Secret Harbor (10 page)

He laughed.

“So that’s your attitude! I suppose, Miss High and Mighty, you think I’m not good enough for you. Well, that’s where you’re mistaken! If I didn’t bail your drunken father out of debt he’d be in prison. Get that into your head!”

He paused for a moment before his eyes narrowed and he said:

“If you are not prepared to accompany me dressed, I’ll take you back as you are and enjoy doing it!”

It was a threat which he looked like putting into operation, for he moved around the bed-post towards her, and she gave a cry of sheer terror.

Then there was a knock on the open door and Roderick Maigrin turned his head.

Abe was standing there.

He carried a glass on a silver tray, and his face was impassive as he walked forward to say:

“You like drink, Sir.”

“I would!” Roderick Maigrin replied, “but it’s just like your damned impertinence to follow me up the stairs!” He took the glass from the tray, then as Abe did not move he said:

“I suppose I have you to thank for helping your Mistress to run away in that blasted foolish fashion! I’ll have you whipped in the morning for not informing your Master where you were going.”

“I try wake Master, Sir,” Abe said, “not move him.”

Roderick Maigrin did not answer.

He was drinking the rum punch eagerly, that Abe had brought him, pouring it down his throat as if it was water.

He finished the glass, then set it down with a bang on the silver salver that Abe still held in his hand.

“Get me another!” he said, “and while I’m drinking it you can take your Mistress’s trunks downstairs and put them on my carriage.”

He paused before he added:

“She’s coming back with me. You can follow and bring your Master’s horses with you. You’ll neither of you be coming back here.”

“Yes, Sir,” Abe said and turning walked from the room.

Grania wanted to call out to him not to leave her, but she knew that if Roderick Maigrin whipped or killed Abe there would be nothing she could do about it.

However it seemed that Abe’s appearance had diverted Maigrin’s worst attentions from herself, for he wiped his lips with the back of his hand and said: “Hurry up and get dressed or you will find I’m not joking when I say I’ll take you as you are. When you’re my wife you’ll be obedient, or you’ll find it a painful experience to defy me.”

As he spoke he walked towards the door.

Only as he reached it did he realise that if he took the lantern with him Grania would be left in the dark.

He put it down noisily on top of the chest-of-drawers, then holding onto the banisters he started to go down the stairs shouting as he did so:

“Light the candles, you lazy servant! How do you expect me to find my way in the dark?”

Grania felt as if she was paralysed into immobility, and she thought wildly that there was only one person who could save her now, not only from being taken back to Maigrin House, but from being married in the morning.

Even as she thought of the
Comte
she knew it was impossible to reach him.

The house had been built with only one staircase since the servants slept outside in cabins, one to each family.

The only way of escape would be through the hall and whether Roderick Maigrin sat in the Dining-Room or the Drawing-Room he would see her pass and undoubtedly follow her.

Then he would not only find out where she was going, but she would also have betrayed the
Comte
to a man she was certain would be vindictive in a manner that might end in the death of all those who were on his ship.

“What ... can I ... do? What can ... I do?” Grania asked frantically.

Because there was no alternative she got out of bed.

She did not underestimate Roderick Maigrin’s threat that he would take her dressed as she was, and she realised that he would positively delight in humiliating her and in proving his mastery over her and over her father.

Tomorrow she would be married to such a man!

When she thought of it she knew that she could never marry him. If that was the fate that was waiting for her she would kill herself before she actually became his wife.

And if she did kill herself he would probably still go on helping her father because he was an Earl, and his threat of letting him go to prison would never be put into operation while he still had some use for him socially.

“I will die!” Grania told herself firmly and wondered how she could do it.

Slowly, because time was passing, she began to dress.

She had just taken from the wardrobe the gown she had worn that day and slipped it over her head when Abe appeared.

He had walked so quietly up the stairs that she had
not heard him, and now as he came into the room she looked at him as she had done when she was a child and gone to him in trouble.

“Abe ... Abe!” she murmured. “What ... can I ... do?”

Abe put his finger to his lips, then as he crossed the room to close one of her trunks and strap it up he said in a whisper she could hardly hear:

“Wait here, Lady, ’till I fetch you.”

Grania looked at him in surprise wondering what he meant.

Then he picked up her trunk, put it on his shoulder and walked down the stairs, making no effort to walk quietly but seeming to accentuate the noise of his footsteps.

He must have passed through the hall, then a few minutes later Grania heard him say in his quiet, respectful voice:

“Another drink, Sir?”

“Give it me and get on with the luggage,” Roderick Maigrin snarled, and Grania knew he was sitting just inside the Drawing-Room door.

“Three more trunks, Sir.”

“Tell your mistress to come down and talk to me. I find it boring sitting here alone.”

“Not ready, Sir,” Abe replied, and by this time he was halfway up the stairs.

He closed a second trunk, and took it down.

