21 The Mysterious Maid-Servant (The Eternal Collection) Page 15

  He put his hand up to his eyes.

  “How could I have imagined – how could I have dreamt even for a moment that she was Charlton’s daughter?”

  “It seems inconceivable,” Henry Somercote agreed.

  “Now I understand why she was so poor,” the Earl surmised. “We learnt that Charlton had collected his family from his house in London and taken them away with him – he must have run out of money and when he died they were left to starve. Oh, God, Henry, we have to find her!”

  He tugged at the bell-pull as he spoke and Henry Somercote said,

  “I told you I have a carriage outside.”

  “I am not ringing for a carriage but for Batley.”

  The door opened as he spoke.

  “Batley,” the Earl said in a tone his valet had never heard before. “I have lost Miss Giselda and I have to find her. I know I told you to make no further enquiries, but have you the slightest idea where she lives?”

  Batley hesitated for a moment.

  “I obeyed your Lordship’s orders, but as it happens it was quite by chance that I learnt Miss Giselda’s address.”

  “You know? Splendid, Batley – I knew I could depend on you! Where is it?”

  “It’s in a very low part of the town, my Lord. I happened to see Miss Giselda walking that way and I thought it might be dangerous for her if she was not aware of the type of neighbourhood she was in. So I followed her just in case there was any trouble.”

  Batley paused to say uncomfortably,

  “I saw her go into a house, my Lord – in a road where no lady should stay.”

  “Take us there, Batley! For God’s sake, take us there!”

  “Are you well enough for all this?” Henry asked with a note of concern in his voice. “Let Batley and me go and bring her back to you.”

  “Do you imagine I could wait here?” the Earl demanded sharply.

  Henry did not answer him and Batley, picking up the Earl’s cape, which he had flung on a chair when he came up to the room, put it over his Master’s shoulders.

  The Earl could only go down the stairs more slowly than he would have wished and, by the time he had reached the hall, Henry’s carriage was outside. The two gentlemen sat inside while Batley perched on the box beside the coachman.

  “How can we ever make reparation for what Charlton’s family has suffered because we did not trust him?” the Earl muttered bitterly.

  “The evidence seemed completely conclusive,” Henry Somercote said. “I remember thinking to myself that it was really impossible for him to be innocent or for the plan to have been stolen without his being aware of it.”

  “We were wrong,” the Earl said.

  “Yes, we were wrong,” Henry agreed with a sigh.

  They drove until the Earl saw they were no longer in the newly laid out part of town with its fine buildings, but passing along narrow streets where in the doorways of dingy houses there stood some extremely unsavoury looking characters.

  He could not bear to think of Giselda moving amongst such people or of the dangers she might have encountered. Yet all he was concerned with at this very moment was finding her.

  Finally after twisting through a labyrinth of lanes almost too narrow to admit the carriage, they drew up outside a dilapidated house, which had lost a number of panes of glass from its windows and whose door seemed to hang precariously on its hinges.

  Batley descended from the carriage and knocked on the door.

  A slatternly-looking woman, who glared at him suspiciously, opened it after some minutes.

  “What d’you want?” she asked uncompromisingly.

  “We wish to speak to Miss Chart,” Batley said.

  “Nice time o’night for gentlemen to be callin’.” the woman said scathingly.

  Then, as she looked at the Earl and was obviously overcome by his appearance, she said abruptly,

  “Back room!”

  She jerked her thumb over her shoulder, then disappeared through an adjacent door, slamming it noisily behind her.

  The narrow passage held a flight of steep stairs, some with broken boards, smelt of age, dirt, and damp, and the Earl moved behind the stairs to where there was a door.

  He knocked and heard a voice murmur something in a tone of alarm. Then the door was opened and he saw two people staring at him with consternation and fear in their eyes.

  One was Giselda who must have only just arrived. Her cheeks were still flushed a little with the speed at which she had run home and her hair was blown by the wind.

  She was standing beside her mother who was very much like her in appearance except that her hair was grey and her face was lined with suffering and privation.

  Neither of the women said anything.

  Then ignoring Giselda the Earl went to Mrs. Charlton and took her hand in his.

  “We have been searching for you, Mrs. Charlton, for a whole year. We have been trying to find you to tell you that your husband was unjustly accused and was subsequently completely exonerated.”

  He felt her hand tremble in his and her eyes looking up searched his face as if for confirmation of his words.

  Then, in a voice he could hardly hear, she asked,

  “Is this – true?”

  “Completely true,” the Earl answered, “and I can only express on behalf of myself, His Grace the Duke of Wellington and the Regiment our deepest and most heartfelt apologies for having brought this sorrow upon you all.”

  He paused to add,

  “If only your husband had waited! The Duke sent an Officer back to England the moment the battle was over to tell him that his name had been cleared and that the thief confessed the crime before he died.”

  Mrs. Charlton gave a deep sigh as if the burden she had carried on her shoulders was no longer there.

