70 A Witch's Spell

by Barbara Cartland

  Then she thought that Lord Wilchester was coming tomorrow to propose to her and felt herself shudder.

  ‘I cannot marry him, I cannot!’ she told herself passionately.

  Then she saw herself back at the Vicarage spending the rest of her life carrying soothing syrups and salves to Mrs. Buries and a dozen other women like her.

  Or waiting for her mother or her father to come home in the evening, knowing that while they both loved her and she meant a great deal to them, they would rather be alone with each other.

  ‘I should marry him,’ she thought.

  Then she looked at the sky through the uncurtained window and felt that she could see the Marquis’s face amongst the stars.

  “Out of reach!”

  She could almost hear him saying the words mockingly in that dry voice of his that made her feel shy.

  “Out of reach! Out of reach!”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Hermia found it impossible to sleep.

  She twisted and turned and all she could think of was the Marquis and that, if she married somebody else or returned to the Vicarage, she would never see him again.

  She was also afraid for him and, although he might laugh at Hickson’s concern, she kept thinking of how every hour of every day he was in danger from his villainous cousin.

  Because she had been thinking about him the previous night, she had said to an elderly man who was at the ball she was attending,

  “Is Roxford de Ville here by any chance?”

  He looked at her in surprise before he answered,

  “I cannot imagine our hostess would contemplate having such a disreputable character as one of her guests!”

  Hermia did not speak and after a moment he laughed and added,

  “Anyway, this is not the sort of company that de Ville feels at home in.”

  She looked at him for an explanation and he continued,

  “He spends his entire life in low nightclubs, with the gypsies on Hampstead Heath or I have heard recently with the trapeze artists who perform at Vauxhall Gardens.”

  “Why does he like those sort of people?” Hermia enquired.

  Her companion went into a long description of how disreputable the Marquis’s cousin was and how much he was disliked.

  But Hermia was remembering that the Marquis had told her father that two of the men who had knocked him about were swarthy and might have been foreigners or gypsies.

  She wondered if she should warn the Marquis that it would be a mistake to go anywhere near Hampstead Heath, but she doubted if he would listen to her.

  She was sure he would merely laugh and say that he could look after himself.

  ‘If Roxford de Ville is determined to murder him, he will do so,’ she thought.

  The idea made her want to cry because she felt so helpless.

  Throwing off the sheets because it was hot, she climbed out of bed and went to the open window.

  She told herself it was because she needed air, but actually she wanted to look at the moon and think about the Marquis.

  She had to force herself to accept the fact that he was out of reach.

  Then, as she leaned out of the window, she looked along the back wall of the house towards the far end where she knew that the Marquis was sleeping.

  She had learnt that when he had inherited he had not altered the front of the house, which faced onto Piccadilly and was magnificent.

  The back was rather featureless, but he had added to it the wrought iron balconies that had just come into fashion.

  Hermia had learnt that all the houses that were being built in Brighton and there were a great many because the Beau Monde followed the Prince Regent there, had wrought iron balconies.

  Those the Marquis had added were all of beautiful workmanship and the windows of the State rooms on the first floor now had large balconies with elaborate designs rising to about three feet around them.

  Those on the second floor where she was sleeping were only half as big, but equally as elaborate and on the floor above there was only a token surround outside each window.

  The effect from the garden was very impressive.

  But, as Hermia leaned out of the window, she thought the Marquis had been very clever to improve his London house so outstandingly.

  Then, as she looked at his bedroom, which was on the same level as her own, she raised her eyes and thought that a chimney had fallen forward onto the balustrade of the roof.

  She wondered vaguely if anybody was aware of it and determined in the morning to tell the servants to make investigations.

  Then what had appeared to be a heap of stone moved and she realised that it was not a fallen chimney as she had thought, but a man leaning over from the roof to look down below him.

  For a moment she thought it might be a workman, but it was a strange time of night for men to be working on the roof.

  Then she saw in the moonlight there was not one man but two.

  ‘Something must have happened,’ she thought.

  Then, as she stared, finding it hard to see clearly from the angle she was looking at, she suddenly remembered what her partner had said last night.

  “Trapeze artists at Vauxhall Gardens!”

  She started and felt a streak of fear run through her as she knew that this constituted a danger for the Marquis.

  She could hear Hickson saying to her that his Master had said that no one could enter his bedroom unless they were a spider or flew in through the window.

  ‘That is what his cousin intends to do!’ Hermia told herself in terror.

  She took one last look and now she could see that one man was on the very edge of the balustrade and she thought that there were ropes around his shoulders.

  It was obvious that the other man was beginning to let him down slowly towards the Marquis’s bedroom window.

  With a cry that was stifled in her throat, she turned and, pulling open her bedroom door, lifted up her nightgown and started to run down the passage that led to the other end of the house.

