A Hazard of Hearts Read online

  Chapter One ~ 1808

  Serena, looking from the window, thought that the miracle of spring at Staverley became more breathtakingly beautiful year by year. Never had the dew-drenched lawns been greener or the lilacs more luxuriant with their branches weighted with white, mauve and purple flowers. The laburnums were fountains of golden rain and the fruit blossom lay beneath the trees in a pink-and-white snowdrift.

  On the lake the darkness of the water was gradually being hidden by the verdant rounded leaves of the water lilies and soon the lilies themselves in all their smooth exotic beauty would be in bloom.

  Serena felt her heart reach out towards such loveliness. It was part of her, an indivisible part of herself, and it seemed to her at times that her love of Staverley quickened and throbbed within her as if it was a living thing.

  “’Tis the hour for your chocolate, Miss Serena.”

  A deep voice startled her and she turned with a little exclamation.

  “I was daydreaming, Eudora. I did not hear you come in.”

  If Eudora’s voice was startling, her appearance was even more so. At first sight one supposed her to be a dwarf, but on a second glance it was obvious that her deformities were due not to an abnormality of birth, but to some disablement that had twisted her back and left her hunched and distorted.

  Her head was a normal size and yet it seemed unusually large on the tiny withered body. It was difficult to guess how old she was. Lines of pain were deeply etched from her pointed nose to her mouth and beneath her deep sunk eyes. Her eyes themselves were surprisingly dark and alive and seemed to miss nothing, often expressing strange and violent emotions so that Serena as a child imagined that Eudora’s spirit, wild and untamed, was imprisoned within her dwarfed foreshortened body.

  Serena had known Eudora all her life. There had never been a time when the little woman had not been beside her, looking after her, tending to her wants, loving her with a passionate almost animal-like devotion and guarding her fiercely and jealously.

  Serena took the chocolate now from the silver tray and sat down on the broad low window-seat.

  “Is it eleven of the clock already?” she sighed. “And I have a vast amount to occupy me.”

  “Mrs. Beaston asked me to inform you, miss, that if Sir Giles arrives this evenin’ there will be no roast in the house for dinner.”

  “Oh yes, there will be,” Serena replied. “I ordered a lamb to be killed four days ago. It should be nicely hung by now. Sir Giles is partial to lamb, as you know, Eudora, and tell Mrs. Beaston we will have baked carp dressed in the Portuguese way, two Davenport fowls, stuffed, parboiled and stewed in butter, some soup to start with and a fruit pie as a remove. It will be a small dinner but just the sort my father enjoys.”

  “And if Sir Giles fails to arrive?” Eudora asked.

  “I can manage with one of the fowls,” Serena smiled.

  “I will carry your instructions to Mrs. Beaston,” Eudora said.

  “Yes, do,” Serena said, “then come and help me pick some flowers. Those in the big vase in the hall are fading.”

  She turned her head as she spoke and looked out of the window.

  “It’s such a perfect day, I want to be in the garden.”

  “My heart is heavy,” Eudora volunteered.

  Her voice was always strange and rather gruff, but now there was a throbbing note in it and a roughness, as if she spoke from some impulse that she could not control.

  “Oh, Eudora, why?” Serena asked.

  “I know not,” the hunchback answered. “But last night when I lay awake, I felt as if a cloud, a dark cloud was approachin’ nearer and nearer.”

  Serena stood up quickly.

  “Spare me, Eudora! I am afraid of these moods of yours. It’s a good time since you have had one and yet always when you talk like this it makes me apprehensive and afraid.”

  “I am sorry, Miss Serena. Yet I can but speak of what I feel and know.”

  Eudora spoke dully, almost sullenly.

  “Yes, I know, Eudora dear, but how I wish you did not feel such morbid things, not on such a day as this. I want to be happy! I am happy! My father should be home soon and let’s pray that his journey to London will not have proved – ”

  Serena hesitated for a word and then almost in a whisper to herself added, “very costly.”

