“Lastly – I think if I was in love – I would want to learn not only of love, but – everything a man like yourself could teach because you have so much – experience and inevitably you would have a wider – horizon than the – woman who loved you.”
There was silence and after a moment the Earl said,
“Would it be possible to find the love of mother, wife and child all in one person?”
“If it was – real love – the love that really – matters,” Demelza replied, “then, I believe, it would be possible.”
She glanced at him before she went on,
“It would be like – seeking for the – Golden Fleece – the Holy Grail, and perhaps the – Gates of Heaven, but it would be the love that human beings were originally – promised in the Garden of Eden.”
Her voice was very moving and the Earl drew in his breath before he said, “And, like the angel who stood with the flaming sword in that garden, you are keeping me out.”
He felt rather than saw the pain in her eyes and knew, because her fingers linked together were tense, that he had hurt her.
“I have – no wish to do that,” she cried, “but – how can I – help it?”
“How can you be so cruel? How can you deny me what you know in your heart belongs to me?”
She did not reply.
“Look at me, Demelza!”
Obediently she raised her head. The dusk had turned to night and the moon’s first rays of silver were on her face.
He looked into her troubled eyes, which held both faith and an innocence in their purple depths.
He lingered on the softness of her parted lips and he knew that, where they were both concerned, time had no meaning and that this was what he had been seeking all his life.
He saw the questioning expression on Demelza’s face alter.
Now there was a sudden radiance as if she felt, as he did, that they had met across eternity and they were no longer separate individuals but one.
It was not only what they saw, it was there in the joining of their hearts and deeper still in the stirring of their souls, reaching out towards what had been lost, yet had not been found.
It was so beautiful, so transcendently divine that they were enveloped in a light which came from within themselves, more vivid than the moonlight from above.
“You love me,” the Earl said hoarsely. “You love me, my lovely little ghost and you belong to me!”
Yet even as he thought she would melt towards him as he felt the vibrations of her reaching out towards him, she said,
“Yes, I love you! I love you in – every way I have tried – inadequately to explain – but after tonight I can – never see you again.”
“Can you really credit that I would allow you to walk out of my life?” he asked angrily, “or rather to bar yourself away from me?”
She was silent and he continued,
“You know that what has happened to us is something so unique and perfect that I can hardly believe that it is not a figment of my imagination – a fantasy conjured up by the mystery of The Manor itself.”
“There is – nothing else I can – do,” Demelza murmured. “Nothing!”
“That is not true,” the Earl said, “and I will convince you of my love for you and yours for me.”
He opened his arms resolutely as he spoke, determined to break the spell which had prevented him against his will from touching her.
As he did so, suddenly they were both aware that someone had come into the garden and was standing at the opening between the walls looking around him.
“Gerard!” Demelza whispered under her breath.
“Don’t move,” the Earl said so that only she could hear. “Leave this to me.”
He rose without hurry from the seat, standing up to his full height knowing that Demelza was hidden behind him.
“So there you are, my Lord!” Gerard exclaimed. “The servants told me you had returned and they had seen you in the garden. I wondered why you did not join us.”
The Earl walked towards him.
“I was hot and a little tired of conversation after so much chatter at The Castle,” he replied.
“Then, if you want to be alone, I must not – ” Gerard began.
“No, of course not! I am delighted to see you,” the Earl interrupted. “Let’s go back to the house together. I have been meaning to speak to you. There are two pictures in the house which, if you are in need of money, I am quite certain would fetch a very large sum in any saleroom.”
“Do you mean that?” Gerard asked eagerly. “I did not think there was anything worth a penny in the whole place!”
“They are both in need of cleaning,” the Earl replied. “I happen to be an expert on Rubens and I would not mind wagering a large sum that the picture at the top of the stairs is one of his early paintings.”
“And the other?” Gerard asked.
“In the library in a dark corner there is, I am certain, a small authentic Perugino.”
“How fantastic!”
Demelza heard the excitement in Gerard’s voice, as the two men moved away into the other part of the garden.
If what the Earl said was true, she thought, then Gerard could have the horses he wanted, lead the life he enjoyed and perhaps spend a little money on renovating The Manor.
But she knew this would not alter the position between herself and the Earl.
It was true that she loved him, loved him with her whole heart and soulo and she thought that she would regret all her life not having let him kiss her as he had wanted to do.
She could imagine nothing nearer Heaven than feeling his arms around her and his lips on hers.
But as she had said, it would have been wrong.
She rose from the seat in the arbour and, reaching up, picked a piece of the honeysuckle.
She would press it in her Bible and perhaps in the years to come that would be all she would have to remember, the one moment when she had lost her heart and it no longer belonged to her.
She raised the honeysuckle to her lips.
Then she looked in the direction of the house, listening for the Earl’s voice. But there was only silence except that from overhead there came the squeak of a bat.
