He smiled without warmth. “It is too late for both Marklye and me. He is as disillusioned as I was - am. We are both struggling like wounded flies, bound hopelessly in your toils. And yet, you see, in spite of everything, my inclination – my overriding desire – is to believe you.”
“I thought you did, I thought for a moment that …” She choked but persisted, her voice trembling, “that we both realised that there had been a misunderstanding years ago, that letters had gone astray and gossip had intervened.”
She did not dare to look at him as she spoke and he did not reply at once. The silence lengthened painfully until he said, “That is in the past. I think we should concentrate upon the disappearance of the diamonds. Do you give me your word that you did not perpetrate this shabby trick upon Marklye?”
“I am appalled that you should ask. Of course I did not.”
“In that case it is imperative that we discover who did.”
Chapter 31
It was the evening after the Barnaby ball and Cassie, who had not of course been invited to that event and had spent a dull evening at her own pianoforte, was looking forward to going to the theatre with Mrs Farley. She hoped that Lord Furzeby and his nephew might be there, perhaps accompanied by Lord Marklye, whose company she found amusing in spite of the unlikelihood of his fulfilling Mrs Farley’s plans for her future. She was about to sit down to an early dinner when the Duke walked into the saloon.
The butler did not announce him, unsurprisingly since the house belonged to him and he was therefore perfectly entitled to walk in and out as he chose, but Cassie was so shocked by his unexpected visit that she dropped her book upon the floor and half rose, as though to ward off a threat, before collapsing once more into her chair.
“What … How agreeable to see you, Robert!” she gabbled, unnerved by his appearance quite as much as by his unexpected arrival.
The Duke was not yet dressed for dinner; indeed it was several hours before he was accustomed to sit down for that repast. He wore a perfectly fitted blue superfine coat, a discreetly embroidered waistcoat, a pair of close-fitting buff pantaloons and a perfectly tied and dazzlingly white neckcloth embellished with a diamond pin. The whole was rounded off with highly polished top boots. There was nothing about him – apart from a remarkably fine figure and a more than usually handsome face - which might have been expected to give a female a fit of palpitations. Nevertheless, Cassie, knowing him better than most, took one look at his face and turned as white as his neckcloth.
“I take it, from your reaction, that you did not expect to see me,” he said with the glimmer of a sardonic smile.
“No. I – I thought you had quite given me up. But I am of course delighted. Will you sit by the fire? I will order some wine.” She was still gabbling but had managed to rise to her feet and remain upon them. She took an uncertain step towards the bell pull.
“I daresay I could order wine myself if I wished for some,” he said in a distant voice, reminding her disagreeably of the fact that everything in the house, including the wine, had been bought by him.
“Pray do not hover over me in that tiresome manner,” he went on. “Sit down. Did you not expect me to discover the truth in the end? Or has everything gone so smoothly for so long that you have become entirely confident that the injury you did me seven years ago would never come to my knowledge?”
Cassie sat down obediently but rather abruptly, neglecting to dispose her limbs in a fetching manner. She sat bolt upright on the edge of her chair, poised as though to receive a sentence of death. At his words, she changed colour, becoming as red as she had previously been white.
“Of what are you talking?” she asked in a constricted voice.
He was watching her closely, his eyes hard. Cassie, in all the time she had known him, had never seen that expression before; the deep blue eyes had reflected many emotions, many moods, but never this one and she was mortally afraid.
“Pray do not waste your time in trying to pull the wool over my eyes any longer. You would do well to admit what you did seven years ago to ensure that I did not marry the woman to whom I was betrothed. If I have to drag it from you, I promise that it will be the worse for you.”
“The worse? What can be worse than your disapproval? Your harsh judgment of me? Or do you intend to beat me? You have been admirably restrained all the time I have known you: never a harsh word nor a rough finger; why you have been a very paragon of a lover!” Her attempt at sarcasm failed miserably, her voice betraying her as her breath came and went.
“Do not try to turn the tables on me,” he advised coldly. “I have indeed been a very paragon of a lover: I have given you everything you could possibly desire. Ever since you seduced me when I was a half-grown schoolboy, you have held on to me, have you not? When I broke away that first time, you took steps to make certain that I could not escape your grip. You timed your poisonous letter with immense care, did you not, so that she would barely have time to write to me before I left for Spain and so that we would not be able to meet again before the ship sailed?”
“I – oh, Robert, I loved you so much, I could not bear to let you go. I thought you would thank me in the end. I knew, you see, that you could never be happy with a little country bumpkin. You would have regretted it almost at once if you had indeed married her.”
“That was not your decision to make – and I was a fool to trust you. Tell me now, without lying, precisely what you did.”
She twisted her hands together. “I – I cannot perfectly remember. I was not the only one who thought your engagement a mistake. Everyone said the same thing.”
“Everyone? What did they say?”
