The Devil and Drusilla

by Paula Marshall

  ‘No? Then why not end the questioning by biting the bullet and telling me the truth?’

  Stricken, Giles looked away. ‘I don’t want you to go peaching to Dru if I tell you—’

  ‘Listen to me, young Giles. I promise to keep your secret if you tell me now. If I find out later, I shall certainly tell her as a punishment for your lying to me and delaying my attempt to find your assailant. Your choice, my lad, your choice.’

  This was a new Devenish. A hard man whom Giles scarcely knew. But a man to respect. He swallowed, and gulped out, ‘Oh, very well. It’s like this, everyone treats me as though I’m made of china, a rare old mollycoddle, not a man at all. Other fellows have fun, I don’t—’ He stopped.

  ‘Oh, spit it out,’ said Devenish inelegantly. ‘You’ll feel much better when you do. If you’ve been dallying with one of the village girls, say so and have done.’

  Giles was so surprised that he sat up sharply, then fell back groaning as his head protested at this cavalier treatment.

  ‘How did you know?’ he gasped.

  ‘I’ve been eighteen myself. Besides, you live in a house full of women, protected from life. What more likely than that, at your age, you’ll kick over the traces. Which one?’

  Giles gaped at him. He had expected reproaches, a sermon, perhaps, not this cool acceptance.

  ‘Betty,’ he said. ‘Betty James. She lives at Halsey.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Devenish. ‘The village Venus. Not that the villagers know her as that. I hope you don’t think that you were her only patron.’

  Giles hung his head. ‘No, I know I wasn’t.’ He paused. ‘She was kind. She didn’t laugh at me.’

  ‘And you were on your way to see her.’

  ‘Yes, and I truly don’t remember anything much after I met her. She said, or I think she said, “Oh, Giles, I’ve something to tell you—” and then, nothing. Truly. If I did remember anything I’d tell you, Devenish. Truly.’

  He was becoming agitated. Devenish said gently, ‘Lie down, Giles, and try to rest. I’m sorry that I had to be so harsh with you when you were feeling ill, but it is important for me to know exactly what happened if we are to find those who hurt you.’

  Giles bit his lip, and hung his head.

  Devenish said, ‘Don’t worry, Giles. I understand why you felt as you did and why you went with Betty. You aren’t the first lad to sneak off to enjoy himself, and you won’t be the last. You’ve been unlucky, that’s all. On the other hand, when you’re feeling better, we’ll have a little talk before you start—adventuring—again. And I shan’t tell Dru.’

  Giles closed his eyes and sank even further back into the bed again. ‘First you make me think that you’re a beast, and then you’re kind. What was it that you said about illusions at Marsham Abbey?’

  Devenish rose and looked down at him. He pulled the covers over the sleepy boy, and thought, If he had lived, Ben would have been older than Giles, and possibly no wiser. The question is, Has Giles made me wiser by telling me the truth? And what was Betty James going to tell him? Had it anything to do with the assault on him, or was it merely one of her rustic lovers attacking the young gentleman out of jealousy?

  Well, one way to find out would be to go and question Betty. After he had taken nuncheon with Drusilla Faulkner, that was.

  ‘How did you find him?’ Drusilla asked him anxiously. She was not sure that she had done the right thing in allowing Devenish to see Giles when he was still so poorly, but Devenish’s cheerful air seemed to suggest that he was not too distressed.

  ‘Battered,’ he said, ‘but surviving. He has no memory of being attacked. I dare say that in a few days he will be over the shock of it. If I might be so bold as to advise you, I would not mollycoddle him overmuch. Are there no other lads in the neighbourhood with whom he could mix? He lacks the companionship of his equals.’

  Devenish had kept his promise to Giles by an act of omission, saying nothing of his visit to Halsey’s Bottom and his affair with Betty James. He was pleased to hear that Drusilla was also worried about Giles’s isolation.

  ‘I was about to ask for it,’ she said, ‘as to whether Giles should attend one of the two Universities. What worries me, of course, is his damaged leg.’

