The Return of Lord Conistone (16 page)

* * *

‘This, milord, is the rummest thing I ever heard,’ grumbled Bentinck. ‘First you get yourself shot at through the window, and have Miss Sheldon in here all night—and now you tell me you’re good as hitched! Beg pardon, but have your wits gone astray? Did that bullet catch you a thump on the ‘ead, by any chance?’

‘Not quite—hitched’. Lucas was looking for his gloves. ‘She’s not accepted me yet’.

Bentinck grunted. ‘And what lady in her right senses would turn you down, pray? Not said yes
yet
, perhaps. She’s just playin’ games, like women do’.

Lucas winced as his valet untenderly straightened the collar of his coat. ‘Don’t you approve of my choice, Bentinck?’

‘Drastic measures, milord! Not but what she’s a pretty piece and all that, but to be leg-shackled! ‘Tis more than the call of duty, surely?’

Lucas said quietly, ‘Talking of duty, I must leave today’.

‘For London?’

‘Just a little further. Will you have my horse ready for me as soon as possible? Thanks to you, I’ve enough to be going on with. Oh, and you’re staying’.

‘So you said yesterday, milord’. Bentinck looked acutely glum.

‘I want you to watch her,’ went on Lucas, ‘wherever she goes’.

‘You don’t think that whoever’s popping pistols at

you—?’

‘I don’t think they’ll actually harm her, no. But she realizes herself now that she needs protection. She knows those Frenchmen were after her—what she doesn’t know is why. It’s your job both to guard her and also to make sure that she never finds out why. Oh, and I want you to carry on looking for more maps, private letters and especially for Jack’s diary’.

‘I did get in her bedroom, milord, but didn’t find anything’.

Lucas nodded grimly.
Setting your servant to ransack a woman’s bedroom. I hope you’re proud of yourself.

‘You still think that she might have it, that diary?’

‘I still think it’s here, yes. Somewhere’.

‘Hmph. Well, it strikes me that if Miss Verena gets just one little hint as to what you’re about and why, she’ll hate you for ever, milord. And you plannin’ to make her your wife! A pretty pickle you got yourself into now, and no mistake!’

Lucas, his face bleak, did not contradict him.

Verena went to her room, praying she would not meet a soul until she could wash and change. Would they be able to see? Would they
know
, just by looking at her face, at her eyes?

She had spent the night in his bed. Allowed him such intimacy. She felt ashamed. She felt full of bewildering joy. She put her palms to her face in a vain attempt to cool her heated skin.

Why does he have to go? What is there in his life that is so urgent? Will he once more ask me to marry him when he returns, or will he realise he’s made a grave error and laugh about me, with his London friends?

Those Frenchmen—he knew about them all the time. And now Lucas had gone; she’d watched him from her window riding away towards the Chichester road; watched him till he was out of sight. Where was he going? Why wouldn’t he tell her more?

He had asked her to trust him. And this time, she would—for he had ensured that Wycherley was safe.

* * *

Soon, the usual clamour of the household took up her attention, and it was some time before she could get up to her room again and think of Lucas.

He and her father would perhaps have become great friends. Her heart lifting at the thought, she went to where she kept his letters locked away in a secret compartment of the dressing table. On that table stood the silver music box, which looked as if it was a little nearer the window than before.

Nonsense. She was imagining things.

She started, smiling, to look at the letters. Her father had written to her more than he did to anyone else, corresponding regularly while on his travels in Spain and Portugal
before the war began.
You would love it all, Verena! Some day I will bring you here, to see the cities, and the plains, and the high mountains!

The letters from his last journey of all were different. Written in the Portuguese dialect of his mother’s family, they were troubled, darker, for the shadow of war was engulfing the Peninsula. She thought again of the British army about to set off over the mountains towards Lisbon; her father would have known that terrain so well.

