The Earl's Captive

by Lorna Read

  “But there was Smithy and …”

  Of course! Pat didn't count. He was the one who was actually performing the ceremony. Martha was right. She and Rory had never been married at all. And those happy weeks during which she had shared his bed – why, she had been acting no better than that slut in the tavern!

  Shame stained her cheeks crimson and her eyes flooded with tears. She hung her head and stared into her lap, watching her fingers twist nervously around each other. Then, on a sudden impulse, she snatched Rory's necklace from round her neck, snapping the thin, cheap chain, and flung it into the fire.

  She regretted her action almost immediately and dashed towards the hearth, but Martha had anticipated her response and, seizing a fire iron, hooked out the trinket on its broken chain. It was warped and twisted by the heat of the flames and the chain was blackened to a sooty thread. In its ruined, misshapen state, it seemed to symbolize Lucy's wrecked dreams and lost love.

  She took the tiny, spoiled thing and laid it in the palm of her hand, where it made dirty smudges. The symbolism was too overpowering for Lucy's vivid imagination to handle and she felt giant sobs well up from the pit of her very soul, and threw herself upon Martha in a storm of grief.

  “There, there, child. Shush, now, it'll be all right. Don't you fret yourself, 'tis all over now. He's gone, he won't come back, and what matters most is that you thought you were married and that means you did no wrong.”

  “Do you really believe that, Martha?” whispered Lucy, through her tears.

  The older woman nodded and continued to rock her like a baby until her sobs began to ebb like a passing storm, leaving a strange calmness in their wake.

  The weeping had cleared Lucy's mind. At last, she knew what had been worrying Rory. She could understand perfectly how Rory, for all his impulsiveness and waywardness, must have found guilt lying heavily on his heart, knowing that he had cheated her.

  If he had plucked up the courage to explain, how would she have reacted? Obviously, he had expected her to be furious and heartbroken, to flounce off after denouncing him as a lying, cheating exploiter of innocent young girls.

  Yes, she would have felt this way, but not for ever. First and foremost had been her shining, wholehearted love for him, which nothing could have changed. As soon as he had expressed his desire to marry her legally, she would have said yes and clung to him, knowing that the truest, most important thing of all was the fact that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her as her lawful husband.

  Poor Rory. How upset and confused he must have been. Maybe he thought she had already guessed and that was why he had sought solace in another's body, thinking the situation was beyond hope.

  Did she resent him for the way in which he had taken her in? She examined her feelings and concluded that she didn't. All she felt was sympathy, coupled with a strange sense of relief. The realization that Rory must have been suffering from a guilty conscience removed some of the burden from Lucy's soul. It was his own folly that had killed Rory.

  Although she did not realize it until many months later, this moment marked a turning point in Lucy's life, the end of her period of mourning for her lost love. Whenever she thought of him in future years, it was to be with sympathy and gentle sorrow. The tearing, agonizing longing for him had gone for ever.

  Chapter Twenty

  The next day dawned as bright as the last. At nine, after she had breakfasted in her room, Philip sent a message that he was preparing horses for the two of them and that they were to take a ride up in the hills.

  Lucy's spirits bubbled with anticipation. She missed the daily riding she used to do at home in all weathers and her restless, active nature demanded regular exercise. Without recourse to the mounting block, she sprang in agile fashion into the saddle, clad once again in her borrowed riding habit.

  “How well you look today,” remarked Philip, as they set out down the long, straight drive.

  Lucy found herself surveying him and discovered that, in his tight cream britches, highly polished Hessian boots and burgundy riding jacket, he cut a very handsome figure indeed. His grey eyes sparkled with animation, and a slight flush of exertion from sitting his trotting mount accentuated the fineness of his complexion and the height of his jutting cheekbones.

  She felt her heart skip a beat as she looked at him, and she goaded her horse into a canter so that Philip was momentarily left behind. He overtook her in a galloping flurry and the two of them raced neck and neck towards the high, wrought-iron gates, reining in their mounts at the very last moment in a noisy slither of hooves.

