Nell (25 page)

The housekeeper grumbled her dissatisfaction as she hunted for candles in one of the capacious kitchen cupboards. She stuck one into a pewter stick and took a taper from the range to light it.

‘And what, pray, am I to tell the master if he comes looking for you here?’

A twinge caught at Nell’s breast. Almost she was tempted to go in search of Lord Jarrow and tell him what had been discovered. Yet if she were to meet either Duggan or Toly Beresford, she would be undone. And if she were truthful, a trifle of resentment yet lingered. No, she had best be sure of her ground before she tackled his lordship! She took up the candlestick and a firm grip of Henrietta’s hand, and confronted the housekeeper.

‘You have not seen me, Mrs Whyte. That is all you need say, no matter who asks. And to say truth, I have scant expectation that Lord Jarrow will trouble his head about me today.’

The confined space of the study was too small to contain him, prey as he was to conflicting emotions. Instead
Jarrow paced the roof walkway, haunted by intrusive images of Nell Faraday.

His imagination placed her everywhere. Standing at the battlements with the light making a halo of her golden head about the strong features. Dangerously leaning into the broken tower in a way that had sent his heart into his mouth—he had suffered visions of her falling helpless, to be lost in the blackness at the bottom of the central well. And walking, walking, head bent, as she paced the roof just as he was doing now, when he had watched her unseen, wondering over and over with apprehension in his breast if she would decide to go.

Now he knew that the thought of her leaving had dictated much of his conduct towards her. All the while fearful of her departure, he had done his best to hasten it! Because, deep down, he had known he was becoming involved—and he had felt it with loathing. Had he not sworn that he would never again succumb to the wiles of a woman? Fate had cast him for a hapless fool, blinded by desire to the detriment of his interests and the ruin of his life. And had he learned of this? The devil he had! Within a few short months of an unlooked-for release, he was once more entwining himself in feminine coils with the first pretty female to come within striking distance—and his daughter’s governess to boot!

Well, it was over. He had let his guard down, and received his deserts. He would ensure that the next creature would be impossibly outside the realms of his romantic fancy. Forty-five at least, and of as unattractive an appearance as he could contrive. There would be no more Nell Faradays!

Something stabbed in his chest and he caught at the battlemented wall, staring out across the green forest below. He must be rid of her! Was she yet gone? If his
orders had been attended to, Detling would have the cob harnessed to the gig, and she must by now have packed up, ready for departure. His breath caught in his throat, and he was obliged to grip the grey stonework until his knuckles whitened.

Hell and the devil, but he had to let her go! He could not again endure that agonising betrayal of trust. If she could do a thing so thoughtless towards his child, she could as readily injure him in other ways. He wanted to believe that. Why should he not? Despite that all her attention had been on discovering dangers that she supposed were threatening Henrietta, she had herself done more to destroy the child’s mental state than anyone. However innocently done, it was the height of stupidity. And Nell was not stupid!

The thought, blinding in its simplicity, hit him squarely in the solar plexus, stopping his breath. For several instants, he could not even formulate the conclusion. But he knew it as surely as if he had. Nell was neither stupid, nor guilty.

The reversal of feeling swept him with remorse as all consuming as had been his anger. He had done her the grossest injustice. Whoever had told Hetty the truth, it could never have been Nell. In an excess of emotion, Jarrow immediately decided that he had known it all along. He had known it, used it, because he wanted to get Miss Helen Faraday out of his life.
He did not want to love her.

From the instant of realisation, Jarrow acted purely on impulse. He sped across the roof walkway, shot through the schoolroom and threw himself down the winding stairs two steps at a time. He was outside Nell’s door and hammering before thought even began to enter his mind.

No answer. His control in tatters, Jarrow turned the handle and thrust the door open. He stood in the empty room, staring about him, unable to take in the implication of what his eyes were telling him. There was a curious silence in the chamber that echoed in his head as thunder. Nothing had changed. The bed was neatly made, a candle set ready upon the bedside cabinet along with a leather-bound book. Jarrow snatched it up.

It fell open upon a page covered in writing. A feminine hand without doubt, its curlicues and flourishes indicative of an artistic or passionate nature. Was it Nell’s hand? He read a line or two, and found it to be notes of instruction upon her role.

