65 A Heart Is Stolen (9 page)

“I daresay they met,” Ivana said vaguely, “especially as we shop in the same village.”

The Marquis reflected that this told him nothing, but determined to attack he asked,

“Are you going to tell me, Mrs. Wadebridge, that this is your first visit to Heathcliffe?”

Ivana laughed quite naturally.

“All my life,” she said, “there was not an angel with a flaming sword keeping me away, but a Naval gun pointing directly at my back if I should so much as walk in the direction of Heathcliffe!”

The way she had answered his question made it impossible for the Marquis to press her further and, when dinner was finished and port was on the table, she rose to her feet to say,

“I think, my Lord, I should withdraw in the correct fashion and wait for you in the drawing room.”

“I think we will start by sitting in the library,” the Marquis replied. “I want to show you from where the snuffboxes were taken and you can see how devastatingly empty the place is.”

“Then I will wait for you in the library,” Ivana smiled.

She went from the dining room and only when she had been gone for some minutes did the Marquis realise that she had not asked where the library was.

Equally, he told himself there would be a footman on duty in the hall and she could ask him.

Because it was insistent in his mind, he said to Anthony, “I am certain that there is something strange about this young woman. I am sure she is not what she appears.”

“I am perfectly happy with her as she is,” Anthony said. “I find her charming, amusing and very very lovely. Good God, Justin, what else do you expect?”

“That is the trouble, I don’t know what I expect,” the Marquis replied. “I just feel in the back of my mind or in my bones, as my father used to say, that everything is not as it should be and I am being deceived.”

“It is Rose who has made you feel like that,” Anthony suggested. “You think because she tricked you that everybody else has the same idea. You look for footprints, criminals behind every door and doubtless smugglers in the cellar. I will make love to Ivana and tell her I think she is adorable!”

For some reason Anthony’s answer annoyed the Marquis.

He put down his glass and rose from the table and without speaking walked from the dining room, while Anthony waited to pour himself another glass of port from the decanter before he followed him.

The Marquis found Ivana in the library.

She was sitting in the window and not, as he thought critically, as any other intelligent woman would have been looking at the books and the pictures.

He walked across the room to join her, but she did not turn her head. Instead she continued gazing at the trees silhouetted against the dusk.

“It is so beautiful here. How can you possibly stay away for five years from a place that is so lovely and peaceful?”

“I have been thinking since I came back that I have been very remiss in not returning before.”

“I think most people would be grateful that the place they remembered had changed so little.”

“But there are changes!” the Marquis objected.

“What sort of changes?”

“Many of the old servants have gone for one thing. I thought to see familiar faces, but instead Bateman, the butler, has retired.”

“You will find him in the village.”

“You know him?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Why of course?”

“Because living here, I know everyone in the village.”

“Then perhaps you can tell me what has happened to the footmen we used to have.”

Ivana stiffened for a moment and then she said in a very different tone,

“I am sure your agent, my Lord, will give you any information you require about the servants in the house, but now I think I should go home.”

Her last words were heard by Anthony as he came into the library.

“Go home?” he echoed. “That is ridiculous! We have so much to show you, have we not Justin? The pictures for instance, and so much else I think you will find fascinating.”

“I am sorry,” Ivana said, “but you must excuse me because I have a headache. I think perhaps it is the heat. It has been excessively hot today.”

“If you must go,” Anthony said, “I will take you back. I would not like to think of you driving alone now it is dark.”

“I shall be perfectly all right,” Ivana answered hastily.

“You cannot be sure of that. After all the highwaymen may be lurking in the bushes, waiting to make you stand and deliver while they take your jewels and your money.”

Ivana laughed.

“Then they will certainly be disappointed, for I have neither.”

“You are too pretty to be alone,” Anthony reiterated. “If Justin and I had not been so thoughtless, one of us would have come to fetch you.”

“I shall be perfectly safe in such a magnificent carriage with Goddard driving.”

It registered with the Marquis that she knew the coachman’s name.

Again the explanation perhaps lay in the fact that they had met in the village, but Goddard and his family lived in a house on the other side of the stables and there was therefore no reason for Ivana to see them unless she came to Heathcliffe.

“I tell you what we will do,” the Marquis said. “We will drive Mrs. Wadebridge back in the phaeton, unless she feels it would be too cold?”

“It will certainly not be that,” Ivana replied, “and I would really love to drive in your phaeton.”

The Marquis rang the bell and, while he gave the order for the phaeton to be brought to the front door, Anthony drew Ivana across the room to look at one of the pictures.

As she made normal conversation about the painting, he stood looking down at her with what the Marquis told himself was a sloppy expression on his face.

“You have not finished your port, Anthony,” he remarked, as if he wished to intrude on what appeared to be a romantic interlude.

With an obvious effort, but because he knew that the Marquis had given him a command, Anthony crossed the room and took up the glass he had left on the side table.

The Marquis stood beside Ivana.

“I have not told you of the long and arduous search we have made today for the highwaymen.”

“Search for the highwaymen?”

“Anthony and I drove all over the County calling on different people and making enquiries at village inns. It was really extraordinary that nobody had ever heard of the gang.”

“Perhaps they are newcomers.”

“It seems strange that they should choose Heathcliffe for their first operation when Brighton is teeming with jewels of every description, fat purses filled with golden guineas and, of course, an enormous amount of treasures in the Royal Pavilion.”

“For all we know,” Ivana replied, “the highwaymen may be there at this very moment, holding up the Prince Regent himself!”

“There is always that possibility,” the Marquis agreed, “but it still seems to me strange that in the whole of Sussex they should come to Heathcliffe the very night I return after a lapse of five years.”

“Surely, my Lord, they were as surprised to see you as you were to see them?” Ivana suggested.

