by Sheila Walsh
William, unexpectedly finding himself on the receiving end of one of Heron’s set-downs, flushed and bit his lip. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘I’ll go and change.’
Heron watched the drooping figure almost to the door before saying impatiently, ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake come back, child!’
William turned politely, but the enthusiasm had died from his eyes. ‘If you please, sir ‒ I’d as lief go and change. I am rather dirty, as you say, and besides, I do want to see ’dora.’
‘As you will,’ came the curt reply. ‘But I doubt you’ll find her home.’
The door closed. Mr Chessington crossed one yellow pantalooned leg elegantly over the other and studied the gleaming toe of his hessian boot thoughtfully as the silence stretched. Heron flung away to stare down into the hearth. At last he turned.
‘All right, Fitz ‒ say it. I made a complete mull of that!’
Mr Chessington transferred his studious gaze to his friend’s face. ‘It was not one of your more elevating performances.’ He paused. ‘You are not usually so clumsy in your dealings, Robert.’
‘No. No, dammit, I’m not.’
The exquisite’s eyes remained steady. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’
‘Oh God, Fitz, I don’t know what to do for the best!’ He sank into a chair opposite. ‘That cursed affair the other night! We had words, Pandora and I … and now we hardly speak.’ He sighed. ‘She said she ought never to have married me ‒ and I begin to think that she is right.’
‘So do I. She is clearly tied to a blockhead who don’t see what’s under his nose!’
‘Oh, I see well enough.’ The lip curled. ‘I am fast approaching my fortieth year, Fitz, and most of those years have been squandered on women not fit to breathe the same air as Pandora.’ His friend’s snort of derision in no way mollified him. ‘Oh, I know she likes to call herself a realist, but she’s only nineteen and, for all her open manner, still full of shining innocence and dreams of romance.’
His companion’s voice was dry. ‘But presumably you considered all this before you married her?’
Heron got up and restlessly prowled the room once more. ‘Well, of course I did. But you can have no idea how refreshing I found her frankness. There was a rapport between us from the first. She never once bored me, you see ‒ and so, God help me, I convinced myself that she needed taking care of ‒ that they both needed taking care of. But what I never admitted, even to myself …’
‘Yes?’ Fitz prompted, his glance suddenly keen.
‘I’m in love with her, Fitz.’ The admission came with a curious humility. ‘Dammit, the other night I was so wild with jealousy, I wanted to knock that young coxcomb’s teeth down his throat!’ Heron’s laugh was mirthless. ‘For behaving exactly as I would have done myself at his age. Diverting, is it not?’
‘Excessively. So now you have convinced yourself that you have deprived Pandora of some young buck’s undying love?’ Mr Chessington stood up. ‘I suppose it had never occurred to you to tell her all this? I thought not.’ He strolled to the door. ‘Be advised by me, dear old fellow, and do so with all speed.’ Looking back, he smiled. ‘Your experience with the opposite sex may be legion, Robert, but you plainly cannot see what is under your nose!’
It was considerably later when William put his head round the door and asked diffidently if he might come in.
Heron, roused from thought, was filled with compunction (a novel experience) as he saw how the boy hovered uncertainly. ‘I beg you will disregard my earlier ill manners, William. I was confoundedly blue-devilled!’
‘Oh, I don’t mind that, sir.’ William grinned with relief. ‘P’raps there’s something in the air today ‒ ’dora was decidedly miffy this morning, too.’ His grin faded. ‘About ’dora, sir. She isn’t back yet. You don’t think anything’s happened to her, do you?’
The Duke had been growing a little uneasy himself. He had asked Pinkerton to put back dinner and to let him know the moment his wife came home. But to William he was reassuring.
‘With Grimble in charge? Never. Any number of things might have delayed them, you know.’
‘Yes, of course.’ The boy sighed. ‘It did cross my mind that she might have gone somewhere with that cavalry officer.’
Heron’s hands tightened on the arms of his chair. ‘Cavalry officer?’
William frowned. ‘Well, I can’t be sure because we were quite high up by then. But I did see someone ride up and get in the landaulet … and he looked to be wearing a hussar uniform.’
