The Shadow of Sin (Bantam Series No. 19) Page 13

  She could still feel the fierce possessiveness of his lips against her cheek.

  ‘I hate him! I hate him!’ Celesta thought.

  She remembered how she had run from the arbour into the Earl’s arms and found a feeling of security and safety to replace her fear.

  He had seemed so big and strong standing there in the light of the Chinese lantern.

  There was nothing Lord Crawthorne could do in his presence.

  But the Earl was in London and Lord Crawthorne was at this moment in the Sitting-Room with Giles, whispering poisonous ideas into his mind, inciting him to further hatred against the man who had rescued him from prison.

  “How can Giles listen to His Lordship?” Celesta asked.

  Then she felt a warm feeling in her heart because Giles had refused to let Lord Crawthorne talk with her alone.

  She was deep in thought and had not even picked up the sewing which occupied her leisure hours when she heard Giles calling to her from the bottom of the stairs:

  “Celesta! Come down!”

  Reluctantly Celesta obeyed him and found him waiting for her.

  His face looked flushed and there was a glint of excitement in his eyes she did not understand.

  “His Lordship is going back to London,” he said, “and he wishes to bid you good-bye.”

  Celesta was so pleased that Lord Crawthorne was leaving that she entered the Sitting-Room with a smile on her lips.

  “I must thank you, Celesta,” he said, “for an excellent luncheon. It has been an inexpressible pleasure to see you, and when I have gone Giles will tell you what we have discussed about the future.”

  “The future?” Celesta asked sharply.

  “I shall be seeing you not tomorrow but the next day,” Lord Crawthorne said.

  Celesta looked at him uncertainly as he went on:

  “I have not had a chance to tell you how beautiful you looked last night.”

  Celesta was surprised that he should refer to the evening when he had been humiliated in front of her, but she merely inclined her head.

  “A great number of people will be talking about you today,” Lord Crawthorne said. “Most of their remarks will be complimentary, although some, like Lady Imogen for instance, will be full of envy, hatred and malice.”

  Celesta looked uncomfortable.

  She was remembering the anger on Lady Imogen’s face when the Earl had led her from the Supper-Room.

  “But then, of course,” Lord Crawthorne continued, “poor Lady Imogen has every reason to be jealous. It is doubtful if any woman could keep Meltham faithful to her for long!”

  Celesta was very still.

  There was an innuendo in Lord Crawthorne’s voice that was unmistakable and as she did not speak he added:

  “Of course you know that they are to be married? The Wedding is arranged to take place early in the Autumn when the King returns to London.”

  Celesta felt as if Lord Crawthorne had thrust a dagger into her heart.

  She did not understand the pain or why the sunshine had gone and the small Sitting-Room seemed dark.

  “They ... they are to be ... married?” she questioned in a low voice, aware that Lord Crawthorne’s eyes were on her face.

  “Did not Meltham tell you?” he asked. “That is not surprising! Imogen will have a difficult life with such a rake! Nevertheless from her point of view marriage has its compensations!”

  “At least the Earl is rich and can buy her everything her heart desires,” Giles interposed with a bitter note in his voice.

  “Yes, the Earl is a very rich man,” Lord Crawthorne said, “and let us hope for Lady Imogen’s sake he lives to enjoy it!”

  He took Celesta’s hand as he spoke and raised it to his lips.

  “You refused my present,” he said softly, “but when I come again I will bring you something different—something which I know you will accept!”

  Celesta felt his lips on her skin but somehow it made no impact on her.

  She did not even shrink from him. She merely felt numb, as if her whole body had become paralysed.

  She was aware that Giles was escorting Lord Crawthorne to his carriage and they were talking intimately with their heads close together as they went down the garden path.

  She could see them from the window but still she did not move.

  She could only stand staring across the room and feel as if her feet were weighted down to the floor.

  So the Earl was to marry Lady Imogen!

  She was not surprised at his choice.

  Never had she imagined any woman could be so beautiful as Lady Imogen with her red hair and green eyes.

  There was something bewitching about her; something which Celesta was certain any man would find irresistible.

  She was very feminine and had the sophisticated elegance and self-assurance that the Earl would require in his wife.

  He had said that he had no desire to be married, but that had obviously been merely an excuse for asking her to become his mistress—a mistress whom he would have discarded very quickly because he would have found her dull and uninteresting beside someone like Lady Imogen.

  Celesta remembered that strange, unaccountable feeling the Earl had aroused in her when he had kissed her.

  It was a feeling she had been unable to explain, but because of it she had wanted him to go on kissing her and not to stop.

  Then as through the window she saw Lord Crawthorne drive away, as she saw Giles walking back towards the house, she knew like a flash of lightning sweeping through her, like a sudden pillar of fire in the sky, that she loved the Earl.

  She had loved him, she thought wildly, from the very first moment when he had kissed her in the peach-house and she had been unable to fight against him.

  When he had called on her she had tried to hate him.

  Yet when they had dined together and she had come down the Library steps to find him standing at the bottom of them she had no hate in her heart.

  She should have known then, she thought, that the strangely unaccountable sensation he aroused in her was love.

