Paradise Found Page 5

  She was also aware that she was damp from the rain and she thought it would be a good idea to remove her riding jacket before the dampness soaked through to her blouse beneath it.

  Accordingly, because it seemed to be the only place available, she went back into Orion’s stall.

  The fresh straw had been piled higher on one side than the other, as if actually it had been stacked there for use elsewhere.

  There was plenty of room for Salrina to sit down on the straw and not interfere with Orion, who was eating the hay in the manger and merely pricked up his ears as she joined him.

  Taking off her jacket, Salrina laid it down beside her on the straw to dry and then settled down with her back against the partition between the two stalls, thinking it would be pleasant if she could have a cup of tea.

  Nanny had given her a sandwich before she had left home, insisting that she needed it because she had eaten such an early breakfast.

  She was therefore not hungry but rather thirsty and she wondered if she should drink some of Orion’s water, but the pail was as dented and dilapidated as the one in Jupiter’s stall and she decided against it.

  She was quite comfortable, half-lying on the softness of the fresh straw and the only sound was of the rain beating on the roof and the movements of four horses.

  She did not know how it happened, but she fell asleep.

  *

  Salrina awoke to hear a man’s voice say,

  “Well, thank the Lord this damned rain has stopped! Now you will be able to get on and for God’s sake don’t make a mess of it!”

  “You need not be afraid of that, monsieur. I promise you I am very experienced.”

  Hazily, as if she was still dreaming, Salrina heard their voices.

  Then with a start of surprise she realised that the man who had just spoken had a French accent.

  Chapter 3

  Listening intently, Salrina heard a low chuckle.

  Then the Englishman said,

  “I am laughing at the way you express it.”

  “The Emperor, I assure you, monsieur, is very satisfied and I have never failed yet in an assignment,” the Frenchman replied in a slightly affronted tone.

  “That is what I have heard,” the Englishman answered, “but this, as you know, is such an important one that we cannot contemplate failure.”

  “There will be no failure, monsieur.”

  “Very well then. As soon as the rain stops, you had better be on your way to London. You have the address and your invitation will be waiting for you. Don’t forget it, as you will not be allowed into Carlton House without it.”

  “I understand, monsieur.”

  “And don’t forget, either,” the Englishman continued in a somewhat dictatorial manner, “that your excuse for speaking to the Prince Regent is to give him a present from the Marquis de St. Cloud, who is unfortunately too ill to accept his hospitality.”

  “You are certain that the Marquis will not decide to be present? If he did, quel désastre!”

  “I know, I know!” the Englishman said in an irritated tone. “All that has been taken care of. The Marquis, I assure you, will be far too ill that evening to attend any party, least of all the one you will be at!”

  The Englishman must have looked out through the door because he then said in a different tone,

  “The storm is practically over. Get your horses and the sooner you are off the better. It is unfortunate that there were travellers in the inn, which I did not expect, but they were of no consequence and, as we did not talk in front of them, they will not remember you.”

  “I sincerely hope not, monsieur.”

  The Frenchman must have opened the door of the stall next to Orion and, as he did so, he exclaimed,

  “Tiens! There were no other horses in here when I arrived!”

  Instinctively, as if somebody warned her that what she had overheard was dangerous, Salrina slipped further down in the straw, as she had been a few minutes earlier when she had been asleep.

  She closed her eyes and even as she did so she realised that the men who had been talking were now standing outside Orion’s stall looking through the door.

  Then in a whisper the Frenchman said,

  “Une femme! Do you think she heard what we said?”

  There was silence after he had spoken as if the Englishman was considering it.

  Then he said,

  “No, as you can see, she is fast asleep. But we should have taken more care! I saw that your phaeton was the only one in the yard and I had no idea that there might be anybody else in the stables.”

  “Mais, you sure elle dort!” the Frenchman asked.

  Because he was agitated his accent was more noticeable and he used more French words than he had previously.

  “She is asleep!” the Englishman said firmly. “I will send my groom from where my carriage is sheltering to help the ostler, if he can be found, to put your horses between the shafts. Then I will leave before you do. I have no wish for anybody to see us together.”

  “Non, non, of course not, monsieur!”

  The Englishman walked towards the door, but, before he reached it, the Frenchman cried hastily,

  “There is something I must have, my Lord!”

  “What is it?”

  “The money!”

  “Good God, I nearly forgot. Of course, I have it with me.”

  The Englishman moved back, as if he needed concealment for what he was doing and Salrina guessed that he went into the stall next to hers and the Frenchman followed him.

  She did not open her eyes although she was sure that no one was now watching her through the door.

  Very gently, so as not to rustle the straw, she turned and put her eye to one of the many cracks in the partition between the two stalls.

  It was far lighter in the next stall than it was in Orion’s, for the simple reason that it was opposite the open door into the yard.

