Love's Tangle (7 page)

Gabriel turned and grinned at her. “What is it? Can you hear a snake?”

“A snake! And you bring me here!”

“Don’t be craven, Nell. They are only grass snakes and won’t hurt you one little bit. In fact they’re terrified of
you
. On very hot days Jonathan and I would watch them slide through the wood to sunbathe on the rocks. Come, I’ll show you.”

He retraced his steps and caught hold of her hand again so she had little option but to go with him. Better certainly than returning alone, whatever the supposed harmlessness of the snakes. They walked on for several more minutes while the light became noticeably brighter. Gabriel’s steps quickened and she felt his impatience to arrive at a place that was evidently important to him.

Out of the woods at last and before her stretched a ring of tall trees, their silver bark glinting in the sun. Boulders of white stone were scattered between slim trunks and within their strong guard a perfect circle of turf stretched as smooth as polished glass. A stillness pervaded the scene, a quietness, something almost holy. She felt she should speak in a whisper.

“Is this where you came as a boy?”

He looked at her, his face warmed by the soft light dusting the cloistered space.

“It is. Right here. It was our secret hideaway. Our tutor never found us but then he was a portly fifty years and very scared of snakes!”

“And did you play in the magic circle?”

“We did. It was King Arthur’s round table, or the deck of our pirate ship, or a clearing in the Amazon jungle. It was whatever we wanted it to be. One day we staged the entire Battle of Hastings, which was some feat with a cast of two! Of course, I was Harold—I was always on the losing side—and fell from the arrow in my eye round about there.” And he pointed to a shallow dip in the ground just short of the encircling trees.

She smiled to herself at the thought of two small boys playing day after day in this wonderful theatre but Gabriel was no longer looking at the space that surrounded them. He seemed to be looking within. “Sometimes,” he said slowly, “we simply lay on its soft turf and watched the sky, whiling the hours away, daydreaming our futures.”

There was a long silence and Elinor knew instinctively not to speak. The very air seemed to crumble beneath the weight of his sadness. “This is one future neither of us could have dreamed.”

But when she reached out tentatively to touch his arm, he said lightly enough, “I trust, Mistress Nell, that with a secret place to visit, your love of Allingham will grow even greater.”

She was unsure if she would ever dare the snakes alone but charmed he had shared with her what seemed the happiest moments of his life. He jumped up from the fallen log and turned to head back the way they had come.

“We should return. I have to speak to Parsons and it must be time for you to find Martha.” His breezy tone blew away the last threads of intimacy.

His parting words were just as business-like. “The fair is quite an occasion, you know. I hope you’ll go tomorrow. The servants are free to attend and you should make sure to enjoy yourself.”

Elinor was left to make a belated curtsy and slowly find her way back to the creamery. It had been a strange encounter but Gabriel Claremont was home again and the knowledge warmed her.

****

As the duke promised, every member of his staff was granted leave to attend the fair the following afternoon. Elinor had no real wish to go. She had seen plenty of such affairs, and far more elaborate ones, during her time in Bath, but neither did she relish being the sole servant left behind. Even the stately Mr. Jarvis intended to be there. So she donned her laundered poplin and her only bonnet and sallied forth with her fellows. As soon as they arrived at the village green, the party from Allingham Hall broke into smaller groups, men and maids going their separate ways to enjoy the merrymaking on offer. Sometimes going the same way, Elinor noted. She wished she could lead their uncomplicated lives.

A veritable cacophony of smells and noises greeted her as she stepped onto the green. The space had been parceled out into a large number of booths and standings, many of which were crammed high with food. The stalls for oysters and sausages seemed particularly popular but there were lines of gilt gingerbread and a number of hot pie sellers. Tables were set here and there for people to sit and eat their fill. There were stalls selling clothes and a number of toy stalls for the children, gay with decorative paint and many colored lamps. But the predominant interest of the fair was entertainment. Elinor saw in the distance the Rector of Allingham, looking somewhat aghast, and wondered whether he had given his approval to such wholesale abandonment: horse riders doing tricks, tumblers, illusionists, even a knife swallower. In the background a band of itinerant musicians consisting of a double drum, a Dutch organ, a tambourine, violin and pipes was playing a selection of military tunes. She walked past food and toy stalls, past the fire eater who drew gasps from his captive crowd, past the puppet show clearly entrancing Tilly. On and on, never pausing until she was outside the tent of the fair’s clairvoyant. Why ever had she had stopped here when she considered fortune telling thoroughly foolish?