  She should have known when they stood together in the Priests’ hole and she wondered whether he would put his arms round her that she already loved him.

  It had been an excitement, a kind of thrilling anticipation that was half fear, half pleasure.

  But nothing like the frightening terror that Lord Crawthorne evoked in her.

  She was in love and she had not known it!

  She loved the Earl and only now, when she had lost him, did she understand why when he had held her in his arms she had known a security and a feeling of safety that was beyond anything she had ever experienced before.

  “I love him! I love him!” she told herself and knew with a feeling of abject despair that he was to marry Lady Imogen.

  He would no longer trouble himself with her.

  What he had said and done last night was merely an act of kindness.

  It had perhaps seemed to him pathetic that she had never been to a Ball and that she had suffered, as he had said the first time they talked, from “the sins that she had not herself committed.”

  “How could I have imagined for one moment that I could mean anything to him when I live in the shadow of sin?” Celesta asked.

  An incoherent tempest of thoughts rushed through her mind.

  Then she realised that Giles was delaying coming into the Sitting-Room because he was opening another bottle of brandy, which he had taken from the case in the Hall.

  He came into the room having extracted the cork and filled his glass.

  Then he raised it to Celesta.

  “Congratulate me!” he said. “I have pulled off a tremendous coup—something you never thought I would do!”

  “What is it? What has Lord Crawthorne suggested to you?” Celesta asked.

  Giles took a long drink of the brandy.

  “You can be proud of your brother,” he said, “and I can assure you I am very proud of myse
lf! We are in clover, Celesta!”

  “What are you talking about, Giles?” Celesta asked. “Tell me because I am worried.”

  “There is no need to be worried,” Giles replied. “We are going to sit pretty and enjoy ourselves, and the person you have to thank is me!”

  “What have you done?” Celesta asked with a touch of irritation in her voice.

  She did not like the way that Giles was boasting or care for the bombastic note in his voice.

  What could Lord Crawthorne possibly have done, she wondered, to evoke such elation?

  “I give you three guesses,” Giles said. “Three guesses, Celesta, as to what I have pushed Crawthorne into suggesting where you are concerned.”

  There was a sudden silence.

  “Where ... I am concerned?” Celesta repeated.

  “Yes—you!” Giles said. “He had very different intentions when he came here, which was proved by that diamond bracelet you so sensibly refused.”

  “Intentions?” Celesta echoed. “I can quite believe that his intentions are disgusting and depraved, whatever they may be.”

  “Oh no! That is where you are quite wrong, my dear sister,” Giles said. “His Lordship’s intentions, now that I have explained things a little more clearly, are strictly honourable!”

  There was a silence while Celesta felt as though her heart would stop beating.

  Then in a voice which seemed almost to choke her with the words she said:

  “What are you ... trying to say to ... me? What do you ... mean by ‘strictly honourable’?”

  “I mean, Celesta, that he is willing to marry you!” Giles said. “You can thank me for the best offer you are ever likely to receive!”

  “Marry him?” Celesta enquired. “Are you crazy? Do you really believe that I would marry a man like that?”

  “Of course you will marry him,” Giles said sharply. “I have already given him my word that you will do so.”

  “You must be out of your mind!” Celesta cried. “I would not marry Lord Crawthorne if he were the last man on earth! Anything you may have said on my behalf you will have to contradict.”

  Giles moved to stand in front of the fireplace, and his eyes narrowed in a manner Celesta had noticed before.

  He looked at her as she faced him defiantly, and for a moment she thought he was going to rage at her.

  Instead he said in a voice that was unexpectedly firm:

  “As you well know, you have no say in the matter.”

  “What do you mean?” Celesta asked.

  “You are only eighteen,” Giles replied, “and I am your Guardian.”

  There was a silence, then he went on:

  “Have you forgotten that a Guardian has complete and absolute power over his Ward?”

  Celesta did not speak and he continued:

  “Just as Papa could have accepted any young man who wished to pay his addresses to you, so now I am in that position, and let me make it quite clear, Celesta, I have accepted Lord Crawthorne’s proposal that you should be his wife!”

  “I will not ... marry him!” Celesta said in a low voice. “I would rather ... die!”

  “You will marry him because he will provide for you in the future,” Giles said, “and for me in the present.”

  “What has he promised you? What bribe has he offered to make you even consider anything as impossible?” Celesta asked wildly.

  “He has promised me that I shall go back to London and live the life I enjoy,” Giles answered. “He has also assured me—and I believe him—that we can arrange for the Priory to become my property again.”

  “You have had too much to drink!” Celesta said. “To begin with, Giles, you cannot dispose of me as if I were some inanimate object you could give away without a thought for my feelings.”

  Giles did not answer and she said quickly:

  “Secondly you cannot be so foolish as to imagine there is any possible way that you could regain the Priory from the Earl. He won it gaming, as both you and I know, and a gambling debt is one of honour.”

  “You are very voluble,” Giles said disagreeably. “But why should I listen to you? Crawthorne is going to arrange that your marriage will take place quickly and quietly, because I cannot afford any expense.”

