“For God’s sake, don’t rub it in,” Lord Bayford begged. “In the meantime you are driving me crazy, as you always do!”
There was a note of passion in his voice.
The Marquis, who had been listening from the windowsill, thought that things had gone far enough.
He found it hard to believe what he was hearing.
He had not moved and had scarcely breathed since hearing Roger Bayford’s voice.
Now he put his other leg over the sill and stood up behind the curtains.
It had flashed through his mind that he should go away without letting them know that they had been overheard.
Then he told himself that it would be more embarrassing to explain later than to confront them now.
He put up his hands and pulled back the curtains.
As he had realised while he was listening, Esther had a small cupid candelabrum alight by her bedside.
It held three candles and the light seeping through the muslin curtains that fell from the corolla was very alluring.
A few seconds passed before either of the two locked together in the bed realised that there was a third person in the room.
Then, as Lord Bayford raised his head, Lady Esther gave a scream.
It was then the Marquis said,
“Good evening! I hope I do not intrude.”
He spoke in a controlled icy tone.
It had made any of his troopers who appeared in front of him on a charge tremble at the knees.
“What the devil are you doing here?” Lord Bayford demanded.
“I came to have a private conversation with Esther,” the Marquis answered, “and to ask her a question that I know she has been waiting to hear, but I realise now that it will be unnecessary.”
He walked across the room towards the door.
“Goodnight!” he said sarcastically. “I hope you both enjoy yourselves.”
It was then, as he unlocked the door, that Esther found her voice.
“Ivan! Ivan!” she cried. “I can explain everything!”
The Marquis did not speak, but he looked at her.
She saw the contempt in his eyes before he went from the room.
He closed the door quietly behind him and walked down the stairs.
When he reached the hall, he could still hear their two voices in the distance and he knew that they were exclaiming wildly at what had just occurred.
His lips were set in a hard line as he let himself out through the front door and pulled it to behind him.
Then he walked slowly back to Grosvenor Square, feeling breathless, as if he had been running in a long race.
When he reached his own bedroom, he undressed without ringing for his valet.
Only then did he feel as if he had been hit on the head with a bludgeon.
He had believed Esther’s protestations of love.
He had trusted Bayford.
And it seemed incredible that they had both deceived him.
He had thought that their affection for him was genuine and now he knew that they had only desired his money.
He pulled back the curtains from his window and got into bed.
Then, as he looked up at the sky, he remembered last night.
Sedela impersonating Lady Constance had stars in her long hair.
‘She warned me and I did not believe her! But she was right, absolutely and completely right!’
He felt as if the knowledge of it stabbed him and drew blood.
Then, as he began to breathe more easily, he thought about his mother.
She had been right in saying that his Guardian Angel was protecting him.
If he had put Esther in what had been his mother’s place as the Marchioness of Windlesham and then discovered that she was nothing but a whore, the humiliation of it would have been unbearable.
He was also well aware who Charlie was who had paid off some of Esther’s debts.
He was a rich dissolute Peer whose sole occupation was philandering from boudoir to boudoir.
The fact that he had a wife and several children did not perturb him in the least. Nor did it prevent him from pursuing every new beauty who appeared on the social scene.
‘Charlie – Roger – and how many more!’ the Marquis asked himself savagely.
It was infuriating to realise that like any greenhorn he had believed everything that Esther had said to him.
Her ‘lonely existence’ in the country was only a tale, a lie to evoke his sympathy.
She had lied and lied and lied.
She had lied when she swore that no other man had ever touched her since Henry Hasting had been killed.
She had lied when she had said that she loved him.
He felt he wanted to stab not her, but himself, for being so gullible.
Then he remembered that he had been saved, saved not only by his Guardian Angel but by Sedela pretending to be Lady Constance coming to warn him that he was in danger.
The danger had been that he might have married Esther and then too late he would have discovered her perfidy.
He wondered how many other people were aware of what she was really like.
Had they been laughing at him behind his back?
He could imagine nothing more humiliating than to have entered a room with Esther as his wife and to know by the look on several of his friends’ faces that they had been her lovers.
How could he have been taken in so completely?
How could he have been such a fool as to believe that he had been the only man in her life besides her husband?
The Marquis had always prided himself on his perception and they had teased him about it in the Army.
They said that he knew whether a man was a rogue even before there was any evidence of it and he had indeed always been aware when a man told him the truth or if he was lying to save his skin.
He had believed Esther – yes, he had believed her.
What was even more infuriating was that he had believed Bayford.
It seemed incredible how easily they had been able to deceive him and he wondered about the other men who had slept with Esther.
Bayford had tricked him into buying expensive horses, carriages and Heaven knows what else.
He would have taken a large percentage of the sales for himself.