  It was quite a long way and as she ran she felt frantically that, if she would be too late, either Roxford de Ville or whoever he had hired to kill the Marquis, would have performed his evil task before she was able to save him.

  She thought that the murderer was most likely to enter the bedroom and stab the Marquis because that would make no noise.

  And yet she could not be sure. It would be quicker and perhaps easier to shoot him from the balcony.

  Then the criminal would immediately be hauled back up onto the roof before anybody would think of looking for him in such an unlikely place.

  It all flashed through her mind as she ran with her heart thumping violently against her breast over the soft carpet, past Lady Langdon’s room, past the empty spare rooms which came before the Marquis’s suite.

  She knew where his bedroom was because Lady Langdon had taken her round the house and had shown her the Marquis’s room saying,

  “This is the Master suite where my father, my grandfather and my great-grandfather all slept. It is the one place in the house that Favian has not changed, but left very much as it was and I love it because it brings back so many memories of my childhood.”

  She remembered it was a large very impressive room with one window looking onto the garden and another on the side of the house from which there was a glimpse of Green Park.

  What had impressed Hermia most was the huge four-poster bed curtained with crimson velvet, the back embellished with an enormous replica of the Marquis’s coat-of-arms in colour.

  It seemed almost Regal and a most fitting background for him and now, as she ran faster and even faster, she thought it might be his deathbed.

  She opened the door.

  The room was in darkness except for the moonlight coming through one open window.

  It was the window that looked onto the garden and, even as Hermia moved towards the bed to awaken the Marquis, she saw the stars outside being obscured by a dark form, whi
ch she knew was a man’s legs coming down onto the balcony.

  Because she was so breathless, it was almost impossible to speak.

  “My – Lord!” she whispered and because she was so frightened she could not even hear herself.

  Then, as he did not answer, she knew with a terror that seemed to strike into her body like the point of a dagger that the light from the window was now almost completely blocked out and she whispered again,

  “My – Lord! My – Lord! Wake – up!”

  She put out her hand as she spoke to shake him because he must be sleeping so heavily.

  Instead of touching his shoulder, however, as she had intended to do, she found her hand was touching something hard and cold that was lying on a low table by the bedside.

  Her fingers closed over it almost before her mind told her that it was the loaded pistol that Hickson had told her was always there.

  As she took it up in her hand looking frantically towards the window, she realised that the man outside had shaken off the ropes he had descended by.

  She saw something glint in his hand and knew it was a dagger.

  It was all happening so swiftly that she hardly had time to think but only to be aware of the danger coming towards the Marquis whom she could not waken.

  Lifting up the pistol, she pointed it towards the intruder and just as he stepped forward to enter the room she pulled the trigger.

  There was a resounding explosion that seemed almost to break her eardrums. Then the man in the window gave a shrill cry and Hermia shut her eyes.

  Trembling, she opened them and there was only the moonlight once again coming into the room.

  It was then, with her ears still ringing from the explosion, that she looked towards the bed and saw a door on the other side of it was open and silhouetted against the golden light in the room behind him was the Marquis.

  For a moment she could hardly believe that he was there and not asleep as she had expected him to be.

  Then she threw the pistol down on the bed and ran towards him, to fling herself against him.

  “He was going to – kill you,” she cried. “He was – going to – kill you!”

  The Marquis put his arms around her and, as she felt the strength of them and knew that he was safe, Hermia burst into tears.

  She hid her face against his shoulder sobbing,

  “He was – let down by a – rope from the – r-roof – I saw him and thought I would never get – here in time – and he would kill you – while you – slept.”

  Her words seemed to fall over each other and they were broken by sobs that made her whole body tremble beneath her thin nightgown.

  “But you were in time,” the Marquis said quietly, “and once again, Hermia, you have saved my life.”

  He held her close for a moment.

  Then he said,

  “I must go to see what has happened, but don’t move until I tell you to do so.”

  He sat her down gently on the side of the bed and while she still cried he walked away from her to look out of the window.

  He did not speak and she suddenly thought the whole scenario had been a dream and there had been no man there and that she had just imagined it.

  She was afraid that the Marquis would think she was very foolish and hysterical to behave in such a manner.

  Then she remembered that if it was real and she had killed a man the repercussions would be frightful.

  She stopped crying, but the tears were still on her cheeks as the Marquis came from the window.

  She saw that he was wearing a dark robe that reached the ground, making him somehow more impressive than usual.

  She looked up at him beseechingly and now he could see her face clearly in the light that came from his sitting room.

  “It was very brave of you, Hermia,” he said quietly. “My cousin Roxford is dead. No one could fall from such a height and not break his neck.”

  “I-I have – killed him!” Hermia whispered.

  “No,” the Marquis answered. “You surprised him, but your bullet went into the side of the window frame and actually did not touch him.”

  She stared at the Marquis as if she could not believe what she had just heard.

  Because she could not speak, he put his arm around her and drew her gently to the window.