“That she was not good enough for you; that her family was not well connected; that she was little more than a child …”
“She? She was two years older than I was when you first persuaded me into your bed. I was – am - six years her senior; you are eleven years mine. Her connexions are quite as good as yours even if her parents never saw the need to introduce her to London Society; her morals are considerably superior. How dare you judge her unworthy?”
“It was not only I. Why did you not choose a girl from the ton? Why her?”
“Because I loved her,” he said simply.
“Damn and blast her!” Cassie exclaimed, bursting into noisy sobs and jumping up from her chair. “I knew there would be trouble as soon as she came to London. Why did she come here after all this time? Fancy a governess coming to London! Has she told you this taradiddle?”
“I have discovered,” he said loftily, “that you wrote to tell her of the sins I had committed with you. Tell me, how did you discover her direction? Did you open my letters?”
“Everyone knew who she was. Society always knows everything. There were plenty of people willing, indeed eager, to tell me who she was and where she lived. I thought she should know what you were like. Did she expect you to be as innocent as she was? How absurd!”
Cassie knew that she was not helping herself by attempting to cast her rival in a poor light. She saw the Duke’s face harden further; she saw his hands clench into fists where they rested on his thighs.
“And then?” he said. “That was not all, was it? She wrote me a letter as a result of yours, breaking off the engagement. I received it just before I embarked for Spain and, like the heartbroken fool I was, I threw myself into the first battle we fought with every intention of being killed. I almost was. I was wounded so badly, as you know, that I did not complete the letter I had begun in reply to hers – was not indeed in possession of my senses – for several months. It was not until I was back to England that I managed to finish it. As I recall, I did so from my bed. When I looked for it later, intending to ask a nurse to post it, I could not find it. I thought that perhaps I had forgotten and that it had been with the others I wrote – to my sister and my mama – and that it must have been despatched at the same time. Someone had taken it – had they not? A woman who visited me every day, who laid h
er cool hand upon my brow, who declared how much she loved me, who begged me to get better, whose lovely face alternated with that other one in my dreams.
“What did you do with that letter?” He did not shout the last words but the speed with which he uttered them and the emphasis he laid upon them made them sound like gunshot.
“I … it was lying on the floor beside your bed. I picked it up and saw to whom it was addressed and put it in my reticule.”
“What did you do with it?”
“I read it and then I burned it. I should think she would have lost all respect for you if I had posted it,” she added cruelly. “You began by asking in the most maudlin manner for her forgiveness for your ‘past’, begged her to reconsider, reiterated your undying love, etc. Then, as I recall, there was a gap, presumably while you hovered on the edge of death. After that, you adopted a different tone - accusatory – berating her for finding a substitute, cursing her for her infidelity and so on and on … It made me feel almost queasy and I thought the proper thing to do was to burn it as soon as possible.” She cast herself down into a different chair, one some distance from both him and the fire. Her legs were trembling so much she was afraid that they might give way.
“You had no business to read it since it was not addressed to you,” he said. “I wonder what would have happened if she had received it; at least she would have known of what she was accused and we might perhaps have been able to explain ourselves to each other. As it was, you had sent her an anonymous letter informing her of my misdemeanours with you and you sent me one, describing purely imaginary misconduct on her part. Has your conscience never smote you in all this time?”
“I thought it was for the best. I still think it was for the best. You would never have been happy with her; you were happy with me.”
“What the devil do you mean? I was not happy; you know perfectly well that I have never been happy since you intervened so spitefully between my betrothed and me. You and I have rubbed along; we have enjoyed some pleasant moments, but you are not, never have been - and you have known it from the beginning - my heart’s desire any more than I am yours. Immediately after I was wounded – in heart and body - you bound me to you again, expressing sympathy for my ‘loss’ – a loss you had engineered. Did you think I would marry you in the end? Is that why you were determined to remove her – an ambition you still hold if I am not mistaken. But all that is in the past. Now we come to the present. What have you done since she came to London.”
Cassie jumped. The sudden change of direction took her by surprise. She knew that her conduct seven years ago had been despicable. She had hated herself for a long time for what she had done, but had been comforted by the thought that the country parson’s ill-connected daughter would not have suited him in the long run. Why she was better born than that cursed woman from Cornwall, whatever he might say to the contrary!
“Nothing!” she faltered, her face whitening again and her lips trembling.
He got up and she thought for a moment that he was going to hit her. He took her by the wrist and pulled her to her feet.
“Tell me - or must I shake it out of you?”
“Let me go!” she begged, beginning to whimper. “Pray do not hurt me!”
“Hurt you? Do you not realise how badly you have hurt me?”
“I have never raised a hand to you.” She could hear the whine in her voice but could not control it in spite of knowing quite well, ever since that first beating she had received from the previous Lord Marklye, that such an approach had the opposite effect to that for which she strove.
“I should think not!” he said contemptuously. “And I have never laid one on you in anger. For God’s sake, Cassie, why hold out on me now? I give you warning: if a hair of Miss Holmdale’s head is harmed, I will kill you with my bare hands. There! I have issued a threat to a woman; I have never done such a thing before and am horrified that I must do so, but I can think of no other way to protect her. I will ask you once more: what have you done or caused to be done since she arrived in London?”
