She rose to her feet and looked round the small clearing to see if there was anything else that might be used as incriminating evidence against the Earl.
Then she turned to walk back along the path through the wood which led to the Cottage.
She had felt quite calm when she had knelt beside Giles’s body and realised his death was part of a plan to damage the Earl. But when she reached her own bed-room and closed the door behind her she found herself trembling violently.
It seemed hardly credible that since she had left her bed and gone for a walk in the moonlight she had been involved in so many terrible events.
It had been terrifying to over-hear the men planning the murder of the Earl and a humiliation beyond words to know that only one person could have told them of the secret passage by which they could enter his bed-room while he slept.
As if that were not enough she had to face the fact that her brother was dead—killed by the man who had been his evil genius.
Lord Crawthorne had utilised Giles to implicate the Earl in a crime from which he would be unable to defend himself because he too would be dead.
It was clever, Celesta had to admit, but at the same time diabolical!
She could understand now why she had loathed Lord Crawthorne from the very first moment she had come into contact with him, and why she had known instinctively that he was evil and wicked.
He would have achieved two murders if she had not been able to warn the Earl in time.
Even now it was difficult to realise that she had saved the man she loved but by a hair’s breadth.
Had the assailants been able to enter the Earl’s bedroom while he slept, he would have had no chance of survival.
Celesta thought of him lying stabbed to death—dead as Giles was dead—and knew that without him there would be nothing left for her in life.
As if her legs could no longer support her she sat down on the bed and faced the fact that she loved the Earl with her whole being; loved him so much that everything seemed changed because of her love.
It seemed impossible now to think that once she had told him that she would never fall in love or that she believed that the emotion he first aroused in her was hatred.
Now, even to think of him was to know that since he had come into her life everything was altered and that her only hope of Heaven was to be close to him.
But this she knew was something that must be denied her, and because she loved him beyond thought of self, the only thing she could do was to go away.
When he had kissed her as she left the Priory she had known that the touch of his lips made them one person.
She belonged to him and although she knew it was impossible she had felt just for one moment that he belonged to her.
They were one! They were indivisible! And then he had released her.
“Go home, my darling,” he had said. “I cannot have you involved in this mess.”
But she was involved.
Involved to the point where her own brother had attempted murder and had in his turn been murdered by the man to whom she was promised in marriage.
Celesta put her hands over her eyes and tried to think.
But for the moment she felt as if her brain would no longer function and she could only feel weak and helpless with no idea of where she could seek safety.
She wanted to be with the Earl.
She wanted it so desperately that her whole body cried out with an almost physical agony for him. But he was to be married, and if, as she suspected, he was ready to protect her, she was well aware of the damage it could do to him socially.
Lord Crawthorne would never allow him to snatch her away without causing so much trouble that the Earl would suffer because of it.
Celesta could imagine the lengths to which he would go: there was nothing that he would not say or do to defame and besmirch the man he loathed to the point where he would murder him.
“No,” Celesta told herself. “I must not inflict myself upon the Earl under those circumstances.”
She was sure that he would endeavour to help her but in doing so he must inevitably hurt himself and that she could not allow.
Once again it seemed to her that the shadow of sin which had covered her from the moment her mother had run away not only separated her from any chance of happiness but had even lengthened through Giles’s death.
Dead or alive he was still a man who had tried to commit murder.
That he had failed in his attempt had merely been through the outside chance of her over-hearing his accomplices in the wood.
Celesta could feel again the breathless fear which had made her run across the garden, climb into the Priory, and speed up the stairs to the Earl’s bed-room.
Supposing she had been too late?
She could hardly bear to think of it.
She had saved him, but now she must do more. She must go out of his life.
He was to marry Lady Imogen and while perhaps sometimes he might remember the strange and wonderful magic of their kiss, it would not deflect him from his social obligations or the fact that he could offer her nothing but what he called his “protection.”
She remembered how she had said to him:
“I would rather die than accept such a position!”
How ignorant and foolish she had been!
Celesta knew now that she could imagine nothing more wonderful than to know that the Earl would protect her against all fears and horrors that still existed round her.
Giles was dead but Lord Crawthorne was alive, and though there was no legal means by which he could compel her to marry him she had the feeling that while His Lordship still desired her he would never let her go.
“I must get away!” she told herself.
She rose to her feet. Suddenly galvanised into action by a fear which gave her an unprecedented energy, she packed the trunk she had brought to her bed-room earlier in the evening.
All the clothes her mother had sent to her, which she had not even looked at after their arrival, she took from the cupboard and placed in the trunk.
There were more than she had thought to find, because hating the gifts she had not counted them or thought of them again after Nana told her what the boxes contained.
The stars had faded and the moon vanished from the sky when finally the cupboard was empty and the trunk was full.
