Reluctant Widow

by Georgette Heyer

  ‘Yes,’ Carlyon said slowly. ‘Yes.’

  John looked at him narrowly. ‘What’s in your head?’

  Carlyon returned no answer, but after a moment said abruptly: ‘I am going up to London. Nicky, will you tell them to bring round the light post-chaise as soon as they may?’

  ‘Going to London?’ repeated John. ‘What the devil for?’

  ‘To try what I can discover there. I shall come back as speedily as I am able. Do you remain here, John, and keep Nicky from doing anything foolhardy! Nicky, understand me, you may stay at Highnoons, and you may watch Francis Cheviot as much as you please as long as you can do so without his finding you a hindrance he might be tempted to remove out of his path. But on no account are you to run your head into danger!’

  ‘Lord, Ned, I’m not afraid of a fellow like Francis Cheviot!’

  ‘Francis Cheviot is a very dangerous man,’ Carlyon said curtly, and left the room.

  Nicky blinked at John. ‘What the deuce makes him think so?’ he asked. ‘For of all the lily-livered –’

  ‘I don’t know, but he was saying something of the sort to me the other night. Of course, if Francis has engaged himself to hand over a certain document to the French, and knows his partner in this pretty piece of treason to be dead, I dare say he will be as dangerous as a cornered rat. Now, mind you do as Ned tells you, Nick! I shall come over to Highnoons myself presently, but it’s not to be expected Francis will make any attempt to search the house during the day, for he would scarcely dare to run the risk of being discovered at that work. I have a good mind to spend the night at Highnoons, quite secretly, of course.’

  ‘Why, he is afraid for his life Bouncer will bite him!’ Nicky laughed. ‘And he knows Bouncer is loose in the house all night!’

  ‘Take care you do not find that dog of yours has been poisoned!’ John said grimly.

  Fifteen

  Elinor and Miss Beccles had spent a quiet, housewifely morning, during the course of which Miss Beccles had announced with simple satisfaction that she believed Highnoons would soon be as pretty a residence as one might find anywhere. She so plainly envisaged a prolonged sojourn in it that Elinor was constrained to remind her that as soon as she was at liberty to do so she was to sell the house. Miss Beccles said that she was by no means persuaded of this being her best course. ‘We might be so comfortable here!’ she said, with a tiny sigh.

  Elinor could only assure her that wherever she went there would be a place for her dearest Becky, but that there could be no question of her remaining on at Highnoons. To which Miss Beccles replied that no doubt his lordship would know best what she should do. This goaded Elinor into delivering herself of a pithy condemnation of his lordship’s tyrannical disposition, and utter lack of regard for the scruples of a decent female. Miss Beccles said wistfully that she did so much like a masterful man, an observation that sent the widow out of the room with something perilously akin to a flounce.

  It was useless to expect Miss Beccles to enter into her sentiments. Indeed, no one with whom she was now in daily contact seemed to have the least appreciation of the awkwardness of her situation. She could not but realise that she was allowing herself to be swept along towards a future that was impenetrably wrapped in a haze of speculation. She could not imagine what was to become of her. It seemed improbable that anything beyond the merest competence would be saved from the wreck of Eustace Cheviot’s fortune: indeed, she could not have borne to have found herself living in affluence as a consequence of her marriage, and must, she told herself, have made over any considerable property by a deed of gift. But, since she was an honest woman, she was bound to own to herself that after this interlude in her drab existence she would find it very hard to return to her previous occupation. A little house, which she could share with Becky, in a modest quarter of the town, seemed to be the best she could hope for, and although this, a week earlier, had represented the sum total of her ambitions, for some reason or other it no longer held any attraction for her.

