The Earl lifted Demelza up in his arms and carried her towards his phaeton. Without waiting for instructions Nattie followed him.
Gerard, holding the Earl’s horses steady with some difficulty, leant forward as they reached the phaeton to ask anxiously,
“Is she hurt? That damned fool had no right to drive so dangerously!”
The Earl did not answer. Instead he said to Nattie,
“Can you climb up behind?”
“I think so, my Lord.”
She managed to get into the seat at the back.
Holding Demelza very carefully, her face against his shoulder, the Earl took the seat previously occupied by her brother.
“She is not badly injured, is she?” Gerard asked.
The Earl did not miss the note of concern in his voice and he answered,
“I think she is suffering from concussion. As soon as we get back to The Manor we must send for a doctor.”
“I would like to tell that idiot what I think of him!” Gerard growled between gritted teeth.
The Earl thought the same, but he knew that the drunkard’s irresponsible driving had solved his personal problem and brought to his arms the girl who had shut him out because she believed that their love for each other was wrong.
Holding her in his arms as if she was a baby, he looked down at her and thought she was even lovelier in the daylight than she had been at night.
Very gently he undid the ribbons at her throat so that he could throw her bonnet onto the floor in front of them.
Then he held her close against his heart, thinking that her hair, so pale gold as to be almost silver, was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
“I love you!” he wanted to cry aloud and instinctively tightened his arms, knowing that never again would he let her go.
Jem had cleared the road ahead, the gig had been pushed further onto the verge, and the old horse, released from the shafts, was being led home by the boy who had been driving it.
The chaise had a buckled wheel, but there was a chance, if it was driven slowly, that it could reach a village where doubtless there would be a wheelwright to repair it.
“You can get through now,” the Earl said.
Gerard moved the horses forward, thinking that never in his life had he expected to have the opportunity of tooling such superb animals and hoping that he would not make a fool of himself in doing so.
It was only a short distance to The Manor and the Earl knew that Jem would follow them and doubtless take a shortcut through the trees which they were unable to do.
He was, however, really concerned only with Demelza, knowing that he was holding her as he had longed to do and wishing with an intensity that surprised even himself that he could kiss her lips.
As they passed through the rusty gates, he said,
“I suggest that while I carry your sister upstairs you drive immediately to Windsor Castle. You will find His Majesty’s Physician in Ordinary is staying there. Tell Sir William Knighton I sent you and ask him to come here as quickly as possible.”
Gerard gave the Earl a quick glance.
“You know she is my sister?” he asked.
“I understood you had one,” the Earl replied evasively. There was a note in his voice which made Gerard say quickly,
“She is called Demelza, but she could not appear when you were giving a bachelor party.”
“Of course not!” the Earl agreed at once.
Gerard turned the horses to draw up outside the front door.
“You really mean me to drive to Windsor?” he asked in the tone of a child who has been offered an undreamed-of treat.
“You had better take a groom with you,” the Earl replied. “I should think Jem will have reached the gates by now.”
“If not, I will wait for him,” Gerard said.
There was a note in his voice which would have amused the Earl had he not been so concerned with Demelza.
The footmen ran forward to help the Earl from the phaeton, but when they would have taken Demelza from him he shook his head.
“Help Miss Nattie,” he ordered and a flunkey hurried to obey.
With Demelza in his arms, the Earl walked into the hall. “Has there been an accident, my Lord?” his Major Domo asked.
The Earl did not trouble to answer, but waited for Nattie. When she came to his side, her eyes only for Demelza, he said,
“Show me your Mistress’s room.”
Without wasting words, Nattie went ahead of him up the stairs.
Following her the Earl thought that Demelza was so light, so fragile, that she might in fact, with her pale face, actually be the ghost he had originally thought her. He looked down at her, noting that the mark on her forehead, which must have been made by striking a stone, was deepening on her white skin, but her body was warm and very soft and he told himself fiercely that never again would he lose her.
‘You are mine! Mine for all time!’ he said in his heart.
*
If the Earl had spent a miserable Friday, so had Demelza. She had known when she awoke early in the morning that her head ached and her eyes were swollen because she had cried herself to sleep.
It was one thing to do what was right and tell the Earl that she could never see him again – quite another to walk alone into the darkness of the secret passage.
As she moved up the twisting staircase to the Priests’ Room, she knew that she was shutting herself away from the world and the Earl in particular.
“I love him! I love him!” she cried to the Holy picture over the altar.
While she knew that she was doing what was right in the eyes of God, her human body cried out for the Earl with an intensity that became more and more painful.
It was with the utmost difficulty that she prevented herself from running down the stairs to unbar the secret panel that led into her father’s bedroom.
‘If I could only see him once again! If I could let him kiss me goodbye,’ she pleaded with her conscience, ‘then I should have something to remember – something to hold close in my heart for the rest of my life.’
