Love and the Loathsome Leopard Read online

  As the idea came to her she felt herself galvanised into action and the helplessness that had made her weak and tearful was gone.

  She ran into Richard’s room.

  He was still asleep and she put her hand on his shoulder.

  “Wake up, Richard!” she said. “We must get away. We will hide somewhere”

  “What are you talking about?” he asked drowsily.

  “We have to escape,” she said urgently, “before Jeffrey Farlow comes for me at nine o’clock. He is determined to marry me.”

  “Where can we go?” Richard asked, sitting up.

  “I don’t know,” Wivina answered desperately, “but we cannot sit here. We have to do something!”

  Richard smiled.

  “You are right,” he said. “Why should we give in tamely? What time did you say he was coming for you?”

  “Nine o’clock.”

  “That should give us a few hours, at any rate. We can get quite a long way in that time. Hurry up, Wivina, and let’s start walking.”

  Wivina bent forward to kiss her brother’s cheek.

  “I knew I could rely on you,” she said and sped to her own room.

  It took her only a few minutes to wash and get dressed, and having done so she put out her hand to draw the pistol from beneath her pillow.

  As she did so, she heard the sudden sound of voices outside.

  They were so loud that she moved to the window to see what was happening.

  Coming from the direction of the warehouses up the road towards the inn were about half a dozen men.

  Jeffrey Farlow was walking in the centre of them and she saw that the others were not the usual smugglers in their rough clothes, but pseudo-gentlemen like Farlow himself, dressed fashionably with high cravats, tight pantaloons and cutaway coats.

  She guessed they were the heads of the smuggling gangs and she realised they were all extremely inebriated.

  “Good ol’ Jeffrey!” one of them said as they neared the Inn. “Lesh have another bottle and drink to your last night of freedom.”

  There was a general shout of assent at this and suddenly Wivina knew what was happening.

  Jeffrey Farlow was enjoying a final bachelor party with his cronies.

  She moved away from the window farther into the room in case they should see her peeping out.

  Then she heard them burst into the inn, shouting for Henri.

  This, she knew, was going to make it difficult for her and Richard to get away.

  They would have to wait until the men below had gone, for as far as Wivina knew, there was no other way out of the inn.

  Anyway, it would be far too dangerous to go down the stairs while they were drinking in the room below.

  She slipped across the landing to warn Richard.

  “I can hear them,” he said. “They are not likely to stay long, because presumably Farlow will want some sleep.”

  “I doubt it!” Wivina said bitterly. “But we shall have to wait.”

  There was laughter and sounds from below that made her think they were drinking toast after toast to the prospective bridegroom.

  She left Richard’s room to go to the top of the stairs.

  ‘If only there were another staircase,’ she thought desperately, ‘we could slip out of the inn and be some miles outside the town before these men begin to sober up.

  Suddenly she heard Jeffrey Farlow say,

  “You should see her. You should see my future bride! The prettiest piece of goods you’ve ever set eyes on!”

  “I’ll see her next trip,” someone answered. “We oughta be movin’ now. Should of gone several hours ago, if it comes to that!”

  The speaker was obviously very drunk.

  “You’ve got to see her now!” Jeffrey Farlow answered. “Wait – I’ll fetch her down to you.”

  The impact of what he was saying penetrated Wivina’s mind and with a little gasp she turned quickly towards the door of her room.

  As she did so the hem of her cloak caught on a rough nail at the top of the stairs.

  As she tried to run it held her back and, although she tore herself free, Jeffrey Farlow was halfway up the stairs before she reached her door.

  She rushed inside, but he had seen her and he threw himself forward even as she shut it and tried to ram home the bolt.

  Wivina was so frightened that her fingers fumbled and, almost before she realised what was happening, the full force of his body crashed the door open and she fell backwards to find herself facing him.

  “Trying to shut me out, were you?” he jeered. “Well, you’ve failed! I want you to come downstairs and meet my friends.”

  “No!” Wivina screamed.

  “Refusing to obey me, are you?”

  He did not speak aggressively, but almost in a manner as if she amused him. Yet at the same time his eyes were on her devouringly, looking at her with a dark lust that made her shrink from him in sheer terror.

  She moved away as he followed her, and now she felt her heart beating as panic swept over her because she knew he intended to touch her.

  It was then that Richard came into the room.

  “Leave my sister alone!” he cried.

  Jeffrey Farlow turned his head.

  “Oh, it’s you, little whippersnapper. And who are you to give me orders?”

  He looked at Richard scornfully and said,

  “Go back to bed and mind your own business!”

  Then it suddenly dawned on him that Richard was dressed and so was Wivina.

  He looked from one to the other, before he said slowly, as if he forced away the fumes of drink to think clearly,

  “You’re both up and dressed. Why – so early in the morning?”

  Richard did not speak, nor did Wivina.

  Then Jeffrey Farlow said,

  “So you were thinking to escape me – to try to get away? Well, I’ll make sure you don’t do that. In fact I’ll make sure that you belong to me – and why the hell should we wait for the Mayor, or any other turnip-head, to mutter a lot of words over us?”

