The door opened and a man stood upon the threshold. At first she thought she had lost her reason for it was not the same man who had locked her into the room.
“Robert?” she asked tentatively, her grasp still tight upon the shard.
“Sylvia!” he replied in reassuringly familiar accents. “Thank God!”
He came towards her, skirting the bed, removed the shard from her hand, laid it down upon the floor and took her in his arms. She swayed, sighed – no more than an exhale of the breath she had been holding since she heard the key turn – and sagged against him.
For a few moments she gave herself up to the perceived safety of those well-remembered arms. All thought was suspended while her cheek rested against that most precious of beating hearts. During every second of the last hour or two when she had fought to preserve both life and honour, the Duke had never been far from her thoughts. Although she had invoked the help of the Almighty, it was a more earthly version of aid for which her heart craved. She had longed to feel those dear arns enclose her and hear the beloved voice say her name with the proprietorship she had, idiotically, once denied him. In spite of her persistent hope, she had not really expected him to materialise, for how would he know what had become of her or where to find her?
Slowly thought returned to her; she became aware of a breeze blowing in through the shattered window and, when she moved her feet, could hear the slight crunching of the fragments of glass which had fallen inside the room.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, beginning, inevitably, to try to make sense of what was happening.
“Come to take you home,” he said, guessing the direction of her question more than hearing it for her words, spoken into his chest, were muffled. He picked her up, adding lightly, “And I judge it wise not to delay our departure.”
“Where … how did you get in?” She spoke more clearly now for her head had fallen back against his shoulder when he lifted her.
“I broke a window and found a man washing his face in a bucket of water in the kitchen. I didn’t wait to introduce myself, thinking it wiser to knock him out immediately rather than engage in a protracted conversation about his prisoner.”
As he spoke, he crossed the room again with long strides and carried her through the open door. There was no sound from below; they might have been alone in the house.
“Is there anyone else here to your knowledge?” he asked, not troubling to lower his voice as he began to walk down the stairs.
“Only the coachman – and I am not sure that he came inside. Should we not put out the candles?”
“What and plunge ourselves into darkness as we negotiate the stairs? No, I think we will leave them: they are less than adequate to light our way but better than nothing. Are you worried about fire? I should not think it would be such a bad thing if this distinctly insalubrious place were to be burned to the ground.”
He carried her across the hall, where one lone candle pierced the darkness, casting wavering shadows on the stained walls, and opened the front door.
“It is not locked!” she exclaimed in an affronted tone.
“Nor it is!” he agreed, amused. “I could have come in like an honoured guest instead of smashing a window and climbing in like a burglar. But the door to your room was locked so you can be reassured that you were not standing there with your weapon when you could have been running off down the road.”
The chaise, with the Rother coat of arms emblazoned on the door, stood outside, the groom beside it. As soon as he saw his master emerge, he opened the door and let down the steps.
“You had better take us to Lady Wey’s,” his grace said, climbing in and depositing his burden upon the squabs. “We should like to be there as soon as possible but need not, I think, travel at quite the speed with which I drove here.”
“No, your grace.”
The door was shut and a few moments later the vehicle began to move.
The Duke picked up a couple of rugs, which had been provided in case the return journey should prove chilly, and began to wrap them around the form of his companion who had, so far, moved none of her limbs independently. Sylvia, put unpleasantly in mind of her earlier journey to the farmhouse, when she had been almost swaddled in a noisome blanket, took exception to the tight binding and struggled to free herself, which led inevitably to a resumption of her internal struggle to understand what had happened.
“How did you know where to find me?” she asked through teeth chattering with shock, adding, “It was not you who ordered my abduction, was it?”
“Good God, no! If you thought that, why did you not pierce my heart with that fearsome weapon with which you had provided yourself? And why should I have taken the trouble to break a window and knock out the man in the kitchen if I had in fact engaged him to abduct you?” He spoke lightly with an undercurrent of amusement in his voice but she, still overwrought, thought he was laughing at her.
“I … it is just that you arrived so pat. For some reason, I was not expecting his principal to appear in person.”
“He did not. I came instead and was obliged to engage in fisticuffs not only with the man washing his face – why was he washing it? – but also with another ruffian who came in while we were fighting – presumably the coachman.”
She did not answer immediately and, during the pause, her accusation seemed to take root in his brain for all amusement had vanished when he said unpleasantly, “Am I to take it that, in spite of your combative stance and the fact that you had armed yourself, you would have fallen into the arms of whoever walked into that room? I was fool enough to think you were pleased to see me. Evidently I was mistaken.”
This defensive remark, which she took as a return to his recurring accusations concerning her inconstancy, ignited the touch paper of her temper.
“How can you think that? I was terrified and determined to defend myself for as long as I could. Why do you suppose I provided myself with a weapon? My legs gave way, that is all – and I was pleased to see you,” she added almost beneath her breath and with such a bitter inflection that it was impossible for him to interpret even this otherwise positive statement as anything but a rebuff.