  She could see the rope that Roxford de Ville had shrugged from his shoulders before he was ready to enter the bedroom.

  Then the Marquis pointed a little above her head and Hermia could see quite clearly in the moonlight that the wooden lintel was splintered where the bullet she had fired had entered it.

  Because she was so relieved that she had not actually killed anybody, even if it was a man with murder in his heart, she turned her face once again towards the Marquis’s shoulder.

  He knew she was thinking that now she would not have to stand trial or explain what had happened and his arms tightened around her as he said,

  “I want you to understand that you must not be involved in any way.”

  He looked out of the window before he went on,

  “They will find my cousin in the morning and the ropes from the balcony outside this room. The story I shall tell is that he must have lost his balance coming down from the roof.”

  Hermia lifted her face to look up at him.

  “Everybody will – know he intended to – kill you.”

  “Officially nobody must know that,” the Marquis said sharply. “The Magistrates will be told that it amused him to climb over roofs and play pranks on people at night and, having had too much to drink, he slipped and fell.”

  “They will – believe that?”

  “I will make sure they do so.”

  “Now – you are safe – and nobody will – try to kill you?”

  “I hope not,” the Marquis answered, “but, as I don’t wish you to be questioned, you are to go back to bed now and forget what has happened. We will talk about it again in the morning.”

  “But – you will be – safe?” Hermia said almost beneath her breath.

  “I shall be safe because you have saved me.”

  The Marquis looked down at her.

  Then, as she stared up at him in the moonlight, his lips came down on hers.

  For a moment she could hardly believe what was happening.

  Then, as the Marquis kissed her for the second time, she knew this was very different from the kiss he had given her before.

  Because she loved him her lips were very soft and warm and, as she felt his mouth take possession of hers, she knew that it was what she wanted more than anything else in the whole world.

  It was what she had yearned for, prayed for and now, as he kissed her, she felt as if she surrendered herself to him completely and gave him not only her heart but her soul.

  It was so perfect, so exactly as she had felt a kiss should be and yet a million times more wonderful than she had ever imagined.

  She at the same time felt as if the moonlight moved through her body in a silver stream and the stars fell out of the sky to shine in her breast and join her lips with the Marquis’s.

  It was so perfect, so ecstatic, so unbelievably rapturous, that she felt if she died at this moment she would be in Heaven and never have to return to earth.

  Then, as she moved closer and still closer to the Marquis, he raised his head and said in a voice which seemed strangely unlike his,

  “Go to bed! Forget what has happened and nobody must know that you have been in my room tonight.”

  Because what she felt when he kissed her made Hermia speechless and in a daze she could not answer him.

  She was only aware that he drew her across the room to open the door and very gently push her outside.

  “Do as I have told you,” he commanded.

  Then, almost before she could realise what was happening, his door had shut behind her and she was alone in the corridor.

  It was difficult to think, difficult to be aware of anything but the emotions pulsating
through her and feeling that her lips were still held captive by the Marquis.

  Somehow she walked back along the corridor, finding her way now by the light of the candles guttering low in the silver sconces, which she had not noticed when she had run to save the Marquis.

  She reached her bedroom and only the open window and the moonlight coming through it told her that what she had seen when she had looked along the wall of the house had been real. Even though the Marquis had not been in his bed, his cousin could have stabbed him in the other room when he was weaponless.

  Quickly Hermia climbed into bed, then, as she closed her eyes, she could only think that the Marquis had kissed her and nothing else was of any importance.

  *

  Hermia was awoken as usual by the maid who looked after her.

  She came in and set down by the bedside the hot chocolate she always brought Hermia before she rose.

  As she did so, she said as if she could not prevent herself from speaking about it,

  “Oh, miss, there’s such a to-do downstairs! Everybody’s in a turmoil!”

  “What has happened?” Hermia asked and managed to speak quite naturally.

  “It’s his Lordship’s cousin, miss. He’s been found dead in the garden after falling off the roof!”

  “How terrible!” Hermia exclaimed. “But why was he on the roof?”

  “Mr. Hickson says it’s all them tricks them trapeze people ’as taught ’im. Them as performs in Vauxhall Gardens.”

  Hermia smiled a little as the maid chatted on, feeling sure that Hickson would be the only person who might guess the real truth, even though he would not know that she was involved in it.

  Lady Langdon insisted that after they had a late night neither of them had breakfast until late in the morning.

  Now, as Hermia waited for the maid to tell her that her bath was ready, she said,

  “Oh, I almost forgot to tell you, miss, ’is Lordship says neither ’er Ladyship nor you are to come downstairs before luncheon. Mr. de Ville’s body is being taken away as soon as the undertakers arrive. Until then ’e wants you to stay upstairs.”

  As she finished speaking, she went to the door saying,

  “I’ll bring your breakfast, miss, as soon as it’s ready, but I thinks as ’ow ’er Ladyship’s still asleep.”