“Who is with Miss Clarinda?”
“One of the farmers, my Lord, a rough man and somewhat violent in his manner.”
Lord Melburne crossed the hall and opened the study door. As he did so, he heard a man saying,
“You’ll give me the money now or I be goin’ upstairs to demand it from Sir Roderick. I knows my rights and you’ll give it to me or it’ll be the worse for you.”
Lord Melburne advanced.
Clarinda was sitting at a large desk in the centre of the room. It was a man’s desk and it made her look very small and fragile.
Standing on the other side of it was a big burly man, dark haired and swarthy of skin, who was speaking with an accent that Lord Melburne recognised as being more likely to have come from Billingsgate than from the countryside.
“Can I perhaps be of assistance?” he then asked.
The man, who had his back to the door, turned quickly. His expression was aggressive and almost ferocious, but when he could see Lord Melburne, his expression changed and in an instant he became subservient.
“I were just askin’ for me just dues, sir,” he said surlily.
“They are not just, as you well know,” Clarinda retorted. “You had thirty pounds from the estate three weeks ago for repairs and, when I visited you last week, I could see no sign of them.”
“I ’ad to get the materials first, ’adn’t I?” the man countered rudely.
“I saw no sign of those either,” Clarinda answered him.
“I’ll be a talkin’ with Sir Roderick about the monies,” the man carried on.
It was quite obvious to Lord Melburne that it was a threat rather than any desire to see the owner of the estate.
“As Sir Roderick is not well,” Lord Melburne said, “I will send my Agent, Major Foster, over to your farm tomorrow. He will advise Miss Vernon as to whether or not you are entitled to any more payment.”
“I be entitled to it right enough,” the man persisted. “Mr. Nicholas knows ’ow much I be entitled to.”
“Then I would suggest that you go and ask Mr. Nicholas Vernon for your requirements,” Lord Melburne said and his voice was like a whip, “for I have a suspicion that you are neither a good farmer nor even a genuine one. Indeed I should not be surprised if the Bow Street Runners would not be interested in your whereabouts in this part of the country.”
Even as he spoke a complete transformation came over the man.
For one moment he looked as though he would defy Lord Melburne, then his defiance crumbled and, with a shifty surreptitious look towards the door, he said,
“I gets your meanin’, sir. No need to send anyone to the farm, I be a-clearin’ out.”
“I thought so,” Lord Melburne replied, “and the sooner the better. My Agent will come tomorrow to see if you have kept your word and departed.”
It was doubtful if the man heard the last part of Lord Melburne’s sentence. Already he was through the door, closing it sharply and they heard his footsteps hurrying across the hall.
Lord Melburne looked at Clarinda and saw that, although she held herself proudly, there was a touch of fear in her eyes.
“How did you know,” she asked, “that he was not what he seemed?”
“It was quite obvious that he was not a countryman,” Lord Melburne pointed out.
“Nicholas sent him here just two months ago,” she explained, “and I did not dare worry Uncle Roderick because he was so ill. I let him have the farm though I knew it was a mistake. He has been forcing me to give him money ever since.”
“Which farm is it?” Lord Melburne asked.
“The one at Coombe’s Bottom,” she answered.
He nodded.
“I know it. I will tell Foster to find you a decent tenant.”
“I don’t wish to put your Lordship to any unnecessary trouble,” Clarinda said in a low voice.
“Are there any more of Nicholas’s protégés on the estate at the moment?” he asked.
She hesitated a moment.
“You had much better tell me,” he suggested in a kind voice.
“There is only one,” she answered, “except for Walter, the footman, whom you saw this morning. Nicholas insisted on our employing him.”
“And the other?”
“A man who came here ten days ago. He wanted Dene’s Farm near the caves.”
As she spoke the words, the colour rose in her cheeks and Lord Melburne knew that she had heard about the caves.
“Who is this man?” he asked.
“He is very strange. He looks more like a Priest than a farmer. He had two men with him, I don’t know whether they were relations. Anyway Nicholas wrote me most insistently that he was to be given the farm. Someone must have told him that it was vacant.”
“And you gave it to him?” Lord Melburne enquired.
“What else could I do?” she asked. “I could not discuss new tenants with Uncle Roderick in his present state of health and I have no authority to refuse Nicholas. The man moved in, I understand, three days ago.”
“You did not like him?”
“There was something horrible about him,” she answered with a little shudder. “I cannot quite explain, but he frightened me.”
“I will tell Foster to look at that farm as well,” Lord Melburne proposed.
“I don’t want to trespass on your Lordship’s kindness,” Clarinda said, “but there does not seem for the moment anything else I can do.”
“I see it goes against the grain for you to accept any favours from me. Shall I promise you that I will not take advantage of your weakness?”
For a moment she raised her chin almost as though he had insulted her and then she said,
“I suppose you are right, my Lord, it is weakness. It is when you are up against people like that man you have just seen and also the one who has moved into Denes Farm, that one realises how hopeless it is to be a woman.”
