A Dream from the Night Read online

  It was the Dowager Countess.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  There was a perceptible pause before Felix Hanson said,

  “I came in here to fetch a towel for my hand. Look!”

  He must have held out his hand to the Dowager Countess, who asked sharply,

  “What has happened? What have you done to it?”

  “Find me something to put on it,” he asked. “It hurts, I can tell you!”

  He walked through the door as he spoke taking the Dowager Countess by the arm and leading her back into the corridor. Their voices died away in the distance and Olinda felt herself relax.

  She had thought for one desperate moment that there was going to be a scene which she would have been involved in, but she had the feeling that Felix Hanson was now in command of the situation.

  ‘Why can he not leave me alone?’ she asked, feeling that every moment she was in the house with him she was in danger.

  “How did you hurt yourself?” the Dowager Countess was asking as Felix led her down the corridor.

  “I tripped and fell against one of the suits of armour,” he replied. “I can’t think why you have them standing about in the corridor! My hand’s damned painful, I can tell you that!”

  “Why did you go into that room?” the Dowager Countess enquired. “Mrs. Kingston asked me to look at the embroidery that girl is doing and I find you there!”

  The Dowager Countess’s green eyes were suspicious as they looked up at him.

  “What girl? What are you talking about?” Felix Hanson enquired.

  “The girl you were so insistent should repair the curtains,” the Dowager Countess replied, “and if she is in the Duchesse’s room, as Mrs. Kingston told me, I cannot believe that you did not see her.”

  “I saw no one!” Felix Hanson said firmly. “I went in, as I’ve told you, to find a towel. My hand was bleeding! I opened the first door I came to!”

  He sucked at his wound before he went on,

  “Of course, as no one was sleeping there, there was no towel nor any water and I think my hand should be washed.”

  “I want to believe you, Felix,” the Dowager Countess said.

  “And why the hell shouldn’t you?” Felix Hanson asked aggressively. “Good God! If I can’t look for a towel and a drop of water without being cross-examined as if I was in the Old Bailey, life is not worth living!”

  He spoke angrily. By this time they had reached the room where he was now sleeping and he walked in first, leaving the Dowager Countess to follow him.

  He went to the washstand and poured some cold water from a china urn into the basin and put his hand in it.

  “I suppose you have a bandage?”

  “Yes, of course,” the Dowager Countess answered.

  She left him to go to her own room and, when he was alone, Felix Hanson gave a sigh of relief.

  That was a near shave!

  He knew only too well how Roseline would have behaved if she bad found him round the side of the bed talking to the little Selwyn wench, let alone if he had been doing anything else!

  ‘Living here,’ he thought to himself, ‘is like living in an open cage.’

  There was always somebody watching, he could not speak without feeling that he was being overheard or do anything without being aware that Roseline was watching him.

  ‘I have to get back to London’ he thought to himself.

  There was a calculating look in his eyes when the Dowager Countess came back into the room with some lint, a bandage and a bottle of antiseptic.

  “It’s not bleeding so much now.”

  Felix took his hand out of the basin and dried it on a linen towel.

  “I am afraid this is going to hurt,” she said as she soaked a piece of cotton wool from the bottle of antiseptic and then dabbed it onto the wound.

  “God! You’re right!” Felix exclaimed. “It does!”

  “It will prevent any infection,” she said. “The suits of armour are centuries old and you do not wish to have a poisoned hand.”

  Felix had the idea that the embroidery scissors that Olinda had stabbed him with would be clean and very unlikely to cause any infection.

  But he could only submit with good grace as the Dowager Countess applied the lint and then a narrow bandage over his hand.

  “If it gets worse,” she said, “we will send for the doctor.”

  “I will be all right!”

  She finished tying the bandage before she said,

  “I still cannot understand why you went in to the Duchesse’s room. Why did you not come to find me?”

  “Oh, good God, Roseline!” Felix ejaculated. “Must you go on harping on the same subject?”

  “If I thought you were pursuing that girl as you pursued my trainer’s daughter at Newmarket, I would throw you out, here and now!” the Dowager Countess said in a low voice. “I will not go through that humiliation all over again!”

  Felix knew that when Roseline Kelvedon spoke in a controlled voice she was far more dangerous than when she raged at him.

  “You were mistaken in what you thought then,” he retorted, “just as you are mistaken in what you’re insinuating now. Anyway, there’s no need for you to throw me out, Roseline. I’m going anyway!”

  “Whatever do you mean?”

  “I’m leaving Kelvedon. “I have to go to London.”

  “But why? Why? What is happening?” she asked. Now there was a very different expression in her green eyes.

  “I have to find myself a job,” Felix answered. “I need money.”

  “Why? What for? I give you everything you want!”

  “You’ve been very generous,” he said, “and you know how grateful I am. But I cannot expect you to pay my debts.”

  “Debts! What debts?” the Dowager Countess enquired. “How can you need anything I have not given you?”

  “Your presents have meant a great deal to me,” Felix smiled. “No one could have been kinder and more generous in every way, but unfortunately my Bank Manager cannot be paid with kisses!”

