Kiss from a Stranger Read online

  Knowing how secret this was, the Earl, with difficulty, prevented himself from looking over his shoulder as if afraid somebody might be eavesdropping.

  “He is to proceed to Malta,” Lord Barham carried on, “freeing eight thousand troops already there for offensive operations, to co-operate with a Russian Force from Corfu for the liberation of the Neapolitan mainland and the defence of Sicily.”

  He was aware that the Earl was staring at him almost incredulously and said,

  “If necessary, since its security is essential to England’s European plan, he is to garrison the island without the consent of the King, and is also, with Nelson’s aid, to safeguard Egypt and Sardinia.”

  He ceased speaking and the Earl said,

  “I can only say I am astounded! But I can understand, knowing the terrifying dangers of the voyage, that ‘Secret Expedition’ is the right description for it!”

  He also thought with a faint smile that on board the packed ships expectation would be running high as, after many months of inaction, the Army was at last to have its chance.

  “To finish my story,” Lord Barham said, “two days ago, on April 19th, the wind that has held up the forty-five transports from leaving England changed and they stood out to sea escorted by two first rates.”

  “And you really think,” the Earl asked, “that this can be kept a close secret?”

  “I am told Napoleon’s spies have been active,” Lord Barham said, “but my reports are that they have no idea of where the expedition is going. In fact, one reliable source says that Bonaparte himself believes it is destined for the West Indies.”

  “In which case he will send what ships he has to attack them!” the Earl said.

  “Of course!” Lord Barham agreed. “And, as he is certain of his impending mastery of the world, he must scare Downing Street into dispersing its slender military forces.”

  “I can see the whole picture,” the Earl said. “At the same time I am not quite certain how I come into this.”

  “Use your brain, my dear boy,” Lord Barham replied. “Spies, as you well know, are not sinister-looking men in dark clothes lurking in alleyways. They are often a pair of pleading eyes and pouting lips with a penchant for diamonds!”

  The Earl frowned.

  “Are you seriously telling me that there are women in England who would spy for France?”

  “Willingly or unwillingly, intentionally or unintentionally, I am certain that is happening,” Lord Barham said, “and as you know only too well, Arrow, a careless word murmured into a shell-like ear on the pillow can mean the death of men carrying the British flag in a far-off country or the sinking of a ship which is fatal to our defence.”

  The Earl’s lips tightened and he said,

  “I know exactly what you are saying, and I nearly lost my own ship two months ago because somebody alerted the enemy that we were approaching and only by the mercy of God were we saved at the last moment!”

  “Then you understand what I am asking of you,” Lord Barham said.

  He threw out his hand expressively as he added,

  “Circulate amongst His Royal Highness’s cronies who flock like hungry crows to Carlton House. Call on the great hostesses, both Tory and Whig, and keep your ears open and your brain clear.”

  “I may prove a dismal failure,” the Earl said. “I am at home on a bridge and can handle a ship better than a woman!”

  Lord Barham laughed.

  “I was quite certain that you had been at sea too long! And now, forget the clever exploits of Captain Durwin Bow and concentrate on being an Earl who has little on his mind except to enjoy himself!”

  The Earl sighed.

  “I think I would almost rather be the desk-bound clerk I expected to be when you sent for me!”

  “That, my boy, would be a waste of your talents, your looks and your position!”

  Lord Barham laughed before he said,

  “No one would expect an Earl to be a spy, but that is exactly what you have to be and I can only beg of you to realise that the lives of seven thousand troops depend on you, apart from the fact that, unless they reach their destination, the Prime Minister will have more trouble with the Russians than he has had already.”

  “Then all I can reply is that I will do my damnedest!” the Earl said.

  “That is the only answer I want.” Lord Barham smiled.

  He rose as he spoke and the Earl realised that the interview was at an end.

  “Do not come to see me again unless you have something of import to impart,” Lord Barham ended. “Put nothing in writing and trust no one in this office or outside it.”

  “You are making my flesh creep!” the Earl complained.

  “That is what I want to do,” Lord Barham said. “There has been too much complacency up until now and that is something, I assure you, we cannot afford!”

  He paused and then he added,

  “Incidentally, nothing has been heard of Horatio Nelson, a somewhat erratic young Admiral in my view!”

  “You have no idea where he is?” the Earl asked incredulously.

  “None!” Lord Barham said briefly. “And if his only eye has once more carried him off to Egypt, the Government will find themselves in a scrape.”

  “Why?” the Earl enquired.

  “It’s important for Nelson to maintain control of the central Mediterranean,” Lord Barham answered.

  “I thought he had done that so successfully that the French fleet had abandoned that sea altogether and gone buccaneering in the Atlantic.”

  “That is what we had hoped,” Lord Barham said, “but now Nelson has vanished and no one seems to know where!”

  “I am quite certain that whatever he does will be the right thing,” the Earl said quietly.

  He thought that Lord Barham was slightly sceptical at his optimistic remark, but he did not say so.

