“Exactly,” he said. “You would not be alone, of course. I shall direct this strictly private group. I hope to enlist O’Meara as a member, and I would have you work in conjunction with a trained male spy who has gained a reputation under the code name of Robin. It would be his duty to protect you.”
“I’m afraid I must refuse you,” she said. “I am happy to be living a quiet country life here with my mother and my stepfather.”
The man in black smiled at her coldly. “Did you say you are happy here?”
“Yes,” she said in weak defiance.
“I wish it were true,” he said. “But it is not so. You are chafing under the indifference of your mother and the cruel arrogance of your stepfather!”
“Please!” she protested.
“Let me finish,” he said sharply. “Your blessed stepfather is cutting deep into your father’s estate. At this moment he and your mother are in Canterbury further mortgaging this house and the land it is on to pay his latest gambling debts!”
“No!” she pleaded, shocked but aware that it was all too likely to be so.
“And you know how he plans to repair his fortunes?” the man in black asked. “He plans to sell you in marriage to his repulsive friend, the elderly Lord Dakin! A lustful old man rotten with syphillis and still reaching out to taint someone of your youth and beauty!”
“Go, Mr. Black,” she said in a broken voice “You have said enough.”
“I could tell you more,” the man in black said “But I have already caused you more pain than I wish. For your own sake you should escape from this house. For the sake of a man you once cared for deeply, you should enlist in this crusade with me. And for the sake of the England for which your brother gave his life, save it from another war! For make no mistake, once in power, Valmy will strike against England.”
She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I believe you are mad, Mr. Black.”
“I hear that often,” the man in black said with a shrug of his narrow shoulders. “Yet I swear all I have told you is true.”
“Fantasy!” she said.
“So they say,” he said with a bitter smile. “They think it is a product of my own mind, put forward so I may hold onto power. So they are removing my power. But I will fight this menace if I have to fight it alone.”
“Good day, Mr. Black,” she said firmly.
He bowed. “Good day. If you come to agree with me, you may find me at my house in Fetter Lane. The number is Twenty. I need you badly. So does the man who was your first love.”
He bowed again and went on out. She stared after him and then crossed to the window where she had been standing when he arrived. She saw him in a his black top hat and suit make his way to the carriage. He gave the coachman some instructions and then stepped inside and vanished. After a moment the black carriage and horse vanished up the gravel roadway, lost among the trees at the turn.
She stared out at the sullen day and wondered if it had all been a strange trick of her mind. Had she imagined the weird black coach and the visitor who came in it? Had the tall tale which she’d listened to been a hint of her own approaching madness? Surely it was the strangest experience she’d known in a long while.
A genius of evil! That was how he had struck her. His knowledge had made her think of an all-knowing Satan spying on his unwary subjects and reporting their misdeeds with unholy glee. Tears sprang to her eyes, and she fled up the stairway to her bedroom. There she threw herself on her bed and sobbed.
Remembrance of St. Helena came back to her all too vividly. Her kindly father had stood up for her when her mother reproached her for her friendship with Napoleon. So she had enjoyed her short stay on the bleak island and spent much time with the exiled emperor.
He had talked to her of his son, the king of Rome. And he’d said wistfully, “I have no fear whatever about my fame. Posterity will do me justice. The truth will be known, and the good I have done with the faults I have committed will be compared. Although I have failed, I shall be considered an extraordinary man.”
Only six years ago! How close they had been! Since then she had lost her beloved father. Next Napoleon had died of apparently the same illness brought on by the difficult island climate. At the moment she was in a state of despair, frantic that she might somehow be forced into a hideous marriage with old Lord Dakin.
And because she’d written about Richard’s death to the War Office, this fantastic man and his utterly insane story had come to her. His invitation to join him in London as one of his private secret agents might seem more reasonable if she could make herself believe what he’d told her. The trouble was that she could not.
When Betsy went downstairs to dinner, her mother and stepfather had already returned and were having sherry in the drawing room. As she joined them, the big bulldog-faced Sir John Cort was haranguing her mother about something. He stood before the fireplace, his back to it, as he uttered a tirade of abuse at his unfortunate spouse. Maria Cort sat dejectedly in her chair, her glass of sherry held loosely in her hand as she listened to her husband.
