A Hazard of Hearts Read online

  “It is no use pretending, Mother,” Justin said quietly. “I am not deceived for one moment. You connived at this nefarious plot, which would have succeeded had not Serena with extreme cleverness managed to escape from my Lord.”

  “She has escaped?” she asked quickly. “How do you know?”

  “Because she has returned here.”

  The Marchioness sat down suddenly in one of the big armchairs beside the fireplace.

  “She has returned,” she said and there was a metallic note in her voice. “Harry must be deranged.”

  She had forgotten for the moment all that she wished to disguise from Justin and was concerned only with the news that her plan had failed and that with it, as she well knew, had gone her chance of gaining ten thousand guineas. She had counted on the gold and she had been so certain that it was hers that the loss struck her with an unsuspected severity.

  “Yes, she has returned,” Lord Vulcan repeated, “and now, Mother, you will oblige me with the truth.”

  The Marchioness looked up at him. Her eyes were flashing.

  “What a cursed fool Harry is,” she said, “to carry off the wench and then let her run away from him! Can one imagine such foolishness?”

  She spoke impetuously and then suddenly the words died on her lips as she saw the look on her son’s face.

  “What did he offer you for your part in this scheme?” he demanded.

  His words were spoken slowly and each one was like a hammer, weighted and dangerous. Too late the Marchioness realised the trap that she had fallen into. Her original attitude had been the right one, she should have denied all knowledge of what had occurred.

  “I know not what you mean, Justin,” she said, but her words lacked conviction.

  “Answer me,” her son thundered and now she was afraid of him as he towered above her.

  But she had never lacked courage and with an effort she rose to her feet.

  “La, Justin, what a fuss you are making about this silly chit. You do not want her for yourself and Harry Wrotham was prepared to marry her. ’Twas a good marriage, a splendid. one. Any mother would have welcomed it for her daughter. But Serena was stupid enough to show Harry a cold shoulder because she believed that he had seduced one of the servants at her father’s house. If it was true, it was of no significance, but Harry assured me that the stupid wench would not listen to reason, so we concocted a little plan together, Harry and I. ’Twas for Serena’s own good and one day she would have thanked me for it when she was Lady Wrotham and Chatelaine in that charming house of his in Dorset.”

  The Marchioness spoke quickly, but Justin’s voice was slow as he said,

  “That is not what I asked you, Mother. I asked you how much gold Lord Wrotham had promised you in payment.”

  “Dear Justin. Have you no decency of mind? As though I could be paid by any gentleman. I am certain that Harry intended to give me a little present, just as I should have given him and Serena a Wedding present once the Ceremony had taken place. He was grateful to me and I was sure that Serena also would have been grateful later. But you tell me the silly chit has returned. I will go see her and find out what happened.”

  The Marchioness turned away. Then she gave a little cry as Justin’s hand came out and took her by the wrist.

  “Listen, Mother, I want the truth.”

  “Insolent boy,” she flamed at him. “How dare you touch me! You are hurting me. Take your great hand away.”

  “The truth,” Lord Vulcan repeated.

  The Marchioness faced him for a moment defiantly. Their eyes met and after a second she capitulated.

  “Very well then,” she said furiously. “Know the truth if you will and the Devil take you for your insistence. Harry promised me ten thousand guineas. ’Twas little enough by all accounts when you recollect that he would gain eighty thousand when he married the girl, if he did so after he had taken all that he wanted of her. Yes, ten thousand guineas, and I needed it badly enough. Now are you satisfied?”

  She pulled her wrist from her son’s grasp and then took a step backwards as she saw the blazing white anger in his face.

  “How dare you!” he said. “How dare you sell a guest! It was bad enough that you should contrive at the seduction of an innocent girl, a child whom I entrusted to your care because I believed that with all your faults you were at least a gentlewoman. But that you should plot against someone who has accepted the hospitality of our house and our home and that you should sell her and betray her for filthy money is a disgrace that will for ever stain with utter shame our pride and our honour.”

  “Gammon,” the Marchioness snapped at him. “‘Our pride and our honour’, you mean Mandrake. You and your father are the same. You think not of me nor of human beings, you think only of this house. The Vulcans of Mandrake, that is all that life means to you. The history of the family, the history of the house. Lud, I am sick of it! I have listened to it all my life. Have I no existence of my own? Am I not a woman with feelings? Have I no interests, have I not a life to live that is apart from the everlasting tentacles of family and place? Your father married me and that, I truly believe, was because he thought that I was beautiful enough to grace a house that he loved to the exclusion of all else. There was no room for a woman in his life. He wanted not living flesh and blood, he wanted a Mistress for Mandrake and because the place was sacred to him, that Mistress must have beauty and breeding.”

  She coughed before she plunged on,

  “That was why he married me and you are behaving even as he behaved. It is Mandrake, Mandrake, all day, every day. Nothing else matters. People can die or sob out their hearts in misery, they can want and go hungry as long as Mandrake is safe, nothing else matters. I am a woman and I want more. I am not content with bricks and mortar, with history and tradition and with heraldic signs handed down the centuries. I want gold, I want excitement. I want the thrill of gaining that I need for myself. I am not afraid of Mandrake. Mandrake may be your mistress, but it is not my Master.”

