The Lost Garden (The Purchas Family Series Book 5)

by Jane Aiken Hodge

  Giles had outstared a bull once. How strange to find herself remembering Giles in this moment of terror. The stag lowered its head, cutting off that eye-to-eye challenge, and took a step forward. Instinctively she backed, felt something behind her, realised it was the tree that had caused her fall. She clutched its trunk with a backward hand and saw the stag hesitate. Where was Tremadoc? Surely, he must have followed when Zoe ran away with her?

  Silence. A nervous rustling behind her that must be the rest of the herd. The stag shook its head angrily and took a step forward, then hesitated, disliking the sweep of the tree’s branches. So near, it seemed enormous. She held her breath, and as it lowered its head to charge, moved swiftly round the trunk of the tree. The stag backed off, circled the tree, came on again, angrier now. Once again, she managed to sidestep its charge. Would help never come? What was Tremadoc doing? The stag was coming on again; she dodged round the tree, slipped slightly, recovered herself, leaned against the rough trunk, breathing hard. How long could she keep this up? It was like a mad dance, she thought, a children’s game turned nightmare. The stag was getting used to the tree; it came closer, faster each time. An antler grazed her arm, bruising through the stuff of her habit. She could not keep this up much longer.

  The thunder of a horse’s hooves. ‘Caro!’ Blakeney’s voice. ‘Caro, I’m coming!’

  Distracted, she was almost too slow in dodging, and once again felt the bruising impact of bone on bone. One last time? Blakeney was shouting now. She dared not turn her head to look, but knew he must be advancing at full gallop, meaning to scare the animal into flight. Behind her, she could hear the herd scattering; saw the stag realise this. It shook its head once, then turned and ambled gracefully away.

  ‘Caro? Caro, are you hurt?’ Blakeney dismounted, slipped the reins over his horse’s neck, came towards her with arms outstretched. She went into them as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

  ‘Caro.’ He raised his head at last from the long wondering kiss. ‘My love.’ He said it slowly, testing the words.

  ‘Blakeney.’ She smiled up at him tremulously. ‘You did feel it too?’

  ‘From the very first,’ he told her. ‘That we belonged together.’ It was not, perhaps, entirely true, but he thought it was. ‘I’ve been working so hard,’ he told her, ‘to make a man of myself. To show my father,’ he hesitated, ‘to show the world I am worthy of you.’

  ‘Oh, Blakeney,’ she said sadly. ‘It’s the other way round, and we both know it. Will the Duke be very angry?’

  ‘He won’t be pleased. But it will make no difference. I love you, Caroline. Do you know,’ he went on, ‘I never loved anyone before? I had no idea…what it was like. What it is like.’

  ‘Neither did I. No one.’ And, as she raised her lips for his second kiss, thought with her incorrigible honesty that that was not quite true. Had she not, perhaps, far away and long ago, loved Giles just a little? The doubt was lost, drowned beyond recognition, beyond memory, in the ecstasy of his second kiss, surer now, stronger, turning her bones to water. ‘Oh, Blakeney,’ she sighed, ‘what are we going to do?’

  ‘Go back to the others.’ He picked up her plumed hat from the grass. ‘Try not to let it show. Not till I’ve told my father. He has the right to know first. But, Caro, my darling, are you sure you’re not hurt?’

  ‘A little,’ she said honestly. ‘But nothing to signify.’

  ‘You were so brave,’ he said. ‘So cool. I have never been so frightened in my life.’

  ‘Not half so frightened as I was.’ She was beginning to shake now, and he saw it.

  ‘We must find the others. We’ll go home, of course. Would you like to stay here, while I find them?’

  ‘No!’ She clung to him and he could feel her tremble.

  ‘Of course not. Stupid of me. But what happened to Tremadoc? What kept you so long? I had come back to look for you, thank God!’

  ‘Thank you, Blakeney.’ She blushed scarlet searching for words that came hard. ‘Mr Tremadoc…asked me to marry him…He tried to hold my hand. Zoe didn’t like it. It wasn’t her fault she bolted. I don’t know what’s happened to him.’

  ‘He must have been thrown,’ said Blakeney. ‘He never was much of a rider. We had better go and look for him. And in future, Caroline, if anyone takes liberties with you, you will refer him to me.’

