Winged Victory Read online

  The Earl would not be drawn.

  “I am not admitting that I know anything more about him. I just don’t wish to have horses that have belonged to him in my stable or to accept any hospitality that I have no intention of returning.”

  “Well, if Melford was rich before, he will be a damned sight richer tonight,” Eddie remarked.

  The Earl’s guests as they drove back said the same thing.

  “I paid too much for the horses I bought,” one Peer complained, “and I wish to God now that I had left them alone.”

  “I warned you to keep a clear head,” the Earl said.

  “I meant, to,” the Peer answered, “but the brandy was the best I have tasted for a long time and although I hate to admit it, it made me reckless. Damn the man! I wish I had listened to you, Poynton.”

  “One can hardly blame Melford for getting the best price he could for his animals,” another guest remarked, “and personally I am very pleased with my buy. When I win the Gold Cup with him at Ascot, you will all be jealous!”

  “So will Melford!” someone exclaimed and they laughed.

  After a superlative meal, such as anybody would expect at the Earl’s house, they repaired to the drawing room where tables had been laid out for games of chance.

  Tonight the party was larger than usual because the Earl had invited a number of his friends from neighbouring estates.

  However, as they were all racing the following day, they left at about midnight saying how much they had enjoyed the evening.

  “I suppose, Poynton, you will carry off all the prizes tomorrow as you always do,” one guest declared philosophically.

  “I hope so,” the Earl answered, “but an outsider often creeps in when one least expects it.”

  “I can only pray that it is my horse,” somebody answered, “but my prayers have a tiresome way of getting lost on their way to the Winning Post!”

  “You should pray harder,” the Earl replied.

  The guests in the house party did not linger downstairs for long.

  “I am going to bed,” one of them a little older than the rest announced. “It has been a long day and a very enjoyable one and I need not say, Poynton, that as usual you are the perfect host.”

  The Earl smiled at the compliment and Eddie noticed that he had not sat down after saying ‘goodnight’ to his dinner guests in the hall and was obviously hoping that his house guests would soon retire to bed.

  It was almost as if they obeyed him without his having to say anything.

  Ten minutes later the Earl entered his bedroom where Yates was waiting for him.

  “Is everything ready?” he asked.

  “The carriage be at the side door, my Lord, where no one’ll see it.”

  “Good,” the Earl replied. “Is Hart driving it?”

  “Yes, my Lord.”

  The Earl pulled off his tight-fitting coat and white cravat, which had been intricately tied in the latest style that had received the approval of the great Beau Brummel.

  In its place Yates handed him a black silk scarf, which he tied around his neck and fastened in a knot at his throat.

  The ends hung over his white shirt and the coat, into which his valet helped him and then covered the rest with a light cloak over his shoulders. He was now dressed entirely in black.

  “You have the lantern?” the Earl asked.

  “Yes, my Lord, the small one we’ve used in the past.”

  “Good.”

  Yates opened the bedroom door and looked down the passage to see that no one was there. Then he stood back for the Earl to pass him.

  Without speaking they walked not along the passage and down the main staircase but to another that led to a door that was seldom opened.

  It was at the side of the house where there were few windows and those there did not belong to the principal bedrooms.

  The carriage waiting for them was closed and very unobtrusive, being without the Earl’s Coat of-Arms on the door or any other means of identification.

  It was in fact so ancient that the Earl could not remember when he had last seen it in use.

  It was drawn by two horses and the coachman on the box was not wearing the tall cockaded hat or the many-tiered driving coat that he usually wore. Instead he seemed as anonymous as the vehicle he was driving.

  The Earl stepped inside, Yates swung himself up on to the box beside the coachman and they moved away.

  It was only a short distance to where the carriage came to a stop and the Earl and Yates alighted.

  It was a warm night with stars and a moon that was gradually climbing up the sky.

  At the same time it was not too brilliant to be embarrassing for anybody who had no wish to be seen.

  The carriage had stopped in the shadow of some trees and beside an iron fence that bordered a paddock.

  At the far end of it, it was just possible to see the roofs and the upper story of Sir Walter Melford’s house.

  Without speaking the Earl followed by Yates climbed the fence and moved through the paddock, keeping to the shadows of the trees.

  When they came to an open space, they crossed it quickly and waited for a second or so to make sure that nobody watching could have seen them before they moved on again.

  At the end of the paddock there was the back wall of the stables and the Earl moved along it until he came to a door at the far end.

  Here he paused and waited while Yates crouched down to light the small candle lantern that he had brought with him.

  It was specially constructed so that on three sides there were shutters obscuring the light, and it could therefore be directed to illuminate only what was required and not shine indiscriminately.

  When the lantern was lit, Yates shone it on the door into the stables, which was fastened with a latch.

  The Earl lifted it very slowly and gently without a sound and found that the door was not locked.

  He pulled it open and saw ahead, as he had expected, a narrow passage that led directly into the stables, on one side of which there was the stall that he had noted earlier in the day marked with the name ‘Star’.

