The Return of Lord Conistone (31 page)

Lucas secured the aid of some soldiers; with them and Alec he scoured every narrow street. But it was Bentinck who was first with some news.

‘Think I’ve got something, milord,’ he panted. ‘I heard that an English wine merchant and his wife were heading back to England today. They had a carriage booked to take them to the coast’.

‘And?’ Lucas was brittle with impatience; Alec at his side was also listening anxiously.

‘They took someone else with them in their carriage,’
explained Bentinck, ‘a young lady with chestnut-coloured hair. Her name, they say, was Miss Lucia…’

Verena’s grandmother’s name
. Lucas was wild-eyed. ‘To England… Where were they sailing from? ‘

‘No one’s sure, milord. The carriage left an hour ago’.

Alec muttered, ‘There’s something else you ought to know, Lucas old fellow. A French spy’s been locked up in the Coimbra gaol, and now the British army’s almost here, he’s started offering information in the hope of saving his skin. He appears to know a little about Wild Jack, and he says some French agents actually went over to England a few months ago, thinking they might find something useful at Jack’s home. Wycherley’.

As he had suspected
. ‘Go on,’ breathed Lucas.

‘Well, there’s an English soldier involved,’ Alec went on. ‘A captain, who was captured at Talavera and let out of a French prison camp after swearing he’d be able to track down Jack Sheldon’s precious diary…’

Lucas swore aloud.

‘What, Lucas?’ Alec looked distraught. ‘You look as though you’ve seen a ghost, man!’

Lucas breathed, ‘I know who it is, Alec. And oh, God, oh, God, I should have realised it, a long time ago…’

He was already on his way as he spoke, striding towards the stables, Bentinck hard on his heels. Alec, too, was chasing after him.

‘Lucas! Where, dear fellow, are you going?’

Lucas called back over his shoulder, ‘To get my horse. To find a ship to England. Even if it’s captained by that damned Jed Brooks!’

But even as he ran, he was thinking in anguish: Why had she left so suddenly?
Why?

Wycherley

I
t was a fine October afternoon. Verena had been home for nearly a fortnight now, and Pippa was a daily visitor, though Izzy, Deb and Lady Frances were still in London, and blithely unaware that Verena had ever been away.

Verena had returned from Portugal on a packet ship in the company of kind Mr Cameron, a wine merchant, and his wife, who’d been staying at the little hotel in Coimbra while they made arrangements for their journey home. She’d hurried to knock on the door of their room as soon as that dreadful conversation she’d overheard in the courtyard had sunk in.

‘Mr Cameron,’ she said swiftly, ‘I remember you saying that you and your wife are travelling to the coast and sailing for Portsmouth tonight. May I ask you a very great favour? Might I travel with you? ‘

‘Of course, my dear Miss Sheldon!’ agreed Mr Cameron. ‘But may my wife and I be permitted to ask—why the urgency?’

‘Something has happened—that I did not expect,’ she whispered. She tilted her chin stubbornly.
She would not cry
. ‘I must go home. And—I would so much value the protection of your company’.

Every hour, every minute of that voyage, she imagined Lucas finding her room empty. Frantically searching the hotel. The entire town.

She’d had enough of lies and rumours. Of having her hopes raised, then so devastatingly shattered.

And so at last she reached Wycherley, where David and Pippa, summoned by Turley, rode over immediately from their farm to see her.

‘Verena, we didn’t realise you’d gone at first!’ explained Pippa, after tearful hugs and kisses. ‘Because the day after Mama and the girls left for London, we had to leave suddenly ourselves, for Oxfordshire, where David’s father was taken ill! We sent you a note to explain, but of course you would not ever have
received
it’.

‘What about Cook? And Turley?’

‘They both assumed you’d gone to London to join Mama, and when we got back two days ago, so did I, until I found the note you’d left me, mysteriously saying you would be back soon! Then we were almost out of our minds with worry!’

‘I’m so sorry,’ said Verena quietly. ‘Pippa, can I rest a little before I tell you it all?’