  ‘Oh, Blakeney,’ she raised her lips for one last kiss.

  ‘We must go,’ he said again, shaken as she was by the current that ran strong between them. ‘Caroline!’ And then, ‘Ah, there will be time for that. Here, Zoe!’ He called the mare, peacefully grazing not far off, and she ambled over willingly to his hand. ‘You’re not afraid,’ he asked, as he prepared to toss her up into the saddle.

  ‘Afraid of my dear Zoe? Of course not.’

  ‘You’re a heroine.’ He mounted his own horse. ‘You are sure you can ride?’ He could see that she was holding the reins in an awkward grasp.

  ‘Oh, yes. It hurts a little, but nothing to signify. But, oh, Blakeney, if you hadn’t come!’

  ‘I’ll always come.’ Mounted, he could see farther, but there was no sign of Tremadoc. ‘We’d best look for Tremadoc first. He must be hurt, not to have come to your help.’

  ‘I am afraid so.’ She did not much want to see Tremadoc, and was relieved when they rode up a little hill and found him already being ministered to by Amelia and Mattingley. He had indeed been thrown, and was lying on the grass, curd-white with shock.

  Sniffing at Amelia’s salts, he raised reproachful eyes to Caroline. ‘There you are at last,’ he said. ‘I thought you would have come to my help sooner.’

  ‘She come to yours!’ began Blakeney angrily, but a pleading look from Caroline made him change his tone. ‘She was thrown too,’ he said briefly. ‘You’re badly hurt?’ He addressed the question as much to Mattingley as Tremadoc.

  ‘No bones broken, I think,’ said Mattingley briskly. ‘But a bad shaking. And Miss Thorpe?’ A quick, anxious glance for Caroline.

  ‘Miss Thorpe’s a heroine,’ said Blakeney warmly. ‘She was thrown and chased by a stag. She was between it and the herd,’ he explained. ‘I found her gallantly dodging it round a tree.’

  ‘A heroine indeed,’ said Mattingley, his thoughtful glance travelling from her flushed face to his.

  Chapter Eight

  After a quick discussion among the men, it was agreed that Mattingley should ride on to the Pen Ponds and explain the situation to Charlotte and Ffether, who must be awaiting them there, while the rest of the party made their way slowly back to the Richmond Gate.

  ‘The carriages will be down at the Star and Garter by now,’ said Blakeney. ‘But I’ll send a boy to fetch them back for us. I expect you will get there before they do,’ he told Mattingley.

  But at that very moment, Ffether himself came in sight, riding towards them at a furious pace. ‘So she didn’t join you!’ He shouted it at Blakeney as he approached. ‘Vixen! To be jauntering about in the Park by herself! Done it too brown this time.’ He was breathless with anger and the sentences came out explosively. ‘I fancy I am a little too much of a man of the world to be playing children’s games.’

  ‘You’re speaking of Charlotte?’ asked Blakeney, angry too. ‘But she was with you.’

  ‘Gave me the slip in the woods! Insisted on riding through them. To look for primroses, she said. Told me to ride on while she made some adjustment to her dress. Vanished! Hoyden.’ He summed it up in one angry word. ‘You can go looking for her, Blakeney. She’s your sister. She can play games with you if she likes, but it’s the last chance she has with me. I’ll be on my way. No need to ask her to apologise to me. I wouldn’t accept it. I wish you all a very good day.’

  ‘No,’ said Blakeney, before Mattingley could intervene. ‘I’m sorry if my sister has played you a schoolgirl’s trick, Ffether, and I do indeed apologise on her behalf, but we cannot leave it like that. Where did you leave her? Which wood? She must not be riding a
bout in the Park by herself.’

  ‘She can ride to the devil for all I care,’ said Ffether.

  ‘I think you do not quite understand.’ Mattingley thought it time to intervene between the two increasingly angry young men. ‘Miss Thorpe and Mr Tremadoc have both been thrown. If we have to look for Lady Charlotte, we shall need your help, Ffether. I fail to see what you find so comic,’ he concluded stiffly, as Ffether went into a peal of rather coarse laughter.

  ‘Both thrown!’ he exclaimed. ‘In the park! Well, I thought I’d seen everything. If I could not ride better than that, I’d keep to the riding house where I belonged.’

  ‘Which wood, Ffether?’ asked Blakeney again, through clenched teeth.