  She could see two men quite clearly and the older one, who was grey at the temples, was counting into the other man’s hand a number of what she thought were ten pound or twenty pound notes.

  He looked rather debauched, she thought, with dark lines under his somewhat protruding eyes and several double chins above his high cravat.

  The other man, who was taking the money in thin, long-fingered, nervous hands, was so typically French that she thought he might have been a caricature of the dandies she had seen in the cartoons that her father sometimes showed her.

  He was thin and wiry with dark eyes, a long nose and a somewhat foxy look about him.

  “One thousand pounds,” the Englishman said in a low voice, “and you will have the other thousand as soon as the Prince Regent is dead. With what undoubtedly the Emperor will give you in addition, you will not do badly.”

  “Merci, monsieur!”

  There was no further comment as the crackling notes went inside the pocket of the Frenchman’s smartly cut coat.

  “Goodbye and good luck!” the Englishman said.

  Just in case he should look again to see if she was asleep, Salrina lay back in the same position as before and closed her eyes again.

  It was fortunate she did so, for a few seconds later she realised that the Frenchman was staring at her through the door of the stall.

  She forced herself to relax as she had done before, as if she was completely exhausted.

  And yet she knew perceptively that he was considering whether for safety’s sake he should kill her.

  Then she heard him pull at the stall door and, as she felt her whole body contract with fear, a voice said,

  “The Master says I should ’elp you, sir.”

  The Frenchman turned away.

  “Thank you. Now that the rain has stopped I can continue on my journey.”

  “Very nasty storm, sir!”

  The groom did not wait for a reply but started to lead out the horse from the stall next to Salrina.

  The Frenchman followed him with his other horse a
nd Salrina could hear them putting the horses between the shafts of the phaeton.

  She still lay exactly where she was, knowing that it would be very foolish to move. Perhaps the Frenchman would come back to make sure once again that she had not overheard his conversation.

  At the same time she held her breath.

  She knew that never in her life had she been nearer to death than she had been a few minutes ago.

  Then, as she waited tense and terrified, she heard the groom say,

  “Thank you, sir, thank you!”

  A minute later she heard his footsteps as he ran from the courtyard.

  The Frenchman in the phaeton, however, did not move and Salrina remembered that the Englishman had said that he would leave first.

  Faintly in the distance she heard wheels and then a moment or so later there was the clatter of hoofs on the cobbled courtyard as the Frenchman drove his horses onto the road.

  Only when she could no longer hear any sound did Salrina jump up, put on her riding jacket and hat and fetch first Jupiter’s bridle from where she had hung it and then Orion’s.

  When finally they were both ready and she could lead them out into the yard, the sun was shining weakly although everything was dripping from the heaviness of the storm.

  She wondered if she should pay for the shelter she had managed to obtain for herself and her horses.

  Then she guessed that, as the inn was a small one, and the Englishman had said that there were other travellers inside, the ostler would be engaged in serving them.

  As he had not helped the Frenchman, he would, like the landlord, be unaware of her.

  ‘The sooner I get away the better!’ she thought.

  She hurried out onto the road and now looking around she saw a signpost, which told her she was, in fact, nearer than she had thought to where Mr. Carstairs lived.

  She made no attempt to take to the fields, but, following a twisting lane, she suddenly saw in front of her the huge ornamental gates surmounted by heraldic stone unicorns, which she knew was the entrance to Fleet Hall.

  She had seen it first a long time ago when she had been out riding with her father and several times later when she had come with her mother to visit Mabel.

  Little Widicot was less than two miles further on.

  Because she was anxious to make up the time she had lost, she hurried past the white thatched cottages with their gardens bright with spring flowers and put the horses into a quick trot for the last part of the journey.

  Mr. Carstairs’s farmhouse was well built and in good condition.

  She was not looking forward to seeing him because the last time she had met him he had looked at her in what she thought was an impertinent manner and she was quite certain that he was the type of young man who she should avoid if possible.

  It was therefore with a great sense of relief that Salrina, when she rode into the stable yard, found that there was only a boy to be seen, carrying two pails of water, but no sign of Mr. Carstairs.

  “I have brought the horse your Master is expecting,” Salrina said, dismounting from Orion.

  “That stall be ready for ’im,” the boy replied.

  “If you will show me where it is, I will put him in for you and unsaddle him.”

  Slowly the boy put down the pails he was carrying and opened the stable door.

  “The Master leaves a letter for whoever brings the ’orse,” he said slowly.

  Salrina felt her heart leap. She was sure that this contained the three hundred guineas she was hoping to receive.

  The boy took the letter from a ledge and held it out to her and she put it into the pocket of her jacket.

  She had let Jupiter loose in the yard, knowing that he would not wander and she led Orion into his new stall.

  It was very much more luxurious than the one he had had at home and decidedly better than the one they had sheltered in at the Posting inn.