  ‘Well,’ Devenish replied, seating himself in the chair which Drusilla offered him, ‘if Lord Byron could successfully go to Cambridge with his damaged leg, and play cricket there, then I see no reason why Master Giles should not do the same. Sooner or later you will have to let him fly the nest. You have several excellent servants, any one of whom could accompany him.’

  Drusilla felt that a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders. She might have known that she would get a sensible answer from him. She was beginning to think that a true heart was hidden behind Devenish’s tart tongue.

  She looked across at him to meet his burning gaze and looked hastily away again. Did he know the effect that he had on her? Only the entrance of the servants with nuncheon, which they laid out on the sideboard, prevented her from making an absolute fool of herself by stammering something meaningless at him.

  By the time that they had been dismissed she was in command of herself and she was able to thank him for his kindness. The only problem was, that for all her outward calm, the sight of food was making her feel ill. This attack on Giles, resembling as it did that which had caused Jeremy’s death, was distressing her more than she liked to confess.

  The whole world was beginning to seem unsafe. She tried to calm herself by picking up her plate and selecting a variety of meats, a small chicken pasty and some bread and butter and taking it to the table which the servants had earlier set.

  Devenish followed suit, pouring them both a glass of red wine and coming to sit beside her. Her unease was a palpable thing, and the psychic bond which existed between them had never been so strong.

  He watched her struggle to eat what lay before her—and fail. Finally she pushed her plate away and said unsteadily, ‘You will think me a fool, I know, but I have never felt so overset. The assault on Giles, coming on top of Jeremy’s death, has reduced me to near hysterics—something to which I have never normally been prone. It also seems to have revived the dreadful feeling of cold which I experienced at Marsham Abbey. You must forgive me if I cannot eat.’

  Her beautiful eyes were full of unshed tears. They affected Devenish profoundly.

  He put down his knife and fork and picked up her untouched glass of wine, saying in his usual composed fashion, ‘Not at all. Most women would be reduced to the vapours or would have taken to their beds long ago. The more I see of you, the more I admire your stoic calm. The only thing I would ask of you is that you drink your wine,’ and he handed her the glass.

  Whether it was his blue eyes which held her in thrall so that she did as she was bid, or her own wish to please him, Drusilla never knew. Obediently she took the glass and tipped the crimson liquid down her throat. The taste and feel of it set her whole body aflame, coming as it did after many hours of fasting.

  Her cheeks flushed scarlet, her eyes shone, belying the fear which had fuelled her distress since Giles had been found to be missing. And then, oddly enough, reaction set in. The unshed tears reasserted themselves and ran down her face like twin pearls.

  Devenish leaned forward. After putting a fingertip on first one teardrop and then the other, he pressed it to his lips. Drusilla gave a little cry. In response he leaned forward again and kissed her on each cheek at the point which his fingertip had touched.

  He whispered, ‘You are not to worry. Giles is recovering, and as for your husband, what is past, is past. I shall do my best to protect you.’

  As he spoke he slipped from the chair to his knees and put his arms around her. She leaned forward to rest her head on his shoulder. He turned his head a little in order to kiss her on the lips this time.

  He met with no resistance, only co-operation. She was shuddering against him, whether from passion or fear, he could not tell, and it was Deve
nish who broke off the kiss, not Drusilla.

  ‘Come,’ he said and, rising, scooped her into his arms to carry her over to a bergère, where he held her close to him, doing nothing while she hid her face in his chest, blindly seeking his protection. He was cradling her as though she were a baby, and when passion began to stir in him, he ignored it. There was a time and a place for everything and this was neither the time nor the place to indulge his desires.

  ‘I feel safe now,’ came from her in a thready whisper, ‘but I cannot expect you to spend your life comforting me in this position.’

  ‘Had I but world enough and time,’ he said, revising the words of a long-dead poet, ‘we could spend eternity comforting one another, but since we have not, this must have a stop—but not yet.’

  ‘I am comforting you?’ Her voice was stronger this time.

  ‘Yes, and you must understand that for the bad man that I am, to come to you in your innocence and not violate it comforts me, for I had forgotten that I might be able to behave so.’

