He found himself wondering how he could explain her background outside the family to people who would inevitably be curious.
The trouble was that Handsome Harry was the type of man who attracted gossip and curiosity wherever he went and those who had once known him, even though he had not been in England for nineteen years, or was it twenty, had never forgotten him.
Besides which the Harle family as a whole had an irritating habit of what Lord Harleston called ‘keeping tabs’ on all their relatives, good, bad or indifferent.
Because Handsome Harry had been not only an adventurer but an irresistible Casanova where women were concerned, nothing about his youthful escapades had ever been forgotten.
On one particular Lord Harleston was determined, that no one should ever know that he had bought Nelda with actual cash from a madam in a house of pleasure.
If it was even whispered about, he knew that it would damn her completely from a Society point of view and give the men who met her an entirely wrong idea of what they might expect from her in the future.
‘She will have to behave herself,’ he thought savagely.
He realised, as he thought about it, that, because she looked young and innocent and at the same time so lovely, she would attract men irresistibly without any additional factors.
The trap had gone some distance before Nelda said in a low voice,
“Perhaps – you would rather I – went in the coach? I am quite – ready to do so – if that is your wish.”
Lord Harleston looked at her sharply.
“Are you telling me in a somewhat roundabout manner that you are tired? ” he asked.
“I am – tired,” Nelda admitted, “but I would much rather be in the open air – but not – if it upsets you.”
“Why should you think it upsets me?” he asked her bluntly.
“Because I feel that you – resent my being here and – hate me,” Nelda replied.
Lord Harleston was so surprised that he turned to look at her as if he could not believe what he had heard.
“Why do you say that?” he asked in amazement.
“Mama would say that I was like the Indians – picking up the vibrations on the air without any need to – hear the drums.”
Lord Harleston knew exactly what she meant and felt somewhat ashamed.
“You must understand that I am very worried about you,” he said somewhat lamely after a moment.
“There is no need – I don’t wish to – upset you and perhaps, if it is possible for me to – return to England, I could ask Mama’s family to – look after me.”
Lord Harleston realised that he had not considered sending Nelda to the Marlowes.
“I expect your mother knew,” he said after a pause, “that your grandfather was so angry with her for running away that he never spoke of her again?”
“Yes, Mama did know and it made her very unhappy. But she said that she loved Papa so much that nothing in the world mattered except for him.”
Nelda spoke quite simply in a way that was rather moving.
It flashed through Lord Harleston’s mind that any man would feel flattered knowing that a woman cared so much for him that she would sacrifice her home and her family and live a life that at times must have been intolerably stressful and perhaps humiliating.
Aloud he said,
“There must be members of your family who I am certain would wish to get to know you and perhaps welcome you, but as a Harle you are my responsibility.”
“B-but – as you – hated Papa – I thought I would rather – live with Mama’s family.”
“I did not say that I hated your father,” Lord Harleston corrected her quickly.
Nelda did not reply, but he knew that she was thinking that he had revealed his feelings by the way he spoke and the tone of his voice.
He also had the uncomfortable feeling that she could read his thoughts and then he told himself that he was being imaginative and, of course, she could do nothing of the sort.
Because he wished now to be conciliatory, he carried on,
“You will understand that I have not met your father since I was very young and I only heard about him intermittently over the years while he was living abroad. What I want you to do when we can be alone is to tell me about your life and, of course, about yourself.”
“Perhaps it is best for you not to – know about it, my Lord,” Nelda said quietly.
“Why should you say that?”
“Because you are bound to – disapprove of Papa and, as I loved him – anything you might say – against him would make me angry and unhappy.”
She spoke softly and yet there was a little hint of steel behind the words that astonished Lord Harleston.
“I promise you that if you tell me about your father I will listen to anything you have to say with an open mind and I will certainly not sit in judgement on him now that he is dead.”
“Yes – he is – d-dead,” Nelda repeated almost beneath her breath, “but I find it hard to believe. He was always so – full of life and made everything – even the most difficult situations – seem funny and – somehow an adventure.”
Her voice broke and she turned her head away from Lord Harleston and he knew that it was because she was hiding her tears.
He then suddenly thought that he had been unforgivably brutal to someone so small and vulnerable.
It was almost as if he had been unsportsmanlike and he knew that it was because he was ignoring the terrible experience that she had just passed through.
He had been thinking not of her but of himself and the problems she presented to him rather than trying to understand what she must be suffering.
He took his left hand from the reins to lay it on hers.
“Forgive me, Nelda, and let us start again from the beginning. I think we have started off on the wrong foot and that is a mistake. We have to work together to plan your future and make it as happy as possible.”
Any of the ladies who had lost their hearts to Lord Harleston could have told Nelda that when he spoke like that in a particularly beguiling voice he was irresistible.