  Her eyes roamed round the room. It was a lovely room, but somehow inadequately furnished. There were patches on the wall where it was obvious that once upon a time pictures had hung, there was the discoloured outline of their frames and the nails they had been suspended from. The room held sofas, chairs and occasional tables, but on looking closer one wondered why there were no cabinets. A space between the windows seemed made to hold a console table and the alcove on the opposite wall was obviously designed for a bureau.

  Yes, the room was strangely empty. And, as Serena turned and went from the drawing room into the hall, there too was a similar emptiness and similar faded patches on the brocaded walls.

  The hall was dark after the sun-filled drawing room and Serena shivered a little.

  “You frighten me, Eudora. Go and give my message to Mrs. Beaston and bring me my pelisse from my bedroom, we are going out into the sunshine to forget your gloomy forebodings.”

  “Very good, Miss Serena.”

  Eudora bobbed a curtsey, which necessitated a strange distortion of her twisted body and then she moved across the marble floor, her feet making a strange uneven patter as she walked.

  Alone, Serena linked her fingers together and stared up at a great blank space over the marble mantelpiece.

  “Oh, please let him have won,” she whispered. “Please, please! Besides – there is nothing left to sell.”

  There was a passion and intensity in her voice and in the pressure of her twisted fingers. With a deliberate effort she turned towards the door.

  She pulled it open and the sharp, sun-kissed spring air came flooding in at her. A breath of wind rustled her hair and she turned her face towards it as if it could blow away the apprehensions of her mind.

  The door was at the top of a long flight of stone steps leading to the gravel drive. Beyond was a stone terrace and beyond again was a great Park, which enclosed Staverley Court, stretching as far as the eye could see and enriched with fine oaks planted there a century earlier. A flight of pigeons winged its way across the blue sky. There were several swans moving slowly and majestically on the lake.

  How beautiful it was! How beautiful! Yet Serena knew that Eudora’s words had thrown a stone, as it were, into the placid calm of her mind.

  She was afraid, terribly afraid. The servants had always said that Eudora was a witch and Serena laughed at such statements, yet in her heart of hearts she was often afraid that they might be right.

  Eudora was different from other people. No one knew, for instance, who her parents were. Serena’s grandfather, driving his chaise at breakneck speed from London to Staverley, had rounded a corner sharply in the twilight, his horses had knocked down a woman walking by the roadside and the wheels of the vehicle had passed over her. He brought her home to Staverley, but she died the following morning after she had been delivered of a child. That the child was twisted and abnormal was due, the midwife said, entirely to the injuries sustained by her mother immediately prior to her birth.

  All enquiries had failed to find out who the woman was or where she had come from, so Eudora had been brought up at Staverley, becoming, first of all, maid-of-all-work at the beck and call of the servants and then, largely by her own insistence and determination, personal maid to Serena.

  She had adored the child from the moment she was born and no amount of complaints or even scoldings could keep her from the nursery.


  Serena’s Nurse had said again and again that Eudora gave her the creeps and she would not have her up there ‘frightening the baby’, but that in itself was a slander because Serena never was frightened by Eudora. As soon as she was old enough to recognise anyone, she had smiled and held out her arms to the strange misshapen creature from whom most people shrank away in disgust.

  But the times were coming when Serena and other people too at Staverley were to be thankful for Eudora. Numbers of servants left never to return, a few old retainers stayed on and often went for months without wages, remaining, so they said, because of their affection for the house, but also because they had nowhere else to go and could not imagine a life which did not hold the background of Staverley for them.

  Eudora became invaluable. She was personal maid, housemaid and general factotum in the house and once, when Mrs. Beaston was taken ill and there was no one else, she even became cook for a few days.

  And yet she was never too busy to look after Serena. However short-staffed they were, her gowns were pressed and her hair dressed skilfully.

  ‘I could not do without her,’ Serena had often said to herself.