“Did you at first consider me to be preferable to the man downstairs? I suppose I have a full set of teeth, if nothing else, to recommend me.”
This was uttered in a sardonic tone and might have been turned to good account if Sylvia could have responded in the right vein, could perhaps have laughed and enumerated his many other attributes as a potential seducer, but she was still too shocked and her temper too unstable for her to be able to gather her wits quickly enough to reassure him. Instead she stuck doggedly to her original line of questioning.
“If it was not on your orders that I was snatched, who did arrange it? And how did you know where to find me?”
“I guessed who was behind it as soon as I saw her at the ball. She came with Furzeby so I taxed her with it,” he answered dully. “It was Cassie – Miss Minton. Fortunately, when faced with my anger, she crumpled and confessed – and gave me directions on how to find that disgusting hovel.”
“Cassie? She is your peculiar – if that is the right word - is she not?” There was something so horridly predictable about the involvement of the woman who had already caused such a rift between them that all hope for a reconciliation died instantly in Sylvia’s heart.
“Was,” he replied grimly.
“Was? When did you cast her off? Or did she cast you off?” she asked viciously, now wanting to wound him as much with words as she might have done with the shard of glass if only she had thought of it in time.
“An hour or two after I met you in Bond Street,” he replied in the same colourless voice, sticking rigidly to the literal truth and resisting any urge he might have felt to embellish it. “It was my decision, if that is of any interest to you,” he added distantly, apparently belatedly remembering that he had not in fact answered her second question.
“Why di
d you?” she asked, plainly determined to leave nothing in doubt.
“Why do you think?” he exclaimed, goaded beyond endurance and now almost as angry as she had been a few minutes before. “Because I realised as soon as I saw you again that all my efforts to turn my heart against you had been in vain. I felt – feel – exactly the same as I did all those years ago, although now there is no joy in my love but only bitterness.”
“But why did you come to look for me?” she persisted, her voice quavering.
“Why do you think?” he repeated. “Have I not just told you why? Have you taken leave of your senses that you cannot now understand simple English?”
“I think I did that a long time ago,” she muttered, her temper cooling beneath the flames of his.
Now it was his turn to seek enlightenment. “What in God’s name are you saying? Pray speak plainly. Have we not been at cross purposes for long enough?”
“Yes – for far too long,” she agreed at once. “But it seems to me that you wish me to be the first … What do you want from me?”
“What do I want?” he shouted, flying off the handle again. “Have you quite lost your wits? I want you …” He stopped abruptly, drew a deep, steadying breath and fumbled for her hand amongst the rugs. “I am sorry. Forgive me. I am behaving like a bear and you have already had an unimaginably horrid experience. I should not be surprised if you do hate me now. Have I frightened you, shouting at you in such an infamous manner?”
And then at last she understood. “No, I cannot be frightened of you, Robert, because, although I have accused you of monstrous intentions, in truth it is nothing but a humbug invented to try to save my pride. The fact of the matter is that I am so lost to propriety that I hardly care what your intentions were – or indeed are. My legs gave way because it was you there – you, Robert, only you, only ever you …” Her voice petered out because his mouth had stopped hers.
It was some time later that he said, “You broke off our engagement on account of my immoral past. Do you still consider that to be an insuperable barrier to our marriage – or will you reconsider?”
“I was an insufferable little prig,” she admitted. “I will indeed reconsider.”
“How long do you reckon such a process will take?” he asked with an assumption of humility.
“Oh,” she responded blithely, her voice beginning to waver. “I have already given it a good deal of thought.”
“And may I enquire what the result of your deliberations was?”
“You have not,” she said primly, “asked me a question to which I can give a clear answer.”
“Did I not? It’s my belief that you are splitting hairs in order to tease me. Will you become my wife?”
“Yes. I was so afraid you would never ask me again,” she confided after another protracted pause during which he signalled his delight at her acquiescence.
“It was not easy to find a moment when your hackles were not so raised that I was unable to approach for fear of injury. I had resolved that, if you would not have me, I would never marry.”
“That would have displeased your sister mightily.”
He smiled. “No doubt it will afford her great pleasure to be able to say, ‘I told you how it would be’.”
“She has only ever wished for your happiness,” Sylvia said.
“I know it and, if she had not intervened, no doubt you and I would still be at loggerheads or you would have run back to Cornwall and I would have been too proud to follow you.”
Sylvia, thinking about the train of events set in motion by Lady Wey’s intervention – because she would have gone home without her ladyship paying her that extraordinary visit at Mivart’s - asked, “What will happen to Miss Minton?”
