She would be about the right height by now, he thought.
She would know exactly how Lady Constance had been described in the reports and she would have known about her ‘shining hair’.
‘But why? Why should she warn me against Esther?’ the Marquis asked himself.
Now he was back to his previous question.
How was it possible that anyone at Windle Court or at Four Gables could know anything about Lady Esther Hasting and himself.
Yet apparently Sedela knew enough to warn him that Lady Esther was deceiving him.
‘That is a lie at any rate, a complete and absolute lie!’ he told himself angrily.
But he was sure that he was right in his supposition about Sedela.
‘I cannot think what has been happening to the child since I have been away,’ he thought, ‘but what she needs is a good spanking!’
He thought it disgraceful that a girl of her age should listen to slanderous gossip and then act on it.
He would visit Sedela at Four Gables tomorrow.
He would confront her and tell her what he thought of her behaviour.
‘As it was the middle of the night and I had been asleep, I suppose I might have been deceived,’ he thought angrily. ‘But, thank God, I am too clever to be taken in by such nonsense!’
He turned it all over in his mind and then added,
‘Lady Constance indeed. How dare she have the impertinence to dress up in such a manner and try to deceive me with her lying gossip?’
He wondered who could have told her such a load of rubbish.
‘I will make her tell me who it was,’ he thought, ‘even if I have to shake it out of her!’
He closed his eyes and turned over in an effort to go back to sleep.
Instead he could hear Sedela’s voice saying,
“You are in danger – deadly danger – save yourself!”
‘She must have ‘bats in her belfry!’’ the Marquis decided. ‘Esther loves me and I am certain she is completely faithful.’
To suggest that she was seeing another lover at the same time was utter nonsense.
Sedela had also referred to a friend. She must have meant Roger Bayford, but he trusted him implicitly.
They had been at Eton together.
When the Marquis had come back to London, it was Roger who had been more helpful than anybody else.
He had told him who was the best tailor and where he could buy new horses, including the two that he was going to try out tomorrow.
Roger had undertaken a lot of negotiating for him when he himself was too busy.
He was at this moment arranging for him to have a specially built travelling chariot. It was to be smarter and faster than anything else on the road at the moment.
‘No! Bayford is a damned good friend!’ the Marquis said to himself. ‘I will not hear one word against him.’
He tried to sleep, but instead he tossed and turned.
He was seething with indignation against the slurs that Sedela had cast upon Esther and Roger.
‘Roger has been a good friend to me!’ the Marquis repeated to himself a dozen times.
At last his anger began to subside.
Yet he was still asking how such incredible lies could have reached the ears of anyone as young and as well brought-up as Sedela.
The Marquis was certain that the General, even if he had heard any such gossip, would not have imparted it to his daughter.
He was a disciplinarian like his own father.
They both believed, however, that children, especially girls, should be protected from anything ugly or unpleasant.
‘I will quash these rumours once and for all,’ the Marquis decided when it was nearly dawn. ‘I will return to London, ask Esther to marry me and bring her back here as my future wife!’
He thought that this would solve the problem and silence the wagging tongues.
And he would deal very severely with anyone who spoke a word against her in the future.
It was then, at last, that he fell asleep.
*
The Marquis had been involved in war long enough to be able to be instantly alert the moment he woke.
He did not look, nor did he particularly feel, as if he had not slept all night.
He rode across the fields on a horse that, he thought, had not been in the stables when he had last been at home eight years ago.
He had now reached a decision that he was sure he would not regret.
He rode back to the stables intending to breakfast early so as not to be late for the hunt meeting, which was to take place at St. Albans.
He was no longer feeling depressed, nor did he feel angry.
‘Everything will be plain sailing from now on,’ he told himself, ‘and, if Sedela has damaged Esther’s reputation, I will immediately make reparation by announcing our engagement in The Gazette.’
He ate his breakfast hurriedly.
Then he left in his father’s ancient phaeton, which was waiting at the front of the house.
It was drawn by two good horses, but he had already decided to buy some better ones.
He was looking forward to riding immediately after luncheon the two that Roger Bayford had bought on his behalf. He was too experienced a horseman to hurry over the purchase of new animals.
He drove towards St. Albans, tooling his horses with an expertise that he was famous for.
He had made an important decision.
He knew that in his safe at Windle Court there were some engagement rings.
They had been handed down through the family since the first Earl of Windlesham had received his title for valour at the Battle of Agincourt.
The Marquis thought that he would choose the most beautiful and he would take it with him to London and he knew how thrilled Esther would be.
‘She wants to be my wife,’ he ruminated, ‘and because she is so beautiful she naturally has enemies.’
It must be some unpleasant spiteful woman who was saying these things about her. Alternatively it was a man she had rebuffed.
