The Ruthless Rake Read online

  “It’ll be nice to see the house full again, my Lord,” the butler said.

  The Earl looked at him in surprise.

  “You were not here in my father’s time?”

  “No, my Lord, I was a pantry boy when your Lordship’s grandfather was alive. I left King’s Keep to go as footman to the Duke of Norfolk and I returned fourteen years ago to take up my present position.”

  “You come from this part of the world?”

  “I was born on the estate, my Lord.”

  “I am glad about that,” the Earl said. “I am anxious to have my own people around me, people who have known King’s Keep all their lives. Where possible, engage local men and women for the house.”

  “I’ll do that, my Lord.”

  The Earl sauntered through the Great Hall, with its magnificent carved staircase and marble statues, to the front door.

  Outside a horse was waiting for him – an enormous black stallion, an expensive piece of horseflesh which the Earl had purchased a year ago and which he had sent to King’s Keep the previous week.

  He had fancied more than anything else that he would want to ride over the estate and he did not anticipate that anything in the Colonel’s stables would be spirited enough. There was no doubt that Thunderer was in need not only of exercise but someone on his back who could master him.

  The Earl felt a sudden elation as finally, after a tussle between man and horse, he brought the stallion under control and they set off across the Park at a gallop.

  The air was mild and there was a sweet fragrance of spring in the wind blowing against his face.

  He saw the green buds on the trees and bushes and everywhere he looked it seemed to him that there was a profusion of daffodils.

  He felt as if they were trumpeting his elation and his sense of triumph.

  He had ridden for nearly two hours before he remembered that there would be people waiting for him at the house.

  He had so much to hear, so much to learn from his employees and yet nothing seemed more important than to acquaint himself with the lands of his fathers and with the woods that had stood sentinel on them for hundreds of years.

  He had ridden further than he had intended and now he turned for home taking a different route, moving through the woods on the South side of the estate and trying to find familiar landmarks.

  He knew, however, that after the long years he had been away it would be difficult for him to remember much beyond the boundaries of the flower gardens surrounding the great house.

  He found himself riding through pine trees.

  Their russet red trunks grew close together and excluded most of the sunshine. Beneath them the ground was sandy and the stallion’s hoofs made little sound.

  Suddenly he thought he heard a cry and reined in Thunderer to stand for a moment listening.

  Could it be an animal, the Earl wondered, caught by a stoat or a weasel or was it a bird protesting at his intrusion in a woodland Sanctuary seldom entered by outsiders?

  His cousin had not been a shooting man and the Earl had already realised that there were too few keepers on the estate.

  He had noticed a number of jays, their wings flashing vividly blue against the dark branches of the pines.

  He had seen numerous black and white magpies and several carrion crows, which he told himself a good keeper would have destroyed long ago.

  Then, as he sat listening to the soft movement of the wood around him, the whisper of the breeze, the swift shuffle of a rabbit, the squeak of a field mouse and the coo of the wood pigeon, he heard the sound of someone crying.

  Wondering in surprise where the sound could come from, he heard a voice say nearer than he had suspected,

  “Oh, darling – how shall I live without – you? How can I go on wondering what has – happened to you? Where you have – gone? How you are being – treated?”

  There was so much misery in the voice that the Earl was almost startled.

  Then with a faint smile on his lips he thought that he must be overhearing two lovers who were apparently saying goodbye to each other.

  “How can I – sleep at nights,” the young voice went on, “thinking of you, knowing you are – missing me – knowing you will not – understand why we are not – together?”

  The voice broke on the words and the speaker was crying again in a heart-broken manner, until with her voice thick with tears she continued,

  “Supposing they are – cruel to you – supposing they don’t understand how gentle you are – how clever and obedient. Oh, darling – darling – what can I do? How can I let you go? Oh how I wish – I was dead!”

  The words seemed to be spoken in an agony and then there was only the bitterness of tears and sobs that seemed almost uncontrollable.

  The Earl slipped from his horse’s back.

  Tying the reins to the bough of a tree he walked quietly towards the sound of the tears.

  Only a few steps brought him through the trees to a clearing and he saw to his surprise standing immediately in front of him a magnificent horse.

  The animal was cropping the young grass at its feet. It carried a lady’s saddle with a pommel.

  With her back to the Earl there was a woman.

  She was sitting on a fallen tree trunk beside the horse and her head hidden by her hands was bowed onto her knees.

  She wore a dress of pale green and the Earl could see from the slenderness of her figure that she was very young.

  Her hair was swept back from her forehead and not arranged in a fashionable manner, but it appeared to curl naturally over her small head and he could not for the moment determine what colour it was.

  He stood gazing at her and saw that, deafened by her own sobs, she had not heard him approach.

  “What can I do – how can I lose you?” she murmured.

  “Surely there must be an answer to that question,” the Earl said quietly. “Could we not try to find one?”

  She stiffened at the sound of his voice, but she did not raise her head from her hands.

