There was silence.
Verena could see that the two men were facing each other and she knew by the tenseness of the gentleman’s figure that he was angry and at the same time alarmed.
“What are you asking?” he enquired at last and the resentful note in his voice was very obvious.
“Five hundred sovereigns, sir,” Hickson answered in an almost silky tone. “I can’t manage with less. ’Tis quite impossible. And seein’ the size of this haul, sir, the men are expectin’ a trifle more. Say now a hundred sovereigns each.”
“Curse you! This is blackmail!” the gentleman exclaimed.
“No indeed, sir,” Hickson said in shocked tones. “Just a generous gesture on your part and an expression of your satisfaction, sir, at the way that your plans were carried out.”
“Blast you, you know I cannot refuse,” the gentleman exclaimed. “Very well, you can take the blasted money when we get to London. But don’t drive me too far, Hickson, or I might find other agents to carry out my commands.”
“I think it might be a mistake, sir, at this juncture, were we to fall out over a few paltry coins.”
Hickson’s voice was still that of a well-trained servant, but at the same time there was no mistaking the threat underlying his words.
There was just a moment’s pause and Verena could see that the men were eyeing each other. Then the gentleman turned towards the cellar steps, carrying the sack in one hand.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said harshly, “before it becomes too curst dangerous.”
He walked away. Hickson put the sack containing the notes under one arm and then picked up the two remaining boxes.
His cudgel dangled from the fingers of one hand.
Looking around the cellar, he seemed to stare for a moment at the Duke and then, chuckling beneath his breath, he followed in the wake of his Master.
Verena did not move.
She waited, half-afraid that one of them might return until, listening intently, far away in the distance she thought that she heard the sound of horses’ hoofs.
*
The Duke was suddenly aware of voices, voices speaking in low tones. Yet at first he could not understand what they were saying.
He had thought, on the few occasions when he had been capable of coherent thought, that he was on a battlefield and he had been wounded. He could remember wondering why the ground felt so soft.
The pain in his head had been very real and he had imagined that a French bullet might be lodged in it or maybe he had been close shaved by a cannonball.
He could recall crying out because he was so thirsty and wondered who could have brought him a drink in a cup rather than in an Army water bottle. What he had drunk had not had the brackish taste of water that had travelled for several days on the saddle of a horse!
Then he thought how infuriating it was to be wounded after having survived for so long unscathed.
‘Damn the Frenchies,’ he murmured to himself and thought that a woman answered him which was, of course, ridiculous!
But now he knew that he was lying in a bed, a soft bed. His head still hurt and it was too much effort to open his eyes.
Then he heard a man’s voice say,
“You’re sure it’s not too much for you, Miss Verena, stayin’ up yet another night with the gentleman? You had best let Dr. Graves send us Mrs. Doughty.”
“I would not have that drunken old midwife in the house,” a young voice replied scornfully, “let alone allowing her to look after a sick man. Don’t worry about me, Travers, you have Grandpapa on your hands and that is enough for anyone!”
“I don’t like it, Miss Verena, and that’s a fact.”
“Well, you will just have to put up with it,” Verena answered with a hint of laughter in her voice. “You know as well as I do, Travers, that I am well able to care for anyone who is sick. Now go to bed and, if I need you, I will ring the bell. That I promise.”
“If the gentleman comes conscious, you let me know at once, Miss Verena. And if he begins throwin’ himself about again in delirium ‒ ”
“If he does, I will take care of him as I have done before,” Verena interrupted. “You must admit, Travers, that I was the only person who could handle him.”
“That be true enough, Miss Verena. Well, if there’s anythin’ you want you’ve but to ring the bell or give me a call. I’m only just down the passage, as well you know.”
“Go to bed, Travers, and stop clucking over me like a broody hen!” Verena said. “The doctor expects that Major Royd is unlikely to regain consciousness until tomorrow. Goodnight, Travers.”
“Goodnight, miss.”
There was the sound of a closing door and now that the waves of darkness had started to recede from the Duke’s brain and then he began to recall the girl in the green habit waiting for the Duke of Selchester! The ruined Priory where she had taken him. The locked door in the cellar – yes, that was where it had all happened!
He could remember the sudden crash on his head, the sensation of falling, then darkness, a darkness in which he had felt himself struggling for hours or was it days?
With what seemed an almost superhuman effort, the Duke opened his eyes. He was lying in a large canopied bed, a curtain was pulled on one side to shield him from a lit candle and, sitting beside the bed in a high-backed chair, was Verena.
He remembered her now. The small heart-shaped face with its elfin loveliness, the gold speckled eyes and the dark brown hair that fell over her shoulders, he did not recall that it was so long.
Then he realised that she was wearing a wrap of white wool, corded round her slim waist with wide sleeves almost like a monk’s robe.
There was a book in her hand and she was holding it sideways so as to catch the light from the candle.
The Duke did not speak, but all at once she looked up at him as if she sensed that he was no longer unconscious.
She set down her book, rose and came to his side.
“Are you awake at last?” she enquired in a soft musical voice.