The hunt meeting was only partially satisfactory.
The present Master, Sir Trevor Smithson, had spent a great deal of money on improving the hounds during the War and had no wish to relinquish the pack unconditionally.
He did agree, however, that it was the Marquis’s hereditary right to share the position with him and the Marquis accepted this with a good grace.
He was aware that Sir Trevor was getting on in years and, if he ran the pack as he wished to, he would undoubtedly soon find it too strenuous and too demanding.
In the meantime he accepted a partnership and promised that he would spend a considerable amount of money in further improving the hounds and the horses of the huntsmen.
Driving back to Windle Court the Marquis was in a very good temper.
It was only as he neared his home that he remembered that he had intended to call on Sedela.
He was, however, already late for luncheon.
The horses were waiting for him to come to the stables as soon as he had finished it.
It was then that he had another idea.
‘What I will do,’ he told himself, ‘is go back to London this afternoon, ask Esther to marry me and then make Sedela apologise profusely!’
He smiled before he added,
‘There will, of course, be nothing else she can do.’
After luncheon he told Hanson that he had a note he wanted taken by a groom immediately to the Lord Lieutenant.
The butler, knowing that he was expected there for dinner, looked slightly surprised.
“I find that I need to return to London sooner than I had intended,” the Marquis explained. “I had forgotten, and it was careless of me, that I have a very important engagement in London this evening which I cannot avoid.”
“So your Lordship will be leaving this afternoon?” Hanson asked.
“Immediately after I have ridden the horses,” the Marquis replied. “But I will be back aga
in soon, Hanson. Perhaps next weekend.”
The butler smiled.
“That’s very good news, my Lord, very good news indeed. There’s a great many people as wants to speak to your Lordship, including the farmers.”
“And I want to talk to them,” the Marquis answered. “I may be bringing some guests with me, but I will let you know as soon as possible how many.”
“I’ll see to it that everything is in order, my Lord.”
“Oh, and by the way, Hanson,” the Marquis said, “give me the key to the safe. There is something I want from it before I go.”
“Very good, my Lord.”
The Marquis hurried out of the dining room and walked quickly round to the stables.
Once he saw the new horses, he told himself that Bayford had been right in persuading him to buy them.
They had been expensive, but they were exceptionally fine stallions with a touch of Arab blood in them.
“Them’s the best ’orses, my Lord, as we’ve ever ’ad in the stables,” the Head Groom enthused.
“They will not be the last,” the Marquis smiled. “I intend to have some very good hunters before the autumn and the sooner you increase your staff the better!”
This was welcome news for the Head Groom.
The Marquis rode the horses, one after the other, around the paddock.
One of them jumped extremely well and the other after further training would, he thought, do as well.
Then he went back to the house and quickly changed his clothes.
Time was passing and he knew that it would be getting late before he reached London.
He was in fact over-optimistic.
The traffic in the outskirts of the City was extraordinarily heavy and it was impossible to move quickly.
He had to wait at a standstill at one spot for an infuriatingly long time before he discovered that there had been an accident ahead.
It had taken place just where the houses began and it was impossible therefore either to leave the main road or to approach the City from a different direction.
Two wagons filled with goods for Covent Garden Market had collided with one another and the ground was strewn with vegetables, coops of hens and chickens.
The drivers of the wagons were having a fierce altercation.
The wheels of their vehicles were locked together in a manner that took an unconscionable amount of time to disentangle, while the traffic in both directions was completely blocked.
The Marquis had to leave his phaeton and organise a number of men passing by, who had nothing particular to do.
He made them help to clear the road and it was in fact entirely due to him that the arguments between the two drivers ceased.
They started to attend to their horses and it took more than twenty men to lift one of the wagons off the road.
Only then were the waiting carriages, wagons and phaetons free to trickle through and continue to their destinations.
It was after ten o’clock when the Marquis reached Windle House in Grosvenor Square.
He was not only dusty and hungry but he was also feeling somewhat irritable.
By the time he had changed, eaten a hastily prepared dinner and enjoyed a glass of champagne, it was nearly midnight.
“I hopes your Lordship has a good night,” the butler said as the Marquis left the dining room.
The Marquis did not answer because he was still considering what he should do.
Then he told himself that having come all this way he should fulfil his intention of proposing to Esther that night.
If she was impatient to hear him ask her to be his wife, he was impatient now to do so.
In the pocket of his evening jacket he had the ring, which he had chosen from the safe before leaving Windle Court.
He had been right in thinking that there was a good selection available.
There were in fact eight rings, all of which had been engagement rings at one time or another.
Some of the earlier ones were rather heavy and the one he liked the best had been worn by the Countess of Windle who had been an outstanding beauty at the Court of King Charles II.
