A Sister's Secret (48 page)

‘Oh, I vow that man’s arrogance unbearable, and he himself despicable!’

Drawing breath, Helene said, ‘He also assured me you are not going back to America except over his dead body.’

‘Oh!’ Caroline put her fingertips to her eyelids and pressed them in anguish. ‘Go away! Please go away!’

‘Ah, Sammy,’ said Captain Burnside.

Sammy was in the stables, about to shoe a horse. He looked young but workmanlike, and his eyes lit up to see the captain, whom he considered a rare dab hand at dealing with life. ‘Why, it’s you yourself, guv’nor. I’m that pleased to see you, sir. You’ve come to stay a bit?’

‘I’m staying, yes, you can say that,’ said the captain, and
gave Sammy a friendly pat on the arm. ‘Here’s my horse. Can you rub her down and stable her?’

‘Willingly,’ said Sammy. ‘And oats, Cap’n Burnside?’

‘I’ll rely on you, but let me know how much she’s taken between now and the time I go. I’ll need to reimburse Her Ladyship.’

‘D’you mean pay, sir?’ asked Sammy, askance. ‘Lady Caroline won’t go much on that, guests paying for their ’osses’ oats.’

‘It’s a question of principle, d’you see,’ said the captain in pleasant and confiding fashion. ‘Her Ladyship and yours truly are presently in argument.’

‘Oh, Lor’,’ said Sammy, ‘that’s a stiff one to take, sir, you and Her Ladyship on an up-and-downer. And her being such a fine lady, and all. But it ain’t too serious, guv’nor?’

‘Well, critical at the moment, I must confess,’ said Captain Burnside. ‘In fact, I ain’t actually allowed into the house.’

‘Lord help us, that’s a blinder, sir,’ said Sammy, shaking his head and dislodging a stray straw from his hair.

‘We shall arrive in calmer waters eventually, though it’s stormy today. Young fellow, I ain’t proposing you should be disloyal, and I know you won’t be, but you can tell me, I hope, if Her Ladyship is regularly out and about.’

‘Ah,’ said Sammy, and examined his loyalties. Captain Burnside, he reckoned, had taken a fancy to Her Ladyship, and Her Ladyship, being in the kind of mood she’d never been in before, wasn’t making it easy for him. And she was talking about going back to America. ‘Well, guv’nor, I can tell you she ain’t one for sitting indoors when she’s here, that she ain’t. She’s been out riding several times, and bringing her ’oss back lathered.’

‘I’d like to be tipped the wink when she next rides out. Can I rely on you, Sammy?’

‘You can rely on me if she don’t tell me not to tell you,’ said Sammy. ‘If she says I ain’t to, then I ain’t a-going to, begging your pardon and all, sir.’

‘Quite right, Sammy. What she tells you you mustn’t do, you won’t do. What she doesn’t tell you to do, you can do. Excellent. You’re a capital young fellow.’

‘Guv’nor, I think you’ve just put me on the ropes,’ said Sammy.

‘It will help the calmer seas to arrive,’ said the captain. ‘I shall be within hearing distance.’

He took a stroll in the gardens below the terrace. From a drawing room, Caroline saw him again. She clenched her hands and gritted her teeth. There he was, meandering, in his beaver hat, and idly swinging his cane, as if all was well with his world. His presence was confining her. She would not, could not, go out while he was here. To meet him, to come face to face with him, would do her no good at all. Oh, how dare he put himself back in her life, how dared he have the effrontery to come and to stay? She had fared very badly. First Clarence, wholly decadent, and now this man, wholly spurious.

John Forbes appeared, walking in his deliberate way. He came up from the parkland, and she saw him turn and advance on Captain Burnside.

‘Captain Burnside?’ said Mr Forbes.

‘Good afternoon, Mr Forbes,’ said the captain.

‘You’re visiting?’ asked the steward.

‘I arrived an hour ago. I’m now taking in the tranquil effect of these gardens.’

‘You must thank George Cutts for that. He’s head gardener. Good afternoon to you, sir.’ Mr Forbes had no idea Captain Burnside was presently in argument with Her Ladyship, though he was well aware Her Ladyship
was not at her best. He had no sooner reached his office a minute or so later than she appeared.

‘John,’ she said, ‘you have just been speaking to Captain Burnside. What did he say to you?’

Mr Forbes, thinking she looked unwell, said, ‘He remarked he was taking in the tranquil effect of your gardens.’

‘He has arrived uninvited,’ said Caroline coldly. ‘He has refused to go. Will you please prevail on him to take himself off? I am receiving no visitors, none.’