There was a smile on her lips that told the Marquis she was very pleased about something and he wondered what it could be.

Then she moved towards the empty cabinet to lay her hand for a moment on the glass top.

“Are you very disconsolate at losing the snuffboxes that you have neglected for so many years?” she enquired.

The Marquis was aware there was a sting in the question and he replied sharply,

“Apart from their value they meant a great deal to me because my father was so fond of them.”

“In which case surely you would have wished to remove them to one of your other houses where you could see them more frequently.”

The Marquis had the feeling that she was being definitely hostile and now he looked into her eyes as he said,

“I think, Mrs. Wadebridge, you are taking me to task not only for neglecting the snuffboxes but also for neglecting Heathcliffe. Could that be right?”

“How could I presume to question anything your Lordship does?” Ivana replied. “But of course, if I have made you feel guilty, I can only apologise.”

The Marquis’s lips twisted and he was trying to think of a scathing reply, as Travers announced,

“The phaeton is at the door, my Lord!”

“Then I must go,” Ivana said. “I am sorry if I seem rude, but actually I don’t like leaving my old nanny alone for long. She becomes nervous.”

“Of what?” the Marquis enquired.

He noticed Ivana’s dimples as she answered,

“The dark. Nanny believes in ghosts and spirits who walk by night. What else can you imagine would perturb her?”

There was a glint in her blue eyes, which left the Marquis feeling as if they crossed swords.

It gave him a strange feeling of elation.

He did not know why, but, instead of dampening down his instinct to probe deeper, she had positively accentuated it.

They walked into the hall and Travers put her shawl around Ivana’s shoulders.

“Thank you, Travers,” she said quietly.

As they walked to the phaeton, the Marquis was trying to remember if he had mentioned Travers by name during dinner.

He was almost certain he had not and yet again there was no reason why she should not know his butler’s name. He too must shop in the village.

Ivana sat between the two men on the way back and the Marquis was aware that Anthony was whispering compliments in her ear and she was laughing with him.

It struck him that she was certainly not the shy frightened country girl he had expected her to be. She seemed sure of herself although there was a very young untouched look about her that the Marquis had not seen for many years.

The sophisticated women like Lady Rose he made love to certainly did not have it and it suddenly struck him that considering how few, if any, cosmetics Ivana used, her face would certainly not look smudged in the morning and he was quite certain that she did not snore.

It did not take them long to reach Flagstaff Manor and the Marquis negotiated the narrow drive most skilfully.

Ivana stepped out to thank them most profusely for a delightful evening.

“I must see you again very soon,” Anthony said in a low voice as he took her to the door.

Ivana was saved from answering because Nanny was standing there looking, he thought, like a ruffled hen who had been worrying over her one chick.

“Goodnight, Sir Anthony,” Ivana said.

He kissed her hand and she looked to where the Marquis was still sitting in the phaeton, controlling the horses.

“Goodnight, my Lord.”

He swept his hat from his head.

“Goodnight, Mrs. Wadebridge.”

Ivana went into the house and Anthony climbed back into the phaeton.

With some skill the Marquis managed to turn the horses so that the wheels of the phaeton did not go over the closely cut grass or the white-painted stones.

They drove through the gates and then, as they turned towards Heathcliffe, he looked back at the house.

From the angle they had reached he could just see the end of the great barn protruding behind it. Then, as he looked, he was aware with a sudden start of satisfaction that in one of its windows there was a light.

The Marquis awoke in the morning with a feeling of excitement that he had not known for years.

He had been a long time in going to sleep, finding it difficult to see anything but Ivana’s face and her expressive eyes.

He kept remembering how frightened she had seemed when he and Anthony had first walked into her drawing room at The Manor and, the more he thought over the way they had been received, the more he was absolutely convinced that she and her nurse had been expecting them.

It was not really surprising that the nurse had called him ‘my Lord’ and known who he was.

After all, she had lived at Flagstaff Manor for years and she would have been well aware that there was nobody else in the neighbourhood with his appearance or consequence.

Far more significant was the fact that a groom had been waiting, the front door had been opened immediately and Ivana was sitting like an elegant lady in her drawing room.

He was quite sure that she would be far too active and busy even in her restricted life to sit doing nothing at any time of the day, yet the difficulty was how to prove it.

When she stood calling the parakeets so that they fluttered down to her from the tree, she had made, the Marquis thought, an inerasable picture.

Then suddenly he remembered a conversation she had with Anthony to which he had hardly listened at the time but which now came into his mind so that he found himself grasping at it almost as if it was a raft in a rough sea.

They had been talking together as they walked back to the house after she had released the parakeets and Anthony had asked,

“You must have practised for years, Mrs. Wadebridge, to imitate the sound they make so accurately.”

If the Marquis remembered correctly, she had replied with a light laugh,

“Oh, I am a good mimic.”

He had been so preoccupied at the time, thinking of the barn and the strange Naval patterns in the courtyard that it had been of no particular consequence for him.

Now he reckoned that the call of the parakeet was a deep note and wondered whether it would be possible for a woman who was a mimic to imitate a man’s deep voice?

Then he told himself that this was too far-fetched even for his credibility. It must be impossible for anyone so feminine and indeed so beautiful as Ivana Wadebridge to disguise herself as a highwayman.

But the thought persisted, although he decided in the morning light, as his idea seemed even more exaggerated than it had in the dark, that he would not mention what he had been thinking to Anthony.

At breakfast, as Anthony helped himself liberally to a dish of kidneys and fresh mushrooms, he said,

“What excitements have you planned for today? More sleuthing? I am beginning to acquire an aptitude for it.”

The Marquis merely smiled and Anthony continued,

“As far as I am concerned I would like to visit Flagstaff Manor again and talk to the dark blue-eyed beauty I find so infinitely beguiling.”