by M. C. Beaton
“I must go after them,” said Hubert quietly. “Lucy is here and your servants will attend to you. Has no carriage passed here since?”
“I don’t know,” sighed Freddie. “I’ve been dead to the world. Mary was going home to her parents, Hubert. Wasn’t going away with me, old fellow. Wanted an escort. I… I wanted to make Lucy jealous. Do you hear that, Lucy?” But Lucy had gone to fetch water.
Hubert pressed his hand in reply, and strode back towards his carriage. He could only hope and pray that he could keep a track of Lord Peregrine.
At first it was easy since Lord Peregrine had been traveling at a hectic enough pace to draw attention, but then at a large crossroads the trail went cold, and there was nothing he could do but scour the surrounding towns and villages.
He was weary, and hungry and mad with worry and concern when he finally stopped in the market town of Little Beddington. There had been a fair that day and knots of people were still standing around the town square. At first they seemed alarmed by his vehement questions, until one farmer vouchsafed that one of his men had a “powerful funny story” about looking in the window of some lord’s carriage and seeing a young lady tied up on the floor; but no one had paid much attention seeing as how the fellow was “touched in his upperworks.” The yokel who had seen Mary was at last found and slowly and painfully told his story.
“Where were they bound for?” cried Hubert. “Think! For God’s sake think.”
The yokel became sulky and hung his head and said he didn’t know, until his ox-like gaze fastened on the piece of gold that Lord Hubert was holding under his nose.
“Duvver!” he cried, all of a sudden anxious to please.
“Dover?” asked Hubert. “Are you sure?”
The yokel smiled, lolling his great head from side to side.
“Duvver, it wor.”
“Don’t’ee believe our Clem,” said the farmer soothingly.
“I’ll have to,” said Hubert grimly. “Pray God he is right!”
Peter Bennet was a very disturbed and worried young man. He sat in a corner, unobserved, at the Duchess of Pellicombe’s breakfast, and listened to the ebb and flow of gossip around him.
The presence of the Witherspoons had been a shock. They had arrived with Mr. Cyril Trimmer, that young man being more pomaded and padded and corsetted and wasp-waisted than any other person in the room. Peter had mildly asked the Duchess the reason for the Witherspoons’ invitation; to which that good lady had replied somewhat incoherently that England was heading for a revolution, and one could no longer be so high in the instep. Even the Challenges were entertaining their servants to dinner!
But it soon became all too evident that the Witherspoons’ social value was in their fund of gossip and they were soon surrounded by a crowd of listeners three deep. Mrs. Witherspoon had happily forgotten Lord Hubert’s threats as soon as she was safely back at her husband’s side. Mr. Witherspoon had promptly sent a note to the Duke of Pellicombe hinting at all kinds of social outrages—hence the coveted invitation.
Peter listened to the gossip with growing alarm. Mary Challenge had fled with Major Godwin. Lord Hubert had been found at Clarissa’s house. Lord Peregrine was a Bonapartiste spy. Only the famous Beau Brummell appeared indifferent to this fascinating news. It had amused him to bring little Lady Mary into fashion. But he had not thought of her for some time, and was supremely uninterested in the others.
A newcomer arrived with the information that Lord Hubert’s servants had said that Lady Mary had gone to stay with her parents and that his lordship and Mrs. Godwin had gone to join them.
Peter still had a bad conscience over his flirtation with Lucy Godwin. All of London society knew that the Godwins were becoming increasingly estranged, and Peter blamed himself for the breach in their marriage.
Whether Lord Peregrine were a traitor or not troubled him not in the slightest, but he felt that the least he could do was to try to get the Major and his wife together again.
He suddenly decided to ride down to Mary’s parents and see what he could do. Peter was surprisingly unworldly at times for such a sophisticated man-about-town.
He accordingly returned to his lodgings to change and rode out from London in the pale, primrose light of late afternoon.
He had travelled several miles through the countryside when he came to a small town with an attractive-looking posting house. He was debating whether or not to stop for a glass of ale before continuing on his way, when, to his surprise, he heard his name being called. He looked up and there was the pretty face of Lucy Godwin looking down at him from a casement window.