It was dingy inside and the figure seated towards the back of the tent was wrapped in so many scarves of gauze that it was impossible to discern much of her features. Elinor wished she had not entered; it was a stupid thing to have done. But the figure’s outstretched arm beckoned her to sit down, while a hand opened to receive the small coin Elinor had taken from her reticule.

“You have chosen well, my dear.” The voice was rasping as though it had traveled through layers of dusty parchment.

“I have?” She was nonplussed, having no idea what this strange creature was talking about.

“You have chosen well in visiting me. Of all those at the fair, I am the one you have chosen.”

How had the old woman known that? She must have been watching me, Elinor guessed, watching me as I walked around the fairground. It was an uncomfortable thought.

The woman reached out again for both of Elinor’s hands and turned them palm upwards. “What do we have here, my dearie?” she rasped. “Ah yes, I see an interesting future for you. There’ll be a man for sure, a man to care for you and children to love. And they’re coming soon.”

It was the old staple of fortune telling, she thought caustically. Tell any girl who comes your way she will shortly be married and she will leave happy. But the woman was tightening the pressure on her hands and bringing them closer to her veiled eyes.

Her voice had dwindled now to a hoarse whisper. “You have chosen well, my dear, in coming to Allingham.”

She must mean the village, Elinor thought, not the Hall, unless the crone had earlier seen her in company with those she knew to be its servants. Another wave of discomfort flooded through her. She had been comprehensively spied upon! Indignation urged her to rise and leave but the woman’s next words were confounding.

“Allingham Hall is your home.” It was a statement of fact which allowed no dissent.

“For the time being,” Elinor amended.

“Allingham Hall is your home, my dear. You have come home for good.”

She felt a shiver of recognition but promptly dismissed it. True, she had felt a sense of belonging from the very first night, but her home? The grandest of houses belonging to a duke? It was nonsense.

“I’m not sure I know what you mean,” she said weakly.

The woman brushed across her palms again and fell slowly into a deep trance. Her eyes half closed, she swayed slightly and her voice when it came was like the rush of wind before a storm.

“There is a woman. Dark hair. Skin as white as alabaster. She comes from over the sea but she is in distress. Distress.” The syllables hissed around the hot enclosed space and Elinor felt her forehead break out in perspiration while a cold prickling flew down her spine.

“Her eyes are the green of a deep, deep ocean. Amazing eyes,” the old woman crooned. “But she is in distress.”

Elinor hardly dared to breathe.

“You will save her. You will make all right.”

“How?” There was no answer from her informant. “How?” she stuttered again.

At this the woman jerked upright and emitted a sigh that echoed around the tent, a sigh so heavy that it seemed dragged from the very earth beneath their feet. Elinor was transfixed and could not move. Gradually the woman’s eyes cleared and all vestige of the trance vanished.

She smiled cunningly, assessing her customer with newly focused eyes. “You’ll be all right, dearie. A nice man and plenty of babies in store for you.”

It was the trite commonplace of fortune telling once more and she realized the séance was over. Whatever the woman had seen, she saw it no more. She pushed back her chair hard and it fell to the ground.

“A few falls before you get there though, dearie.” And the woman let out a high-pitched cackle. Elinor fled.

She rushed through the tent flap as though pursued by a thousand demons and cannoned straight into Roland Frant. He took a firm hold of her shoulders to steady her and peered into her face. “Is that you, Nell? Whatever is the matter?”

“It’s nothing, Mr. Frant,” she murmured. “Really it is nothing.” The last thing she wanted was to tell what she had just heard.

