‘He will be a good rider,’ Shana told herself.
She wondered if he would condescend to hunt with the rather inferior local pack, which she and her father rode to in the winter.
She rather suspected the Marquis would hunt in Leicestershire and if she was not mistaken he maintained a hunting-box there.
What it comes down to,’ she decided, ‘is that Hertfordshire will see very little of him. ‘But I do not suppose he will be a very great loss.’
*
The next day she found herself worrying a little more over Mrs. Grimes.
She therefore gave orders for their cook to make her some dishes which could be warmed up. There was a soup which her father always enjoyed and which was very nourishing and it was easy to consume when one was not well.
She put these and several other items into the chaise she habitually drove when she visited the village and drove to the Rose and Crown.
Bob was delighted to see her again so soon and he and Winnie had carried the food into the kitchen.
“Now that be just what the missus wants,” he exclaimed. “It’s no use me tryin’ to cook. I never were a good hand at it and Winnie be just as bad. Me missus wouldn’t even taste what I takes her up for breakfast.”
“We must persuade her to eat,” Shana observed, “otherwise she will get weaker and her leg will take much longer to heal.”
She climbed upstairs and gave Mrs. Grimes the same message.
“I lies here a-worrying, Miss Shana,” she sighed, “as Bob ain’t eating anythin’ with only that stupid girl to cook for him. The eggs she sent up this mornin’ be so hard I needed a pickaxe to break ’em. Heaven knows what her’ll give me husband for lunch!”
“Don’t worry, I will go down and cook him something,” Shana reassured her, “and tomorrow I will bring some more food if you promise to eat up everything I have brought to you today”
“You be sent down from Heaven specially to help us,” Mrs. Grimes muttered. “And God’ll reward you, I can be sure of that.”
Shana walked downstairs to the kitchen to find Bob standing by the stove and there was no sign of Winnie.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“I be tryin’ to heat up this meat for the two gentlemen as has just come in,” he answered. “They be foreign chaps and as they orders an expensive bottle of wine, I didn’t like to send ’em away.”
“No, of course not,” Shana agreed.
She could see that he was making a mess of the meat, but she managed to prepare it so that it was edible. She added a delicious sauce and some vegetables.
She took it into the dining room, as Bob was serving someone in the bar and she could see that the two men at the far end of the room were foreigners. She thought in fact they were either Portuguese or Italian.
She put the meat dish down in front of them and one of them said in a heavy accent,
“Good, we wait long time.”
“I am so sorry,” Shana said. “But now your meal is here I hope you enjoy it.”
They helped themselves without replying.
She left the dining room intending to ask Bob whether she should serve them cheese to follow, but he was busy in the bar.
She went back towards the kitchen and as she did so she realised that she could hear the men talking in the dining room.
There was a small window in the room which opened surprisingly into the passage. The pub was very old and alterations had been made to it down the ages.
This window must originally have looked onto the yard and then for some reason when another room was added the builders left it opening into the passageway.
This window must originally have looked onto the yard and then for some reason when another room was added the builders left it opening into the passageway.
As Shana stopped opposite the window she became aware that the men were talking in Italian and she could understand what they were saying.
“Now what we have to do, Marco,” one of them was saying, “is to get there as soon as it is dark. I have arranged with the servant we have bribed to leave a window open for us. I have a plan of the place here with it marked.”
“Yes, I know, I’ve looked at it already,” Marco came in. “What is important, Antonio, is to get to the safe where the silver is kept without being seen.”
“I thought of that,” his colleague answered. “Our friend will be on guard there tonight. We must not forget to tie him up before we leave.”
“Yes, of course, but you are sure he knows where the key is kept?”
“He swears he’ll have it for us,” Antonio answered. “But just to make sure, we’ll take our tools with us. From what I hear the safe is an old one and it shouldn’t be difficult to prise it open.”
“When we’ve finished this meal, we’ll study the plan of the house again. I suppose there’s no chance of anyone hearing what we’re doing in the pantry.”
“The house be as big as a Palace,” Antonio assured him. “And the Marquis sleeps right at the other end and so do his guests. The only ones we have to fear is them as sleep on the ground floor. The butler’s so old he’s getting deaf. Then there’s a footman, but I’ve told our friend to make him as drunk as a Lord before he goes to bed.”
The other Italian laughed.
“You make it sound too easy. To be truthful, I’m frightened we have not thought of everything.”
“Leave it to me,” Antonio replied. “As I’ve told you before, this silver be worth thousands and thousands of pounds. All we’ve to do is to get it to Abramo in Rome.”
Shana was listening in horror to their conversation.
One man, the one called Antonio was talking with a rather working-class accent, while the other Italian, Marco, was obviously well-educated and much better bred.