‘Of course!’ Pippa hugged her tightly. ‘As long as you’re
all right’.

So Verena had scarcely been missed. That at least was a huge relief. ‘Quite all right. Really’. Verena hugged her sister back.

Could she ever tell Pippa about Lucas? It was unthinkable at the moment; the hurt was too recent, too raw. And as for their father—she would never say anything. Why should
her dear sister also have to suffer the terrible knowledge of their father’s hidden past?

‘David and I did wonder,’ Pippa confided, as she poured them both tea, ‘if perhaps you’d run away with Lord Conistone, seeing as you are secretly betrothed. An elopement, my dear! We were quite excited!’

Close. Too close. Verena tried to smile, and said lightly, ‘I’m afraid we are no longer engaged to be married, Pippa. Secretly or otherwise’.

‘Oh!’ Pippa had been stunned. ‘Oh, I’m so very sorry’.

Two days after her return home, Verena had wandered down the path towards the sea at Ragg’s Cove and gazed out.
Lucas had killed her father
. If only he’d told her from the very start, she agonised. But when? And how? How could such dreadful news ever be broken gently?

She breathed in the clear sea air. At least Wycherley was safe. She would find her own, small happinesses here. And the stabbingly painful memories of her love for Lucas would fade in time—wouldn’t they?

She only wished she could believe it.

* * *

Verena went into Framlington the next day and was looking for birthday gifts for Pippa’s twins, who would soon be one, when someone riding by called out her name.

It was Captain Martin Bryant.

The last time she’d seen him, he’d done his best to poison her mind against Lucas, to tell her even that he might be working for the French.

And now Martin Bryant pulled his horse up and saluted her. ‘Verena! They said you’d been to London!’

As good an alibi as any other. Gazing up at Captain Bryant, she said coldly, ‘I’ve been away, yes. But, as you see, I’m home’.

She wanted to move on, but he seemed not to notice her
coldness. ‘I’m rejoining my old division in Portugal soon,’ he told her eagerly. ‘May I call on you later today? ‘

Her first impulse was to refuse, but then she thought,
No
. She had one last piece of business with Martin Bryant. Without giving any secrets away, she had to tell him how utterly wrong he had been to speak so maliciously about Lucas.

‘You may,’ she said, with a calmness she did not feel. ‘I will be at home from five’.

* * *

By the time he arrived, the October dusk was settling. She realised Martin was restless… nervous, even. After Cook had brought in the tea tray, he would not sit, but paced to and fro in front of the fire, before swinging round to face her and stammering out hotly, ‘Verena. I must speak to you about a matter that’s been on my mind ever since our meeting today!’

‘And I, too,’ she said crisply, ‘need to speak to
you
, Captain Bryant. You spoke to me some weeks ago about Lord Lucas Conistone’.

‘Ah, yes,’ he said, shrugging. His pale blue eyes first kept darting to the door, then to the window. ‘Yes, perhaps I was wrong about Conistone, but there’s something else’. His eyes were fixed on her now. ‘Verena, it’s about your father’.

Oh, no
. ‘Even less,’ she responded quickly, ‘do I want to talk about
him’.

‘But this is something you must know! Please—if you’ll just step outside with me, so we are alone…’ He pointed to the door which led directly out into the garden.

She hesitated, her heart thudding. Did Martin
know
her father had turned traitor? She was absolutely terrified of her family learning the bitter truth.

He had already opened the door and reluctantly she
followed him a little way outside. ‘Very well, Captain Bryant,’ she said tightly. ‘For a few moments only…’

‘Just come further into the garden, away from the servants,’ he urged. ‘I have really important news and I don’t want anyone else to hear it!’

If this was about her father, neither did she. She followed him towards a thick copse of fir trees, a sombre spot, where the last of the dying daylight could not penetrate. And heavy raindrops were starting to fall. She suddenly imagined she heard a low whispering, somewhere in the undergrowth.

