“That’s a good idea!” the valet conceded.
Terence Verley walked towards one of the candles on the floor and Christina saw him pick up a piece of paper that lay beside it.
With difficulty, because she felt as if she was still constrained by the ropes, Christina sat up.
She then pushed herself back so that she could lean against the wall.
Terence Verley came to her holding in his hand what was obviously a letter.
“I have written this to his High and Mightiness,” he told her, “and you had better read what I have said.”
He handed it to Christina.
As if he had given the order, the valet brought the other candle and put it down beside her.
Because she was frightened, for a moment what was written swam before her eyes.
Then she read,
“My dear cousin,
I find on thinking it over that your proposition is unacceptable. I have also learnt from my manservant that it is entirely due to that golden-haired chit that you found out about the Estate Manager and are now intending to spend the family fortune on a lot of ignorant and ungrateful country folk!
She is obviously determined to marry you, which will certainly ruin my prospects so I have therefore taken her prisoner.
If you require her services in the future, you will have to pay me fifty thousand pounds for her – ”
Christina then gave a loud gasp of horror, but because there was more, she read on,
“ – That should provide me with a few comforts, which are only my due. Although I may have to ensure that between you, you do not produce an heir.
Should you decide that the girl is not worth the price I put on her, she will soon starve to death, as I shall not feed her and every day that you prevaricate in answering my demands, she will be thrashed insensible.
I think, my dear cousin, in your guise as a hero, it would be very much wiser for you to pay the price I ask. If you agree, raise a white flag on your mast on top of The Hall. I will then release the girl when the money has been transferred to my Bank, which is Coutts in Lombard Street.
Hoping you will see sense, I remain,
Your affectionate cousin,
Terence.”
Christina read the note to the very end.
Then she reacted furiously,
“How can you – ask such – a thing? How can you – imagine that he would pay – so much money – for me?”
“Only you can answer those questions,” Terence replied. “As I said in the letter, you must blame yourself for being such a busybody that he has started to spend the Melverley fortune on his damned estate!”
Christina did not reply and he went on,
“It is no use denying what you have been up to and that you see yourself as the Marchioness of Melverley. My valet listened to your nursemaid talking in the housekeeper’s room and that made me aware of how dangerous you really are.”
“I am not – dangerous,” Christina protested. “I was only trying to – help the people who have been the – responsibility of – your family for generations.”
“And one far too expensive!” Terence snarled. “If you had left them alone, they would doubtless have died of starvation. As you will!”
He almost spat the words at her.
Then in a different voice he added in a drawl,
“But, of course, the hero will rescue you because there is nothing else he can do. And don’t think for a moment he will do it except by paying up. No one will find you here – no one!”
It was as he spoke that Christina was suddenly aware of where she was.
There was the quack of a duck outside.
She knew, as if he had told her in so many words, that she was in the old mill.
It was a derelict building that had been abandoned long ago because it was of no further use to the estate.
As it was on a dangerous whirlpool, the land had not been cultivated even before the war.
This was because two sheep had fallen into the whirlpool water many years ago and had been drowned.
With a sinking of her heart she knew that it would never occur to the Marquis that that was where his cousin might have hidden her.
He was right when he said that she would never be found.
She would starve to death unless the Marquis paid him the money he was demanding for her release.
As if Terence Verley was reading her thoughts, he said,
“You see how clever I have been!”
“You – you cannot – do this to me – you cannot!” Christina cried.
“You will soon find that I shall stick to every word I have put in that letter,” Terence Verley replied. “It is you who is throwing away what should be mine on a lot of nincompoops and it is you who are trying to marry my cousin and give him a son who will steal my inheritance from me.”
Now he spoke in a way that made Christina feel he was mad.
He had turned from being an educated man into a snarling animal.
“I will beat you,” he was threatening, “for what you have done to me and enjoy doing it!”
He sounded so violent that the valet stepped forward and put his hand on his arm.
“Come on, sir,” he pleaded, “we’re wastin’ time. Gimme the letter and there’s a bottle of good port waitin’ for you below.”
“All right,” Terence Verley agreed reluctantly. “But I will beat her until she pleads for mercy. As she will do!”
He took a pencil out of his pocket and handed it to Christina.
At the same time the valet picked up a piece of wood that was lying on the floor and put it on Christina’s lap for her to write on.
She took the pencil and spread out the letter on the piece of wood.
She was trying frantically to think of a way to let the Marquis know where she was.
She might have guessed that Terence Verley would be prepared for this for he said,
“One word that might be a pointer to where you are hidden and I will give you a taste of the whip without waiting for tomorrow!”
Desperately, frantically, Christina was praying for help.