Lord Harleston felt Nelda’s hand quiver beneath his and, when she was free of his touch, she turned her face to say,
“If I was – rude – please forgive me.”
“There is nothing for you to forgive. Perhaps we are both a little on edge, which is not surprising.”
“N-no – of course not,” Nelda agreed, “and I am trying to – thank you for being – so kind to me.”
He smiled at her and again it was something that women found exceedingly attractive.
They drove on and an hour later Waldo called a halt while they ate a luxurious midday meal.
The wagons formed a circle in the traditional manner that Lord Harleston had read about in books and noted with interest.
They did not picnic on the ground, but a table and chairs were brought from one of the wagons and a very substantial luncheon was provided in large hampers.
As Portman was there to serve them, it was quite a feast.
They drove on after luncheon, stopping only to water the horses at one of the many rivers on the Plain.
Waldo told them that there had been plenty of rain recently, but later the rivers would become nothing more than streams and the lakes would even dry up into muddy swamps.
Now they were beginning to have glimpses of herds of cattle grazing on the grass. Waldo pointed out that the cattle Empires all had their own particular brand marks, but he had not yet seen any of those belonging to the Prairie Cattle Company.
It was beautiful country, at the same time very vast, and they seemed to be going further and further away from anything civilised into an indeterminate landscape where human beings had not yet ventured.
Nelda was very quiet and Lord Harleston sensed that she was still very tired. However he realised that, although they had suggested it several times, she had no wish to travel alone in the closed carriage.
With a perception that he did not usually possess he was aware, although she did not say so, that she only felt safe when she was close to him and when they were not too far ahead of the wagons. He therefore deliberately did not push the horses.
At about four o’clock in the afternoon Waldo came up alongside them to say,
“The Ranch is less than four hours’ drive ahead. Would you like to ride now?”
Lord Harleston was just about to say that there was nothing he would like more when he realised that Nelda had made an involuntary little gesture with her hand towards him as if she pleaded with him without words not to leave her.
For a moment he hesitated as to what he should do.
Then, making a decision that really surprised himself, he said,
“I am enjoying driving these horses, but you go ahead, if you want to.”
“You can give them their heads now. We are on our own grazing lands so and are quite safe.”
He took a long look at Nelda before he added,
“I’ll tell Pa and Ma to kill the fatted calf by the time you arrive. So long for now!”
He spurred his horse as he spoke and galloped off leaving a cloud of dust in his wake.
Lord Harleston and Nelda had travelled for another mile before they saw a small stream beside some trees and Nelda asked,
“Do you think the horses are thirsty? Perhaps we should let them drink?”
“A good idea,” Lord Harleston answered.
He turned the trap as he spoke towards the stream, which was winding through the trees and bushes in a very attractive manner.
He drove the leading horses into the stream so that the others would reach the water and as they did so Nelda jumped down from the trap saying,
“I feel so dusty that I want to wash my hands and face.”
Lord Harleston could understand why she was anxious to do so.
The dust they had encountered on their journey had left a film over the horses. It was half an inch thick on the floor of the trap and his clothes were covered in it.
He took off his hat and shook it and saw how much dust had accumulated on it.
Nelda knelt down beside the stream and pulled off her bonnet and washed her face in the clear water.
“It’s lovely and cool,” she exclaimed.
Lord Harleston realised that the horses would not wander away while they were drinking and so he fixed the reins to the buckboard and climbed down too.
As Nelda had said, the water was very cool and, as he washed his face and his hands, he thought that the one thing he would enjoy on arrival at the Ranch would be a bath.
Nelda rose from where she was kneeling and wiped her face with a small handkerchief.
Lord Harleston smiled.
“I should have thought of it before. My handkerchief is certainly larger than yours.”
He handed her one from his breast pocket that had been neatly folded by Portman.
She took it from him, wiped her face and her hands and then handed it back to him.
“Thank you. I feel much fresher now. I should have remembered the dust on the Prairie and brought a towel.”
Lord Harleston recalled how dusty and dirty she had been last night when the cowboys had carried her into Jennie Rogers’s house.
He knew that she was thinking of it too as she turned to look back at the way they had come.
Then suddenly she gave a shrill cry of fear.
“Indians!” she called out in a voice that seemed to be strangled in her throat. “Indians!”
Chapter Five
Startled, Lord Harleston looked in the direction she was pointing.
Far away on the horizon was a long line that appeared to be coming nearer and behind it a cloud of dust.
He glanced quickly in the direction of the wagons and realised that, while they had been watching the horses and washing, the wagons had moved on quite a considerable way from them.