‘Your Ladyship, he’s refused to go?’

‘He has. I declare him unwelcome. Therefore, please see to it that he departs.’

Mr Forbes, a grave man, gave himself time to reflect. ‘Your Ladyship,’ he said, ‘am I being asked to intervene because you’ve quarrelled with Captain Burnside?’

‘How dare you!’ said Caroline.

‘It was put respectfully,’ said Mr Forbes.

‘Ask him to leave, please. Call the gardeners if he proves objectionable, and have them carry him off the estate.’ And Caroline turned and swept away.

She watched again from the drawing room. She saw Mr Forbes speaking to the captain. The captain nodded, cut off a dead rose bloom with a swish of his cane, lifted his hat to the steward, and strolled away. She lost sight of him as he made for the stables. Mr Forbes returned to the house, and reported that Captain Burnside had consented to go.

‘Thank you, John,’ said Caroline, ‘and forgive me if I was too demanding of you.’

So, he had come and he had gone. The ice around her heart turned leaden.

Captain Burnside rode back to the house under cover of darkness that night. He stabled his horse, removed his hat and coat, made a bed of a great mound of dry straw, settled himself down, composed his thoughts, and went to sleep.

‘Oh, save my soul,’ said Sammy. Captain Burnside was at the pump, shirtsleeves rolled up. He was dousing his head in the cold water. ‘Sir, you’re a hot potato, that you are. The word’s out. You ain’t permitted nowhere near the place. I’ll get stoned if I don’t see you off.’

Captain Burnside shook the water from his hair. ‘Well, there it is, Sammy, stormy as a raging south-wester,’ he said. ‘Be a good young fellow and find me a razor. I ain’t half my usual self when I’m unshaven. And a crust or two would be very welcome.’

‘Oh, Lor’, that’s another blinder,’ said Sammy. ‘Guv’nor, you’ll get me topped.’

‘Sammy, I ain’t as much in need of a few crusts as I am of a friend. Just a razor, then, how will that do?’

Sammy gave a huge grin. ‘Seeing you ain’t short of nerve, guv’nor, I’ll risk getting topped.’

‘In that case,’ said the captain, freshened by the cold water, ‘you won’t lack a consoling companion. We’ll get topped together. But not a word out of place; can I rely on that?’

‘Her Ladyship ain’t yet told me what I mustn’t do today,’ said Sammy, and sidled off.

The warm breeze blew in her face, and the sunlight danced ahead of her. The side-saddle was firm, and she was expertly at home in it, her black gelding a flyer. She galloped to take out of her heart and mind everything except the glory of the August morning. The speed of
the gallop was an antidote to cold, crushing anguish. And it helped her to reject the persistent intrusion into her mind: the thought that she was in blind, obsessive martyrdom of herself.

The boundary brick wall of the estate appeared in the distance. She turned her horse, continuing her reckless gallop as she made for Wivenden Wood, its trees profuse with summer leaf. She heard a sound behind her. She looked back. A horseman, fifty yards away, his head bare, was racing up on her. She went rigid in her saddle, and her frisky gelding pulled on the bit. Her body shivered and she clenched her teeth, digging with a spur.

He had come back, he was behind her, and the suffering was a torment. She raced over the thick grass alongside the wood, heading back to the house. He raced after her. He did not attempt to catch her up. He knew that at the pace she was going, and had been going, she would run her mount to a standstill long before she reached the house. He stayed within twenty yards of her, watching her ride like a madwoman. He did not call, or shout. He let her gallop on. She looked back, more than once, and she did not utter a sound, either.

Her gelding began to flounder, to falter, at which point Captain Burnside came up beside her.

‘Kindly stop,’ he said.

‘Never! Never for you!’

‘Gently, marm, gently,’ he said.

‘Oh!’ she raged, and struck at him with her riding crop. It caught him across his jaw. Her gelding, blown and lathered, stopped, head hanging, flanks heaving. Captain Burnside pulled up and dismounted. She slapped wildly at her horse, but it was too winded to respond. The captain reached for her with long arms. She struck him again. He pulled her from her saddle, her fury almost hysterical
as she tumbled into his arms, her top hat falling off. He held her, and she kicked in his arms.

‘It won’t do, marm, it won’t do at all,’ he said.

‘Let me go!’

He set her on her feet. Bitter, glittering and utterly outraged, she struck at him yet again. His arm came up, warding off the blow. He shook his head at her.

‘I ain’t ever put a woman over my knees before,’ he said, ‘but I fancy if I don’t do it now, you’ll never come to your senses.’