  After a moment as the Earl waited she replied,

  “There is – nothing you can do. Please – go away.”

  “How do you know I cannot help you?” the Earl asked.

  “No one can – help me,” she answered.

  Her voice was muffled by her hands, which still covered her face.

  “How can you be so sure?” the Earl enquired. “When things seem at their worst, it is then that one finds an explanation or has an idea that can change everything.”

  “Nothing – can save – Mercury,” she answered, “so there is no – point in – talking about it.”

  The Earl sat down on another tree trunk.

  He looked very elegant in his white breeches and his cutaway coat, his top hat at an angle on his dark hair.

  The girl was no longer sobbing, but she did not raise her head.

  “Why is your horse being sent away?” the Earl asked. “I am not just curious, I want to help you.”

  “I have told you – no one can – help,” she replied, her voice helpless, almost childlike, while her breath was still coming fitfully between her lips from the violence of her tears.

  “Why not?” the Earl enquired.

  “He is to be – sold on – Saturday,” she answered. “I don’t mind about the – other things – the house, the furniture but – Mercury will not understand.”

  “No, he will not understand,” the Earl agreed reflectively.

  “He has been with – me ever since he was a – foal,” the girl said. “I have looked after him – I have fed him and groomed him. He has never even been – ridden by – anyone else. Supposing – supposing someone was – cruel to him?”

  Again there was an agony in the young voice that was strangely moving.

  “I cannot believe anyone could be cruel to such a fine animal,” the Earl said.

  The girl raised her face a little to look at her horse and the Earl had a glimpse of a small straight n
ose and lips that trembled.

  Then she turned her head aside as if she did not wish him to look at her face.

  “There is – nothing you can – do,” she replied. “Please go away. You are trespassing.”

  “Do these woods belong to you?” the Earl asked.

  “No, but I am allowed to ride in them,” the girl answered, “and you will not have had permission. So please go back to the village – you will find it a little way down there to the left.”

  She pointed with her hand as she spoke.

  “The village of Whitley?” the Earl asked.

  “That is right. You must have lost your way.”

  “I would still like to help you,” he said.

  “I have told you,” she replied almost angrily, “Mercury has to be sold, it is in part a debt of – honour. Gaming debts are, you know! And there are other – amounts that must be paid or else – ”

  Her voice died away.

  “Or else – ” the Earl prompted.

  “My father will go to – prison!”

  She almost whispered the words as if she spoke to herself.

  “And what will happen to you?” the Earl asked tentatively. “When your house is sold and Mercury is gone, where will you go?”

  “I have no idea,” the girl answered, “but it is not – important what happens to – me when I no longer have Mercury to – look after.”

  She drew a deep breath.

  Then she said with what the Earl knew was a tremendous effort of self-control,

  “I should not be bothering you, sir – with my problems. You are a stranger and they are of no interest to anyone except myself. You cannot – understand what I am feeling.”

  “As it happens, I do,” the Earl contradicted her. “Many years ago when I was a boy, I had a dog. It was given to me when it was a puppy and I brought it up myself. She was called Judith and I loved her more than I have ever loved anyone in my whole life.”

  He paused and went on slowly,

  “Judith went everywhere with me, she slept on my bed. If I was doing my lessons, she sat at my feet and, if I went riding, she followed my pony.”

  He paused a moment.

  The girl was listening to him and now she had raised her head and he could see the perfection of her small clear-cut features silhouetted against the darkness of the trees.

  She was looking at her horse and he could see that her eyes were very large and her dark eyelashes wet with tears stood out against the whiteness of her skin.

  She was very pale and he thought that in some way there was a sort of shadowiness about her.

  It was as if she was hardly human, not flesh and blood, but some spirit which had come from the woods and was a part of the trees and the soft green of the leaves.

  “Quite unexpectedly,” the Earl went on, “I learned one evening that I was to leave for London the following morning. There was no mention of Judith and I thought, of course, that she would come with me. We had never left each other and I could not visualise life without her. It was only as I was taken by my attendants to the carriage waiting outside the front door that I was told that Judith was to stay behind.”

  “How cruel!” the girl exclaimed.

  “They barely gave me time to say goodbye to her,” the Earl continued. “They pulled my arms from round her neck and I was frantic with anxiety and fear as to what would become of her.”

  “And what did happen – to her?” the girl asked.

  “I have no idea,” the Earl answered and his voice was hard.

  “You mean you never saw her again?”

  “I not only never saw her again, but I never heard what they did with her,” the Earl replied.

  “How terrible for you! How cruel! How utterly – brutal!”

  There was silence and then the girl added,

  “So you do – understand what I feel about – Mercury.”

  “Yes, I understand,” the Earl smiled.

  Again there was silence until the girl said reflectively,

  “I wonder which is worse, to imagine terrible things, to lie awake thinking of Judith’s bewilderment – or to know that Mercury is neglected, beaten, perhaps harnessed to a mail coach driven too fast with too heavy a burden.”