Now that he knew the truth, the Marquis could see it all happening and he realised how obtuse and stupid he had been.
“I know you are busy, old boy,” Bayford had said almost every day in the last few weeks, “so I will look for the horses you want and, of course, you must have a decent phaeton. Just leave everything to me and I will see that you are not cheated.”
‘Not cheated!’ the Marquis murmured to himself angrily.
Bayford had cheated him in more ways than one. It was not only that, but that he had been taken for a fool.
A number of people in the Social world must be aware of it.
The Social World was one thing, but his home was something quite different.
How was it possible that Sedela, who had come to him last night, knew of his infatuation with Esther?
How did she know too that Bayford was untrustworthy?
He could still hear her soft voice waking him up.
He knew that she had dressed up as Lady Constance hoping that he would believe the family ghost when he might not believe her.
She knew how to reach him through the secret passages and she had disappeared in the same way as she had entered his bedroom.
His father and her father, the General, had been close friends and their friendship had been very important to them.
He could remember long ago before he left school asking his father why Sedela had been allowed to know the secret of the passages.
She had just jumped out at him when he was writing his holiday task in the library and it had made him start so that a blot of ink had fallen onto his essay.
“What do you think you are doing?” he had asked angrily.
�
��I have something exciting to show you,” she replied, “and you have been working all the morning.”
“I have to get this essay done,” he said, “so just leave me alone!”
“I said I have something to show you.”
“What is it?” he asked somewhat reluctantly.
“Swallow has had her foal!”
He remembered jumping to his feet with excitement.
“She has? What is it like?”
“The most beautiful foal you have ever seen and exactly like Swallow.”
He recalled how he had forgotten his essay and everything else except for his favourite mare.
He had run towards the stables, Sedela following him like a small dog.
But how was it possible that Sedela knew anything about him and Esther?
He had not thought about her in a long time.
‘I suppose she must be grown up by now,’ he ruminated. ‘At the same time she has no right to creep in on me in the way she used to as a child to warn me of things she had no business knowing about.’
He began to wonder who else at Windle Court knew of his affair with Esther.
If it was not somebody in the house, it would be even worse to think that they were talking about him in the village.
Of one thing he was determined to make certain, the gossip must go no further.
He could imagine nothing more humiliating than that the farmers and his tenants should be laughing at him. Or, for that matter, that the people in the County should learn that he had made a complete fool of himself.
His father had always been exceedingly proud of the Windle name, which was highly respected in Hertfordshire and he had also been respected among his Peers in the House of Lords.
He had been a regular attendant until he grew too old and ill to make the journey to London.
“One day you will take my place, Ivan,” he said to his son, “and I know that you will bring distinction to the family not only on the battlefields but also in Parliament.”
It was what the Marquis intended to do.
Now that he had left the Army he had the time to attend to his estate and later he would consider what part he could play in politics.
He knew from what the Prime Minister had said the last time they had met that he was likely to be offered a junior Ministry.
He was not quite certain if that was something he really wanted so soon.
Yet he was well aware that it was a compliment.
There were so many things to do and he felt that he needed a wife to help him.
Now he was aware that if, as he had intended, he had married Esther, it would have been the most disastrous action of his whole life.
Sedela had saved him.
At the same time it annoyed him to think that he had needed to be saved and even more that it should have been by a girl who was little more than a child.
‘I will see her tomorrow,’ he decided.
He already knew that he could not stay in London.
He was certain that Esther and Lord Bayford would try their utmost to see him.
They would by now have concocted some explanation of their behaviour.
Esther, with crocodile tears in her eyes, would ask his forgiveness and she would doubtless think up some plausible excuse for what had happened.
Perhaps that she had drunk too much and Bayford had taken advantage of her!
The Marquis could think of a dozen lies that she could tell.
Any means that she could think of to extricate herself from the predicament she was in and reinstate herself in his affections.
He was sure that she and Bayford were, at this very moment, fabricating some ‘cock and bull’ story that they hoped he would believe.
‘I will not see them!’ the Marquis said determinedly to himself.
It was impossible to sleep, but he dozed a little just before dawn.
He rang for his valet soon after six o’clock and ordered his fastest travelling carriage and a fresh team of horses to be ready in an hour.
He was hurrying over his breakfast, when his secretary, Mr. Mason, came into the room.
“I have just heard, my Lord,” he began, “that you are returning to the country. Surely you don’t have to make the journey today having only just arrived?”
“I am returning to the country, Mason, because I find that there is a great deal to be done on the estate,” the Marquis explained. “Cancel all my engagements and make it clear to any enquirers that I have no idea when I shall be returning to London.”
Mr. Mason looked aghast.
“But has your Lordship forgotten that His Royal Highness and the Prime Minis – ”
The Marquis put up his hand.