His last letters grew shorter, the notes folded many times. Damaged, torn even, during their uncertain journey to her. Several of them were inscribed with his rough-sketched maps, together with footnotes about distances and heights. One of the maps, drawn in more detail than usual, was labelled
Busaco.

This was the final communication she’d received from him. And the last words were:
The e-r of Sta-iffe. Do not trust him. He is our enemy.

She’d looked at those words, some of them half-obliterated, many times.

But now, her heart suddenly seemed to stop beating. She walked across her room, to hold the letter closer to the window. Her fingers started to shake.

She’d always assumed—
believed
—that her father was writing about the Earl of Stancliffe, with whom he’d argued so bitterly.

But now, she realised she could make out the letters more clearly in the bright morning light. And they spelled out not the
earl of
, but the
heir of Stancliffe.

Lucas. Oh, dear God.

Verena stumbled blindly for a chair, and in doing so she sent the music box crashing to the ground. It fell open and the poignant melody of ‘My Soldier Love’ filled the room.

She snatched it up and slammed the lid shut, her mind reeling in the stunning silence.
You fool, Verena. You utter fool.

‘You have failed again. You were mad to even try such a thing, Englishman. Yes, it appears our enemy has decided to pass this incident also off as an accident. But truly now he will be even more on the alert’.

In the grey morning light a confrontation was taking place less than half a mile away, down on the shingle beach at Ragg’s Cove, between three men who spoke in harsh, fractured English and Captain Martin Bryant.

‘You have blundered too!’ Martin fought back, attempting defiance. ‘You tried to kidnap the girl, although you swore to me that she would not be touched!’

For some moments the only sound was that of the rolling waves dragging at the shingle. Then Bryant saw the gleam of the pistol in the first man’s hand and he stepped backwards, sweat breaking out on his forehead.

‘Vraiment
, she will not be harmed,’ murmured the man with the pistol, ‘if you get us the information we need. We want to see her father’s papers. His maps. Especially, we must have the diary that he kept of his travels in Portugal two years ago’.

Bryant muttered, ‘I’m not sure that she knows anything. I’m not sure that what you want even
exists
. I visited the old Earl, who’s half-mad and just rants that Sheldon swindled him; and at Wycherley I’ve been through Sheldon’s study quite thoroughly’.

‘You told us. That you’d got inside the house with a key you’d purloined, and made it look like a burglary. Clever. And yet you found—nothing. Be careful, my friend. It was you, after all, who promised us these items in return for
your freedom, a year ago’. The three men were moving in closer.

Martin Bryant faced them with squared shoulders. ‘At least my shot last night means that Conistone is laid up again, useless!’

‘Ah. Your bullet caught him then,
mon ami?’

Martin flushed. ‘Not exactly. But I heard that valet of his telling a servant this morning that Conistone stumbled last night and re-opened his wound—an accident no doubt caused by the shock of my bullet flying so close!’

‘In that case,’ said the first Frenchman silkily, ‘why has he just gone riding off along the road, to the devil knows where?’

‘What?
’ Martin Bryant’s face was quite white. ‘I swear I don’t know! I honestly thought he was bedridden…’

‘We have let him go—for now. He has powerful friends. But you must try to do better, Captain Bryant. There is so little time left. Do you understand?’ The Frenchman moved closer to Martin, his pistol raised threateningly now. ‘To where does he go? And on what business? What has Lord Conistone found that you could not?’

Three weeks later—Jersey, Channel Isles

A
magnificent private party was being hosted by the Comtesse de Brouet in her mansion overlooking the sea at St Helier. Amongst her glittering guests were other French royalists who had similarly taken refuge here, as well as an assortment of handsome British army officers and several English travellers on business they preferred to keep to themselves. Jersey was British territory, but only a few miles from France; in this time of war, nobody asked too many questions.

Candlelight shone in the beautifully furnished salons, and a string orchestra filled the evening air with sweet melodies. The widowed Comtesse de Brouet was only in her thirties and had several suitors, but she had her eye on a tall, dark-haired Englishman who went by the name of Mr Patterson.