Italian was a language in which Shana was very proficient and she had understood every word.
She remembered her father telling her what a magnificent collection of silver the Kilbrookes had acquired over the centuries.
It would be a disaster not only for them but for England if it was stolen and taken out of the country.
The two men had admitted they had bribed one of the footmen and there was nothing she could do now but alert the Marquis to what was going to happen in his house that very night.
It was something she had no wish to do as it would be a mistake for her to have any contact with the Marquis, who believed she was just the cook at the Rose and Crown.
At the same time it would be wicked to allow these two Italians to walk off with such a treasure.
Quickly she moved away from the window.
She was quite certain that neither of the men had the slightest idea they had been overheard. They were sitting in an empty dining room, where there was no one but themselves.
She guessed it would be unwise to tell Bob what she had just heard.
As he came out of the bar she asked him,
“Do your guests in the dining room want a pudding or will cheese be enough for them?”
“Give ’em cheese,” Bob suggested. “There’s also some fruit in the larder and if they have coffee they’ve nothin’ to complain about.”
“I think they are quite happy,” Shana told him.
She put the coffee ready and left Bob to take it in to them.
There was cheese and some hot toast which she had made quickly as there were no rolls or biscuits to eat with the cheese.
Then she told Bob she had to leave. He thanked her again profusely and she promised to come back the next day with some more food for Mrs. Grimes.
“If I am not able to come myself,” Shana said, “someone will bring it. So do not try to make her eat food it is impossible for her to swallow.”
“Thank you, thank you, Miss Shana,” Bob said over and over again as he saw her into the chaise.
The groom who had accompanied her had taken it under a tree so that it was in the shade. Shana had not forgotten him – she had sent some bread
and cheese out for him while she was cooking the meal.
Now as they drove home she was thinking very seriously about what she should do next.
‘I suppose I shall have to go to the Hall myself,’ she decided finally. ‘It is all too complicated to put down in a letter.’
Equally she felt uncomfortable at approaching the Marquis.
If she told him the truth and how she had stepped in to save Bob, it would be too good a story for him to keep to himself. He would be bound to tell the guests he had brought with him.
In which case it would quickly be talked about all over Hertfordshire and that would certainly annoy her father.
‘I must keep up the pretence,’ she told herself finally.
She wondered when the Marquis would be at home and she guessed she would be able to see him alone at about six o’clock in the evening.
If she went now he might be shooting somewhere else on his estate.
‘If I arrive’, she calculated, ‘just before they go up to dress for dinner, that would give him plenty of time to take action against the burglary. And he will not wish to talk to me for long.’
She thought she had considered her plan as carefully as her father would have done and she could only hope that everything would go off smoothly.
She ordered a chaise to be brought round at five-fifteen and she deliberately chose the same small, rather old one which she had used when she went down to the village.
There were much better vehicles and horses in her father’s stables, but that would not look right for the cook from the Rose and Crown, even though she could say she had borrowed a conveyance to take her to the Hall.
‘I have to think of every detail,’ she told herself. ‘Otherwise in trying to save the Marquis from being burgled I shall most unfairly end up in trouble.’
CHAPTER TWO
The Marquis decided that the second day’s shoot was not as good as the first.
The bag had been smaller and the birds not so high.
He had taken luncheon from the Hall and had it served in one of the keepers’ cottages. He considered that the food had not travelled well and the luncheon they had eaten the day before at the Rose and Crown was much better.
When they returned to the Hall, however, his guests thanked him profusely. They said they had two of the best days shooting they had enjoyed for a long time.
The Marquis was about to go upstairs to change his clothes, when as he was leaving the hall, the butler informed him,
“Her Ladyship asked me to inform you that she is in the conservatory, my Lord.”
The Marquis did not reply, but there was a frown between his eyes as he climbed up the upstairs.
He had begun to think that Lady Irene was becoming rather tiresome and it was in fact time for him to end his affaire-de-coeur with her.
He had, when he first saw her, thought she was one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen. She was a little older than him, having turned thirty and was a widow.
She was the daughter of the Earl of Stanton and had married when she was very young and her marriage had proved most unfortunate. She had been irremediably unhappy until by, for her a stroke of good fortune, her husband was killed in a railway crash.
It would have been hypocritical for her to pretend to mourn for him. She had merely left the country house where they lived and moved to London to enjoy herself.
As soon as she was out of mourning, she started to entertain and to be entertained.
Because she was beautiful, amusing and knew almost everybody of any importance, she instantly became a huge success. In fact it was impossible for any hostess giving a fashionable party not to invite Lady Irene to be one of the guests.
She discreetly took a number of lovers, although it was inevitable that a great many people in Society would become aware of her activities.