  Wivina gave a cry of horror and put out her hands to ward him off.

  He caught her in his arms and while she struggled frantically she realised that he was very strong and she was completely helpless.

  “I’ll bed you now!” he said roughly. “And that’ll settle the matter once and for all!”

  Struggling and fighting against him, Wivina felt herself pulled across the room.

  Then suddenly Richard, who had been standing uncertain and immobile just inside the door, acted.

  He ran to the bed and pulled the pistol from beneath the pillow.

  “Leave her alone!” he ordered, pointing it at Jeffrey Farlow.

  For a moment the man was still while his arms held Wivina. Then with a swift movement which took the boy by surprise, he turned Wivina round and flung her towards her brother.

  She bumped against the pistol and, as she did so, Jeffrey Farlow struck Richard forcibly on the side of his face.

  The boy toppled over and fell to the ground beside the bed, the pistol clattering on the bare boards.

  “You have hurt him! You have hurt him!” Wivina shrieked.

  “He can think himself lucky I’ve not killed him!” Jeffrey Farlow said. “And now I’ll deal with you!”

  She was half-sprawling on the floor, and picking her up in his arms, he flung her down on the bed.

  Then, as she screamed in sheer terror, there was a sudden bright explosion which shook the whole house.

  It seemed to be followed by complete silence.

  Then shouts and screams broke out, to be followed by yet another explosion – the vibrating boom of a ship’s gun.

  Chapter Seven

  Crossing the Channel, Lord Cheriton felt he had never suffered such anxiety and pain as he had endured thinking of Wivina.

  He had realised, as soon as he learnt that Jeffrey Farlow had gone to France and that Wivina had disappeared, that he had taken her wi
th him, and he knew they would have gone to Roscoff, where Tom Johnson had a house.

  With the quickness and precision that was typical of his Army training, Lord Cheriton went back to the troops clustered round the stables where they were guarding the smugglers who had already been captured.

  In a few seconds he had picked out fifteen of the men he thought most experienced and told them to mount their horses.

  The rest, including those who were slightly wounded, were left to guard the prisoners, but he knew there was little risk involved because the wagonette with the Officer in charge would be arriving shortly.

  Actually he met them as they rode down the drive towards the village and he stopped just long enough to tell the Officer that the prisoners were to be taken to Chichester, where he thought the Magistrates were less likely to be intimidated than those in the towns on the open coast.

  He then set off across country at breakneck speed towards Portsmouth.

  As he went, a plan was forming itself in his mind as to what he should do.

  At the same time, every nerve in his body cried out for Wivina and for the agony he knew she must be suffering at being the prisoner of Jeffrey Farlow.

  He would not contemplate the possibility that he might be too late and would find her already married. If she was, he could only kill the man who had compelled her by force into such a degradation.

  Equally, knowing what she felt about him, he was afraid of what horrors Jeffrey Farlow might have inflicted upon her.

  Anyone who had served with the loathsome leopard would have known that as he rode ahead of his men, his face grim, his chin set, he was at his most formidable.

  It was the way he looked on going into action against the French. There was a sense of power and purpose about him which the men who followed him recognised and which made them confident that whatever he undertook he would be victorious.

  It took them under two hours at the speed they were riding to reach Portsmouth, and, as they hurried over the rough cobbled streets, Lord Cheriton turned towards the docks.

  As he had hoped, the first ships he saw were two large Revenue Cutters tied up against the quay, and the men moving about amongst the gigs and galleys on their decks, dressed in red flannel shirts and blue trousers, were obviously getting the ships ready to go to sea.

  Lord Cheriton was just about to dismount and go aboard when he saw a man standing leaning against a shed, watching the cutters – and at the sight of him his eyes lit up.

  It was Captain Osborne, a man he was particularly pleased to see at that very moment.

  Even as he rode directly up to him, he saw that just inside the harbour in the deep water there was a warship at anchor.

  “Osborne!”

  Lord Cheriton’s voice was low but commanding.

  Captain Osborne started and looked round in surprise to see who had called him.

  “I did not expect to see you here, sir,” he replied in a low voice, obviously keeping Lord Cheriton’s identity secret as he had been told to do.

  “I need you,” Lord Cheriton said briefly. “What is that warship?”

  “She is the H.M.S. Valiant, sir, and she arrived in Port this morning.”

  “Have you any idea where her Captain is?”

  “As it happens, I have just seen him come ashore. I think he is with the Harbour Master.”

  “Then get hold of the Officers in charge of the Revenue Cutters and bring them there immediately. Tell them they are required on important business, with direct orders from the Prime Minister.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  Captain Osborne ran across the quay towards the cutters while Lord Cheriton rode on to the Harbour Master’s office.

  He was so precise and authoritative in his orders that in under an hour all three vessels had put to sea, Lord Cheriton sailing in H.M.S. Valiant, the soldiers under the command of Captain Osborne divided between the two cutters whose Commanders had, once they knew what was required of them, recruited a number of other men to sail with them.