He let go of her wrist and walked away from her to stand in front of the fire.
She, weeping hopelessly, sank down into the chair, rubbing her wrist clumsily, but she would not meet his eyes.
He said nothing more but waited, unmoving.
She stumbled to her feet again and threw herself on her knees in front of him, clasping her hands around one of his legs, sobbing as though her heart would break.
“Stop this!” he said at last wearily. He bent and unclasped her hands, lifted her to her feet and conducted her to the sofa, where he pushed her down. “You are a fool!” he said in a gentler tone than he had used since he had entered the room. “Just tell me what you have done – or tried to do – and whom you have employed to do it.”
“I knew she was in London because of the way you broke it off with me. You could hardly bear to touch me once you had seen her again. What is it about her that is so fascinating?” Not receiving an answer to this diversionary tactic, she continued, “I set someone to follow you because I knew you would meet her again. He saw you when you pulled her off the road when she was nearly run down. He told me she gave you a parcel and then you kissed her. What will you do next? To kiss someone like that – he described it to me – on the pavement! Then he saw Lady Sullington drive up and brandish her whip. He didn’t know she was Lady Sullington, but I did, from his description. She was always a nasty piece of work. I knew her a long time ago – from when you were in short coats. She hated me because Lord Sullington liked me better than her.”
She paused but the Duke said nothing and, after a moment, she continued, “I was in despair. That night I went to the opera with Prue. We met Lord Furzeby, who was with his nephew, and Lord Marklye.” She stopped again because he had drawn in his breath sharply. “What have I said?”
“Nothing. Go on.”
“Prue had decided earlier that Lord Marklye would make me a good husband but, when we had supper after the opera, he told me plainly that he could see through her machinations and that, although he liked me and he thought I was beautiful, he was not interested.”
The Duke’s grim mouth twitched into a slight smile.
“It was after that, talking to Lord Marklye and realising that I could not manipulate him into falling in love with me any more successfully than I had done with you, I decided there was no point in having you followed. I called off the man the next morning.”
“When you employed the man to follow me, did you also instruct him to kill Miss Holmdale?”
“No, only to follow you and tell me what she looked like, although I own that I did think of it but, after I heard about the travelling chaise nearly running her down, I hoped someone else might do the job for me. It would have done if you had not pulled her out of the way.”
“Almost certainly; it was lucky I was there, was it not? Lucky for Miss Holmdale; unlucky for you, Cassie. Did you mention that you wished her dead to the man you set to follow me?”
“No, not precisely,” she said with a degree of hesitation which led him to pounce upon her words.
“Was it on your orders that the travelling chaise was set in motion to run her down, as it were?”
“No, most definitely not.” She spoke sharply. “That was before I even knew who she was. I only knew that when he told me about the woman he saw you kissing.”
“Did you tell him to remove any woman I appeared to be interested in? I suppose kissing one might lead him to that conclusion.”
“No! You kissed her after the chaise had tried to run her down!” she exclaimed.
“You seem to know a great deal about it. What happened next?”
“You took her back to the Sullington house and you both went inside for some time,” Cassie said sulkily. “When you came out, you put her into a hackney, but you didn’t get in yourself.”
“No; I see my decision to send her off on her own was the right one. What did I do next?”
“You walked home.”
“What did she do?”
“I do not know. I had not asked the man to follow her. But the next time you were in the same place was at the Barnaby ball.”
“Just so! And who ordered a shot to be fired at Miss Holmdale when she went into the garden?”
“I did not.”
“No? But you are not surprised to hear that one was fired, are you?”
“No. Lord Furzeby told me this morning.”
“Ah! News travels fast, does it not? So you know whose flesh was shredded by the bullet, I suppose?”
“Yes, Lord Marklye’s. But he was on the terrace with her, was he not? Do you have a rival in him, Robert?” She spoke viciously, wanting to wound him.
“If you mean, as I think you do, does Marklye admire Miss Holmdale, I believe you must ask him. I cannot answer for another man’s feelings. Is there anything else you feel you should confess to me? I would advise you to make a clean breast of it for, if I later discover some further plot to hurt Miss Holmdale, you will pay a heavy price, as I warned you before.”
“No, there is nothing else,” she whimpered, wishing that he would stop interrogating her. “I wanted only to know who she was – and now I do know.”
“That was not the only thing you wanted, was it? There is one other small matter. Do you know aught of a box of diamonds?”
Cassie looked so startled by this question that he shrugged.
“Whose diamonds?” she asked.
“If you know nothing of them it is immaterial.” He moved away from the fire towards the door. “Have you definitely called off your man?”
“Yes, I swear it.”
“Have you paid him?”
“Yes.”
“I do not wish to appear grudging,” he said, his hand on the door handle, “But I must point out that using my money to pay a man to follow me strikes me as somewhat improper.”
Sylvia Or The Moral High Ground Page 27