  Then she said,

  “I am glad for my children’s sake, that you discovered the truth, but you – cannot give me back – my husband.”

  “I am aware of that,” the Earl replied, “but I think he would be glad that you should no longer suffer on his behalf or hide in shame.”

  He still held Mrs. Charlton’s hand in both of his and now pressing it warmly he went on,

  “It will be a little comfort to you to know that there is not only your husband’s pay and pension waiting for you in London, but there is also quite a considerable sum of money. It was collected by the Officers of the Regiment and subscribed to by the Duke himself and we intended to offer it to the Major as compensation for what he suffered by being unjustly accused.”

  He saw the pain in her expression and he continued,

  “It will be useful to make sure that Rupert gets really strong and well when he is allowed to leave the hospital.”

  It was then that the tears came into Mrs. Charlton’s eyes and the Earl for the first time looked around the room.

  He had never seen anything so poor, such an impossible background for the beauty of Giselda, – dirty walls with paper peeling from them, rotten floorboards and three iron bedsteads which were practically the only furniture.

  Making up his mind quickly and with an authority of manner, which those who served with him knew meant he intended to have his own way, the Earl declared,

  “I have a carriage outside and I am taking you both away from here at this moment!”

  For the first time he looked directly at Giselda.

  “This is no fit place for you,” he stressed, “as you well know.”

  She did in fact look very out of place in her beautiful pink gown, the room in contrast seeming even more unpleasant than it might have seemed if she had been differently dressed.

  Henry Somercote was speaking to Mrs. Charlton,

  “I would like to tell you, ma’am,” he said, “how fond we all were of your husband and how desperately concerned we were when we learnt that he had disappeared.”

  She could not answer him because of her tears, but he carried on,

  “The Earl has been ill, but I personally h
ave travelled to many parts of England this past year hoping to find some trace of Maurice.”

  “He was always – proud of the Regiment,” Mrs. Charlton managed to stutter.

  “It was a terrible misunderstanding,” Henry replied sympathetically.

  The Earl was close to Giselda.

  “How could you leave me?” he asked in a low urgent voice. “How could you imagine that whoever you were I would have let you go?”

  “I tried to – hate you, as I hated all those who did not – believe in my father,” she answered.

  “But you failed,” the Earl said softly.

  She looked at him and, seeing in her eyes how much she loved him, he knew that nothing would ever separate them again in the future.

  “You belong to me,” he whispered softly so that no one else could hear.

  *

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Earl allowed Batley to help him into bed and lay back against the pillows.

  “As it seems to have turned cold this evening, my Lord,” Batley said, “I’ve taken the liberty of lighting the fire, only a small one, but there’s a wind coming from the Malvern Hills that will grow colder during the night.”

  “I am sure that is very sensible, Batley.”

  The valet picked up his Lordship’s evening clothes and turned towards the door.

  “I just wish to say, my Lord, it’s been a very happy day and I wishes you and her Ladyship all the best for the rest of your lives together.”

  “Thank you, Batley.”

  The door closed behind the valet and the Earl waited. It had been a long day and there had been a great deal to do in the previous two days since he and Henry had taken Mrs. Charlton and Giselda away from the slum they had been living in.

  The first night they had stayed as the Colonel’s guests at German Cottage, but the following morning the Earl had been determined to find them comfortable apartments where Mrs. Charlton could look after Rupert when he came out of hospital.

  They found exactly what the Earl deemed adequate in the recently completed Royal Crescent.

  They had become the tenants of a beautifully decorated suite on the first floor consisting of two comfortable bedrooms and a large sitting room.

  The Earl was quite certain Mrs. Charlton would soon be receiving a number of friends who, once they knew she was at Cheltenham would be only too pleased to renew their acquaintance with her.

  Giselda had stayed for two nights with her mother in Royal Crescent spending the days buying clothes for her and many luxuries they had thought she would never see again.

  When she learnt of the large sum of money that had been collected for her father, Giselda found it almost impossible to express her gratitude.

  “If only we had known,” she whispered at length.

  “If only we had been able to find you,” the Earl answered.

  He had learnt by then of some of the privations and miseries that the family had suffered after Major Charlton had taken them away from London the night he had escaped his guards.

  He had known his house would be the first place they would look for him, so they had hastily bundled together everything they could and, having hired a carriage, they had driven from London into the country.

  Maurice Charlton, who was quite a resourceful man, was determined to find work but the difficulty was that he had no references and, apart from being a soldier, he had few qualifications.

  Finally he had worked on a farm looking after horses and he was quite an expert on horseflesh, but unfortunately while he had been doing so he had been tossed and gored by a bull.

  This was why, as the Earl could now understand, Giselda was so expert at bandaging.

  An inexperienced country doctor and their inability to pay for better treatment made Maurice Charlton’s wounds heal slowly, but finally he developed pneumonia.

  Almost before his wife and daughter realised what was happening, he had died.