  He merely took the Earl to the door and, opening it, said in a loud voice that could be heard by everybody in the outer office,

  “It has been delightful to see you, my dear boy. We shall miss you in the Navy, but I do understand that you have a great deal to do on your estates. Take time off to enjoy yourself after all your hard work!”

  He shook the Earl by the hand and then one of the senior clerks escorted him to the front door.

  The First Lord went back to his own office with the air of a man who had wasted too much time for no good reason.

  The Earl climbed into his phaeton, thinking how he could even begin to carry out Lord Barham’s orders.

  He had, however, a very astute brain.

  There had been no need for the First Lord to impress on him more than he had done already the importance of the Secret Expedition and the danger of Napoleon’s spies having infiltrated the Social world or the Beau Ton as it was colloquially termed.

  Every country had spies, the Earl was well aware of that.

  But that Napoleon should have been clever enough to make them men and women who were accepted by the great hostesses, by the Prince of Wales and perhaps at Buckingham Palace, was something he had not thought of in the past.

  He was, however, aware that there were a great many émigrés in England who had come to the country for sanctuary during the French Revolution.

  In a number of cases, as their châteaux and estates had been looted or confiscated, they had not returned even when Napoleon invited them to do so.

  They might constitute a danger but, at the same time, the Earl knew that they professed a loathing for the ‘Corsican Upstart’, who had come to power entirely through the Revolution and had now crowned himself Emperor.

  They were affronted when they were told how he had installed himself in the Royal Palaces and was behaving more Royally than Charlemagne.

  ‘Could there be spies amongst the émigrés!’ the Earl asked himself. ‘If not, then who else?’

  He drove his phaeton up the Mall, past St. James’s Palace and into St. James’s Street.

  As he did s
o, he thought now that he was back in England that he would go to Whites, the Club where he was certain he would find the majority of his friends.

  He would also, he was well aware, hear the latest gossip.

  Perhaps, although it seemed unlikely, that would give him a clue as to where he should look for the despicable creatures who were ready to debase themselves by taking money from the French.

  He drew up outside the club and, walking in, was not really surprised when the Head Porter greeted him,

  “Good day, my Lord! It’s nice to see you back after so many years!”

  The Earl laughed.

  It was part of the tradition of Whites that the porters should know and remember the members.

  He was a clearly aware, too, that he was no longer Lieutenant-Commander Bow, as he had been the last time he entered the Club, but was now the Earl of Arrow.

  “I am glad to be back, Johnson,” he said.

  He was gratified not only by the Head Porter’s appreciation of him in remembering his name, but also by his own memory.

  “You’ll find Captain Crawshore in the morning room, my Lord,” Johnson informed him.

  The Earl was amused, too, that the porter even remembered his friends.

  He walked into the morning room and for a moment there seemed to be a pause in the conversation as the members looked at him.

  Then there was a cry of, ‘Durwin!’ and a second later Perry Crawshore was beside him.

  “You are home!” he exclaimed, wringing his hands. “I was wondering when you would get back!”

  “I arrived a few days ago,” the Earl replied, “and I went first to my house in Berkeley Square, which is in the hell of a mess.”

  “I would have helped you if you had asked me,” Perry said.

  “I am asking you now.”

  The Earl sat down in one of the leather armchairs beside his friend and told a Club servant to bring him a drink.

  “Now that you are back, what are you going to do?” Perry asked.

  “Enjoy myself!” the Earl replied. “I have been rocking on the sea for so many months that I began to think that I should never be able to stand steady on terra firma again!”

  “Are you going to stay in London or go to the country?” Perry enquired.

  “Both! And I am looking to you, Perry, to introduce me to all the beauties and the ‘Incomparables’, as if I was an innocent debutante!”

  Perry Crawshore shouted with laughter and two or three other men who knew the Earl in the past came up to ask where he had been.

  “We thought you have been swallowed by a sea-lion or eloped with a pretty mermaid!” one of them quipped.

  “If there are any mermaids in the Mediterranean, I have not seen one!” the Earl replied. “And the porpoises are more of a nuisance than the French!”

  “How long is this damned war going to continue?” somebody asked.

  It seemed to the Earl that everybody looked at him and after a moment he responded,

  “Until Napoleon is defeated and, make no mistake, there is no one who can do that except ourselves!”

  *

  Shenda looked around the house that had been her home ever since she could remember and found it difficult to believe that she now had to leave it.

  When she had received a letter from the man who had just been appointed manager to the Arrow estate asking her to vacate the Vicarage within two weeks, she had sat down and cried.

  The only person she could go to was her father’s older brother who had, on her grandfather’s death, moved into the house in Gloucestershire.

  She had met him twice in the last two years and had thought that he was very unlike her father.

  He was also, she knew, exceedingly hard-up since he left the Army. He had four children of his own and had great difficulty in making ends meet.

  ‘How can I possibly impose myself on him?’ she asked herself.

  But there was nowhere else she could go.

  She had never met her mother’s relatives who lived in the North of Scotland and had known from what her mother had told her that they had always disapproved of her father.