But she knew if she once gave in to the impulse that made her want the Earl’s arms around her and his lips on hers, then it would be impossible to deny him anything else he asked.
She had never imagined that love could be so fierce or so cruel. She felt as if she was being torn apart by her desire for a love that was forbidden.
How, she wondered, could all this have happened? And yet, even with the agony she was suffering, she would not have had it different.
The Earl embodied everything that she had ever dreamt a man could be and, although she might never see him again, she knew his image would always be there not only in her heart but before her eyes.
How could there be another man to equal him? How could there ever be another man who could thrill her as he did, so that when he was beside her she became pulsatingly alive in a manner she had never known before.
‘This is love!’ she told herself.
Then, because it was out of reach, because she had deliberately walked away from it, the tears came.
At first they only gathered in her eyes, then ran slowly down her cheeks until suddenly a tempest shook her so that she threw herself down on the bed to cry until her pillow was wet.
Later in the night she tortured herself with the idea that the Earl would easily forget her.
He had so many beautiful women in his life who would be only too ready to console him, women as lovely as Lady Sydel and Lady Plymworth of whom the former had been so jealous.
It was obvious that in a few weeks, perhaps sooner, he would forget the ghost who had intrigued him for a short while.
“But I shall never forget!” Demelza sobbed. “I am a ghost who has fallen in love and therefore will be haunted for the rest of my life!”
She cried until she fell asleep and her only thought to lighten the darkness was that, although he could not see her, she could at least see the Earl.
>
“If you asks me,” Nattie said when she brought Demelza’s breakfast, “five days’ racing is too much for anybody! You looks washed out, and there’s Master Gerard in a state of agitation over Firebird and asking for brandy at breakfast time. I don’t know what your mother would say to hear him – that I don’t!”
She had not waited for Demelza to reply, but had hurried downstairs to minister to Gerard who had always been her favourite, while Demelza, because she did not wish Nattie to be concerned, had done her best to wash away the traces of her tears.
Whatever she felt about the Earl it was impossible not to worry about Firebird.
After all, she and Abbot had trained him, taking him round and round the course early in the mornings in all weathers and often finding it difficult to find enough money to feed him properly.
“Sir Gerard will take all the credit if he wins,” Demelza said once to Abbot, “but the glory will be ours! We have done all the hard work.”
“That’s true enough, Miss Demelza,” Abbot had answered, “and I doubt if Master Gerard’ll ever realise ’ow much you’ve done to bring this ’ere ’orse to the peak of condition.”
“Do you really think he is at his peak?” Demelza asked a week before the meeting.
“If he ain’t, it’s not your fault or mine, Miss Demelza,” Abbot had replied. “But don’t you go worryin’ about ’im. With a bit o’ luck, he’ll win.”
Demelza remembered his words and found them comforting as she and Nattie had set out in the gig for the races.
Today, because Abbot was with Firebird, they were being driven by a rather stupid boy who was employed in the stables because he was cheaper than any other lad would have been.
“I don’t like leavin’ you with only Ben to drive you tomorrow, Miss Demelza,” Abbot had said when they drove back from the course on Friday evening.
“Ben will be all right,” Demelza answered. “You will have too much to do with Firebird to worry about us.”
“Just you tell him to stay with the gig and not go wandering off in the crowds,” Nattie said sharply. “If he does, he’s quite capable of forgetting we’re there and leaving us to drive ourselves home.”
“I’ll see ’e does as ’e’s told,” Abbot promised, and Ben in fact stayed with the gig the whole day.
Because she was certain that the Earl would be looking for her, Demelza, to Nattie’s surprise, had not insisted on going to the saddling enclosure before the race.
“I was sure you’d be wanting to give all sorts of last minute instructions to Jem,” she said.
“Jem is a good jockey and it’s too late for words,” Demelza replied.
But even as she spoke, she knew that every nerve in her body was aching to go to the enclosure, not to see Jem or Firebird but the Earl.
She knew how pleased he would be that one of his own horses had won the first race. At the same time she was certain that he would be watching Firebird and perhaps wishing Gerard good luck.
It was the first time that Gerard’s name had appeared on the race card as an owner and she longed to be beside him to share both his excitement and his pride.
‘He will be very proud when Firebird wins,’ she thought.
She felt a pang of anxiety in case the horse failed and Gerard was faced with large gambling debts and no money to settle them with.
Then she remembered the thousand guineas that the Earl had paid for renting The Manor.
There were so many ways they could use it on The Manor, but she was convinced that Gerard would expend it all too easily on his life in London.
She gave a little sigh and Nattie, hearing it, said,
“Now don’t you go fretting about that horse, Miss Demelza. It’ll win, if it’s meant to win – and if it isn’t, there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Her words forced a faint smile to Demelza’s lips.
“You are always such a comfort, Nattie dear,” she said. She thought even as she spoke that she would need all the comfort her old nurse could give her in the future.
