As she spoke, Sir Roger Chatham came forward, reached the Earl and held out his hand.
“Nice to be here again, Yardecombe.”
The Earl deliberately ignored his hand and said,
“When you were my guest, Sir Roger, at the invitation of my cousin Jarvis, you abused my hospitality and I can only ask you to leave immediately!”
Sir Roger stared at him and Lady Maureen gave a cry of astonishment.
“What are you saying? What is all this about, Oscar?”
“I am sure Chatham is well aware that his behaviour when he was recently under this roof was not becoming to a gentleman and quite inexcusable.”
The Earl’s voice was like a whip and Sir Roger, who had turned very red in the face, muttered,
“I don’t know what you are talking about, Yardecombe. In fact I think you must have taken leave of your senses!”
At the same time his eyes flickered and the Earl was sure he was not mistaken in thinking it was he who had tried to assault Mary Bell and upset the whole household and village, thus bringing Dorina to condemn him with an expression in her eyes he never wished to see again.
He knew that it would be a terrible mistake now, from his own point of view, to accept Sir Roger as his guest at luncheon as he and Lady Maureen had obviously intended.
“I think, Chatham,” he said firmly, “you would not wish me to go into details and I suggest you leave immediately. You can either take Lady Maureen with you or collect her after luncheon.”
“What are you saying? What are you talking about, Oscar?” Lady Maureen cried. “How can you dare to be so rude to one of my friends?”
She spoke accusingly, but when she saw the expression in the Earl’s eyes and the sharpness of his chin, she slipped her arm through his and added beguilingly,
“This is not the welcome I expected, dearest Oscar. If Roger has offended you, I know he will apologise and then we can all enjoy ourselves.”
“I can see no reason why I should apologise for anything I may or may not have done!” Sir Roger asserted aggressively. “I cannot help it if Yardecombe has listened to a lot of lies about me – my conscience is clear.”
“Then you are very fortunate,” the Earl answered. “I still insist that I have no intention of entertaining you now or at any other time!”
“Damn it all!” Sir Roger swore. “This is the outside of enough! I am not going to stand being insulted by you or any other man for some crime he is afraid to name!”
“I am not the least afraid of saying what you did,” the Earl retorted. “Perhaps you would like me to call witnesses from the servants’ hall to substantiate what I am saying.”
The expression on Sir Roger’s face proclaimed his guilt without it having to be spelt out further.
If he had been doubtful as to what the Earl was referring to, the doubt no longer remained. All he could do was to say angrily,
“I do not intend to stay here and listen to a pack of lies. I thought you were a man of the world, but I see that after all, you are only a tinpot soldier with a lot of boring puritan ideals which are certainly out of keeping in the Social world I move in.”
The Earl did not reply. He merely looked at Sir Roger with a faint twist to his lips and an expression of contempt in his eyes which would have made any man feel vanquished.
For the moment the two men faced each other. Then with a muttered oath Sir Roger turned on his heel and walked to the door.
As he reached it, he turned to say,
“I will wait five minutes for you, Maureen. If you don’t join me by then, I will drive back to London without you.”
He left as he finished speaking and Harry tactfully followed him so as to leave Lady Maureen alone with the Earl.
She gave another cry of horror and then, throwing back her head to look up at him, she demanded,
“What has happened? What is wrong? Oh, Oscar, I was so looking forward to seeing you! How could you behave in such a cruel and heartless manner?”
“I am sorry, Maureen,” the Earl replied, “but I will not have an outsider like Chatham in my house.”
“But he has been so kind to me.”
“Then I suggest you drive back to London with him.”
She reached out her hands to lay them palm down on the reverse of his coat and her lips were very near to his as she sighed,
“I love you, Oscar. I made Roger bring me here because I wanted to see you – because I wanted to be sure that you still love me as I love you.”
The Earl looked at her, but despite the pleading note in her voice, the beseeching look in her blue eyes and the subtle fragrance of the perfume which accentuated her allurement, he replied coldly,
“I think, Maureen, we have both forgotten, and it is very reprehensible, that you have a husband.”
Had he thrown a bomb at her, Lady Maureen could not have been more astonished.
She stared at him incredulously and then retorted,
“Husband? But what has he to do with us?”
“A great deal and because I know Wilson and like him, I can only feel ashamed that we should both have betrayed him.”
“I think you are crazy!” Lady Maureen exclaimed. “Was Roger right in suggesting you have suddenly developed a puritan conscience and taken to psalm-singing?”
“Perhaps that is the answer,” the Earl replied coolly.
“I don’t believe it. Have you forgotten, Oscar, what we meant to each other first in Paris and then when you returned to London?”
She knew that her plea was going unheeded and in a different tone she said,
“Surely you cannot have become overnight so prim and proper that you now consider a wife must be unswervingly faithful to her husband?”
