A Circus for Love Page 2

  The new Lady Fernhurst quickly altered all that.

  She abolished the Services, saying that the servants were wasting their time when they should be working.

  If her father had protested, Thelma had not heard him.

  She only knew that the Chapel had been closed. The gardeners no longer put flowers on the Altar and the dust accumulated on the floor and on the carvings in the Chancel.

  ‘It will take some time to get it clean,’ she thought, and time was what she needed.

  She took several gowns from her wardrobe, choosing those that were of fine muslin or gauze.

  They weighed nothing and could be packed into a very small space.

  She put them on her bed and added nightgowns and other necessities and she included a pair of comfortable satin slippers.

  There was quite a pile when she had finished, but she knew that it was not too much to be carried on two horses.

  Years ago, when she had first gone to stay with some friends of her own age, her mother had bought her a pannier for her saddle.

  Thelma remembered that it was in a drawer in her bedroom.

  She laid it out on her bed and then filled the bags with the smaller things that she had accumulated.

  The gowns she rolled up and put into a long bag that would be fixed at the back of her saddle.

  She then hid everything under her bed and walked down the stairs.

  The most important and difficult thing was to make sure that she had enough money. It would have to last her for a long time.

  While she was thinking of what she could do, she remembered that tomorrow was Friday and the last day of the month.

  This meant that Mr. Simpson would be paying wages to everybody in the house and on the estate. He would have gone to collect the money this morning from the local Bank in the nearest town.

  He would by now have returned and would be attending to her father’s pile of letters.

  After that she knew that he would visit the farms to receive the rents from the farmers and then there were the tenants who lived in their houses in the village.

  This would take him until late in the afternoon.

  She walked down to the estate office and saw that it was empty.

  She was sure that by this time Mr. Simpson would be riding from farm to farm. Some of them were a considerable distance from The Manor.

  The monies he had brought from the Bank would be in the safe.

  Locking the door of the office so that no one would be able to suddenly surprise her.

  Thelma found the key to the safe in its usual ‘safe’ place.

  It was kept in what Mr. Simpson believed was a secret place and so she went ahead and opened the safe.

  As she expected, the money was there in neat little bags. One bag contained sovereigns, another half-sovereigns, a third silver.

  What was indeed more interesting to Thelma was that there were a number of notes of much higher denominations.

  These, Thelma knew, were to be used by her father who disliked carrying anything bulky in his pockets.

  She counted the notes out quickly and found to her delight that they amounted to over one hundred pounds.

  She put them in the pocket of her jacket and took the bags of coins as well.

  Looking a little further into the safe she next found her father’s cheque book.

  Just for a moment she stopped, stood still and hesitated.

  She had no wish to do anything that could be strongly held against her in a Court of Law, although it was unlikely that she would be taken to one.

  She had on several occasions in the last months written her father’s name for him when he had been incapable of doing it himself.

  Her stepmother always refused to help anybody in the village and Thelma had gone in despair to her father when some of the older servants, who had served them for years, were in desperate straits.

  “Surely, Papa,” she had pleaded, “you would help old Lucy, she was housemaid here for years. Now she needs a crutch so that she can move about, but she has no money to buy one with.”

  “Of course, of course,” her father had replied in a thick voice. “I will pay for it.”

  “I thought you would, Papa,” Thelma said, “and there is Browning who used to stoke the boilers. He is almost blind and needs some spectacles.”

  She went on to read out a whole list of things that were required. She wrote out a cheque for them all and it came to quite a considerable sum.

  Only when Lord Fernhurst came to signing the cheque did she realise that his hand was shaking so badly that it was impossible.

  She tried to guide him, but it was still no use.

  Finally she signed the cheque herself and then showed him what she had done.

  “That is your signature, is it not, Papa?” she asked.

  “Yes, of course, it is,” he said thickly.

  Mr. Simpson had taken it to the Bank and there had been no trouble about it.

  She told herself that if she was really desperate, she could forge her father’s signature and she was sure that it would be honoured by the Bank.

  She therefore took two cheques from his cheque book and put them in her pocket.

  Then she wrote a note to Mr. Simpson, telling him what money she had taken and asked him to tell her father, but not her stepmother.

  She left the note in the safe and went back upstairs to her bedroom.

  As she did so, she saw maidservants scurrying with brooms, buckets and brushes along the passage that led to the Chapel.

  And she guessed that her stepmother was still there.

  She then changed into her best riding habit that had only recently arrived from London.

  It was what her father had given to her as a birthday present.

  He had been in one of his good moods and he had told her to go to the best-known tailor of ladies’ riding habits, who was patronised by all the ladies who belonged to the Beau Ton.

  It was a very pretty habit in dark blue.

  It made her hair look as golden as the spring sunshine and her skin as translucent as a pearl.

  Underneath the full skirt she wore a starched petticoat edged with delightful lace her pretty blouse of fine muslin was inset with bands of lace.

