65 A Heart Is Stolen (15 page)

Her success in monopolising many of the most eligible and attractive bachelors had made her many enemies.

The Marquis now admitted to himself that, while he was delighted to be rid of Rose Caterham, he had in fact tumbled out of the frying pan into the fire.

For almost the first time he asked himself what attitude Ivana would take. He presumed that he owed her some sort of apology even though she might accept his behaviour as a just retribution for the manner in which she had deceived and tricked him.

‘What am I to do?’ he asked himself over and over again, as he galloped his horse at full stretch, as if by moving very quickly, he could run away from his problems.

He had come to no solution by the time he reached Flagstaff Manor. In fact the difficulties ahead seemed even worse than they had when he started.

It was the question not only of his feelings and Ivana’s but of her husband’s. When he returned home Mr. Wadebridge might have some very strong views about his wife being talked of as the wife of another man.

The Marquis felt as if a number of unanswerable questions were hammering at his brain.

As he dismounted outside the front door of Flagstaff Manor, he told himself that the only possible thing to do was to talk it over sensibly and quietly with Ivana and to see if she had any solution.

This afternoon there was no groom to take his horse and he therefore tied the reins of the stallion to the branch of a tree hoping that the animal would not become entangled.

The horse, however, put his head down and started to crop the grass and the Marquis thought he would be all right.

Then he walked to the front door and, seeing it open, did not bother to knock and walked in.

There appeared to be nobody about, but the staircase and furniture seemed even more highly polished than before and the scent of beeswax mingled with the fragrance of the flowers which had been skilfully arranged in a large bowl on one of the hall tables.

It struck him that Ivana besides her other unusual activities was skilful at making her home attractive.

Then, as he thought of her, he heard voices from a room that she had told him was her father’s study.

He walked towards it, opened the door and then was still with surprise at what he saw.

Ivana was standing behind her father’s desk and opposite her in a threatening attitude with a knife in his hand stood a large unpleasant-looking man in a tattered sailor’s uniform.

*

Driving back from Heathcliffe behind the fat slow pony that was too old to be hurried, Ivana felt that she had stepped into a strange nightmarish drama from which she could not wake.

She could hardly believe that the Marquis had actually threatened to see her hanged because she had stolen his possessions and that Marky, after thirty-five years in the service of the Veryans, might be dismissed.

Even more incredible was the fact that she had been introduced to the Prince Regent by the Marquis as his wife and she had been unable to do or say anything to contradict such an absurd statement.

‘What will happen now?’ she asked herself. ‘How can he possibly explain away something that seemed so convincing that the Prince Regent actually believed it?’

It seemed extraordinary that the Marquis had no wish to marry anyone so beautiful as Lady Rose, but even so, to contradict her assertion that they were engaged by producing a wife as it were out of thin air, was, Ivana thought, too fantastic for her even to be sure that it had actually happened.

If that was the unaccountable way Society behaved, then she was glad that she was not part of it.

Nevertheless for the moment she was involved because the Marquis would have to announce sooner or later that she was not his wife and what explanation could he produce for being rid of her?

Then it struck Ivana that she was so unimportant and insignificant that she would just be able to disappear and no further explanations would be necessary.

‘I suppose I could be drowned at sea or die of some obscure disease and he need not even feel obliged to mourn for me,’ she mused.

At least, she told herself, she had been able to render him a service that should make him more inclined to be merciful to Marky and perhaps to her than he had been before Lady Rose’s arrival.

‘Maybe the whole thing will turn out to be a blessing in disguise,’ she told herself with a rising of her spirits.

Equally she thought uncomfortably that the Marquis was very formidable.

She had known when she faced him across his desk that he was extremely angry, even though he controlled his feelings to speak in a sarcastic contemptuous voice which made her feel almost as if he hit her.

‘How could I have done anything so foolish as to rob somebody as frightening as the Marquis?’ she asked herself and then remembered that she had had no alternative.

As she had said to him, it was either a question of selling the snuffboxes or letting men die whom she knew, with enough money to feed and treat them, Nanny and she could save.

‘We have not been extravagant,’ she thought piteously, ‘we have skimped and saved on ourselves. But men need a lot of food and there were other things that proved expensive.’

She was thinking of the fares she had to find the money for.

There was one sailor who came from Northumberland, another from Cornwall and however cheaply they travelled on the outside of stagecoaches, each man required a number of guineas if he was to reach his destination.

Womanlike she could not help for a moment being aware of the difference between her appearance and that of Lady Rose.

She had known before she saw the slim revealing muslin that barely seemed to cover the beauty’s nakedness that her own gown was lamentably out of fashion.

And the bonnet with its upturned brim reaching almost to a point high over her lovely face was smarter and different from the bonnets the ladies had been wearing when Ivana last visited Brighton.

Her turquoises and diamonds glittering in the sunshine that came through the windows of the library had, Ivana was sure, cost an astronomical amount of money.

She was not envious, she was merely aware of the contrast between herself and the woman who personified the fashionable world the Marquis moved in.

‘How could anyone for a single moment think that I was his wife?’ Ivana said to herself.

She found herself wondering what the Marquis had said to Lady Rose to make her think that he intended to marry her.

Had he kissed her? She was sure that if he had done so he would kiss with an elegance and an expertise that was characteristic of everything else he did.

Ivana had not missed the way he sat a horse or how outstanding he looked when he was driving his phaeton.

‘He is the most handsome man I could ever imagine,’ she murmured.

She could understand why Lady Rose wanted to marry him and what a blow it must have been to be told that he was already wed to some ‘country bumpkin’ like herself.

