Never Call It Love (7 page)

Elizabeth
made no reply to that. "Shall I get a tray of food for Christopher and
take it up to him?"

"I
think he would prefer that I brought it to him. Hawkins will help me prepare a
tray. I must wake her up and talk to her, anyway."

She
left the room. After a few minutes, staring into the fire, Elizabeth knew that
her mother must have aroused the cook from her slumbers in the room off the
kitchen, because she could hear the distant, agitated sound of their voices.
Elizabeth had no doubt that Hawkins would swear to anything Christopher wanted
her to. Like Mrs. Montlow, like Elizabeth herself—at least, until a few hours
ago—Mary
Hawkins had been his adoring slave ever since he was an infant.

From
the back of the chair her mother had occupied she picked up a knitted red shawl
and wrapped it around her. Quietly she went down the hall and out the front
door. Through cold moonlight so bright that she could have read large print by
it, she went down the brick walk, still damp from the early-evening rainstorm.
At the gate she turned and started back toward the house.

From
somewhere not far away came the whinny of a horse.

Instantly
she thought of the dark-cloaked rider, revealed by a lightning flash as he
fought to control his mount. Had he been a bailiff? Was he still somewhere
nearby? Her eyes swept the hillside to the west of the house. Nothing but a
copse of leafless oaks and maples, rising from dead brown grass bleached almost
white by the moonlight.

After
a moment she realized that the man could not have been a bailiff. The bailiff,
when he arrived, would be in a coach, so that he could take his prisoner away
with him.

Probably
that whinny had come from farther away, in the fields beyond the hill's crest.
And probably it was one of the Weymouth horses she had heard. Often Weymouth animals
strayed onto Montlow land.

To
comfort herself, she pictured Donald Weymouth. His light brown hair, his thin,
sensitive face with its steady hazel eyes and warm smile. No matter what
happened, Donald's loyalty and love would not waver. It was impossible to think
of a circumstance that could deprive her of that love.

And
then suddenly she shivered. Something colder than the chill air had touched
her. It was a return of that dark presentiment that had assailed her earlier, a
presentiment
of herself alone and helpless under the onslaught of some sort of violence.

The
moment passed. Clutching the shawl close around her, she hurried the rest of
the way up the walk and into the house.

It
had been a good meal. Cold chicken, bread, plum tart, and tea scalding hot, the
way he liked it. Christopher laid the chicken bone on the tray, resting on the
stand beside his bed, and then snuggled deeper under the eiderdown.

He
was home. He was safe. Even if the girl was dead by now—and he felt sure she
must be—he was safe. The worst that could happen to him would be a few months'
imprisonment until the next General Sessions at Old Bailey. There was not a
more respected name in the kingdom than the Montlows', and not a more
irreproachable matron than his mother. What jury would fail to take her word,
backed up by Liza's and Hawkins', especially since all that was involved was
the death of a servant girl?

Certainly
they had thought she was a servant girl when they saw her hurrying along the
sidewalk. Who but a harlot or a servant girl, sent on some errand by her
employers, would be out alone on the London streets after dark? And no harlot
would show herself in that respectable neighborhood.

Certainly,
too, she had appeared to be a servant girl when they got her into the house and
had a good look at
her. An Irish servant girl, with the carroty hair many of the Irish have, and
light blue eyes. And she had sounded like a servant girl. "Oh, please,
sirs!" she kept saying, as they held her down on the bed's dusty
counterpane. And every once in a while she would call upon the Blessed Virgin,
the way the Papists do, and Blessed St. Anne. From the way she kept calling
upon St. Anne, Christopher felt that must be her name saint.

They
had not meant for her to die. They had meant to take her afterward to the mews
behind the house, pay her enough money to buy her silence and to compensate her
for damages to her clothing, and then send her on her way. There would have
been little risk in that. Few servant girls would accuse young men of their
class with rape. They could always say that she had solicited them, and gone
willingly with them into the house.

But
unfortunately, while they still had her upstairs in that long-unused back
bedroom, it had occurred to him that it would be fun to let her think for a
moment that she could get away from them. They had all stepped back from her,
and she, after lying there for a moment like a rabbit surrounded by hounds, had
gotten up and dashed out of the room. With two of them carrying the candles, they
had run after her. But she hadn't turned toward the rear staircase, as he had
expected. Instead the silly wench had turned in the other direction. With them
pounding after her, she had raced toward the long front window at the end of
the hall. His outstretched hands had almost grasped her, when she plunged
through the glass and fell, screaming, through the darkness.

But
at least he'd kept his nerve, and his head. He'd told the others to wait inside
the rear entrance to the house. He'd gone back to that bedroom for his hat.
Then he'd gone down two flights of stairs to the kitchen and out into the
areaway.

The
girl had been lying there on the flagstones, a still
white shape in
the darkness. Quickly he had averted his eyes from her. Wadding his cloak around
his fist, he had struck the kitchen's windowpane several times, and heard the
glass tinkle to the floor inside. When he was sure the opening was wide enough
to admit a supposed housebreaker, he had slipped back inside the kitchen, and
locked the door with the same key with which he had unlocked it earlier that
night. Then, as rapidly as he could manage, he made his way through the
darkness back to where his friends waited, huddled in an anxious knot just
inside the house's rear entrance. He had told them to scatter as quickly as
possible, and to of course say nothing to anyone. With another key he had
unlocked the back door, followed his friends out, and relocked the door.