It was then at last that Celesta lay down on her bed to close her eyes.
She was well aware that she would need all her strength not only for the journey ahead but also to convince Nana that she must go.
She rested but she could not sleep.
At seven o’clock she was up and dressing herself in an elegant gown of pale blue silk with a coat to cover it of a darker tone.
It was smart! It was Parisian! It was chic!
There was a bonnet to accompany it, high-crowned, trimmed with twisted blue ribbons which tied under her chin, the brim edged with a tiny row of lace which softly framed her little face.
But Celesta hardly looked at herself in the glass.
She had only just finished dressing when the door opened and Nana came in to call her.
For a moment she stood transfixed in the doorway and then as Celesta turned round to face her gave a little cry.
“You’re going away, dearie?”
“I am going to Mama.”
Nana did not speak and Celesta went on hastily:
“I have to go, Nana, and please, I beg of you, to lend me the money Giles repaid you two days ago. You know that I will pay it back. I cannot stay here, and only Mama will understand that I cannot marry Lord Crawthorne.”
Celesta had decided not to tell Nana that Giles was dead. She would learn it soon enough.
Besides, if she did so, there must be explanations as to why she was in the wood and why having found him she had sent no-one to carry his body back to the Cottage.
She saw by the expression in Nana’s face that she was about to argue at her assertion tha
t she would not marry Lord Crawthorne and she said quickly:
“There is no haste in such matters. Whatever I do later, at this moment I must see Mama.”
“You’re right, dearie,” Nana said reluctantly. “Perhaps I should have sent you there sooner but you had such a hatred for Her Ladyship and would never speak of her.”
Celesta drew a deep breath.
How could she explain to Nana that she had not understood?
When she had said to the Earl: “I will never allow myself to be inveigled into behaving as Mama behaved,” she had not known the power of love.
Unawakened and ignorant, how could she have guessed that he was right when he had replied, “Love is a rapture—an over-whelming force which is irresistible”?
Every word made her want to tell him it was the truth.
Her love for him was indeed a rapture and a wonder since the first moment he had kissed her. It was also an over-whelming force that she could not resist.
“I love him! I love him!” Celesta wanted to cry out.
But she knew that Nana must not learn of her feelings; otherwise it would seem even more incomprehensible that she must go away to her mother in Paris.
Saying very little, which afterwards Celesta thought surprising, Nana brought her savings and put them into her hands.
“When I get to Paris,” Celesta said in a low voice, “I will write to you, but do not tell anyone where I have gone.”
“What shall I say to His Lordship?”
“If you are speaking of Lord Crawthorne,” Celesta replied, “tell him I have gone North to visit relatives. Promise me, Nana, you will convince him that he cannot get in touch with me.”
“I’ll try, dearie,” Nana replied.
The first Dover coach passed through the village at eight-thirty in the morning.
It had rattled its way from old London Bridge down the Old Kent Road, through New Cross and Black-heath to Shooter’s Hill, where at The Bull the horses had been changed for the first time.
Then the coach had continued to Gad’s Hill, past the corpses of highwaymen rotting on the gibbets, to Wroxbury.
It was a slow cumbersome vehicle which unlike the faster express coaches stopped at every village.
But Celesta was too anxious to get away from the Cottage to be prepared to wait. She knew that at any moment Giles’s body might be found in the wood and be carried home.
Then it would be difficult to explain why she was leaving, and to be seen dressed in blue would cause a great deal of local comment.
It was not until her trunk, which was carried to the coach by one of the village boys, was stowed on the roof along with a motley collection of baggage, some hens in a coop, and several crates of vegetables that Celesta felt she was safe.
Slowly the horses drew away from the village and out into the open country on the way to Rochester and the Medway Flats to Canterbury.
The other occupants of the coach, having stared at Celesta with undisguised curiosity, settled themselves to sleep, read, or eat until they reached the next halt.
After dozens of stops, five changes of horses, and a delay when the Coachman became involved in a wordy controversy on a narrow stretch of road with the driver of a dray as to who should pass first, they did not reach Dover until the afternoon.
Celesta was not unduly worried.
She knew there was a boat which left the harbour at about five o’clock and had resigned herself from the very start to being unable to catch an earlier one.
During the long journey she found herself wondering amongst other things what her mother would think when she appeared.
She felt, however, that the presents which had come year after year, even when she had never acknowledged them, were proof that her mother was still concerned with her well-being.
‘How foolish I have been,’ Celesta thought, ‘to have hated Mama all these years.’
Now because she was in love herself she could understand what her mother had felt for the Marquis of Heron.
It was easy to understand that as a child she had been deeply shocked by her mother’s behaviour and even now she would not pretend it was anything but wrong.
And yet there were extenuating circumstances.
