‘Emma, what you’re saying, what you are suggesting, is that I might have been his murderer. Then aren’t you afraid to meet me alone on the moor? Do you not hesitate to throw such a challenge at me?’
She shook her head. To be afraid was to put a value upon life, she told herself. And if Matthew should admit his guilt, if he was in fact a murderer, then life and living had no more meaning for her.
‘You don’t believe it!’ he exclaimed joyfully. ‘You could not believe it of me. Admit that, Emma!’
‘I want not to believe it.’
‘Then don’t, for I swear to you it isn’t true. I will tell you everything about my encounter with the man that day. I had never seen him in my life before, but he knew who I was. I had ridden into Bythorpe in the morning, and as I was returning home I found him waiting on the road near the gates of Oakroyd House. He accosted me, demanding to know if I was the man who had done a lagging in Australia. I confirmed the fact, and asked him who he was and why he wanted to know. But he merely gave an unpleasant smirk and said he’d answer that when I produced fifty pounds. He claimed he could tell me things worth that much and more. I laughed in his face, and asked him if he took me for a fool – at which he turned on his heel and began to walk away, calling back that he’d be at the spot near the river where you saw us, Emma, in the afternoon. Bring fifty gold sovereigns with you, he said, and you’ll learn what you’ve longed to know ever since you got the boat – he meant since I was transported.’
‘So you went to meet him with the fifty pounds?’
‘No! It might have been a trick to get me alone in a quiet spot with money in my pocket, where I could be set upon by his accomplices. I went with no money, and challenged the man to give me proof of his good faith. At the very least, I insisted., he must indicate what it was he had to reveal before I’d be prepared to consider handing over such a large sum. Eventually he told me he could put a name to the killer of Hugh Hardaker.’
Emma caught her breath. ‘He really said that?’
‘He did! I admit I tried to put the fear of God into him with mention of taking him to law, but to no purpose. He said he would deny everything. So in the end I promised to bring him the money the following day, and said he should have it if he could convince me that his information was true.’ Matthew sighed. ‘The rest you know. Someone killed him that same night.’
Emma said faintly, on a breath, “Who, Matthew – who?’
‘I wish to heaven I knew! If there’s any truth in what he claimed, it’s unlikely he was a complete stranger to Bythorpe, as is believed. The man must have had some sort of link with these parts.’
‘He was no stranger,’ Emma confirmed. ‘Ursly knew him, she recognised him. His cart was pulled up by the roadside and he was lying down in the bracken. He called out some surly remark as we passed. Ursly couldn’t see him properly, being so near-sighted, but she recognised his voice. She called him Johnny Gone-tomorrow.’
‘What did she tell you about him?’
‘She was reticent, merely saying she knew him from a long time ago. And she obviously disliked him very much; hated him, I think. She reckoned he was up to no good here, and said that clearing out of Bythorpe before was the best day’s work he ever did. But I couldn’t persuade her to tell me any more.’
Matthew’s eyes were narrowed in thought. ‘As I recall, Ursly is a tiny woman, and must be quite old by now. Surely she couldn’t have —’
Shocked at the idea, Emma protested, ‘No, no, it’s out of the question!’
‘Nevertheless, she can tell me more about this fellow. I shall go and see her.’
‘Ursly’s a stubborn old woman, Matthew. If she doesn’t want to talk, she won’t talk, no matter how hard you press her. I know her.’
‘Well then, there must be other people who could tell me something about the man, now that we know what he was called.’
Emma caught his arm in sudden panic. ‘But you can’t admit to knowing his name,’ she said, ‘or anything else about him. If it came out about your rendezvous with him, would your story be believed? You might put yourself in serious danger.’
He acknowledged the truth of this. For a moment they remained motionless, her fingers still touching his sleeve; then slowly Matthew’s hand came up and he slid it over hers. This simple gesture made Emma aware of the surging emotion within her and, afraid of it, she drew back from him abruptly.
