She flew out of bed, washed herself in cold water, slipped into her clothes, drank the chocolate and was downstairs just as the big dishes of eggs and bacon were being carried in piping hot from the kitchen.
“Are you tired?” Lord Wye asked her. “I warned you that you would not have much rest.”
“I feel ready for anything,” Elvina retorted.
It was true, for at the mere sight of him she felt as if champagne had been poured into her veins.
They had another day together!
Another day alone, another day when he could talk to her and tell her all the things she wanted to hear.
“I am not being a nuisance – am I?” she asked. “You see, I am down as early as you are.”
“You are never a nuisance,” he replied. “And it is fun to have you with me. I want to show you some of the sights as we near London. I might even take you to Vauxhall Gardens this week if the Prince Regent does not want me.”
“Oh, would you? I should love that above – all things.”
“You are such a child. It will be amusing to show you the places that I enjoyed when I was a boy, the aquarium, for instance. That was one of my favourite spots.”
“What about – Lady Cleone?”
Elvina could not help the question. The mere thought of Lady Cleone was like some dark snake within the Eden of her happiness.
“Oh, I had not forgotten her,” Lord Wye answered. “I must give a dinner party as soon as she arrives in London. She is very beautiful, Elvina. I am rather surprised that I have not met her before.”
“Yes, she is – beautiful,” Elvina responded in a quiet voice.
She left the rest of her breakfast, she was no longer hungry.
That day Lord Wye pushed the horses even harder.
They changed three times and he gave himself nor Elvina any rest save that they ate while fresh horses were being put between the shafts and they were ready to move on almost before the grooms had finished fastening the harnesses.
Elvina was so tired when night came that she could scarcely keep her eyes open.
“Have a glass of wine,” Lord Wye suggested.
She drank a glass of claret, but it made her sleepier still. The inn they were staying at was bigger and more comfortable than the one where they had stayed the night before and Lord Wye had ordered a heavy dinner.
He himself was hungry and he was not particularly tired. In fact the drive was exhilarating to him because he always liked to be doing something.
There was nothing he found more tedious than sitting about, as Peregrine Howard and his cronies liked to do, playing a game of cards for high stakes and spending the rest of the day drinking.
“You know, Elvina,” he said, as he helped himself to another slice of boiled mutton, “one ought to spend more time touring England. Everyone has complained that they cannot do the Grand Tour of Europe because of the War. Why not visit one’s own country? Shall we start a new fashion, you and I, driving North to Yorkshire and Northumberland and driving South to Devon and Cornwall?”
“That would be lovely,” Elvina agreed.
She wanted to say how wonderful it would be to drive with him anywhere, to Hell itself if necessary, but the words would not come between her lips.
She had put down her knife and fork some time ago although the food on her plate was not half-consumed. And now she leaned back against her chair and her head fell against the winged sides and stayed there.
“I will tell you what we will do,” Lord Wye began and then he looked up.
Elvina was asleep, fast asleep, and his eyes softened at the sight of her.
Poor child! It had been a hard day and yet she had never complained. Cleone had been right. He expected too much.
She should have gone to London in a more leisurely manner rather than racketing along beside him.
Then he remembered the urgency and the appeal in her voice.
“You promised! You promised!”
He could hear her saying it and knew that if he had forced her to go with Cleone it might have well nigh broken her heart.
‘Oh, well,’ he told himself, ‘we are nearly there and we will not have such a long day tomorrow.’
He finished his meal and told the landlord to bring another bottle of wine.
“What about the young lady?” the landlord asked. “Will she be wantin’ anythin’?”
“I think all she wants is her bed,” Lord Wye smiled.
“I’ll fetch the missus,” the landlord suggested, “and I’ll carry her up. No need to wake her.”
“When your wife is ready, I will carry her up myself,” Lord Wye replied.
“Very good, my Lord.”
A few minutes later there came a knock at the door.
The innkeeper's wife came into the sitting room holding a lighted candle.
“I have prepared a bed, my Lord,” she said, dropping a curtsey. “If you will carry the young lady upstairs, I will get her undressed without wakin’ her. My husband was tellin’ me you’ve come a long way today.”
“A long way indeed and it has been hot.”
“That it has,” the innkeeper’s wife agreed. “’Tis the heat that takes it out of you. That’s what the harvesters were sayin’.”
She was talking all the time that she led the way upstairs, but Lord Wye was not listening. He was thinking how small and light Elvina was in his arms. Only a child and yet she had the heart and courage of a lion.
He would look after her, he thought, if she did not find her sister and, if she did, he would see that she was comfortably provided for. He owed her so much.
It was a debt that money could never wipe out.
He set her down gently on the bed. Elvina stirred, but she did not wake up. He bent over her and heard her murmur in her sleep.
“I love – him!” she was saying, almost beneath her breath.
Lord Wye stood looking down at her.
There was an expression of tenderness on his face that made the innkeeper’s wife wipe her eyes.
CHAPTER TEN
The day had started badly.
When Elvina came down to breakfast in the oak-beamed sitting room of the inn, it was to find the landlord regaling Lord Wye with a long description of the groom’s sickness during the night.