Her heart started to race. She could not help but remember that night in July when she’d gone down to the cove and those Frenchmen had tried to abduct her. She felt very cold. And they had already gone further from the house than she’d intended.

‘This is quite far enough, Captain Bryant,’ she declared, starting to turn. ‘In fact, I think I should go back in, for it’s starting to rain—’

That was when he leaped on her. And—there were two others, coming swiftly from the shadows of the trees. She started to cry out, but Martin’s hand was clamped across her mouth and one of his companions pinned her arms behind her back. She couldn’t breathe. Her senses were starting to reel, but still she fought.

The two men cursed her in French. Martin Bryant looked like one demented as he ordered them to hold her tight. He had a piece of rope in his hands. She struggled with the last of her strength.

‘You,’ she cried to Martin. ‘And the French—
you
are working for them…’

‘We wanted your father’s diary,’ he grated out. ‘That damned Lucas Conistone got it, instead. And now—we want Conistone’.

In the rain that was falling steadily now, he started
wrapping the rope around her wrists. That was when the full horror dawned. They were going to use her to lure Lucas into a trap. She was feeling sick, but she shook her head in defiance. ‘No. You’ve got it all wrong. Lucas is in Portugal!’

A malicious smile twisted Martin Bryant’s face. ‘But, you see, he’s not. I got news yesterday that he’s on his way back to England’.

Her heart hammered. ‘That may be so! But what makes you think he’d trouble himself to come here to Wycherley?’

‘He will,’ said Martin Bryant. ‘Because I’ll let him know that you are my prisoner. Conistone escaped my pistol before, but he won’t this time’.

‘You—
shot
him?’

He glanced at her quickly. ‘At Wycherley, yes’.

The broken window.…

Her hands were tied securely and the two Frenchmen were already manhandling her in the near darkness along the steep path that led down to Ragg’s Cove. It could be hours before anyone realised she was missing.

She tried again, twisting her head to see Martin as he followed grimly behind. ‘If Lucas does come, he will bring help!’

‘I’ll tell him to come alone’.

No good despairing. No good screaming for help. No one could hear and these men would just silence her by tying something round her mouth, or worse. She must think how to help Lucas, who might soon be charging headfirst into danger on her account.

‘Martin,’ she breathed as they dragged her down the path to the beach,
‘why?’

The bitter look in his pale blue eyes frightened her. ‘Believe me, I had good reason, Verena. It was the only
way I could get out of that hellhole of a French prison after Talavera. It was the price of my life. Why should others, like Lucas Conistone and his friends, live in the lap of luxury when people like me were marching across barren mountains eating wretched army food and being shot to pieces?’

Verena thought of Busaco. Of the danger and hardship that Lucas endured willingly. That terrible sabre scar… She whispered, ‘You’re wrong, so very wrong! Lucas has given up so much to serve his country!’

‘Rubbish,’ said Martin shortly. ‘He plays games, your secret hero. And unlike the ordinary soldiers, he’s free to sail back to the life of a wealthy man, with his friends of the Prince’s set, abandoning himself to the decadent parties, the beautiful women’.

‘You’re lying,’ she said bitterly. ‘You’ve
always
lied about him!’

But if he heard her, he did not respond. They were nearly down at the shore now. Her captors’ shoes were crunching on shingle. In the darkness she saw the gleam of a rowing boat, anchored twenty yards or so from the sea’s edge. With the rope still tugging rawly at her wrists, Verena turned to him defiantly.

‘After this, Martin? What’s next for you, after this?’

After betraying your country?
She was thinking desperately. She guessed they would take her to some isolated spot, keep her prisoner until Lucas came after her, and then they would ambush him. Kill him…

Martin’s eyes were wild. ‘What’s next? Why, I will be rewarded, of course! And I thought you’d marry me if I had money, Verena!’

She exclaimed, ‘Are you mad?’

‘Why not? The French have promised me gold to capture or kill Conistone—enough gold to give me—and you—the
chance of a better life! I can offer you so much, Verena! I—I care for you so much!’