Then slowly, writing carefully so that it would not be difficult for the Marquis to read, she wrote,
“I am praying to St. Christopher that you will save me.”
She did not sign her name, but just added a capital ‘C’ after what she had written.
Terence Verley snatched the letter from her and read it suspiciously.
“Who is St. Christopher?” he asked.
“My Patron Saint,” Christina explained. “If I had been a boy, I would have been baptised Christopher.”
Terence Verley snorted because he clearly thought that she was talking a lot of rubbish.
He folded the letter and handed it to the valet.
“Hurry up!” he ordered. “I hope you have left me something comfortable to sleep on downstairs.”
“I’ve done me best, sir,” the valet answered, “and if the rats bites your toes, don’t you go a-blamin’ me!”
Christina gave a little cry of horror, as she had forgotten that there would be rats in the old mill.
The valet was already descending the stairs as he spoke.
And Terence Verley was about to follow him when he turned back.
“Until tomorrow, you tiresome little interferer!” he growled, “Unless, of course, you would like me to stay and keep you warm?”
There was a seriously unpleasant note in his voice and Christina turned her face away from him.
He must have been aware of how much she was hating him, for he laughed unpleasantly.
He then went down the stairs and she heard him shutting the door at the bottom of them and turning the key in the lock.
It was then the fear that had been eating away inside her seemed to well up until she put her hands up to her face.
She did not cry.
She only felt despairingly that the Marquis would not find her.
Wh
ich meant that she would die in this horrible place.
Anyway, how could he possibly pay the enormous sum that Terence Verley was demanding?
She had listened for years to her father and the old Marquis talking about the estate.
She was aware that the Melverleys had never sold an acre of land nor had any of its treasures ever been pawned or sold all down the centuries.
Oliver Cromwell had stolen some of them at the time of the Commonwealth and the Verleys fighting with Marlborough had run up large debts to provide his men with better food and uniforms than were supplied by the British Government.
But the debts had been paid off and the pictures, furniture and the fertile acres had all remained in the family.
The same applied to all that they owned in London.
Lord Coventry had gambled away several streets in one night’s gaming at White’s Club, but neither the Earls nor the Marquises of Melverley had parted with anything.
Christina knew that to find fifty thousand pounds pounds would cripple the family finances, as nothing else had ever been able to do.
‘He must – not do it for – me! He must – not!’ she determined.
It was then she thought with horror of what would happen to her if he did not pay the money to his evil cousin.
It was obvious that Terence Verley was deranged and he would do anything to obtain money and even if he secured it by fair means or foul, Christina had a feeling that he would in some way prevent the Marquis from producing an heir.
He might kill the present Marquis or he might wait and kill off any sons that were born to him.
‘I could not – bear it if that – should happen,’ Christina told herself.
Then, as she thought of the Marquis, so strong, handsome and so very kind, she knew without realising it that she loved him.
How could she help loving him?
It was a shock.
Yet she knew that he had been there in her heart ever since he had helped her on the day when Ben was killed.
Then again when Sir Mortimer was pestering her!
After that he had shown inestimable kindness towards the people on his estate.
She could still picture the farmer’s wife with tears running down her cheeks and the farmer himself staring incredulously when the Marquis had told him what he was prepared to do.
‘He is so wonderful, so magnificent!’ Christina said to herself. ‘And if I die – it will be – impossible then for his wicked cousin to go on – blackmailing him.’
She rose to her feet, aware that her ankles hurt from where they had been bound and went to the window.
The river beneath the mill was in darkness and then she looked up to where the stars were shining in the sky.
The moon she had seen earlier had gone behind a cloud, but still in the starlight she could see the other side of the river.
There were no houses in sight and the land looked desolate.
It was then she knew that her only chance of survival was if the Marquis understood what she had written in that one sentence that had been challenged by his dastardly cousin.
He must work it out very quickly.
If not, only God could tell him what it meant so that he could find her.
She put her fingers together and looked up at the stars.
The Marquis would be asleep and he would be lying in the great four-poster he had been in when she had gone to waken him last night.
How would he guess?
How could he imagine for one moment that she had been spirited away?
Why should he question that what he had arranged would not be acceptable?
He had given Terence Verley enough money to keep him in comfort and yet, in some crafty manner, he had managed to creep back without anyone being aware of it.
She was now helpless in a place that she could not escape from.
‘The Marquis must not give all that money for me!’ she told herself, looking up at the stars. ‘Please, God, let him understand what I have written and know where I am. Perhaps by a miracle You could think of a means by which I could escape?’
Even as she prayed she thought that it was hopeless.
Yet because her mother had said that ‘good always triumphs over evil’, she could not believe that there would not be an answer.
