by M. C. Beaton
“Help, Jem,” cried the footman.
The valet came rushing out of an inner room wielding a cudgel. He swung it at Lord Charles, who dodged and brought his fist up to land full on the valet’s jaw with a satisfactory thump.
The ex-boxer struggled to his feet and grasped Lord Charles from behind in a crushing grip. Lord Charles heaved him over his head like a sack of coals and sent him crashing down the narrow corridor of Mr. Truebury’s lodgings.
Lord Charles seized the cudgel. The valet was out cold, but the ex-boxer was sitting up, dizzily shaking his head.
“You,” said Lord Charles. “What is your name?”
“Giles Marsham,” grunted the footman, feeling his head with a beefy hand.
“Well, Giles Marsham, either you tell me where your master is to be found or I shall spread your brains all around the place with this cudgel.”
“The Quality shouldn’t go around like bruisers a-breakin’ of people’s heads,” said the footman sulkily. “I’ll lose my employ.”
Lord Charles hefted the cudgel in his hand.
“Or your life,” he said sweetly. “Take your pick, Giles Marsham!”
Only determination not to cry in front of such an obnoxious toad as Geoffrey Truebury kept Patricia dry-eyed. She also reminded herself sternly that she ought to be grateful to Mr. Truebury. For one thing, he had made no overtures to her but seemed content to sit well over on his side of the carriage, gazing at the scenery.
The English countryside was looking its best. Everything was coming to life under the warm sun. New leaves trembled on branches in the lightest of breezes and lambs scampered about the fields where the new grass rolled lazily under the sun, so green it was like the color of Lord Charles’s eyes.
Patricia tentatively touched her still-swollen lips. She had told him she loved him, but that had seemed to disgust him more than anything else.
She stared bleakly out of the window at the smiling countryside seeing only weeks and months and years of grief ahead. Love was a sickness. Why did she have to go and fall in love? She could have had a comfortable marriage and children and a home of her own without all this burning, aching yearning.
“Where did you say your mother lived?” she said, breaking the silence.
“Richmond,” replied Mr. Truebury laconically, “on the river. Vastly pretty place. Not the main family place. We’ve got estates in Sussex.”
“I hope Mrs. Truebury will not be too put out by my unexpected arrival?”
“Oh, no, nothing ever disturbs her,” said Mr. Truebury cheerfully, aware that he spoke the truth for nothing had disturbed his late mother since she was laid to rest some ten years before.
They stopped for refreshment at an inn and Patricia found herself becoming even more pleased with Mr. Truebury’s restrained behavior. He said thoughtfully that he would send one of his grooms ahead with a message to let his mother know of their impending arrival.
Patricia hoped Mrs. Truebury would prove to be amiable and undemanding so that she could find some peace and quiet to try to get over the worst of her grief.
As they continued on their journey, she said warmly to Mr. Truebury, “You are a thoughtful and considerate companion, sir, and I shall always be grateful to you.”
“Thank you,” said Mr. Truebury, beaming at her. Coercion and threats were more his father’s business. Mr. Truebury thought his marriage to Patricia might now be arranged amicably.
The carriage at last turned in through tall mossy gateposts and made its way up a weedy drive. Tall tangled woods blotted out the sun and cast a green gloom into the carriage. Patricia shivered. The estate looked sadly run down.
The house came into view, a Gothic folly, tall and turreted. The windows did not seem to have been cleaned in years and had a closed, blind look about them as they peered through their shrouds of ivy.
Patricia allowed herself to be helped down from the carriage and stood looking up at the forbidding exterior of the house. For one moment she thought it was deserted and that Mr. Truebury was playing some trick on her, but to her relief the heavy oak door was opened by a butler and behind him stood an elderly gentleman, every bit as highly painted as Mr. Truebury.
“I am Sir Egbert Truebury, Geoffrey’s father,” said the elderly gentleman, walking forward and taking both Patricia’s hands in a warm clasp. “My son sent a messenger ahead to warn me of your arrival. A room has been prepared for you.”