  The cutters from the Customs Service, being required to stay at the sea for long periods in all types of weather, had to be more stoutly built than the smugglers’ vessels that could choose the time and the weather for their short runs.

  They were therefore craft of low free-board and great depth of keel with enormous sail area for their size.

  The higher deck levels were made up of bulwarks pierced for guns and Lord Cheriton knew that in a fight they could overpower by sheer weight the lighter luggers and other craft of the smugglers.

  To have found the warship also in Port was a piece of good fortune he had not dared anticipate, and the Captain of the Valiant was a young, enthusiastic man who, once he knew what was at stake, was as keen as Lord Cheriton himself to get to grips with those who had bled Britain of her valuable gold all through the war.

  “Vermin – that’s what they are, my Lord, the whole lot of them!” he said to Lord Cheriton as he stood beside him on the bridge. “Cut-throats and murderers! I’m glad the Prime Minister has realised that something has to be done about such scum!”

  “I have half the Larkswell gang in custody, at any rate,” Lord Cheriton said.

  He spoke automatically because his thoughts were on Wivina.

  How could he feel that anything mattered unless he could save her, he asked himself.

  His whole life had been devoted to the duty of soldiering and yet now there was not the excitement that he usually felt when going into battle, simply because all that really concerned him was to rescue one slight, helpless woman from the clutches of a villain.

  ‘I had no idea that I could feel like this,’ he thought to himself, as the ache in his heart became an agonising pain.

  He had known Wivina for such a short while, but in actual fact he thought she had always been there in his mind and his imagination.

  When other men had talked of their amatory conquests, he had remained silent, knowing that the women who had surrendered themselves to him had been of no real consequence in his life and were easily dispensable.

  Wivina was different.

  He had known the moment he saw her standing in the window, the sun on her hair and the flowers in her arms, that she was the embodiment of everything that was beautiful and sacred, everything that his mother had meant to him when he was a child, and very much more besides.

  That he should have found her in the house he hated and which was haunted, or so he had thought, by the memory of his father seemed somehow incredible.

  Yet Wivina had swept away the ghosts and the dark shadows of the past and he had slept peacefully in his father’s bed without even remembering how much he had suffered at a tyrant’s hands.

  However, it was not the past that concerned him now, it was the future – a future which without Wivina would seem empty and pointless.

  He had so often wondered what he would do after the war and what he would find to occupy his mind after so many years of active soldiering, but now he knew exactly what he wanted, as long as he could have Wivina.

  The wind was North-West, which was exactly what they needed to reach Roscoff in record time, and, as the three ships seemed to skim over the sea, Lord Cheriton felt that he was leading an Armada that was one of both vengeance and hope.

  Vengeance on the men who had disgraced the name of their country and played traitor to those who were fighting for her, and hope that he would find Wivina alive.

  He was sure that when it came to the point she would die rather than submit to the degradation and horror of Jeffrey Farlow’s advances, and he could only pray, as he had not prayed since he was a child, that God would permit him to be in time.

  He was well aware that he was twenty-four hours behind the boat which had carried Wivina and Richard across the Channel.

  In twenty-four hours a great deal could happen, and, as he thought of it, Lord Cheriton clenched his fists and his face was so stern and grim that the Captain of the Valiant looked at him in surprise
.

  “We’ll teach them a lesson, my Lord, have no fear of that!” he said.

  But Lord Cheriton did not answer him.

  They came into Roscoff just as dawn was breaking, and as they saw the lights in the houses and buildings clustered round the port, Lord Cheriton made ready to step ashore.

  The two Revenue Cutters went ahead and sailed right into the harbour, making for the quay nearest to the warehouses, while the warship could only just get inside the outer boom.

  She hove to, and as the anchor-chain ran out, the guns were hauled into position and, as the Captain and Lord Cheriton had arranged, were aimed at the warehouses.

  Before they could be fired and before the Revenue Cutters had reached the side of the quay, Lord Cheriton was already in a boat that had been lowered over the side of the Valiant, and he stepped ashore at the end of the jetty.

  With pistol in hand, he started to move quickly over the rough stones towards the street.

  He considered it likely that Wivina would have been conveyed to Tom Johnson’s house, but he had no idea where it was.

  He thought he would look first for Jeffrey Farlow in the warehouses, and having found him would throttle the information out of him as to where he had put Wivina.

  Then, as he reached the end of the jetty and the beginning of the street which lay to the right of the warehouses, he saw Jeffrey Farlow come out of a door at the far end of it, holding a pistol in his hand.

  He was some distance away, but there was no mistaking his flamboyant clothes and his hat set on the side of his head in a rakish manner, which Lord Cheriton remembered well.

  He drew nearer, and as he did so, Jeffrey Farlow, who had been staring at the warship and the damage its guns were doing to the warehouses, saw him.

  He raised his pistol to fire, but Lord Cheriton was faster, and with the aim of an expert marksman, he shot him dead.

  It took him only a moment to reach the fallen man’s side.

  Then, as he looked down at him, realising it was too late now to demand to be told where Wivina was hidden, he saw her, her white frightened face and wide eyes looking at him from the window above.