  “I do not think he wished to live,” Giselda said passionately when she told the Earl what had happened. “He was so ashamed and humiliated that the men he thought to be his friends did not believe him.”

  Her voice was bitter, as she continued,

  “He had always been a man of honour, a man of his word. Even as children we were severely punished if we told even the smallest falsehood.”

  “I know it seems very hard, my darling,” the Earl said soothingly, “but circumstances were very strongly against him. He was the only person who had the key, the only person the Duke entrusted with his secret papers.”

  “If he had not associated with – that woman perhaps it would never have happened,” Giselda responded in a hard little voice.

  The Earl realised that her father had confessed to his wife and daughter his association with Marie Louise.

  He thought perhaps this would have hurt Giselda more than anything else. Children are always very intolerant of their parents’ weaknesses.

  Because he had no desire to discuss it, he asked,

  “Tell me what happened after your father died.”

  “Mama thought that Rupert should go to school – even a school where one paid as little as a penny a day would be better than no education at all.”

  Giselda sighed, as she went on,

  “She worked all the time on her embroidery and because she sewed so beautifully I found everything she made was easy to sell. The shops paid us very little but charged their customers quite enormous sums.”

  “So you came to Cheltenham?”

  “We found lodgings outside the town in a village,” Giselda replied, “and we were really quite comfortable. Then Rupert was knocked down by a phaeton.”

  The Earl saw the horror in her face and heard it in the tone of her voice and he put his arms around her.

  “That is something else you will have to forget, my precious. Newell tells me that Rupert will be walking quite normally in another six months. Until then I intend to engage a Tutor for him and after that, if he still needs treatment, I shall arrange a holiday for him and your mother at one of the Spas in Europe.”

  “You are so kind – so very very kind,” Giselda murmured.

  The Earl had already told her that he intended to give Mrs. Charlton a house on the estate at Lynd Park.

  “There are several charming small manors to choose from, or the Dower House if your mother would prefer it. They will be near us and I think your mother and Rupert will make many congenial friends in the immediate neighbourhood.”

  The Earl paused to say gently,

  “But I shall be jealous if you spend too much time with your family and neglect me.”

  “You know I would never do that,” Giselda protested. “Never, never! I want to be with you! I want to be close to you – every moment – as I have always wanted to be.”

  She gave a wistful little smile, as she added,

  “You don’t know how much I resented having to be with Julius when I might have been with you. I knew that you had planned the part I should play as much to help me as to save him, but I much preferred being your servant!”

  “My nurse – my guide – my inspiration and my love!” the Earl corrected.

  She put her cheek against his in a manner that was even more tender than if she had kissed him and he thought that he had never known a woman who could make such endearing gestures.

  He found that the look in Giselda’s eyes and the lilt in her voice could tell him of her love as eloquently as words and she made him want her more and more every hour that passed.

  “You are not really well enough to get married,” Giselda had protested when the Earl planned their wedding for the third day after the drama in the theatre.

  “I cannot wait any longer,” he answered masterfully. “I have lost you once and I am taking no further chances. You will marry me here in Cheltenham and we will leave the following day for Lynd Park.”

  When Giselda would have argued, he put his finger on her lips and continued,

&nbs
p; “Later, when I am really well, I am going to take you abroad, but for the moment I think we will both be content to be together in the country.”

  “It would not matter to me if it was in a coal mine or on the moon, just as long as I can be with you,” Giselda sighed.

  “Until you get bored with me,” the Earl teased.

  “Do you really think I could ever do that?” she asked. “It is much more likely that you will become bored with me. You don’t like stupid women, but you dislike it when I argue.”

  “I love everything you do,” the Earl asserted positively.

  He had pulled her to him and turned her face up to his.

  “I have never, and this is the truth, Giselda,” he said quietly, “known anything so perfect or so exciting as your lips. They thrill me as I have never been thrilled before.”

  “Is – that really – true?”

  He answered her by kissing her until there was a flush on her cheeks and her eyes were shining like stars.

  When he released her he said hoarsely,

  “If you imagine I can wait one moment after tomorrow to make you my wife, you are very much mistaken. I am well now, my darling, well enough to show you how much I love you.”

  At the passion in his voice, she hid her face against his shoulder and he kissed her hair. Then he touched it gently with his fingers and added,

  “Tomorrow night I shall see this falling over your shoulders and I shall know how long it is. I have always wondered.”

  *

  They were married very quietly in St. Mary’s, the Parish Church since the twelfth century.

  Colonel Berkeley was best man and there were only Mrs. Charlton and Captain Somercote as witnesses.

  “If we invite one other person, we shall have to invite the lot!” the Earl said, “and I have always loathed the idea of being a ‘Peep Show’ simply because I am being married to someone I love.”

  The Church, which had been built in the shape of a cross, was filled with lilies that scented the air, and it seemed to Giselda that there was something very sacred in the vows they made to each other.

  She knew that they would withstand all the difficulties and problems of time and their love and joy in each other would only deepen as the years passed.