  The iron railings at the top of it were still completely covered with horse blankets.

  Walking so quietly that it was impossible to hear the sound of his feet, the Earl moved along the narrow passage to the entrance to the stall.

  Everything was very quiet except for the movements in some of the further stalls of horses that had been sold earlier in the day, but had not yet been collected by their new owners.

  There was no sign or sound of any grooms.

  As the Earl had anticipated, by this time they were sleeping off the ale that they had celebrated the success of the sale with and the amount of tips that they had received from the buyers.

  He had been aware when he saw the stables that the younger lads would sleep in the loft above them while the older ones would have rooms in another building.

  Now he took a special implement from his pocket that he had found of great use in the past.

  It certainly made short work of the padlock and when it opened the Earl removed it gently and set it down on the ground before he pushed the door of the stall.

  For the moment there was only darkness and the smell of horseflesh and hay until Yates followed him with the lantern.

  He directed the light towards the manger and then upwards to the hayloft above it before he turned it downwards and drew his breath.

  The Earl had stood still, but now the light shone on a body lying on the floor and he moved forward as if this was what he had expected.

  Yates followed him and now the light was on a woman’s bare back that was criss-crossed with weals clotted with dried blood.

  She was lying face down on a pile of straw and her hands were bound together and were attached by a rope to the bottom of the manger.

  Her ankles were also bound and, as the Earl knelt down beside Cledra, he saw that there was a gag in her mouth that was tied tightly at the b
ack of her head.

  Taking a knife from his pocket he cut the rope that held her bound hands turned upwards towards the manger and knew, as they fell limply onto the straw, that she was unconscious.

  He picked her up in his arms and carried her towards the door followed by Yates.

  As he stopped outside it, he waited and without being told Yates knew that he was to close the door and replace the padlock in its original position.

  It took only a few seconds before Yates led the way to open the door into the paddock and the Earl came slowly after him, being careful not to knock Cledra’s feet against the side of the stall or the passage wall.

  When they were outside in the crisp night air. the Earl, who was carrying Cledra so that he touched as little as possible of her bare back, spoke for the first time,

  “My cloak!”

  Yates lifted it from his shoulders and put it very gently over Cledra.

  Then they were moving again, the Earl walking quickly and purposefully towards the fence.

  It would have been difficult for anybody watching him to imagine that he carried a half-naked woman in his arms, covered by his dark cloak.

  With Yates’s help he had no difficulty in lifting Cledra over the iron fence.

  When he had placed her on the back seat of the carriage, Yates climbed onto the box, Hart whipped up the horses and they were driving swiftly back the way they had come.

  There was nobody about on the empty roads to notice the carriage turning into the Earl’s drive and the windows in the house were dark while guests and servants slept peacefully after what had been a long and busy day.

  They went in through the side door, the Earl carrying Cledra up the staircase and there was nobody in the passage where his bedroom was situated.

  He carried her into his own room and then across it to a door that communicated with a small dressing room, which was filled almost entirely with the wardrobes that contained his clothes.

  There was, however, a single bed at one end that was seldom used except as a handy place where Yates laid out the Earl’s clothes before he put them on.

  Very gently the Earl laid Cledra down on the bed.

  He had removed the gag while they were travelling in the carriage, and also cut away the rope that had been tied around her ankles.

  She had stirred and, now in the light from the candles that Yates had brought into the room, he looked at her anxiously.

  Her face was ashen white, her chest was still, as if she was not breathing and it flashed through his mind that she had been beaten to death or had died of shock from the agony that she must have endured.

  He lifted his cloak very slowly from her back aware that the satin lining had stuck in some places to the weals and it would, if she had been aware of it, have hurt her unendurably, as the movement started the blood flowing again.

  However she lay completely motionless and now the Earl glanced at Yates who bent forward to feel her pulse.

  He was extremely proficient in nursing illnesses and healing wounds.

  He had saved the lives of many soldiers in the war by preventing a bayonet thrust or a poisoned sword wound from festering. He has also learned to cope with scorpion and snake bites and fevers that, without his attention, would have proved fatal.

  Now for the first time since they had left the paddock, the Earl spoke.

  “Is she alive?”

  There was a note in his voice that Yates recognised.

  He knew better than anybody how angry it had made the Earl when any man under his command had been knifed by an assailant or mutilated after death, as had often happened in India.

  “She’s alive, my Lord,” Yates replied, “but she’ll need careful nursin’ and her back’ll be agony when she’s conscious of it.”

  The Earl looked down at Cledra and appeared to be thinking before he said,

  “We have to get her away from here. When will she be well enough to travel?”

  “Nobody need know she’s here, my Lord. We could move her tomorrow evenin’, but it’d be better to wait until the next day.”

  The Earl nodded.

  “I will leave after the second race the day after tomorrow. Nobody will think that in the least strange and I will discuss with you later how best we can take her out of the house without anybody being aware of it. Now you had better do something about her back.”

