“That certainly seems a reasonable plan,” the Vicar commented.
“I think so too,” Dorina agreed.
She rose as she spoke and added,
“I think, Papa, we should now go home, for I want to start brewing some more herbs that Mrs. Meadows can give the Earl during the night and I will bring a fresh concoction to offer him first thing in the morning.”
“The groom will drive you home,” Harry said, “and then I will go and talk to Oscar before he falls asleep.”
“Let him sleep as much as possible,” Dorina begged, “and if you would be kind enough to send a groom to collect the herbs, I shall have them ready in about two or three hours’ time.”
“Of course,” Harry answered, “and thank you, Miss Stanfield, more than I can possibly express for saving the life of a man who has always been more to me than a brother.”
There was a note in his voice that Dorina found very moving and, because she felt shy, she did not know how to answer.
Then as she and her father drove away from Yarde, she found herself praying fervently that the Earl would be safe, when and wherever Cousin Jarvis might strike.
Chapter six
Dorina awoke early despite the fact that she had found it hard to go to sleep.
She was worrying about the Earl and what diabolical ideas Jarvis would think up next.
She was quite certain that Jarvis was mad and that his desire for power and to be the Head of the Yarde Family had unhinged his mind.
She, however, tried to be practical and went into the garden to pick the herbs that would, she hoped, completely eliminate the last vestiges of the poison with which he had tried to destroy the Earl.
It was indeed fortunate that the Earl had drunk so little of the wine, otherwise he would undoubtedly have died.
Now he was alive, but the question was – for how long?
When Dorina had taken the herbs into the house and Nanny was helping her prepare them, she thought that she should also to give him a tonic that would help him back on his feet again.
The children her mother had treated after they had taken deadly nightshade were always limp and listless for over a week and not well enough to go to school.
She was wondering if she could find anything in the garden when she remembered that a month ago a friend of her father’s, who was an explorer, had sent him a present from China.
It consisted of some cactus roots which delighted the Vicar, but at the same time he had sent a strange herb with them which he said in his letter was very precious in China and was kept only for the Emperor.
He wrote,
“It is called ‘ginseng’ and is known to have miraculous qualities in giving people long endurance when they travel and also in rejuvenating those who are growing old.
The Chinese worship this plant and I therefore would get into great trouble if they knew I had sent it out of the country. But 1 thought it would interest you and I enclose details of how according to the Chinese Mandarin who gave it to me, it should be prepared.”
The Vicar had not been particularly interested in the ginseng because he was so excited at receiving the cactus roots.
Dorina took the box now from the cupboard in his study where he had put it. The roots, of which there were several, were in a Chinese box and with them were the instructions.
Dorina followed them exactly and when the elixir was ready, she thought if it brought the Earl back to good health, it would certainly justify the long journey it had made, which had taken nearly a year.
She gave Rosabelle and Peter their breakfast and when they were finishing it, she said,
“I have a special treat for you today.”
The two children looked up at her expectantly and she went on,
“When you come back after your luncheon, I may perhaps not be here, but Hawkins is sending a groom with two horses for you to ride.”
Both Rosabelle and Peter gave a whoop of delight as Dorina went on,
“You have, however, to promise me that you will not ride in the direction of the Big House and it would be best too to keep out of the Park.”
“Why should we do that?” Peter asked.
“Because Cousin Jarvis is coming down from London and I am sure that you don’t want to meet him.”
“No, of course not,” Rosabelle agreed, “but as long as we can go riding, I don’t care where we go.”
Because she could not bear to contemplate Rosabelle coming anywhere near Jarvis, Dorina had made this arrangement with Harry before she left Yarde yesterday.
Now that she had told him and the Earl how she had overheard Jarvis making his pact with Satan, Harry understood and suggested,
“I will tell Hawkins what you want and there is no need to worry Oscar with small issues like that until he is better.”
Dorina could not help thinking that it was not a small one to her, but she was glad Harry had agreed and she went home feeling that they had planned everything as carefully as possible for the next day.
But how could they foretell what Jarvis’s attitude would be and whether, as they actually hoped, he would make another effort to destroy the Earl, in which case, Harry would deal with him.
When she arrived at Yarde, a groom with the phaeton picking her up at eleven o’clock, it was to find the Earl very much better and looking more like his usual self.
He was, however, still in bed, and as soon as Dorina had unpacked her basket and told him the contents, he became very interested in the ginseng and said mockingly that he was very honoured to sample a concoction that was kept only for the Emperor.
“I hope you are satisfied that it will not poison me!” he said teasingly.
When Dorina told him that she was certain he could trust her father’s friend, he remarked,
“I cannot really argue with you, Dorina, considering how clever you have been in saving my life with your herbal concoction, even though it does not taste very nice.”
Dorina gave a little sigh.
“I am only afraid that Cousin Jarvis will have something worse to give you.”
