Her first thought was that she must wake Gerard, but it was impossible to get directly into his room and she was afraid if she went into the corridor she might encounter the men to whom Sir Francis was speaking or even Sir Francis himself.
Almost without conscious thought, her feet carried her along the side passage which led to the Master’s room.
Only as she descended the steps which led to the secret panel by the fireplace did she ask herself if she was doing the right thing and remembered how furious Gerard would be with her.
Then she told herself that nothing mattered but that she should save Crusader.
How could she stand by and do nothing while he was doped and made unfit to race the following day?
It was not only that the Earl would lose face at having to withdraw his horse and that he and Gerard would lose the money they had wagered on him. It was also a humiliation and an ignominy that such things should happen at The Manor of all places.
She put out her hand without even waiting to look through the peephole.
The secret door opened and she stepped into the room which had been her father’s.
The curtains were drawn back and, by the light of the stars and a pale moon that was creeping up the sky, she could see clearly enough to realise that the Earl was in bed and asleep.
Drawing a deep breath Demelza spoke – *
The Earl had enjoyed his dinner when the house party had been joined by six of his closest friends.
The food had been excellent, the wine superb and, although the conversation had naturally been about the racing everyone told amusing anecdotes of one sort or another.
They capped each other’s jokes with a wit that made the Earl feel sorry that the King was not present.
If there was one thing that George IV really enjoyed it was witty conversation to which he could contribute with an intelligence that few people except his closest friends credited him with.
“A damned good evening, Valient!” one of the Earl’s guests said when he left. “I cannot remember when I laughed more.”
As the Earl went up to bed, he thought he had been wise in insisting that everyone should retire early.
Like the King, he hated parties that went on too long and he disliked it if men drank so much that they became incoherent.
Abstemious himself, he found drunkards a bore and he never allowed himself to be bored.
When he got into bed, he echoed the sentiments of Lord Chirn who had said as they walked upstairs together,
“This is the best Ascot I have ever attended, Valient. Not only have I made money, but I have never been more comfortable and I find in the peace and quiet of this house that I sleep like a child.”
It was what the Earl himself had found.
There were no noisy chambermaids or whistling ostlers to wake him in the morning and the clean air coming in through the windows carried the scent of the pines and flowers.
He fell asleep almost as soon as his head touched the pillow. Then he awoke with an alertness that came from his training as a soldier.
It was almost as if he sensed danger before he heard a very soft voice say,
“Go to Crusader! Go to Crusader!”
He turned towards the sound and incredulously saw the ghost of the White Lady!
It was the same vision he had seen when he arrived in the Long Gallery and here she was again standing by the fireplace. He could see her quite clearly in the light from the window.
Then, as he moved to sit up, she said again very clearly,
“Go to Crusader! Go now! It is urgent!”
The Earl sat up completely and as he did so the White Lady vanished!
One moment she was there, the next she was gone and now there was only the outline of the mantelpiece against the darkness of the panelling.
‘I am dreaming,’ the Earl told himself.
But he was awake and because of the urgency in the soft voice he knew he must do what he had been told, if only to make sure that the whole thing was nothing but imagination.
He climbed out of bed, pulled on a shirt and a pair of close-fitting pantaloons with a speed that would have annoyed Dawson who liked to dress his master slowly.
He shrugged himself into the first coat he took from the wardrobe and tied a cravat loosely round his neck. Then with his feet in a pair of soft-soled slippers he opened the door and walked down the corridor.
The house was in darkness except for one candle that had been left burning in the hall in a silver candlestick.
The Earl picked it up and it lit him along a corridor which led, he knew, towards the stables.
Only when he reached a side door before the kitchen quarters did he set the candle down on a table, undo the bolts and let himself out.
As he felt the coldness of the night air on his face, he told himself that he was being a fool to pay any attention to what had undoubtedly been a very vivid dream.
Yet, if, as he expected, he found Crusader safe and undisturbed, he could just make his way back to bed and no one would know that he had been seeing visions or whatever one might call them.
‘I expect the wine was stronger than I thought and, because I was thirsty, I drank too much of it,’ the Earl decided.
At the same time the White Lady had seemed very real. If she was a ghost – did ghosts speak?
He decided he was lamentably ignorant on the subject. Then, as he rounded the huge overgrown laurels and had his first sight of the stables, he saw something ahead of him move.
Instinctively he stood still.
The movement he had seen was in the shadow at the entrance to the stables. Once again he thought he was imagining things until the movement occurred again.
Now he realised that it was a hand and a hand must belong to a person.
He waited.
A few seconds later he discerned two men moving stealthily in a manner, which proclaimed all too clearly they were up to mischief, and creeping towards the stable.
They kept in the shadow of the building and the Earl knew that his warning from the White Lady had only just come in time.
He remembered now that his groom had mentioned that the lock to the main stable door at The Manor was broken.