The Marquis must surely find it.
‘He is so strong, so intelligent,’ she whispered to herself.
She felt her love for him surging up from within her heart.
‘I love – him! I love – him!’ she admitted forcefully to her inner being.
As she looked up at the stars, it seemed as if they repeated the words as they glistened and glimmered in the dark sky.
Finally she turned away from the window.
She realised then that the candles were flickering and would not last very long.
There was nothing to lie on except for the thick rug that she had been covered with and Terence Verley had left it on the floor.
She lay down, turning a corner of it so as to make a pillow for her head.
The candles were burning ever lower.
She looked about her apprehensively, afraid the rats might come near her when it was dark.
Then she told herself sensibly that the mill had not been in use for many years and anything edible would have been devoured by the rats a long time ago.
‘If only the Marquis was here – he would – frighten them away,’ she thought.
Only to think of him made little thrills run through her body.
‘How can I have – loved him all this time without – realising it?’ she asked herself.
Then she knew that she could never love anyone with the same feelings that she had for him.
It was what she knew her father had felt for her mother and it was why they had been so happy all the years they had been together.
And it was exactly what she wanted to find herself and why she had been repulsed by Sir Mortimer Stinger when he approached her.
Then she remembered how important the Marquis was and that he must have known many women who had loved him and women he had loved in return.
‘He will never think of me except as someone who helped him when he came home to such chaos,’ she thought unhappily, ‘but I shall love him all my life and there will never be another man to compare with him in any way.’
Then the terror of the predicament she was now in swept over her.
The thought of what might happen tomorrow made her clench her fingers together.
And once again she was praying.
‘Please, God – please – let him – s-save me – !’
*
The Marquis awoke early as he always did.
He lay expecting Yates to call him when there was a knock on the door and without stopping to think he called,
“Come in!”
To his surprise, Christina’s Nanny appeared.
“Oh, my Lord, please excuse me!” she began, dropping him a curtsey, “but Miss Christina’s not in her room!”
The Marquis sat up in bed.
“Not in her room? What do you mean? Where is she?” the Marquis asked.
“Her bed’s not bin slept in, my Lord, and she’s nowhere to be found!” answered Nanny.
The Marquis stared at her in astonishment.
“Is that possible?”
“Come and see for yourself, my Lord, and Henry, who was on duty last night, says the front door was unlocked this morning!” Nanny exclaimed.
The Marquis was silent for a moment.
Then he said,
“There is obviously something wrong! I will dress as quickly as possible, Nanny.”
“I don’t know what’s happenin’, that I don’t!” Nanny said tearfully, “but my baby must be somewhere!”
The Marquis climbed out of bed and rang the bell for Yates who came hurrying in.
“I knows as ‘ow you’d be wantin’ me, your Lordship,” he said. “I’ve just bin told by Henry. The
door ’e was supposed to be guardin’ was ajar when ’e wakes up this mornin’.”
The Marquis did not answer. He was dressing as fast as he could.
Five minutes later he was downstairs, having looked into Christina’s bedroom.
He saw, as Nanny had said, that the bed had not been slept in.
Nanny also informed him that Christina’s dressing gown and bedroom slippers were missing too.
As he reached the hall, Johnson came hurrying towards him.
“I’ve been making enquiries of everyone in the kitchen, my Lord,” he said before the Marquis could speak. “No one can throw any light on what’s happened to Miss Christina. But this note was found pushed under the back door.”
He handed the Marquis the note on a silver salver.
As the Marquis took it, he recognised Terence’s handwriting.
Carrying it to his study, he closed the door behind him before opening the note.
He read it, and for a moment was too furious to move.
He read the letter twice thinking he must be mistaken.
No gentleman could sink so low or be so utterly vile as to make such threats.
Then he told himself that he was dealing with a madman and there was therefore no point in getting angry.
He had to use his brain if he was to defeat Terence and rescue Christina from his clutches.
He read what she had written again and again and he did not understand why she had included St. Christopher in her plea for help.
He could understand the horror and terror she must have been feeling when she wrote her message.
And he felt he could easily kill Terence with his bare hands for torturing her in such an abominable way.
He was still studying the letter when Johnson came into the study.
“I thought your Lordship should know that the travelling chariot in which Mr. Terence left here,” he said, “has returned.”
“Returned?” the Marquis questioned.
“Yes, my Lord. The driver says that Mr. Terence made him stop at the first Posting inn on the main highway. He then told him to wait until the morning to come back to Melverley Hall.”
“Mr. Terence did not come back with him?” the Marquis enquired.
“No, my Lord, and when the driver made enquiries at the Posting inn he learnt that Mr. Terence had taken a post chaise back here.”
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