  “You owe your Bank money?”

  “I’ve been in debt ever since I was at Cambridge,” Felix answered truthfully, “and now it’s reached the point when they insist that I pay off my overdraft. And there are other debts as well.”

  The Dowager Countess did not speak and he went on in a brave voice,

  “Oh, well! All good things have to come to an end and now I have to put my shoulder to the wheel, or whatever the saying is, and find work of some sort. It’ll not be difficult. I know several firms who will be glad to have me.”

  “And that means you will have to live in London?” the Dowager Countess asked.

  “Not necessarily,” Felix answered. “It might be Birmingham or Manchester or any big industrial town.”

  “Felix, you cannot leave me!”

  It was the cry that he had hoped to hear and he said with a well-simulated throb in his voice,

  “You can’t think I wish to do so! You’ve given me so much happiness, Roseline, that I can never forget what we have meant to each other. But it must be goodbye!”

  “No! Felix, no! I cannot let you go. How much money do you want?”

  There was a desperation in the tone of her voice that he did not miss.

  “I can’t tell you,” he said. “I’m ashamed that I’ve let things reach such a state.”

  “How much is it?” Roseline Kelvedon insisted.

  “Eight thousand pounds!”

  She gave a little gasp.

  Then she said,

  “I will find it, you know I will find it, Felix. It will not be easy. I cannot take it out of the estate money, for the accountants who check the accounts every month would be certain to report such a large sum to Roque.”

  “I would not wish your son to know of this,” Felix said quickly.

  “He will not know,” the Dowager Countess said confidently. “I will find the money myself. I think I have almost enough and anyway I can alwa
ys borrow on my jewellery.”

  “Yes, of course,” Felix agreed, “but I can’t allow you to do that.”

  He had forgotten the jewellery, he thought to himself.

  The fabulous collection of jewels, some belonging personally to the Dowager Countess and some being Kelvedon heirlooms, was immensely valuable.

  He wished now he had made the sum he had required ten thousand pounds. On jewels such as Roseline possessed she could raise any money she asked for, but he had not thought of it until this moment.

  He cursed himself for a fool and then thought that, if he could achieve the eight thousand now, it might be worth waiting a few months before he left to collect a little more.

  “I will write you a cheque on my private account,” Roseline Kelvedon was saying. “Promise me, Felix darling, that you will never get into such straits again. Give me your bills as they come in and I will settle them. When one has to find such a very large sum at a moment’s notice, it makes things difficult.”

  “You have only to smile at your Bank Manager,” Felix said, “and he’ll give you a million on loan without needing any further security. I know I would.”

  “Are you flattering me, darling?” the Dowager Countess asked. “It is something you have omitted to do for some time.”

  “It’s only because I’ve been so worried.”

  “Why did you not tell me, you silly boy! Money is such a boring barrier to come between us and spoil our happiness.”

  “It’s extremely boring if you haven’t got any!” Felix said. “You ought to let me find some work, Roseline.”

  “I cannot do without you – you know that! You are mine and I will not share you with anyone else again!”

  There was that hint of suspicion in her tone and Felix cursed himself for having been caught in the Duchesse’s room. He had been certain that Roseline had gone out into the garden and that he would be free of her for at least half an hour.

  But she had come creeping back and now he knew that she would be even more watchful and suspicious of him than she had been before.

  Granted he had been a fool to be nearly caught red-handed with her trainer’s daughter at Newmarket.

  She had been a pretty piece and not in the least reluctant to do whatever he wished. It was just unfortunate that Roseline should have come in search of him and found them together in one of the loose boxes.

  He had lied his way back into favour, but he had known that after that she had been more watchful and far more suspicious.

  He told himself that never again would he become involved with a woman who was so much older than himself.

  He really liked very young and unsophisticated girls. It gave him a sense of power and omnipotence. But the type of girl he fancied had no money and this meant that he was back where he came in, seeking the security of a rich wife.

  “Come along to my room,” Roseline Kelvedon said. “I will write you a cheque at once. I do not wish you to be worried or to act as strangely and unkindly as you have these past two days.”

  She smiled as she added,

  “I know you so well, Felix darling. I was sure you had something on your mind.”

  “I was wondering how I could break it to you that I had to leave,” Felix answered.

  “That is something which is never going to happen,” she said. “It’s so wonderful that we can be here together. I have never and that is the truth, Felix, been so happy.”

  ‘It’s more than I am!’ he thought savagely.

  But he put his arm round her shoulders as they went towards her boudoir, which opened out of her bedroom at the far end of the corridor.

  The room was filled with flowers, some from the vast hothouses which occupied nearly an acre of land in the kitchen gardens and some from the borders running along the side of the great lawns which were a kaleidoscope of colour as the early summer flowers came into bloom.

  There were comfortable sofas and chairs and the room was redolent with the exotic scent that Roseline Kelvedon always used and which she sent to Paris for.

  She sat down at an exquisite French secretaire, opened a drawer and took out her cheque book.