“I said all my engagements. Mason, and I mean all. Make it clear that I have gone to the country on family business and that you have no notion of when I might return.”
He rose from the table as he finished speaking.
He went from the room leaving his secretary staring after him in consternation.
*
The new team of horses he was driving carried the Marquis swiftly out of London.
He had to appreciate that they were exceptional not only in appearance but also in speed.
But it annoyed him to remember that they had been purchased on his behalf by Bayford.
He reached Windle Court in what was record time.
There was a look of surprise on Hanson’s face as the Marquis ran up the steps and walked into the hall.
“Welcome back, my Lord!” he exclaimed. “We were not expecting your Lordship back so soon and I hopes nothing’s amiss?”
The Marquis handed his hat to a footman together with his driving gloves and walked towards the study.
“I wish to see Johnson,” he ordered, “and then I require a horse to ride.”
“Very good, my Lord.”
Johnson, who was the Estate Manager, was produced rather quicker than the Marquis had anticipated.
After making arrangements to see two of his farmers that afternoon he went upstairs to change his clothes.
“It’s nice to ’ave your Lordship back,” Groves said with satisfaction. “It’s ’ere you belongs, my Lord, and there’s no place like ’ome.”
The Marquis answered him in curt monosyllables. But Groves had been at the Court enough years to think of himself as one of the family.
“Now, what you’ve got to do. Master Iv – I mean, my Lord,” he said, “is to get to know the people as ’ave bin prayin’ for you and admirin’ you all the years you’ve bin away.”
The Marquis muttered a reply and Groves went on,
“Them in the village loves you as if you be their own son and if there’s one person as ’as bin lookin’ forward to your return more than anybody else, it’s Miss Sedela, your Lordship knows who I mean, the General’s daughter.”
“I know who you mean,” the Marquis said grimly. “But why should she be looking forward to my return and wishing to see me? She was little more than a child when I went to the Peninsula.”
“She came here every day to cheer up your father, his late Lordship, and many’s the time I’ve ’eard ’er say to ’im, ‘now don’t you worry. Ivan’ll be safe. I feel it in my ’eart, and there’s bin no sign of Lady Constance!’”
The Marquis was listening, although he pretended not to.
“And many’s the time when the news from Portugal were bad,” Groves went on, “I’ve seen ’er prayin’ in the Chapel. And it were ’er as always put fresh flowers in front of your Lordship’s picture in the Blue Salon.”
The Marquis remembered that the Blue Salon had always been his mother’s favourite room and the picture that Groves was referring to had been painted when he was eight years old.
He was curious and so had to ask,
“Does Miss Sedela still come here even though my father is dead?”
“’Course she do, my Lord! She comes to see Nanny, if no one else.”
“Nanny!”
<
br /> The Marquis realised at once that he had been most remiss in not thinking of her before.
Of course Nanny was still living at Windle Court and she would, he knew, be longing for him to visit her.
He adjusted his tie in the mirror and without saying anything more he allowed Groves to help him into his whipcord riding jacket.
Then he walked down the corridor and up the stairs that led to the nurseries.
He was thinking that, because Esther had monopolised his thoughts since his return to England, he had forgotten Nanny.
He reached the third floor and opened the nursery door.
The sunshine was pouring in and shining on Nanny’s grey head as she sat there crocheting.
As he entered, she gave a cry of delight.
“Master Ivan! I thought you’d gone back to London!”
“I have come back, Nanny, because I wanted to see you,” the Marquis answered her.
He crossed the room and bent to kiss her on the cheek.
“How are you, Nanny? Have they been looking after you while I have been away?”
“I’m ever so happy now that you’re home,” Nanny smiled. “Let me look at you! I can see that you’ve grown older since you’ve been away and you’re very much a man!”
The Marquis laughed and sat down in the chair beside Nanny.
“I was one of the lucky ones and I am sure that it was because you were praying that I would return safely.”
“Would I be doin’ anythin’ else?” Nanny asked. “And it was Miss Sedela who said there was nothin’ else we could do but pray.”
“I hear that Sedela has been coming to the house to see you. What is she up to these days?”
He was hoping that Nanny might give him some clue that would reveal to him how Sedela knew about Esther.
“She’s grown up into a lovely girl,” Nanny said. “And now that your Lordship’s back, I expect you’ll be givin’ parties and you may be quite sure everybody’ll want to come to them.”
“Parties?” the Marquis repeated vaguely.
“Some of your old friends’ll never come back, them as lost their lives in the War,” Nanny said. “But the others’ll remember you and, of course, will want to see you again, besides all them on the estate and in the village.”
“You make me afraid that it will take me a lifetime to get round them all,” the Marquis smiled.
Nanny hesitated.
Warned by a Ghost Page 5