John remained silent, struggling with temptation. From the moment she proposed he knew he wanted to accept. But did he have the right to take advantage of her need? If she did not love him but was merely turning to him for protection, what kind of marriage would it be for her? For now he knew that he was falling deeply in love with her.
“Cecilia –” he said, tightening his hands on hers, “if only –”
His head was spinning and he was overwhelmed by memories of their time in the water, when she had been a mermaid leading him into the depths. To live with that enchantment always, to sit with her by the fire in the evening, to see her face in his children – all this was such temptation.
But could it be right to yield to such temptation, no matter how great his love?
“Cecilia –” he started gently and then fell silent, uncertain as to what to say next.
Her face fell. A chill was creeping over her heart. This was not what she had hoped for. She tried to be reasonable. She had taken him by surprise and now she must be patient.
“Of course,” she said. “You will need to think it over –”
“I don’t need to think,” he replied. “I already know my answer –”
“But you must not answer me too quickly,” she said. “I have not finished explaining. It must seem to you that all the gain is on my side, so why should you give up your life to protect me?”
“Cecilia –” he said, half laughing and thinking of the delight in her eyes when he would tell her that to offer her his life would be his highest joy.
“In return for your protection,” she hurried on, “I will give you everything I possess. You will be completely independent. You could buy your own hotel –”
“My dear, your money is nothing to me.”
“I know. I have always known that you were a good man. You could never be like him.”
“Sir Stewart?”
“Hush, do not even say his name. He has nothing to do with us. I know you are not a fortune hunter, which means that I can tell you how much my dowry will be.”
She took a deep breath.
“Two hundred and fifty thousand pounds.”
For a moment he was unsure whether he had heard correctly. He had imagined her to have ten thousand, perhaps even as much as twenty.
Two hundred and fifty thousand pounds.
There could not be so much money in the world.
Visions danced before him. His home, restored to its old glory, the gardens beautiful again. He could do so much for his tenants, repair their cottages and advance them loans to improve their stock.
And all he had to do was reach out his hand.
That thought brought his whole bright dream crashing down. She was offering him everything with an eager, trusting soul, not knowing that she was putting temptation in the way of a man desperate for money.
In his torment he recalled her saying that she needed a man who cared nothing for her money.
What would she say if she knew that he had deceived her, claiming her trust while hiding the truth about himself?
A quarter of a million pounds. No man needed it more. And no man was less entitled to take it.
Perhaps one day, when there could be total truth between them. But he must tell her that truth carefully. Instinct told him that this was not the moment to blurt it out. She might not even believe him.
“Let us not hurry with this decision,” he said at last. “You honour me by suggesting it, but –”
“But you do not wish to,” she answered in a shaking voice.
“Listen to me –”
“You do not need to say anything,” she said hurriedly. “You are very kind but I should never have – it was wrong of me.”
“No, it wasn’t –”
“Please, say no more. Forget I ever – excuse me.”
Avoiding his outstretched hand, she darted from the room. John was left clutching his hair and cursing himself for being so clumsy.
Back in her own room Cecilia locked the door and leaned against it, her hands covering her face.
‘How could I do it?’ she whispered to herself. ‘Whatever was I thinking of? To propose marriage to a man – oh, I am so shameless and wicked. I was so sure – but I had no right to be sure. I deluded myself with what I longed to believe. Oh, Heavens, what must he think of me?’
For a long time she paced up and down the room, wringing her hands.
‘How can I ever face him again?’ she moaned. ‘I can’t. I must get away from here at once.’
But the thought died at once. If she left the hotel she might run straight into the arms of Sir Stewart. She had no choice but to stay and face her shame.
‘But I don’t need to see him,’ she thought frantically. ‘I will ask Roseanne to nurse him while I work downstairs – oh, no, I cannot do that either. Whatever am I to do?’
For a moment she felt as though she would crack under her burdens, but she forced herself to keep calm. She was strong. She must always remember that. And she never needed strength more than at this very moment.
*
Cecilia did manage to avoid John for the rest of the day, but in the evening she had to go to him with his supper and the pills the doctor had left for him.
His face brightened as soon as he saw her and he said eagerly,
“Thank goodness, I have been so hoping to see you.”
“Really? Are you feeling ill? Is there something I can do for you?” she asked politely.
“Cecilia please, you know what I meant. I need to talk to you.”
“About what?”
“I may have given you the wrong impression – I want to explain –”
“There is nothing to explain,” she replied, giving him a bright smile.
“But –”
“In fact, I have no idea what you are talking about. Enjoy your supper.”
With those words she whisked herself out of the room, leaving him facing a blank door.
John wanted to bellow aloud at his own clumsiness.
‘I should have accepted her offer, then told the truth and offered to release her,’ he groaned. ‘Instead I did everything about as stupidly as I could. I must put this right.’
He tried to struggle out of bed, but almost at once he collapsed onto the floor. Frank, entered the room at that moment and yelled, “Sir!” and hurried to help him.
