaccustomed warmth in his tone, “I cannot think that is a likely fate for you!”
“Yes, but it is!” Dick insisted. “I have been cooped up here ever since coming back from Eton, and Uncle Walter keeps saying he’ll take me to town and then postponing it. So he has made up his mind that this friend of his will be a very eligible match for me. He and this Lady Prince put their heads together, I’ve no doubt –”
“Ah, so that is it,” interrupted Bruce, “I should have guessed!”
“Are you acquainted with the lady?” Dick asked, surprised.
“Diana Prince is my cousin,” was the explanation.
“Your – what?” Dick gasped, recoiling.
“Don’t be alarmed,” Bruce beseeched. “Though I shrink from owning it, I think I must your uncle’s horrid friend. But I do assure you, Mr Grayson, his and my cousin’s meddling schemes come as a complete surprise to me.”
Dick swallowed painfully. “D-do you mean to tell me you are Sir Bruce Wayne?”
“Yes,” Bruce confessed, and then added meditatively, “But though I may be a dead bore upon occasion, I do not consider myself really very old!”
“You should have told me,” Dick whispered, deeply mortified.
“I should have, I know, and I do beg your pardon, but I clung to the hope that I might not be the, ah, old goat you and Wally described in such daunting terms.”
Dick turned his face away, hands clasped into fists on his lap and shoulders very tense. “I would never…how could you let me speak of you like that?”
“Don’t worry, I have heard much worse,” Bruce said, cautiously reaching out and taking one of those tense hands into a comforting clasp. “Please don’t feel you have to elope to Gretna just to escape my attentions.”
“No, but –” Dick broke off and gazed at him from under a confused frown. “But how can you be a friend of my uncle’s?”
“Well, I do not believe I can really call myself so,” he said. “He is a friend of a relative of a friend, and in some way he and my family have been on comparatively good terms for the last twenty years or so.”
Dick wrinkled his nose, still dissatisfied. “Then why did you come to visit?”
“To be frank,” Bruce said with a wry smile, “I ran out of excuses not to.”
This finally won a chuckle and a lightening of the frown upon Dick’s face. “So you haven’t – I mean, you didn’t know –”
“Until this evening, I had no idea you existed. Diana, though sharing in your uncle’s meddlesome ways, has far more tact and an infinite amount of shrewd discretion.”
“I see. What an infamous scheme the two of them cooked up! Uncle Walter made me think that everything had been sorted, and that the only thing I had to do was to accept your offer! So naturally I decided I had to marry Wally. Poor thing, he will be so relieved to hear that it’s not necessary!” He let out another wicked chuckle. “Was there anything ever so nonsensical? I thought you had to be fifty, and very likely fat!”
“I am thirty-four,” Bruce said meekly, “and I do not think I am fat.”
The quiet laughter grew until Dick had to hide it behind his hand, eyes dancing. “No, I can see you are not. I am terribly sorry, Sir Bruce, for all the things I said, and for the charade tonight which must seem to you something off the stage. But Uncle Walter once thought for a whole month that nothing would do but for me to marry Sir Vandal Savage, and he is not only a widower but pushing sixty and involved, we discovered afterwards, in all sorts of nefarious deeds. There is never any telling what mad plan he will get in his head.”
“Dear god, Savage?” Bruce asked, aghast. “Mr Grayson, there is absolutely nothing for which you need to apologise; I myself would rather work in the coal mines than even contemplate marrying Savage.”
Dick laughed again, “I see we are in accord.” A thought occurred to him; he turned his hand, slightly surprised to find it was still in Bruce’s clasp, and gently grasped Bruce’s wrist in question. “But how comes it that you are acquainted with Wally, and arrived so late? We were expecting you at dinner, and when you did not arrive Uncle Walter was in such a temper.”
“I do beg pardon for my lateness; a series of accidents delayed me and by the time I reached Shropshire I found Sir Walter’s directions were not as helpful as I had hoped.”
“Oh, he is terrible at giving directions,” Dick agreed, “and it is difficult country. But how did you meet Wally?”
“I stopped at the Green Dragon in the village to dine, and made his acquaintance in the coffee-room. We fell into conversation and he was good enough to confide his intentions to me.”
“He must have been drunk,” Dick interpolated.