He sat very still, his mind seduced by the romantic picture they made—the pretty girl leaning out of the window among the rambling roses under the golden thatch of the inn, the swimming lazy golden light of evening, the stillness of the countryside and the young cavalier, seated on his horse, looking up. Then he shook his head to banish such mawkish thoughts and sprang down lightly from his horse and entered the inn. Lucy met him at the foot of the stairs, her beautiful eyes brimful with excitement. She poured out the tale of their adventures leaving Peter with only one point to grasp hold of in all the outpourings. Major Godwin had been hurt.
“Take me to your husband immediately,” he said more abruptly than he had intended.
Lucy smiled and shrugged. “Oh, if you please, but Freddie’s all right now. The doctor says he has a thick skull.” And with that she went off into a trill of laughter.
Nonetheless she ushered Peter into a low bedchamber where the Major sat in a chair beside the window.
Until Peter’s arrival, the Major had been cursing himself for his stupidity. Lucy had at first crooned over him and nursed him tenderly. It had been wonderful. “Am I not better than that drab, Mary Challenge?” she had kept asking jealously. At last the tenderhearted Major had held her in his arms and had told her that Mary had been upset over something, and that he had merely been escorting her home and that he loved only Lucy. Lucy’s affection had ceased from that moment, and she had spent more time in her room than in his.
He looked up as Peter Bennet entered the room. He looked from Peter’s handsome face to Lucy’s flushed and excited one, and his face hardened.
“Peter came looking for me,” giggled Lucy who had managed to elicit the information that Peter had been on his way to the Tyres to see them.
“That is not the case at all,” said Peter heavily. “Pray leave me with your husband, Mrs. Godwin.”
Lucy started to protest and then backed away from the expression in Peter Bennet’s eyes. He closed the door behind her and turned to the Major. He hardly knew how to begin.
Major Godwin continued to stare at him and at last, with a sigh, Peter drew up a chair and sat down.
“You may have been aware that at one time I nursed a certain tendre for your wife,” began Peter awkwardly.
“Yes,” said the Major in a flat voice.
“I came in search of you to offer you my sincerest apologies for my behavior,” said Peter quietly. “I was, I believe, still shocked from the Battle of Waterloo and Mrs. Godwin seemed like an angel to me. If I have done anything to cause you distress, I am bitterly sorry for my conduct. Is there any way in which I can remedy the situation?”
He sat with his head bowed, his face taut with embarrassment and distress.
The Major’s large heart was touched. “No, Captain Bennet,” he said quietly. “The damage was done before you appeared. I have hung around like a fool watching Lucy flirt with one gallant after another. When she met you, I feared her heart was engaged… but she has no heart. I appreciate what it cost you to come here. But there is nothing anyone can do for me.”
Peter’s sensitive soul writhed under the other man’s distress. He abruptly changed the subject. “What is this villainy of Lord Peregrine? What is all this about a meeting at Horseguards?”
“The Witherspoons I suppose,” asked the Major heavily and Peter nodded.
“Then I
may as well tell you.” He told Peter about the missing papers. “But that does not make Peregrine the villain,” he pointed out at last. “He is mad with jealousy over Lady Clarissa’s obvious interest in Lord Hubert.”
“So you think that may be why he abducted Lady Mary?”
“It could be. Good God… someone must inform the authorities. Are you returning to town?”
Peter nodded. “I shall go straight to Horseguards, never fear. But surely, Lord Hubert would send one of his servants?”
The Major shook his large head. “That one would not stop or think until he found Peregrine. I informed the local magistrate of the abduction but not of the matter of treachery.”
Peter rose and tried to find some words of comfort before he left. He could not bring himself to present his compliments to Lucy. He made the Major a stiff bow and turned towards the door.
“I say—Major Godwin,” he said with his hand on the latch.
“Yes?”
“I would beat her, you know—beat her soundly.” And with that he was gone.