He bent low, he wound an arm around her, and he straightened up. Caroline screamed as she found herself hanging over his shoulder, his right arm wrapped around her skirted legs. Her hair came loose. Frenziedly, she beat at his back. He carried her into the shelter of the wood. In a clearing, he found an ideal tree stump. He seated himself, and Caroline screamed again as he brought her down over his knees. The indignity was paralysing, and horror rushed to suffuse her with fiery colour as her riding skirt and underskirt were whirled upwards over her back, uncovering her pantaloons. Oh, dear God, he really was going to do it!

‘No,’ she gasped, ‘no!’

‘Shall we talk, then, Your Ladyship?’

‘Yes – yes.’

He released her. She escaped her indignity, her skirts falling into place, her brown coat awry, her hair disordered, her face burning.

‘This ain’t an inconsequential matter, marm,’ he said, ‘it’s life and death.’

‘Your death,’ she said, but her bitter look was gone, and so was the misery of feeling locked in numbing ice. In its place was a swamping, surging tide of reborn gladness at simply being alive. What had happened to her that
she had become a grey, cold, self-pitying and unproud shadow of herself? Why, here he was, the torment of her being, and she could not be called a true woman if she did not stand up and fight him. ‘Sir,’ she said, ‘before I catalogue your infamies, I must congratulate you on your bravery in dragging a helpless woman from her horse and assaulting her.’

‘Helpless?’ he said, fingering his tender jaw.

‘You shall pay dearly for subjecting me to such indignity. I have discovered all your sins. You are a fraudulent wretch and a worthless deceiver.’

‘I thought, Your Ladyship, you were aware of that from the beginning.’

‘In the beginning, you led me to believe you were a professional adventurer, an unprincipled rogue and a shameless blackguard. This beginning itself, sir, was an act of contemptible fraudulence.’

‘I agree, marm, and confess it so, humbly,’ declared the captain, ‘but I’m no more than an ordinary blackguard, such as you may come across every day in London. But as things were—’

‘Ordinary?’ said Caroline, spirited now. ‘Did you not declare you would commit any crime short of assassination or murder? There are few men so lost to all grace and decency as to deliver lies of such magnitude as you did, and to one as kind and trusting as myself.’

‘Quite so, marm, but the circumstances, d’you see—’

‘You are not an adventurer, a rogue or a thief, but you are a man of deceits,’ said Caroline. She had grasped the nettle and seized the initiative. She was in her element, finding entirely new exhilaration in standing up to him instead of denying him access to her presence. ‘Why, you are not even a professional card-sharp.’

‘I’m a professional soldier, though not of the usual
kind,’ he said. ‘I execute uncommon commissions for His Majesty’s government.’

‘As I have discovered to the cost of my self-respect. The Duke of Avonhurst, my father-in-law, confessed all your deceits. Do you now say, sir, that you did not compromise your adjutant’s wife or decamp with the trinkets of young ladies who thought you would marry them?’

‘God forbid I should even dream of it,’ said Captain Burnside, ‘and God forgive your father-in-law for spilling the beans.’

‘My father-in-law does not spill beans, sir. He is a gentleman of honour, and in honourable fashion he—’ Caroline broke off as Captain Burnside coughed. ‘Sir?’ she said haughtily.

‘A cough ain’t always significant, Your Ladyship.’

‘My father-in-law, as a matter of honour, felt impelled to acquaint me with all the miserable details of your two-faced activities. I have forgiven him his own part. Your part, sir, will never be forgiven. I detest myself for being a naive, trusting and sweet-natured simpleton, thinking of your professed sins not with scorn but with Christian pity.’

Captain Burnside eyed her with due gravity. Chin high, she stared him out, showing not a sign that this final confrontation had her in a state of resurgent challenge.

‘Allow me, marm, to confess myself abject, penitent and contrite,’ he said, ‘and to offer myself up for execution. But while I am all of a piece, I beg your consideration of the plight of the maidservant Betsy, so invaluable in the matter of the letter. The sweet puss—’

‘The pretty trollop?’ interjected Caroline bitingly.

‘She’s been dismissed following an investigation into the letter’s disappearance. While allowing you ain’t charitably inclined at the moment, due to my regrettable abuse of your trust and self-respect, I know you to have
natural compassion and I thought, therefore, you might find her a position here at Great Wivenden. Sussex, d’you see, offers her less temptations than London, she owning too much of a weakness for gentlemen of a suspect kind.’

Caroline could not believe her ears. Merciful heavens, was the ground she had newly won to be swept from beneath her feet? Were there no limits to his outrageous audacity? Was there ever a more presumptuous villain, or a more endearing one? Her resolution trembled on the brink.