“I own I am reluctant to accuse her of abduction or attempted murder unless you particularly wish it. I believe that she has now accepted that she and I have parted irrevocably. Consequently, I am convinced she no longer poses a threat to you - and I do not think that, were a similar situation to arise in the future, she would embark upon such a course of action again. She seemed truly contrite and indeed appalled at what she had done.”
“No, I do not wish her to be arrested – or transported or subjected to whatever punishment the law might deem suitable. I find myself in a good deal of sympathy with a woman who was reluctant to let you go although I cannot approve of her method of trying to remove me. Ordering someone to shoot me was one thing but arranging my ruin was quite another. That argued a degree of malice which gives me pause.”
“Indeed, but I think not so much malice as bitterness, which you may understand better when you have heard her story.”
And then he told her Cassie’s history, including her writing of the two anonymous letters which had led, not only to Sylvia’s original breaking of the engagement, but also to his apparent failure to approach her again.
“But she did not play the trick with the diamonds, did she? How would she have got hold of them – or even known that I had them?”
“No, that was Lady Sullington and it was not done to harm you so much as to raise money. Sullington has always played deep and lost heavily; he has been through his wife’s fortune and now, I believe, has lost his daughter’s dowry. She was desperate to provide something for Melissa. I think she substituted your childish treasures so that the box would feel the same weight and something would rattle about inside. I assume she knew you had received them and stole them while you were out – possibly arguing with me in Bond Street.”
“So will you make her pay back the sum you redeemed them for?”
“I daresay I should on principle but I find myself wanting to provide Melissa with some sort of a dowry. I might make it a condition of letting her keep her ill-gotten gains that she permits the girl to marry Mr Harbury. Do you think they would be happy together?”
“Yes, I do, and I feel strongly that when people truly love each other they should be encouraged to marry, even if they are very young and the match is not, in worldly terms, ideal.”
“Indeed. I have no argument with that.”
Perhaps it was thinking about Melissa’s – and her own – happiness that led Sylvia, still haunted by the grievous harm which had been done to Miss Minton more than twenty years earlier, and from which she had clearly been unable to recover, to say, “She must have suffered unimaginably.”
“I believe she did, but not at my hands – and certainly not at yours.”
“No, but she clearly holds me responsible for your discarding her and flinging her back on the market, so to speak – and she is right, is she not? Appalled as I am at her conduct, I am conscious that I am not without fault myself and that there is something odiously hypocritical about my behaviour: I threw you over because you had committed what I believed to be a sin but, since meeting you again, I have myself displayed a shockingly deficient moral standard.”
“What have you done? I believe now is the moment to confess to any duplicity of which you have been guilty. Did you flirt with poor Marklye?”
“No; it was that first day in Bond Street. Not to put too fine a point upon it, I behaved with shameful spite, biting your neck and deliberately treading upon your foot, actions which were both childish and vicious. Will you forgive me?”
“Yes. I own I was a little surprised by your tendency to resort to violence. I shall try hard in future to retain your affection for I dread to think how you would serve me when we are married if you should once more take me in dislike. There will no doubt be a positive plethora of weapons to hand, as well as the necessary privacy to enable you to mete out the most frightful vengeance if you should feel so inclined.”
“I am sorry. I wanted to hit you but felt constrained by the presence of other people.”
“I see; well, I do not suppose that we can conduct our married life entirely in the presence of other people; once we have shaken off the servants and retired to a place where we can be undisturbed, you will be able to hit me to your heart’s content.
Is that really what you want to do?”
“No; and it wasn’t then either; I wanted to kiss you,” she confessed.
“Ah! Just as I did later.”
“Yes.”
“If you ever grow tired of kissing me,” he said after another interval, “and feel the urge to hit me, I believe I would prefer it if you could see your way to explaining your dissatisfaction verbally rather than assaulting me physically. I promise to do likewise. We have lost seven years and must do what we can to make up the time, preferably without falling into distempered freaks and resorting to fisticuffs.”
AUTHOR’S BIOGRAPHY
Catherine Bowness has only begun to write novels since she retired. Partly, this was lack of time; mainly, it was lack of confidence.
Now, living in the country with several cats and two dogs, she is able to indulge herself. She says she writes escapist novels because that's what she wants to read and there never seem to be enough of them.
Her parents lived abroad and she went to boarding school. She spent the holidays with her Victorian grandmother and thinks that she would have been a different person – and might write different books – if she had not been alone so much during her childhood. She passed the time reading 19th century and early 20th century novels and suspects this may be the reason why she writes in the way she does.
She is a counsellor and hypnotherapist. It was when she began writing scripts for her hypnotherapy training that she realised how powerful and soothing escapism can be and how images, led by the hypnotherapist but conjured by the client, can open the mind and soothe the soul. It was this, and the joy she felt when writing them, that inspired her finally to start writing the novels she had wanted to since early childhood. Practising hypnotherapy gave her the courage to share her writing with others.
Sylvia Or The Moral High Ground Page 32