“My dear Buck, he is very rich and gives the most amusing parties. I grant you he is not particularly prepossessing, in fact I always think that there is something sinister about him. Olivia thinks that he is the most depraved man she has met and she swears, although I don’t believe she knows what she is talking about, that he is a Satanist,”
“Go on,” Lord Melburne said sharply.
He was suddenly alert and his boredom had vanished. He was like a hunter who sees the tracks of his prey and knows that he must follow them.
“We were all talking,” Lady Romayne continued, “when suddenly Nicholas Vernon was announced. I looked up in surprise, I really was astonished to see him. He had never called on me before.”
“What did he say?” Lord Melburne enquired.
“He bowed over my hand, apologised for intruding and said he had long been meaning to pay his respects, but was not certain of my address. I had a suspicion, of course, that this was not true and he had another reason for coming, but all I could do was to smile and introduce him to my friends. Then I heard him saying in a low voice, which he did not think I could overhear, to Sir Gerald Kegan,
“‘I was told I would find you here’.”
“What else did he say?” Lord Melburne demanded.
“You know, Buck, I have very acute hearing,” Lady Romayne said. “I had crossed the room to the bell-pull, which was quite near to them. I heard Nicholas Vernon continue, ‘I am arranging a special meeting tomorrow night. Something has occurred that makes it imperative to hold one.’ ‘Tomorrow night?’ Sir Gerald said in that unpleasant voice of his, which, I do not know why, always makes me shudder.”
“What else did he say?” Lord Melburne asked impatiently.
“He added,” Lady Romayne continued, ‘I shall be there, Nicholas.’ ‘So I must tell the others,’ Nicholas Vernon told him, ‘and I do promise you, Gerald, it will be a very special meeting. Incidentally I shall need your help, so drive down with me.’ ‘And our Venus, is she lovely?’ Sir Gerald then asked. ‘You will find her exquisite and completely – untouched,’ Nicholas replied.”
Lord Melburne did not speak and Lady Romayne went on,
“Then they moved apart and Nicholas Vernon, lifting my hand to his lips, suddenly said in a loud voice,
“‘I must now leave you, my Lady, but before I go I have some information that I feel will be of interest to you.’
“He looked at me with those dark eyes of his and I had the feeling he was deliberately being unpleasant, that he desired to hurt me and make me unhappy.
“‘What is it?’ I enquired’.”
“‘I have just learnt the news,’ he replied, ‘that your cousin is affianced to my father’s niece – Clarinda Vernon.’
“‘My cousin?’ I asked and as I spoke I knew what the answer would be.
“‘Yes, your cousin – Lord Melburne,’ he said. ‘His estates march with mine. I shall be seeing him tomorrow, shall I offer him your congratulations?’”
Lady Romayne’s expression darkened.
“He was being deliberately cruel, Buck, I knew it. He was just trying to make me look foolish in front of my friends, He knew we had been talked about, you and I, and he wished to humiliate me.”
“What did you say?” Lord Melburne asked.
“For a moment I was speechless,” Lady Romayne answered, “and then, as he walked to the door, he looked back and laughed, an unpleasant laugh, a mocking one and a sound I can hardly describe.
“‘Yes, they are affianced,’ he said, ‘but it will not be for long’.”
“Are you sure that is exactly what he said?” Lord Melburne said and his tone was harsh and insistent.
“Yes, I am quite sure,” Lady Romayne said. “I have told you exactly what happened.”
“Then listen,” Lord Melburne said and he had a purposeful air about him. “I must leave at once. Go back to London, I cannot wait to see you off. I cannot explain, but I assure you it is of the utmost import.”
“Why, Buck, why?” Lady Romayne enquired, her voice rising almost shrilly.
Then she realised that, without even waiting to answer her, Lord Melburne had left the room and she was now alone in the Blue Salon.
Lord Melburne hurried across the hall.