  She knew, however unpleasant she personally might find Mr. Carstairs, his horses were well housed and well looked after.

  She removed Orion’s bridle and undid the girths of his saddle.

  She thought that the stable boy might have stayed to help her, but he had disappeared, so she merely put them outside the stall and went back to pat Orion just in case he felt nervous.

  He was already eating the good food in the manger, which Salrina noticed was better quality than they could afford.

  “You will be all right, my boy,” she said, “and mind you win the steeplechase!”

  Orion pricked up his ears when she spoke to him, but he was too busy to nuzzle against her and Salrina felt a little pang of unhappiness because she was parting with an animal she had known and ridden for over a year.

  He was one of the finest examples of horseflesh that her father had ever trained.

  She patted Orion again and then went back into the yard where Jupiter was waiting for her.

  She undid the leading-rein and put it in a pocket of the saddle. Then, taking him to the mounting block, she seated herself and set off down the track that led from the farm back to the road.

  As she did so, she felt almost as if somebody had fired a pistol at her and she had to do something about what she had overheard at the Posting inn.

  Because she had been so frightened that the Frenchman might kill her, she had been intent primarily on getting safely away and making up for lost time. So she had not until now really considered the full impact of what she had learnt.

  Now, as Jupiter carried her smoothly and comfortably towards the village where Mabel’s cottage lay, she realised as though seeing it written in letters of fire that the Frenchman had been paid to kill the Prince Regent.

  It seemed so incredible and so over-theatrical that she told herself she must have been mistaken and what she had heard could only be a joke.

  Then she went back over the conversation that she had listened to, spoken in very low voices with something surreptitious about them because the men were afraid of being overheard.

  She knew that it was actually a dastardly plot, obviously thought up by the arch enemy of England, the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, and shamefully connived at by an Englishman.

  ‘How can it be possible that such a thing could happen in London and at Carlton House?’ she asked herself.

  And yet, when she thought of what had been said, it all sounded so simple.

  The Frenchman had been provided with an invitation and a present from the Marquis de St. Cloud, who Salrina suspected was one of the many émigrés now in England.

  Some of these were aristocrats who had come here immediately after the French Revolution, but she was aware that there had also been others in the last years who, loathing the new régime in France, had escaped across the Channel to throw themselves on the mercy of the English.

  Her mother had often spoken of their plight and it was only now that Salrina realised that while there were many French people who would be welcome as guests at Carlton House, it would be possible for an assassin to infiltrate without anybody being aware of it.

  The more she thought about it, the more she realised that it was not only possible that His Royal Highness the Prince Regent could be assassinated at his own party but that she was the one person who could warn him of it.

  ‘If I am, what can I do about it?’ she asked herself.

  She thought at first that the best thing would be to ride home as quickly as possible and tell her father.

  Then she knew that in the predicament he was in at the moment, being incapable of riding, it would agitate and upset him.

  The only thing he could do when he learned of what she had overheard would be to send her the next morning at the earliest to see the Lord Lieutenant of the County.

  He lived nearly as far from her home as she was now and it was quite easy to calculate that by the time he could reach London to warn his Royal Highness it would be too late.

  “What can I do? What can I do?” Salrina asked aloud.

  He
aring her voice Jupiter made a little movement with his head as if he thought that she was asking him, but there was no answer.

  As they drew nearer to the first house in the outskirts of the village, Salrina rode a little slower.

  How could she go to Mabel’s cottage, sit down and gossip with her about everything that she had done since she saw her last, knowing that a Frenchman was on his way to London, intent on killing the handsome, elegant and much talked about Prince Regent?

  ‘I have to do something!’

  But again the question was – what?

  Then, as she saw Mabel’s cottage ahead of her, she also saw above the trees in the Park a flag flying in the breeze.

  It was the Standard of the Earl of Fleetwood.

  She was aware as she saw it silhouetted against the sky that it meant he was at home.

  Suddenly, as if it was the answer to her question, she knew what she must do.

  If she told the Earl what she had overheard, he had every facility for reaching the Prince Regent quickly to inform him of what had been plotted to happen at his party the next night.

  But still Salrina hesitated, knowing that her father would have no wish for her to meet the Earl who she had heard discussed ever since she had been a child.

  He was the most important, the wealthiest and the most attractive young man in the whole neighbourhood.

  Salrina had therefore often heard him being talked about not only by her father and mother and their friends but also by the farmers, the cottagers and in fact everybody who lived within talking distance of Fleet Hall.

  She had always longed to see the house, but had never had the opportunity.

  Her father and mother many years ago when she was tiny had been invited to the garden parties that took place at Fleet Hall once a year.

  That was before the late Earl had died and when his son was abroad in the Army.

  After he inherited the title, the new Earl had made no attempt to entertain the local people.

  There was, however, much gossip about the parties he gave where beautiful ladies and distinguished gentlemen came down from London to stay for a few days.