He was engaged in the wine trade, she’d been told, and had been in St Helier for a week now. Waiting for someone, he said.

Disappointingly, instead of joining the dancing, the rather delicious-looking Mr Patterson was at present outside on the terrace, leaning against the balustrade, watching the moonlight on the sea. It was August, and the night air was pleasantly warm, but even so, such a waste.

The Comtesse went sweeping out to him in her gown of draped white satin embroidered with gold thread, and declared, ‘My dear Monsieur Patterson, do not brood alone, pray!’ She tapped her feathered fan flirtatiously against his broad shoulder. ‘Are none of our St Helier beauties to your liking?’

Lucas Conistone, for it was he, answered as required, with a bow and in equally fluent French, ‘Since you have declared your intention to remain single, I fear not, Comtesse!’

‘Dancing is not the same as marriage,
monsieur,’
she said, coyly smiling up at the handsome, powerfully built Englishman. ‘Will you promise to partner me in the cotillion before supper?’

‘I would be honoured’. But when she nodded, satisfied, and returned inside, Lucas turned back to gaze at the harbour below. The summer seas just lately had been rough, but today had been calmer, and Lucas had tonight seen several British navy vessels drop anchor in the bay.
Tonight. Come on, man. Make it tonight.

‘Mr Patterson?’

Lucas spun round to see a waiter addressing him.

‘There’s an officer in here, sir, looking for you…’

Lucas hurried inside. There, eye-catching even in this crowded salon, was a familiar figure clad in the dashing blue jacket and white breeches of the Light Dragoons, who came straight over to him.

‘Got your message, Lucas, almost the minute I got into harbour,’ grinned Alec Stewart. He looked around
appreciatively. ‘You’ve chosen a mighty fine place for our rendezvous this time’.

Lucas was already leading the way to the balcony again. ‘Apart from the occupational hazard of man-hungry French comtesses, yes. Come out here. We’ll be more private’.

Alec seized two glasses and the almost-full bottle from the waiter’s tray, and jauntily followed his friend out to the table and two chairs set in the shadows beyond the doorway. ‘Man-hungry French comtesses,’ he breathed. ‘My God, after over a week on board ship, that sounds good…’

‘Tell me the news before you let yourself fall prey to one’.

Intelligence reports when he reached London from Hampshire had informed Lucas Conistone that Alec Stewart was making his way to England from Lisbon on board a ship that was due to call in at St Helier for supplies, so Lucas had set sail here himself and waited.

For Alec was not a wastrel, as was popularly supposed, but a vital messenger for Lord Wellington himself. Now Alec poured them both wine and his expression became graver. ‘Lord Wellington’s started his march towards Lisbon from the Spanish border, Lucas. But the bad news is that the French, I’m afraid, are after him, in almost double the numbers’.

For Lucas, the sounds of music and laughter seemed suddenly to recede, and he was picturing, in all its brutal vividness, Wellington’s army on the march. The thousands of footsore soldiers with their heavy packs; the gun-carriages; the vital ammunition and supplies borne on mules and lumbering bullock carts, which were the only transport fit for what rough Portuguese roads existed. And the huge French army in pursuit.

‘A gamble,’ Lucas said softly. ‘A brave but almighty gamble’.

‘Exactly. Lord Wellington gave me a message for you. He urgently needs more maps—detailed maps—of the wild and difficult terrain he’s about to cross. He’s sent out his own scouts, of course, but you and I are both aware of one man who knew that territory like no other’.

‘Wild Jack Sheldon,’ nodded Lucas. ‘Alec, I’ve found—
these’.
He pushed across the maps Bentinck had found at Wycherley.

Alec scanned the maps eagerly. ‘Congratulations. These are good.
More
than good. But—no sign of that diary? The one you’d suspected Sheldon left at Wycherley before setting off on his last journey?’