“I cannot believe he would try to poison you again!” Harry interposed. “After all, it was a clever idea to give the brandy to Oscar secretly, so that, if he had died, there would have been no reason to connect Jarvis in any way with his death.”
“I agree,” the Earl said. “For Jarvis left several hours before the poison began to work.”
“That seems to me rather strange,” Dorina commented.
“Actually,” Harry replied. “While, of course, there are poisons that work instantly, the ancient Romans are said to have perfected one which took over two months before it worked, which made it quite impossible by the time the victim died for anyone to find the culprit.”
Dorina shivered.
She did not like to say so, but she could not help feeling that, if Jarvis had used a different poison, she might not have recognised it or had the antidote available, as she had in the case of the deadly nightshade and it was bad luck for him that the Earl should have somebody close to him with the knowledge of herbs.
Dorina was sure that in ordinary Society ladies like Lady Maureen would not have had the slightest idea what to do if he was taken ill.
As if once again the Earl could read her thoughts, he said as involuntarily she looked at him,
“I am very grateful to you, Dorina, and I realise that you are thinking that God and His angels protected me.”
“I am sure of it, my Lord, and this room feels quite different now that Papa has exorcised all the evil from it.”
“But the evil is coming back,” Harry warned, “and that is why we had better be prepared for anything, Oscar, and not be caught napping.”
As he spoke, he brought a pistol from his pocket and held it out to the Earl, saying,
“This is loaded. Put it under your bedclothes, where you can reach it quickly.”
The Earl took the pistol and said as he did so,
“I don’t
believe that Jarvis will shoot me. If he did, he could have no defence against a charge of murder.”
“Then – what will he do?” Dorina asked in a frightened voice.
“We shall just have to wait and see,” Harry replied, “and by the way, Oscar, I think it would be a good idea to tell your valet to meet him in the hall with the good news of your recovery.”
The Earl looked at his friend enquiringly and Harry explained,
“It will make him realise that if he is to dispose of you, he will have to act fast and that is exactly what we want.”
“I see your point,” the Earl replied and Harry left the room.
When he had gone, Dorina went to the side of the bed and said to the Earl,
“I have brought you – something which I would like you – to wear.”
From the way she spoke and the colour that had come into her cheeks, the Earl realised that she felt shy.
He held out his hand and she put into it a small ivory crucifix on a gold chain.
“It belonged to Mama,” she said. “You may laugh – but I feel it will – protect you.”
“I am not laughing,” the Earl replied in a deep voice, “I am, in fact, deeply touched, Dorina, and grateful that you should take so much trouble over me.
She looked up at him and smiled. After a little pause he added,
“I think – I hope I am right – that now you have forgiven me and are no longer hating me as you did when first I came to Yarde.”
The colour in Dorina’s cheeks deepened and the Earl repeated,
“I am grateful and very deeply in your debt. If I survive, I will try to make up to you for all my previous misdeeds.”
“Please, I don’t want you to – feel like that,” Dorina said quickly. “Already everybody is so much happier at Yarde that it is like the old days.”
“That is just what I want,” the Earl asserted firmly.
He saw the look of happiness in Dorina’s eyes and thought it was remarkable that anybody so attractive should always be thinking of other people rather than of herself.
Harry came back into the room and said as he closed the door,
“There is a phaeton coming down the drive and, unless I am much mistaken, it is your cousin Jarvis coming to gloat over what he hopes is your dead body.”
“Then he is going to be disappointed,” the Earl murmured grimly.
“Please, please, do be careful!” Dorina begged.
The Earl sat up firmly against the pillows, looking, she thought, magnificent under the red silk canopy with his coat of arms embroidered on the curtain behind him.
He was wearing a silk nightshirt with high frills round the neck and over it was a light robe of dark blue silk, which made him appear almost as if he was up and dressed.
Harry seated himself by the window which was open to let in the sunshine and Dorina sat on the chair at the end of the bed.
All three of them looked relaxed and at ease, but she knew that both the Earl and Harry were as tense as she was.
She started to pray that things might not be as frightening as she feared.
Suddenly the door was flung open and Jarvis walked in.
He had obviously hurried up the stairs the minute he arrived, for he was not only elaborately and fastidiously dressed with a very high cravat and shining hessian boots, but he was also still wearing his many-tiered riding coat as if he had been too impatient to discard it.
As he came into the room, he stood for a moment theatrically posed with an expression of astonishment on his face.
Then he exclaimed,
“My dear Oscar! I posted from London the moment I heard how ill you were. But now, to my delight, I have just heard from your valet that you are better.”
“Yes, I am better,” the Earl replied, “but it was kind of you to take the trouble to come.”
“How could I stay away?” Jarvis asked. “I was appalled at the information that Harry Harringdon’s letter contained!”
He then looked at Dorina and said,
“I am surprised to find you here, Dorina! And were you instrumental in nursing our beloved cousin back to good health?”