  Drusilla did not need to be told that this was a rare confession on his part. ‘You have never been bad with me,’ she breathed, and kissed him on his cheek where it was soft, just above the point where he had shaved his beard away, and where his skin was nearly as tender as hers.

  ‘That is because you are as good as any faulty human being can be,’ he told her, still sternly repressing his wish to have her in his arms, consenting to whatever he might wish to do. ‘Goodness can beget goodness as evil can beget evil. And do not trust me too much, for I sometimes make vows which I cannot keep.’

  ‘Do not we all?’ she said drowsily, for if the wine had begun by rousing her senses it was ending by making her want to sleep.

  ‘But I am worse than most of all,’ he told her, but he was smiling when she opened her eyes and looked at him again, ‘as doubtless Miss Faulkner and Toby Claridge have both told you.’

  ‘Oh, I take no note of them. It is your actions which I judge you by, and so far you have been kindness itself.’

  ‘But I shall not be kind much longer,’ he said, sliding her out of his embrace and seating her beside him, ‘for you are temptation itself, and when I am tempted I have to say as I did at Marsham—’

  Drusilla finished his sentence for him, ‘Vade retro Sathanas. You know, it’s an odd thing. I remember Jeremy, who was no Latin scholar, being annoyed when I quoted that to him not long before he died. When I explained what it meant he said that I was not to say it again, for one might call up the Devil merely by uttering his name and I would not like that. I told him not to be superstitious and he told me that there was more to superstition than we liked to think.’

  She paused and said slowly, ‘He became very angry with me when I said that no one believed in the Devil any more, and shouted that I might be surprised to learn that there were some who still did.’

  Devenish became very still. ‘Did he, indeed?’ He thought it surprising that so many who lived around Tresham Magna disliked to hear the Devil spoken of disrespectfully. All desire had suddenly fled from him—which could not be the Devil’s fault since surely he would have preferred him to seduce Drusilla, not behave chivalrously towards her.

  He had learned something about himself since he had arrived at Lyford House: that he had fallen in love with the pure woman beside him and would do nothing to hurt her or those whom she loved. How far this love would take him he did not know. He had always vowed that he would never marry, but that vow had been made before he had met Drusilla Faulkner.

  ‘Let me ring for your maid,’ he said. ‘I am sure that you did not sleep well last night, and a little rest would restore you. No, do not say that you will not give in to a passing weakness. Even the strongest of us must pause now and then, and let kind Nature take its course.’

  ‘Very well. It’s true, I couldn’t sleep last night, but now that you have seen Giles and he was able to talk to you I feel much better.’

  Devenish waited until she was safely on her way upstairs before he returned to the stables where he had left his horse and his groom. He needed to visit Halsey in order to find Betty James immediately—what he did not need was any witnesses to his visit to her.

  Consequently when he reached the stables he ordered the groom to return without him. ‘I have a mind to take a short ride on my own, and do not need company. Tell Mr Stammers I shall not be long returning.’

  If the groom wondered why his master had changed his mind he did not say so. Devenish waited until he was safely on his way back to Tresham Hall before setting off alone to question Giles’s village inamorata in the hope that she might be able to offer him some valuable information.

  Halsey might be small, but it was not poor. One of his first acts on inheriting the title had been to have the wretched hovels in which his tenants existed, rather than lived, improved.

  He rode through Halsey’s Bottom before he entered Halsey village, and, as he had expected, found nothing there which might help him to discover who had attacked Giles. The undergrowth was trampled where Vobster and Green had searched it, and he dismounted to look around for any evidence which they might have missed. But, of course, he found none.

  It was a different matter when he rode down the muddy lane which served as Halsey’s main street. Heads turned, men doffed their hats and women curtsied. He knew where the James family lived and rapped on the door with his riding crop.

  It was opened by old man James himself—Betty had been the youngest and wildest of his eleven children. A look of profound relief swept over his face at the sight of Devenish.

  ‘Oh, m’lord, ‘tis pleased I am to see you. I was about to visit the Hall to see if any there knows aught of what has happened to our Betty. She went out yesterday well before noon and has not been seen since.’