  The riding hat that she had bought at the same time was very elegant with a gauze veil that matched her eyes and fluttered out behind when she was riding at the gallop.

  She also changed her riding boots for a very smart pair that ended just above her ankles.

  There was a cape to cover herself if it was raining and so she took that with her as a precaution.

  Now at last she was ready.

  She looked round the room to see if there was anything else that she would need and she ought to pack.

  Then she saw lying on a table in the window there was was her paint box.

  For a moment she hesitated and then she told herself that it was something she might easily want.

  The Teachers at her school had told her that she was talented at drawing and painting.

  She had thought therefore that it would be a good idea for her to clean and restore some of the pictures that hung in The Manor.

  Her mother had been very interested in them, but her father was distinctly indifferent.

  Denise, Thelma remembered, had hardly glanced at them once she knew it was impossible for her to sell them.

  Thelma had been very careful with those that were ancient and which had been handed down through the generations.

  She cleaned away the dust of ages and restored them as her teachers had taught her to do.

  Now she was leaving everything she loved including the pictures.

  Her brother, Ivan, had been so proud of the house and everything it contained.

  Thelma was over five years younger than he was. Yet when they had played together as children it had usually been she who had thought of the mischief which made their laughter ring through the corridors.

  It had echoed thro
ugh the low rooms with their Elizabethan panelling.

  It rung in the huge Medieval hall with the Fern Coat of arms in stained glass.

  When it was very cold, she would crouch in front of the fireplace where the whole trunk of a tree would be burned.

  Thelma had never felt that she had been alone there.

  Her ancestors had always assembled in the Great Hall before a battle, to celebrate their Weddings and to mourn the dead members of the family.

  She could feel them still watching over her and protecting her year after year.

  Now, she thought, she was running away from her ancestors as well as the house where she had lived all her life.

  Leaving her mother whose presence she could still feel in every room, especially in her bedroom where she habitually sat by the window enjoying the sun.

  ‘It is no use, Mama,’ she said in her heart, ‘I have to go. Otherwise I shall find myself married to Sir Richard because stepmother will have the Law on her side and Papa will never oppose her.’

  While she was thinking, she was packing her money.

  Some in the pannier and some in the inside pocket of her riding jacket.

  It was then that she thought of something else and it was important.

  She ran downstairs, taking the precaution as she left her bedroom of locking the door.

  She went to the gun room that opened off the hall.

  It was a small room where her father kept his shooting rifles that he shot game with and the rifle he used when he was stalking in Scotland.

  Thelma knew that he had several duelling pistols in a drawer as well. Two of them were smaller than the others and these she took out.

  She inspected them to see if they were all in working order. Finding nothing wrong, she looked for the bullets that fitted them.

  She found them in a small packet and put them into her pocket. She hid the pistols under her coat and went back upstairs.

  Now at last she was ready to go.

  Carrying the things that she had packed, she walked along the corridor.

  Down a side staircase that would take her to an exit nearer to the stables than any other.

  She stepped out into the sunshine and just for a moment she felt panic-stricken.

  She now wondered, if she made a last desperate appeal directly to her father, whether he would support her.

  She knew, however, that even if he agreed to do so, it would be useless.

  When evening came, he would be drinking deeply of the rich claret and fiery brandy and he would be too drunk to argue about anything with her stepmother.

  By the time that the Chapel would be ready it would be merely a case of sending for her father’s Chaplain.

  Thelma could see all too clearly the nasty smirk that there would be on Sir Richard’s face when he returned with the Special Licence.

  He thought of himself as a handsome man, but his eyes were too close together and his mouth was small and mean.

  She was quite certain that he had no genuine feeling or affection for her stepmother.

  He admired her and that was in a way understandable.

  ‘Yet if she had not been able to entertain him in London with her husband’s money, he would have ignored her.

  As it was, Thelma reflected, he rode her father’s horses and drank his wine.

  If it became unavailable, he would soon find somebody else to sponge on.

  She was quite certain that he would be only too pleased to marry anybody as rich as she was.

  It would not only be a case of sharing her wealth out with her stepmother, which was what she intended to do, it would be with any other pretty woman who took Sir Richard’s fancy.

  It would not matter to him if she was a part of the Beau Ton or one of the disreputable creatures known as ‘Cyprians’.

  ‘How could I spend the rest of my life with a man like that?’ she asked herself and ran towards the stables.

  She walked over the cobbled yard to where a stable boy was standing. He touched his cap.

  “Where is Wilkins?” she asked.

  “’E be groomin’ Juno, Miss Thelma.”

  She walked into the stables and found Wilkins in the first stall. Juno was a magnificent bay mare that she knew he had a deep affection for.

  He took the greatest care of all the horses, but Juno was his favourite.

  “’Marnin’, Miss Thelma,” Wilkins intoned as she reached him.