He did not reply and she put a small cool hand on his forehead. It made him recall how often in the torturous darkness of his dreams he had felt the coolness of that hand and had thought that it was the cold wind blowing over the snowy mountains of Portugal.
“Where am ‒ I?”
His lips could hardly form the words, but she understood.
“You are in my grandfather’s house,” she answered. “You are quite safe and I am nursing you.”
“How long?”
“This is the second day you have been here,” she replied, “and it will be the third night since you received the blows on your head.”
“Who was it?”
“I will tell you later,” she replied. “Go to sleep.”
He felt her fingers moving on his forehead and the gentle pressure seemed almost mesmeric. There was so much more he wanted to ask her, but somehow it was not of any consequence.
He was tired, he wanted to sleep, and the insistence of those fingers was quite irresistible –
*
When the Duke awoke again, it was morning.
There was no sign of Verena, but a manservant was tidying his bed. He was not a young man, but there was something in his carriage and in the way he held his head and shoulders that told the Duke that he had been a soldier.
Then he remembered he was in the house of General Sir Alexander Winchcombe – “Old Bark and Bite”. And it was his grand-daughter who had brought him here. The same girl, curse her, who was responsible for the dreadful pain in his head.
“I see you are awake, sir,” a respectful voice came from before him. “Would you care for something to eat or drink?”
“I would like a shave,” the Duke replied.
“Very good, sir, and may I suggest you partake of the light gruel that Miss Verena has prepared for you?”
‘I will take nothing of the sort,’ he wanted to retort, but somehow it was too much of an effort.
/>
When the gruel came, he drank it.
He was not asleep when the servant shaved him although most of the time he kept his eyes closed.
However, he must have dozed off as it seemed only a few minutes later that it was the afternoon and Verena came into the room with the doctor behind her.
The Duke had thought himself annoyed with her and yet, when she came to his side and stood there smiling at him engagingly, he found it impossible not to smile back.
She looked so young, so fresh and infuriatingly well in the sunlight streaming through the windows.
“Here is Doctor Graves to see you, Major Royd.”
The doctor was a jovial middle-aged man, who, despite a practice covering many miles of country, found time to hunt three days in the winter and to enjoy boating trips in the summer on the River Ouse.
He examined the Duke’s head carefully.
“It’s a good thing you are so tall, Major,” he said. “If the blow had been on the top of your head we might have been in trouble! As it is the cudgel, or whatever those villainous footpads used, stunned you, but has done you no particular damage. We need not be afraid that you will end up in Bedlam!”
The doctor chuckled at his joke, which the Duke thought singularly unfunny.
“Rest is what you require,” the doctor continued. “Rest and sleep. Eat anything you fancy, but don’t try to get up until you are quite certain that the floor will not rise up and hit you in the face!”
Again the doctor chuckled.
“You have a good physique, young man, which is half the battle, and, as you are a soldier, that is the right expression if I may say so.”
“How long shall I have to stay here?” the Duke asked.
“If you take my advice, you will stay here as long as possible,” the doctor said. “You are comfortable, you do not have to exert yourself and you have an excellent nurse.”
He smiled at Verena as he spoke.
“Thank you kindly, doctor,” she replied. “Unfortunately your patient does not appreciate me. Indeed, when he was delirious, he kept thinking I was one of Bonaparte’s soldiers and was trying to shoot me!”
“Make him apologise,” the doctor suggested, “or dock his rations.”
Enjoying his own sense of humour, the doctor patted the Duke on the shoulder.
“Now be sensible, Major. If you get up too soon, you will feel as if your head is being split open with a chopper. And what is more you may well find yourself back in bed for a week or two. I will call in two days’ time and no heroics until I see you again.”
He walked across the room with Verena following him. The Duke heard them talking about the General until he could hear them no more.
His head was still hurting more than he cared to admit to himself. Because he disliked the feeling of being helpless, he scowled at Verena when she came back into the room.
“One thing should cheer you up,” she remarked. “You are not going to be a turnip-brain as a result of all this!”
“That is, of course, a great comfort to me,” the Duke remarked drily. “And I would like to point out, young woman, that this would not have occurred at all had you not persuaded me to go seeking for highwaymen in that peculiarly unpleasant cellar of yours!”
“It was not highwaymen who attacked you or a footpad as I told the doctor,” Verena answered. “It was the Bullion thieves!”
The Duke forgot his own grievances.
“Bullion thieves! How do you know?”
“I saw them. Oh, I am so glad you are better. I have been aching to tell you what happened. Are you well enough to listen to my story?”
“Of course I am well enough!” the Duke replied sharply. “Tell me exactly what happened.”
She hesitated.
“The doctor said you were to be kept quiet.”
“If there is one thing that is likely to put me in a fidget,” the Duke replied, “it is that after having whetted my curiosity you should refuse to tell me what occurred after I was ignominiously disposed of by an unseen hand.”
“The hand that held the cudgel belonged to a man called ‘Hickson’,” Verena replied. “He did not look in the least like a highwayman or even the desperado he is. I heard him admit to having killed the two guards on the Bullion coach and to have bound and gagged the coachmen.”