“Goodbye – my hero – my only love!” she whispered and her voice broke on the words.
Chapter Six
“You certainly had a good Ascot, my Lord!” Gerard Langston said, as the Earl tooled his horses through the traffic outside the entrance to the course.
The Earl did not reply and he went on,
“Three winners, including the Gold Cup, is as much as any racehorse owner could wish for.”
There was a note of envy in his voice which made the Earl say consolingly,
“The race in which your horse took part was one of the most exciting of the meeting.”
“It would hardly be described as being completely satisfactory,” Gerard replied, “considering that it was a dead heat.”
He paused to add,
“It means the prize money is halved – also the bets I laid on Firebird.”
“You will doubtless do better next year,” the Earl said. He spoke almost automatically as if his thoughts were elsewhere.
Although he was not aware of it, several of his friends had looked at him in surprise when, after his horse in the first race had passed the winning post a length and a half in front of the other competitors, he had seemed curiously disinterested.
It had in fact been to the Earl a day of such frustration that he had found it almost impossible to concentrate on anything that anyone was saying to him.
He had not believed that Demelza had meant what she said on Thursday night and that she really intended never to see him again.
The following day the Earl had hurried back from the races with an exciting anticipation he had never known before, being quite certain, she would meet him in the herb garden after dinner.
He had therefore insisted, rather to the surprise of his guests, that the
y should dine early and afterwards had skilfully arranged for everyone but himself to play cards.
This left him free to wander with what appeared to be a casual air into the garden.
Sitting in the arbour covered with honeysuckle he had waited and waited until finally he realised that Demelza did not intend to join him.
It was then for the first time that he became afraid.
He was quite certain that he would find it impossible, if she was determined to keep him out, to find again a way into the secret passages and he wondered frantically as he went to bed how he could communicate with her.
He knew that to betray either to her brother or to Nattie the fact that they had met would seem to her an act of treachery that she would be unlikely to forgive.
And yet what alternative did he have?
On Friday he had found the crowds made it impossible for him to distinguish any individual among them.
If Demelza wished to hide, it would be like searching for a needle in a haystack to discover her in the seething mob pressing around the race track.
What was more, the number of carriages, waggons and carts seemed to have increased since the beginning of the week.
‘What can I do? What can I do?’ he asked himself over and over again.
He thought that for the first time in his life not only his luck had deserted him, but also his expertise where women were concerned.
Always before, the Earl had found it only too easy to make assignations with any woman who caught his fancy. That one to whom he had declared his affection should actually avoid him was a new and unpleasant experience.
With any other woman he knew that he could woo her and be certain that sooner or later she would succumb, but Demelza was different.
So different, he realised, now driving back to The Manor, that he was worried as he had never been worried before that he might be compelled to leave and never see her again.
He had been confident when setting out that morning that the one place he would be sure to find her was in the saddling enclosure before the second race that Firebird was running in.
He had seen Abbot, spoken to the old groom and wished Jem, the jockey, luck.
But, looking around at those watching the horses, he could see no one with large pansy-coloured eyes in a small pointed face.
Last night, when Demelza had not come to the arbour as he had expected, he told himself harshly that he was being a fool.
How could he be sure that he had not been beguiled by the mystery of The Manor, the secret passages and her ghostlike appearances into thinking that she was lovelier and more desirable than she actually was?
Then he knew that his doubts betrayed his own heart and that Demelza meant more to him than any other woman had ever done. If he had to dedicate his whole life to searching for her he would do so.
It was infuriating to know that she was so near, and yet so far, just at the top of the house, but guarded by the mystery of an impregnable fortress.
To all intents and purposes she might as well have been in the North of Scotland or the wilds of Cornwall.
It was all the more frustrating that she was divided from him only by the twisting steps of a secret stairway.
Finding that even the horses had become of little interest to him the Earl had decided to leave after the third race.
He knew only too well that, owing to the crowds, the difficulty of clearing the course was always worse on the last day of the race meeting and the fourth race could often lag on until six o’clock or later.
He had therefore said nothing to his friends, but had set off resolutely to where his phaeton was waiting, feeling that few people would notice his departure.
The King had not attended Ascot since Thursday, but the Royal Box had been at the disposal of those with whom he was closely associated and the champagne had flowed as bountifully as when His Majesty was present.
The Earl, however, had drunk nothing since luncheon, for he had the feeling that he must keep his brain clear so that he could solve what had begun to appear like an almost insurmountable problem.
He found his phaeton and was about to climb into it when Gerard Langston hailed him.
“Surely you are not leaving so soon, my Lord?”
The young man’s face was flushed from celebrating the partial victory of Firebird, and it suddenly struck the Earl that Demelza would not wish her brother to indulge further.
Accordingly, with an unusual consideration, he replied,
“Yes, I am leaving to avoid the crowds. Why do you not come with me?”