Her thin, lined face lighted up a trifle at the arrival of Betsy since it would mean that some of the attention would be temporarily taken from her. “How nice you look, my dear,” Maria said. “The white gown becomes you nicely. I’m sure Lord Dakin will be taken with it.”
Almost angrily she replied, “I did not wear it to please Lord Dakin. In fact I wasn’t at all sure he was coming tonight.”
Her stepfather, resplendent in blue jacket and fawn trousers, scowled at her, and in his booming voice told her, “I’m sure I made that quite clear. Alfred is coming to stay overnight with us, and it is his hope, and ours, that you will come to some arrangement whereby your engagement can be announced.”
“Never!” she said, defiantly facing her stepfather.
“Don’t be rash, my dear!” her mother counseled her.
“You should consider yourself a fortunate young woman to be picked out by a man like Lord Dakin for marriage. As Lady Dakin you will rule London society,” Sir John Cort said.
“A groom of sixty-one with an odious reputation,” she said angrily. “All London would either pity me or laugh at me!”
Sir John Cort’s ugly face took on a purplish shade, and he turned to demand of the hapless Maria, “Is this the respect you get from your ungrateful daughter?”
Maria, pinched looking under the lace cap she wore, pleaded with the burly man. “Do not be too hard on her, John. She has lost both a brother and a father, each of them dearer to her than I.”
“Another disgrace!” Cort snapped, his jowls flapping over his tall, hard collar. “The girl was ruined by her father! His bad judgment was exemplified while you lived at Saint Helena — to allow his daughter to become a friend of Napoleon!”
Betsy exclaimed, “Do not speak against my father!”
“Ha!” Her stepfather snorted with disdain. “Next you will be warning me to proceed easily with the name of Napoleon!”
“I do warn you,” she said with defiance. “Napoleon was my true friend!”
“Listen to her!” her burly stepfather exclaimed. And to Betsy he cried, “I vow you had no scruples of being in the company of an older man then!”
“Napoleon respected me,” she said. “He did not want to ravish me as your lecherous friend does!”
Sir John Cort told her angrily, “If Lord Dakin marries you, it will be as close as you can ever expect to your becoming a lady. If only in name!”
“Lord Dakin is a fine gentleman, my dear,” her mother said in a frightened voice.
Betsy smiled bitterly and told the two, “I suspect you need the match to replenish the family fortune. It is widely known that in your jaunts to London gaming houses you have squandered most of the fortune left by my father!”
“You hear that, madam!” her irate stepfather roared at her unfortunate mother. “This girl has no respect for me!”
“John!” Maria wailed pitifully.
At that moment Hobbs came into the room and cleared his throat to announce, “Lord Alfred Dakin’s coach is in the drive, sir!”
“Thank you, Hobbs, I shall go at once to greet him,” her stepfather said. And to them he went on scathingly, “It is not your daughter’s fault that he has not caught us all quarreling like drunken fishwives!” And he strode off to welcome his old friend.
Maria looked up at Betsy sadly as soon as they were alone. “I do wish you would try to get along with your stepfather.”
“I hate him!” Betsy said angrily. “I cannot conceal it!”
“He is only trying to arrange a suitable match for you. It is time you were married! Most of your friends are already raising children!”
“I can wait for marriage until I meet a man I love,” she told her mother.
“You may wait a lifetime without finding such a person,” Maria Cort lamented.
She knelt by her mother and said, “You above all people ought not to say that. I have such fond memories of your happy life with my father. Why did you have to marry again? And marry such a bounder as Sir John!”
Her mother whimpered, “I thought all men were like your father. Sir John flattered me and made so many promises — none of them which he bothered to keep. My only happiness rests in you!”
“And would you have me married to that old reprobate?”
“No,” her mother said. “But Sir John is so forceful. I cannot seem to prevail against him.”
“Then I promise you, I shall,” Betsy told her mother grimly. She stood up again as she heard the voices of her stepfather and Lord Alfred Dakin approaching.