“Maybe it were summat ’e ’ad eaten, my Lord,” the landlord said. “But it were not what ’e ’ad in this ’ouse. Comin’ as late as you did, ’e ate almost the same as your Lordship and you’ve ’ad a good night, I can tell it by the look of you.”
“I slept well,” Lord Wye replied. “But I am sorry to learn that my groom is indisposed. Is he too ill to travel?”
“That ’e be,” the innkeeper replied. “Lyin’ in the straw above the ’orses, claspin’ ’is stomach and groanin’ so you can ’ear ’im right across the yard.”
“I will speak to him when I have had my breakfast,” Lord Wye said.
“Very good, my Lord.”
The landlord hurried away to come back with the inevitable dish of eggs and bacon, a great ham, which he assured them was from a prize porker bred in the village, and a brawn that he boasted was made from the finest recipe in the whole county of Surrey.
“What will you do if the groom is too ill to travel?” Elvina asked when they were alone.
“Send for the local physician and leave him enough money to make his own way back to Southampton,” Lord Wye replied. “We shall not need him. We shall be in London this afternoon.”
Elvina heard this with a sense of dismay.
Although she had known that the journey must end some time, she had snatched at these days alone with Lord Wye, feeling that each one of them was full of enchantment and every hour with him was precious.
“Is London – very big?” she asked with a little tremble in her voice.
“It depends on how you view it,” Lord Wye replied. “For those who are socially inclined it is a small circle of those you know. The ones outside that circle are not of the least conseque
nce.”
“My mother always said one should know people of every world and – every class of Society,” Elvina said.
She spoke without thinking and then saw Lord Wye look at her closely.
“This is the first time you have mentioned your mother. What was she like?”
“Very lovely,” Elvina answered almost defiantly.
“That I can believe. Was she of some noble family in Portugal?”
Elvina felt her face burn and she dropped her head a little lower.
“I – think so,” she mumbled.
How she hated to lie to Lord Wye and yet the moment had not come when she could tell him the truth. Besides, she had plans in her mind, plans only half-formed, but nevertheless there.
She could not speak of them until she had seen London and until she knew what lay ahead of her.
It was a warm sunny morning with the promise of great heat later in the afternoon. The new horses provided at the inn were an excellent pair used to running together and they set off at a spanking pace.
Elvina felt a sudden rush of happiness. She longed to put her hand on Lord Wye’s knee to tell him how happy she was.
And yet, because she loved him so deeply, it was far more difficult for her to express herself than had she been the child that he believed her to be.
The roads were now good, far better than the lanes they had encountered when they first left Southampton.
There was very little traffic and although they occasionally met a stagecoach or a closed carriage with a Nobleman’s arms painted on the panel, the other travellers were mostly driving hay carts and moving very slowly from one part of the farm to the other.
“This is very different from the Dover road,” Lord Wye remarked, “and when the Prince Regent is repairing to Brighthelmstone, one can barely move above a snail’s pace for the congestion of carriages, coaches, phaetons and curricles.”
They had luncheon at a charming little country inn and, having changed horses, set off again. Elvina had never known Lord Wye so gay and animated and she thought with a little stab of the heart that it was because he was nearing London.
Lord Wye seemed not to notice that she answered him only in monosyllables, her spirits sinking lower and lower, the heat of the sun and the misery in her own mind seeming to stifle everything she would have said in response to all that he was telling her.
“As soon as we reach London, I must report to the Prime Minister exactly what happened during our sojourn with the French forces,” Lord Wye was saying. “He has often said to me that he thought that Bonaparte was running short of men. When he learns about that last pitiable Division which arrived from Paris when we were in St. Jean de Luz, it will confirm his most optimistic hopes. Boys of sixteen, emaciated, overgrown and without the stamina to stand up to Wellington’s seasoned troops. Poor little devils! I have it in my heart to be sorry for them.”
“Yes,” Elvina replied.
Seeing in her mind’s eye not the white-faced, exhausted French boys crowded round the food carts, but Lord Wye sheltering her from the drunken roistering troops. Lord Wye pulling her up the hill by the hand. Lord Wye holding her close beside him as they lay in the open on the rough mountainside.
They were now passing through a wooded part of the country, the road rising to the top of the hill and twisting a little through high beech trees.
It was then, unexpectedly, without any warning, that a horseman suddenly galloped from the shadow of the trees across their path.
“Stand and deliver!”
The words were shouted out in a coarse ugly tone and Lord Wye pulled the horses to a standstill, the curricle shaking as they plunged against the tightness of the reins.
“What the devil!” Elvina heard him exclaim and then there was another man at their side also on horseback, his face half-covered by a black mask and an ugly-looking pistol held in his hand pointing straight at Lord Wye’s heart.
“Get down and give us your valuables,” he demanded roughly.
“Why should I do that?” Lord Wye enquired.
“Unless you want a bullet in your gullet, you’ll do as you’re told,” was the answer.