“Let us say he was a trifle worried about the propriety of eloping with you – and of missing the grouse shooting with his uncle in Yorkshire.”
“Oh for heaven’s sake, Wally,” sighed Dick in acute resignation.
Bruce smiled and continued, “I did what I could to dissuade him from taking such an ill-advised step, he – ah – succumbed to the disorder from which he was suffering, and thus, here I am in his stead.”
“That was very kind of you, but I don’t know why you should have taken such trouble for me,” Dick said, smiling up at him.
Bruce squeezed his hand before he could stop himself. “I could not let you kick your heels in the shrubbery half the night, could I? Besides, I was most curious to make your acquaintance, Mr Grayson.”
“Are you quizzing me?” Dick demanded.
“Not at all,” Bruce replied, grinning a little in the face of Dick’s bemusement. “You must allow one’s curiosity to be caught when one learns that a gentleman is prepared to elope in order to escape from advances one had no intention of making.”
“That sums it up,” Dick said wryly, blushing. “I wonder it did not give you an instant disgust of me! I know eloping would have been most improper, but it would be such an adventure, and one of our biggest pranks!”
“If you seek adventure, my chaise is waiting in the lane,” Bruce responded promptly, and Dick laughed and shook his head.
“I think my days of eloping are over – and if I did not elope with Wally, who is almost a brother, I don’t think it would be any better to run away with a stranger instead.”
“Well, I do feel that it would be best if you gave up that notion,” Bruce said. “I fear I can hardly draw back from Sir Walter’s invitation now, but if I give you my word that I do not mean to press an unwanted suit, you might not find my visit so insupportable after all.”
“Of course I shan’t find it so,” Dick responded, “but how on earth are you going to explain this late arrival?”
“I shall drive up to the front door in twenty minutes’ time,” Bruce said, “full of apologies and excuses for losing my way.”
“It will be so close to midnight; I do hope you are prepared to grovel! Or come the high-handed gentleman, full of imperious pride: that might work, for you are taller and grander, and Uncle Walter is rather short and stout!”
“You are just as wicked as Wally said,” Bruce laughed appreciatively. “I shall survey the battlefield when I arrive and adjust my plans upon first contact –”
They broke off and fell silent, frozen where they stood. Footsteps which tried to be stealthy and failed drifted through the rose-scented air, and a voice, obviously imagining itself to be a whispering, said, “You go that way, Mullins, and no noise!”
“Uncle Walter,” breathed Dick, taut like a hare who had just scented a fox. “He must have heard the owl I startled, climbing out the window! He thinks we are poachers; our neighbour’s chicken coop was robbed last month.”
“Can you get to the house unseen if I distract them?” Bruce asked.
“Yes, but be careful! He will have his fowling-piece with him.”
“I shall declare myself before he fires, then. Go!”
Dick darted off, snatching up his valise as he went, and Bruce spared a second to admire Dick's swift silent grace as he disappeared into the shadows before putting his hat back on and sauntering out onto the lawn. He stepped more heavily than was his wont, ensuring his presence would be detected, and linked his hands behind his back as he wandered through the moon-splashed grounds.
As soon as Bruce reached the rose garden he was challenged by an elderly gentleman who did indeed level a fowling-piece at him.
“Stand! I have you covered, you rogue. Mullins, you fool, over here!”
Bruce stood still and waited for his host to approach him, which Sir Walter did only after receiving reinforcements in the shape of his butler, similarly attired in a nightshirt tucked into breeches and a greatcoat. He then came forward and said, with gleeful satisfaction, “Caught you!”
“How do you do, sir?” Bruce said, holding out his hand. “I must most sincerely beg your pardon for arriving at such an unconscionable hour, but I have been dogged by ill fortune all day. A broken lynch-pin and a lame horse must be my excuses.”
Sir Walter almost dropped his gun. “Wayne?”
Sir Bruce bowed.
“But what the devil are you doing in my garden?” Sir Walter demanded, lowering his piece.
“Communing with Nature,” Bruce said airily, waving a hand.
“Communing with Nature?” Sir Walter echoed weakly, eyes almost starting from his head.
“Roses in the moonlight…lilies heavy on the breeze…” Bruce said lyrically. “Ah, must Mullins continue to point his gun at me? I must confess I do detest them.”