A few minutes later, Lucy bounced into the room and made a moue of disappointment. “Oh, has Peter gone?”
She ran to the window. “Cooee, Peter!” She turned a laughing face to her husband before turning back to the window again. “Such a handsome young man! Peter! I shall see you when I return to London and you shall tell me all the on-dits.”
Lucy was leaning far out of the window, looking as if she might topple out at any minute.
Her husband surveyed her with a red mist of anger beginning to blur his eyes. He rose from his chair and walked over to where she stood with her back to him. He jerked her back with a rough hand and sitting down on the bed, he pulled her across his knee and proceeded to administer a good hiding, deaf to her screams.
Every inn servant listened to the screams with great satisfaction. They hoped the trollopy Major’s wife was getting her just desserts. For Lucy had flirted with almost every customer in the inn.
His rage did not last long. He buried his head in his hands as she slumped to the floor at his knees. It was all so incredibly hopeless.
Then to his amazement, he felt a pair of soft arms winding round his neck and a soft voice saying, “Oh, Freddie, I do love you so.”
Major Godwin slowly took his hand away from his face and stared down into his wife’s shining eyes. Of all things, he thought. His brutal handling of Lucy had won him the response he had dreamed of. It was a strange sort of love but if it made his wife look at him like that… well… He pulled her roughly into his arms and began to make love to her with a well-simulated savagery.
Peter Bennet rode slowly through the tranquil blue light of the evening. He thought of the Godwin’s marriage with fastidious distaste. He thought of old battles, and once again his ears reeled with the thud of the cannonade and the bark of shot. The tranquil evening fled before his frightened eyes as the noise of battle became more deafening and he saw ghostly, mutilated bodies lying beside the road. He stumbled from his horse and sat beside the road, covering his head with his arms, trying to ward off the nightmare terrors of war. It was his worst attack yet.
And then he heard the bells of evensong.
Faintly, they sounded through the roar of battle and then gradually they came to his ears, sweet and clear.
He raised his head.
He only saw now the quiet fields and, some distance away, the gray walls of an Anglican monastery. The pale scents of the summer evening came to his nostrils. Up in the violet sky, the first star of evening shone bravely down.
With a calm, single-minded purpose, he remounted and road steadily across the fields towards the monastery, towards home.
And that is how Society lost one of its most elegant ornaments, and how the gentlemen of Horseguards heard nothing of Lord Peregrine’s villainy that day.
Chapter 10
The wind sighed and moaned in the shrouds of The Avenger as the trim sloop swung at anchor in Dover harbor.
Mary had pounded on the door of the cabin, and screamed until her lungs were hoarse, but the only sounds that came to her ears were the occasional high-pitched cry of a gull and the whining of the wind. Night had fallen. The small cabin was furnished with a table and two chairs and a low berth in one corner. A brass lamp swung dizzily from the low ceiling. Then, above the wind, she heard the sound of voices on the quay.
“It’s a powerful deal of yelling she’s doing,” said a rough voice. And then quite distinctly came the smooth reply of Lord Peregrine. “I’ve told you all, my sister is mad and to pay no heed. It’s a sad business, but mayhap she will fare better in a sunnier clime. Come, my friends. If I had not volunteered to remove her from these shores, our relatives would have had her in Bedlam.”
Then came the sound of steps on the gangplank, then above Mary’s head, and finally descending the ladder to the cabin. As he opened the door, Mary made one desperate bid for freedom, flinging herself on Lord Peregrine and clawing at his face with her nails. He gave her a violent shove and she fell back against the berth.
He lit the lamp, and then came and stood over her, dabbing at the scratches on his face with a handkerchief. “Now Lady Mary Challenge,” he sneered. “I suppose you wonder why I have brought you here.”
“Revenge,” gasped Mary. “You would be revenged on Hubert because he gave you the thrashing you deserve.”
“Correct,” he smiled, “but I must also leave the country. It would only be a matter of time before those fools at Horseguards found out that it was I who stole the papers from Captain Black.”
“You are a traitor,” said Mary flatly.