It was a favour that even an older, more important man would have found difficult to refuse.
It was well known that the Earl was so fastidious about his companions, and especially those who drove or rode with him, that Gerard for a moment found it hard to reply.
Finally, as the Earl climbed into his phaeton, he managed to stammer,
“I-I should be very – honoured, my Lord.”
The Earl hardly waited for him to swing himself into the seat beside him before he moved his horses and Jem jumped up behind.
Then they were through the iron gates and out into the road, where country bumpkins in their smocks were rubbing shoulders with the sharp-faced tricksters who had come down from London.
Gerard, saluting some of his friends who stared at him curiously as the Earl passed them, was silent until they had turned off the London Road onto one which rounded the end of the course.
Then he glanced at the Earl and was struck by the grim expression on his face and wondered if anything had annoyed him.
The Earl was in fact considering how it would be possible to approach the subject of Demelza.
It seemed rather late in the day, having stayed at The Manor since Monday, to ask Langston if he had a sister.
It was equally impossible to say, “I have met your sister and would like to meet her again.”
But, if he said nothing, he knew he would be expected to leave that evening as his friends were doing or at the very latest the next morning.
Lord Chirn and Lord Ramsgill were not even returning to The Manor and had said their goodbyes that morning before they left for the racecourse.
The Honourable Ralph Mear was going to London and would only return to the house to pick up his luggage.
At any moment the Earl expected that Gerard Langston to ask him if he too would be departing before dinner and he did not know what answer he should give.
‘I must see Demelza again – I must!’ he told himself.
And yet he had the unmistakable feeling that, even if he betrayed her trust and sent her brother to fetch her from the Priests’ Room, she might refuse to come.
‘God, what can I do?’ he asked desperately and it was in the nature of a prayer.
Suddenly he saw her, saw her ahead of them, driving in an old-fashioned gig.
He recognised Nattie first and there was no mistaking her straight back and the grey cotton gown she always wore with a white collar and cuffs. On her head was a black straw bonnet which concealed her face, but the Earl thought he would have known her anywhere.
And there was a sylph-like figure beside her.
Demelza was in white and her unfashionably small bonnet was trimmed with a wreath of white flowers.
It struck the Earl immediately that this was the opportunity he had been waiting for. He had only to say to the young man beside him,
“Surely that is your old nurse ahead of us? Who is the girl with her?”
Once again, he thought with a sudden elation, his luck had not failed him and it seemed to lift him from what had almost been the depths of despair.
It was as if the sun had suddenly come out in the darkness of night and his fingers tightened on the reins, slowing his horses just in case the road should widen and he be obliged to pass the gig.
Then everything happened very swiftly.
Round the corner from a side turning hidden by a high hedge there came a chaise with tw
o horses travelling too fast and driven by a red-faced middle-aged man who had obviously imbibed too freely.
It was quite impossible for him to pass the gig which was in the centre of the road at the place where he met it.
In a desperate effort to avoid an accident, he turned his horses, but the wheel of his chaise locked with the gig which then overturned.
Controlling his own animals, the Earl saw with horror the gig tip over onto the verge of the road and its occupant in white thrown from it.
It all happened so quickly that there was no time to cry out a warning or even exclaim at what had occurred.
With expert driving the Earl pulled his own horses clear of those that had been drawing the chaise at high speed and were now rearing and plunging, suddenly checked by the locked wheels.
While the driver of the chaise started to shout and bluster, the Earl handed his reins to Gerard Langston.
“Hold them!” he said sharply.
He sprang down from the phaeton and was running towards the gig before either Gerard or Jem were fully aware of what had occurred.
Demelza had fallen from the gig over the rough grass which edged the road into a dry ditch on the other side of it.
As the Earl bent down and picked her up in his arms, her bonnet fell back to be caught by its ribbons under her chin.
As he looked at her little face with her lashes dark against her white skin, he thought for one terrified moment that she might be dead.
It was a fear that struck through him with the pain of a dagger. Then he saw the bruise on her forehead and knew she had only been knocked unconscious.
He was down on one knee, cradling her in his arms, when Nattie raised herself from the rough grass into which she had fallen to say,
“Miss Demelza! Oh, my dearie – whatever’s happened to you?”
“It’s all right,” the Earl said consolingly. “She must have fallen on a stone, but I don’t think any bones are broken.”
Nattie with her black bonnet on one side of her grey head stood looking bewildered and perhaps for the first time in her life unsure of herself.
Behind her, Jem was trying to create some sort of order out of chaos.
Willing hands had appeared from nowhere to help unlock the wheels of the two vehicles. The red-faced man’s groom by now had his horses under control and the ancient horse which had drawn the gig had scrambled to its feet and was quite unconcernedly cropping the grass.
The Ghost Who Fell in Love Page 11