Call of the Heart Page 3

  The tears she had shed while she was being beaten had run down her face and her swollen eyes were still full of them.

  She was so pale that Sophie said in an irritated way.

  “You had better give her something to drink, Mama. She looks as if she is going to die!”

  “And a good thing if she did!” Lady Studley retaliated.

  “Well, keep her alive until she has told Lord Rothwyn my news,” Sophie remarked.

  “She is nothing but a trouble and a nuisance!” Lady Studley said harshly.

  She went to the washing-stand, on which stood a bottle of brandy from which she frequently imbibed.

  She poured a little into a glass and held it out towards Lalitha. “Drink this!” she said, “although it is too good to waste on such a scarecrow!”

  “I will...be all... right.”

  “You will do as you are told without arguing about it,” Lady Studley snapped, “unless you want another beating!”

  With difficulty, moving as if every step was an effort, Lalitha crossed the room and took the glass.

  Because she knew that they were waiting for her to do so she drank down the brandy and felt it searing its way through her body.

  Although she hated the taste of it she knew that it had brought her a new strength and dispersed the darkness that seemed to be still hovering just above her head.

  “Now listen, Lalitha, and if you make a mistake over this I will beat you until you are insensible!” Lady Studley said vehemently.

  “I am ... listening,” Lalitha murmured.

  “You are to go to the Church of St. Alphage in the carriage which will be arriving at nine-thirty. You will find Lord Rothwyn there and you will explain to him that Sophie is too honourable, has too fine a nature, not to keep her word of honour. She has therefore decided that, rather than break Mr. Verton’s heart, she must marry him as arranged.”

  Lady Studley paused to ask:

  “Is that clear?”

  “Yes,” Lalitha answered. “But please do . . . not make me... do it.” “I told you what would happen to you if you argue,” Lady Studley said menacingly.

  She picked up the cane, which she had put down when she’d poured out the brandy.

  “No, Mama!” Sophie said quickly. “If you hit Lalitha any more she will collapse and then she will be quite useless. I will talk to her. The carriage will not be here for another hour.”

  “Very well,” Lady Studley said grudgingly, as if she regretted not being able to beat Lalitha again.

  As they spoke they heard a knock on the door below. “That will be the carriage for me,” Lady Studley said. “Had I better go to Lady Corey’s as we had planned, or shall I stay at home, having heard the sad news of the Duke’s imminent death?”

  Sophie considered for a moment. _

  “I think actually, Mama, you should stay. If Julius learnt that you were at a party after he had written to me, he might think it unfeeling of you.”

  “Of course, I should have thought of that,” Lady Studley agreed. “How stupid of me. I was still covering our tracks where Lord Rothwyn was concerned.”

  She laughed.

  “Oh well, I shall have to stay at home and spend a boring evening here. But at least it will give me a chance to make plans for the future! Oh, dearest, I have always longed to see you in a Ducal Coronet!”

  “Thank God I knew in time,” Sophie said in heartfelt tones. “I would never have forgiven myself if I had gone away with Lord Rothwyn and then heard that Julius was a Duke.”

  “We have had a lucky escape!” Lady Studley exclaimed.

  She looked at her daughter and said:

  “Take off that gown. You do not want to spoil it. It is one of

  your best.”

  “I will put on a dressing-gown,” Sophie said.

  “Yes, do that,” Lady Studley agreed, “and take that scarecrow with you! Her death’s-head upsets me!” “Well, at least she makes herself useful,” Sophie answered. “There is no-one else we can send to Lord Rothwyn to tell him the bad news.”

  “He will think it bad too,” Lady Studley chuckled. “If ever I saw a man who was infatuated, it is His Lordship.”

  “He will get over it,” Sophie replied.

  She walked from the room and Lalitha followed her. But Sophie reached the second floor some time before her halfsister could struggle up the stairs.

  “Come on!” Sophie said impatiently when at last Lalitha entered the bed-room. “You know I cannot undo this gown myself.”

  Lalitha put down the lace dress she was carrying, then she said:

  “Sophie, do not . . . make me do this. I have a . . . feeling that His Lordship will be very . . . angry. Angrier even than ... your mother.”

  “Why do you not call her ‘Mama’?” Sophie asked. “You have been told often enough.”

  “I...I mean ... Mama.”

  “I am not surprised that she gets into a rage with you,” Sophie said spitefully. “You are so stupid, Lalitha, and if Lord Rothwyn also gives you a beating, it is no more than you deserve!”

  “I could not. . . stand any . . . more,” Lalitha whispered.

  “You have said that before,” Sophie remarked.

  She glanced at Lalitha’s face and said a little more gently: “Perhaps Mama was rather rough with you tonight. She is very strong and you are so thin, I wonder her cane does not break your bones!”

  “They feel as if . . . they are . . . broken!” Lalitha said.

  “They are not or you would not be able to walk,” Sophie remarked practically.

  “No, I suppose . . . not,” Lalitha agreed, “but I. . . cannot face ... Lord Rothwyn and his ... anger.”