Jarrow stared at it stupidly, aware of a thumping in his chest. Dispassionately, had he been asked, he would have expected to see neatness and control in Nell’s handwriting. But what he was looking at became immediately right in the woman he had come to know. This was Nell indeed—boldly individual, with a strength that must fell all vestige of opposition, and a depth of heart that he had only begun to probe. And she had not left him!

He cast a swift glance round, finding her dressing robe on a hook at the back of the door, and upon the dressing table, a wood-handled set of brush, comb and mirror. Crossing to the press, he opened the doors and tugged out drawers one by one, reassured by the piles of clothing within that Nell had done no packing. She was still here.

Relief swept through him, to be immediately succeeded by alarm. If she was here in the castle, then where was she?

For the first time it occurred to him to think rationally about what had happened. Duggan had accused Nell, saying that the child was in tears. Miss Faraday had
claimed the nurse had revealed the truth about her mother’s death. Shock had sent him flying to Hetty’s chamber, although even then his mind had refused it. But when, at sight of him, his daughter had thrown herself anew into her pillows, screaming her own accusation, he had not stopped to consider possibilities.

What a blind fool he was! Had not Nell herself given him ample reason to distrust the nurse? She had tried to warn him, and he had paid no heed. There was the matter of laudanum for one thing. Had the woman been deliberately drugging the child?

His gorge rose. Whatever Duggan was doing, he knew well whom he had to thank. Whatever the nurse did must be at the instigation of his brother-in-law, whose bed she had been warming since nobody knew when.

Concentrated as he had been on his conviction that Toly had been responsible for Julietta’s death, he had ignored the nearer danger. Why he should target Hetty was a matter passing Jarrow’s comprehension, which must be why he had paid no heed to the warning signals. Did Toly wish him to think his daughter had inherited her mother’s insanity? If so, it must be some product of his warped mind. The same that had driven him to destroy his own sister! A matter that Jarrow had tried in vain to set aside, knowing that the truth could only land him in a resounding scandal and bring Toly to the hangman’s noose.

Had he shrunk from that only to leave his daughter prey to the tortures that could be inflicted by a mind devoid of true humanity? For Toly was undoubtedly subject to snatches of insanity including such vagaries as capering about in ghostly garments, or fooling Nell with his playing of the clavichord. Only Jarrow had refused to recognise that the man could be truly dangerous, only
because he must then accept the truth he had not wanted to believe.

And with that realisation, he had left Nell, too, endangered. It was plain enough now that Toly wanted her gone. The implication of this morning’s fracas became sinister. His heart lurched. Nell was not gone, after all. Toly had failed. It became a matter of supreme importance to discover the present whereabouts of his brother-in-law.

Yet, as he left the bedchamber, instinct sent him searching after Nell. He tore down the corridor towards the back of the castle, meaning to try the parlour and then the kitchens, for it was common knowledge that his housekeeper had befriended the governess. Making the turn, he failed to see his butler approaching the head of the stairs, and almost cannoned into the man as he made for the parlour door.

‘Hell and the devil, Keston, what are you doing?’

The fellow was breathing hard, evidently unable for the moment to answer, and Jarrow looked at him with astonishment.

‘What the devil is the matter, man?’

Keston was holding to the knob at the edge of the balustrade. He struggled to express himself over the heaving at his chest. ‘I was—coming—to find you, m’lord.’

Dread caught at Jarrow’s heart, sending his pulse into high gear. He seized the butler’s arm. ‘Tell me!’

‘Mrs Whyte, m’lord,’ gasped Keston. ‘Found her—on the floor in the kitchen.’

‘What, has she fainted?’

‘Knocked on the head seemingly.’

Jarrow released him, his brain afire. ‘Is she still unconscious?’

The butler shook his head, speaking more easily now. ‘Gave her some brandy, m’lord, and left Grig to mind her. She sent me to fetch you straight, m’lord. Said I were to tell you it concerns Miss Faraday.’