  She wrote Felix’s name on the cheque and filled in eight thousand pounds in her elegant, rather bold writing. Then she signed it and held it out to him.

  “A present for someone I love,” she smiled.

  “Thank you, Roseline. You know how grateful I am.”

  He slipped the cheque into the inside pocket of his coat.

  “How grateful are you?” Roseline Kelvedon asked softly.

  She looked up at him, her red mouth curved invitingly and he knew what was expected of him.

  “Let me show you,” he answered and pulled her into his arms.

  *

  Olinda finished the curtain in the Duchesse’s room an hour after she had heard Felix Hanson and the Dowager Countess moving away and she knew that by a miracle she had been reprieved.

  She then picked up her embroidery silks, wiped her scissors, which she saw with distaste had a touch of blood on their points, and went back to her own room.

  She rang the bell and when Lucy appeared she said,

  “Would you ask Mrs. Kingston if the cover from the Duchesse’s bed can be brought here for me to work on it?”

  “Yes, of course, miss,” Lucy replied.

  Olinda was sure that Felix Hanson would tell the Dowager Countess that he had not been aware that she was in the bedroom and she thought that, if later her Ladyship went to find out the truth for herself, she would find no one there.

  It was just a question of timing if she was found working in her own room and it might substantiate his story and allay any suspicion the Dowager Countess might have.

  She loathed with every tissue of her body being involved in his lies, but she knew that to be dismissed now, when there was so much work still for her to do, would be heartbreaking.

  Besides she had to admit to herself that she could not bear to leave not knowing what the Earl would do or whether he would pay any attention to what she had suggested to him last night.

  It would be like reading a book and losing it halfway through so that one never knew the end of the story.

  It was difficult to guess what the end of the Kelvedon drama would be.

  Although she had told the Earl that he should stay at his home, she wondered if any man, feeling as he did about his mother’s liaison, could bear to be reminded of it day after day.

  It would be a humiliation for him to have to be even distantly polite to Felix Hanson and Olinda could understand the revulsion that the mere sight of the man caused in him.

  It was the same feeling she had herself for Felix Hanson, not that what she felt was of any account!

  Yet what was the alternative for the Earl? To go back to Paris and, if what Mademoiselle le Bronc said was true, eat out his heart longing for his home, for his country, for his horses and for his possessions and everything that was a part of his blood?

  ‘Why can his mother not understand what she is doing to him?’ Olinda asked.

  She had tried last night to make him see the Dowager Countess’s point of view. Her looks were fading, she was growing old and everything that she valued most would wither and die together with her youth.

  Olinda had wondered this morning when she awoke how she had been brave enough to speak as she had, to champion a woman who fundamentally was the opposite to everything she believed was good and noble.

  Olinda knew that to her mother the Dowager Countess would be quite simply an evil woman.

  Lady Selwyn was very strait-laced and she had often deprecated to Olinda the loose morals of what was known as ‘The Marlborough House Set’ – the gay, pleasure-loving, fast Society that surrounded the Prince of Wales.

  “They are a bad example to the country as a whole,” she had said to her daughter in her gentle voice, “and I cannot understand how the Prince of Wales can allow his name to be coupled with such women as Mrs. Langtry or the Count
ess of Warwick, who has proclaimed the Prince’s infatuation so openly that it is gossiped about in the common newspapers!”

  Olinda had not been particularly interested at the time because she had known that it was very unlikely she would ever come in contact with the Social figures who shocked and distressed her mother.

  But now there was a love affair taking place in the house where she was working and she could see all too clearly the repercussions it had not only upon the Earl but on all the household.

  The servants disliked Mr. Hanson and resented his presence. Yet last night she had tried to find an explanation to the Earl for his mother s behaviour.

  She thought now that he was right and there was in fact no excuse for the way the Dowager Countess had behaved, apparently even when he was still a boy.

  Olinda admired the Duchesse de Mazarin and, in spite of her lack of morals, she had given the King not only her body but her mind and had inspired him in a way no other woman had been able to do before.

  Her scintillating and brilliant brain had been as important to him as the beauty of her body.

  Olinda remembered reading that in the salon Hortense de Mazarin had set up in London, her knowledge of philosophy, her exchange of witticisms with the greatest brains of the age and the brilliant cut and thrust of debate had brought the King a new interest and an intellectual pleasure that he had missed ever since his return to England.

  That was love on a very different plane, Olinda told herself, from the Dowager Countess’s passion for a man over twenty years her junior and her inferior in both breeding and intellect.

  She felt herself shudder as she thought about Felix Hanson.

  She longed to comfort the Earl and sweep away his bitterness, to try to persuade him that his mother’s behaviour must not be allowed to poison his life.

  There was so much lying before him, so much for him to do, he must not be handicapped by a woman who had never considered her son or cared enough to deny herself a sensuous pleasure.

  As Olinda sewed away at the cover the housemaids brought her and laid out on the table in her room, she found it impossible to think of anything but the problems around her.

  The fantasies that had so often occupied her mind in the past had all now become concentrated in the real-life story of the Earl.