  The first fruits of the brief notice of her nuptials, which Carlyon had inserted in the London newspapers, had come to her hand already. Letters from two of her cousins, and her least beloved uncle, had reached Highnoons, brought up to the house from the mail-office at Billingshurst by the groom, who had gone there on an errand. Her uncle’s missive, couched in dignified terms, showed him to have taken offence at the secrecy of her marriage, and reminded her, over two crossed pages, that it had not been at his wish or instigation that she had abandoned the shelter of his roof. He had apparently missed the other notice, of Eustace Cheviot’s demise, and wrote that he hoped she might not regret an alliance with one of whom all reports spoke ill.

  The cousins sprinkled their letters with points of admiration, and were obviously agog with curiosity to learn all that must lie behind the formal advertisement in the Times. Both begged her to recall their affection for her, and not to hesitate to invite them to Highnoons if they could be of service to her in her hour of trial. Elinor lost no time in replying to these kind offers, in civil but repelling terms.

  The return of Francis Cheviot from the funeral, in a beaten-down condition that made it necessary for Crawley to be summoned to lend him the support of his arm, was a surprise, but as nothing to the surprise occasioned by his faltering explanation of his overmastering grief. Elinor could only gaze at him in horror. As little as Carlyon did she believe that the young Frenchman’s murder had been at the hands of pickpockets. Some dreadful and sinister force was at work, and she could not suppose that it would cease with the death of De Castres. She had not the least guess who the assassin might be, whether an English agent, or a French one, but that it was connected with some document which De Castres, and Francis Cheviot, and perhaps others as well, believed to be concealed at Highnoons she did not doubt. In her first dismay, she was almost ready to have torn the house down brick by brick, only to be rid of whatever was so cunningly hidden in it, but soberer reflection gave her thoughts a more proper direction, and she could not but acknowledge that it was the part of a loyal Englishwoman to do her possible to frustrate the enemies of her country, however ruthless these might be. But she wished she had not been the appointed Englishwoman.

  Looking upon Francis’s pallid countenance, she could not wonder at his discomfiture. Although she might have little dependence on the sensibility which cast him into such apparent woe, she could not doubt that he was labouring under considerable nervous tension. It found expression in a shriller note in his voice, and the testiness with which he rounded on his valet for some fault. His smile seemed forced, and his movements less measured and graceful than they had been before the receipt of the tidings from London. Elinor could almost have pitied him had she not stood in such dread that his fear of the implacable master whom both he and De Castres served might lead him to undertake some desperate action in which she might become involved. She was in a fever to put out the whole to Carlyon, and once Francis had gone upstairs to lie down upon his bed, with smelling-salts and hartshorn and the blinds drawn, she could scarcely drag herself away from the parlour windows, which commanded a view of the front drive. Provokingly matter-of-fact Carlyon might be, but she owned it would be an inexpressible comfort to see his tall figure entering the house, and to hear his quiet voice coolly making light of her alarms.

  But it was not Carlyon who at last came riding up from the gate, but only Nicky, who had shed his funeral wear, in defiance of his brother John, for a blue coat with large silver buttons, and very yellow buckskins; and was bestriding a raw-boned hunter which took instant exception to Bouncer’s ecstatic greeting of his master. Nicky was fully occupied for a minute or two in a tussle with his horse, but he caught sight of Elinor presently, and waved, shouting: ‘I’ll just stable Rufus! Isn’t he a proper highbred ’un? Just playing off his tricks, you know! He don’t care a button for Bouncer, of course. He’s been eating his head off in the stable, poor old fellow
!’

  She nodded, and smiled, able to sympathize, even in her agitated state of mind, with his pride in his horse. He rode on towards the stables, and she resigned herself to a prolonged wait while he saw the noble animal properly rubbed down, and bestowed.

  Twenty minutes later he came striding into the house, and, laying down his hat and whip on the table in the hall, said in an undervoice vibrant with excitement: ‘Where is Cheviot?’

  ‘In his bedchamber, with the blinds drawn, and Crawley chafing his feet. Oh, Nicky –’

  ‘Hush! Come into the book-room, cousin: we must not be talking here, where we might be overheard.’