As she threw back her head she added coldly,
“If that is the truth, then all I can say is that you will be the laughing stock of everyone in London.”
“To be accurate, of a certain section of the Society to which you belong,” the Earl countered. “My answer is quite simply, let them laugh!”
Lady Maureen gave a scream.
“What you are really saying, Oscar, is that you are tired of me and I no longer attract you.”
She spoke as if such an idea was unthinkable, but the Earl replied slowly,
“You are a very attractive woman, Maureen, but I find it unpleasant to think that I am stealing from another man what is his and humiliating not only him but myself in doing so.”
Lady Maureen stamped her foot.
“If you are telling me the truth, then all I can say is you are insane! You, the most ardent and enticing lover I have ever known, are now fit only for Bedlam!”
She stared at him as if she did not really believe what she was saying was true. Then, with a quick change of mood, she held out her hand and said,
“Oscar dearest, we cannot leave each other like this.”
“I think it is the wisest thing to do, Maureen,” the Earl replied impassively, “and I really believe that we have nothing to gain by continuing this argument.”
“Then I will go,” she screamed. “I hate you, Oscar! Do you hear me? I hate you!”
“I am sorry that is how you feel, Maureen, but there is nothing I can do about it.”
“Nothing?” she cried and it was half a curse, half a sob.
Realising that the five minutes that Sir Roger had given her must be nearly over, she walked to the door with what was obviously affronted dignity.
It was only when she reached it that she looked back to say, when she saw that the Earl had not moved, but was standing exactly where she had left him,
“You will be sorry about this, Oscar, very sorry!”
Then she left the room, violently slamming the door behind her.
It was only when he could no longer hear the sound of her feet moving down the passage that the Earl went to stand by the window, drawing in deep breaths of air as if he felt he needed them.
It was some minutes before Harry came b
ack. He took one look at the Earl and walked to the grog-tray to pour out two glasses of champagne.
He placed one in the Earl’s hand and said as he did so,
“You were absolutely right, Oscar. Chatham is a nasty piece of work and I am glad to see the last of him.”
The Earl took a sip of the champagne before he answered,
“I suppose between them they will make up a story which may include a few grains of truth in it and could reflect on the family name.”
“I think that is unlikely,” Harry said quietly.
“Why?” the Earl asked.
“Because to be thrown out of Yarde would be so ignominious that everyone would know that you must have had a good reason for doing so.”
“I had not thought of that.”
“You forget, my dear fellow,” Harry said half-jokingly, “how important you now are.”
The Earl did not answer. He was merely thinking that he had done what he thought was right and that perhaps it was the influence of the cross that Dorina had given him which he was still wearing round his neck.
*
Nanny allowed Dorina to get up for luncheon and come downstairs.
The scratch on her arm had healed cleanly and no longer troubled her. But she was feeling a little low-spirited and depressed because, although she had hoped that the Earl would come back with her father after the funeral, there had been no sign of him.
She had learnt from her father that the Earl and Harry had been the only two mourners and she could visualise them going back to Yarde together, laughing and carefree, because the menace of Jarvis was finished for ever. Now everything in the Earl’s future was golden with sunshine.
She knew without anyone having to tell her that he found his inheritance really interesting and her father had said that he intended to explore the gravel pits that were shown on the old map.
The Vicar had also learnt that the number of woodcutters was to be trebled, which meant that there would be work for a number of young men in the village who had come back from the war to find nothing to do.
‘He now no longer needs me,’ Dorina told herself and felt the pain of this thought was like the dagger that Jarvis had intended to drive into her heart.
While she was in bed, Nanny, having the time because she no longer had so much to do in the house, had made her a new white gown, which was something she had not had for years.
It was very simple. The muslin was not expensive, but the best the carrier had on his cart when he called in the village the week before.
The ribbons, which crossed under her breasts from her shoulders and hung down her back, came from an old gown of her mother’s and were the green of the woods, making her look very nymph-like.
It also made her think, as she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, that she would like to go to the woods to think where, ever since she had been a child, she had taken her joys and sorrows.
She somehow felt that the trees and the spirits of the woods would understand her.
When luncheon was over and since she had help Nanny no longer required her to take away the dishes, Rosabelle and Peter went riding. Dorina had told them they could ride in the Park that day and gallop on the level ground and on the East side of it.
“All I can say is thank goodness Cousin Jarvis is dead,” Rosabelle said, “and we can enjoy ourselves as we want to do.”
“I think that is something you should not say,” Dorina corrected her sister almost automatically.
But she knew as she spoke that she was thanking God with almost every breath she drew that Jarvis could no longer menace the Earl and he was safe.
When the children had ridden away, excited at being on such fine horses, she walked through the garden gate and into the Park and under the oak trees towards the nearest wood.
In the centre there was a small clearing made many years ago by the woodcutters and one of the felled trees was still lying there.