Yes,
he had managed everything quite nicely. Still, because that silly girl had thrown
herself out of the window, there would be an investigation. That was why he
needed to have his mother and Liza and Hawkins testify that he had been here at
the Hedges, fifteen miles from London, when a person or persons unknown had
broken into the house on Kingman Street

One
recurring thought made him uneasy. What if the girl had not been a servant? Her
clothes had struck him as being of rather good quality. What if she had someone
of importance to be concerned about her, someone other than an illiterate
parent or two steeping themselves in gin in a London slum or scratching a
living out of the soil somewhere miles away in the country?

Who,
for instance, was Patrick? Just before she had plunged through that window, she
had not called upon the Blessed Virgin, or one of those popish saints. Instead
she called out, in a strangled voice, "Patrick! Oh, Patrick!"

He
shoved the worry aside. Patrick was probably some fellow servant some stableboy
she had fancied.

Light
footsteps passed the closed door of his room. His
sister, on her way to bed. His
sister, with those eyes that tonight had seemed to look right through him.
Thank God he had foreseen that Elizabeth might be a problem. That was why he
had resisted the impulse last night to get out of London as fast as he could.
Instead he had first paid a brief visit to Peggy Frazier-Fitzsimmons.

Before
she would agree to perjure herself, Liza would go to Peggy. He had seen that
resolution forming in his sister's face tonight, down there in the side parlor.
Well, let her go to old Peggy. God, the woman must be almost thirty-five!

Regretfully
he rubbed his fight thumb over his ringless second finger. Well, better a ring
missing from his hand than a rope tightening around his neck.

***

In
her room, Elizabeth undressed and put on her night-shift. Then, too tense to go
to bed just yet, she moved to the window. Even with a three-branched
candelabrum burning on the dressing table behind her, the moonlight appeared to
her extraordinarily brilliant. Striking some of the glossy ilex leaves at just
the right angle, it made the hedge appear to be hung with tiny silver-blue
lights.

She
must stop asking herself questions she could not answer, such as who was the
girl, and had Christopher been in any way responsible for her death. She would
have the answer to both questions by this time tomorrow night

And
if she were forced to conclude that Christopher was responsible? Would she
still swear to a lie, in order to save him? She thought of her mother, that
frail woman who probably would not live—would not even want to live—if her son
was carried, hands bound behind him, in a jolting cart to the gallows at
Newgate, and there, before an excited, jeering crowd...

Stop
thinking, she told herself. Try to get some sleep. She
turned, blew
out the candelabrum's flames, and moved to her bed.

***

Standing
there in the hillside copse beside his tethered gray horse, Patrick Stanford
went on looking at that upstairs window. It was dark now, but only a moment ago
Elizabeth Montlow had been standing there, chestnut hair like a cloak around
her shoulders, slim body dimly visible through the thin stuff of her shift.

He
knew that her brother also was in the house. Two hours earlier he had seen a
male figure, hat in hand, pale hair gleaming in the moonlight, leave the
carriage house and move swiftly to that side terrace. Patrick was resolved to
make sure that Montlow did not leave the house until a bailiff arrived in the
morning to take him away.

He
knew that a bailiff would arrive. In fact, in the past sixteen hours he had
learned quite a lot about Christopher Montlow's recent past, and about what
Patrick grimly hoped would be the youth's short, inescapable future. Arriving
at the gatehouse of young Montlow's college before daybreak, he had interviewed
first the porter and then two of the dons. Patrick had learned that Montlow had
been the ringleader in a prank played upon an aged college servant, an episode
that had caused Montlow and four other students to be sent down.

Because
by then both he and his hired mount needed rest, Patrick had gone to an inn for
three hours' sleep, and then returned to London. At Sir John Fielding's office
in Bow Street, he learned that a warrant was out for young Montlow's arrest. It
had been issued because of additional evidence, furnished only that morning, by
an eyewitness across the street from the Montlows' town house. Since then Bow
Street Runners had been searching London for the young man. If he was not found
in the city, a bailiff would be dispatched early tomorrow morning to the
Montlow country house near the village of Parnley.

Pausing
only long enough to hire a fresh mount, Patrick had ridden to Parnley and asked
the way to the Montlow house. Through a brief but violent rainstorm, he had
ridden to this hillside copse, with its excellent view of the house.

Young
Montlow was a ringleader, those Oxford dons had said. And everything, including
the fact that she had been carried into the Montlow house, indicated that he
had been the ringleader in the assault upon Anne.

That
sister of Montlow's. In the past, Patrick had thought of her, not just with
desire, but with something he could only call respect How could she have such a
vicious degenerate as a brother? But it happened sometimes. In almost any
family a moral monster could appear, outwardly normal, even brilliant and
charming, but with an essential quality missing from his nature, that quality
called conscience.

For
not the first time during the past two hours, he had to fight down an impulse
to stride into that house and choke the truth out of Christopher Montlow. But
no, he must not take the law into his own hands. He must not draw unfavorable
official attention to himself, lest he jeopardize his purpose, a purpose even
more important to him than avenging Anne's death. Let the law see that
Christopher Montlow paid for that, dangling from a rope at Newgate.

But
if, by one means or another, he escaped the gallows? In that case, no matter
where he went, Patrick would track him down and take his life in payment for
Anne Reardon's.

He
sat down, leaned his back against a tree trunk, and prepared to wait until
daylight

Around
ten the next morning, standing at the front window of the upstairs hall,
Elizabeth watched Christopher and two bailiffs go down the path toward a waiting
carriage. Christopher carried a small leather portmanteau, which she knew must
contain shirts and underclothing. She waited until the carriage had driven away
through the misty sunlight. Then she went downstairs.

Mrs.
Montlow was standing in the lower hall. With relief, Elizabeth saw that her
mother, despite the aggrieved look on her fine-featured face, seemed fairly
calm.