The Marquis remembered her story with satisfaction.
Despite the fact that she attracted the roving eye of the King, she had remained faithful to her husband.
She had refused to allow King Charles even to kiss her.
“I had no idea,” the King was reported as saying, “that I would ever have a Puritan at Court!”
The Countess had laughed at him.
In the family archives there were letters telling her husband how much she loved him and there were also poems that he had written to her beauty and to her heart.
‘That is what I want,’ the Marquis told himself as he put the ring into his pocket.
He knew how beautiful it would look on Esther’s long white finger.
He thought as soon as he had the time he would write a poem to her.
It was a warm evening and, although the footman in the hall offered the Marquis his cape, he rejected it.
He also refused his hat and cane and thought that the man looked somewhat surprised.
Instead he just walked out through the front door and round the corner.
It was only a short distance to South Street where Esther had a small house situated between two much larger ones.
The Marquis had laughed at the way it was squeezed in between them.
“I believe they protect me,” she said softly, “and as I am so alone I need protection.”
The look she had given the Marquis told him only too clearly what she wanted him to reply.
Instead he had just kissed her.
Now, he told himself, he would say the words she longed to hear and watch her beautiful eyes light up.
Her looks in some ways were a contrast to her character.
She looked, he thought, almost as if she was a cold woman.
He knew that it was her breeding and the way she had been brought up that made her behave with such calm dignity and this was the impression she gave to those who met her casually.
But he now knew all about her passion and insatiable desires, which had ignited a consuming fire within him.
There was a touch of red in her hair and a suspicion of green in her eyes.
But for him, and for him only, she was as wild as a tigress in the jungle and it was a compliment that no man who was a man could resist.
The Marquis had felt tired when he arrived so late in London.
Now he could only think of Esther’s happiness when he gave her the engagement ring.
He vowed that he would be everything she required as a lover.
He knew that the front door of the house in South Street would be locked and bolted and there was no footman on night duty in Esther’s small household.
There was, however, a Mews at the back of the house where there were a number of stables.
He had often thought that Esther was not as secure as he would like her to be.
Now he thought that he would put his apprehensions to the test.
He would enter her bedroom from the Mews and kiss her into wakefulness.
Then he would proudly put the ring on her finger.
He was sure that she would find it exciting and very romantic to be woken in such a manner.
In the Peninsula the Marquis had taught his men to climb what seemed almost impossible mountains and buildings and they had also learnt to do so silently and stealthily.
This had enabled them on occasions to take the enemy by surprise and twice it had resulted in their capturing a French stronghold without a shot being fired.
The Marquis therefore looked at the back of Esther’s house with an experienced eye.
He gazed up at her bedroom window.
His first task was to climb up onto the sloping roof of her stable, which was unoccupied because he had put his own horses at her disposal.
He was wearing soft shoes that enabled him to cli
mb onto it without slipping.
There was an iron safety ladder fixed to one side of the house and it stretched from the top floor to the first floor. If there were a fire, this would enable the servants who slept in the attics to escape.
The Marquis then climbed up the fire escape to the level of Esther’s bedroom.
Below her windows there ran a narrow protruding ledge just wide enough to give him not much more than a toehold.
He edged his way carefully along the ledge, holding onto the side of the house.
He reached safely the first window, which was Esther’s wardrobe room.
And from there it was only a matter of a few feet to the next window.
He had already noted from the ground that it was open.
He at first thought that there was no light behind the curtains and then he remembered that they were of a heavy material.
They would not only keep the light from showing through and they would also prevent anybody in the bedroom from hearing a slight noise if he made one.
The Marquis, however, reached the open window without making a sound either with his feet or his hands.
He knew that his troopers would have been proud of him.
Then, as he put one leg very cautiously over the sill, he stiffened.
Somebody inside the room was speaking.
It was a man.
Chapter Three
“You are very alluring, Esther, as you well know,” Lord Bayford was saying, “I cannot therefore understand why you have not yet brought Ivan to the point.”
“He will ask me, of course, he will ask me,” Esther replied. “It is only a question of time.”
“Time is one thing that neither of us have,” Lord Bayford replied. “The duns are becoming impatient!”
Lady Esther gave a deep sigh.
“I hate to tell you how high my bills are!”
“I thought you made old Charlie pay them?”
“He paid for some,” Lady Esther admitted, “but then Ivan came along and I had to send him away. Anyway his wife was becoming suspicious.”
“You have to make Ivan ask you to be his wife!” Lord Bayford asserted urgently. “I only wish to God that I could marry you myself!”
“Oh, darling,” Lady Esther replied in her cooing voice, “you know how wonderful that would be, but you are not a Marquis and you are not rich!”
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