While Celesta would not condone the fact that her mother had run away, she could at least not wholly condemn her, because now she could understand how it had happened.
But it was impossible to think for long of anyone except the Earl.
Always in front of her eyes she could see his handsome face, the cynical smile on his lips, the look in his eyes which seemed so often to be mocking her.
He was over-whelming and over-powering in many ways, and yet when they had danced together they had moved in unison and their steps had matched so that she was sure that they both thought and felt the same.
Last night it had seemed to her there had been something new in his kiss that had not been there before.
She had moved into his arms because it had been inevitable; because she told herself now that nothing could have prevented her at that moment from turning to him and seeking his lips as he had sought hers.
Then at the touch of his mouth she had felt a flame rise within her.
It was nothing she could explain; nothing she could really put into words; and yet it seemed as if her whole being pulsated with new life.
Something that was beautiful and unbelievably compelling!
It was as if he swept her into the star-strewn Heavens and they were one with the Divine!
But almost before she could realise what was happening he had led her outside the Priory and she heard him lock the door.
“That was the moment,” Celesta told herself miserably, “when I left his life for ever!”
It was a pain as if she had a dagger in her heart to know that she would never see him again, but when she had found Giles dead in the wood, there had been no hope for her love.
Celesta shut her eyes.
She did not hear the other passengers chattering or a man snoring beside her, having drunk heavily at the last halting-place.
She did not hear the thump of the luggage moving about over-head, the Coachman swearing at the horses, or the whirl of the wheels.
All she could hear was the Earl’s voice saying: “My darling...” in a deep voice which seemed to vibrate through her whole body.
“My darling ... my darling ...”
That is what she had been to him at that moment.
But never again. It was over! It was finished.
The love which had come into her life was a burning light which had swept away her prejudice, her ignorance, her stupidity.
Only to be ... extinguished.
Now there was nothing left but the darkness which had been hers for four years.
The shadow of sin!
Not just her mother’s but now also Giles’s.
As the coach drew up outside The King’s Head for the passengers to get out, before proceeding to the ship waiting to carry them across the Channel, Celesta realised that there was a strong wind blowing from the sea.
She had felt it when they had descended from the coach at the last halt and her elegant French bonnet had almost been swept from her head.
The other women travellers had clutched at their skirts, holding them down over their ankles as they hurried into the Posting-House.
Now Celesta could see the waves breaking over the promenade, white-crested as they threw their spray against the grey shingle.
The flag flying from the flag-pole outside The King’s Head was almost being torn into fragments, and as they entered the Inn the Landlord said:
“Ye’ll not be leaving tonight, Sirs. No skipper’ll set sail in this weather.”
“Shall we have to stay here?” Celesta asked in consternation.
“Ye will indeed, Ma’am,” the Inn-keeper replied, “unless ye have friends in th’ neighbourhood.”
“No, I have none,” Celesta answered, “and I would be grateful i
f you could provide me with a bed-room.”
“I can do that,” the Inn-keeper replied.
He glanced at Celesta’s elegant appearance and added:
“And one o’ the best, Ma’am!”
Celesta had no time to say more because the other passengers in their turn engaged the Inn-keeper’s attention.
She allowed a maid in a mob-cap to escort her upstairs where she was shown into a pleasant low-ceilinged room over-looking the sea.
It was only when her luggage had been brought up by a porter and she had given him a few pence for his pains that she wondered whether she would have enough money for the sea-voyage and the coach she must find in France to convey her to Paris.
She had not anticipated having to stay the night in Dover and was well aware that the few sovereigns that Nana had been able to lend her would not permit any extravagance or indeed any untoward delays on the journey.
The fare for the Channel crossing was half a guinea for a Lady or Gentleman and five shillings for their servant if they had one.
Celesta knew that on reaching France she must ignore the expensive, quicker, and more comfortable post-chaises.
They charged one shilling eleven pence a day a post and there were thirty and a half posts between Calais and Paris.
But the much cheaper Carrosses and Coches meant that the 183 miles to Paris would entail seven lunches and seven suppers on the road.
This would mean the journey could cost as much as two pounds ten shillings.
“I must eat as little as possible” Celesta said to herself. “At least I can economise on food!”
She took off her blue coat, laid it on the bed, and untied the ribbons of her bonnet.
She was too worried about her finances to stay long in front of the mirror, but she noted that her fair hair released from the confines of the bonnet seemed to spring into place and that her eyes were very dark and anxious in her pale face.
At the same time Celesta thought it was strange that her deep unhappiness and her feeling of despair did not show itself more obviously.
‘I must find out the cost of this bed-room,’ she thought. If it is expensive I must move into a cheaper room.’
Turning from the mirror, she went down the stairs.
The Inn-keeper was waiting at the bottom.
The Shadow of Sin (Bantam Series No. 19) Page 16