The Outrageous Lady Read online

  Finally they dipped down into a creek, which was half-hidden by scrubby trees and, after riding through thick shadows, Lady Roysdon saw ahead of them, almost indiscernible except from the direction of the sea, there was a hut.

  She was well aware that it must be a smugglers’ hut, used by those waiting to put out to sea or as a place to hide the merchandise they carried across the Channel.

  Only as they drew nearer did she see a face at the window and a moment later the door was opened and Denzil came running towards them.

  He greeted Jake with a wide smile, before he said,

  “Good afternoon, your Ladyship. I was a-thinkin’ we might be a-seein’ you, but the Master was afraid it’d be too dangerous for your Ladyship to come to us.”

  “Where is he?” Lady Roysdon asked.

  “Asleep, my Lady, but’ e’ll wake quick enough when ’e knows ’e’s got a visitor.”

  He helped her down from the saddle, then leaving him with Ladybird, Lady Roysdon walked to the hut and went inside.

  It was dim and dark and there was a faint smell of tobacco.

  The hut was small and very primitive. There was a table with two chairs and by a blackened fireplace a trestle bed where Sir Just lay sleeping.

  He had lain down in his riding clothes, one leg rested on the ground and one arm was thrown out over the side of the bed.

  Lady Roysdon stood looking at him and she thought he looked much younger and somehow defenceless with his eyes closed and a faint smile on his lips as if his dreams were happy ones.

  As if the mere fact of her presence rather than any noise she made awakened him, he opened his eyes, looked at her for a moment incredulously and then rose to his feet.

  “My darling! You should not have come here!” he exclaimed.

  But there was no mistaking the gladness in his voice and, as she moved towards him, his arms went round her.

  “You are safe! I have been so worried in case anything had happened to you.”

  “Do you think I have not been worried about you?” he asked. “Denzil told me what you did. How could you have saved me in such a brave but reckless manner?”

  “It was the only thing I could do,” Lady Roysdon said quietly. “However, D’Arcy has the best doctor in Brighton and we need not trouble ourselves about him. He will recover, you can be sure of that!”

  “If you had killed him and if there had been the slightest chance of your being suspected, I would have come back and given myself up.”

  Lady Roysdon gave a little laugh.

  “I knew that and, if I had any sense, I would have aimed for his arm or his shoulder.”

  “It was very brave of you, but at the same time I cannot bear you to be involved in all this unpleasantness.”

  He looked down at her. Then very gently he took her hat from her head, set it down on the table and lifting her chin with his fingers he said,

  “Why is it that every time we meet you are more beautiful even than I remember?”

  “I love you!” Lady Roysdon replied. “But, darling, you must go away at once. The Prince Regent has sent for the Dragoons and they will be here tomorrow morning.”

  “I suspected that might happen.”

  “There are no soldiers in Brighton at the moment. They are on manoeuvres at Dover.”

  “I had heard that too.”

  “The threat of being interrogated by the Military was merely a story to impress Lord Marshall.”

  Lady Roysdon drew in her breath.

  “D’Arcy Sheringham intended to interrogate you himself!”

  The horror in her voice was very evident and Sir Just drew her a little closer.

  “Forget it,” he said. “It has not happened and it is my fault for involving you in all these criminal activities, which are now over and for ever!”

  She raised her eyes to his.

  “Do you mean that?”

  “I thought it over during the night,” he said, “and knew that nothing I do must ever hurt you and that I had been very selfish in choosing such a way to be near you.”

  “It was not selfish, but the most wonderful thing that ever happened,” Lady Roysdon said with a little throb in her voice. “Supposing you had stayed in Cornwall and I had never met you? Supposing I had never known what real love and happiness mean?”

  “And now you do know?” Sir Just asked.

  “I have come alive,” Lady Roysdon replied. “That is what D’Arcy saw had happened and it is true. I am alive as I have never been before! I am happy, wildly, radiantly happy because you love me and because we have found each other.”

  Her words moved him so that he could only hold her tighter until it was hard to breathe.

  Then he said,

  “I am going home, my precious one. I have so much to do before my house and my gardens will be ready for you.”

  She turned and hid her face against his shoulder.

  Then she said in a voice so low that he could hardly hear it,

  “Let me – come with – you now.”

  She felt him stiffen for a moment and then he answered very quietly,

  “I am preparing a home for – my wife!”

  She knew then that this was what she wanted more than anything else in the world and this was what he had intended from the first moment he had seen her.

  “You may have to – wait a – long time.”

  “Does it matter?” he asked.

  “N-no.”

  Her reply was a little uncertain and yet she knew that he was right.

  Time was not important. What really mattered was that eventually they would be together. She would belong to him. She was his and everything else, everything that came between them, was of no consequence.

  As if he was aware of what she was thinking and there was no need to put into words what they both knew, he looked down into her eyes and said,

  “I shall be there. All you have to do is come to me and we will both come alive.”