  ‘Oh, no!’ she agreed, going towards the book-room obediently. ‘But indeed I think he is in truth laid down upon his bed. He is suffering the greatest irritation of nerves: I cannot allow that to be called into question.’

  ‘Lord, yes, don’t I know it!’ he said, shutting the door securely, and treading over to the fire to cast another log on to it. ‘Sick as a horse! He told you that Louis De Castres has been murdered?’

  ‘Yes, and the reflections this shocking event conjures up are so horrid that my own nerves are in a sad way. Where is your brother? I had hoped he might have come back here with you!’

  ‘No, no, you will not be seeing Ned to-day!’ Nicky replied. ‘He has gone up to London – driving post, you know, and taking his own bays over the first two stages! Prime goers, those bays of his! Beautiful steppers!’

  ‘Gone up to London!’ she exclaimed in a stupefied tone.

  ‘Yes. He said he would come back as fast as he could, but –’

  ‘Does he know of that Frenchman’s death?’ she demanded, interrupting him without compunction.

  ‘Oh, yes! Well, of course he does! It is to do with that he has gone to town, though he would not tell us what he meant to do there. John is at the Hall still, and if you should like it he says he will spend the night here, without Francis’s being any the wiser, of course. And, by Jupiter, Cousin Elinor, I must take care Bouncer does not eat anything I do not give him myself, for John thinks Francis, or that tooth-drawer of a valet of his, may seek to poison him! But I have been training Bouncer not to take food from the hand of any stranger, so I dare say there is not the least fear on that score.’

  She refrained from telling him that his favourite apparently considered the offer of a bone or a scrap of meat sufficient introduction to put him on terms of acquaintance with the seediest stranger, and said: ‘Your brother knew this, and has gone off to town without a word vouchsafed to me?’

  ‘Oh, he knew I was to return here, and should inform you of his journey! It is the most famous affair, cousin! We cannot tell what may happen next!’

  ‘Very true! And for that reason I should have wished to have had speech with his lordship!’

  ‘Well, I fancy he don’t know either, but I don’t mind telling you this, cousin: he thinks Francis is a very dangerous man! He said so, and bade me take care what I was about here.’

  ‘Oh, he did?’ exclaimed Elinor, rigid with wrath. ‘I am sure I am very much obliged to him! And am I to take care what I am about, or is that of no consequence?’

  Nicky smiled engagingly down at her. ‘Bouncer and I will take good care of you, Cousin Elinor.’

  ‘I have a very good mind to pack up my trunk, and to leave this house within the hour!’

  ‘You will not!’

  ‘No, I will not,’ she said crossly. ‘But it is the most infamous thing! When I see your brother – if ever I do see him again, which very likely I shall not, as I dare say I shall soon be found with my throat cut from ear to ear! – I shall have something to say to him! Oh, when I think of the hideous case in which I am, and all through his crazy schemes, which he has the effrontery to say are very sensible, I could – I could go into strong hysterics!’

  He laughed. ‘Ay! You will have a spasm, I dare say, like one of my sisters’ governesses! But this is no time to be funning, cousin!’

  ‘Funning!’

  ‘Now, be serious! Oh, Cousin Elinor, did you ever suppose – when you were quite young, I mean: in the schoolroom – that you would one day find yourself pitted against French agents?’

  ‘No, Nicky, I did not. Nothing that has happened to me during the past week did I expect, even when I was in the schoolroom – where I very much wish I was now!’

  ‘I am persuaded you do not! Why, how could you? But the thing is, what will Francis do now?’

  ‘That thought has been occupying my mind this past hour.’

  ‘He is such a poor-spirited fellow, you know, that I do not at all believe that he will attempt anything of a violent nature. I wish he would!’

  ‘Yes, I am sure you do.’

  ‘No,’ said Nicky, unheeding. ‘If Ned is right, and he is indeed a dangerous fellow – but I own I cannot believe that a fellow that prefers cats to dogs, and will not stir without he has his smelling-salts with him can be worth a button! – but if it is so indeed, then I’ll swear he will go to work in some devilish cunning way you and I would never think of!’