“Eh? Oh, put it down, you fool,” Sir Walter hissed. “Sir Bruce, my dear fellow, do you feel quite the thing?”
“Never better, I assure you,” Bruce replied. “Oh, are you thinking I should have driven straight up to the house? Very true, sir, but I was lured out of my chaise by this exquisite scene. I am passionate about moonlight, you see, and about the chiaroscuro effect of shadows on the midnight flowers. I yielded to temptation and felt bound to explore your wonderful gardens. I am sorry for having disturbed you!”
Sir Walter was staring at him with the stupefied gaze of a stuffed animal. “You…wanted to explore my gardens…at midnight?”
“Goodness, is it so late? You could read a book with this light!”
His host had to swallow twice, and Bruce had rarely enjoyed himself so much. “But where’s your chaise?”
“In the lane,” Bruce said vaguely. “I believe – yes, I do believe I detect the hint of jasmine.”
Sir Walter approached him very carefully, and ventured to lay an almost timid hand on his arm. “Sir Bruce, my dear chap, do but come up to the house and go to bed! This night air is positively unwholesome.”
“On the contrary, I find it awakes the poetry in my soul,” Bruce said with an utterly straight face. “I am inspired to write sonnets on roses drenched in moonlight.”
“Mullins, go and find Wayne’s chaise and direct the post-boys to drive to the stables,” Sir Walter said in a hurried undertone. “Sonnets, eh, Sir Bruce? Yes, I’ll admit I was a rhymester in my time, but just come with me and you will soon feel better. Poetry is terribly bad for your health.”
He took his guest firmly by the arm and drew him towards the house. Bruce went unresistingly but kept to a slow, meandering pace, often stopping to admire the dappled effect of trees against the night sky, or the sheen of moonlight on the lily-pond. Sir Walter, curbing his impatience, replied soothingly to these flights of fancy, and at last succeeded in coaxing Bruce into the house, up the stairs and into his room. A suspicion that his guest had been imbibing too freely had given way to a worse fear, and he made sure, by dint of pressing his ear to the door, that Bruce’s breaths were deep with sleep before tiptoeing back to his own room.
* * *
Sir Bruce and Mr Grayson met officially at the breakfast table late the next morning. Sir Walter provided the introduction, eyeing his guest warily as he did so.
Bruce, bowing first to Lady Cooper, apologised gracefully for disturbing the household, and then turned to the young heir. For Dick’s part, he had been covertly studying him while Bruce exchanged civilities with his aunt and approved of what he saw. The good impression he had gleaned last night under the moonlight was reinforced by the brightness of the sunlight streaming into the room, and the giddy feeling under his ribs occasioned by the hint of Bruce’s smile, the width of his shoulders, the kindness in his eyes, only intensified.
He had surprised his aunt, who had despaired of detecting any hint of docility in her headstrong nephew, by choosing to come down to breakfast in his new green coat and a neatly-tied neckcloth, and further amazed that lady with his demure, polite behaviour at the table. Lady Cooper looked on with fond pride as Dick extended a hand with one of his sweetest smiles, and thanked the heavens the fit of sulks had passed.
Breakfast passed with easy conversation, though Sir Walter was a trifle distracted, and when Bruce begged leave to stroll around the garden he acquiesced readily and scarcely waited for his guest to depart from the room before grabbing his nephew and tugging him urgently into his library.
Shutting the door, he said without preamble, “Dick, you need not be in such a temper, for I have changed my plans for you. Yes, yes, I no longer think Sir Bruce would suit, so let us have no tantrums!”
Dick stared at him. “Changed your mind, uncle?”
Sir Walter looked around cautiously, as if expecting Bruce to materialise in his library. “My dear boy, it is the most distressing of circumstances! The poor fellow is deranged, I swear, absolutely barking mad! You would never credit it, looking at him now, but I found him wandering the gardens at midnight last night, talking of roses and poetry and moonlight and all that nonsense!”
Dick lowered his gaze swiftly and bit his tongue before he was confident he could reply. “Is that so, sir? Dear me, how odd.”
“I was never more shocked in my life,” declared Sir Walter. “I had not the least notion of such a thing, and as for Lady Prince! Well, I do not think at all that she has behaved as she should in concealing it from me, but you know what those high-born ladies are like.”