‘I see. And did you notice what happened next?’
‘Well, I was a bit occupied.’ William frowned over his recollection. ‘But Mr Oliver pointed the carriage out to me shortly after and ‒ well, you get a terrifically wide view of things up there, sir, and I remember thinking it was funny because it was going towards the river instead of coming this way, so p’raps they were going to visit someone?’
‘Yes, that will be it.’
He wondered why Heron should look so peculiar all of a sudden, and why he started when the door opened. It was Mr Varley asking for a word with his grace. The Duke heard the note of gravity in his secretary’s voice and said in his calm way as he left the room: ‘Go and tell Pinkerton to serve you your dinner, William. I expect you are hungry and there seems no point in waiting further. I will join you shortly.’
‘I did not wish to alarm the boy, sir,’ said Mr Varley as they hurried to the parlour below stairs where Grimble lay on a couch, blood congealing on his head, his face grey.
‘It’s a miracle that he got back here at all, your grace,’ muttered the under-groom who hovered close. ‘On a strange horse, ’e was, all slumped over, like.’ His voice sank still lower. ‘Looks mortal bad, don’t ’e?’
The Duke bent over the couch, his voice calm, unhurried. ‘Grimble ‒ can you hear me?’
After a moment, the groom’s eyelids fluttered open, the eyes dull, uncomprehending. ‘Head … hurts like the devil.’
‘Yes, I know, old chap. The doctor will be here directly.’ He spoke slowly and clearly. ‘Can you remember what happened? The Duchess?’
‘Four of ’em … hard villains …’
Heron felt as though his heart was being squeezed. ‘And Captain Austin ‒ do you remember about him?’
But the groom’s eyes had closed again.
‘I think he’s lost consciousness again, your grace.’
The Duke swore silently and straightened up. He was already turning away when there came the merest thread of sound. He bent close.
‘… pawn of … jealous woman … he said … ruin … Duchess …’
He could make little sense of it. The doctor came bustling in and after a word, they left him to it and went up to the library.
‘Not much to go on, Ambrose.’
‘No, sir.’ Mr Varley had never thought to see so much anguish in his employer’s eyes.
‘I mean to find her, you know. Even if she and Austin have …’ He recollected himself and stopped short.
Mr Varley took a deep breath. ‘If you’ll pardon the liberty, sir, that’s pure gammon! Her grace has eyes for no one but you.’
He was surprised to hear a short burst of laughter.
‘So everyone keeps telling me!’ The Duke buried his head in his hands. ‘Oh, God ‒ where do we begin?’
‘Well, sir ‒ as I recall your telling me, young William saw the carriage going towards the river, and if that is so, it occurs to me that we do have a formidable source of help in that quarter?’
Heron lifted his head slowly. ‘Sergeant Blakewell and his friends ‒ of course! They’d do anything for Pandora. Ambrose, you’re a genius!’
‘No, sir.’
‘The carriage wouldn’t exactly escape notice in an area like that.’ He stood up with an air of purpose. ‘Look, would you get down there and organize things? I have been going over what Grimble said ‒ and there is something I must do.’
Lady Sarah Bingly was about to
leave for a dinner engagement when the Duke of Heron was announced. A feeling of unease gripped her.
‘Tell his grace I am not at home,’ she snapped.
‘How very ungracious of you, my dear,’ Heron said, striding past the gaping servant and making her an exaggerated bow. He looked her over with an air of studied familiarity which brought a faint flush of anger to her cheeks. ‘Exquisite as ever. Going out? Well, I won’t detain you. The fact is, I am a little concerned about my wife and felt convinced that you could help me.’
Alarm flickered in her eyes and she was betrayed into a wild tinkling laugh. ‘My dear Robert, if you will marry a naive little nobody, I am not surprised that you are concerned!’
Sarcasm had been a mistake. She realized it at once, but the damage was done. He closed upon her with frightening speed.
‘Where is she, you unscrupulous little bitch?’ he said softly.
She raised a hand to strike him, but he seized her wrist in a punishing grip, his tawny eyes paled to a chilling yellow like the eyes of a wild cat. He forced her back until she was brought up against a Louis Quinze commode and could go no further.