“That is right,” the Earl answered. “We have to thank Dorina for making me so much better. In fact, I hope to get up tomorrow.”
“Splendid! Splendid!” Jarvis cried. “And because I feel this calls for a celebration, I have told your butler to bring us up a bottle of champagne.”
He smiled at the three of them listening to him and added in an ingenuous tone,
“I need some sustenance after my mad rush to arrive here and I certainly wish to drink your good health, my dear Oscar!”
“How kind of you!”
The Earl had the greatest difficulty in preventing himself from glancing at Harry or Dorina to express his surprise that Jarvis was playing the same trick again.
A few minutes later Burrows came into the room carrying a tray containing four glasses and two bottles of champagne, neither of which had been opened.
“Mr. Jarvis asked for a bottle to celebrate, my Lord,” he said as he put the tray down on a table against the wall. “But seeing there’s two different sorts of champagne in the cellar, I brought up a bottle of each, to see which your Lordship prefers.”
“Either will suit me,” the Earl replied. “Have you any preference, Harry?”
Harry shook his head and Burrows opened one of the bottles deftly and filled four glasses.
He gave one to Dorina, walked to the bed to give one to the Earl, the third went to Harry and lastly he gave a glass to Jarvis and left the room.
Raising his glass, Jarvis proposed,
“To Oscar! May you continue to flourish and may you always be as successful in life in the future as you have been in the past!”
“Thank you – ” the Earl had begun to say.
At that moment, making them all start in surprise, a huge black bird suddenly appeared, flying wildly around the room.
Afterwards Dorina could only think it had come from beneath Jarvis’s travelling coat, having appeared, as it were, from nowhere.
It was a large ugly bird, flapping about alarmingly, and she instinctively jumped up from the chair by the bed and moved to the side of the room.
“Shoo it out of the window, Harry!” Jarvis ordered.
The bird, however, swooped over the top of the canopy above the Earl’s bed and swung away from the window.
Then, while everybody else was watching the bird, which twisted and turned elusively, Dorina saw Jarvis, while still distracting the bird away from the bed, pause for a moment.
The Earl, intent on watching the bird, had put his glass of champagne down on the bedside table.
With a movement so swift that she did not think it possible, she saw Jarvis drop something into the Earl’s glass.
She knew that if she had been watching the bird, as had been intended, she would not have noticed it.
But something, some instinct or perception or perhaps a power that protected the Earl, made her aware of what Jarvis had done.
She was quite sure that her eyes were not deceiving her, although the movement of his tiered coat, if she had not been already so suspicious of him, would have made her suppose that not his hand had moved against the glass but the hem of his coat.
He then walked away and was helping Harry drive the bird through the open window.
In a flash Dorina had put her own glass down beside the Earl’s and picked up the one she was certain that Jarvis had poisoned.
Then she moved away and put that glass down on the tray where Jarvis had put his when he had started to try to drive the bird from the room.
For a moment the two glasses stood side by side, then as Harry and Jarvis had finally frightened the bird into swooping out through the open window, Dorina realised what she had done.
As Jarvis turned round, she picked up the glass which he had originally held in his hand.
It all happened so quickly that she hardly had had
time to think, but only to act, and now, as Jarvis walked towards her, he said,
“What an extraordinary thing for a bird of that size to fly in through the bedroom window and give us so much trouble! I hope it was not an ill omen!”
“I hope not indeed,” Harry replied pointedly.
Jarvis picked up the glass that remained on the silver tray.
“Now we can return to our drinking,” he said, “and I look to you all to respond to my toast and no heel taps.”
He raised his glass once again.
“To Oscar!” he cried and tipped the glass of champagne down his throat.
It was only as he lowered the glass that he realised that all three of them were staring at him, each holding a glass in their hands which none of them had drunk.
“What is wrong?” he asked. “Why are you not drinking?”
Even as he spoke, the last words were lost as he put his hand up to his mouth, then lowered it against his throat.
There was an ominous silence while still nobody spoke.
“Why are you saying nothing?” he screamed. “Why are you looking at me?” Dorina was nearest to him and he spat the words at her.
Then, as she stepped back in alarm, but at the same time watching apprehensively to see if the poison she suspected he had drunk was working, he suddenly yelled furiously,
“It is you! It is you, Dorina, who is obstructing me! Well, I promised you as a sacrifice and that is what you shall be!”
As he spoke, he drew from his inner pocket a long thin dagger, not unlike a stiletto.
Dorina could only stare at him, paralysed with horror as he shouted,
“Die! Die as a sacrifice to Satan so that I can have – all – I – desire!”
The last words were only a gurgle, half-stifled as he tried to utter them.
Then, when he would have struck Dorina through the heart, the Earl with a superhuman effort flung himself across the bed.
Jarvis was already only semiconscious from the effects of the poison which must have been almost instantaneous and, as the Earl struck him from behind, he fell forward on top of Dorina, forcing her down on the ground.
The Devil Defeated Page 10