“You are most kind, sir,” smiled Patricia, grateful that Sir Geoffrey seemed to be as uninquisitive as his son about the reason for her flight from her guardian. Geoffrey Truebury had seemed to accept that she had had some sort of falling out with Lord Charles without bothering to ask further questions about it.
“Come along then,” he said. “Betts,” he said to his butler, “take Miss Patterson to her room. Tea will be served in the drawing room in half an hour, Miss Patterson.”
“Thank you,” said Patricia. “I am anxious to meet your wife.”
“Oh, ah, her… yes. Well, you’ll see her soon enough.”
Patricia followed the butler up the stairs. The oaken staircase was intricately carved with heraldic beasts, and a stained glass window checkered the treads with oblongs of purple and scarlet.
A footman followed, carrying Patricia’s bandbox.
The butler led the way along a corridor on the second landing and opened a door. The bedroom he ushered Patricia into was small and smelled of damp and disuse. But a fire had been lit in the hearth and cans of hot water and soap placed on the toilet table.
The butler bowed and left. The young footman, an unsavory-looking youth, placed Patricia’s bandbox on a table at the end of the bed and proceeded to open it.
“Leave that,” said Patricia, half amused, half alarmed. “The housemaids will put away my clothes.”
“Don’t have no housemaids,” said the footman. “Master don’t like female servants.”
“Then leave it all the same. I prefer to unpack my clothes myself.”
The footman bowed and slouched out.
“What a peculiar household!” thought Patricia. “Perhaps poor Mrs. Truebury will be really pleased to have some female companionship.”
She hung away her scanty wardrobe, after selecting a primrose yellow silk gown to change into. She could feel black grief threatening to overcome her and resolutely kept herself busy, washing her face and hands, arranging her hair, and putting on the fresh gown to fill in the time before going downstairs.
When she opened her bedroom door she found to her surprise that the footman who had carried up her bandbox was stationed outside, leaning against the wall with his arms folded.
Not liking the expression on his face, which was an odd mixture of cunning and servility, Patricia said sharply, “What are you doing here?”
“I was told to wait for you, miss,” he said, ducking his head, “’case you lost your way.”
Patricia followed him along the corridor and down the stairs.
The house was very quiet and still. Dust motes swam lazily in the colored shafts of light from the stained glass window which lit the staircase.
“It is like a house in one of those romances I used to read,” thought Patricia. “What a strange brooding air of menace!”
She straightened her dress and nervously patted her hair before entering the drawing room, hoping that Mrs. Truebury would not take her in dislike.
But only Sir Egbert and Geoffrey were in the room. They rose to their feet at her entrance.
“Where is Mrs. Truebury?” she asked, looking about at the room which was crammed with heavy, ugly furniture.
“Resting, my dear. Mrs. Truebury always sleeps very sound,” said Sir Egbert.
For some reason this remark of his father’s seemed to strike young Geoffrey as being exquisitely funny.
“But to pass the time until Mrs. Truebury is ready to receive you, Geoffrey here will take you to see the pride of our estate. We have a most elegant folly on a little i
sland on our lake. This house belonged to my dear father,” said Sir Geoffrey, “and he channeled water from the Thames to make an artificial lake. It will only take a little while and then you may return and take tea.”
Patricia eagerly agreed, anxious to escape from the heavy atmosphere of the house.
She followed Geoffrey out and along a straggling weedy path which led through the overgrown gardens and shaggy lawns at the back of the house until it ended at the edge of a lake.
There was a little island in the middle on which stood a mock Grecian temple, its slim white pillars gleaming in the late sun.
Geoffrey helped Patricia into a flat-bottomed boat moored to a rickety wooden jetty and then began to pole her across. He was not a very expert punter and several times Patricia clutched onto the side of the boat in alarm. “I cannot swim, Mr. Truebury,” she said.
