Haunted

by Barbara Cartland

  “You did not expect anyone as countrified as me to realise it!”

  “That is something I would not say!” Charles protested.

  “No, but you thought it.”

  There was no chance to say any more for the signal came for Charles to take the bridle of Jimmy’s horse.

  Then the Marquis lifted the boy onto the saddle in front of him.

  “Now lean your head against my shoulder,” he ordered, “shut your eyes as if you are either unconscious or in pain and try to make your body as limp as possible.”

  “I have to start now?” Jimmy enquired.

  He looked through the trees as he spoke and saw that Heron Hall with its fine architectural facade was quite a long way from them.

  “You never know who might be watching,” the Marquis said, “and we cannot afford, Jimmy, to take any chances. Besides I think it would be a good idea for you to get yourself into the part you are about to play.”

  He went on very firmly,

  “You must be very convincing when I carry you into the house and up the stairs. And your sister will follow us looking worried and anxious about you.”

  “I commend you,” Charles volunteered mockingly. “I see you have all the art of the Cheltenham theatricals at your fingertips!”

  “Either we do it properly,” the Marquis riposted sharply, “or we send Lady Mimosa and her brother home to face whatever awaits them there, while we wash our hands in a pontifical manner and pretend their problems are not ours.”

  Lady Mimosa gave a little cry of protest and Charles said smiling,

  “I stand rebuked! I was, of course, only teasing, Drogo!”

  “Quite frankly, Charles,” the Marquis said, “I am taking this very seriously.”

  “How can you be so kind – so understanding?” Mimosa murmured. “When I came to see you, I was quite certain that you would send me away and tell me I was making a – fuss about nothing.”

  There was a rapt note in her voice that Charles did not miss.

  As the Marquis gave her one of his irresistible smiles, he thought that Drogo had made yet another conquest, which was not surprising, although he was doubtful if he would appreciate it.

  Compared to Lady Isme, Mimosa was very young, very unsophisticated and undoubtedly countrified.

  There was no artifice either in her manner or in her clothes.

  She did not disguise her gratitude nor did she make, Charles noticed, any of the provocative glances or movements that every woman in London affected when the Marquis was present.

  Instead she just looked at him wide-eyed as a child might have done and made no effort to hide her admiration.

  ‘The boy may not lose his life,’ Charles thought wryly, ‘but his sister will certainly lose her heart!’

  Equally he was so pleased that the Marquis should be intrigued by the problem that Lady Mimosa had brought him that he was more concerned with what his friend was feeling than with her.

  He was in fact extremely grateful to her for appearing at exactly the right moment.

  Following the Marquis’s instructions, Jimmy acted his part extremely well from the moment they drew up outside the front door of Heron Hall.

  As a groom came hurrying to the horses’ heads and the footmen ran down the steps, the Marquis said sharply,

  “His Lordship has had a fall! Send for Henson and Mrs. Dawson!”

  Mrs. Dawson was the housekeeper, and a footman immediately ran up the steps and into the house to find her.

  By the time that the Marquis had lifted Jimmy very carefully down from the saddle and had carried him into the hall and had started up the Grand Staircase, Mrs. Dawson, in rustling black silk with the silver chatelaine at her waist, was waiting on the landing.

  “Lord Petersfield has had a rather nasty fall out riding, Mrs. Dawson,” the Marquis said. “I suspect he may have slight concussion and should be put to bed.”

  “Yes, of course, my Lord,” Mrs. Dawson agreed. “He should be put in the ‘Stuart room.’

  The Marquis thought for a moment and then he said,

  “I think the ‘Charles II suite’ would be better.”

  “Very good, my Lord,” Mrs. Dawson agreed. “As I understand it, a room will also be required for the young lady.”

  “Lady Mimosa will, of course, wish to stay by her brother,” the Marquis said briefly, as they walked a little way down the corridor to the Charles II suite.

  It was very impressive and most attractive with a riot of cupids hovering on the ceiling, carrying a Royal crown in their hands.

  The carved and gilt bed, the mirrors and the furniture were also all embellished with the crown.

  Jimmy’s room was a little smaller than the one to be used by Mimosa.

  There was a boudoir adjoining them both and it was very much grander than anything Mimosa had ever seen before.

  She thought of the rather dull furnishings at her grandfather’s house and how exciting it was to be staying with somebody as prestigious as the Marquis.

  His possessions were, she knew, admired and envied by everybody who had ever seen them.

  After they had left the apparently unconscious Jimmy to be undressed by Henson and put between the sheets, Mimosa sat in the boudoir beside the Marquis and said in a low voice that could not be overheard by the servants,

  “Your house is magnificent, my Lord, and it is exactly right for you.”

  The Marquis looked amused.

  “What do you mean by that?” he asked.

  Mimosa glanced round the sitting room with its gilded Charles II furniture and high-backed tapestry-covered chairs before she replied,

  “I can understand that you expect perfection and therefore you achieve it!”

  “I think you are flattering me, Lady Mimosa,” the Marquis said. “At the same time I enjoy it and it is true I do crave perfection, but it is something unfortunately that is often out of reach.”