Lord Dakin came strutting into the room resplendent in a pale yellow silken jacket and dark blue trousers. He wore a wig too black to look natural and somewhat ill fitting. His thin fece was powdered and rouged, and he studied her with his lorgnette held up to his watery blue eyes.
“Damme, you never looked more lovely!” he said in his high-pitched voice, ending with a giggle.
“My daughter has been looking forward to your visit,” Sir John Cort said, his eyes at the same time flashing a warning to Betsy not to deny this flagrant lie.
Her mother was on her feet and smiling at the ancient fop. “May I say how well you look, Lord Dakin. Your youthful appearance is the talk of London society. I have heard matrons whisper behind their fans that while their birth dates are the same as yours, you appear young enough to be their son!”
“Thank you, dear lady,” Lord Alfred Dakin said. “Perhaps it is because I prefer the company of the young, particularly in my bed, that I have retained my own youth!” He guffawed at his distasteful joke.
They all, with the exception of Betsy, joined in laughing at his sally. Sir John turned to her with a frown and asked, “Have you no word of greeting for Lord Alfred?”
“I’m sure he knows he is welcome enough here without my adding to his greeting,” she said quietly.
“True!” the old roué said, waving his jeweled lorgnette. “I need no reassurances from one who may soon share my love. A true Juliet and her Romeo, determined to be eternally youthful!” He giggled once again.
Even Sir John looked slightly disgusted at his performance and said, “Let us proceed to the dining room! I have your favorite pheasant and a bushel of fine oysters for your pleasure!”
So they proceeded to the dining hall. There at the elegant candlelit table a feast was served. Betsy tried to remain silent while the others kept up an unending conversation. The tales of the latest London scandals and the bon mots of the town gossips were repeated at the table with glee. Betsy tried to ignore the giggling and braying of the old man who would be her Romeo.
Shortly after the meal, when he approached her and made attempts to fondle her breasts covertly as they stood alone for a moment in the drawing room, she complained of a headache to him and hurried off to her room. She knew that her stepfather would be in a rage, but she did not care.
As she undressed for bed, she again thought of her visitor of the afternoon and his offer. Escape to London even in the pursuit of what might turn out to be a mad fantasy did not seem so farfetched to her now.
She had carefully locked the door to her bedroom, and so she fell asleep without any apprehensions. This made it all the more terrifying when she awakened in the middle of the night to hear a key being turned in the bedroom door. The moon shone into the room, flooding it with a cold blue light as she gazed at the door in consternation!
BETSY DREW the sheets up over her lightly covered rounded breasts as she watched with a feeling of horror as the door opened. She immediately guessed what was happening. Her stepfather had provided his lecherous friend with a duplicate key to her room! She was being offered to Lord Dakin as a tasty treat along with the pheasant and the oysters.
Now the door was opened, and the skinny Lord Alfred Dakin, clad only in a nightshirt which barely came to his hips, stood revealed before her. A mad, lustful smile was on his ugly old face as he closed the door behind him and began advancing to his bedside.
“My lovely!” he croaked.
She pulled away to the other side of the bed, crying out, “Don’t dare come near me!”
His answer was a throaty chuckle. He knelt on the bed, his nightshirt riding up so that the revolting ugliness of his dangling private parts was thrust toward her. She let out a cry of revulsion and got to her feet on her way to the door and escape!
With an agility surprising in one his age and probably produced only by his heightened state of lust, he scrambled across the bed like a schoolboy and then ran after her. He caught her before she reached the door and clasped one hand over her mouth and held her struggling body with the other arm.
All the while he crooned foul suggestions in her lovely ears. And as she struggled with him, he managed to tear at her thin nightgown until shortly she was completely naked. The awareness of her nudity seemed to spur him on more. With a mad strength he swung her around and flung her on the floor by the side of her bed!
Gasping from his exertions and giggling with glee, he held her down as he mounted her and prepared to ravish her. She was stunned for a moment after hitting the floor, but as her mind began to work again, she groped out wildly with her one free hand, seeking a weapon!