It made a comfortable seat she could sit on to look at the great house in the distance with the lake below it and the Earl’s standard flying against the blue sky.
It was so beautiful that Dorina felt as if the trees all around her were singing a melody, which she could not hear with her ears but with her heart.
Then she thought of the Earl, reigning like a King over such beauty and how wonderful it had been to be with him when he had asked for her help with Burrows and Mrs. Meadows.
She had then saved his life with her mother’s herbal potions and to think of it gave her a happiness which was perfect, rapturous and different from any feeling she had ever known in her life before.
She sat for a long time staring at the house and feeling almost as if she was speaking to the Earl and telling him how important it was in his life.
Then, astonishingly, because never before had she been interrupted when she was in the woods, she heard the sound of a horse’s hooves coming nearer and nearer.
Turning around, she saw the man she had been thinking about riding his black stallion.
He drew in his horse and for a moment just sat looking at her, silhouetted against the trees in her white gown with green ribbons.
Then he dismounted, tied his horse’s bridle to a fallen branch and came walking towards her through the undergrowth.
He took off his hat as he did so and she thought how handsome he was and how overwhelmingly masculine. Then she felt herself blush because she had never felt like that about him before.
“Your Nanny told me that this is where I would find you,” he began as he reached her.
“I did not – expect you this – afternoon,” Dorina said, “or I would have – stayed at home.”
“I am not complaining,” the Earl replied, “and I feel, if I am not mistaken, that you are very much at home here in my woods.”
He smiled at her and sat down beside her on the tree trunk. Then he looked, as she had been doing, at the view in front of them and said,
“I am sure you have been thinking about Yarde and all the things I should be doing for it.”
“I think you have done quite a lot already.”
“There is a great deal more to be done, but I think, Dorina, that I should start by thanking you that I am here to do it.”
“No, please,” Dorina pleaded, “I don’t want your thanks. I am only so very – very glad that you are – alive.”
“I don’t think you would have been so glad the first time you came to see me, angry and full of condemnation.”
She did not answer and the Earl said as if he was thinking it out,
“I suppose it was a choice between me and Jarvis and I was the lesser of two evils.”
“All that is forgotten,” Dorina said quickly. “You made a mistake, but you were big enough to realise it. Now everything has changed.”
“Are you quite sure about that?”
“Quite sure,” she answered.
“Now I want to know, Dorina,” he said, turning sideways so that he could look at her, “what you feel about me.”
It was a demand that took her by surprise and he saw the colour come into her cheeks as her eyes flickered and she looked away from him.
“We have been through,” the Earl said quietly, “some very strange and traumatic experiences together. Such as, I should imagine, no other two people have ever had. I cannot believe that you still think of me as an outsider who has become the Earl, any more than I think of you just as an ordinary, very pretty girl who is the daughter of the local Vicar.”
There was just a hint of amusement in his voice as he spoke and Dorina asked almost childishly,
“And how do you – think of – me?”
“Do you really want to know?” he asked. “But first it is only fair that you should answer my question.”
She gave him a very attractive smile before she said,
“That is easy! I think of you as a man who is very suitable to be the Earl of Yardecombe and will make a great success of it.”
�
�That is possible,” the Earl admitted, “but that I am still the Earl of Yardecombe is entirely due to you. I think I should ensure my success by making certain that you help me achieve it.”
“That is something I would very much like to do,” Dorina answered, “but I was thinking this morning that now you can – manage very – well without me.”
She spoke with a sincerity which told the Earl that it was truly what she believed and he thought how very different she was from any other woman he had ever known.
Then he said quietly,
“You told me what you think of me as an Earl, but what I am really interested in is what you feel about me as a man.”
She looked at him with a faint air of surprise and he realised that she still did not understand what he was trying to say.
He put out his hand, pulled Dorina to her feet and drew her forward a few steps so they had a better view of the house, the lake and the great trees of the Park lying in front of them.
“We are looking at Yarde,” he said, “which you have known all your life, and which means, I know, a great deal to you. But it is all new to me since I have lived twenty-nine years without it. So I have a great desire, Dorina, for you to think of me quite apart from the background of Yarde and just as I was when I first came here – an ordinary soldier who had made a career for himself in the Army and had no ambitions outside it.”
“I think I understand – what you are asking me,” Dorina said, “but I believe that everything you strove for and learnt in the Army was only a preparation, planned for you by fate or, as I believe, by God, so that when the time came you would not fail those who rely on you and who belong to you because they are your people.”
The Earl laughed and it was a very tender sound. Then he said,
“Oh, my darling, only you could give me an answer like that, which is so true, but at the same time is not really what I wanted to hear.”
At the endearment Dorina’s eyes widened in surprise and he continued,
“Surely you realise now that what I am trying to say in a roundabout way is that I love you.”
“You – love – me?”
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