  “Not where you are concerned,” Mimosa said quickly.

  She did not look at him as she spoke and he had the feeling that she was not thinking of him as a man but more as something impersonal and Godlike, who could make such things possible.

  It was such an unusual way for him to be looked at by a young woman that for a moment he thought that he must be imagining what she was thinking.

  Then he was aware that strangely enough he could read her thoughts.

  He supposed it was because she was so simple and unaffected.

  And yet he told himself it was something he had never achieved before, unless as so often happened, the thoughts of the lady in question had been so banal, so ordinary and worse still suggesting the dreaded word monotonous, that it was impossible for him not to be fully aware of them.

  Aloud he said,

  “I have put you here, Lady Mimosa, for two reasons, first because I know you will appreciate these particular rooms and secondly because they are near to mine.”

  Her eyes turned to his enquiringly and he explained,

  “I am only a short way down the corridor. If by any chance you are disturbed, as you were last night, or afraid of any sort of danger, you must come to me at once. Do you understand?”

  She nodded and he knew that for a moment what he had said was such a relief that she could not find words to express it.

  Then she said in a low voice,

  “Thank you! Thank you very – very much, my Lord. There is nothing – else I can say at the moment.”

  “Do not thank me yet,” he said. “We have a long way to go before we can be sure that Jimmy is safe.”

  As he spoke, he saw the fear come back into Mimosa’s eyes.

  Then, as if she realised that because he was there nothing was so frightening as it had been before, she merely said,

  “I-I knew you were the – only person who could help – us.”

  Chapter Three

  When Mimosa was dressed for dinner, she went first to Jimmy’s room to see if he was all right.

  He was s
itting up in bed eating what she thought was a large supper including a dish filled with the chocolate pudding that the Marquis had said he had enjoyed as a boy.

  Jimmy grinned when he saw his sister and called out,

  “Ripping food! Far better than we get at home!”

  Mimosa looked anxiously towards the door.

  “Be careful!” she warned in a low tone. “You are supposed to be suffering from concussion!”

  “That’s all right,” Jimmy replied. “Henson, his Lordship’s valet, has told me to eat anything I want and he will say downstairs that as I was not hungry he finished my dinner for me!”

  Mimosa laughed.

  She knew Jimmy’s little ways of always getting what he wanted.

  “I will come to see you after dinner,” she promised, “and then you should try to go to sleep early. I am sure that there will be lots of exciting things to talk about tomorrow.”

  She did not add that she was tired having stayed awake all the night before, not only terrified by what had happened but also turning over and over in her mind who she could turn to for help.

  She was not quite certain why the Marquis had occurred to her and how she was sure that he was exactly the person she needed.

  It was almost as if she saw him, as she had done once or twice in the past, taking a fence out hunting or competing in a steeplechase.

  He had been young in those days and she had been merely a child and yet she had remembered him.

  The last time she had seen him had been five years ago, shortly before he had left for Portugal.

  And yet clearly, almost as if he was a picture in a book, she had seen him in front of her eyes and it was as if somebody had told her that he could save Jimmy.

  It all seemed extraordinary and even more incredible that she was now a guest in his house and she was sure that whatever ghastly plots her cousin Norton Field was concocting the Marquis would defeat him.

  She had been told by Mrs. Dawson that they were to meet in the Blue Drawing Room before dinner.

  This was a room she had not yet seen and when she was shown into it by a footman she felt as if she was stepping into a dream.

  Never had she imagined that a room could be so lovely with its blue brocade walls, huge chandeliers and a profusion of Sèvres china, whose blue matched the covering of the carved and gilt furniture.

  After a quick glance, she had eyes only for the Marquis and Charles Toddington, who were standing at the far end of the room, each with a glass of champagne in his hand.

  As she walked towards them, she was very conscious of how resplendent they both looked in their evening clothes and how dowdy she must look in comparison.

  There was another reason to make her eyes look worried and it had followed her down the stairs and into the Blue Drawing Room.

  As she dropped the Marquis a graceful curtsey, she said,

  “I am afraid, my Lord, I have some explaining to do, and I do hope that you will not think it very intrusive of me to have – my dog with – me.”

  The Marquis had already noticed the small attractive brown and white Spaniel that had come with her into the room.

  He smiled and then held out his hand to the dog, saying dryly,

  “Another unexpected guest!”

  “If you insist, I will send him back,” Mimosa said quickly, “but your valet told me that, when he arrived to collect our luggage, the servants told him that Hunter was in such a state because I was not there that they were afraid he would run away to look for me.”

  “So his name is Hunter!” the Marquis remarked.

  “Jimmy christened him that because he was always hunting for something and it is certainly true that he might have run away to hunt for me and got lost.”

  The Marquis knew from the way Mimosa was speaking that it was another plea for him to understand and to accept her dog.

  To put her at her ease, he smiled and said,

  “As I can understand Hunter’s devotion to you, I am very pleased for him to stay here, as long as he behaves himself.”

