“I will do that,” the Marquis replied.
As he walked upstairs he knew that he did not want to talk about Ula or what had happened, but to kill someone in her defence.
*
The Earl, because he was in a hurry for the next day to arrive, did not sleep well and rang earlier than usual for his valet.
He always rose at seven o’clock, but this morning he was awake at six-thirty and, before he left his bedroom, he said to his valet,
“Fetch Mrs. Plumb to me. I wish to speak to her.”
It was only a few minutes before Mrs. Plumb, the housekeeper, in her rustling black gown came hurrying along the passage.
“You wanted me, my Lord?” she asked.
“Yes, Mrs. Plumb. See that Miss Ula is dressed in the white gown Lady Sarah has chosen for her and she can have the use of the family wedding veil, which I know you have in your possession. But she is not to leave her bedroom until I send for her.”
“I understand, my Lord. Unfortunately there is a little – difficulty.”
“What do you mean – a little difficulty?” the Earl asked in an irritated tone.
“Miss Ula’s crying for help, but unfortunately we can’t find the key of the room and I hears your Lordship didn’t take it with you last night when you retired.”
The Earl thought for a moment before he replied,
“That is true. I told Hicks to bring it to me, but he said it was not in the door and he thought that, what is her name, Amy must have taken it upstairs with her.”
Mrs. Plumb paused for a moment before she said,
“Amy wasn’t in her room, my Lord, when the other housemaids rose at five o’clock and they thought she must have gone downstairs early, but they’ve not found her.”
“What the devil’s going on!” the Earl ejaculated angrily.
“I’ve no idea, my Lord.”
“Then find out! Find out!” he ordered sharply. “And if you cannot find the key, then get somebody to break the lock.”
As if he was suddenly aware that something untoward was happening, he walked quickly out down the corridor until he reached the oak room at the end of it.
There were two housemaids and the man who did odd jobs standing outside it looking puzzled.
They stepped to one side as the Earl approached the door and, hammering on it with his fist, he shouted,
“Is that you, Ula?”
“Help! Help me! Please – help me!” a voice cried.
“What is happening?” the Earl demanded.
“Help!
Help
!”
He could hardly hear the voice, which seemed somewhat muffled and, turning to the servants, he roared,
“Open this door immediately. You, Jacob – surely you can do something?”
“Someone’s gone for the carpenter, my Lord.”
This meant the estate carpenter, who did not live in the house and the Earl with a rising fury shouted,
“The whole house cannot be so full of nitwits that they cannot open a door! Tell Newman to bring the footmen upstairs.”
It took nearly a quarter of an hour before finally somebody managed to break the lock.
By that time the Earl, shouting instructions and cursing everybody, was in such a rage that when everybody stood back for him to enter the room, he was almost incapable of doing so.
When he saw Amy lying on the bed, her wrists apparently tied together and a silk cord around her ankles, he was for the moment speechless.
Then with a stream of oaths he began to berate her for allowing Ula to escape.
She burst into tears and he hurried out of the room and down the stairs, shouting for Newman to send all the grooms to go in search of Ula immediately.
“She cannot have gone far!” he stormed as he reached the hall.
Newman was waiting and he said in a quiet voice that was very much in contrast to the Earl’s,
“Excuse me, my Lord, but the Marquis of Raventhorpe has called and I’ve shown his Lordship into the study.”
“The Marquis! He’s at the bottom of this!” the Earl thundered, crossing the hall to fling open the door of the study.
The Marquis, looking exceedingly elegant, his highly polished riding boots reflecting the sunlight coming through the window, was standing in front of the fireplace.
The Earl glared at him.
“What do you want?”
“I think you know the answer to that,” the Marquis replied coldly.
“If you are after that damn niece of mine,” the Earl said, “then you will have to find her. She has disappeared and I suppose it’s your doing! I will take you to the Courts over this, Raventhorpe.”
“You can take me where you please,” the Marquis retorted, “but am I to understand that you intend to marry Ula to Prince Hasin of Kubaric?”