  “You have never met him,” Sophie said, “so what do you know about his anger?”

  Lalitha did not answer and she said more insistently: “Tell me. You know something, I can see that.”

  “It is just a . . . book that I found here in the . . .

  house. It is called Legends of the Famous Families of

  England. ’’

  “It sounds interesting,” Sophie said. “Why did you not show it to me?”

  “You do not often read.” Lalitha answered, “and I was also... afraid it might... upset you.”

  “Upset me?” Sophie asked. “Why should it upset me? What did it say?”

  “It recounted the origins of the Rothwyn family and how the founder, Sir Hengist Rothwyn, was an adventurer and a pirate.”

  “Yes, go on,” Sophie said.

  “He was very successful and was also known to have been very fierce.”

  Lalitha saw that Sophie was listening and went on: “All down the centuries, so this book said, the Rothwyns have inherited the uncontrollable temper of their ancestor. Lord Rothwyn’s name, ‘Inigo,’ means ‘fiery.’ ” “I think I am well rid of that particular gentleman!” Sophie remarked dryly.

  “There was a verse about Sir Hengist written in 1540,” Lalitha continued as if Sophie had not spoken. “What did it say?” Sophie asked.

  Lalitha thought for a moment.

  Then in a weak voice which trembled as she spoke she recited:

  “Black eyes, black hair,

  Black anger, so beware,

  If revenge a Rothwyn swear!”

  Sophie laughed.

  “You do not think I am afraid of that balderdash!” she sneered.

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six,

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Two

  Driving towards the Church in the hired carriage which should have been carrying Sophie, Lalitha wished she did not feel so ill.

  The brandy which her Step-mother had given her after the beating had made her feel better for a short time, but now a strange and an unnatural lassitude was sweeping over her and

  her back was beginning to throb unbearably.

  She knew she should be grateful to Sophie for preven
ting her Step-mother from beating her insensible, as she had done on other occasions.

  Only the previous week Lady Studley had come to her bedroom with some complaint which had aroused her anger and found Lalitha in her night-gown.

  She had beaten her then until she had fallen unconscious to the floor and lain there for hours.

  Eventually it had taken all her resolution and what remained of her strength to crawl into bed. But she had been so cold from lying for so long on the floor that she had been unable to sleep or to keep her teeth from chattering until it was time for her to rise.

  She was sensible enough to realise that she was growing weaker and that her illness after Christmas had swept away almost the last resistance she had to her Step-mother’s cruelty.

  Often she had been so unhappy that she had wanted to pray to die, and then she thought of her mother and would not allow herself to show such cowardice.

  Her mother, small, gentle, and fragile, had always admired people who were brave.

  “We all of us have deeds of valour that we must do in our lives,” she had said to Lalitha once, “but the hardest of them all do not demand physical bravery but rather mental and spiritual.”

  To let Lady Studley kill her, Lalitha thought, would be the coward’s way out of the intolerable hell in which she found herself after her father’s death.

  Even after living for two years with her Step-mother she could hardly believe that the horrors that she experienced every day were not just part of a nightmare.

  To look back on her childhood was to remember the happiness of years which seemed always to be filled with sunshine.

  It was true that her mother was not strong and as the years passed there was not enough money to do the things they wanted.

  Neither of these had counted beside the inexpressible joy of being together.

  Her father, a large, good-humoured, kindly man, had been both loved and respected by those who worked and lived on their Estate.

  It was, Lalitha realised as she grew older, his kind disposition which kept him from being prosperous.

  He could never bring himself to push a farmer for the rent he owed or to evict a tenant.

  “I felt I had to give him another chance,” he would say a little shamefacedly.

  So there was never enough money for repairs, new implements, or for her mother and herself.

  Her mother had not minded.

  “I am so lucky,” she would often say to Lalitha, “both in my husband and in my daughter. To me they are the most wonderful people in the world!”

  Their days had always seemed full, although there had been few parties or Social events because their house, which had been in the Studley family for five generations, was in an isolated part of the country.

  From a farming point of view the land was excellent, but their neighbours had been few and far between.

  “When you are older you must go to London and enjoy the Balls, Assemblies, and Receptions that I found so entrancing when I was a girl,” Lalitha’s mother would say.

  “I am perfectly happy to be here with you and Papa,” Lalitha would reply.

  “I suppose every mother wants her daughters to be Social success,” her mother said a little wistfully, “and yet I had my London Season and came back to marry the man I had known since we were children together.”

  She smiled and added:

  “But it was going out into the world, meeting the elegant and important men in London, which convinced me that your father was the only man I loved and with whom I wanted to spend the rest of my life.”

  “You were lucky, Mama,” Lalitha said once, “your father’s Estates marched with Papa’s so you had a suitor on the doorstep, so to speak. There is no-one here for me.”

  “That is true,” her mother agreed, “and that is why we must save, Lalitha, every penny we can so that when you are seventeen and a half you can dazzle the Beau Monde with your pretty face.”

  “I shall never be as beautiful as you, Mama.”