“I didn’t think you would be able to,” was all he said. “Most females can’t.”
There was a scraping sound as the boat landed on a small pebbled beach on the island.
Seen close to, the temple was a depressing place, the bottom of its pillars green with damp. Weeds had thrust their way up through the cracks in the broken wooden floor.
“Isn’t it splendid?” cried Geoffrey. “I always think it the most romantic of places. Do excuse me but a moment, Miss Patterson. I must make sure the boat is secure.”
Patricia nodded and sat down on a marble seat in the temple. She felt depressed and sad and very, very tired. As soon as she was presented to Mrs. Truebury, she would beg to be allowed to retire.
She thought of Lord Charles and tears welled up in her eyes.
Then she heard Geoffrey Truebury calling her name.
She got up and walked listlessly down to the little crescent of pebbles where the boat had beached.
But the boat had gone, and with it Mr. Truebury.
She heard him call again and saw him some yards away out on the lake in the boat.
“Will you marry me?” he called.
Patricia took a deep breath. Nothing, she realized, would ever make her want to marry any man such as Geoffrey Truebury.
Too tired and upset to be diplomatic, she called back, “No, I am afraid I can’t,” she shouted back.
“Then you can stay there until you come to your senses.” He grinned.
Patricia looked at him as if she could not believe her ears. “Do not play silly games. Where is your mother? She will be upset and angry when she learns of your cruel jokes.”
“I told you, nothing upsets her,” said Geoffrey. “She’s been dead for ten years.”
“So that is why he was so eager to help me,” thought Patricia.
Then she remembered that Lord Charles’s servants must have seen her leaving shortly after Mr. Truebury’s call.
“Lord Charles will find me,” she said.
“He won’t know where to look,” laughed Geoffrey, his voice carrying clearly across the water. “Papa won this awful old place at the card tables six months ago. Nobody knows we have it. Our family place is down in Sussex. Anyway, my servants have been told to tell Lord Charles that Papa and I have gone on the Grand Tour.”
“Don’t be a fool,” snapped Patricia. “He will never believe that such a worm as you would dare to venture abroad in the middle of a war.”
Geoffrey’s mouth fell open in dismay. Then he rallied. “Well, he won’t come looking for you here. Papa and I will be in London tomorrow showing ourselves out and about, and if Lord Charles calls at our place in Sussex, it’ll take him a long time to get here. Scream if you like. Nobody’ll hear you. But there you stay until you’ve decided to marry me!”
He began to punt energetically and inexpertly toward the opposite shore.
“They cannot do this to me,” thought Patricia. “It is all a bluff.”
But the sun was rapidly sinking and a chill wind was beginning to blow over the water.
Patricia began to panic. She was terrified at the thought of spending a night in the middle of an island surrounded by water.
If only she had learned to swim.
She stared furiously down at the greenish-brown water. It was so muddy she could not even see the bottom. How did one learn how to swim? Surely, by simply getting into the water and trying.
But if she found she could not learn, then she would have to spend a night on the island, soaking wet. Then she remembered she had a tinderbox in her reticule.
For a start, she would set the temple on fire so that even if no one from outside came to see what the matter was, at least she would be warm if she failed to learn how to swim.
She diligently went about the small island, picking up as many scraps of dry wood as she could find. She carried them all to the temple and heaped them up on the remains of the wooden floor. Lighting anything with a tinderbox took at least half an hour, and Patricia labored with it, thinking she would never get the cotton waste to produce the necessary glow to ignite the timber. A violet dusk had settled over the surrounding countryside and an owl hooted mournfully from the woods on the far shore.
Then a little tongue of yellow flame licked its way up through the little pieces of tinder. Patricia retreated to safety as the flames burned higher until soon the whole wooden floor of the temple was blazing merrily.
“Now, I cannot waste time seeing if the fire will bring anyone,” she lectured herself severely. “It is time for your first swimming lesson, Patricia Patterson!”
