70 A Witch's Spell Read online

  A great love, if that was what she was asking from the man who would want to marry her, should not be based on something that seemed on second thoughts rather theatrical and contrived.

  Hermia had the uncomfortable suspicion that, if the Marquis was at all intelligent and intuitive, he would remember the conversation they had had at dinner about his mother.

  Would he not therefore think it a strange coincidence that two days later Marilyn should be called to a dying woman’s bedside?

  Hermia felt sure that, if she was in the Marquis’s position, she would certainly think it very strange.

  But the Marquis might be different.

  If he was a stupid man, beguiled by Marilyn’s pretty face, the suggestion that she was like his mother might swing the scales in her favour.

  She picked up her book again from where she had discarded it when Marilyn arrived.

  She did not open it. Instead she looked out of the window at the beauty of the unkempt garden with the shrubs just coming into bloom.

  The blossom on the fruit trees gave them a fairylike appearance that swept her into one of the stories she had known as a child where the spirits of the trees danced at night under the stars.

  Then she knew that if she ever fell in love, as she prayed she would one day, she would never stoop to scheming or intriguing to encourage the man on whom she had set her heart into proposing to her.

  Either he would want her because he recognised her as the woman he loved through time and space or else whatever she might feel for him she would let him go.

  Then she would hide her tears privately so that he would never be aware of how much she cared.

  ‘It is humiliating and degrading to ensnare a man as if he was a wild animal,’ she told herself fiercely.

  Then she found herself once again thinking of the man with a face like the Devil who had kissed her and pressed a guinea into her hand.

  She told herself that the kisses she had dreamt of and imagined in her stories were very different from the one he had given her.

  She was sure that if ever she received them they would not be disappointing.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Hermia rose very early and put on the riding skirt she had made herself.

  She remembered Marilyn’s instructions not to doll herself up and decided that it would be best not to wear her riding hat.

  If she was supposed to have ridden off in a hurry to find her cousin, she would not have bothered about herself, but would have run out of the house as she was.

  What was more, the Marquis, if he noticed her at all, would think that she looked very countrified and certainly not smart like the ladies he usually rode with.

  As she dressed she thought how much her father and mother would disapprove of her acting a lie even to please her cousin.

  However, it was the first time Marilyn had asked her to do anything for her for a very long time and Hermia thought that she must not only help her but pray that if she was happy she would be much kinder to her and everybody else.

  She had a feeling that Marilyn had changed a great deal since she grew up.

  She was in fact becoming more and more like the Countess who always had something unpleasant to say and looked down on most people as if they were dirt beneath her feet.

  When Hermia was dressed and it was not much after six o’clock, she crept very softly down the stairs so that nobody should hear her.

  Perhaps it was slightly reprehensible, but now that she had the chance of riding one of the fine horses from The Hall, which she missed more and more every day, she did not want to ride straight to Bluebell Wood as Marilyn had instructed her to do, but to enjoy a good ride first while she had the opportunity.

  When she reached the stable, she found as she expected that late in the evening, without their hearing him, a groom from The Hall had put a horse in one of the many empty stalls.

  The previous Vicar must have been very much richer than her father because he had extended the stables and there was room for a dozen horses or more.

  Now there was only the Vicar’s new yearling, which was only partly broken in.

  He was training it not only to draw the gig in which he made his rounds in the Parish but also the old-fashioned but comfortable chaise he drove his wife and daughter about in.

  Rufus, as they had named him, being a chestnut, was excellent for the work he had to do, but he certainly looked outclassed by the horse in the next stall.

  When she saw him, Hermia felt her heart leap with excitement and she knew that for the next hour she was really going to enjoy herself as she had not been able to do for many a year.

  She recognised the horse for she had ridden him before and knew that he was called Bracken.

  She patted him and made a fuss of him while she fetched her side-saddle which was hanging on the wall.

  She was just tightening the girths when the old man who looked after her father’s horse and worked in the large untidy garden came shuffling through the stable door.

  “Be you goin’ ridin’, Miss Hermia?” he asked. “I thinks as ’ow the ’orse ’ad been sent for the Reverend.”

  “No, I am riding this morning, Jake,” Hermia replied, “and don’t tell Papa, if you see him, that I have gone, as it’s a secret.”

  Jake took some time to digest this before he answered,

  “I’ll keep me mouth shut, Miss Hermia, and I expects you’ll enjoy yourself with a fine animal like ’e.”

  “I shall, Jake! It’s a long time since I have had anything so magnificent to ride.”

  As she spoke, Hermia led Bracken out of the stables and Jake held his bridle as she stepped onto a mounting block.

  She could manage to lift herself into the saddle without one, but she thought for Marilyn’s sake that she should arrange her skirt tidily, although she was quite sure that whatever she did her cousin would find fault.

  When she had settled herself in the saddle, she smiled at Jake and said,

  “Not a word now to anybody until I return!”

  “I’ll ’old me tongue!” Jake promised and Hermia rode off.