“Get into bed, sir,” he ordered, guiding him firmly backwards.
“Frank I have to get well fast,” John said, breathing hard. “I am useless like this.”
“You cannot hurry these things, sir.”
“I have to hurry them, dammit! She isn’t safe.”
Before he could say more they heard the light step of the doctor on the landing outside and the next moment he was in the room.
Dr. Sedgewick was in his thirties, with a plain face and a friendly manner. He came twice a day to inspect John’s wound and pronounce it healing well.
“I was just passing and I thought I would look in,” he said cheerfully. “How are you?”
“Not too good,” Frank said at once. “He just fell on the floor.”
The doctor tut-tutted and took out his thermometer.
“Halloo!”
“What’s that?” Frank said, frowning at the sound of a voice bawling from below.
“Anyone there?”
“It’s that useless policeman,” John groaned. “You had better go and see him.”
“I think he’s coming upstairs, sir,” said Frank.
Sure enough, they could hear heavy footsteps and the next moment the door burst open and Constable Jenkins stood there. He was frowning.
“So there you are!” he declared aggressively.
“Yes, here I am,” John said. “As you knew perfectly well.”
“I thought you might have gone on the run.”
“Why should I do that?”
“I have been talking to Sir Stewart.”
“You have found him? Thank heavens!
I hope he is under lock and key.”
“No. I said I have been talking to him, and I’ve learned a thing or two. It seems you abducted his ward and carried her off with foul designs.”
“I told you what he was claiming –”
“Sir Stewart is a titled gentleman,” Jenkins stated stiffly. “I hope you are not going to claim that I should disbelieve a member of the aristocracy.”
Frank made a rude noise which exactly expressed John’s own feelings.
“Even if I did – which I didn’t –” John said with heavy irony, “that still would not entitle him to blow a hole in me.”
“You launched a vicious attack on Sir Stewart, forcing him to defend himself,” Jenkins recited.
“Is that what he says?”
“That is Sir Stewart’s accusation, sir, which I am here to investigate. I have to tell you that I take the matter very seriously.”
“You didn’t take my master’s injury seriously,” Frank complained. “It took you four days to come here.”
“I would not advise you to get clever with me, my lad,” Jenkins responded loftily. “Sir Stewart says –”
“For pity’s sake, stop saying Sir Stewart in that ludicrous manner,” John begged. “You only believe him because he has what you fondly imagine is a title and if that is all it takes to impress you, let me give you another one. Earl Milton.”
“I don’t know what you mean by that.”
“I mean that I am an Earl,” John fumed. “Lord Milton of Milton Park in Yorkshire and since an Earldom is four steps up from a Knight, I suppose you can assume that I am four times as truthful as that blithering booby that you should have arrested.”
Jenkins observed him for a moment and then began to shake his head with mirth.
“Very good, very good,” he said. “Clever of you to have thought of that on the spur of the moment, but we in the police force aren’t so easily fooled. An Earl! Hah! Oh, yes, very good! An Earl, running a hotel.”
“I took it on as a diversion,” John snapped through gritted teeth.
“It is true,” Frank said. “He is an Earl.”
“Oh, yes, you would say the same as him, wouldn’t you?” Jenkins said triumphantly. “You are an accomplice. I have a good mind to arrest you as well for the offence of mocking Her Majesty’s Constabulary.”
“Some things are beyond mockery,” muttered the doctor, who had not spoken before.
Now he rose to his feet.
“Get out of here, Jenkins,” he said, “and stop making an ass of yourself. You cannot arrest this man, he is too ill to be moved.”
The constable hesitated. It was clear that he knew Dr. Sedgewick and was in awe of his authority only a little less than if he possessed a title.
“I have my duty to do, sir. This man is under arrest. I further demand that he produce the young lady concerned.”
“I don’t have the young lady,” John protested angrily.
“In that case, sir –”
Jenkins produced a pair of handcuffs.
“Get out!” cried the doctor, rising to his feet. “Get out at once or I will throw you downstairs myself!”
Jenkins paled and took a step towards the door.
“I have my duty to do –”
“Get out!”
Jenkins took another step back, pointing at John, and saying, “consider yourself under arrest.”
Then he fled.
“He will be back,” said the doctor angrily. “Is there anyone who can vouch for you, my Lord?”
“Robert Dale could, but he is in London.”
“I will go and fetch him,” Frank offered.
“You can’t. If you are not here who will protect –” John stopped.
“Who will protect the young lady?” the doctor asked sympathetically.
John nodded silently.
“I think I had better go downstairs and see what he’s up to,” Frank suggested.
“Yes, let’s make sure he is off the premises,” added Dr. Sedgewick.
John watched them go, mad with frustration at not being able to accompany them. At last, unable to bear the suspense any longer, he crawled painfully out of bed and staggered to the window.
He was always glad that he had done so, otherwise he might have missed a scene that gladdened his heart.