  “You are torturing yourself.” the Earl pointed out. “There is every likelihood that a gentleman will buy him. He could be ridden by a Lady of Quality. Perhaps he will go to the stables of someone who understands horses.”

  “But how can I be – sure?”

  It was only a whisper.

  “It will not help you or Mercury to anticipate the worst,” the Earl said. “It is weak and perhaps a little cowardly.”

  There was a long pause before the girl answered.

  “You are – right. I am wrong to be so despondent and I am thinking only of – myself. Mama would be – ashamed of me.”

  “What is your name?” the Earl asked.

  “Syringa,” she answered almost indifferently as if she was not attending to his question. “My father is Sir Hugh Melton and we live at the Manor House in the village.”

  She paused again as though she was thinking of something else and then suddenly she rose to her feet.

  “I want to show you something. You have made me realise how foolishly I am behaving. I should not be crying, I should be praying for Mercury – should I not?”

  “Do you think that might help?” the Earl answered.

  “I know it would,” she answered.

  She still kept her head turned away from him and she started to walk away from the clearing towards the trees on the left hand side.

  “Stay here, Mercury!” the Earl heard her say to her horse as she passed him.

  Then she was moving ahead through the trees and surprised but curious the Earl followed her.

  It was only a very short distance.

  The trees suddenly came to an end and he saw that they stood on the edge of a sharp incline. The countryside lay below them stretching out green with woodland and uncultivated land towards the horizon.

  Vaguely at the back of his mind the Earl remembered that this was a ‘look out’ and that once when he had been small a groom had brought him here on one of their rides.

  “From here,” Syringa said softly, “all you can see is an empty world with no houses and no roads. Actually they are there, but hidden. Mama used to say that this view is like our lives, stretching away into Eternity and it is for us to make a pattern across it.”

  As she spoke, she sat down on a flat stone on the very edge of the cliff which, bare of all vegetation, fell precipitously and dangerously away to some bushes far below.

  The Earl stood beside her gazing out. He understood what she meant, it was an empty world.

  A world of trees just coming into bud, a world of beauty joining the horizon misty blue in the far distance.

  “Mama would be ashamed of me,” Syringa was saying softly. “I have been behaving – like a coward. Now you have shown me how wrong I am, I will try to think of myself travelling through the empty world trying to make a straight path.”

  “And Mercury?” the Earl asked.

  “I shall pray for him,” she said, “I shall pray that he will find someone kind – and understanding. Perhaps someone who loves him – as much as I do. I shall pray every minute from now until Saturday.”

  “I am sure your prayers will be answered, Miss Melton.”

  “Do you really think that?”

  She turned her face as she spoke and looked up at him and for the first time he saw her full face.

  He was not quite certain what he expected, but nothing quite so exquisite or so unusual.

  She was not in any way a conventional beauty and yet she was beautiful.

  Her eyes still wet from her tears were enormous in a very small pointed face. It was a face that had a spiritual look about it, a face that no one could describe merely as ‘pretty’.

  He saw now why her hair had made him think that she was a spirit of the w
oods because like water it seemed to reflect the light while having no definite colour of its own.

  Her eyes were the same. They were grey and yet they held green and gold flecks in them. And her mouth was very sensitive.

  He did not know that a woman could express so much emotion in her eyes or the movement of her lips.

  She was sitting staring up at him as he towered above her.

  He had taken off his hat and his broad shoulders and handsome suntanned face with its lines of cynicism seemed to stand out like a painting on a ceiling against the blue of the sky behind him.

  He realised that Syringa was looking at him in a strange manner.

  Then she rose quickly to her feet before he could put out a hand to assist her.

  “There is something else – I want to show you,” she said, “something that I think will make you feel – happier about Judith.”

  The Earl raised his eyebrows.

  “It still hurts, does it not, when you think of her?” Syringa asked softly.

  She did not wait for his reply, but moved back along the way they had come and as she reached the clearing she called her horse,

  “Mercury!”

  The horse raised its head from the grass and walked towards her and without touching him she turned into the wood.

  Almost immediately they came upon the Earl’s stallion, Thunderer.

  She saw that he was tethered and waited while the Earl untied the bridle. Then she sprang into the saddle without assistance.

  The Earl looked at her and thought that in her green gown mounted on the big horse she looked unreal. A Fairytale creature of dreams.

  She was waiting for him and, when he was astride Thunderer, she set off ahead, winding her way through the wood, going deeper and deeper towards the heart of it.

  The Earl realised that the trees were now closer together and suddenly in front of them he saw a thick thorn hedge.

  It was so thick and so high he could not see how it was possible for them to penetrate it and he expected Syringa to turn to the left or to the right.

  Instead she went nearly up to the hedge and dismounted.

  The Earl did the same and having again tethered Thunderer to a tree, he turned expectantly towards Syringa.

  “Follow me,” she said in a quiet voice.