‘You are mad!’ she hissed. ‘Let me go or I shall scream!’
‘Try it,’ he invited cordially. ‘It would give me a great deal of pleasure to throttle you. Now, then.’ He gave her wrist a persuasive twist. ‘Where is my wife?’
‘I don’t know!’ she cried, and as his grip tightened even more painfully, ‘I tell you I don’t know!’ The look in his eyes frightened her, yet she could not keep a hint of triumph from her voice. ‘More than likely she is by now well out to sea!’
Chapter Seventeen
The chair creaked as Pandora shifted her position in order to look round the small bare room into which they had been unceremoniously thrust, their hands and feet firmly bound. Captain Austin lay on a pile of sacks in the corner near the filthy casement through which the fast fading daylight filtered. He moaned from time to time, but had not answered when she tried to rouse him. There was no way of telling the time, but she supposed it must be early evening.
Would Robert be wondering where she was? Perhaps he hadn’t even noticed her absence. Thinking of him filled her with a great aching need ‒ suppose she never saw him again? She rebuked herself for the sin of despair. Papa had taught her always to think positively.
From somewhere close by came the steady slap of water against a stone wall or jetty. So they must be near the river, and rivers were a mighty convenient outlet for disposing of unwanted people ‒ or bodies. Her mouth, already dry, grew drier. The sooner they could get away, the better.
‘Captain Austin?’ She tried again. ‘Oh, Captain, do please wake up!’
He muttered something unintelligible. Pandora feared he was concussed, so if they were to escape being fed to the fishes, it would be up to her. Her hopes of creating a scene when they arrived had been thwarted by her captors who had stuffed a noxious rag into her mouth, removed her pretty hat, dragged the pins from her hair and had thrown a piece of sacking over her head and shoulders.
‘Can’t have all the neighbours gawping, now, can we?’
They had removed the Captain’s distinctive jacket, too, and now he shivered occasionally in his shirt sleeves though the room enveloped them in malodorous stuffiness. Pandora was sure she had heard mice, maybe rats, scuttling about. As darkness came they would probably grow bolder, and though she was no stranger to vermin, there was something repellent about being tied up and subject to their whims. It would be too much to hope that one might gnaw its way through her bonds.
At least she no longer had to suffer the choking rag. She had Joss to thank for that. ‘No one’d hear you if’n’ you did shout your head off.’ He had given her a few sips of porter, too, when they were alone for a few minutes. It was not what she would have chosen, but it removed that other, fouler taste. He was clearly unhappy about the situation, but Pandora had sized him up very quickly as a born follower of orders, unlikely to go against his mates.
‘What regiment were you, Joss?’ she asked suddenly.
‘Fifty-seventh, ma’am,’ came the prompt reply.
‘Then you have a proud record. Isn’t this a bit of a come-down?’
He shuffled uncomfortably. ‘A man has to eat, ma’am.’
‘Perhaps so, but surely …?’ She looked at his tough scrawny little body and sighed. ‘Oh, well.’
‘I’ll have to be going.’ He picked up the piece of cloth, his eyes pleading for understanding. ‘I’m sorry about this, straight I am.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘You really a Duchess, ma’am?’
‘Yes.’ She viewed her surroundings ruefully. Not exactly Carlton House! ‘But before that I was with the Army, too. I’m Colonel Carlyon’s daughter.’
‘Gawd Almighty! You never are? There’s some of your lot got a ken not far from ’ere.’ He stopped, conscious of being indiscreet. And then, as a thought struck him: ‘Someone said as it was bought by some swell cove like a ‒’ his eyes widened ‘‒ like a Duke?’
‘My husband,’ she said. ‘It was his wedding present to me.’ The thought of Sergeant Blakewell not far away was absurdly comforting.
‘Oh Gawd!’ he said again.
‘You won’t tell the others?’ she pleaded.
‘Stop jawing in there,’ came a growl from beyond the door.
‘I’ll have to go, ma’am ‒’
An idea stirred. ‘Joss, don’t leave me here in the dark without a light. There are rats, I think.’