The Earl had hardly listened at the time. It had not seemed to be of any importance.
The grooms would doubtless be sleeping over the stables as they always did, but apart from anything else, since his plans had been changed at the last moment, it was unlikely that any of the unsavoury characters on the Racecourse would know where he was staying.
One man ahead of the other pulled open the stable door, then, as they disappeared inside, the Earl moved.
His slippers made no sound on the cobbled yard and, when he entered the stable like a whirlwind, they were at Crusader’s stall, undoing the iron gate.
He caught the first man, who turned round to look at him, a blow on the chin that lifted his feet off the ground.
The other man, bigger and more aggressive, went for him, but the Earl had learnt the art of boxing from the greatest professional pugilists of his generation, ‘Gentleman Jackson’ and his partner Mendoza.
It was nothing of a fight for his opponent was laid out and unconscious within a few seconds.
It was then that the Earl shouted and the grooms came running – with them Baxter, his Head Groom and old Abbot.
They searched the unconscious men and found the drug with which they had intended to dope Crusader and, as Baxter held it out in the palm of his hand towards the Earl, he said,
“I apologise, my Lord. I should’ve left a guard on the ’orses, but I thinks we were safe enough ’ere.”
“We have learnt a lesson we will not forget in the future, Baxter,” the Earl said. “I wonder who paid these thugs?”
As he spoke, Abbot, who was holding the lantern over the smaller man, gave an exclamation.
“What is it?” the Earl enquired.
“I’ve seen this man afore, my Lord. ’e’s visited t
he stables several times since ’e’s been a-stayin’ at The Manor.” “Staying at the manor?” the Earl asked sharply.
“Aye, my Lord, ’e tells I ’e were interested in ’orses, especially Crusader.”
“Who is he?” the Earl enquired.
“’E says ’e were a valet, my Lord. And ’e’s a-wearin’ a livery waistcoat.”
The Earl looked down. By the light of the lantern he could see the buttons that fastened the striped waistcoat and recognised the crest on them.
“Tie these vermin up,” he said to Baxter. “Lock them up for the night, and I will see they are handed over to the Racecourse Police in the morning.”
“Very good, my Lord, and thank you, my Lord. I can only say ’ow ’umiliated I am that this should’ve ’appened.” “Fortunately I was warned in time,” the Earl remarked. “Warned, my Lord?”
It was a question which the Earl thought as he walked back to the house he could not answer.
He walked upstairs and without knocking opened the door of the Red Room.
Sir Francis was half-undressed and not in bed.
The expression on his face as the Earl entered was one both of fear and guilt.
“I give you ten minutes to get out of this house!” the Earl said curtly.
“What is – ” Sir Francis began, only to be silenced as the Earl interrupted.
“If you are wise, you will leave the country. Your accomplices will doubtless betray you to the Police and a warrant will be issued for your arrest.”
Sir Francis was silent.
Just for a moment the Earl was tempted to knock him down, then he decided it was beneath his dignity.
“Ten minutes!” he repeated and went from the room closing the door behind him.
As he reached his own bedroom, the full force of what had happened made him stare incredulously at the place where he had seen the White Lady speaking to him.
He walked towards it and as he did so was aware of that sweet elusive perfume and knew who it was who had left him the note warning him not to drink the wine.
“First me, then my horse,” the Earl said with a twist of his lips.
Ghosts did not write letters even if incredibly they were able to speak.
He stood staring at where he had seen the White Lady. Then he put out his hand and began to feel the panelling – Far away in the depths of his memory, he recalled when he was a small boy, staying with his parents at a house in Worcestershire.
It had been very old and surrounded by a moat which had delighted him.
His parents had paid little attention to him and, as there were no other children in the house, he had attached himself to the curator.
He had been a kindly man who had shown him the pictures of battles and other dramatic events in history with which the house abounded.
Then, because he was an intelligent little boy, the curator had told him the story of the Battle of Worcester and how the fugitive King Charles II had hidden in an oak tree to escape those pursuing him.
“Some of his followers hid here in this house,” the curator told him.
He had then shown the Earl the secret passage where the Royalists remained undiscovered by the Cromwellian soldiers.
To reach it, the Earl remembered there had been a panel that opened in the wall just wide enough to allow a man to pass through it.
He thought that the curator had pressed a certain spot in the carving and could see his fingers feeling for it. Then he remembered his excitement when the panelling opened.
Now his own fingers were feeling among the leaves, the scrolls, the exquisitely carved heads of corn and then the flowers.
He was just beginning to believe that his search would prove unsuccessful when he found what he sought!
As he pressed, a door in the panelling opened and he saw surprisingly on the other side of it there were two pairs of riding boots!
The Earl went back into his bedroom and lit the candle that stood beside his bed in a brass candlestick.
Then, holding it high to light his way, he went through the panelling feeling that he was starting on a voyage of discovery as exciting as anything he had ever done in his life before.