“And you would prefer to be a man?” Lord Melburne asked, thinking how exquisitely feminine she looked with her big troubled eyes, a little droop at the corner of her lips and the much-washed white muslin revealing the soft curves of her breasts.
“I hate it, if you want to know!” she replied with a sudden rush of spirit. “I wish I was a man, a man who could fight and control such creatures as those, a man who did not have to coax, intrigue and beg for favours because he is too frail to demand them.”
Lord Melburne gave a cynical laugh.
“As you grow a little older, you will find it, I assure you, far easier to get what you want by being a beautiful woman rather than a brawny man.”
He spoke almost caressingly, simply because he was bemused by her loveliness.
She looked up at him in surprise and for a moment he held her eyes.
Then sharply she turned away and said in her most icy tone,
“As far as you are concerned, my Lord, I would most certainly wish to be a man.”
CHAPTER THREE
Lord Melburne awoke with a feeling of pleasurable anticipation that he had not felt since he was a boy.
For a moment he wondered where he was and then, seeing the carved posts of his huge bed silhouetted against the faint light peeping in through the sides of the curtains, he realised that he was still at Melburne.
He was conscious at the same time of a feeling of wellbeing and recognised that it was quite a long time since he had woken with such a clear head.
He had gone to bed early and, although he had expected to lie awake, he had slept almost as soon as his head touched the pillow.
His second day at home, although he had not expected it, had been extremely busy.
The wind coming through the open casement window blew the curtains apart and for a brief second a golden shaft of sunshine entered the room. It reminded him of Clarinda’s hair and he found himself thinking about her.
Lord Melburne was not a particularly conceited man, but he would have been a fool if he had not realised that, when a woman of any
age looked at him, her face softened and her eyes appreciated his good looks.
He would have been half-witted if he had not known that he had only to pay a woman a compliment or look at her admiringly for a gleam of excitement to show in her eye and that, when he kissed her hand, if his lips lingered on her soft skin, her breath came a little quicker between her parted lips.
And yet this country wench, this unsophisticated chit, who apparently had seen nothing at all of the world, could look at him with undisguised hatred and her voice when she spoke to him could be colder than the wind blowing from Siberia.
Why did she hate him?
What was the secret behind her hostility?
Lord Melburne was forced to admit that he was intrigued. He had expected to post back to London today bored with the country, eager for the companionship of his friends and the gaiety of the Clubs, the parties and the gaming halls they frequented so often.
But he knew now that he had no intention of leaving Melburne until he found the answer to a number of questions that puzzled him.
It was not only Clarinda who intrigued him.
Yesterday afternoon, after he had spent time with Sir Roderick, he and Major Foster had ridden out to look at the caves. It was many years since Lord Melburne had been that way and he noticed at once that the lane had been repaired and widened.
At one time it had been almost impossible to get even a horse with any ease between the trees and shrubs sloping down from the Chiltern Hills to the very edge of the farmed fields with their sprouting wheat.
But now what had been a track had become a road wide enough to allow the passage of a coach and four and, when they reached the caves themselves, it was to find that a large gravel sweep had been laid down outside the entrance and then the entrance itself had certainly been transformed.
Lord Melburne had looked at Major Foster.
“This has cost money,” he commented.
“It is exactly in the Dashwood tradition,” Major Foster murmured.
They both stared at the great wrought-iron gateway, at the moment securely held by a padlock. There were sconces on either side ready to hold flaring torches and there were yew trees, some obviously transplanted, some in large tubs and a general air of sophistication very different from the bramble-covered wilderness that Lord Melburne remembered as a boy.
A little further on they found a huge stack of chalk that had clearly been excavated from the caves themselves and a place where carriages could wait.
Then, as there seemed little more to see, they rode towards the small farmhouse only two hundred yards from the entrance to the caves and standing in the middle of lush green fields.
“Burrows, who farmed this land for forty years, died last month,” Major Foster said. “I understood that the place was empty.”
“Miss Vernon told me that it had been occupied in the last three days,” Lord Melburne said. “Nicholas Vernon sent down someone from London.”
“Another of his riff-raff!” Major Foster exclaimed. “You were right, my Lord, about the other man. When I visited the farm yesterday, he had cleared out. There was no one there.”
“I thought he would,” Lord Melburne said. “I suspicioned as soon as I looked at him that he was the type that would be wanted by the Bow Street Runners.”
“Heaven knows where Nicholas Vernon finds these people,” Major Foster muttered.
As they reached the farm, they drew in their horses for coming from the door towards them was a strange-looking man wearing an old and rather dilapidated cassock.
Lord Melburne saw at once why Clarinda had thought that he looked more like a Priest than a farmer. He was fat and his shaven face had an expression of one who is used to good living. His head was bare and what little hair he had was turning grey.
There was something in the expression on his face and in his narrow dark-circled eyes that struck Lord Melburne as being particularly unpleasant.
“What do you want?” the man asked in an educated voice.
“I am Lord Melburne, your near neighbour,” Lord Melburne replied, “and this is Major Foster, my Agent. I understand you are a newcomer here.”