  They were still laughing and bandying words as they ascended the winding track leading to the top of the ridge which overlooked the valley. A keen wind set her gelding's hide and ears twitching as they toiled up the last stretch of pebbly pathway and paused on the top of the hill.

  Behind them stretched the patchwork of the valley which coiled for many meandering miles, connecting a dozen hamlets and villages and banded with the silver, snaking river. Ahead lay countless acres of nothingness, open moorland, growing ever steeper, until the hills became mountains and the valleys turned into the great lakes of Cumberland and Westmorland.

  To their left, half a mile away perhaps, was a hump which rose some fifty feet into the air, like the back of a giant animal, crested with a spinney of dark, gaunt trees. As she looked at it, Lucy felt a sudden shudder and sensed magic in the air; old, pagan magic which had existed centuries before Darwell Manor had been built.

  “Come on!” shouted Philip as he spurred his mount into a canter across the stony ground. His eager challenge dispelled the mysterious, evocative mood and Lucy set off after him, keeping a firm grip on the reins lest her mount should stumble on a loose stone or slip on a patch of muddy earth.

  Their route led them across a series of hillocks and dips until Philip at last slowed to a halt in a sheltered, grassy grove. A cluster of gnarled mountain ashes, twisted and bent by the winter nor'easters, presided over the head of a clear mountain stream that fell in a miniature waterfall from the rock face, bubbled merrily through the grove and splashed among the lower outcrops of rocks.

  Philip dismounted and tossed the reins over a tree stump. “Look!” he said, gesturing towards some feature at ground level which Lucy could not see without dismounting herself. When she did so, she found that the object at which Philip was pointing was apparently nothing more than a heap of stones close to the foot of the tiny waterfall.

  She glanced at him in puzzlement, and then back at the stones. It seemed rather strange that such a variety of stones, some obviously not native to this particular part of the countryside, should have collected just at that spot. Something seemed to sparkle in a shaft of sunlight and Lucy looked closer. It was a fragment of green glass from an old bottle. There was a flash of blue, and one of red – more glass.

  She gave Philip a questioning look and his face creased into a grin.

  “I used to come here when I was a boy,” he explained. “I tried to build a dam once, to trap the water and form a swimming pool, but the force of it carried away my stones every time. This is all that is left.

  “I often come up here,” he added. “I can pretend I am young again and all my problems just fall away and disappear, like the water dropping from the rocks.”

  Lucy was moved by his statement. Suddenly, as she looked at Philip, she could picture a small, shy lad in knickerbockers and stout shoes, scrambling about over the stones, or sitting beneath the ash trees pretending to be some character out of a game: a mountaineer perhaps, having just scaled the summit of the highest mountain in the world, or a fugitive king fighting to regain his lost kingdom.

  How lonely Philip must have been as a boy. He kept his inner self well hidden but, when he revealed it in fleeting glimpses such as this, it touched something in Lucy's heart.

  A hush had descended. Here in the hollow, the howling and singing of the wind in the rocks could no longer be heard. The distant piping of a chaffin
ch, the babbling of the stream, these were the only traces of reality in what had become an enchanted place where neither time nor reason existed. Surely … surely Philip would kiss her now?

  But he didn't, and Lucy was suddenly conscious of the restless, rhythmic movement of the horses' teeth snatching at grass blades, the slow swishing of their tails and the lingering disappointment in her heart.

  * * *

  That night, the feelings she dreaded revisited Lucy. She tossed and turned feverishly in her bed, trying to force her mind onto other, less disturbing subjects but, try as she might, thoughts of her childhood, of horses and music and all the other subjects she grasped at and fought to hold steady in her mind, simply evaporated. In their place came visions of Philip stroking the dog, Philip standing in the grove, Philip laughing, bent over the neck of a prancing horse or looking at her with that sudden, speculative, appraising expression.