As soon as she met the Marquis she was determined to capture him, particularly as everyone had told her how difficult he was and how one beauty after another had failed to attract him.
But Lady Irene was very confident of her charms and she was extremely clever in stalking the Marquis as if he was a wild stag.
It took him a little time to realise that, whomever he dined with, Lady Irene was always in the party. Invariably, because she was of consequence, she had her host on one side of her and the Marquis on the other.
Lady Irene played her cards very cleverly.
Although she saw him practically every night and often at luncheon as well, she was amusing, witty and flattering, but never intimate.
Finally she asked the Earl to dinner only to find that he was the only guest at her attractive house in Mayfair.
There was no question of how the evening would end and he found her passionate and insatiable.
Afterwards it was impossible, as they were seen everywhere together, for people not to realise what was going on.
Their affair did not create as much of a sensation as it might have done, but at the same time the Marquis knew he was being talked about and he disliked gossip intensely.
Yet when he saw Lady Irene coming towards him, looking so beautiful and dressed exquisitely, he thought it was almost worth it.
When he arranged his first shooting party of the Season in the country, he would not have invited her if she had not insisted on it.
“Of course I must help you entertain,” she told him, “and as you know as well as I do that I am longing to see Brooke Hall.”
“I have a great deal still to do to the house,” the Marquis said, “and I think it would be better if you waited until the alterations are completed.
“If I do not like them they may have to be done again,” Lady Irene replied provocatively.
He thought she was joking, but when she came to the Hall, he had the suspicion that she was making notes of everything she would like changed.
There could only be one explanation for such behaviour and the Marquis realised with horror that she wanted to marry him.
He had long ago made up his mind that he had no desire to rush into matrimony, as many of his contemporaries had married only to find that they were tied to a woman who bored them for the rest of their lives.
It was one thing to woo an attractive, charming girl and quite another to find a few years later that she had nothing to offer except her face.
Her conversation would not change with the years.
Being extremely intelligent himself, the Marquis found most people rather stupid.
If he spent a long time with anyone, whether it was a man or a woman, he invariably found them tiresomely repeating themselves. He then realised that he had learned all there was to learn about them and they had then become boring.
When he had a choice and when he was at his Club, he enjoyed being with much older gentlemen. He found them stimulating and extremely interesting.
He knew this to be impossible where a woman was concerned. No matter how beautiful she was, even if she produced the heir he must have eventually for his title, she would bore him.
He could imagine nothing more appalling than having to spend year after year listening to the same stories, the same complaints.
When he talked it over with two or three of his close friends, they agreed with him. Two of them had been married and although they were quite fond of their wives, they were, as the Marquis was well aware, champing at the bit.
A number of his friends had reached a difficult situation as they had found they could not be alone with their wives because they irritated them so much.
“I feel depressed,” one of them said to the Marquis, “every time I walk through my own front door. It is impossible for me to have a divorce, so what can I do?”
A divorce meant a major scandal as well as a long drawn-out law case which would have to be processed through the Houses of Parliament.
The Marquis had thought over his own position very carefully. He would hope and, he almost added pray, that he would find someone he loved and who wou
ld love him.
Then he would be eternally happy as happened in the fairy stories.
He laughed at his own imagination, knowing it would never come true!
There was just a chance he would find someone with whom he could have some kind of working relationship, someone he could get along with amicably.
When she became bored she could more or less live her own life and this meant that there was no question of his marrying a girl very much younger than himself and it would equally be extremely difficult to find an older woman who could fit the bill.
What he had no intention of ever considering was to marry one of the acknowledged social beauties. He knew only too well that they were waiting to be unfaithful to their husbands immediately they turned their backs.
And that of course included Lady Irene.
He knew she had enjoyed one affair after another since her husband had died.
That she might want to marry him had not occurred to him.
She was obviously having such a success with so many men that it seemed unlikely she would be prepared to give it all up for one suitor.
Yet he knew as soon as they entered the Hall that he had made a mistake in letting her join him.
Although, as he had said, a great many alterations were to be made, the house was magnificent. It was one of the finest ancestral houses in England, having been redesigned almost entirely by the Adam brothers.
In perfect taste, the exquisite rooms were each breath-taking when one first saw them and the furniture and pictures were the envy of every museum curator.
Because the Marquis’s father had been ill for a long time, the social world had almost forgotten Brooke Hall, but he knew from the way his first guests behaved that everyone would be clamouring for an invitation.
Last night when the gentlemen were leaving the dining room, the guest beside the Marquis had stopped and was looking up at a picture painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds of his grandmother.
“That is one of the most beautiful portraits I have ever seen,” he said. “You must be very proud of it.”
“I am,” the Marquis replied. “She was a great beauty in her time.”
Journey to love Page 3