Once again Grania heard him give Mr. Maigrin another drink.

She thought perhaps Momma Mabel was preparing them in the kitchen, but there was no sound of their voices and Abe came upstairs again. This time he was not empty-handed.

He was carrying a large washing-basket in which clothes after they had been washed were taken out to be attached to the line on which they would dry.

Grania looked at him in surprise as Abe set it down on
the floor and without speaking motioned her to get inside it.

She understood, and crouching down in the basket waited while he fetched a sheet from the bed and put it over her, tucking it down round her without speaking.

Picking up the basket by its two handles he started down the stairs.

Now Grania’s heart was beating frantically as she knew that there was every chance even though he had had a lot to drink, of Roderick Maigrin thinking it strange that her clothes which had come from London should be in an open washing-basket.

She was however, aware that there was nothing else in the house in which she could be carried and Abe had taken a chance on the fact that Mr. Maigrin would not be expecting her to escape in such an undignified manner.

Abe reached the last step of the stairs.

Now he was walking across the hall and passing the open door of the Drawing-Room.

Through the open wicker-work Grania could see the lights from several candles and vaguely she thought she could distinguish the large body of the man she loathed sprawled in one of her mother’s comfortable armchairs, a glass in his hand.

She was not sure if she really saw this with her eyes or with her imagination.

Then Abe had passed the door and was walking down the passage to the kitchen and she held her breath, just in case at the very last moment she would hear Roderick Maigrin shouting at them to stop.

But Abe walked on and now he carried her out through the back door and still not stopping moved into the thickness of the bougainvillaea bushes which grew right up to the walls of the house.

Only as he put the basket down on the ground did Grania realise that he had rescued her, and now she could reach the
Comte
without Roderick Maigrin knowing where she had gone.

Abe pulled off the sheet which had covered her and in the moonlight Grania could see his eyes looking at her anxiously.

“Thank you, Abe,” she whispered. “I will go to the ship.”

Abe nodded and said:

“Bring trunks later.”

As he spoke he pointed and Grania saw that the two trunks he had already brought downstairs were hidden under the bushes, where it would be difficult for anybody who was unsuspecting, to see them.

“Be careful,” she warned and he smiled.

Then as the terror which enveloped her swept over her like a tidal wave, she started to run frantically, wildly, as if Roderick Maigrin was already pursuing her down through the bushes and trees towards the harbour.

Chapter
five

A
lthough it was
dark between the trees Grania could not stop running. Then suddenly she bumped into something and realising at once that it was human, she gave a little scream of fear.

But even as it left her lips she knew who it was.

“Save ... me! Save ... me!” she begged frantically, speaking only in a whisper for fear her voice would be overheard.

“What has happened? What has upset you?” the
Comte
asked.

For a moment Grania was too breathless to speak. She was only aware that she was close to the
Comte
and without really
t
hinking of what she was doing she moved closer still hiding her face against his shoulder.

Slowly, almost as if he tried to prevent himself from doing so, he put his arms around her.

To feel him holding her was an indescribable comfort and after a moment she managed to say:

“He has ... come to fetch me ... away ... I am to be ... married tomorrow ... and I thought I would ... never escape.”

“But you have,” the
Comte
said. “My look-out saw lights in the windows of your house and I was coming to investigate in case something was wrong.”

“Very ... very wrong,” Grania replied, “and I thought I could not ... get away ... but Abe ... carried me out in a ... washing-basket.”

She thought as she spoke it ought to sound amusing, but she was still so frightened and so breathless with the speed at which she had run that what she said was almost incoherent.

“Is Maigrin in the house?” the
Comte
asked.

“He is ... waiting for ... me.”

The
Comte
did not reply, he merely turned her round so that she faced in the direction of the ship and with his arms round her shoulders he led her through the trees to the harbour.

Because he was with her and was actually touching her she felt her agitation gradually subside.

At the same time she felt too limp and weak to think for herself any longer.

As if he understood, when they reached the gangway the
Comte
steadied her on it then walked behind her with his hands on her arms in case she lost her balance.

They stepped on deck and for a moment Grania thought there
w
as no one about.

Then she saw a man halfway up the mast and
supposed he was the look-out of whom the
Comte
had spoken.

Now she was on deck she turned to look back at the house and realised that the trees and shrubs made it completely invisible. Only the man on the mast could have seen the lights in the windows which had made him alert the
Comte.

They went down the steps to the cabin and she saw that when this had happened he was already in bed.

The sheets were thrown back and she saw now by the light of a lantern that he was wearing only a thin linen shirt open at the neck and dark pantaloons.

He stood looking at her and for the first time she was conscious of her own appearance and that her hair was hanging loose over her shoulders. She had made no effort to tidy it when she had dressed on Roderick Maigrin’s instructions.

The
Comte
did not speak and Grania said the first thing that came into her mind.

“I ... I cannot ... go back!”

“No, of course not. But where is your father?”