  ‘You are very likely right, and every word you say adds to my conviction that I had best pack up and be off to Mrs Macclesfield this very day.’

  ‘Mrs Macclesfield? Oh, that female you was to have gone to! It is a good thing Ned would not let you, isn’t it? You would not have liked to have missed all this sport!’

  Elinor had not consorted with adolescents for six years without learning when it was useless to persevere in the attempt to convey to them ideas that were wholly alien to their minds, and she now made no further effort to bring Nicky to an appreciation of her own sentiments. She agreed that it would have been a shocking thing to have missed spending a week in almost continuous alarm; and was rewarded by his telling her with impulsive warmth that he had known all along that she was a right one. He then did what lay in his power to undermine whatever fortitude was left to her by recounting, with embel-lishments, John’s theories on the murder of De Castres.

  ‘John does not think that it can have been one of our fellows,’ he said, striding about the room with all the energetic restlessness of a young gentleman itching to be up and doing. ‘He says, of course, there is no knowing what such men will be at, but he inclines to the belief Louis must have been killed by those who employ him.’

  ‘Only for failing to procure what was wanted?’ she faltered.

  ‘Oh, no! John has a notion they may have suspected him of not dealing quite honestly with them. You see, he is persuaded that Louis was never a principal, because nothing seems to be known about him, and of course our people are generally pretty watchful, and know more than you would suppose. The thing is that there is very likely someone, and I dare say more than just one man, who is behind it all. I should not be at all surprised if it were someone no one suspects in the least. What capital fun it will be if he comes to have a touch at us himself!’

  ‘Yes, indeed! And to make it even better, I dare say, since he appears to be such a desperate character, he will stop at nothing to obtain his ends.’

  ‘Exactly so! Particularly if he should suppose that we have that paper safely in our possession!’

  She could not repress a gasp of dismay, but common sense came to her rescue, and she suggested diffidently that if they had had the paper they must surely have restored it to its rightful owners.

  Nicky, after considering this with some dissatisfaction, was obliged to own that there was something in what she said. He cheered up after a moment or two, and said: ‘But only conceive what a famous tangle it is, with the only man who knew where the paper was hid dead, and you living in this house, so that whatever is done to find the thing must be done by stealth! The more I think of it the more I believe they are bungling the affair sadly! The thing to have done would have been to have got into Highnoons by a ruse. By Jupiter, yes! Someone should have been sent to y
ou as a servant, and only think how easily a seeming servant could ransack the place!’

  Her mind darted to the two young wenches hired by Mrs Barrow, to the carpenter who had been sent for to mend defective hinges, and broken chair-legs, and even to the boy who had been engaged to assist the gardener in his labours. She started half out of her chair, exclaiming: ‘Good God! You do not think that that man who was working here all the morning – or the maids – or –’

  ‘No, I’m afraid not,’ Nicky said wistfully. ‘You mean Redditch, do you? I must say it is a first-rate notion, but I have known Redditch all my life. And as for the maids, ain’t one of them Mrs Barrow’s niece, and the other a girl from the village?’

  ‘Of course!’ she said, sinking back again. ‘I do not know how I came to be so stupid! It is your fault, you horrid boy, for putting such dreadful ideas into my head! And now I come to think of it, I have not the least apprehension that any sinister stranger will arrive at Highnoons, for it is not at all reasonable to suppose that the man who employed De Castres can be aware that your cousin was employed as a go-between.’

  ‘Why not?’ demanded Nicky, staring.

  ‘Because if this dreadful person knew who was the man from whom De Castres obtained information he must surely have approached him himself! Why should the French Government be paying two persons where one would suffice? I am sure they would never do so!’

  Nicky thought this over. ‘Well, yes,’ he admitted, in some discontent. ‘I dare say that may be so. And that is why Francis is forced to act in the matter himself, which I’ll wager he never wanted to do! I must say, it will be a dead bore if Francis is the only man we have to reckon with!’