“But, my dear, you came through that doorway like a bullet from a gun. Whatever ails you?” Her spirits sank. He was not easily going to let her go. “If you are in any trouble, maybe I can help,” he was coaxing.

“I am not in trouble but thank you for your concern. It is merely I found the fortune teller a little frightening.”

For the first time he looked up at the sign which hung high above the tent. “Madame Demelza?” He tutted loudly. “My cousin’s hand is everywhere. There was a time when the Allingham Fair was wholesome enjoyment but now every low criminal for miles around makes it their business to set up shop.”

“It was only a piece of fun, Mr. Frant,” she protested.

“But your face told quite another story.” She had to acknowledge he was right; she had been deeply scared.

“You know, Nell,” he said confidentially, “you should not visit such people. They are all charlatans and want nothing but your money. I hope you did not pay her.”

“Only a very little.”

He wagged his finger. “Even a little is too much. And see the result—you have been thoroughly frightened by whatever nonsense she has told you. That is foolish, most foolish.”

He might speak truly but really he was the prosiest of bores and she was tired of his censure. “I am sure you are right, Mr. Frant. But if you will excuse me now, I will look for my fellows and join them.”

“It may be best if I stay with you until you have regained your equilibrium. I am happy to act as your escort.”

“There is no need—I am perfectly restored. But thank you,” she added as she saw an expression of pique flit across his face. Before he could insist further, she slipped from his grasp and walked hurriedly away in the opposite direction.

The fair was turning into a very bad afternoon. The jarring noise and coarse smells were stretching her nerves thin and Roland Frant’s persistence had left her drained. It had come too quickly after the unnerving encounter with the clairvoyant. She’d had to be rude before she could shake him off. She sank down at one of the tables trying to gather her wits. What had the creature meant with her talk of a pale woman in distress? When she’d repeated that word, Elinor had felt a physical pain shoot through her. And now she was supposed to save this poor unfortunate. It was a daunting imposition. But had the old woman in fact meant anything? Had she simply been enjoying her power to disturb, and the evident discomfort of her victim? That was the most likely explanation. She must not dwell any further on the words she’d heard but shrug them off for the nonsense they were.

It was easier to say than to do for they echoed constantly in her mind. She sat immobile for minutes on end while all around the sounds of enjoyment seemed to come from a far off country. She was in a fair way to succumbing completely to the blue devils when a familiar voice hailed her.

“The fair is supposed to be a merry event, so why so sad, Mistress Nell?”

The duke stood before her, dressed in a close fitting coat of glistening blue superfine, his shapely legs encased in tight dove grey pantaloons and a pair of dazzling hessians, their little gold tassels swinging jauntily from side to side. She had never seen him look so magnificent. Somewhere his valet must be dancing a jig; twice in a week Summers had conquered the carelessness of his noble employer.

She must have been staring rather too hard because he said, “One has to dress to impress at these affairs, Nell.”

She pulled herself together. “You will certainly do that, Your Grace. Your boot tassels alone could buy the whole of this fair.”

She hadn’t meant her words to sound quite so disparaging but he did not seem to notice. “And what about you?”

“Me?”

“Where is your dress to impress?”

“Servants do not have such a luxury, Your Grace,” she said primly.

“Now that’s where you’re wrong. I have just bid farewell to Mrs. Lucas who is looking most becoming in a peach satin turban. So where is yours?”

“I do not possess one,” she said repressively.

“Not a turban perhaps, but a dress rich in color. Any color but grey! It is not a flattering hue, though you look most comely.”

She flushed with annoyance. He might be her employer, he might have taken her a little into his confidence, but he had no right to judge her choice of dress.

“I do not wear grey to flatter myself, Your Grace, I wear it because it is eminently serviceable. And I
am
in service.” It was something he seemed prone to forget.

“I am aware, but you see I have brought you something which will improve matters immensely,” and from behind his back the duke brought forth a corsage of tiny pink roses nestling within a spray of lavender. The pale pink and mauve blooms chimed perfectly with her gown.

“Thank you but I cannot accept such a gift,” she stammered.