  ‘The big one over there,’ he pointed carelessly with his riding crop. ‘But I imagine she is at the Star and Garter by now. She had said something earlier about going there which I did not rightly understand. I take it it is her idea of a jest to go riding about the Park by herself like the veriest…’

  ‘Schoolgirl,’ interposed Mattingley, as Ffether searched angrily for the right word. ‘Well, a childish prank enough, but we must be grateful that it’s no worse. Do you not think, Blakeney, that we had really best all ride to the Star and Garter? Miss Thorpe will be glad of rest and refreshment before we drive home, and so, I expect will Mr Tremadoc. Do you think you could manage the ride, Miss Thorpe?’

  ‘Of course I can,’ she said eagerly. ‘By all means, let us start at once. I do not like to think of Charlotte’s being there by herself.’

  ‘By herself?’ asked Amelia. ‘I’ll bet you a guinea to a garter that Gaston is with her.’ And then coloured crimson, obviously wishing the words unsaid.

  ‘Gaston!’ exclaimed Blakeney. ‘Of course! Stupid of me. You’ll give us your company to the inn, Lord Ffether?’ He made it a little formal, almost an apology.

  ‘I thank you, no. I’ll ride home. My carriage is at your disposal if you need it. If not, be so good as to tell my man to bring it back to Grosvenor Square.’ He kicked his horse into a startled gallop and left them before either Blakeney or Mattingley could protest.

  ‘Well, so much for that,’ said Mattingley. ‘And perhaps best as it is. If you are fit to ride, Tremadoc, I think Miss Thorpe is right and we should be making the quickest possible way to the Star and Garter.’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ said Blakeney, as Tremadoc got groaning to his feet. ‘Of all the extraordinary starts. I’d not have thought it of Charlotte.’

  It was a subdued little party that started back across the Park towards the Richmond Gate. Caroline was beginning to feel the throb of pain where the stag’s antlers had grazed her, and concentrated silently on the business of sitting her horse. Tremadoc, on the other hand, kept up a stream of sotto voce grumbling, which made her own pain even harder to bear, and she was deeply relieved when they reached the Richmond Gate and he announced that he could ride no further.

  ‘You do not seem to understand,’ he told Blakeney and Mattingley, ‘that I am seriously injured. I shall stay here, and you will be so good as to send my carriage to me.’

  ‘Well, thank God for that,’ said Mattingley with an attempt at cheerfulness, as the four of them set forward again down Richmond Hill. ‘I do feel, do not you, Blakeney, that the fewer of us, the better.’

  ‘Yes.’ Blakeney recognised with a sinking heart that Mattingley shared his own fears about what news would await them at the inn. ‘Should I have asked him and Ffether to keep their mouths shut, do you think?’ he asked now.

  ‘Useless, I’m afraid.’ Mattingley was touched and amused by the appeal to his greater age and wisdom. ‘Hopeless in Tremadoc’s case. He’s bound to tell his mother. And unnecessary, I should think, in Ffether’s. He will hardly wish to tell the world that your sister has made a public fool of him.’

  ‘I suppose not. But it’s the deuce of a business, sir. My father is going to be angry.’ He could not help a swift, shamed thought that it made the time anything but hopeful for him and Caroline.

  ‘I just hope that’s the worst of it,’ said Mattingley.

  When they reached the Star and Garter, his fears were confirmed. Enquiring for his sister, Blakeney was handed a sealed note.

  ‘Dear God!’ He passed it to Mattingley. ‘Charlotte and Gaston.’

  ‘What I feared.’ Mattingley crumpled it in his hand. ‘Blakeney, have I your permission to handle this? As a friend of your mother’s, and, forgive me, an older man.’

  ‘Sir.’ Blakeney looked at him very straight. ‘I would be more grateful than I can say.’

  ‘Good. I’ll make some enquiries.’ He returned almost at once. ‘They’ve not got much start. Left not much more than fifteen minutes ago. A closed carriage, only two horses. Going north, of course.’

  ‘Not Gretna?’ asked Blakeney, appalled.