‘Perhaps one day I shall fall in love with somebody like the Marquis,’ she thought, as the pony plodded on, making heavy weather of even the slightest incline and paying no attention when Ivana slapped the reins up and down in an effort to hurry him.

Then she had the uncomfortable feeling that, now she had seen the Marquis, any other man she might meet would pale into insignificance.

She had always imagined that the heroes she read about in books and the man of her dreams who would one day be her husband would be wearing Naval uniform and have fair hair and the far-seeing eyes of men who were constantly looking at the sea.

But now, instead, he seemed to be wearing a tall hat at a raffish angle on the side of his dark head and either a grey whipcord or a superfine evening coat which fitted over his athletic shoulders without a wrinkle.

Then she remembered the anger in the Marquis’s voice and the steely expression in his eyes and felt herself tremble.

‘He will never forgive me, not only for stealing his possessions, but for involving his household in the theft,’ she told herself and her spirits sank to a new level.

She drove straight into the stables of Flagstaff Manor and, because now there was no Travers to help her, she unharnessed the old pony, put him in his stall and saw that there was plenty of hay in the manger.

Then she walked into the house.

It was very hot and she was almost certain that Nanny, having been up early first to tend their invalids, then later to give them their midday meal, was having a rest.

She was getting on in years and so much work made her tire easily. The only way she kept going was when the wounded men recovered enough to help in the house as well as in the garden.

When they were able-bodied, they were of inestimable help for as long as they stayed.

As the Marquis had supposed, the tidiness of the garden was due to men who were so grateful for what had been done for them that they wished to do something in return.

Even those who were crippled, polished the stairs as they sat on them, cleaned the brasses and helped Nanny in the kitchen by peeling potatoes and shelling peas.

There were only five wounded men left at the moment and Ivana had told them firmly that they were to stay in the barn unless either she or Nanny told them it was safe for them to go outside into the courtyard.

When she had left Flagstaff Manor, she had not known that the Marquis had discovered her secret and she had been afraid that he or Sir Anthony might call unexpectedly to visit her and see the men in the garden.

She stopped for a moment in the hall to tidy her hair in front of a very old mirror, thinking as she did so, that the Marquis must have thought it strange that she was not wearing a bonnet.

She had never for a moment expected to see him when she had gone to Heathcliffe, thinking that he and Sir Anthony would be out riding or driving and she had taken the precaution of going to the back door to ask for Travers.

When one of the footmen fetched him, she saw at once by the expression on his face that something was wrong.

“What is it?” she had asked.

“His Lordship’s taken the ledger from the estate office into the library, Miss Ivana, and has sent for Mr. Markham!”

Ivana had given a little gasp for she knew only too well what this portended.

Then she said,

“I expect the library windows are open. I will go along the terrace and see if I can hear what is happening.”

‘It was a good thing I did so,’ she thought now defiantly, ‘otherwise the Marquis would have gone on bullying poor Marky and frightening him into a fit!’

The idea made her angry and she opened the door of the study to walk in with a little flounce of her unfashionably full skirt.

Then, as she reached the centre of the room, she gave a scream.

The door closed behind her and she saw that hiding behind it had been a man!

One glance at his torn uniform that was almost in rags told her that he was a sailor and obviously one who had been discharged.

There was, however, something about him that she disliked at first glance.

It was not only that he was dirty and unshaven, it was the expression in his eyes that told her immediately he was not one of the men who accepted almost fatalistically the fact that they were redundant.

“What are you doing here?” Ivana asked.

“The door were open,” the man replied in a rough voice.

“If you had knocked I daresay someone would have answered it.”

“Shut it in me face more like!”

Ivana sat down at the desk.

“I suppose you have been told that I try to help sailors who have been made redundant from the ships that are being laid up,” she said quietly, “but, as you must understand, we cannot help everybody.”

She had an idea, as she spoke, that the man had not heard of her activities before, but had merely been waiting for an opportunity to break into the house and steal anything that was of value.

She was too wise to say so, however, and she merely asked,

“What is your name?”

“What’s that got to do with you?”

“I am trying to help you and I would obviously like some particulars. In some cases I can arrange for a man to travel back to his home, so suppose you tell me where you live?”

“I lives where I likes,” the man said coming up to the desk to face her. “I wants all the money you’ve got in the ’ouse and any jewels you might ’ave.”

“In that case I am afraid you are going to be disappointed,” Ivana replied. “I have no jewellery and the very little money I own, as I have already said, is to help sailors reach their homes or perhaps take them to a town where they can obtain work.”

“I’ve ’ad enough of work to last me a lifetime!” the man said abruptly. “Nah, ’and over the money and stop talkin’ so much!”

As he spoke, he pulled a knife from his belt and held it in his right hand pointing it towards Ivana.

“You are making a great mistake,” she said calmly, although her heart was beating fast. “There are a number of sailors here at the moment and I have only to call out and they will come to my assistance.”

“Make one sound,” the man facing her said, “and your face won’t look so pretty as it does now!”

Instinctively Ivana rose to her feet and he gave an unpleasant laugh.

“If your thinkin’ of runnin’, you won’t get far. I’m sharp on me feet, as sharp as this ’ere knife!”

Ivana felt her heart thumping against her breast and her lips were suddenly dry.

She knew she was frightened, very frightened.

She remembered that the snuffboxes she had taken from the Marquis were all locked in the centre drawer of the desk with the few sovereigns she had left over from the last sale, which had actually been nearly a month ago.

She had decided that she must sell yet another box from the Marquis’s collection when he had arrived home unexpectedly.

Desperately she wondered what she should do.

If she opened the drawer to give the man the money, she knew he would not miss what else the drawer contained.

As if he was aware that she was hiding something from him, he became more aggressive.