The Duke was so interested that he made a movement as if he would sit up. But then there came a sharp excruciating pain in his head, which made him sink back again against the pillows.
“No, don’t move,” Verena said to him sharply, adjusting the pillows carefully behind him.
“I cannot see you properly,” he complained weakly. “I don’t want to miss a word of what you are telling me.”
“Then I will sit on the bed so that you can see me.”
Without any sign of shyness or embarrassment, she perched on the side of the high bed that was wide enough to be intended for two people.
The Duke could lie at his ease looking up at her and he thought once again that she was unlike any young woman he had ever met before.
Her hair was neatly arranged with fashionable curls falling on each side of her cheeks and the rest was coiled neatly on the top of her head.
He recalled how, when he had first come back to consciousness, it had fallen over her shoulders, reaching, he thought, almost to her waist. And now in the sunlight streaming through the window he could see that there were shimmers of gold in the russet brown.
He could also see the sparkling gold in her eyes as she started to tell him what had occurred in the cellar.
The story took her a long time in the telling and, when Verena had finished, the Duke knew that there were a thousand questions he wanted to ask her.
But he was too tired. Slowly his eyelids covered his eyes and he was conscious that Verena had bent forward to put her hand once again on his forehead.
There was something so very comforting in the soft coolness of her hand, which he remembered had massaged Salamanca’s fetlock too.
The thought of his horse roused him from the sleep that was seeping over him like a warm wave.
“Salamanca?” he murmured.
“He is quite safe in Grandpapa’s stable,” Verena answered. “Don’t worry about him.”
The Duke was asleep just after she had said the last word.
When he awoke again, it was to see to his astonishment a shock of untidy red hair and a pair of impudent blue eyes staring at him curiously.
“Billy!” the Duke cried, saying the word to himself more to be sure he remembered it than in addressing his new visitor.
“Be you better, Major?” Billy asked. “Miss Verena has gone to the Big House to see Miss Charmaine. She says I’m to tell you she’d be back shortly and to sit ’ere in case you wanted summat.”
The Duke considered for a moment before he asked,
“Do you think you could run an errand for me without telling Miss Verena or anyone else?”
“’Course I could!” Billy answered. “I dinna talk, not if I gives me promise.”
“Then I want you to take a note for me to Eaton Socon,” the Duke said. “Can you manage that, Billy?”
“’Course I can,” Billy replied scornfully. “I’ll walk there in under the hour if I goes across the fields. ’Tis like as not I’ll get a lift back in Farmer Wilk’s gig!”
“Then please find me a pen and some paper,” the Duke said. “I have to write a note.”
It all took time. The Duke found it difficult lying on his back to hold a piece of paper firm against a book while he wrote with a quill pen.
Once or twice the words he was writing seemed to swim before his eyes, but finally he managed to inscribe quite legibly,
“I have been detained. Stay where you are until I send for you.
On no account let this boy learn my name, but reward him with two crowns.
Selchester.”
The Duke addressed the note to Mr. Carter, The White Horse Inn, Eaton Socon. He won
dered what his anxious clerk would make of it. But he knew that, whatever his private feelings, Mr. Carter would obediently carry out his employer’s instructions.
Giving the letter to Billy, the Duke asked him,
“Can you read?”
“Nay.”
“Then take this note to The White Horse at Eaton Socon. You know the inn, I suppose?”
“Everyone knows The White Horse,” Billy grinned.
“Ask for a Mr. Carter. When you see him, hand him the note and he will give you two crowns.”
“Two crowns!” Billy exclaimed. “Be you sure of that, Major?”
“If he does not, I will give them to you on your return,” the Duke promised. “But I reckon you will find that Mr. Carter will not fail his obligation.”
“How soon can I be off?” Billy enquired, obviously eager to receive such untold wealth.
“As soon as Miss Verena returns and has no further use for you and, Billy, give me your word you will not divulge our secret to her.”
“Break me promise or tell a lie,
High on the gibbet may I die!”
Billy recited breathlessly.
The Duke felt that such an oath should be fairly foolproof and then, feeling quite exhausted with the effort he had made he closed his eyes.
It was not long before Verena returned and Billy was relieved of his charge.
“I hope he has been no trouble to you?” Verena asked.
“On the contrary. He has been most helpful,” the Duke replied and then saw Billy winking at him behind Verena’s back with a faint sense of amusement.
It was a long time, he thought to himself, since anyone had treated him with such scant courtesy, but there was a comradeship about it that somehow was vaguely heart-warming.
As soon as Billy had left, Verena pulled off the tricorn hat that she wore with her velvet riding habit and perched on the side of the bed.
“I have such excitements to tell you,” she began. “The Duke has not appeared!”
“Not appeared,” the Duke echoed. “Just what can have happened to him?”
“Lord Upminster is now almost convinced that the letter he received announcing His Grace’s visit was a hoax, written by one of his envious competitors whose cattle did not win as many prizes at the local Show as his Lordship’s.
The Odious Duke Page 8