The Reluctant Widow Read online

  ‘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