  She entered the Park and, riding in the opposite direction from Bluebell Wood, went past the wood nearest to the Vicarage, which was marked on the maps as Brook Wood, but was known to everybody in the village as Witch Wood.

  This was the wood where they believed Satan’s revels, which they whispered about amongst themselves, took place.

  This morning Hermia was not interested in the woods, but in wanting the horse under her to gallop as swiftly as it was possible for him to do.

  On the other side of Witch Wood there was a level piece of ground she had always hoped her uncle would make into a miniature Racecourse, such as a number of racehorse owners had built on their own estates.

  But he had refused, saying that he found it boring to visit the same place day after day.

  “As I own ten thousand acres I have plenty of room to ride where I wish,” he explained, “which is good for my horse as well as for me.”

  Now, as Hermia saw the flat grassland that extended for over a mile, she drew in her breath with excitement and gave Bracken his head.

  When she slowed him down to a trot after the wild gallop they had both enjoyed to the full, she felt that anything she had to do for Marilyn in payment for this delight was well worthwhile.

  She rode on seeing parts of the estate she had known ever since she was a child, but had not been able to visit for a long time.

  Then, knowing that time was passing and she must not be late for Marilyn, she rode Bracken back past Witch Wood and over the Park towards the wood where Marilyn would be riding with the Marquis.

  Now Hermia had to go very much more slowly because the rabbit holes were dangerous and also because of the low branches on the trees.

  It was as she had expected, getting warmer as the sun moved up the sky and she was glad that she had not put on the jacket of her riding habit.

  Instead she was just wearing
a white muslin blouse. It was old and had been mended, darned and patched in places, but it was the best she had.

  She thought once again that if the Marquis thought about her at all he would believe she had just come straight from the bedroom of the dying woman to fetch her cousin.

  Now that the moment was upon her and she had to act the part that Marilyn had assigned to her, she rehearsed in her mind what she would say.

  She hoped that if she spoke urgently and with a note of sincerity in her voice the story would be believed.

  She entered the wood and moved slowly under the trees, along a path that led into the very centre of it.

  The bluebells and primroses were over and the undergrowth was very much higher than it had been in the spring.

  Occasionally Hermia would see the wild orchid called Lady’s Slippers growing under the trees and there was also a profusion of small mushrooms, which she had always believed showed where the fairies had danced the night before.

  Because she could not help it, she began to tell herself a fantasy story in which a Princess escaped from the goblins and was taken to safety by a wood nymph.

  She was just getting to the exciting part of the tale when she heard voices and realised that Marilyn and the Marquis were not far from her deep in the heart of the wood.

  She drew in her breath, then, having kicked her heel into Bracken to make him move faster, she managed by the time she reached them to sound as if she was in a great hurry and almost breathless from the speed she had come at.

  Only when she had her first glimpse of Marilyn, did she realise how untidy she herself must look.

  Her hair had been blown about her forehead from the speed she had galloped at, her cheeks were flushed and, although she was not aware of it, her eyes were shining because it had all been so enjoyable.

  Marilyn on the other hand, dressed in an exquisitely cut summer riding habit of pale blue silk trimmed with white braid and with a jabot of lace at her chin, looked as if she had just stepped out of Rotten Row.

  Her riding hat was encircled with a gauze veil of the same colour as her habit and hung down her back.

  As she turned to look at Hermia with well-simulated surprise, her face was serene and lovely and everything about her was neat and tidy to the zenith of perfection.

  Hermia rode up to her at such a pace that she had to pull Bracken to a standstill so sharply that he reared up most effectively.

  “Hermia!” Marilyn exclaimed. “What’s the matter? Why are you here?”

  “Oh, Marilyn, I have been looking for you everywhere!” Hermia replied. “Poor old Mrs. Buries is dying, but she says she cannot do so until she has said goodbye to you and thanked you for all your kindness to her.”

  Because she was feeling nervous, Hermia had not attempted to alter the words that Marilyn had instructed her to say.

  She thought as she said them that they sounded somewhat contrived.

  Marilyn gave a little cry that sounded very theatrical.

  “Oh, poor Mrs. Buries! Of course I must go to her!”

  She turned her horse sharply as she spoke and passing Hermia gave it a sharp flick of the whip.

  She had gone quite a way before, as if she suddenly remembered what she had planned, she turned her head to call out,

  “Show his Lordship the way back to The Hall and then follow me. I shall need you.”

  “I will do that,” Hermia replied.

  She thought as she spoke that Marilyn was making quite certain that she did not linger and ingratiate herself with the Marquis.

  For the first time she looked at him.

  He had turned his horse so that it was across the path and now he was nearer to her than Hermia expected.

  Then she gave an audible gasp and realised simultaneously that she had been very stupid.

  She might have guessed that the man who had kissed her and given her a guinea for helping him would turn out to be the Marquis of Deverille.