  The Marchioness’s breath was coming very quickly. She almost spat the words between her red lips, but her son was unmoved.

  When she had finished speaking, there was a sudden silence, a silence that was even more frightening than the passionate words that had preceded it.

  The Marchioness waited a moment and then it seemed as if her hot blood ebbed away and almost apprehensively she looked up at Justin.

  “Well,” she said. “Have you nothing to say? Have I silenced you at last?”

  “I have a great deal to say,” Justin responded, “and a great many things to do. I shall speak with my father and then I shall tell you what decisions I have come to about this and about many other things. ’Tis likely that the house will be closed and you must go elsewhere. The passage beneath the cliff will be blocked up. These are but a few of the things that must be done and done quickly. After that we will see. But there is something else that must be done first now that you have told me what I wish to know.”

  He spoke so quietly that for a moment the Marchioness did not grasp his meaning.

  Then when she did she drew in her breath and her face paled.

  “Justin,” she said, “you cannot mean it. To close the house, to send me abroad?”

  Her hands went out to him, but he turned aside. For a moment she felt as though he had taken every support away from her and she must fall to the floor. Her world, the world she had built so laboriously about her, was crashing down in ruins.

  She had a sudden vision of the rooms empty, of the Silver Drawing Room shrouded in dust sheets and of the curtains drawn against the sunshine. She saw only the nightwatchmen with their swinging lanterns traversing the long halls and passages, the servants’ wing vacant save for a few caretakers, the bedrooms closed and curtained and the stables empty of horses.

  She gave a sudden cry and it was the cry of a frightened child.

  “No, Justin, not that. You cannot close the house, that would be cruel and unjust. Besi
des I would not let you.”

  Even as she spoke the words she knew how ineffective they were. She had no power, no strength to match against his. In the eyes of the world he was the Marquis of Vulcan. He owned the house and the estate, he was Master of everything and she was dependent on him even for the allowance to pay her gown-makers and jewellers.

  Too late she saw that she had fallen into a pit of her own digging. The husband might have been coerced, pleaded with and even seduced into a fairer frame of mind. But the son was ruthless.

  She had driven him too far and too hard and now she was up against an obstacle that she could not circumvent, for she had not the means within her power.

  “Justin,” she cried again. “Please, please listen to me.”

  But already he was moving towards the door.

  “We will speak of it, Mother, tomorrow, or maybe the day after,” he replied. “Now I will beg you to excuse me for there is something I have to do.”

  “But what?” the Marchioness asked bewilderedly. “What – what are you going to do?”

  He smiled a smile to which she could find no explanation and less consolation and then with a little bow he left the room.

  She stood alone, perturbed, astonished and afraid and for the first time since she had opened the great salons of Mandrake to her friends, she did not wait to say ‘goodnight’ to them, but went upstairs alone to her own bedchamber. She felt tired with a tiredness that weakened her whole body and made her mind feel clogged and thick so that, however hard she tried, she could not think coherently.

  She walked about her room until weakness caused her to sit down in a chair and stare at the dying fire. Martha would be waiting up for her as usual, but she did not ring for her. She wanted only to be alone and to sort out this tangle.

  In some strange manner her life had suddenly become coiled and distorted into something horrible and menacing.

  She could not believe that it was possible, having been so happy earlier in the evening, to know such sheer despair at this moment. She tried to tell herself that she need not be afraid, that Justin did not mean what he had said, but all the time the cold logic within her brain told her that he had spoken with a deep conviction and that there would be no gainsaying him.

  A coal fell from the grate. The Marchioness shivered.

  She pulled off her clothes, flung them down in haste and taking the bottle of laudanum from the cupboard at the end of the room, put it on the dressing table. For one moment she thought wildly that she would drink the whole bottle, and then her courage, still raising its head from what seemed a shambles around her, told her that there must be a way out, a loophole of escape.

  For the moment she would seek only oblivion and it was with a steady hand she poured herself a double dose, drank it off and crawled into bed.

  *

  A loophole! That was what she wanted now. It was what she had to find this morning before Justin came to see her again and before the final judgement fell from his lips. She was thinking, thinking hard, thinking against time.

  Fretfully she stretched out her hand again and rang the bell. Martha came into the room.

  “Where is his Lordship?” the Marchioness asked. “Don’t send for him, I don’t wish to see him, but I want to know where he is.”

  “I will find out, your Ladyship,” Martha answered.

  She went from the room and the Marchioness lay back against her pillows again, thinking, thinking. Would pleading help? No, she knew that was hopeless, for she had tried it in the past and it had proved useless. Justin held the reins in his hand.

  What then could she do? With a miserable sense of impotence she flung wide her hands against the sheets. To be old, to be growing old and to lose one’s power was bitter, bitter indeed.

  Once she had been beautiful, far more beautiful than this silly chit who had caused all this trouble.

  At the thought of Serena the Marchioness suddenly sat bolt upright in bed. The white powder was working. She felt that her brain was rising quickly, that her heartbeats were accelerated and that the blood was coursing quickly through her veins. She was not finished yet. Serena!