  He looked in surprise at what she was carrying.

  Wilkins was a small, wiry man who had been her brother’s batman from the moment he had joined his Regiment.

  After Ivan’s unfortunate death, Wilkins, who had been only slightly wounded, had been sent back to England.

  He had called at once at The Manor to tell Lord Fernhurst how his son had met his death.

  Thelma had listened to his tale. She knew as she did so how genuinely upset Wilkins was and how much he had loved Ivan.

  Her father had taken him on as one of his Head Grooms and Wilkins had proved quite invaluable.

  He was genuinely devoted to all the horses, but he was also prepared to do anything else that was required of him.

  He had transferred his love for Ivan to his sister.

  Thelma knew now that she was going away that it was Wilkins who must come with her.

  Speaking little above a whisper, although there was no one to listen to him except for the horses, she told him exactly what she had overheard.

  Wilkins listened in silence until she had finished her story.

  “That be wrong, real wrong, Miss Thelma,” he exclaimed.

  “How can I marry a man like that?”

  “’E be a bad’un and no rider either!”

  “Then you will understand that I have to leave immediately,” Thelma said. “And I want you to come with me. I have plenty of money and I thought that you would carry some of it for safety.”

  She held out the bags of sovereigns and half-sovereigns. Without arguing, Wilkins put them away in his coat pocket.

  Then Thelma handed him one of her father’s pistols and some bullets.

  He took them too and, as if they were just going for a ride in the Park, he asked,

  “Well, now, which ’orse will you be ridin’, Miss Thelma?”

  She hesitated a little then said,

  “If you come with me on Juno, I will take Dragonfly.”

  Dragonfly was the latest acquisition of her father’s.

  He had bought him the last time he was in London. He was a magnificent stallion and Lord Fernhurst had paid a large sum of money for him at Tattersalls.

  He had had to outbid a number of other keen horse-owners. Wilkins did not argue about Thelma’s choice and there was now a faint smile at the corners of his mouth as he went in to Dragonfly’s stall to saddle him.

  He then saddled up Juno before he took Dragonfly into the yard.

  Thelma climbed onto the mounting block and settled herself in the saddle.

  Because Dragonfly was being a little obstreperous she moved a bit further ahead.

  She left the stables by the back entrance which meant that no-one from the house would notice her departure or see in which direction she went.

  It took Wilkins just a few minutes to collect his own things and to put the saddlebags on Juno’s back.

  Then he caught up with Thelma.

  As he did so and without speaking, she moved quickly through the paddock and out into the rich meadowland beyond.

  She was not quite certain where they were going, but instinctively she turned South.

  The horses sprang forward and she told herself that this was the most thrilling but also the most frightening thing she had ever done.

  It was an adventure.

  She was setting off into the unknown.

  She had not the slightest idea what she would find or how dangerous it might be.

  Chapter Two

  They rode on for some time in silence.

  Thelma was thinking about wha
t she had brought with her and wondering if she had left anything of importance behind.

  She had not forgotten the letter from the Solicitors and she had then slit it open when she began to change her clothes.

  She had seen that it was a long one covering several pages and would take time for her read it through.

  Time was the one thing she did not have. She had to be a long way from home when Sir Richard returned from his expedition to Canterbury.

  She therefore put the Solicitor’s letter with her clothes and then added to it several sheets of crested writing paper and some envelopes.

  She knew that she had to consider very carefully how she should reply.

  She was terribly afraid that in some crafty manner her stepmother would gain control of her money.

  This made her think that she would be wise to tell her father that she had gone away, but time was passing and she was in a hurry to leave.

  She therefore had put another piece of writing paper on her blotter and wrote,

  “Dearest Papa,

  I am going away for a few days to stay with a friend. As I have no wish to argue about it, I have not told Stepmother, but only you, that I am leaving.

  I shall be thinking about you and hope you will be feeling better by the time I return.

  My dearest love,

  Your affectionate daughter,

  Thelma.”

  She put the letter in an envelope and left it on a table that stood outside her bedroom.

  She knew that her father’s valet or the housemaid who looked after her would take it to him when he was awake.

  Riding now beside Wilkins into the unknown, she hoped again that she had thought of everything.

  There would be a commotion when her stepmother found out that she had disappeared.

  Ordinarily Denise Fernhurst would have been only too glad to be rid of her.

  But today, when Sir Richard came back triumphantly bringing the Special Licence, there would be no bride.

  As even to think of it made her afraid and so Thelma rode a little quicker.

  In two hours’ time they would be a good number of miles from The Manor. Thelma was beginning to feel hungry and she suspected that Wilkins felt the same.

  “Where shall we stop for luncheon?” she next asked him.

  “There be a village not far from ’ere, Miss Thelma,” he replied, “and so they’ll ’ave only bread and cheese if that’ll do.’