The Return of Lord Conistone (17 page)

‘I couldn’t find it, Alec. I couldn’t damn well find it…’ Lucas raked his hand through his hair. ‘I’ve left Bentinck still looking. But unfortunately, I suspect I’m not the only one searching’.

Alec started. ‘You mean—the French have got wind of it?’

‘You and I know Wild Jack had begun to talk, for money. So it was, I’m afraid, inevitable’. And Lucas told Alec quickly about the attack on Verena above Ragg’s Cove, of the bullet through his window. ‘I’ve been shot at twice,’ he grimaced. ‘At least on the battlefield you know roughly which direction the bullets are coming from’.

Alec listened, his expression serious. ‘Haven’t you sometimes regretted leaving the army, Lucas? You could have stayed in uniform and still done intelligence work, as many of us do!’

‘I thought about it, God knows. But Wellington asked me specifically if I would operate as a civilian. I’m a useful source as to what’s going on in London, amongst the politicians and the foreign diplomats there. And, Alec—’ Lucas’s face suddenly darkened ‘—after what happened with Verena’s father, I got used, I suppose, to leading a
double life. But God help me, sometimes I just long for a straightforward battle’. He knocked back the last of his wine and looked around. ‘Perhaps we’d better either join the ladies, or throw away a fistful of guineas in the gaming room, before people start to wonder what we’re up to. After all—’ he raised an eyebrow cynically ‘—both you and I have reputations to keep up’.

Alec grinned wickedly. ‘Of course’. Then he was serious again. ‘Lucas, my ship’s going on to Portsmouth, but I’ll leave my dispatches with you and find a vessel to take me back to Portugal, tonight if the tide’s right, so I can get these to his lordship, as soon as possible…’ He was searching through the maps again. ‘One more thing. Have you ever come across anything about a place called Busaco?’

‘No. Is it important?’

‘It could be, yes. It’s a nine-mile rocky ridge, just before the mountains drop down to Portugal’s coastal plain, and Wellington is planning to draw the French up there after him. It will take him six to seven weeks to get there. Look out for anything about it, will you? He’ll need any advantage he can get’.

Busaco. Busaco
.…‘Of course’.

Lucas was starting to get up, but Alec asked almost abruptly, ‘Does Verena have any idea yet, Lucas? About her father?’

Lucas’s expression was taut. ‘No. She still sees him as a hero. That’s how I want it to stay’.

Alec started to protest. ‘You’re being more than unfair on yourself, Lucas! Why the devil should
you
have to bear all this, when the fellow was—’

‘Alec?’

‘Yes?’

‘Do me a favour and stow it, will you?’

Alec hesitated. Then he nodded. ‘I wish you luck with her,’ he said quietly.

Lucas’s firm mouth twisted into a smile. ‘My thanks. Now, back to the fray. Smarten yourself up, dear fellow’.

Alec grinned. ‘Heiresses?’

‘Most definitely. You’ve no objection to a French one, have you?’

‘Not in the slightest,’ breathed Alec. ‘Lead on, my friend’.

As soon as they entered the drawing room, they were surrounded by a cluster of women, glittering in fine gowns and jewels. ‘Gentlemen!’ the Comtesse declared. ‘You are breaking our hearts! How can our two most handsome guests so neglect the ladies?’

Lucas smiled. ‘Comtesse’. And Alec’s eyes widened as they were approached by even more exiled beauties. Lucas honoured his promise to partner the Comtesse, who was charming and pretty.

But suddenly, in the middle of the set, he was struck by a hammer blow.

Busaco. Alec had confided that Lord Wellington was planning to face the French there, in six to seven weeks’ time. The name had seemed familiar, and now he remembered more. There were legends about Busaco. The steep hills there were said to have once contained mines, where, it was rumoured, explorers returning from the Americas centuries ago had hidden their gold. No treasure had ever been found; and the mine tunnels, if they ever existed, were lost beneath loose rocks and scrub. But—Wild Jack had explored that territory. And both Lucas’s grandfather and Verena had told Lucas recently that Jack Sheldon had boasted of finding something of great value.