He put out his hand towards the trap and, almost as if they sensed that something was wrong, the horses put their heads up and were already beginning to move out of the water and in the direction of the other horses.
Lord Harleston would have stopped them, but Nelda said with a cry,
“We must hide! Our only – hope is to – hide.”
Without saying anything more she sprang as lithely as a young gazelle over the stream onto the bank on the other side and then she was running frantically between the trees.
There was nothing that Lord Harleston could do but follow her and, as he too jumped the stream, he wondered if they were courting certain death or whether to join the others might be even more hazardous.
He had thought from his first look at the Indians that there must be a great number of them.
As he ran after Nelda, who was moving with the swiftness of fear ahead of him, he calculated that with three men in each wagon and four on horseback, that was sixteen guns not counting Portman, who could use one quite effectively.
‘We should have stayed together,’ he thought.
He knew that by stopping to drink at the stream on Nelda’s suggestion they had now separated themselves irretrievably from the wagons.
He ran on and now he could hear the sound of hoofs, at first like the faint roar of distant waves and then growing louder and louder.
He wondered if those in the wagons had been alerted and were already forming the traditional circle so that they could fire at the enemy behind the shelter of the vehicles.
All he could do was to concentrate on catching up with Nelda, who he was aware was running from the shelter of one tree to another. Fortunately they were thicker here than anywhere else they had seen on the Prairie.
Suddenly there were ear-splitting yells of the Indians’ war cries, followed rapidly by a fusillade of shots.
It was then that Nelda stopped and, as Lord Harleston reached her, he realised that she had run until she was exhausted and was gasping for breath in a way which told him that she was near to collapse.
He put his arms around her to stop her from falling down and she laid her head against his shoulder, her breath coming intermittently and her whole body trembling.
Lord Harleston could only hold her and listen to the war cries and sound of shots, which seemed to intensify.
He guessed that the Indians were now in their usual manner firing as they rode round and round the wagons, heedless of the toll that it took of their own warriors.
‘How could I have imagined that this could ever happen to me?’ he worried.
He knew that it would indeed be a miracle if he and Nelda escaped being killed.
She was now finding it not so hard to breathe, but, because her body had become stiff, he knew that she was listening and was aware even more vividly than he was of what was occurring because she had seen it happen before.
After what seemed an interminable time, there were no more shots and the war cries died away into an uneasy silence.
Nelda did not relax and Lord Harleston knew from what he had read that this was the moment when the Indians, having killed their victims, would scalp them.
They would then take every possession they required from the dead bodies and from the wagons before riding away with the spoils.
He was aware, simply because she did not move or speak, that Nelda also knew what was happening and they both waited, listening until the very effort was a physical pain.
Then so suddenly that they both jumped, the war cries came again, there was the thunder of hoofs passing them and gathering speed until they faded away into the distance when finally nothing more could be heard.
It was then, realising that they were both alive and had for the moment nothing more to fear, that Lord Harleston drew in his breath, which he did not realise he had been holding.
“It’s all over,” he said in a voice that did not sound like his own.
He felt the stiffness go out of Nelda’s body and she burst into tears.
She cried tempestuously as a child mig
ht and Lord Harleston was aware that it was because she had kept herself so strictly under control after the death of her father and mother.
Now her pent-up emotions broke from the bonds she had placed on them and she cried until it swept away thought and will power.
“It’s all right,” he kept saying, “it’s all right. They have gone!”
He tried to pat her shoulder and as he did so realised that when she had been running she had lost the pins that kept her hair in place.
Now it fell over her shoulders as it had done the night the cowboys had brought her to Jennie Rogers’s house.
As he touched it, he realised in some obscure corner of his mind that it was as soft as silk, softer than any woman’s hair that he had ever touched before.
But his brain was preoccupied with wondering how they could reach safety before it grew dark.
By now the sun was sinking low on the horizon and he recognised that dusk would fall swiftly.
It would be very frightening when darkness came and the wild animals on the Prairie were on the prowl to be anywhere near the carnage the Indians had left behind them.
Nelda’s tears had abated a little and Lord Harleston said,
“You have been very brave up to now, but you do realise that we cannot stay here in case the Indians come back?”
He felt the shudder that went through her as she raised her head to say,
“If – if we go – where can we – hide?”
Her voice was hoarse and tears were still running down her cheeks.
It struck Lord Harleston as he looked at her that she was really lovely, in fact lovelier than any woman he had seen before who had been crying.
“I think as Fate has saved our lives so far, it will help us again,” he tried to reassure her.
She drew in her breath.
Then she asked hesitantly so that he could hardly hear,
“Y-you are – sure t-they are – all d-dead?”
“I am afraid so.”
He knew that the Indians when scalping their victims would have made certain that there was no life left in them.
Lucky in Love Page 8