Studying her face and trying to penetrate her mind, he said, ‘There’s something else, isn’t there? You demand complete honesty from me, Emma, but I must know your questions first. Tell me what disturbs you, and I will answer frankly.’ When she did not reply, he grew insistent. ‘Please, Emma – something concerning me is causing you distress. I have to know what it is.’
‘Blanche! ‘ The name slipped out against her will, and she flinched back from Matthew’s quick frown.
‘Blanche! What about her?’
‘You and she – Uncle Randolph talks as if there’s something between you – an understanding.’
‘That’s utter nonsense!’
‘Blanche doesn’t seem to think it’s nonsense.’
‘Has she said something to you?’ he demanded.
‘No, not to me. But from the way my uncle was talking, it is clear that Blanche is making no attempt to deny a relationship between you.’
‘You already know what there is between us, Emma. I still believe it’s a possibility that Blanche’s husband killed your father, but so far I’ve been unable to obtain any clear evidence. My attempt to track down his missing greatcoat was a total failure, as also was my search for gaming houses where William Hardaker might have been known. Fifteen years is a long time ago and things have changed in the gambling world – I gather that a recent Act of parliament has almost put such places out of business. Accordingly, I went back to Blanche as my only source of information. I became all the more curious, indeed, when you told me yourself that Blanche must be considered the most likely person to have forced open your deed box. I have seen her on several occasions now; trying, as casually as possible, to get her talking freely. As yet, though, nothing further has come to light.’
‘And that is all?’
‘Yes, Emma, that is all.’
‘You’re not being honest with me,’ she accused. ‘There is much more between you and Blanche than that – I can feel it. I have known it from the moment I witnessed your meeting in the drawing room at Bracklegarth Hall. I have never before been so vividly aware of a relationship between a man and a woman.’
For a few moments his eyes lingered on her, then he turned away and gazed out across the wild empty moorland. Above them, the sky had changed from the colour of brass to a threatening coppery red, and the air was hot and breathlessly still.
Matthew’s voice was harsh against the silence. ‘You shall hear it all, then. I will hold nothing back. I knew Blanche well at one time, in the days before I was arrested and charged. Exceedingly well!’ He swallowed, then swung back to her, his dark eyes gleaming in that strange, oppressive light. ‘I won’t mince matters – we were lovers. Lovers! My God, the word means nothing when it can be used to describe such differing emotions! Keep this in mind, Emma, I was a mere youth, not quite eighteen when it all began. Blanche was beautiful – she is still a beautiful woman. I was overwhelmed that she should notice me, and was soon utterly bewitched by her. To me she represented all that was wonderful in a woman, all that was perfect. I called it love, of course, and I was equally convinced that Blanche loved me – she protested she did, time and again. I know better now, can see that she was bored with her marriage, and the risks involved in an illicit affaire brought an exciting spice of danger to her life.’
Matthew seemed to have come to the end of what he was prepared to tell her, and Emma prompted him. ‘You had better go on.’
‘No doubt I sound bitter. I am bitter! But in those days Blanche brought an enchantment into my life that I’d never thought possible. Can you imagine my bewi
lderment, then, the feeling that the world was crumbling beneath my feet, when she made no attempt to save me from being convicted of manslaughter?’
‘How could she have saved you?’ Emma asked in a tense whisper.
‘Don’t you understand, even now! I was with Blanche that night, the night your father died. As always, we spent our time together in the gazebo in the corner of her garden. After I left her, Blanche returned there for some piece of jewellery she’d forgotten. That was when she nearly ran into her husband – you remember? But at the hour your father must have been killed the two of us were together. Blanche knew – she knew with utter certainty that I could not be guilty. Yet she stayed silent when I was charged with the crime; she sat unprotesting throughout my trial while the evidence piled up against me. Even when I was sentenced to fourteen years transportation she still said nothing. Her excuse now is that her intervention would have served no purpose; that she would have been thought to be perjuring herself to protect her lover. It would not have saved me, she claims, yet would have ruined her. Blanche supposes I accept the reasonableness of her argument and do not blame her for making no effort to save me. But is love – true love – ever so coldly calculating? Does any woman in love counterweigh the pros and cons like that? No, I’m convinced that it never once entered Blanche’s head to protect me – not at such cost to herself.’