“What I do is none of your damned business,” the Earl raged. “She will marry the Prince if I have to thrash her insensible to make her do so!”
“I suppose you have some idea of the Prince’s reputation?”
“I have no intention of discussing it!”
“Then I will tell you about him,” the Marquis said without raising his voice and making every word seem to ring through the study. “Prince Hasin is so steeped in vice that it is impossible to speak of his habits without being physically sick.”
He then related quietly and calmly the varied erotic pleasures in which the Prince had indulged himself since he had been in London and which were obviously part of his life in his own country.
It was as if the Marquis hypnotised the Earl into listening and, when he had finished, the Earl, as if he had to assert himself, grew more crimson in the face than he was already.
“Even if what you say is true, which I very much doubt,” he fumed, “I don’t intend to go back on my word. His Highness has asked to marry Ula and, however important you may think you are, Raventhorpe, you cannot go against the law. As Ula’s Guardian, I have given my promise to this marriage and there is nothing you can do to stop it.”
“But you tell me that Ula is missing,” the Marquis remarked.
“She will not go far wearing nothing but a nightgown,” the Earl replied. “My grooms are out on horseback looking for her and, when she returns, she will marry the Prince within the next two hours.”
“That is what I intend to prevent,” the Marquis said, “and if it means rendering the Prince incapable of playing his part as a bridegroom, I shall not hesitate to do so.”
“I will see you in jail for this, Raventhorpe!” the Earl shouted. “You are only a lecher who would not stoop to marry my niece with her scandalous background and has doubtless taken advantage of her in a more convenient manner!”
He sneered the last words and the Marquis countered coldly,
“If you were a younger man, I would knock you down for making such an infamous suggestion, but what I intend to do will, I think, prove more painful. I personally will make sure you are thrown out of every Club of which you are a member, starting with the Jockey Club and White’s.”
“You would not dare do such a thing!” the Earl retorted, but his eyes were wary.
“I consider you to be a man of no principles or decency and therefore not fit to associate with a gentleman!” the Marquis said. “I am not making idle threats and it is something I will attend to as soon as I return to London.”
He walked across to the door as he added,
“In the meantime, as I have no wish to be in your company for one second longer than is necessary, I intend to go myself in search of Ula. When I have found her, I shall take her back to the protection of my grandmother, where she will remain while you consider what proceedings to take against me.”
He paused before he added,
“Make no mistake, Chessington-Crewe, not only will I reveal from the witness box your brutal treatment of a helpless orphan, but I will inform them in detail of the Prince’s predilection for very young girls and children, in spite of which you consider him a suitable husband for her.”
He paused to add in a voice like the crack of a whip,
“I shall find it strange after that if either you, your wife or your daughter dare show your faces in London again.”
The Marquis did not wait for an answer and left the room.
Only when he was alone did the Earl, as if he could no longer support himself, sink down into an armchair.
The Marquis walked into the drawing room where his grandmother was sitting.
She looked up eagerly as he appeared, but knew at once by the expression on his face that there was no news.
He walked slowly across the room as if he was very tired and sat down beside her.
She was silent and after a moment he said in a voice she had never heard from him before,
“What am I to do, Grandmama? I have looked everywhere! How could anyone disappear so completely? Unless, of course, she really was an angel and has gone back to where she came from!”
He thought as he spoke that must be the only explanation and that Ula was dead.
Every day since her disappearance he had ridden round the boundaries of the Earl’s estate, occasionally encroaching into his woods when he thought it would not be noticed.
He was aware, however, that the Earl’s grooms were searching them very thoroughly.
He had also enquired of the people in the adjacent villages who assured him, he was convinced truthfully, that they had not seen her.
Eventually, when he thought he could bear it no longer, he employed divers to go down into the deep pools of the stream that passed over the Earl’s land, increasing in size the further it flowed.
He had watched the divers and for one moment it seemed almost as if he could feel a knife stab at his heart when he believed that they had found her body.
