Read Bewitched (Bantam Series No. 16) for Free Online Page A

are getting older. Things do not seem as amusing as they were when I was young.”
    “You’re still young enough to enjoy yourself, M’Lord,” Hobley said with a twinkle in his eye, “and if Your Lordship takes my advice you won’t waste one minute of the years as they pass.”
    “Are you having regrets about your own lost youth?” the Marquis enquired.
    “No, M’Lord, I’ve no regrets, and that’s something I pray that Your Lordship’ll never have. In my experience there’s always something to look forward to and there’s always adventures when we least expect them.”
    “You have cheered me up, Hobley!”
    The Marquis was smiling as he walked across the Hall and ordered his Phaeton to be brought round immediately.
    No-one was more surprised than the Marquis to find himself a week later travelling the same road from London to call on Eurydice.
    He had expected to see her at the Duchess of Devonshire’s Ball, and he had searched for her during the next four nights at Assemblies, Balls and dinner parties given by their mutual friends, to which he was quite sure she had been invited.
    But there was no sign of her and, as the Duke of Severn was also missing, it was not difficult to imagine where they could both be found.
    He had confided to no-one that he was waiting for Eurydice’s answer to his proposal of marriage, but his friend, Charles Collington, was aware that he was restless and unusually inattentive and uninterested in the succession of parties they attended.
    “What is the matter, Fabius?” he asked. “You are like a bear with a sore head!”
    “I will tell you about it later,” the Marquis promised.
    “Jethro has not been up to his tricks again?” Charles asked suspiciously.
    “If he has, it was as ineffectual as the falling masonry from my roof!” the Marquis said.
    “I hardly think that is a joking matter,” Charles Collington replied severely.
    “As a matter of fact it is not,” the Marquis said. “I had the roof inspected the following day and the stonemason I employed informed me that it was quite impossible for such a large piece of the parapet to have broken away accidentally.”
    “You mean—as we suspected—it was deliberate?” Charles Collington asked incredulously.
    “I was thinking,” the Marquis said, “how it would have been quite easy for someone to have hidden in the garden in the centre of the Square. Then when I appeared in the doorway—with the lights behind me—they had only to signal to whoever was on the roof.”
    “That of course is exactly what happened!” Charles Collington exclaimed. “It was just fortunate that you turned back to speak to Burton.”
    “Very fortunate!” the Marquis agreed.
    “Well, for God’s sake—be careful!”
    “How can I?” the Marquis asked irritably. “If I have to go about with an armed guard, stay at home, or live eternally on the alert expecting to be poisoned, shot at or struck to the ground—all I can say is—let Jethro try and get it over!”
    “If we had taken up that attitude where Bonaparte was concerned, we would have lost the war!”
    The Marquis was about to make some quite heated reply, when he burst out laughing.
    “I cannot allow you, Charles,” he said, “to compare Jethro with Napoleon! It is giving him an undue importance!”
    “I never thought it mattered if a man was important or not, if it was his gun which blew a piece of lead through me,” Charles Collington retorted, and for a moment the Marquis had no reply.
    Driving to the country now, he thought he had taken an unwise step in his effort to circumvent Jethro’s plan for securing the inheritance for himself.
    He knew, if he was honest with himself, that he did not really wish to marry Eurydice.
    In theory it had seemed a good idea. In practice he knew they had no chance of real happiness together and little hope of even getting on reasonably well.
    He was quite sure that the reason Eurydice had sent for him was to tell him that