  He was looking, she thought, as he had the other day, very much like the Devil, except that, as she met his eyes, she realised that there was a slight twinkle in them and a decided twist to his lips.

  For the moment she could only stare at him, wondering wildly what she should say.

  “So you are not a milkmaid after all!”

  He spoke with that dry drawling voice that he had used before.

  Then, as she felt the colour come flooding into her face, Hermia in a voice that did not sound like her own, replied,

  “No – and you had no – right to – think I was!”

  What she had meant was that he had had no right to kiss her and, feeling shy and very embarrassed at meeting him again, she could only wonder how she could make him realise how badly he had behaved.

  “Do you want me to apologise?” the Marquis asked.

  With an effort Hermia lifted her chin and looked at him defiantly.

  “It’s too late now for that! Were you able to find the blacksmith without any – difficulty?”

  “I rode back to where I was staying and left my grooms to cope with it.”

  “That is where you will wish to go now and I will show you the way.”

  “There is no hurry. I am interested as to why at one moment you are pretending to be a milkmaid, and the next you appear as an amazon on an exceedingly well-bred horse.”

  “I was not pretending to be a milkmaid!” Hermia retorted. “And even if I was – ”

  She stopped because she thought what she was about to say would make the conversation even more embarrassing than it already was.

  “What you are saying is that I had no right to kiss you,” the Marquis said slowly. “Surely you must be aware that if you walk about alone looking as you do, you are a temptation to any man who sees you?”

  “Not the sort of men I meet here in the country,” Hermia replied, “but perhaps the gentlemen who come from London have different ideas from ours about – respect and – propriety?”

  She tried to speak defiantly, but because she was still feeling shy her voice sounded rather small, weak and ineffective.

  “I stand rebuked!” the Marquis said and she knew that he was laughing at her.

  “If your Lordship will ride on a little way,” Hermia said, “I will show you a path that will lead you back into the Park. Then it will be easy for you to find your way to The Hall.”

  “I have already said,” the Marquis replied, “I am in no hurry.”

  As his horse was across the path and the trees were close together, it was impossible for her to go round him. Hermia could therefore only look at him helplessly and wonder what she could do.

  “Suppose you tell me who you are?” the Marquis asked. “And why do you make it your business, besides collecting eggs, to fetch young women to the deathbeds of the villagers?”

  Again Hermia was certain that he was mocking at her and she thought with a little flicker of anger that he was living up to his appearance.

  “If you are interested,” she said coldly, “my father is the Vicar of Little Brookfield, and when the old woman who is – dying – asked for my cousin Marilyn, I – naturally came in – search of her.”

  “And you were aware that this was where she would be?”

  Hermia drew in her breath.

  She knew that it was a very pertinent question and something Marilyn should have foreseen he might ask.

  After a very short pause she replied,

  “I was going up to The Hall when – somebody told me that they had seen you – riding in this – direction.”

  She tried to make the lie sound convincing.

  At the same time, because the Marquis was looking at her closely, she stumbled a little over her words.

  “So Marilyn is your cousin.” the Marquis remarked slowly.

  “Yes, as I have just told you,” Hermia answered, “and she will be waiting for me. Please, my Lord, let me show you the way. Then I can hurry back to help her.”

  “Do you enjoy deathbed scenes?”r />
  Again Hermia was aware that he was mocking her and now she was quite certain in her own mind that he did not believe that anybody was dying.

  She hated him even more violently for being so perceptive and wanted to escape from him.

  She had the feeling that his eyes, despite his drooping eyelids, were sharp and penetrating and that he was well aware that she was becoming more and more involved in her lies and telling them very badly.

  Then she hoped that she was being needlessly apprehensive.

  Yet, because he was challenging her, she wished that she could take him into the village and show him Mrs. Buries dying in her bed with Marilyn sitting beside her like an angel of mercy.

  However, that being impossible, she could only remain silent, her face turned away from him.

  She was unaware that as she did so the sun flickering through the thick branches of the trees made her hair shine as if it was made of the same gold as the guinea he had pressed into her hand.

  She was thinking of that and of how he had insulted her and also of the strange hardness and possessiveness of his lips when he kissed her.

  Again, as if he could read her thoughts, he said,

  “I appreciate that you are angry with me and, while I can only apologise again for mistaking your calling, I do not apologise for kissing you, because you are so unexpectedly beautiful!”

  “It was an – intolerable way to – behave, my Lord, and I have no wish to – discuss it!”

  “I imagine you have never been kissed before,” the Marquis commented reflectively.

  “Of course not!” Hermia said angrily.

  Then a sudden thought struck her and she turned her face towards him, saying in a very different voice,

  “Please – you will not tell – Marilyn or my uncle what – happened? If they spoke of it to Mama and Papa, they would be very – upset.”

  There was something pathetic in the way she pleaded with him and after a moment the Marquis said,

  “I have many faults, but I have never done anything so dishonourable as to talk about any woman I have kissed.”

  He saw the little sigh of relief Hermia gave and added quietly,