  The vivid images crowded in and obsessed her, giving her no rest but filling her with aching yearnings and uncomfortable stirrings. Why did he affect her this way when she didn't even like him? Why should a glance from him make her head swim as if she had drunk a whole glass of fine wine?

  Every time she was in his presence, she tingled with awareness of him, as if a million tiny needles were pricking her all over. It wasn't fear, she realized, that made her so nervous and self-conscious when he spoke to her; it was her admiration for him, that made her want to say and do only what would raise, rather than lower, her in his esteem. Having to consider every word she spoke was a great strain.

  As she lay there thinking about him, a sinful compulsion began to take control of her mind. She had no idea what time of night it was – midnight perhaps, maybe even one in the morning – but she knew Philip would be in his bedchamber, reading maybe, or perhaps even in bed, his dark locks spread across the white linen pillowcase, his face flushed pink from sleep, his lean, muscular body warm and relaxed beneath the covers.

  She ached to light a candle, creep down the long corridors in the shadowy darkness, find his room, silently open the door and just gaze at him. She imagined his expression as he opened his eyes – eyes whose shade could change from smoky warmth to silver ice in an instant – and saw her standing there with her tousled chestnut curls tumbling over the shoulders of her white cambric nightgown. Surely his heart – and body, too – would be moved at the sight? He would not – could not – reject her!

  The compulsion grew stronger. She had to go to him, even though she barely knew her way to his room and would no doubt feel cold in the draughty corridors. She couldn't dress, or even throw a shawl or cloak over her nightgown, as that would ruin the effect of spontaneous beauty that she wanted to create. Perhaps she could pretend that she was sleepwalking!

  The embers in her bedroom fire were still glowing. Lucy thrust a candle into their midst and held it there until the wick sprouted a tiny flame. Then she left her room, shuddering as the chill night air penetrated her thin nightgown.

  She climbed the stairs to the first floor and stealthily, silent as a moth in flight, she crept on bare feet down the dark corridor, shielding her candle with one hand lest a sudden draught extinguish its brave little flame. Several huge, framed portraits of relatives and ancestors of the Darwells frowned sternly down from their gilded frames and an ornate gold French clock, a relic of the Darwells' more affluent days, glinted elegantly from a console table.

  Two doors stood open, revealing furniture covered in dust sheets. There were two more doors opposite one another, but no chink of light filtered out from either. Philip was obviously fast asleep. Perfect!

  Lucy's heart beat quickly as she silently moved the handle of the first door, keeping the candle behind her so that the sudden glow would not wake him. She could make out the silhouettes of the carved oak panel at the foot of the bed and a heavy, imposing chest of drawers beneath the window, but in order to see Philip in bed, she would have to move the candle so that its light shone directly onto the pillow.

  Gradually, she illuminated the room, moving the flame an inch at a time so that the pool of light it cast slowly encroached on the darkness. When the border of the candle's glow touched the pillow, Lucy stifled a gasp. There was no head resting there. The bed was empty and looked as if it had not been slept in at all.

  Crestfallen, she stepped out and closed the door. She repeated her actions on the other side of the hall, but once again there was no sign of occupation. Could she be on the wrong floor entirely?

  By now, Lucy was shaking from cold and fear and the bravado she had felt was beginning to leave her. Perhaps she should simply return to her own bedchamber and count herself lucky that she had been saved from humiliation by an act of fate. Perhaps Philip was in the study or the library, still poring over a book, oblivious to the time of night.

  But the compulsion to see him and make her longings plain to him swept over her once more in a raging, fevered surge. Down the stairs she tiptoed, only to find the study door ajar and the room in darkness. The library similarly yielded no occupant.

  She thought of the huge ballroom with its ghostly atmosphere and shuddered. Even if Philip was in there, which she doubted, nothing would persuade her to enter that empty, echoing space at past midnight, with drapes that wafted in the draughts like the billowing skirts of spectral dancers. She also knew that the faulty catch on the door had a strange way of locking unbidden visitors in.

