Streaking by Brian Stableford Page A

friend?”
    â€œThat’s not the kind of question loyal servants are supposed to ask,” Canny pointed out, “Even if they have known the young master since he was in nappies. I’ll be the Earl of Credesdale soon enough—I might have to make some changes around here if I can’t get the respect my position demands.”
    â€œYes sir,” Bentley said. “Would you like me to make out a list of suggestions, or should I leave all that to the village elders?”
    â€œNo—I’m relying on you to keep the village elders at bay. And no, she’s not an intimate friend—but I have invited her to pop round tonight when she’s finished her shoot. I don’t know what time she’ll arrive, and I’m not absolutely certain that she’ll arrive at all, but I’m sure the staff can cope if and when she does.”
    â€œThe staff can cope, sir,” Bentley assured him. “It’s your mother you have to worry about. And I hope you’ll remember to tell your father that you don’t know the lady intimately. He’s not well enough to be allowed to jump to distressing conclusions.”
    â€œI suppose he’s instructed you and Mummy to draw up a list of eligible brides for me?”
    â€œIf only she and I had been able to do so, sir, it would doubtless have set his mind a little more at rest. Your mother and I have put our heads together but the county isn’t what it was.”
    Bentley had steered north towards Ulleskelf rather than west towards Barkston, but he had to swing left now towards Towton. The country was flat hereabouts, but now they were pointed in the right direction Canny could see the hills that shielded Cockayne in the distance, and the moors forming the horizon behind them.
    â€œIt’s a bigger county than Daddy seems to think,” he assured the butler. “If it were necessary to go as far into the untracked wilderness of Bradford or York, it could be done without the aid of native trackers. Richmond might be difficult, though. I’m sorry he’s been on at you. I suppose people of his antiquity are entitled to get bees in their bonnets, but they shouldn’t used them to sting the people around them. It’s my business, and I really don’t know why he cares so much about something so ridiculously old-fashioned as the succession , but we’ll just have to keep stalling.”
    â€œIt might make him feel better if you were prepared to pretend,” the butler suggested. “Or at least to make it clear to him, if Miss Lo does accept your invitation, that you were merely making polite reparation for her kind offer of assistance in returning home more speedily.”
    â€œI’ll do the second bit,” Canny promised, “but I’m not going to start spinning him a line abut some hypothetical Yorkshire lass I’ve got me eye on. Mind you, there’s bound to be someone eligible in the village. There’s a girl I was at primary school with—Ellen, the oldest of the Proffitt sisters, it was—who showed me her knickers once. She married Jack Ormondroyd, who runs the fish and chip shop and captains the cricket eleven. Her eldest daughter Marie must be sixteen going on seventeen now, just about ripe. Another four or five months and she’ll be exactly half my age. She’d do, I dare say. Handsome family, the Proffitts. Maybe we ought to invite her up for tea.”
    â€œThe fact that a young lady’s mother indulged in a little harmless exhibitionism when you were five years old is hardly a basis for lifelong commitment, sir,” Bentley observed, lowering his baritone voice a little further, “although I dare say that Mr. and Mrs. Ormondroyd would be very proud indeed to know that the gesture had enhanced their daughter’s desirability.”
    â€œOh, stop pretending to be John Gielgud in that third-rate American movie,” Canny said. “It’s