  “I will not marry him!” Celesta cried. “Will you not get it into your head, Giles, that I will not marry him? I loathe and detest him!”

  “Who cares what your feelings in the matter are?” Giles asked. “It will mean that we shall be rich and comfortable and live the life we want to live.”

  His voice sharpened as he went on:

  “If you think I am going to give up what Crawthorne has offered me for the sake of some foolish, girlish simperings on your part, you are very much mistaken!”

  Celesta went to his side and put out her hand. “Please, Giles, do not quarrel,” she begged. “Try to understand my point of view. I detest Lord Crawthorne!”

  “What does it matter?” Giles asked. “I am not pretending he will make you a very attractive husband, but he will support you, Celesta, and while he is enamoured of you as he is at the moment, you can do anything you like with him.”

  “I do not want to do anything with him,” Celesta said almost childishly. “Why has he no wife? Why is he not married?”

  “He has been married twice, as it happens,” Giles answered. “His first wife died and his second took her own life!”

  “Because I presume she could not tolerate His Lordship any longer,” Celesta said. “Do you wish that to happen to me?”

  “You are being hysterical!” Giles replied unsympathetically. “Crawthorne is all right and he can be a good friend if it suits him, which it does at the moment.”

  “Only because he wants me!” Celesta said perceptively. “Do you think he will go on being a good friend when I no longer interest him? When he is bored with me and finds other women more interesting.”

  “By that time,” Giles answered complacently, “I shall have feathered my nest, and I will be back in the Priory!”

  “What has Lord Crawthorne said about the Priory?” Celesta asked.

  Giles walked to the table to pour himself another drink.

  “I am not going to tell you anything,” he said. “I do not trust you! But Crawthorne is clever.”

  “How is he clever about the Priory?” Celesta persisted.

  “He has told me not to tell you.”

  Giles sat down in a chair, sipping his brandy.

  “If you tell me what I want to know,” Celesta coaxed, “perhaps I will be more ... pleasant to him when he comes to see me again.”

  Giles was getting very drunk, but at the same time she realised that what she had said had percolated his mind.

  “I might behave very ... badly if you do not tell me,” she threatened.

  Giles considered this for a moment and then he said, his voice thick:

  “Crawthorne thinks that we can prove that Meltham broke the rules of the game and that his bid for the Priory was not valid because Crawthorne himself had already wagered the same amount.”

  “If that was true, why did he not say so at the time?” Celesta asked.

  “Meltham is rich and money talks, as you well know, Celesta,” Giles answered. “But if Meltham was not there, then it might be quite easy to prove “

  “What do you mean, ‘if he was not there’?” Celesta enquired.

  There was a pause. She had the feeling that Giles was thinking up an answer rather than telling her the truth.

  “He could be abroad on his honeymoon, for one thing,” Giles replied at last.

  Even as he spoke Celesta was sure that that was not the answer he should have given.

  Chapter Seven

  The Earl rose early despite the fact that he had gone to bed very late after his Ball.

  As he dressed he decided he would go to Wroxley Priory. He summoned his Secretary and gave him instructions to send a groom ahead to prepare the House-Hold.

  “I
have a letter here,” the Earl continued, “for Mademoiselle Désirée Lafette. Will you take it to her personally and hand her over the deeds of the house.”

  The Secretary looked surprised and said tentatively:

  “You will remember, My Lord, we had some difficulty in finding a house to purchase in that particular locality.”

  “I will not be needing it again,” the Earl said briefly.

  “Very good, My Lord.”

  There were various other matters to be seen to and just as the Earl had finished dealing with them, a note arrived from Carlton House asking him to see the King immediately after luncheon.

  This upset all the Earl’s plans.

  “I am afraid I shall have to postpone going to the country until tomorrow,” he said to his Secretary.

  “There would indeed hardly be time for you to go, My Lord, unless His Majesty requires you for a very short time.”

  The Earl smiled.

  His Majesty’s “short times” usually involved a commitment of several hours.

  “I have a feeling the King wishes to talk over the Coronation with me,” he said. “I expect that that is the explanation, My Lord,” his Secretary agreed.

  The Earl therefore repaired to his Club for an early luncheon and found Captain Charles Kepple, as he had expected, in the Morning-Room.

  “Good-morning, Vidal,” Charles Kepple said. “I have been hearing glowing accounts of your Ball last night.”

  “I am only sorry you could not be there,” the Earl replied.

  “It was just my luck to be on guard duty when you were giving a party,” Charles Kepple said, “and as you can imagine on Coronation night no-one wished to exchange duties with me.”

  “I hear there were a number of very noisy junketings all over London,” the Earl said as he sat down in a chair next to his friend.

  “But your party was exceptional!” Charles Kepple said.

  “To what are you referring particularly?” the Earl enquired with a twinkle in his eyes.

  Charles Kepple laughed.

  “You know as well as I do! The whole town is talking about the new ‘Incomparable’ that you produced. Who is she, Vidal?”

  “I imagine you are speaking of Miss Celesta Wroxley.”

  “Giles Wroxley’s sister? How extraordinary!”