  As he finished speaking, his lips were on hers and he kissed her possessively and demandingly.

  At the same time there was a tenderness that made his kiss different from the way he had kissed her before.

  It was as if he dedicated them to a certain course that they would both follow without deviation. And in that moment the wonder and rapture which Lady Roysdon had felt before swept over her so intensely that she quivered in his arms.

  What he felt for her was, she knew, a love so perfect, so dedicated to an ideal, that she would pray every night and every day that she would not fail him.

  “I love you, my Galatea!” he said softly and his voice was a little unsteady. “I love you until there is nothing in the world but you. Wherever I go, wherever I am, I shall see your lovely face, your glorious eyes and your soft lips.”

  He kissed her eyes before he went on,

  “At night I shall dream of you and I shall wait until I no longer need to dream because you are with me.”

  Lady Roysdon felt the tears come into her eyes.

  “That is how I love you,” she murmured, “and I shall wait as you are waiting, counting the hours until we can be together for the rest of our lives.”

  “And after that in Eternity,” he said, “because you are mine, my Galatea, mine completely and absolutely, a part of me, and even death will not separate us.”

  He kissed her again passionately, longingly, and she clung to him feeling her heart beating against his.

  At last he took his arms from her and picked up his hat and whip.

  “I am going now,” he said. “Jake will take you back. He will stay with you and when the time comes he will bring you to me. Until then, God will take care of you, my darling, as I am unable to do.”

  She stood looking at him, her eyes filled with unshed tears and, although she longed to cling to him, she did not do so.

  She only watched him with her soul in her eyes, as he walked out through the door and closed it behind him.

  She stood very still.<
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  She heard his voice speaking, she thought to Jake. Then there was the jingle of harnesses and the sound of two horses moving off.

  She did not go to the window to watch him leave, but put her hands up to her face and knew that wherever he went her heart went with him.

  It was some moments before Lady Roysdon could compose herself and put on her hat to leave the hut.

  Jake was waiting outside, holding Ladybird and his horse by their bridles.

  He helped her into the saddle and now they went back slowly and without haste.

  Lady Roysdon knew that she and Jake were both thinking of two other horsemen, riding away in the opposite direction, starting on their long journey to the very end of England.

  As they drew nearer to Brighton, she began to think of what she should do while she waited, as Just was waiting for her to be free.

  She had a feeling, although they had never had time to discuss much together, that he was well read besides being intelligent.

  She thought how many blank spots there were in her own education, having been taught by incompetent Governesses and only occasionally, when her father was feeling rich, being able to have extra Tutors for the subjects which interested her.

  She remembered the huge library that she had seldom visited in the country house belonging to her husband in Huntingdonshire and another library in the house in London where she had been too busy with her Social amusements to have time for books.

  ‘There are hours I can spend in both those places,’ she told herself.

  She recalled that Jake had told her that Sir Just supported an orphanage and she thought that she would find out more about orphanages in general.

  Perhaps, too, she would visit those she knew existed in London, but about which, she had not been concerned until now.

  ‘I must be worthy of him,’ she told herself firmly.

  She thought humbly, as women have thought since the beginning of time, that she was not good or clever or beautiful enough for the love that had come to her and which was a part of God.

  They reached Brighton and now, as if she had no wish for any further subterfuge or pretence, Lady Roysdon rode up to the front of the house.

  She dismounted and walked up the steps to the door as Jake took the horses round to the mews.

  As Fulton took her gloves and whip from her, she said,

  “Will you send a footman to the Royal Pavilion and tell His Royal Highness and Mrs. Fitzherbert that I have changed my mind and would be very pleased to dine with them tonight”

  “Very good, my Lady.”

  Lady Roysdon laid her hand on the bannisters.

  ‘I will not allow anyone to think that I am especially distressed or upset by what has happened to the Earl’ she thought. ‘From now on I intend to lead my own life in my own way and the sooner everybody is aware of it the better!’

  She thought as she reached the top of the stairs that it was going to require courage – a courage very different from anything that she had shown in the past.

  There would be nothing defiant about it, nothing rebellious, but instead a deepening of her personality and character.

  She reached her bedroom and as she did so she knew that she was no longer restless. She no longer wished for excitement and adventure to fill her days, for she had found what she was seeking.

  Like the peace and quiet of the wood it was there in her heart and in her mind every time she thought of Just.

  He was not beside her, but his love enveloped her until she could feel her spirit reaching out to his and they were an indivisible part of each other.

  Chapter Seven

  “You cannot mean to give Juliet all your jewellery, Galatea. You have been far too generous already.”

  “Everything except the emeralds.”

  “But why? You will need them and you have taken nothing from Roysdon Park or the house in London.”

  “I don’t need anything, Roland.”

  Galatea looked at the new Earl of Roysdon as she spoke and thought, as she had often thought before, that he was an extremely prepossessing and delightful young man.