“My carriage,” he demanded, “I need my carriage immediately.”
“I ordered it for six o’clock, my Lord,” the butler told him
“I must leave now,” Lord Melburne said. “Send someone to fetch it.”
The butler snapped his fingers and one of the footmen ran through the door and hurried off towards the stables.
“You will not be changing, my Lord?” the butler enquired.
“No,” Lord Melburne answered, “there is no time.”
He took his top hat, set it on his head and then stood tapping his foot impatiently until the closed carriage came hastily round from the stables.
He almost ran down the steps and reached the carriage door before the footman had time to open it.
“The Priory,” he said sharply to the coachman, “and hurry!”
The horses were fresh and they took a comparatively short time to traverse the few miles that lay between the two houses. Lord Melburne was tense as he sat back against the soft-cushioned seat.
He wondered as they went whether he would be wise to get hold of Major Foster first. Then he realised with the instinct of a man who has been a soldier and planned his operations with an eye to detail that the first objective must be to make sure that Clarinda was still at The Priory.
It seemed absurd even to contemplate such an idea, but something had told him with a terrifying clarity that she was in appalling danger.
It was, of course, unthinkable that Nicholas, who after all had been born a gentleman, would involve Clarinda in the filth and degradation of his Hell Fire Club.
But he had said to Gerald Kegan, ‘she is exquisite and untouched’.
How many women did Nicholas know who came into that category?
Lord Melburne was aware that the woman who took part in the Ceremony of the Black Mass was referred to as ‘The Venus’.
And she must by custom be pure and a virgin!
Lord Melburne thought of Sir Gerald Kegan and his fists clenched automatically. He was a lecher of the worst type, a man with such an unsavoury reputation that, unless he had been extremely wealthy, there would have been no lady’s drawing room he could set foot in.
He remembered Sir Gerald had a reputation for liking very young girls. He had heard men laugh about him in the Club. He had heard him spoken about as being a frequenter of the bawdy houses that supplied their clients with maidens fresh from the country, often recruited by the despicable method of meeting stagecoaches at their London terminus.
An innocent young girl coming to London in search of employment would find herself bewildered and frightened by the noise and crowds. She was therefore only too glad to avail herself of the help proffered by some respectable-looking middle-aged woman who would whisk her away to a brothel before she had any idea of what was happening.
It was these notorious establishments that catered for the perverted tastes of gentlemen like Gerald Kegan and Nicholas Vernon. They were both, Lord Melburne thought, despicable characters, men without principle, without decency and without honour.
He clenched his hands until the knuckles showed white. He knew now only too well what Lady Romayne had described as an unpleasant look in Nicholas’s eyes. And he was sure, as he had never been sure before, that the stories about the Hell Fire Caves were not exaggerated.
He had learnt now who paid for them. Kegan’s wealth had been at Nicholas’s disposal for the excavations, the furnishings and doubtless the food and wine that would be required in vast quantities for the type of companions who would wish to be members of such a Club.
It would have been Kegan’s money that provided the wagonloads of women brought down London. Women who would do anything for gold and submit to whatever beastlin
ess was required of them to satisfy gentlemen who could pay as well as Nicholas would be able to do with Kegan’s backing.
‘God, if only I had known of this before,’ Lord Melburne exclaimed to himself.
Then he knew that, as he had said to Major Foster, he needed proof before he could act.
‘But supposing,’ some quiet voice within him asked, “supposing that the proof is to be Clarinda?”
‘It is ridiculous, it is unthinkable,’ his common sense replied and yet his instinct told him that Clarinda was in deadly danger.
She was innocent and exquisite and had undoubtedly incurred the enmity of Nicholas Vernon by becoming the heiress to the lands and fortune of which he had been disinherited.
‘Why could I not have guessed something like this would happen?’ Lord Melburne asked himself. ‘I should have taken her away from The Priory, where there is only a dying man and a few old servants to protect her. I should have been on my guard as soon as I had learnt that a prying footman had carried a message to London.’