Had he found those long-lost mines of Busaco? Did he write about them in his missing diary?

Lord Wellington desperately needed a victory at Busaco. It could hang on something as simple as that. Those tunnels could be used to hide cannon and marksmen, and to launch an attack from nowhere on the vastly superior French as they climbed up from the valley towards the waiting British.

Tomorrow he would sail back to England; he would say nothing to Alec yet, about the lost mines. He might be wrong. The damned mines might be just another wild goose chase, an unnecessary distraction.

Back to England, and Wycherley.

The Comtesse de Brouet was flirting with him, using all her wiles; she was wasting her time, because Lucas was remembering Verena. He remembered that last kiss. Remembered her hands, shyly but ardently pulling him closer; her lovely face, flushed with passion; her full breasts and long, silken legs as she twined herself around him, breathing his name, as she let herself submit to the meaning of love, and love’s ecstasy.

And he remembered, bitterly, that her father had been prepared to sell vital secrets to the enemy.

‘I wish you luck with her,’ Alec had said quietly.

And he thought now, with anguish,
I am going to need a damned deal more than luck.

I
t was a hot September morning. Days of heavy rain had given way to sunshine and Verena was walking up to the village celebration on the Common with Izzy. Izzy was bursting with excitement, because that very afternoon she and Deb and Lady Frances were going at last to London.

They wanted Verena to go with them. She knew she
should
go with them.

But she held back, because. Because she still hoped Lucas would come back? But then what?

How could she ever ignore the warning her father had sent her?

Yes, Wycherley was safe. The compensation for the diverted stream that Lucas had told her the Earl owed her family had been settled, and the sum was beyond her expectations.

‘This is all quite proper and correct, Miss Sheldon!’ Mr Mayhew had assured her, kindly.

All of the Sheldon family’s outstanding bills had been paid off, together with the mortgage on the house. With proper investment, the estate, with its farms and tenancies,
would be able to run at a profit again. The Sheldons would be able to buy new furniture, new gowns, even rent a modest London house for the forthcoming Season.

Lucas had ensured that the Earl paid them this money.

And Verena wished she could have flung it all back in Lucas Conistone’s face.

The heir of Stancliffe. Do not trust him. He is our enemy
, her beloved father had written.

If she had read that warning earlier, what then?

She might not have been strong enough to refuse the sum that meant the saving of Wycherley, but she would have been strong enough to resist Lucas’s endearments, and his sweet caresses.

Or would she?

Lucas had been away for a lot longer than the week he’d promised. Best for her if he did not come back at all.

As they climbed the sunlit path in their simple cotton frocks and bonnets, Izzy was still chattering about London. This was merely a preparatory trip to buy clothes and establish contacts, but Izzy was thrilled.

‘It’s so exciting, Verena, that we are no longer poor! Just imagine—once I’m eighteen in November I will be able to have my come-out, and attend wonderful parties, and balls! It’s all thanks to Lucas, isn’t it? And Mama says he was so
extremely
grateful to you, for tending him after he was injured, that he might even propose to you soon, darling Verena!’

Oh, no. Her foolish mother.…

‘Then she is talking nonsense,’ Verena responded crisply. The sun was brilliant in a bright blue sky, the birds were singing, some late guelder roses sweetly scented the air.
And her heart was breaking
. She forced a smile. ‘Stop making ridiculous plans for me, my dear,’ she went on.
‘I hope you’ve packed your bags for your journey this afternoon?’

‘Oh, yes! I have checked everything a
hundred
times! ‘

They were going to Chichester tonight, to stay with Aunt Grace, then on to London by stage the following day.

Sometimes hope visited Verena fleetingly, and that was the hardest of all.
Perhaps her father was mistaken
. But so often she had felt that Lucas was not telling her the truth. There were too many unanswered questions. His abrupt resignation from the army. That terrible sword scar. His secrecy about his travels. His strange interrogation, when he’d first arrived, about her father and his diary. It was becoming clear to her that her father knew something about Lucas that Lucas did not wish to be revealed. Yes, he had helped them to get compensation from the Earl—but was that money somehow Lucas’s price for her silence? Silence about what?