  While she packed her clothes and the things she wished to keep, she had been turning over and over in her mind the desperate problem of her future.

  There was no use pretending she had any money because all she had was the few pounds she had obtained for selling some of the furniture not worth storing.

  Farmer Johnson, however, whose bull had killed her father, had offered to look after anything she might leave with him at the farm.

  “You can ’ave one of the outhouses, Miss Shenda,” he said, “or there’s the attic, if you prefers. I’ll see they comes to no ’arm, you can be sure of that!”

  “That is very kind of you,” Shenda replied, “but there is not much, only a few trunks and perhaps two or three packing cases.”

  “I’ll send Jim with the cart to carry ’em back up ’ere,” Farmer Johnson said, “and you knows, Miss Shenda, anythin’ we does for you, we does willin’!”

  She knew that he felt guilty because his bull had killed her father, although it was really nobody’s fault.

  How could her father have known that a particularly savage bull was in the field he always crossed when he visited Mrs. Newcomb?

  And how could Farmer Johnson know that it was the Vicar’s normal custom, for he had never bothered to tell him.

  There was a packing case that was still half-empty and, as Shenda looked at it, she remembered that one of her mother’s special tablecloths had been left in a cupboard in the dining room.

  She went to fetch it and, as she took it down from the shelf, she saw that there was a tear in the lace that decorated the edges and knew it should have been mended.

  Her mother had taught her to sew as neatly as she did herself. Shenda could also repair lace and other materials with such tiny stitches that everyone in the village admired her work.

  She picked up the cloth and, wrapping it in white paper, laid it carefully in the packing case.

  As she did so, she wondered if she would ever again have a home of her own where she could use the things that once had seemed quite ordinary, because they were part of the way they lived, but were now luxuries.

  Then, as she patted the cloth almost as if she was caressing it, she had a sudden idea, an idea that she felt must have come in some way from her mother.

  Only last night she had lain in bed praying first to God and then to her mother for help.

  ‘What shall I do, Mama?’ she asked. ‘I am sure that Uncle William does not want another mouth to feed and, if I go there and take Rufus with me, that will mean two mouths.”

  She knew as she prayed that the one thing she could not bear to lose was Rufus.

  She had the uncomfortable feeling at the back of her mind that her aunt, who she thought had looked at her in a somewhat hostile manner, would not want a dog in the house.

  “Help me – Mama – help – me!” she prayed desperately.

  Because she spoke aloud without meaning to, Rufus had crept up to the bed to comfort her.

  She held him in her arms, aware as she did so that his paw had healed.

  He still, however, walked delicately, as if he was afraid that every time he touched the ground it would hurt him.

  Her fingers lingered on him and he raised his paw, as if he was speaking to her.

  She ran up to her almost empty bedroom to fetch her bonnet.

  “Come, Rufus!” she called. “We are going for a walk!”

  With the spaniel at her heels, she went through the garden, which was now a kaleidoscope of colours, and then into the wood.

  She did not, however, take the mossy path that led to the magic pool, but instead set off across the Park in the direction of The Castle.

  It looked very imposing with its ancient tower pointing towards the sky.

  The rest of the house, which had been added to generation after generation, was silhouetted against the woods
that lay at the back of it.

  If the Vicarage garden was a bower of beauty, the garden of The Castle was, Shenda thought, lovelier every time she saw it.

  It was especially lovely in the spring and now the almond trees were in bloom and the box-hedges protecting the formal gardens which had been first laid out in the reign of Queen Elizabeth were neatly trimmed.

  All through the late Earl’s illness, the gardeners had kept the garden as beautiful as if they thought that, at any moment, he might come out to inspect it.

  Shenda had often thought it must be disappointing for them that he would not do so.

  Whenever she visited The Castle on one pretext or another, she would tell old Hodges, the Head Gardener, how beautiful they had made it and she felt that, because she praised him, he looked forward to seeing her.

  There was a cascade, a fountain, a bowling green, a herb garden and a dozen other places that delighted her eyes and fired her imagination.

  She would tell herself stories of those who had lived at The Castle, particularly the one about the first Knight.

  A battle had taken place in Medieval times and the Commander, whose name was Hlodwig, had with his men attacked the Danes who had landed to pillage and plunder with a stronger force than his own.

  The battle was going against them when, taking a bow from one of his soldiers, he shot the arrow himself, killing the leader of the Danes.

  He had been rewarded by being made a Knight and became Sir Justin Bow.

  He had moved inland and built a fortified Manor house, most appropriately calling it “Arrow”.

  The Earldom had been created in the reign of Charles II with the title of Arrow.

  All through history the Bows had served in the Army and Navy and also as advisers to the Monarch.

  It was such a romantic story that Shenda would imagine The Castle filled first with Knights in armour, their ladies wearing long pointed medieval headdresses.

  Then there were the doublets and ruffs of Tudor times and the long wigs that emulated the one worn by Charles II after the Restoration.

  In her mind Shenda designed herself a gown to go with the period and wished that she could have one in the present fashion, which had swept England from France after it had been introduced by the Empress Josephine.