  “Leave it to me, my Lord. I’ve got some salve I’ll apply tonight and I’ll make somethin’ better tomorrow while your Lordship’s at the races.”

  As he spoke, Yates took off Cledra’s slippers before he added,

  “I’ll get the salve and the bandages from my room, my Lord, and then I’ll get her into bed.”

  The Earl nodded again and Yates hurried away, only stopping in the bedroom next door to light some more candles.

  The Earl stood very still looking down at Cledra.

  In the light from a candelabrum the wounds on her back looked worse than when he had first seen them.

  He realised that her uncle must have used a thin, flexible riding whip that had cut sharply into the flesh as effectively as a knife.

  The weals crossing and re-crossing each other were deep and the blood from them had run round her body in a crimson stream.

  The Earl saw that Sir Walter had torn open the thin muslin gown Cledra had been wearing from the neck to the waist before he had thrown her forward onto the straw in the stall so that he could thrash her more effectively.

  It was likely, the Earl thought, that he had gagged her first and to be unable to scream would have made the agony of the beating even more intense than it would otherwise have been.

  He wondered how soon it was before she had collapsed into unconsciousness and could only pray that the darkness of oblivion had come quickly before her suffering had become unbearable.

  Just as the Earl was appalled at anybody being cruel to an animal, he found it hard to believe that any man with any pretence to humanity could beat in such a bestial manner anything so small and frail as the girl lying on the bed.

  He supposed that Sir Walter, having discovered that Star was missing, had taken Cledra to his stall and meted out the punishment that he considered fitted the crime.

  It was only by sheer chance that the Earl had been aware that she was there and it was not his intuition in this case that had told him something was amiss when he stood looking at Star’s name on the stable door.

  Because it puzzled him that horse blankets covered the iron bars at the top of the stall and why the stall itself was padlocked, he had stood silent.

  Then he thought that he heard a faint and, as he knew now, muffled whimper. It had been like the sound of a small animal caught in a trap, which ordinarily he would have dismissed from his mind.

  It had, however, struck him that it was the sound of something in pain and he had been about to put out his hand to draw aside the horse-cloths to see what lay behind them when the groom had spoken to him and told him that the stall was empty.

  Because he was sure that it was a lie, it had made him suspicious and, when he had walked away, he somehow found himself haunted by that whimper of pain.

  Travelling home from the sale he had told himself that it was not his business and, if Cledra was right and Sir Walter was cruel to animals, there was nothing he could do about it.

  At the same time the whimper kept recurring in his mind until by the time he went up to dress for dinner he knew that it would be impossible for him to sleep unless he found out what had caused it.

  It had never struck him for one moment that the sound might have come from Sir Walter’s niece.

  He had merely imagined after what Cledra had told him that it was a dog that had been shut up in the stable and perhaps beaten for some offence.

  Alternatively it might have been another horse he intended to poison as he had allegedly poisoned Lord Ludlow’s.

  But whatever was inside the locked and shrouded stable, it was something that Sir Walter did not wis
h anybody to see or know about.

  That in itself was enough to make the Earl curious to the point where he knew that he had to rescue whatever was suffering.

  Ever since he had rescued aristocrats during the French Revolution he had never undertaken a task without first seeing the layout of the land.

  So he had, before he left Sir Walter’s sale, deliberately walked to the end of the stable to note the door at the far end and the paddock adjoining it that bordered the road.

  Still there was no positive plan in his mind and he kept telling himself that it was wrong for him to embroil himself in any way with Sir Walter.

  He had done enough already in buying a horse from his niece.

  Then his instinct had come into play and it had told him this was something he had to do for whatever was behind those horse blankets was in considerable pain through cruelty and it was something that he could not ignore.

  Now, as he looked down at Cledra’s back, he knew that somehow, whatever the consequences to himself, he would protect her from the man who had ill-treated her so brutally and callously.

  Chapter Three

  The Earl watched his horse win the second race with some ease and received the congratulations of his friends in the Jockey Club box.

  He said ‘goodbye’ to those who had stayed with him for the Meeting and Eddie walked with him to where his phaeton was waiting,

  “You are leaving unusually early, Lennox,” he remarked.

  “I want to be home before it’s dark,” the Earl replied. “Look after my guests for me and I will meet you in London tomorrow. I shall not be there until late as there are one or two things I have to see to on the estate.”

  He spoke in his dry, rather bored voice, but Eddie saw that there was an unusual alertness in his bearing and a glint of excitement in his eyes that he had not seen since they had fought together in India.

  “I have a feeling, Lennox,” he said slowly, “that you are up to something. I have no idea what it can be, but I know you too well to be deceived by your air of indifference.”

  He wondered as he spoke if there was a new woman. Although he had become aware that the Earl was becoming bored with the Politician’s wife, he could not think of anyone who was likely to take her place immediately.