Lucas had gone from Wycherley so swiftly, leaving her with the words,
‘When I return, I want you to say, “Lucas, I will marry you”’.
He had not returned. And she had allowed him to all but seduce her. She’d been shameful and wanton; since then her father’s message had awakened her to the harsh reality that Lucas was not what he seemed.

Bentinck, however, was still at Wycherley. Lucas had told her she needed protection—but from whom? Sinister Frenchmen, or from Lucas himself? She guessed that Bentinck was probably trailing her even now, keeping her in sight on the leafy path up to the Common.

‘Come on, Verena, you slowcoach!’ Izzy, hitching up her skirts in a most unladylike fashion, was practically running up the last section of the path. Verena quickened her step, forcing a smile.

The Common was dotted with trestle tables that groaned with food and pitchers of home-brewed ale. All the farmers’
wives had contributed—there were loaves, cheeses, pickles and home-cured hams for the noontide feast—and Wycherley’s cook, determined not to be outdone, had sent up baskets laden with her famous pork pies and sweet apple cakes. A fiddler was playing country jigs for the energetic ones to dance to, and a Punch-and-Judy man had all the children clustered, enraptured, around his brightly checked stall. It should have been the happiest scene in the world.

‘Hurry, Verena, do!’ Izzy was pulling her sister by the hand into the midst of the merrymakers. Verena followed, then stopped in amazement when everyone fell back into a circle around her and started to clap and cheer. Even the dancing had stopped. Old Tom was there, and Ned Goodhew, and all the men she’d defended from the militia down on the beach. Billy, in the end, had to step forwards and raise his tankard for silence.

‘To our Miss Verena!’ he declared. ‘If she ain’t the saviour of us all, then I dunno who is! Remember how she came down to Ragg’s Cove and gave Colonel Harrap what for?’

There was another round of applause, and someone gave three cheers. Verena’s heart was full. ‘I assure you,’ she said quietly, ‘that I really did very little’. She hesitated.
Give credit where it’s due
. ‘Lord Conistone does, you know, have some influence with the Chichester magistrates’.

They all nodded and applauded again. Ned Goodhew piped up. ‘We heard somethin’ about Lord Conistone saving the whole estate, Miss Verena!’

Really, it was the Earl, she thought, the Earl who had paid them the compensation, but at Lucas’s instigation, so she said, after hesitating, ‘It is indeed true that he has helped us all. And no one can be happier than me that my family can continue to live at Wycherley as before’.

‘Hurrah for Lord Conistone!’ Billy raised his tankard
again. ‘Will he be comin’ here today, Miss Verena, so we can thank his lordship properly?’

She shook her head, and though she was still smiling, it was as if a shadow had passed across the sun. ‘Not today, Billy. But I’ll pass on your thanks when I do see him’. She turned to them all. ‘Please, carry on enjoying yourselves!’

Then she wandered round with Izzy, feigning lightheartedness, trying out the hoop-la David had set up, then sitting on the sun-warmed grass with Izzy to laugh at the antics of Mr Punch.

But she thought of Lucas all the time.

Sometimes what had happened between them the night before he left seemed like a dream. In her bed at night she could not sleep, recalling his wonderful kisses, and those sweet, ecstasy-bestowing caresses that brought fresh colour to her cheeks every time she remembered them.
Do not trust him.

* * *

It was almost noon and the sun was high when Captain Martin Bryant arrived, looking dapper in his scarlet uniform. He’d been making official reports in London, he told her, bowing low over her hand.

‘Captain Bryant,’ she said lightly. ‘This is a wonderful occasion, don’t you think?’

She suddenly noticed that Martin’s eyes were brooding, his expression upset. ‘Perhaps. But I’ve heard distressing news, Verena’.

‘Really?’

‘Yes. I heard that you’ve allowed yourself to become indebted to Conistone, of all people. I didn’t realise you were so easily swayed by the lure of money!’