He treated her now with an awkward deference that would have been comical in other circumstances.
‘Can’t promise anyfink, ma’am,’ he’d mumbled.
But now, as the casement window showed its little patch of sky turning to an indistinguishable darkening grey, he sidled in furtively with a scrubby bit of candle in a holder. It flickered feebly as he set it on the table. ‘Best I could manage,’ he muttered by way of apology.
She thanked him, but watched in dismay as the closing door almost extinguished it, and with it her only hope.
It seemed to take her an unconscionable time to shuffle to the table, the cord chafing her ankles with every tiny movement, the noise sounding alarmingly loud in the silence so that every moment she expected someone to come rushing in.
But that was the least of her difficulties; positioning her wrists over the candle flame, near enough to have some effect without dropping them so low that they put it out, and without being able to see what she was doing, was well-nigh impossible; the effort of holding the position steady once she had achieved it made her perspire and the strain on her arm and shoulder muscles caused them to tremble so much that a fear of failure superseded all else. She tried to empty her mind of thought, concentrated fiercely and could hardly believe it when at last she felt a slight give in the cord’s tension. A few moments more and it fell apart, but one end in falling guttered the candle.
‘Oh, devil take it!’ she exclaimed, furious with her own clumsiness.
‘Who’s there?’ came a blurred voice from the corner.
To Pandora it was the most wonderful sound in the world at that moment. Crawling to Captain Austin’s side she struggled to free her ankles with fingers numbed of all feeling, while the words spilled over themselves in her relief.
‘So you see, we must be quiet,’ she whispered, untying his hands and feet. ‘How do you feel?’
‘Devilish queer,’ he muttered thickly. He tried to sit up. ‘Oh, God ‒ my head! And I can’t see a damn thing!’
‘No, I’m afraid that’s my fault.’ Pandora explained about the candle. ‘Please, you must lie quiet. I mean to try and get help.’
‘Must let me …’ he began, then sank back with a groan.
Now that her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, she found that just sufficient light filtered through the window to enable her to see what she was doing. The window had a latch, though she doubted it had been opened in years. Her hands and feet were
suffering the excruciating discomfort of returning sensation, but she forced herself to think of other things.
‘Perhaps,’ she mused, ‘if I can drag the table against the door without them hearing, it will hold for as long as it takes me to release the latch and climb out.’
‘Make too much noise ‒ two of us together ‒ lift the table.’
Captain Austin had hauled himself upright and was sitting propped against the wall.
Pandora eyed him doubtfully. ‘I really don’t think ‒’
‘Dammit, Duchess!’ he exploded softly. ‘I refuse to sit here doing nothing while you ‒’
‘Oh, pride!’ she scoffed. ‘Very well, but do take care.’
With her arm for support he slid up the wall to stand for a moment, eyes shut. ‘Ah!’ he gasped, and then, taking a deep breath, ‘Now, your grace, lead on, if you please.’
Laughing shakily, she put a shoulder under his oxter and they staggered drunkenly across the room. The table was heavy, but between them they jammed it hard up against the door. The noise seemed to echo through the dark room, but no sound came from beyond. The effort had exhausted the Captain, however, so Pandora moved the chair close to the table and made him sit.
‘You can hold them off,’ she said placatingly and turned her attention to the window. Kneeling on the wide sill she tried it. It was solidly stuck. ‘I’ll have to bang it,’ she said, attacking the surround with clenched fist.
Just as the top was beginning to give, there was a shout from the other room and pandemonium seemed to be breaking loose. Pandora renewed her efforts, the door reverberated with rattles and thumps, the table rocked and there was much shouting. A few minutes more of that and all her effort would have been for nothing.
Then the window gave and fresh air rushed in. She turned swiftly to the captain, holding out a hand. ‘Come on. I’m sure you could make it.’
‘No. I’ll slow you down.’
‘But I can’t leave you here! They’ll kill you!’
‘They can try.’ A touch of the old audacity showed briefly, then he put his weight against the table and said tersely, ‘It’s you they really want, so stop agonizing, girl ‒ and go!’