  She said it again out loud to the spring wind as she stood on top of the steps that would lead her down to the garden. Yet she wished with all her heart that Eudora would keep her forebodings to herself.

  It was uncanny the way Eudora’s warnings came true. Once she had said, “I can smell danger,” and it seemed too as if she could smell trouble long before it appeared.

  ‘What can it be? What can it be?’ Serena wondered and knew that she was already worried because her father was three or four days overdue.

  She looked forward to his return and yet she dreaded it. She would know from the moment she first saw him driving up to the front door in his yellow-wheeled curricle whether he had won or lost. If he had won, he would spring out like a man half his age, throw his reins to the groom and come bounding up the stone steps to shout for his daughter as though she were not already waiting for him in the hall.

  “Serena! Serena!”

  At the sound of his voice, which she would often have been waiting for for days, the relief would be almost overwhelming.

  “It is beyond anything great,” he would say. “We have a fortune! We will give a party, a ball and you must buy yourself some new gowns. We will restock the cellar and now, for the Lord’s sake, let them serve dinner and I will recount to you the whole tale.”

  He would be bubbling over with excitement like a child and, because his cheerfulness was so infectious, Serena would forget everything but his happiness and they would sit far into the night planning the things they would do, the improvements they would make to the house and the money they would spend on the estate. How enjoyable they were, those moments of feeling rich, when no extravagance was too fantastic and nothing was out of reach of their pockets!

  And yet Serena had known after these occasions that all too quickly Sir Giles would say,

  “The money is going, my pockets will soon be to let! I will travel to London on Thursday. When I return, we will consider the plans for the new wing to the house. We must empower Adam to do it for us.”

  “Oh, Father, don’t go yet,” Serena would beg, but she would know it was hopeless even while she pleaded with him.

  There was some urge within him, some need within his blood, which could not be denied. He craved the feel of the cards between his fingers as a man dying of thirst craves water. He had to go. But as the years went on the times when he won grew fewer and fewer. It seemed to Serena when she was young that they were fairly frequent, but, as she grew older, Sir Giles’s return from London was generally a very different story.

  The curricle would come slowly up the long drive, even the horses seemed lethargic, and when they drew up at the front door Sir Giles would descend very slowly, almost reluctantly, it seemed to Serena, as if he was afraid to face her. If she was waiting for him at the top of the steps, he would kiss her in silence, then he would pass into the hall, relinquish his hat and coat to the butler and look searchingly round him.

  How well Serena knew that look! Now practically everything that was worth selling had gone. The Van Dykes, the inlaid china cabinets, the Charles II silver, the fine tapestries that had hung in the dining room for hundreds of years. Now for reminders there were only marks on the walls and empty places in the hearts of those who had loved them.

  “Please, God, let him have won.”

  Once again Serena whispered her prayer out loud, but the fresh wind seemed to blow it from between her lips.

  Then she stopped and stared along the drive where a horse suddenly showed between the distant trees.

  “He is coming! I can see him!”

  She spoke more to herself than to Eudora, whose step she had heard behind her.

  “Put on your pelisse, Miss Serena. It is ever so cold out here.”

  “’It’s my father! He has arrived! What a strange time. He must have left London early.”

  Even as she said the words she felt her heart drop. When Sir Giles was gambling, he seldom left the tables before dawn and, if he had gone from the Club early and come to Staverley before noon, it could have only one explanation. He had lost all his money and therefore had been able to play no longer.

  Instinctively Serena put out her hand towards Eudora and she took it in both of hers, but she said nothing and Serena was well aware that Eudora had no words of consolation for her. She had seen the horse between the trees before the drive curved a little to hide anyone from sight. Now the horse appeared again and Serena gave a cry.

  “But it’s not Sir Giles! Look, Eudora, it is someone else on horseback. Who can it be?”

  “It’s not Sir Giles,” Eudora replied quietly.