  His anxiety was plain, as was that of his worn-down wife who peered anxiously around him.

  ‘Come in, m’lord, dunnot stand in the street. Gertrude, put out a chair for m’lord, and a cup of the tea you’ve just made.’

  Devenish had no wish for either chair or tea, but pleased his humble host by accepting both. After he had drunk a little of the tea he asked as gently as he could, without appearing to criticise Betty’s father in any way, ‘Did she often stay out all night?’

  Mr. James was uncomfortable. He looked away. ‘Aye—oh, you know what she is, m’lord, everyone does. There’s no ruling her. But she has always returned before breakfast before.’

  No point in beating about the bush or in pretending the girl was other than she was. ‘And have you no notion of who she was with this time?’

  ‘No, m’lord. I dunno who she met yesterday. It could have been Tom Orton, or the lame boy from Lyford House—or it might have been anyone else she fancied. Who’s to know? I asked young Tom if he’d been with her, yesterday, and he said no. I thought I’d ask at Lyford on the way to see you.’

  Devenish knew, without being told, that what Betty earned from pleasing her various admirers, either in money or in kind, was a useful addition to her family’s budget.

  It was time that he informed them why he was there. ‘No one has told you, then, that young Giles Stone was attacked and left injured in Halsey’s Bottom yesterday?’

  Mrs James gave a gasp and threw her apron over her head. Her husband said, ‘No, we knew naught of that. The Bottom’s a mile away, and you’re the only visitor we’ve had in the last week.’ His face paled. ‘Did Master Giles say whether he had been with her?’

  ‘Master Giles has no memory of the attack. Indeed, his last memory is of deciding to go for a walk. He knows nothing after that.’ He had decided that the less people knew that Giles’s last memory was of being with Betty, and that she was about to tell him something which she thought important, the better.

  ‘Aye, so then there’s none knows who she met, or where she can be.’

  Where, indeed?

  Mrs James flung her apron down again, and cried out, ‘Niver say that she’s gone like them ot
her poor girls, niver to be seen again.’

  This was, indeed, what Devenish feared. She had been with Giles when he was struck down, must have seen his assailant, and was now added to the list of the missing.

  ‘Oh, m’lord, say as how you’ll try to find her for us.’

  Devenish stared helplessly at his tea, conscious of how difficult that was going to be. ‘Yes, indeed, but you must tell me this. Was she friendly with any of the missing girls?’

  ‘Nay,’ began Mr. James, ‘not her,’ only for his wife to contradict him.

  ‘Oh, but she was, our Will. She was right friendly with the last to leave, Kate Hooby. D’you think she’s run off to London, too?’

  Devenish doubted it very much. He was growing more and more certain that there was a link between what had happened to Faulkner, young Giles, and the disappearance of the girls, although what it might be baffled him completely.

  All that remained for him was to comfort Betty’s family, even though, in honesty, he did not think that he could offer them any real hope.

  ‘Rest assured that Mr Stammers and I will do all we can to find her,’ he told them. ‘In the meantime, you must ask her friends whether she was going with anyone new or strange in the district.’

  He rose. Mr James clutched at his hand, and began to thank him profusely. Mrs James on the other hand, stood there, her mouth dropped open, her eyes distant, as though she were trying to think of something.

  He was halfway back to his horse, which he had left tethered to a tree, when she ran after him.

  ‘M’lord, m’lord, I’ve just remembered. Our Betty’s not been quite herself since Kate disappeared. And as to having truck wi’a stranger, she must have been meeting someone wi’ money, for she’d been given a pretty necklace wi’ a nice white stone in it which she allus wore beneath her dress. I saw it by accident and she swore it were a trumpery thing some lad she’d met at Tresham Fair had given her. But it looked better’n that to me.’

  Devenish thanked her and rode slowly away. At last, a link between two of the missing girls: both of them had been given a valuable necklace of a similar design. But, like the other mysteries in this sad tale of death and loss, he could, for the moment, make nothing of it.