Very softly and moving slowly so as not to make a noise the Earl climbed the narrow twisting staircase.
Occasionally he stopped to look at where it branched off into other passages, but he continued climbing all the time until he saw a light ahead of him and was aware he had almost reached the top of the house.
A second or two later he had found what he sought.
The Priests’ Room was very small and he saw it contained a couch against one wall and on the other there was a picture of the Madonna encircled with flowers.
Below it, jutting out from the wall itself, was what was little more than a shelf, but had obviously in the past been used as an altar by the hunted Priests to say Mass.
On the narrow altar now were two lighted candles and between them a bowl of white roses.
Kneeling in front of it with her hands pressed palm to palm in the eternal attitude of a woman in prayer was the White Lady.
Her hair which fell over her shoulders was so pale in the light from the candles that it seemed almost silver.
The Earl could see she was little and slender enough to be a child, but the white robe buttoned down the front revealed the soft curve of her breasts.
She was in profile and her small nose was straight and aristocratic, her lashes dark against her pale cheeks.
It was a long time since the Earl had last seen a woman kneeling in. prayer and it certainly was not what he had expected to find as he was climbing the stairs.
Then, as if she was aware instinctively that she was not alone, the woman he was watching turned her head.
The Earl found himself looking into the largest and strangest eyes he had ever seen, which seemed to fill the whole of her small face.
For a moment she was very still. Then quietly in the voice which had spoken to him in his bedroom she said,
“Crusader?”
It was a question.
“He is safe!” the Earl answered. “I went to him as you told me to do.”
She gave a sigh of relief which seemed to come from the very depths of her being.
“You were praying for him?” the Earl asked.
“Yes. I was afraid – terribly afraid – you would be too – late.”
“Your prayers were answered.”
Then, as she rose slowly to her feet, the Earl asked,
“Who are you? I thought you were a ghost!”
She smiled and it seemed to transform the expression on her face from one of perfect spirituality to something very human and yet in its own way equally lovely.
“The White Lady,” she said. “That is who I hoped – you would think I was when you – saw me in the – Long Gallery.”
“Why? Why do you have to hide yourself?” the Earl asked.
He had a strange feeling that he had walked into another world. Despite her smile and the fact that they were talking to each other, he felt that she was not real, but as ethereal as the ghost she had pretended to be.
“What – happened to – Crusader?” she replied, as if her thoughts were still on the horse.
“There were two men attempting to dope him,” the Earl answered. “I knocked them out. They are still unconscious.”
“I hoped – you would do – that.”
There was no mistaking the admiration in her strange eyes, which seemed to the Earl to be almost purple, although he was sure he must be mistaken.
She looked down at his hand and gave an exclamation.
“You are bleeding!”
For the first time the Earl realised that he had broken the skin on his knuckles with the force at which he had struck first the valet and then the larger man who had not gone down at the first punch.
“It is nothing,” he said.
“But it is!” Demelza insisted. “It might become septic and would then be ver
y painful.”
She opened a cupboard in the wall and took out prom it a small china basin and a ewer in the same patterned china.
She set it down on a chair, then brought a linen towel from the cupboard and with it a little box.
The Earl stood watching her, seeming unnaturally large and broad-shouldered in the confines of the small room, until she said,
“I think my Lord, you had better sit down on the bed so that I can treat your hand properly.”
The Earl was too intrigued to do anything but obey. He put his lighted candle down beside the others on the altar and sat down.
Demelza went down on her knees beside him before she poured some water from the ewer into the basin, then, opening the box, added what the Earl realised were herbs.
“What is your name?” he asked as she stirred the water with her fingers.
“Demelza.”
“Cornish!”
“My mother came from Cornwall.”
“As I do.”
“But of course!” she exclaimed. “I had forgotten that Trevarnon is a Cornish name – but I might have – guessed.”
“Are you Gerard Langston’s sister?
She nodded as she took his hand in both of hers, dipped it into the cold water and washed it very carefully.
He wondered if any other woman would have touched him so impersonally, but Demelza was completely unselfconscious while he was vividly conscious of her.
“Do you grow the herbs in the small garden which is surrounded by the red brick walls?” he asked.
“It was Mama’s herb garden.”
He gave a sudden exclamation.
“Honeysuckle!”
She looked up at him in surprise and he said,
“The scent you use which has been haunting me – I can smell it now on your hair.”
“It is the honeysuckle which grows over the arbour in the herb garden. Mama taught me how to distil the oil from the flowers in the spring.”
“I could not put a name to it,” the Earl explained, “although I was conscious of it everywhere in the house and especially on the note you left for me.”
“I did not – know how else to – warn you.”
“How did you know that the wine would drug me?” He saw the flush of colour on Demelza’s cheeks and before she could reply, he exclaimed,
The Ghost Who Fell in Love Page 8