In the gathering dusk he saw Sir Stewart emerge from the hotel entrance, accompanied by Constable Jenkins whose head was bent towards him deferentially.
Suddenly Sir Stewart roared, “There she is!”
At that moment a female figure hurried towards the gate. She wore a long cloak with a hood that enveloped her head, so that it was impossible to see her face. But she was Cecilia’s height, and from the way she moved, she was young and athletic.
John ground his nails into his palms as he watched the impending disaster. Sir Stewart and Jenkins rushed at her and seized her fiercely. The girl struggled frantically, but she was no match for the two of them.
“Got you!” Sir Stewart roared triumphantly. “That’s an end of your wandering, my lady. Now you will come home with me and behave yourself.”
“Help!” shrieked the girl. “Help! Kidnap!”
Her cries brought several of the guests out from the hotel, but they backed off when they saw the policeman’s uniform.
“Keep clear,” Jenkins intoned. “This woman is a desperate runaway, who has been properly apprehended by lawful authority. Ow!”
This last noise was produced by a well-aimed heel landing on his calf. The next moment Sir Stewart had seized the hood, pulling it back to reveal the girl’s face.
It was Roseanne.
John clutched the window sill to stop himself shaking with relief. The commotion below grew louder. Frank and the doctor had joined the fray.
“Who is this woman?” Sir Stewart bawled. “Where is my ward?”
“But isn’t she – ?” Jenkins stammered.
“No, she isn’t,” Frank said grimly. “This is Miss Campbell, my fiancée and if you don’t take your hands off her this minute I will make you both very sorry.”
“And I will help him,” growled the doctor. “Clear off Jenkins and stop making an idiot of yourself.”
“Where is she?” Sir Stewart howled. “Where is she? Constable!”
But Jenkins had taken the better part of valour and vanished.
Roseanne took advantage of Sir Stewart’s agitation to free herself from his grasp, aiming another kick as she did so, which made him double up. He seemed about to protest further, but thought better of it and limped away.
The doctor followed him to the gate, before turning back just in time to see Roseanne and Frank in each other’s arms. He grinned and waved up to the window, where he had noticed John. This made the loving couple look up too, beaming with delight.
After a moment they rejoined John in his room.
“Congratulations,” he said. “When did you propose, Frank?”
“Five minutes ago,” he said, looking slightly stunned. “When I called her my fiancée – well, I’ve been thinking for some time, but the sight of that brute –”
“Cecilia always said it would happen,” John commented.
“I will go and tell her,” Roseanne said, speeding away.
But she came back a few minutes later, her face pale and worried.
“She’s gone!” she exclaimed.
“She can’t be,” John said. “She must be hiding in her wardrobe –”
“She isn’t. I have looked everywhere. There is no sign of her, and her bag has gone. She has run away.”
CHAPTER TEN
Hidden under the trees, protected by the gathering darkness, Cecilia watched the dramatic scene in the yard.
She saw Roseanne fool Sir Stewart and Constable Jenkins and the two men take themselves off, humbled. She watched with pleasure as Frank and Roseanne threw themselves into each other’s arms and their return to the hotel, followed by the doctor.
Only when everything was compl
etely quiet did she slip out and walk to the gate. Looking to the left she could make out Jenkins and Sir Stewart in the distance. As soon as they had turned a corner out of sight, she turned to the right and began to run.
After a while she found a cab and hailed it.
“The railway station, please.”
All the way to the station she sat well back in the cab, grinding her fingers into her palm, terrified that the last train to London might have gone.
But she was in luck. The London train was still in the station and she was just in time to climb aboard. She would travel to London, perform the task she had set herself and then hide away forever with her shame.
He was an Earl.
Listening outside John’s door, she had heard everything he said and had known at once that he was speaking the truth.
Cecilia, an ordinary girl, had proposed marriage to an Earl. He had let her down gently, too kind to say that a great aristocrat did not marry someone like herself. But the truth was that she had committed a horrible faux pas and felt ready to die of embarrassment.
When she thought how she had offered him money to buy his own hotel she could have screamed. And the amount – a quarter of a million pounds – seemed enormous to her, but was probably nothing to him.
How it must have amused him to know that a tradesman’s daughter could think herself fit to be his wife! It was lucky that she was alone in the carriage, as the tears began to pour down her cheeks.
She remembered the dismissive way he had spoken of Sir Stewart’s title and his air of indifference to titles generally. That should have warned her that he was no common hotel manager. He had said that he had taken on the job as a diversion. There was no accounting for the escapades great Lords regarded as diversions.
Then she remembered the day they had swum together, that magic hour in the water when the whole world seemed hers for the taking. It had seemed so beautiful, but the truth was that he was an Earl, passing the time with a girl far below him on the social scale. And she had embarrassed him by thinking it meant something.
If only she could find a way to stop loving him, but it was too late for that. She would perform this service for him, before hiding in some place where he could never, never find her.
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