“Dreadful,” Dick said obediently, digging his nails into his palms. “He does seem sane, though.”
“He seems sane now,” his uncle said darkly, “but we don’t know what he may be like when the moon rises! I believe some lunatics are only deranged at the full moon. Now I come to think of it, they said his grandfather had some strange turns! I wish I had known before inviting him, for we can hardly throw him out now, but you must be careful, Dick, not to be in his company unless I am at hand to protect you.”
The choke was swiftly turned into a cough, for his uncle did not know of the many fights Dick had got into, nor of the fencing training that Wally’s uncle Barry had given both boys since they were young. He returned some dutiful answer, spotted Bruce in the garden outside the library windows, and dashed off without loss of time to join him.
He found him by the sundial and hurried over, eyes alight with mischief. Bruce looked up at his approach and smiled.
“Oh, the funniest thing! Uncle Walter fears you are mad, Sir Bruce, and doesn’t in the least want me to marry you!”
Bruce took his hands and held them. “I know, you should have heard the things I spouted last night! Now, what must I do to convince him I am in full possession of my faculties?”
“What should it signify?” Dick asked. “I am sure you do not care what he or anybody thinks. I don’t know how I kept from laughing; he says I should not be in your company unless he is nearby to protect me!”
“I see nothing to laugh at in that!” Bruce protested.
Dick looked up coyly. “No? I am sorry, but I didn’t think you would really mind.”
“On the contrary,” said Bruce, “it is of the utmost importance that Sir Walter should think well of me.”
“What on earth for?”
Bruce smiled crookedly. “How can I persuade him to permit me to pay my addresses to you if he thinks I am mad?”
For a moment Dick stared at him, then his cheeks became suffused with colour and he tugged his hands away. “Oh! But you said – you said you would not!”
“I said nothing of the sort, Dick. I said I would not press an unwanted suit upon you. Is my suit so very unwanted?”
Dick blushed the colour of a nearby rose, and was persuaded to raise his head from his scrutiny of the top button of Bruce’s coat by a gentle hand under his chin.
“Well? Is it?”
“That depends,” Dick said, the imp dancing merrily in his eyes.
“On?” Bruce asked, wholly and utterly enchanted.
“On whether you will visit the travelling circus with me, or steal away at midnight to paint pink bows on a neighbour’s horses, or explore caves and ruins and forests with me, or a hundred other reckless, wild things,” Dick replied breathlessly, hand stealing into Bruce’s free one to interlace their fingers.
“Didn’t you know? I am held to be quite mad in these parts,” Bruce said tenderly, brushing a curl of hair away from Dick’s face. Dick beamed up at him, swaying forward, but the idyll was intruded upon a moment later by the sound of a gardener and they hurried to separate, cheeks flushed. Bending down to pluck a bloom off a bush, Dick turned as Bruce said,
“I shall have to make myself agreeable to Sir Walter. I rely on your superior knowledge. What should I do, Mr Grayson?”
“I suppose, if you do not wish him to think you mad, you had best stay with us for quite some time so he gets to know you, and realise you are quite sane! Though if you want to marry me, there are plenty who will doubt that.”
“Nonsense,” Bruce said briskly. “That is settled, then. An excellent idea. May I have that?”
Sir Walter, rounding the corner of the house a moment later, was just in time to see his nephew fix a lush red rose in the buttonhole of Sir Bruce’s black coat with a most improper smile. His reflections of the perversity and stubbornness of nephews the world round he kept to himself, merely telling Dick, with some asperity, that his aunt was looking for him, and bearing his guest off to look at the stables.
Dick found Lady Cooper in an anxious flutter, having been informed by her husband of their guest’s moonlight madness. “And such a handsome man, too! Such a shame! And so amiable!”
“He is, isn’t he?” Dick sighed, cheeks aglow and eyes very bright. “I think he is the best man of my acquaintance! And he wants to marry me! I’ve had to pinch myself, but it seems I am indeed awake.”
Lady Cooper stared. “No, no, that is quite at an end! Sir Walter would never hear of it. And when I think that yesterday you were determined to marry Wally West in spite of anything your uncle said, I cannot help but wonder what’s come over you!”
“Moon madness,” laughed Dick, “just like Bruce! Poor Uncle Walter!”