  “You flatter me!” her mother protested.

  “Papa says there has never been anyone as lovely as you, and I feel that is true.”

  “If you can convince me that you think the same when you return from London, I will believe you,” her mother had replied.

  But there had been no London Season for Lalitha.

  Her mother had died one cold Winter unaccountably and without any warning.

  For Lalitha, like her father, it was a disaster so tremendous and unexpected that it was difficult to believe that it had really happened.

  One moment her mother was there laughing, looking after them, charming everyone with whom she came in contact.

  The next moment there was only her grave in the Church-yard and the house was empty and still.

  “How can it have happened?” Lalitha asked her father.

  While he kept repeating over and over again:

  “I did not even know she was ill.”

  But if her mother had died, Lalitha soon realised that her father had in effect died too.

  Over-night he had changed from being good-humoured and happy to a man morose and churlish who sat drinking far into the night. He took no further interest in any of the things that had occupied him before.

  She tried to rouse him from his lethargy but it was impossible. One night in the Wintertime when he was driving home from an Inn where he had been drinking he had an accident.

  He was not found until morning and by that time he was in a bad way.

  He was brought back to the house and while he lingered on for over two months he was a man who no longer had the will to live.

  It was then that Mrs. Clements came to the house ostensibly to help.

  Lalitha could remember the previous year when her father had come back to luncheon one day and said to her mother:

  “Do you recall a rather rat-faced individual called ‘Clements’? He kept the Pharmacy in Norwich.”

  “Yes, of course I remember him,” Lalitha’s mother had replied. “I never cared for the man, although I believe he was clever.”

  “We patronised his shop,” her father said, “because my father had always dealt there and his father before him.”

  “But Clements was not a Norfolk man,” her mother smiled, “nevertheless he lived in Norwich for many years.”

  “I know that,” Sir John replied, “which is why I feel I have to help his daughter.”

  “His daughter?” his wife asked. “I seem to remember there was some trouble . . . ”

  “There was,” Sir John said. “She ran away when she was only seventeen with a young Army Officer. Old Clements was furious and said he would have nothing further to do with her.” “Yes, of course. I recall the incident now,” Lady Studley said, “although I was only engaged to you at the time. My mother was deeply shocked at the thought of any young woman defying her parents in such a way, but then Mama was very strait-laced.”

  “She was indeed,” Sir John said with a smile. “I do not believe she really approved of me.”

  “She grew very fond of you after we were married,” Lady Studley corrected softly, “because she realised how happy I was.”

  Her eyes met her husband’s with a look of perfect understanding and then Lalitha, who had been listening, asked: “What happened to Mr. Clements’ daughter?”

  “That is what I have been trying to tell you,” Sir John answered. “She is back. I saw her this morning and she asked me if I could rent her a cottage.”

  “Oh, I am sure we do not want anyone like that on the Estate,” Lalitha’s mother said quickly.

  “I was rather sorry for her,” Sir John said. “The man she ran away with turned out to be an absolute blackguard. He never married her and left her destitute after a few years. She has been supporting herself and her child by working as a domestic servant.”

  “If Mr. Clements were alive the idea would give him a heart-attack!” Lady Studley said. “He always thought himself very superior. In fact
he stood for Mayor at one time.”

  “Well, the Clements family will have nothing to do with the ‘black sheep,’ but I felt I could not turn her away.”

  “You have rented her a cottage?” his wife cried.

  “The one near the Church,” Sir John answered. “It is small, but large enough for a woman and a child.” “You are too softhearted, John,” Lalitha’s mother said. “She will not be received well in these parts.”

  “I do not suppose she will want to have any contact with village folk,” Sir John answered. “She appears to be superior in every way. She is still a good-looking woman and her daughter is about the same age as Lalitha—perhaps a little older.”

  He paused and then said somewhat uncomfortably: “She said if you were in need of help in the house she would be only too glad to oblige you.”

  “I am sure she would,” Lalitha’s mother said swiftly, “but we have everyone we need at the moment.”

  Lalitha had not seen Mrs. Clements, which was apparently what the new tenant called herself, until after her mother had died.

  Then unexpectedly she had arrived and offered her services when things were most difficult.

  Two of the older servants had retired, so they were shorthanded.

  Then there was an epidemic of fever that Winter and it was quite impossible for three of the remaining staff to keep their feet.

  Sir John had not seemed to care.

  He sat gloomy and uncooperative, drinking in his study or riding out to neighbouring Inns from which he returned invariably so drunk that he had to be helped up to bed.

  Mrs. Clements had asked Lalitha if she could assist, and because she was so desperate the offer had been accepted.

  She had proven to be a tower of strength keeping the household going, and managing Sir John in a manner which aroused Lalitha’s admiration.

  It seemed as if only Mrs. Clements could persuade him to eat as well as drink.

  It was Mrs. Clements who had the fire burning brightly in his study and his comfortable slippers waiting for him when he returned from riding.

  It was Mrs. Clements who could persuade him to make a decision about the Estate when he would not listen to anyone else.