“Have you any jurisdiction over this land?” the stranger in the cassock asked.
“No,” Lord Melburne replied, “we were just calling on you out of courtesy.”
“That is unnecessary,” he replied, “so I will bid you good day, gentlemen. I have no time to waste on callers.”
He turned as he spoke and walked back to the door of the farmhouse. The door closed behind him and Lord Melburne looked at Major Foster.
“Charming manners,” he said sarcastically, “and what the devil is he doing here?”
“I imagine that only Mr. Nicholas Vernon could supply the answer to that question.”
Lord Melburne glanced towards the caves.
“I dislike my own suspicions about him,” he said almost to himself.
They rode back towards the main highway.
“I wonder what I ought to do about all this?” Lord Melburne mused. “You might say it is none of my business, but with Sir Roderick so ill, Nicholas Vernon disinherited and that girl to all intents and purposes alone at The Priory, I feel I have a certain responsibility.”
“I think you have a very great responsibility, my Lord, if you will forgive my saying so,” Major Foster said. “You are of vast import in the County. I don’t think you can allow such scandals to continue unchecked.”
“I see what you mean,” Lord Melburne replied. “At the same time I have no desire to make allegations without being able to prove them. From all you tell me we have only the word of a village maiden, noted for being to let in the attic, that she has taken part in some sort of orgy and that she suspects the son of one of our most reputable landowners of having abducted her baby. Now you know as well as I do, Foster, that that sort of rumour would not hold water in any Court of Law.”
Major Foster sighed.
“No, indeed, my Lord, we will have to do better than that.”
“You will have to do better, you mean,” Lord Melburne said insistently. “Find out more, Foster, discover when Nicholas Vernon is holding his next party in the caves. If I am not very much mistaken, the person who could tell us that quite accurately is that seedy-looking Cleric we have just left at Dene’s Farm.”
“Why in Heaven’s name should Nicholas Vernon require a Parson?”
Lord Melburne looked at his Agent and made as if to answer his question and then he changed his mind.
“I am convinced,” he continued, speaking seriously, “that mere speculations on what has occurred are a mistake. We need facts, Foster, facts and proof that something untoward is taking place here.”
He brought his hand down hard on his saddle.
“Then I promise that I will go to the Lord Lieutenant, I will invoke the Law. I will bring in the Military if necessary. But I must then be absolutely sure before I make any accusations against Vernon or I could make myself a laughing stock.”
Lord Melburne had spoken positively and behaved, as he thought, with discretion. At the same time he knew that he was intensely curious.
The rest of the day was fully occupied by his Head Groom, who had several yearlings to show him and was most insistent that he should inspect some horses from a nearby stable that were up for sale.
Lord Melburne, after three hours of hard bargaining, obtained what he thought would prove to be three excellent hunters and returned home in a high good humour.
This morning, as he dressed with the assistance of his valet, he thought that perhaps Major Foster might have more information for him about the caves and, as he went down to breakfast, he admitted to himself that the situation at The Priory interested him far more than anything else had for a long time.
“Nice morning, Newman,” he said to his butler as he helped himself to a dish of veal cutlets cooked with cream and fresh mushrooms.
“It’s good to see your Lordship in such excellent health
,” Newman replied.
He was an elderly man who had faithfully served Lord Melburne’s father.
“I must come to the country more often,” Lord Melburne said, “it obviously agrees with me.”
“We shall be more than glad to welcome you, my Lord,” Newman answered and Lord Melburne knew that he was speaking the truth.
Having partaken of several dishes and sent his compliments to the cook, Lord Melburne went to the front door where his horse was waiting.
It was a black stallion with a touch of white in his two front fetlocks, a magnificent beast with Arab blood in him, which Lord Melburne had bought at Tattersalls six months ago, sent down to the country and had half-forgotten its very existence.
Now he looked at it appreciatively and realised with a feeling of acute pleasure that he was going to have some difficulty in holding the animal.
The horse was rearing up and it required two grooms to keep it under control until Lord Melburne was in the saddle.
“Saladin be over-fresh, my Lord,” one of the grooms remarked unnecessarily, as bucking and rearing the stallion pranced about the drive, doing its best to exert its supremacy over the man it sensed instinctively would eventually master him.
Lord Melburne took Saladin through the Park, checking him from a full gallop for fear of rabbit holes and made his way towards Dingle’s Ride, which was the traditional place on his estate to try out fresh horses.
Dingle’s Ride lay between the Melburne Estate and Sir Roderick’s. It consisted of a large wood and five hundred acres of land that were not worth cultivating. But through the centre of it ran a wide grassy ride that had been the delight of both families since the beginning of time.
Yet they fought over the ownership. On some of the ancient maps Dingle’s Ride was shown belonging to Melburne and on others to The Priory.
The ownership had been a lasting bone of contention ever since Lord Melburne could remember and now, with a little smile of triumph on his lips, he recalled that yesterday Sir Roderick had offered Dingle’s Ride to him as a present.
The Irresistible Buck Page 4