One of the divers had come to the surface to say that he had discovered something, but he was not quite certain what it was and, when he went down again, it turned out to be only the carcass of a sheep.
It was then, as he felt relief flood over him, that the Marquis admitted finally and irrevocably to himself that he loved Ula and could not contemplate life without her.
Although he had ridden until dark as he had done every day for nearly a week, he was still no wiser when he went home as to where she could be.
He experienced a feeling of utter despair that he had never known before in his life, but he did not wish to upset his grandmother.
She had cried for two days after Ula was lost, as had most of the maids and the other women of the household.
“Somebody must have hidden her,” the Duchess said, “because otherwise she would have been very noticeable, wearing only her night attire.”
It was something she had said hopefully over and over again and the Marquis was trying to make some optimistic reply when the door opened and Dalton came in.
The Marquis looked at him enquiringly, and he said,
“Excuse me, my Lord, but Willy would like to speak to your Lordship.”
“Willy?” the Marquis asked, not recognising the name.
“He’s the knife boy, my Lord,” Dalton explained, “whose finger Miss Ula treated when he cut himself.”
“You say he wants to see me?” the Marquis asked.
“It seems impertinent of him, my Lord, but he says he’s something to tell your Lordship about Miss Ula and he refuses to divulge to me what it is.”
There was a note of irritation in Dalton’s voice which the Marquis did not miss.
He rose from the armchair where he was sitting and said,
“Send Willy into the library.”
As he left the drawing room, there was an expression of hope in the Duchess’s eyes, but he thought the knife boy was probably making things worse than they already were.
It was unlikely that he could contribute anything useful to all their interminable discussions about Ula’s whereabouts.
He had not waited for more than a minute, when there was a tentative knock on the library door and Willy came in.
He was a thin boy of about fifteen and he looked intelligent, although he was obviously shy and very overawed by his Master.
“You wished to see me, Willy?” the Marquis asked in a quiet tone.
He sat down as he spoke, thinking the boy would find him less overpowering than when he was standing.
Willy twisted his fingers together, then almost as if the words burst from him, he said,
“’Tis about Miss Ula, my Lord.”
“If you think you can tell me something which will help me find her,” the Marquis said, “I shall, of course, be very grateful.”
“’Er were very kind to me, my Lord.”
“I know that. Tell me anything you think might help me in my search to find her.”
The Marquis spoke in the same tone of voice he had used in the Army which had made a young recruit find it easy to confide in him.
Willy took a deep breath.
“’Tis like this, my Lord, when I tells Miss Ula I were an orphan, ’er said ’er were one, too and misses ’er Pa and Ma just like I misses mine.”
Willy seemed to take a gulp of air as if he had spoken without breathing and the Marquis said,
“Take your time, I am listening and I am very interested.”
“Miss Ula says to me, my Lord, that even if we can’t see ’em, they’re always lookin’ after us and still lovin’ us. And I says to ’er, I says, ‘’tis ’ard to believe that when I’m all alone’.
“And ’er says to me, ’er says, ‘when I goes to bed at night I pretend I’m still at ’ome in the ’ouse where I was so ’appy when my father and mother were near me, lovin’ me and I’m safe as they’re there’.”
Willy paused again. He knew the Marquis was listening, and after a moment he went on,
“Then ’er says to me, ’er says, ‘I loves my ’ome and one day I shall go back and, although my father and mother’ll not be there, I shall feel their love be still lingerin’ on the walls and though ’tis very small, to me ’tis more wonderful than any other ’ouse could be’.”
Willy’s voice softened as he added,
“There were tears in me eyes, my Lord, when ’er said that and I thinks that if ’er were un’appy or frightened, that’s where ’er’d go – ’ome!”
The Marquis looked at the knife-boy in astonishment and then he exclaimed,
“Of course she would! It was very clever of you, Willy, to think of it and to be brave enough to tell me so. I will go to Worcestershire, where I know she lived and, if I find her, I shall certainly reward you for helping me.”