  “No, I told you it wasn’t,” Serena said impatiently. “But I believe it is Cousin Nicholas. Yes, of course, that is who it is. And I was assured that he too was in London. He must have returned, maybe to tell us what time my father will be home. He is riding swiftly. Go and order wine for him and some cold meats. He will be hungry after his ride.”

  Eudora turned without a word and Serena, waiting impatiently at the top of the steps, waved to her cousin as he crossed the bridge spanning the lake and cried out a greeting as soon as he came within earshot.

  “Nicholas! How enchanting to see you. I thought at first you were my father! Have you come from London?”

  Nicholas Staverley looked up at Serena where she stood, the sunshine on her fair hair and the wind blowing the skirts of her muslin dress.

  She had no idea how lovely she looked against the grey stone of the old house and Nicholas stared at her as he swept his hat from his head. He dismounted as an old groom came hurrying round the corner of the house to take his horse.

  “You ’ave ridden ’er ’ard, Mr. Nicholas,” he said reproachfully with the familiarity of an old servant.

  When Nicholas had no answer for him, he took the horse away, grumbling a little beneath his breath.

  “Come in, Nicholas, it’s nice to see you,” Serena said. “It must be nigh on two months since you went to London and only one letter have I had from you. I declare I have a mind to chide you for being so unkind, but I expect you have been too gay to remember your country cousin.”

  “Oh, I say, Serena, it isn’t that,” Nicholas said, colouring a little like a schoolboy. “It is just that I am no hand at letter-writing, never was at school, and many a flogging I’ve had for it.”

  “But now you are here you can tell me all the news,” Serena said. “Eudora has gone to prepare a luncheon for you. But tell me, first of all, how is my father? Is he – winning?”

  Serena dropped her voice on the last words. Nicholas looked down into her upturned face. He was much taller than his cousin, a well-set-up young man with broad shoulders and a well-turned leg for a boot and yet at that moment he looked like a badly scared little boy who must confess to those in authority for some misdemeanour.

  Serena
saw the expression on his face.

  “What is it, Nicholas?” she said.

  “Let’s go into the drawing room,” Nicholas said. “We cannot discourse here.”

  Serena opened the door that led into the drawing room. The room was still bathed in sunshine, yet somehow it seemed to her that there was an atmosphere of disquiet and of apprehension, as though it waited for the fulfilment of Eudora’s prediction.

  Nicholas closed the door quietly behind him and then he stood still and looked at Serena. The sun was behind her now, gilding her fair hair with a shining radiance.

  “What is it, Nicholas?”

  “Uncle – Giles – ” he stammered.

  Serena’s eyes widened.

  “Ill? – Oh, Nicholas!”

  “Worse, Serena – worse than that.”

  Serena gave a little cry.

  “Worse? Not – not – he is not dead?”

  Nicholas nodded.

  For a moment Serena stood very still. She made no movement, only her eyes searched his face blindly. Then at last in a voice that was scarcely above a whisper, she asked,

  “How?”

  It seemed to her as she asked the question that the whole world was hushed and still.

  “A duel,” Nicholas answered, “at dawn this morning. I was one of his seconds.”

  “A – duel!”

  Serena’s hand went quickly to her breast.

  Her heart had started beating again after a moment so breathless with fear that she felt as if she had been turned to stone. Almost she said, “thank God!” She had feared something far worse, something that she had always been afraid of.

  “Yes, a duel,” Nicholas repeated.

  “He did not – suffer?”

  “Not at all. But – oh, Serena, he intended it to happen.”

  Nicholas’ face was white and Serena suddenly realised how tired and drawn he looked. She took a deep breath, taking control of her emotions and forcing her mind to think of Nicholas rather than of her own chaotic feelings.

  “You are tired, Nicholas. Sit down. We can talk as easily sitting as standing.”

  Nicholas made a gesture.

  “Wait, Serena, there is something that I have to say to you. You must listen.”