He had forgotten that he had told himself it was none of his business, forgotten that he did not wish to be involved and forgotten that only this morning he had decided that when Sir Roderick was dead his part would have been played and he would have no share or interest in Clarinda’s future.
Now he knew that he must save her, save her from a peril so appalling that he could not even think of it clearly or put it into words.
The horses were moving at a quick pace, but he rapped on the glass window.
“Quicker,” he demanded of the coachman, “go quicker.”
They went down The Priory drive at a speed that made the lightly sprung coach rock as if it was on a rough sea. As they drew up at the entrance, Lord Melburne opened the carriage door and stepped out before the footman could get down from the box.
Bates was standing in the open doorway.
“Your Lordship, thank God you have come!”
“What has happened? Where is Miss Clarinda?” Lord Melburne demanded.
It was then Betty, who ran forward, tears running down her cheeks and her eyes red from crying.
“Oh, your Lordship, Mr. Nicholas has taken her away. She whispered to me as I put on her cloak, ‘tell his Lordship, the caves’.”
“The caves,” Lord Melburne repeated and knew it was what he had expected to hear. “How long since they left? Did Miss Clarinda go willingly?”
“I think she had no choice, my Lord,” Betty said. “There was Mr. Nicholas and another gentleman, a middle-aged man who looked – if your Lordship will forgive me – a wicked person.”
“I know who you mean,” Lord Melburne nodded briefly.
“Miss Clarinda was very pale,” Betty went on. “She held her head high, but I’m sure, my Lord, that she was frightened. She made an excuse that the roses on the front of her dress had come undone so that she could whisper to me, but her hands were tremblin’ so that if they had been loose it would have been impossible for her to fasten them.”
“How long since they left,” Lord Melburne asked.
“About half an hour ago,” Bates answered.
Lord Melburne, without a word, turned, ran down the steps and entered his coach.
“Where to, my Lord?” the footman enquired.
“Turn right when you leave the lodge gates,” he said, “go down the road for about two miles and I will tell you when to turn off. And hurry!”
“Very good, my Lord.”
The horses started off and Lord Melburne lay back in the coach. Those who had been with him in the War would have known by the set of his chin and the expression on his face that he was at his most formidable.
When the battle was at its fiercest and they were hard pressed, the men serving under him had always looked to Lord Melburne for a change of tactics, a different approach or a brilliant idea which would often turn defeat into a victory.
But Lord Melburne knew that this situation was something so difficult and unusual that for the moment it seemed to him that his brain was not working and he was stunned into a kind of vacancy that gave him no idea of what he must do or even an indication of the first steps he must take.
He was fully aware that Clubs such as Nicholas had in the chalk caves were not only conducted with utmost secrecy because their members were afraid of being exposed but were usually over-subscribed rather than in need of new associates. It would not be a question of bribing himself into the place nor of entering it by force.
He had seen the entrance when he visited it with Major Foster and he knew that one man with a pistol could keep a whole legion of intruders at bay without the slightest difficulty.
It would be no use blundering up to the place and demanding Clarinda. They could lock the gates and laugh at his endeavours to save her. And all the money in the world would not get him past the gatekeeper if the man was a loyal servant to Nicholas Vernon.
He thought of the brusqueness with which the Priest had refused to speak to him and he knew with a sudden despondency why a Priest was necessary and why Nicholas had insisted on his being given the tenancy of Dene’s Farm. A discredited Priest who would perform the Black Mass and, if necessary, perform a marriage!
As for Clarinda, he hardly dared think of her and what she must be suffering. She was so young, so pitifully young and inexperienced.
She could never in her wildest dreams have possibly imagined the licentiousness of men dedicated to the worship of Satan, men in whom the last remnants of decency were dead, so that an innocent and untouched girl meant something very different to them from what she meant to other men.