  ‘Where else?’ He handed Blakeney a note he had scrawled to the Duke. ‘Blakeney, do you take the young ladies home, give this to your father, tell him I hope to catch the young fools before they even get out of London, but, just in case, that I count on him to meet me at the inn on the Great North Road that Gaston mentions. It’s an odd note, when you think about it. Why tell us they’ll be at the Crown Inn? Don’t look so anxious, man,’ he put a friendly hand on Blakeney’s shoulder. ‘I know the carriage Gaston has taken, and he’s no kind of a whip. Mine was built for speed and I’ve ordered four horses put to. Besides, I think he means to be caught. And I shall most certainly do so. We’ll have to think then, the Duke and I, what is best to be done about this bit of folly.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I don’t quite understand, but I do thank you, sir. I only wish I could come with you.’

  ‘But you know you must not. The girls must be taken home. Caroline is behaving like a little heroine, but she must be exhausted. And I hope you know you can count on me.’

  ‘I do indeed.’ Blakeney shook his hand warmly. ‘We’ll not keep you a moment longer. Caro,’ he turned to her with a quick, loving look that moved Mattingley to a passion of pity. ‘Can you manage without a rest?’

  ‘Of course I can. We must go straight home, and we must not delay Mr Mattingley another minute.’

  Driving swiftly across Richmond Bridge and through a well-known pattern of side roads that should bring him to the Crown Inn before Gaston’s lumbering carriage could possibly get there, Mattingley thought with angry sympathy of the disaster that faced the Duke and his family. All the Duke’s fault, of course, for refusing to tell Gaston and Caroline the truth about their births, but what difference did that make now? If he was not very much mistaken, Blakeney and Caroline had come to some kind of an understanding in the park. Poor children, he thought, and congratulated himself that Blakeney had been biddable enough to accept his quick arrangements. He very much hoped that by the time Blakeney got the girls home to Chevenham House, found the Duke and broke the news to him, he himself would have told the grim truth to Gaston, got rid of him, and so avoided the painful and maybe dangerous scene that might otherwise take place between him and his new-found father. Gaston had too much of the Duke’s impatience of temper for such an encounter to be anything but disastrous.

  He slowed his horses and pulled Gaston’s note from his pocket to confirm the strong impression he had received, on first reading it, that Gaston had no intention of going to Gretna. He meant to be caught and to make his own terms with the Duke. Not a nice young man, thought Mattingley, and he must be very sure of Charlotte. He meant to have the Duke pay him handsomely to marry his discredited daughter.

  But Gaston’s scheme had already gone awry on one vital point. He must have expected the entire party to arrive at the Star and Garter and learn of the elopement. In that case, with Ffether and Tremadoc present, there would have been no hope of hushing the matter up. But Ffether and Tremadoc had not been there. And Gaston could not marry his half-sister. He had ruined himself, but not, with luck and good management, Lady Charlotte. At all costs, Mattingley thought, he must get to the inn before they di
d. Gaston meant to be caught, but not before he had fatally compromised Lady Charlotte. Seduced her? Raped her?

  Mattingley whipped up his horses, his thoughts turning to Blakeney and Caroline, who were going to suffer so much when, as it now must, the truth about her birth came out. Poor Caroline.

  Driving steadily on, he looked back at a series of pictures of her face today. She had been in a great deal of pain and concealed it admirably. And she had been glowingly, ecstatically happy. What would it feel like to see her look at him as she had at Blakeney? It would be pleasant. It would be most remarkably pleasant. His mind surprised him with a quick picture of the Duchess, passive in his arms. Suddenly, to his own amazement, he had made up his mind.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ he thought. ‘I’ll marry her.’

  The carriage was veering across the road. An admonitory touch of the whip to his leaders’ ears had it back on course again, and he drove on, curiously contented, his mind made up. ‘Here you may see Benedick, the married man.’

  Everything went as he had planned. Quick enquiries at the inn reassured him that Gaston and Charlotte had not yet arrived.

  ‘I am expecting two young friends,’ he told the landlord. ‘Your best parlour please, and a neat dinner for when they get here.’

  They drove into the inn yard half an hour later, and Mattingley, watching them from a parlour window, thought they had been quarrelling already. Nothing surprising about that. They both had their father’s temper. But it should make his task easier.

  ‘There you are at last.’ He walked leisurely into the hall of the inn to greet them. ‘I was really beginning to fear that you had met with some accident. But, come in,’ he went on hospitably. ‘You must be famished, both of you, and dinner will be ready this instant.’