The Reluctant Widow Read online

  ‘What should put such a notion as that into your head?’ marvelled the widow. ‘When I understand you have been in London since yesterday!’

  ‘Oho! That is it, is it? But it seemed to me expedient that I should go to London, and you will give me credit for having made the best possible speed back to you.’

  ‘I shall give you credit for nothing. I dare say you went to be measured for a pair of boots!’

  ‘No, but if I told you my object you would think it trifling, I dare say.’ He straightened himself, and said, smiling: ‘Are you very vexed with me for leaving you, ma’am?’

  Mrs Cheviot felt her colour rising, and made haste to reply: ‘Vexed! No, indeed! When you were so thoughtful as to inform Nicky that you believed Mr Francis Cheviot to be a dangerous man! I am sure I ought to be very much obliged to you for the warning, and it must be quite my own fault that I now have a bump as big as a hen’s egg on my head!’

  ‘It is a pity Nicky cannot learn to hold his tongue,’ he remarked. ‘I do not anticipate that Cheviot will be a danger to you, ma’am.’

  Mrs Cheviot recruited herself with another sip of her draught. ‘Of course I have dreamed the whole!’ she said. ‘I was not hit on the head at all!’

  He laughed. ‘You are refining too much upon the event, Mrs Cheviot. I am sure it gave you a fright, but there is not much harm done, and it is unlikely that you will suffer any further annoyance.’

  ‘Oh!’ she gasped. ‘Oh, how abominable you are! Not much harm done, indeed! Further annoyance! Pray, in what terms would you have described my murder?’

  He did not answer for a moment, and then he said curtly: ‘We are not discussing murder, ma’am.’

  ‘You will be, if you mean to keep me tied to this dreadful house!’

  ‘Nonsense! If it was Francis Cheviot who struck you, as I believe it was, I dare say it was the last thing he wished to be obliged to do.’

  ‘I may take what comfort I can from that! But why should he have been obliged to do anything of the sort?’

  He hesitated, and then said: ‘You were holding in your hand some folded papers that might have been the very papers he wishes to obtain.’

  She gazed up at him, one hand pressed to her temple. ‘What, must I now take care never to have a paper in my hand for fear I may be struck down from behind? My lord, it is monstrous! I dare say he must have seen me with papers in my hand half a dozen times already!’

  ‘Yes, possibly, but –’

  ‘But what?’ she demanded, as he broke off, and turned away from her to mend the fire.

  ‘Perhaps it startled him, ma’am, and he sprang to a false conclusion. Whatever be the answer, upon my honour I do not believe you to be in any danger!’ There was a pause, while she eyed him uncertainly. His countenance relaxed; he said: ‘Indeed, my poor child, you have had an uncomfortable time of it at Highnoons, and I am a villain to keep you here. Shall I take you and Miss Beccles up to the Hall?’

  The colour rushed into her cheeks at this; she had the oddest desire to burst into tears, and sought refuge in one of her rallying speeches. ‘What, and leave that creature to ransack the house at will? No, indeed! I hope I am a little better-spirited than that, sir! If I am to be martyred in this cause, no doubt it was so ordained, and I can depend on you for a handsome tombstone!’

  ‘Indeed, you can!’ he replied, smiling, and putting out his hand. ‘It is a bargain, then, and you will stay here.’

  She laid her hand in his. ‘It is a bargain. But for how long am I to endure that creature above-stairs?’

  ‘I should not wonder at it if you were to be rid of him sooner than you expect. I beg you will not tease yourself with thinking of him.’

  Her eyes searched his face. ‘But will he go without what he came for, sir?’

  ‘I hope he may be prevailed upon to do so.’

  ‘Shall you so prevail upon him?’ she asked.

  ‘Perhaps. I shall do my possible. You have been troubled with him for too long.’

  She agreed to it, but added, after a moment’s reflection: ‘And yet, if he does so, who can tell what horrors may next be in store for me?’

  ‘None, upon my honour.’

  ‘Very pretty, my lord, but I have frequently been forced to observe the remarkable disparity that exists between my notions of what is horrid, and yours. Are you ever put out of countenance?’

  ‘Very often.’

  She smiled a little archly. ‘Will you think me very saucy, my lord, if I say that that confession gives me an excessively odd idea of the life you must lead at the Hall? For you have treated as the merest commonplaces every shocking event that has occurred in the last week, from your cousin’s death at Nicky’s hands, to the discovery that you have stumbled upon a dangerous treason. These things appear not to have the power to disturb the tone of your mind! I envy you!’

  ‘Well,’ he said reflectively, ‘two of my sisters, and my brother Harry, were for ever doing such outrageous things that I think I must have grown out of the way of being very much surprised at anything.’

  She laughed, and rose rather shakily to her feet. He put his hand under her elbow to assist her, and escorted her to the door. She parted from him in the hall, declining his offer to take her upstairs. ‘Indeed, I am quite well now! You do not mean to go to London again, I hope?’

  ‘No, I am fixed in Sussex for some time, I believe. You have only to send a message over to the Hall if you should wish to speak with me. May I again impress upon you that you have no need to feel any further alarm?’

  She looked quizzical, but as the doctor just then appeared at the head of the stairs, returned no answer, but went up, leaning on the banister-rail, and saying: ‘You mean to scold me, Dr Greenlaw, but indeed I am going to my room, and I have drunk all that horrid mixture!’

  ‘I am glad of it, ma’am; I can assure you you will be the better for it. I shall call to-morrow, to see how you are going on, if you please.’

  She thanked him; he waited for her to pass him, and then went on down the stairs to where Carlyon stood in the hall. ‘If you will pardon an old man who has known you from your cradle, my lord,’ he said bluntly, ‘I do not understand how that lady came by that bruise on her head, but I will go bail there is some devilment afoot here!’

  ‘I will readily pardon you, but if this is intended as a reproach to me it falls wide of the mark. I assure you I did not give Mrs Cheviot her bruise.’

  The doctor smiled grimly. ‘Very well, my lord, I know how to hold my tongue, I hope.’

  ‘How do you find Mrs Cheviot?’

  ‘Oh, she will do well enough! Someone struck her a stunning blow, however – for all you may say she fell, and so hit her head, my lord.’

  ‘And your other patient?’

  The doctor grunted. ‘I can find nothing amiss with him, beyond a pronounced irritation of the nerves. I have prescribed a few drops of laudanum, but as for sore throats, I see no sign of such a thing!’ He looked up under his brows, and added: ‘Master Nick would have me scare him away with a tale of smallpox in the village, but you may tell him, my lord, that whatever it may be that has occurred at Highnoons, it has given him a pronounced dislike of the place, so that I fancy he will not be plaguing Mrs Cheviot for much longer. As for Master Nick himself, your lordship will like to know that I constrained him to let me take a look at his shoulder when he caught up with me to-day, and I find it healing just as it should.’

  ‘Why, thank you! He was always one to mend quickly.’

  ‘Fortunately for himself!’ Greenlaw said, in his sardonic way. ‘He tells me you had my Lord and Lady Flint with you for a night. I trust her ladyship enjoys her customary health?’

  He lingered for a few minutes, enquiring after the various members of Carlyon’s family, and then put on his coat, and departed. Carlyon went back into the book-room.

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