‘God save her,’ Lord Melburne muttered beneath his breath and it was a prayer that came from the very depths of his heart.
CHAPTER SIX
As the carriage came to a stop, Nicholas and Sir Gerald Kegan drew black masks from their pockets and put them over their eyes.
It gave them a sinister appearance, which made Clarinda feel even more acutely than she had before that her self-control was on the verge of breaking and she would scream.
For one wild moment she thought, as she stepped from the coach, that she might run away.
But she knew that Nicholas had not boasted when he had said that he had been a good runner and the same pride that had come to her assistance at The Priory made her feel that she could not humiliate herself by trying to escape only to be recaptured in front of the servants.
“We are early,” Sir Gerald Kegan remarked as they alighted.
Nicholas looked round to see only a very few carriages and a big covered wagon parked outside the caves.
“It will be extremely crowded later on,” he replied. “Nearly everyone I have spoken to was determined to be present on this auspicious occasion.”
He took Clarinda’s arm and his eyes glittering through the mask made her feel that she was already in the presence of some devouring demon.
“The celebrated Wedding of the Master,” he mocked, “Is something that every member wishes to celebrate.”
She made no effort to reply to him. She felt as if her voice had died in her dry throat. A fear such as she had never before experienced was sweeping over her as Nicholas led her through the great iron gateway behind which at a table sat a man in livery.
Clarinda had a glimpse of a pistol in his belt and she knew that it was to repel intruders. She felt despairingly that Lord Melburne would never get past him.
“Your badges, gentlemen?” the man in uniform asked and then added,
“I know you, Mr. Vernon.”
But he put out his hand to Sir Gerald, who drew something from his waistcoat pocket, showed it and put it back again.
There were footmen in attendance as they went down the strange passageway which had been burrowed, as Clarinda recognised, out of the chalk rock.
Although it was hung with red velvet curtains and the floor was carpeted, the ceiling was left white and bare and occasionally on the red carpet beneath her feet Clarinda could see small pie
ces of chalk that had fallen down, as if to remind those who entered that they were going down deep into the bowels of the earth.
There were candles to light the way set in sconces, which were either fashioned in the grinning mask of some terrifying monster or so obscene in design that even if Clarinda had looked at them she would not have understood what they depicted.
The passageway descended sharply. Then there was the sound of voices and Nicholas led her through a doorway covered with a hanging curtain into what seemed a comparatively large room.
There was a woman standing in the centre of it and for a moment Clarinda had a gleam of hope as she realised that she was dressed as a nun. Then, as she heard Nicholas address her familiarly, she realised that the face of the supposed nun was rouged and painted, her eyes mascaraed and her lips vermilion red.
“Good evening, Moll, my dear,” Nicholas greeted her. “I was hoping you would be here in plenty of time. I have brought you the prettiest Venus you have ever seen.”
He pulled Clarinda forward as he spoke and the woman’s hard eyes flickered over her.
“Pretty enough!” she said in a common voice. “But they all starts like that.”
“Prepare her now for the ceremony,” Nicholas commanded. “Tell her what to expect and warn her to behave herself. If she is hysterical, drug her.”
He turned as he spoke and looked back at Sir Gerald, who had followed them.
“You have the stuff, Gerald,” he said, “give it to Moll.”
“I thought Sir Gerald would be ’ere this evening,” Moll said with an almost insolent note in her voice. “What part are you to play then in the evenin’ activities, my fine gentleman, or needn’t I ask the question?”
“Alas, mine is a merely subsidiary part,” Sir Gerald replied. “The Master insists on his rights. But perhaps he will feel more generous-hearted before the evening is out.”
“No,” Nicholas said firmly, “I have told you why I intend to be the first. But I have no time to waste talking. Get on with your work, Moll. I have a deal to see to. Tonight is to be the most memorable night the Club has ever known, a night we shall all remember for the rest of our lives.”
The Irresistible Buck Page 9