“I am a loyal supporter of Napoleon. He will escape again, mark my words, and then I will come to power. England will be under French rule and I shall be regent.”
“You’re mad,” said Mary in a voice that broke on a sob. “Why are you taking me with you?”
“I’m not,” he said, moving closer to her while the lamp above them swung in a dizzying arc. “Your first guess was correct. I want revenge on that oaf, Hubert. I shall have you first, then I shall kill you and leave your remains in a sack on the quay for dear Lord Hubert Challenge to find. I cannot set sail because of this accursed storm, but it cannot last forever.”
“What of Clarissa?” begged Mary desperately.
“That one will console herself with someone else soon enough—probably with your husband.”
“He would not have her,” cried Mary, steadying herself as the boat made a wild, bucking lurch. “He married me!”
“And regretted it ever since,” sneered Lord Peregrine. “Clarissa was too unfaithful a type of woman for him. He wanted to gain his money by marrying a respectable little mouse.”
“Then he will not care if I am dead,” pointed out Mary, grimly trying to keep him talking.
“You forget, you are his possession like his horse or his dog. I shall have revenge enough.”
Both stared at each other in silence, Lord Peregrine in greedy cruelty, Mary wide-eyed, almost numb with fatigue and shock.
Above and below them pounded the tumult of the storm. The boat plunged and reared, riding and tossing and straining at anchor like a nervous thoroughbred. The gale shrieked and hissed and moaned in the shrouds. A flicker of apprehension appeared in Lord Peregrine’s eyes. Perhaps he had been foolish to allow his crew to spend such a night ashore.
Something broke loose on the deck above and set up a wild, rhythmic thudding.
There was another great heave and lurch and both staggered trying to gain their balance. Then with a great crack, The Avenger struck against the side of another boat. Lord Peregrine started in alarm and Mary began to hope again that there might be some way of escape. But Lord Peregrine’s greed for revenge was too strong. He moved closer to Mary and put a large, beefy hand on her neck. “Plead for mercy, Mary,” he laughed. “Plead for mercy and I might let you live!”
Mary stared up into his gross brutal face and all the fight left her. “Hubert,”
she said with a weary sigh and closed her eyes. She heard his excited labored breathing and waited for the feel of that awful, brutal mouth against her own.
There came a loud report and the sound of splintering wood. The cabin door flew open and Lord Peregrine abruptly released Mary and stared in alarm.
Lord Hubert Challenge loomed on the threshold. He held a smoking pistol in one hand and a drawn sword in the other. The door with its lock shattered from his shot swung wildly on its hinges as the boat plunged and heaved in the storm.
“Leave the cabin, Mary,” shouted Hubert. “Get behind me!”
Lord Peregrine stood swaying, his face black with rage, his hands fumbling to fasten his breeches. His eyes never left Hubert’s face as Mary, holding her hands to her face, scurried behind her husband and stood at the foot of the companionway.
“Your sword, Lord St. James,” said Hubert in a voice like ice.
A gleam lit up Lord Peregrine’s eyes. He would normally be no match for Hubert’s swordsmanship, but in this reeling, plunging cabin he might have a chance.
Mary sat on the bottom step of the companionway as the rain lashed down on her and buried her head in her hands and prayed.
The two men began to thrust and lunge and parry, ducking their heads to avoid the swinging oil lamp which threw grotesque shadows on the cabin walls. Lord Peregrine fought with a mad courage born of desperation and once he slipped under Hubert’s guard and his sword point pinked him on the shoulder. The sight of Hubert’s blood drove Peregrine to further efforts. He thrust his sword point up through the glass of the lamp and plunged the cabin into darkness. He could just make out the doorway of the cabin as a sort of lighter blackness.
He heard a noise over to the left of him and made a dash for the doorway, throwing his great bulk directly ahead to freedom.
He ran full headlong into the point of Lord Hubert’s sword.
Lord Hubert pulled his sword clear and backed out of the cabin, fumbling behind him to find Mary and then pulling her to him in a strong grasp.