  There were other doors, but where they led she did not know, and she had no desire to explore them in the middle of the night. Apart from the servants' quarters where Martha, Matthew and the cook, deaf, crabby Eliza were taking their rest, the whole ground floor of the rambling Manor seemed deserted.

  Even Solomon, the brindled hound, had not lifted its head and barked. It was stretched on a mat at the foot of the main stairs, regarding Lucy through one half-open eye. The eye closed and the dog heaved a deep sigh and proceeded to ignore her.

  Lucy paused, rubbed the soft fur on its broad brow and then, remembering having seen Philip do the same thing, the burning urge to find him possessed her once more and she began to climb the stairs again.

  This time, she walked the other way along the hallway, towards the rear of the house where she remembered Philip saying he had his room, as he liked to look out over the hills. As she raised her candle, debating what to do, an area of shadow in one corner suddenly assumed the shape of a man. Lucy stood transfixed, unable to scream, her vocal chords paralysed by fear.

  The man appeared heavily built and dressed in something which gleamed dully in the weak, flickering light. Where his eyes should be, he appeared to be wearing some kind of slitted mask, like an executioner. He made no move towards her and she suddenly realized that he could not. The lurker in the shadows was nothing but an empty suit of armour.

  The relief she felt lent her courage and without further hesitation, she walked unfalteringly towards the door on the left and pushed it open. The candle's guttering light sought the head nestling into the pillows, and found it, but the name she was about to whisper died on her lips as Lucy found herself staring into two red-rimmed, horribly distended eyeballs, yellowed like old parchment, in the center of which were two milky blue discs which hypnotized her with their crazed stare.

  A crack opened beneath a nose on which the papery skin clung thinly to the bone that gleamed beneath, and a dry voice rasped faintly, “Eleanor?”

  Then the eyes bulged terrifyingly and the living cadaver sat up, its livid flesh tinged red in the candlelight as if it were already upon the funeral pyre. The crack opened to a cavern and the deafening roar that burst from it sounded as if a demon had gained possession of the cadaver's soul.

  “ELEANO-O-O-R!”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “Philip … Oh Philip, I am so terribly … I didn't mean …” Lucy's words, spoken in a voice that was choked with tears, were almost incoherent and her breath came in ragged gasps.

  Philip looked ashen as he paced the floor, the green velvet j
acket that was slung round his shoulders looking most incongruous over his nightshirt.

  “You frightened him to death, that's what happened! He thought you were his dead wife come to claim his soul at last. And I'm not surprised the old man was misled. If you had wandered into my bedchamber dressed like that, I would have taken you for a ghost, for sure.

  “But in God's name, woman, what were you doing in his room? Sleepwalking? Or looking for more deeds to steal? Why didn't you kill Hardcastle while you were about it? Instead, that swine is still alive and poisoning the face of the earth with his cheating and whoring, while my poor father …”

  He whirled round to face Lucy, his eyes flashing like slivers of steel, his lips taut with fury.

  “Philip! No, don't hit me, please.” Her whimper appeared to infuriate him still more as he stood over her, hands on his hips, his hair thrown back from his stark, white face. “I just got lost. I couldn't sleep. I ached. I thought that, if I could only walk a bit, ease my muscles –”

  “Going for a walk? Dressed like that, with no shoes? In February? You must be mad! Or else there is some sinister meaning to all this which I have yet to discover.”

  “N-no, nothing s-sinister. I was … I just …”

  “What were you doing going upstairs? I told Martha to warn you never to trespass and especially never to enter any rooms you had no permission to enter. You knew the extent of his frailty. Did you want to kill him?”

  “Of course not,” Lucy whispered.

  This was the very worst thing that could have happened, worse even than entering Philip's room and having had him reject her. To kill his father! She had not known that he had cared so deeply for the old rogue who had gambled his fortune away.

  Now, not only was she held in the deepest possible suspicion, but he would never again look on her with that light of warm interest in his eyes. What's more, she knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that she would be asked to leave as soon as the sun was up.