  “Thank you, my Lord!” Mimosa cried. “I promise you that he will be very very good. He always does as I tell him.”

  Hunter was licking the Marquis’s hand and wagging his tail as if he understood that he had been accepted.

  Then the Marquis suggested,

  “Now I will get you a glass of champagne, Lady Mimosa, and I think that we should all drink to the success of our campaign against what I am beginning to think may be a very formidable enemy.”

  “I cannot believe he is worse than Napoleon!” Charles teased. “After all, although it took time, we defeated him in the end.”

  “I think in these circumstances the one thing we do not have is time,” the Marquis remarked.

  He passed a glass of champagne to Mimosa and, as she took it from him, he said,

  “I cannot contemplate weeks, let alone months, of you looking as worried as you do now. You must trust me and believe that you were right in coming to me for help.”

  “I am quite – quite sure of that,” Mimosa said quickly, “but I cannot help worrying, not only about Jimmy – but because we are being a problem to you.”

  “As I have already told you that is a very good thing!” Charles interposed. “You have given us something new to think about, Lady Mimosa, besides cabbages and turnips and I, for one, am very grateful!”

  Mimosa understood that he was deliberately talking lightly and she forced a smile to her lips and took a sip of champagne before she said,

  “I cannot believe anybody could be as lucky as I am to have two such fearless Knights ready to destroy the dragon.”

  Charles laughed and replied,

  “Nothing could describe Drogo better. He has always been a Knight Errant, looking for a maiden in distress. And now he has found one!”

  “You are letting your imagination run away with you, Charles,” the Marquis pointed out.

  At the same time he was smiling.

  He refilled his friend’s glass and, as he did so, Mimosa said,

  “It is very exciting for me to be here at Heron Hall, which I have always been told is very beautiful. But I am afraid you will think that it is very unconventional for me not to be in mourning considering that my grandfather has only recently died.”

  She looked down at her simple muslin gown, which the Marquis recognised as being made of a cheap material that no lady he was acquainted with would have condescended wearing.

  But on Mimosa, because it was so plain while it was fashionable since the war for gowns to be decorated round the hem and bodice, it made her look very childlike.

  The worried look, however, was back in her large eyes as she explained,

  “There has been little time since the funeral for me to go shopping, especially as I have been so perturbed over what was happening to Jimmy.”

  “Charles and I understand,” the Marquis replied soothingly, “and personally I have always abominated the gloom of mourning, which seems completely out of keeping with the message of Christianity which is, of course, a belief in the Resurrection.”

  He spoke in the controversial tone that he used when he and Charles were arguing over abstract subjects that were not of any interest to their brother Officers.

  Then, to his surprise, Mimosa answered him quickly,

  “I am so glad that you feel like that, my Lord. It is what I have always thought myself and so did Mama. She always said that mourning was wrong because there was no death for those who had died and we were crying for ourselves and not for them.”

  She paused and then she said in a low voice almost as if she was talking to herself,

  “That was why she was so anxious to be with Papa.”

  The Marquis’s eyes were on Mimosa’s face as if he was taking part in a conversation he had never expected to have with a woman as young as Mimosa.

  He could not remember such a subject arising with any of the sophisticated beauties he spent his time with in London.
r />   Aloud he said,

  “As you live in the country and we have so much to do in the next few weeks and I think it unlikely that we shall be entertaining in any way, I should just dress as you wish and forget the conventions, which are always extremely dull and, as you have just said, often unsuitable.”

  Mimosa’s eyes lit up.

  Then as she looked at him, she said,

  “I might have guessed you would think like that! And yet I suppose I always knew that you would be original in what you thought as well as in what you did.”

  Once again Charles thought as he listened that she was complimenting the Marquis in a different way from what he might have expected.

  He also noticed that Mimosa’s appraisement of him was somehow quite impersonal and expressed in the same way that she would have admired a fine picture or piece of furniture in the house.

  Now for the moment the worry had gone from her eyes and she smiled as a child might have done as she said ingenuously,

  “Now I no longer feel embarrassed as I did when I came down the stairs, worried not only because I had to introduce Hunter to you but also in case you thought I did not know how to behave properly.”

  The Marquis chuckled.

  “I think you behave impeccably, Lady Mimosa, and so, I might add, does Hunter!”

  The Marquis looked as he spoke at the Spaniel who was sitting at Mimosa’s feet, his eyes looking from one to the other of the people standing round him almost as if he was listening to what they were saying.

  “Hunter and I are very grateful for those kind words, my Lord,” Mimosa replied.

  For a moment her hand rested on her dog’s head.

  They went into dinner and to the Marquis’s surprise he found himself embroiled in a serious and extremely interesting conversation on the conventions of different religions and the attitude they held to death.

  It ranged from the Pharaohs of Egypt, who were buried with their possessions and even their servants so that they should be comfortable in the next world, to suttee whereby Hindu widows threw themselves on their husbands’ funeral pyres.

  To both men’s surprise, Mimosa was able to take part in the conversation in a way that told them she was very well read and extremely knowledgeable on subjects that most women would be completely ignorant about.