‘I – I cannot blame you for feeling harshly towards her,’ Emma murmured in a small voice.
‘And can you blame me, either, for making use of Blanche now to achieve my objective? When we first met again, at Bracklegarth Hall, I could read in her eyes that she was a frightened woman. I perceived at once that she could be valuable to me. Within minutes, when she realised I wasn’t going to denounce her there and then, she became bolder. By the time she went home that evening, I believe she was half convinced that we would soon be back on our former terms, if not closer. Being widowed now, there was no reason for secrecy – marriage figured on the horizon. Oh yes, I could see it all in her scheming mind.’
Emma was trapped in a whirlpool of conflicting emotions. There was a feeling of joy, an easing from the torment of jealousy. And yet it frightened her to hear him talk of Blanche with such scathing contempt; a fear more for Matthew than for her aunt. What had those terrible years of hardship and suffering done to him? Would the scars never fade from his mind? Had rancour taken hold of his spirit like some malignant growth, and would he never again be free of it?
‘Matthew, I believe you’re wronging yourself by what you are doing,’ she said. ‘I hold no brief for Aunt Blanche. What she did was despicable, unforgivable. But wouldn’t it be better, rather than playing this hateful game of deceit with her, to let her know the measure of your contempt? And break off all association with her?’
He raised his hand to protest, then let it fall back limply.
‘It was hatred which sustained me during those long cruel years in Van Diemen’s Land. It kept me alive. And now you want to rob me of it!’
‘But it was different then,’ she objected. ‘Now you’re a free man, and you can look to the future. Naturally you want to clear your name, but not by these means, Matthew, I beg you.’
His mouth tightened and he said sarcastically, ‘Your life has been too easy, Emma, too cosseted and comfortable. You know nothing of the harsh world outside, or you wouldn’t talk in such a way. Why, I almost believe you’ll be asking me next to forgive Blanche.’
‘Don’t mock me!’ she flashed. ‘What I am saying is what I truly believe to be for the best, for your own sake. And I would remind you that my safe sheltered life is not of my own choosing. I long to venture forth in the world and do something useful.’
‘I am sorry, Emma. I was carried away.’ He gave her a twisted smile. ‘I’m well aware that you have your own burden to bear.’
‘Cathy is not a burden,’ she said. ‘I love her dearly, and she could never be that. But sometimes I feel – stifled.’
Unnoticed by either of them it had been growing darker by the minute. Emma felt a large raindrop splash on her cheek and glanced up in dismay at the now leaden sky.
‘I must get home, Matthew. It’s going to come down hard soon.’
But already it was too late. A fierce gust of wind sprang from nowhere, billowing her flimsy skirts and whipping off her straw bonnet so that it was held only by the ribbons loosely tied under her chin. Within seconds they were drenched by a torrential downpour.
‘We must find shelter,’ cried Matthew. ‘The old woman’s cottage!’
‘It’s at least half a mile from here.’
‘But it’s the nearest place. Come on!’
He caught her hand and together, lanced by the rain and buffeted by the wind, they stumbled and squelched through the heather. Emma’s feet were soon sodden and the wet pierced her through to the skin. The entire sky seemed to be cascading water. Gasping for breath, they reached the shallow clough in which Ursly’s cottage lay. They plunged down the slippery rocky path as fast as they dared, crossed the swift-rising beck by the stepping-stones and flung themselves against the cottage door, which flew open to their weight.
Inside there was an abrupt diminution in the sound of wind and rain. The startled cat streaked across the room, to gaze at them in green-eyed fury from the safety of a shelf; and the jackdaw screamed raucously.
‘Ursly! Where are you?’ When there was no reply, Emma opened the latched door at the foot of the narrow staircase and raised her voice. ‘Ursly! Ursly, are you up there?’