She saw the Earl moving about the enclosure in front of the Royal Box. She also saw him walking through the crowds towards the saddling enclosure.
Only by an exertion of willpower that was more demanding than any she had ever had to use before did she prevent herself from running across the track and going to his side when he was speaking to Abbot.
By standing up in the gig, she could watch him pat Firebird’s neck and say a word of encouragement to Jem.
Then, for fear he might see her and be drawn to her by her longing for him, she sat down and did not look again until the race began.
It was a disappointment that Firebird was not the winner, but The Bard ran better than expected and at least, Demelza thought, Gerard would feel it no disgrace that his horse had done so well the first time it had been entered in a race.
Nattie had been even more elated than she was.
“I suppose you’re going to say, Miss Demelza, that it’s been worth all the times you’ve come in chilled to the bone from riding in a North wind or looking like a drowned rat after exercising that animal in the pouring rain.”
“Yes, it has been worth it,” Demelza agreed, “and Gerard will be delighted.”
She saw Nattie’s eyes light up with pleasure and added,
“At least he should have made money at this meeting if he backed his Lordship’s horses as well as Firebird?”
“I’ve told him often enough he shouldn’t gamble at all,” Nattie said.
But she was not using her scolding voice which both Demelza and Gerard knew so well.
When Nattie said it was time to leave after the third race, Demelza looked for the Earl. She told herself this would be the last time she would ever see him.
She was aware, because Nattie had told her, that two of his guests would not be returning to The Manor.
They had both tipped Nattie generously and Demelza knew that, when they were alone again and Ascot had relapsed until next year into the quiet empty place it had been before, the money would be spent on food.
Demelza searched the Royal Box and the small enclosure in front of it for a sight of the tall handsome figure who made her heart beat quicker every time she saw him.
But she could not see the Earl and, although she told herself it was absurd, she felt even more despondent than before.
Ben manoeuvred the gig with some difficulty away from the carriages and waggons lying four deep along the course and they threaded their way through the booths and gambling tents across the Heath.
When they reached the road, it was crowded but less so than it would be after the last race was run and all the waggons, coaches and carriages were moving at the same time towards Windsor and London.
It was very hot and Nattie said,
“I’ll be glad of a nice cup of tea as soon as I get home and I expect, dearie, you’d like a drink of lemonade.”
“It would certainly be very cooling,” Demelza answered.
“I’ll put some ice in it,” Nattie said. “The chef had a large block delivered today to cool the champagne for the gentlemen. That’s something we don’t often see at The Manor.”
Demelza was not listening.
She was thinking of the Earl standing in the drawing room for perhaps the very last time and remembering how handsome she had thought him when she looked at him first through the peephole.
Even then she had loved him, although she had not been aware of it.
In a voice that she had difficulty in making appear casual she asked,
“Is his Lordship – leaving this – afternoon?”
She never heard the answer to her question, for at that moment the horses drawing the chaise came round the side turning and a split second before they reached the gig, while Ben belatedly began to draw his horses to the left, Demelza knew there must be an accident.
She wanted to cry out a warning, but before she could do so there was the shuddering impact of the wheels collidin
g and she felt the gig tipping over.
Then there was darkness and she knew no more – *
She came back to consciousness moving, she thought, down a long tunnel towards a faint light at the far end of it.
She felt weak and somehow disembodied. It was hard to move and yet something told her that she must do so.
Then Nattie was beside her, lifting her head in the manner she had done ever since she was a child, holding something to her lips.
“Wh-what has – happened?” Demelza tried to ask, but she could not hear herself make a sound.
After a moment, as if she knew what she wanted, Nattie said,
“It’s all right. You’re safe!”
“There – was – an accident?”
“Yes, an accident,” Nattie agreed, “and you hurt your head on a stone, but the doctor says you’ve no bones broken and you’ve just suffered a little concussion.”
“I – am – all right.”
It was a statement, but Nattie took it as a question.
“Perfectly all right! His Majesty’s own physician came to see you – not once, but twice!”
“Twice.”
Demelza repeated the words and then asked,
“How long – ago?”
“He came first yesterday when the accident happened, then again today. He said if we wanted him he’d come down from London. A nice expense that’d be!”
Demelza must have looked concerned because Nattie added quickly,
“No need to worry. We’re not paying. His Lordship saw to all that.”
“H-his – Lordship?”
“Yes, very kind he was and wouldn’t leave until Sir William had seen you for the second time.”
“He has – left?”
Nattie patted the pillows and laid Demelza’s head gently down on them.
“Yes, he left this morning. There’s nothing to keep him here, now that the races are over.”
“No – nothing,” Demelza repeated and closed her eyes.
*
Later in the afternoon Nattie insisted on Demelza eating something and, although it was difficult to do so, she felt better.
The Ghost Who Fell in Love Page 12