The way had been distinctly unpleasant, taking them down through dank cellars below the kitchens and into a dark and freezing corridor that followed the castle interior. Nell suspected the hem of her gown was gathering both wetness and dirt, but she cared nothing for that. She had kept tight hold of Henrietta’s hand as she crept around the base of a tower and along a dreadful collection of broken-down cells that could only have been dungeons in former times. Skirting the second tower, she had frightened them both with the opening of a heavy wooden door that creaked ominously.

As she moved through, the air struck damp and chill, and a heavy aroma of must and decay enveloped them. Henrietta, who had been dumbly obedient until this moment, was moved to a squeal of protest.

‘Hush!’

‘Is the crip,’ replied Hetty in a whisper. ‘It stink. I ’member.’

‘You remember this smell? Then we are in the right place.’

Nell held the candle aloft, spreading light across a series of boxlike tombs of heavy stone. To her dismay, nearly all had a long statue lying across the top. Despair gripped her.

‘Where in the world are we to find Eleanor?’

She glanced down at the child by her side, and found Henrietta’s eyes gazing apprehensively up at her. Evidently she had no memory of the location of the partic
ular tomb they sought. Nell released her hand and gave her shoulders a quick hug.

‘Never fear, my love. We will find her.’

Moving forward, Nell was startled by a sudden slithering in the darkness at her feet. She could not withstand a gasp of fright, and pulled back sharply.

‘Is a rat, I ’spec,’ opined Hetty in a matter-of-fact tone.

‘I dare say, but I had rather not know.’

‘I ’spec there’s spiders too, and cockaroshes. We prob’ly tread on them.’

‘Thank you for that nice thought,’ said Nell drily.

‘However, whether there are cockroaches, spiders or rats—or even all three—we will not regard them, for we must look for Eleanor. Do you agree?’

Hetty nodded. ‘I’se not afraid.’

Nell refrained from telling the child that she was! ‘Excellent. Then let us go forward.’

Squaring her shoulders, Nell took hold of Hetty’s hand again and moved to the first tomb to one side. She held the candle to its edge and read the inscription. She had done this two or three times before the little girl reminded her that they were looking for the hands.

‘How silly, of course we are.’

Thereafter, she held the candle high to check at each tomb whether its stone hands were positioned in such a way that they might conceivably form a secret compartment. Several sets of fingers were discovered folded in prayer, but no pair Nell examined gave sign of any hiding place. She began to wonder if she had allowed her imagination to be carried away. Only Hetty had been so positive.

Mrs Whyte had intimated that the crypt ran the full length of one side of the castle, and it began to seem endless as she and the child shifted from one tomb to
another, Nell desperately trying to ignore the giveaway patters and slithers that indicated the presence of crawling things she would prefer not to identify. The atmosphere was oppressive, and the darkness closed in all around them as the spill from the single candle travelled slowly along the tombs of mouldering stone, cracked with age.

All at once Henrietta uttered a cry. Nell turned quickly to her, half expecting to find that some creature had run across her foot or made its presence felt in some other horrible way. But she found the little girl already moving, into the far spill of the candlelight.

‘Take care!’

She followed quickly, and came up behind the child to find that she had halted before a tomb carrying the long figure of a woman in medieval garb, her head covered in the traditional wimple held on by a coronet. Cupped hands rested at her breast.

Nell searched along the tomb’s edge for the inscription, and her heart leaped when she found it. ‘
Eleanor Jarrow.
This is it, Hetty!’

Henrietta ran to the head of the tomb and tried to jump up. ‘The hands! Nellenor hands! Look this side, Nell.’

In the midst of her own excitement, Nell took in that the child had used her given name and her heart warmed. She saw that Hetty had managed to pull herself up and was climbing on to Eleanor’s head. She moved forward.

‘Wait, Hetty! Show me first.’

She looked where the little girl pointed, and sure enough, just above the two thumbs in an arc made by the fingers was a small opening. Nell caught her breath. The thought flittered through her mind that Kitty ought to be here for this. She would have been in her element.

When Henrietta would have poked a finger in the hole,
she seized it to stop her. ‘There may be some insect nesting in there.’ Holding the candle close, Nell tried to peer into the interior of the hands. She thought something winked in the light, and the blood abruptly drummed in her head. But her common sense did not desert her.