‘She must be out,’ Matthew said. ‘And she’s not likely to get home in this.’
‘I wonder if she’s safe.’
‘Oh surely! Unlike us, she probably knew a storm was imminent and took shelter in time.’
‘I suppose you’re right.’
They stood looking at one another uncertainly, Emma was painfully conscious of her lank hair and the sopping garments that clung to her figure and dripped on to the stone-flagged floor.
Matthew said, ‘You’d better get out of those wet things. There’s a bedroom, isn’t there? Go up and put on what you can find – a blanket if nothing else. Meanwhile I’ll build up the fire.’
Emma hesitated only a moment. She knew Ursly wouldn’t mind them making free with her home, not in the circumstances, so she went upstairs to the small bedroom and peeled off her wet clothes. There was a hooded cloak hanging behind the door, luckily voluminous, except that it came only just below her knees. It would suffice. She pulled the pins from her hair and shook it out, combing her fingers through the long, wet strands. It would have to dry, like her clothes, before the fire. Gathering her things together, she made her way downstairs in bare feet.
Matthew, shirtless, was crouched on his haunches coaxing the peat fire to burn more brightly, piling on kindling twigs to get it blazing. As he reached for another handful, the firelight shone on his naked back. What was revealed to Emma tore a gasp of horror from her throat.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you coming.’ Matthew rose to his feet and groped for his still-wet shirt. Emma, dropping her bundle of sodden clothes, ran forward and caught him by the arm, turning his back so that she could see it better. The smooth skin was horribly mutilated by a criss-cross pattern of ugly weals, livid mementoes of the lash.
‘God in heaven!’ she whispered. ‘Oh Matthew, it – it’s dreadful! You tried to tell me, but I had no conception! What wild beasts those men must have been to inflict such terrible wounds.’
Matthew said slowly, sombrely, ‘Now, at a distance, I’m beginning to see things in perspective. Men are made brutish by circumstances, Emma. The troopers, the gaolers – they were almost as much prisoners as the convicts. Thank God the transportation system is almost at an end.’
Emma traced the long raised line of a scar with her fingertip, very gently, hardly daring to touch, as though it were still raw and bleeding. She was weeping openly, her vision blurred by her tears. She had thought Matthew an embittered man, his mind pe
rmanently scarred. She had not guessed that his fine virile body also carried the living scars of his long ordeal. Could she blame him for his hatred? Did she not herself feel hatred on his behalf?
‘Oh Matthew!’ she said again, with a little sob.
The shirt fell to the floor unheeded as he gathered Emma into his arms and held her close against his chest. Slowly he lifted her face to his, and their lips met in a long kiss.
‘My dearest one! I love you, you know that.’
‘I love you too, Matthew,’ she said breathlessly.
Outside the wind flung itself at the old cottage in one last tremendous gust. Time seemed to stand still.
At length, when the tumult had gone from the storm, Matthew said, ‘You rob me of my resolution, Emma. In Australia I was left with nothing but the will for revenge, a driving compulsion to square the account. It was the single goal to which all my thoughts and dreams were directed. Yet revenge has suddenly become irrelevant, without point or meaning. Now, I only want to put the past behind me. Not forget it, Emma, as long as I live I shall not forget it. But I must think instead of the future – the future that you and I are going to share.’ His voice rang with superb confidence and the lines of his face were suddenly youthful. Emma, a sense of happiness and peace flooding through her, thought she had never seen so handsome a man.
‘However,’ continued Matthew more soberly, ‘before we can openly come together, my love, I must clear my name, for a purely practical reason. How can I ask you to marry me as things are? I am still believed guilty of that hideous crime for which I was convicted, even if my present wealth has won me a certain status and social acceptance.’ He saw the protest in her eyes, and added, ‘It is the only way, you know that to be true.’
She looked away. ‘Uncle Randolph and Aunt Chloe have both warned me not to associate with you. And Jane doesn’t approve of you, either. She thinks it was a mistake to invite you to dinner, and even Bernard is full of dark hints.’
The Other Cathy Page 15