  Yes, that was the name of the one who was at the bottom of all this trouble. It was that girl, that pale-faced country miss who, coming into the house, had upset everything.

  She had brought bad luck, the Marchioness was certain of that now. Things had not been easy before she came, but never had they been as desperate as they were now.

  It was she who should be blamed, it was she who should pay and pay dearly for what had transpired.

  The Marchioness’s fingers tightened until her nails were cutting deeply into her palms.

  The door opened and Martha returned.

  “I have ascertained, your Ladyship, that his Lordship left the house last night on horseback and has not returned.”

  “Left last night?”

  The Marchioness’s voice was shrill with astonishment.

  “Yes, my Lady. The grooms report that he asked for a horse about three o’clock in the morning. He left no message for your Ladyship, nor did he tell anyone where he was going.”

  The Marchioness stared at her.

  “My God,” she moaned, “he has gone to fight Harry Wrotham!”

  She fell back against her pillows. Her face was so white that Martha bent over her solicitously, fearing that she was about to faint.

  The Marchioness closed her eyes and then opened them again.

  “Martha,” she said in a deep voice. “They will kill each other! Justin was in a blue-devilled rage and I know, fool that I was not to have thought of it before, that he went to call Lord Wrotham out.”

  “Perhaps it is not as bad as that, my Lady,” Martha suggested. “Your Ladyship may be mistaken. And his Lordship has left no message.”

  “No message,” the Marchioness repeated. “Why should he? I should have known at the time. I should have stopped him. Martha. Martha, what can we do?”

  “Nothing, my Lady,” Martha said practically. “If his Lordship is fighting a duel, it will have taken place by now.”

  “At dawn,” the Marchioness cried. “The Lord save us, Martha! How are we to know what has occurred?”

  For a moment she covered her face with her hands. She had forgotten her anger and her fear of Justin. It was her son who was in danger, someone who was part of her blood, one who was part of her life.

  “Now, now, my Lady, don’t upset yourself,” Martha said. “You will get yourself all worked up over these things and that’s a fact. There is something coming up for you to eat in a moment and you will feel better then.”

  “Fool, you fool! I don’t want food!” the Marchioness snapped. She sat up suddenly, pushing aside Martha’s ministering hands. “I am all right, leave me alone, I tell you. And fetch Miss Staverley to me at once, do you hear?”

  Chapter Fourteen

  When Serena awoke, the summer sun was high in the sky, its golden rays streaming brilliantly through the partially curtained windows of her casement.

  The whole room seemed golden and she lay with her eyes half-closed, letting the loveliness of it seep into her consciousness so that it was some seconds before the events of the night came crowding back on her.

  Then she stretched her arms high above her head and sat up.

  She felt exceedingly well and refreshed. The hot posset which Eudora had brought her and which had sent her speedily to sleep had taken the chill from her limbs and brought her a dreamless slumber with no nightmares.

  Now in perspective with the sunshine warm on her face it was easy to forget her misery and tears and to remember only that she had outwitted Lord Wrotham. There was satisfaction in recalling that. How angry he must have been!

  Serena gave a little chuckle to herself before she called out for Eudora.

  “Eudora!”

  “So you are awake at last, Miss Serena.”

  Eudora stood in the doorway, twisted and deformed, but so dearly familiar that impulsively Ser
ena held out her arms to her.

  “Yes, awake, and oh, Eudora, I am so glad to see you. I might not have been here this morning.”

  “So I understand from your bletherings last night,” Eudora answered, “but before you tell me what occurred I will fetch you a dish of hot chocolate.”

  “I would like that,” Serena sighed, “and maybe a little fruit, Eudora. I have no fancy to eat.”

  “We will see about that,” Eudora said severely. “You will need to keep your strength up if there are many more such goings-on.”

  She spoke with ominous bitterness and Serena laughed at her.

  “I feel strong enough to face – the most formidable obstacles,” she said. “Hurry up, Eudora, there is much I want to tell you.”

  When Eudora had gone and she was alone, Serena slipped from the bed. She crossed the room to the window seat and, pulling the curtains back so that no sunshine should be excluded from the room, she sat there bathed in glory, the waves below shining iridescently before her eyes.

  How lovely it all was! Serena gave a little smile and then looked down on the gardens beneath as if searching for someone.

  Her eyes had wandered across the well-kept lawns before she shook herself and a faint flush stole into her cheeks.

  She knew who she was looking for, yet why she should imagine he should be there it was not easy to explain, even to herself. She only knew that she could still remember the strength of his arms and the gentleness that he had laid her down with on her own bed.

  ‘Surely I am being exceedingly absurd,’ Serena told herself.

  But she was answered by the soft throbbing of her heart and by the blood flooding into her cheeks.

  When she came back with the tray, Eudora exclaimed at the sight of Serena.

  “You will catch your death of cold without even a shawl on your shoulders,” she scolded. “Besides, ’tis not decent.”

  “There are only the seagulls to see me,” Serena teased her.

  “That’s as maybe,” Eudora retorted. “There are enough loose ways in this house without your adoptin’ them.”