  He was nearly thirty-four and had been happily married for the past eight years to a charming wife who liked the country and had no desire to shine in the Social whirl of London.

  They would settle down at Roysdon Park, she knew, and carry out all the obligations that she had avoided.

  Roland would undoubtedly become the Lord Lieutenant of the County, while his wife, Juliet, would open bazaars and fetes and hold huge garden parties on the lawns to which the County families would flock en masse.

  But now Lord Roysdon was looking at her with a puzzled expression and she knew that he could not understand her decision to hand everything over to him.

  “Are you quite sure, Galatea,” he asked, “that you would not wish to keep the Dower House for yourself? It is in a very pleasant situation and we can improve the gardens considerably.”

  Galatea shook her head and after a moment he said a little hesitantly, as if he had no wish to appear curious,

  “Where are you going to live?”

  She looked away from him to where the first rays of the spring sunshine were beginning to percolate through the bare branches of the trees growing in the centre of Berkeley Square.

  “I have planned what I intend to do, Roland, and I do not wish to speak of it at the moment. But when I am settled I will write to you.”

  “I am worried about you, Galatea,” he replied. “After all, although legally you are my aunt you are nevertheless very young and I don’t like to think of you alone and unprotected.”

  “I shall be neither of those things,” Galatea replied, still with that smile on her lips, which gave her, he thought, an almost unearthly expression of happiness.

  “You have not changed your mind and intend, after all, to marry the Earl of Sheringham?” he enquired.

  She did not answer and after a moment he went on,

  “Forgive me if I sound impertinent, but everyone is aware that since recovering from his injuries he has been continually knocking at your door.”

  “I have made it very clear to his Lordship that I will never be his wife,” Galatea replied quietly.

  “He is wildly in love with you.”

  “In his own way.”

  “To be honest, I do not care for him particularly,” Lord Roysdon said, “but at least your future would be assured, although you have refused to accept the money, which I know my uncle would have wished you to have.”

  “I want nothing,” Galatea answered, “except what was provided for me in the Marriage Settlement.”

  “That is very little compared with what you are entitled to claim as my uncle’s widow.”

  “It is enough,” she replied.

  For the first time since she had been speaking to him there was a note of hardness in her voice.

  It had been enough, she thought, to pay for her on her marriage, as if she was a parcel that passed across the counter of a shop. She felt that money should be hers, but nothing else.

  She wanted nothing from the Roysdon family except her freedom, which she had now that George was dead.

  She had been called to his bedside before she left Brighton. A messenger had ridden post-haste from London a fortnight after she had said goodbye to Sir Just.

  Two weeks in which she struggled to adjust herself to a new way of life, a new appraising of everything that had seemed important in the past, but which now appeared to be of no consequence whatsoever.

  She had driven to London within an hour of the messenger’s arrival, leaving her servants to pack up the house and follow after her.

  On arrival at the dark sombre mansion in Berkeley Square where she had never felt at home and where laughter had been unable to penetrate the oppression and gloom, the doctors told her that there had been a change in her husband’s condition.

  He was still in a coma, but his heart was growing weaker and his pulse was slower.

&
nbsp; “Is there nothing you can do?” she asked quietly.

  They shook their heads.

  “Nothing!”

  It had just been a question of waiting – waiting while a man who had held tenaciously onto life for five years, although his mind was not aware of it, sank slowly into oblivion.

  It had taken a month – a month during which Galatea had hardly dared to leave the house in case she should be needed, a month when everybody spoke in whispers and walked around with lowered eyes.

  Once or twice she felt like screaming at the hypocrisy of it all.

  How could they want a man to live in such circumstances? How could one call it life when the mind was dead and only his heart refused to stop beating or his flesh to grow cold?

  Then she knew that she must play the part that was expected of her with propriety, because then she would have nothing to reproach herself with after the end came.

  She knew that George’s family was surprised at her quietness and the charm with which she entertained them, making them as comfortable as possible.

  They had tried to ostracise her in the past because they were incensed that George should have married anyone so young and her wild behaviour had been just what they had expected.

  Every detail of her escapades, which lost nothing in the telling, only added to their preconceived opinion of what she was like.

  But now they stared at her in amazement as she listened to the grumbling of the old aunts and commiserated with them over their rheumatism.

  She sent carriages to convey them wherever they wished to go, accommodated them in Berkeley Square, provided them with an unceasing succession of delicious meals and, where the gentlemen were concerned, superlative wine.

  They had not expected her to be a good housekeeper and they had certainly not expected to find her alone without a retinue of fast disreputable friends of whom they disapproved as violently as they disapproved of her.

  “You have been very kind to an old woman, my dear,” George’s eldest aunt had said after the funeral.

  The other relatives had echoed the same remark with both surprise and gratitude.

  But they had been even more astonished when they received valuable mementoes of a relative who had never particularly cared for them in his lifetime, but to whom they had paid ‘lip service’ and given a certain amount of respect only because he was the head of the family.