Elvina gave a little cry. She recognised the threat for what it was and knew that men such as those who faced them now would not stick at murder.
“Please,” she murmured, “please – do as they say.”
Lord Wye glanced down at her.
“You are frightening the lady I have with me,” he said.
“If she knows what is good for ’er she’ll give us any sparklers she may ’ave on her,” the highwayman said. “Hurry now! We ’aven’t time to stand about all day.”
The man who had stopped the horses had now dismounted and gone to their heads. Elvina noticed with relief that he slipped his pistol into his belt so as to leave his hands free.
His own horse, obviously used to such diversions, moved leisurely to one side and started cropping the grass.
Slowly, almost maddeningly slowly, Elvina thought in her fear, Lord Wye got down into the road and stood for a moment, hesitant, his eyes roaming towards the small portmanteau he carried in the back of the curricle.
There was not much in it, as Elvina knew only too well, only a few clean shirts and cravats that Peregrine Howard had lent him for the journey. The trunk was his also.
To her astonishment Lord Wye said, in what appeared a most unconvincing manner,
“There is nothing, nothing, I assure you, in my baggage.”
“We’ll soon see about that,” the highwayman said, obviously suspicious. “Open it up.”
With an obvious reluctance Lord Wye drew off his driving gloves and started fumbling at the straps of the portmanteau.
He was being so clumsy at getting them undone that Elvina almost offered to help him because she was so anxious to escape from the situation that they now found themselves in.
“Hurry! Hurry!” the highwayman said angrily, digging the point of his pistol into Lord Wye’s ribs.
He stood beside him.
“I cannot get them undone,” Lord Wye said. “My fingers are stiff. Besides, as I have told you, there is nothing in them that could possibly interest you.”
“I’m the best judge of that,” the highwayman answered. “’Ere, Jed, come and give the cove an ’and. The ’orses are quiet enough.”
“There is nothing there,” Lord Wye expostulated. “Nothing. Let me give you my purse.”
He turned as if to pull the purse from his trousers pocket.
“Get that portmanteau open,” the highwayman almost shouted. “That’s where the gold is. Come on, Jed.”
They both put out a hand towards the stiff leather straps and as they did so Lord Wye acted.
He caught the first highwayman, who had been concerned with the horses, a tremendous blow in the stomach.
The other man turned to fire at him but he knocked the pistol up and it exploded harmlessly into the air.
Then he caught the man a crashing blow under the chin that seemed to lift him right into the air before he collapsed on his back in the road.
The other man was doubled up with the pain of the blow.
Lord Wye hit him again, knocking him sideways onto the grass verge and then, almost before Elvina could draw her breath, he had sprung into the curricle, picked up the reins and they were moving off.
The report from the pistol was still ringing in her ears. She felt the horses move forward in obedience to the whip and, with a little gasp of astonishment and relief, realised that they were free.
She looked back. The highwaymen were still. One in the centre of the road, the other on the side. Neither was moving, while their horses unconcernedly cropped the grass.
“Oh, you were – wonderful! Wonderful!” she breathed. “I was so frightened, so afraid they would – shoot you.”
“Not a pleasant situation,” Lord Wye muttered, “not with you beside me.”
“I was so – frightened,” Elvina said again.
<
br /> She only realised now just how terrified she had been. The paralysis that seemed to have gripped her the moment the highwayman had called out ‘stand and deliver’ ebbed away and she felt her heart beating and her body trembling with fear of what might have been.
“They – m-might have – killed you,” she said, her voice shaking with the horror of it.
“Surely by now you know that I do not die easily,” Lord Wye answered.
His eyes were twinkling and his mouth was smiling. He was elated by what had happened. It was the sort of adventure he enjoyed.
“If they had – killed you, I should have – wanted to die too,” Elvina faltered.
He laughed at the tragedy in her tones and, taking one hand from the reins, he put it round her shoulders and drew her close to him.
“It’s all over,” he said reassuringly.
“You were – splendid!”
She hardly breathed the words above a whisper, but her lips were parted and her eyes shining like stars. He looked down and instinctively bent his head to kiss her.
He had meant to touch her cheek as he had done so often before, but somehow his lips met hers and her mouth clung to his.
The kiss she gave him was not the kiss of a child, it was the kiss of a woman who loves and whose every nerve tingles at the touch of the man she adores.
Just for a moment his lips remained on hers and then he jerked up his head, his face drained of all colour beneath his tan.
Elvina felt him draw a deep breath.
Then his hand, which had been round her shoulders, went up to his forehead to wipe away the sudden beads of sweat on his brow.
“I must be crazed!” she heard him say almost beneath his breath.
Then they were driving on in silence, both of them looking straight ahead, both of them tinglingly aware that something momentous had happened.
It was Elvina who was the most dismayed.
She realised that she had betrayed herself and yet she knew that Lord Wye did not understand and was in fact amazed and horrified at the feelings that she had aroused in him.
She could still feel the touch of his lips on her mouth.
The kiss seemed to burn itself through her whole body making her feel as if she was on fire with a sudden wonder and happiness that she had never know before.
Love Under Fire Page 17