She walked down to the beach and placed her bonnet and reticule on a rock. She decided to keep on her shoes, which were little more than flat slippers, in case the rocks in the water were sharp. She tucked the skirt of her gown inside her drawers and tied them firmly by the tapes at her waist.
Then she gingerly walked into the water.
It was ice-cold. She looked longingly back at the blazing fire. But no one had shouted or come running, and so she ploughed on until the water was up to her waist.
“Now,” she thought, “you have watched the village boys. They kick out with their arms and legs and you will do the same. It is all very easy.”
She lifted her feet from the bottom and thrashed out wildly with her arms and legs until she was exhausted. She raised her head to see if she had moved at all and sank like a stone.
“Don’t panic,” said a small voice of reason in her head. “Don’t panic or you will drown. Stand on the bottom and thrust yourself up to the air.”
Patricia thrust up, shot her head and shoulders up out of the water, and splashed down again. That was when she realized she could still stand on the bottom and keep her head above the water.
She stood up. The water was up to her neck. Behind her the burning temple sent a path of red light across the water. The other shore looked very far away.
Spreading her arms out on the water to maintain her balance, Patricia took a few tentative steps forward. The water still stayed just below her chin. She took a few more steps. Again, the water level did not rise.
Slowly, with increasing confidence, she made her way until she was past the halfway mark. It was then, as she ploughed on and the water level began to sink down below her shoulders, that she realized that both Geoffrey and his father had been unaware of how shallow the lake was.
It was then that she knew that somehow she must make her way back to London. She would get as clear of the house as she could and then hope her clothes would dry as she walked. She would walk all night if need be.
Nothing mattered so long as she saw Lord Charles again. He could curse her and shout at her and hate her, but he was her guardian, and she loved him, no matter what he did or said.
As she was making her way gingerly around the front of the house, she heard a great commotion.
“They must have spotted the fire,” she thought, shrinking back into the darkness of the shrubbery.
It was a moonless night so Patricia decided to move slowly to the front of the house, keeping always in the shadow of the bushes, and then make her way
down the drive and out into the road.
She tried not to hurry, although she was shivering with cold and the desire for freedom was great.
The front of the house came into view. Keeping a wary eye on it in case anyone looked out of the window, Patricia headed for the drive.
A great splintering of glass and a scream made her whip around. A figure came flying through a downstairs window, thrown straight through the glass, and landed in an inert heap on the lawn.
The row from the house was tremendous. Then there was a shot and silence. The figure on the lawn groaned and then lay still.
Shaking with fear, she crept forward and looked down. In the light of the stars, the unconscious face of the Truebury footman looked up at her.
And then clear as a bell, a familiar and beloved voice shouted, “Where is she? Answer me, Truebury, or I will blow your horrible head from your shoulders.”
Chapter 9
“Charles!” screamed Patricia.
The footman’s body had been thrown through the drawing room window.
Patricia ran headlong into the house, wrenched open the door of the drawing room, and stood like an apparition on the threshold.
She was as white as a sheet, and dripping wet. Bits of water weed clung to her gown and hair.
Lord Charles was standing by the fireplace, blood running from a cut at his mouth. Sir Egbert was crouched in an armchair, his old painted face a mask of hate. The butler was lying with his head in the coal scuttle and another footman lay stretched out on the hearth rug at his lordship’s feet.
Geoffrey Truebury was clutching his wrist. “You’ve broken it,” he was whining.
“Then that will teach you to try and put a bullet through me,” Lord Charles was saying as he looked up and saw Patricia.
For one dreadful moment, he thought she was dead and he was seeing her ghost.
Patricia would have run to him, but he said sharply, “Don’t come between me and them, Patricia. Stay where you are.”
He turned to Sir Egbert. “I am taking my ward away from here. I shall find out the full story from her of what has happened. I do not want any scandal, which is why I have decided not to kill you—that is, unless I return in the next few days and find you still here, or, in fact, if I find you anywhere in England.”