by Sandra Heath
The gentle babble of water told of the little stream that overflowed from the pool and made its way down toward Inchmead and Nailsworth. Its water was clear up here near the head of the valley, but the mill just outside Inchmead would stain it with blue dye. Flowers bloomed close to the water—violets, golden kingcups, and forget-me-nots, which in daylight would be bright splashes of color, but in the mist and moonlight they were as silver as the bluebells.
A squirrel bounded across her path, and Ursula began to wonder if she should turn back. She hesitated, but all was quiet now, no rustlings, no birds, no voices, just the burble of the brook. The scent of the bluebells was almost intoxicating, as if the dew had freed it tenfold, and suddenly she realized what the voices had been chanting—an ancient ring game.
In and out the dusky bluebells,
In and out the dusky bluebells,
In and out the dusky bluebells,
I am your master.
Tipper-ipper-apper—on your shoulder,
Tipper-ipper-apper—on your shoulder,
Tipper-ipper-apper—on your shoulder,
I am your Master ...
She had watched the village children laughing as they played it, but here, now, the words seemed threatening.
A twig snapped somewhere ahead, and she halted with a sharp intake of breath. Something moved. A man was walking along the path toward her—a gentleman by his fashionable silhouette. She shrank back in alarm, for he must be able to see her as clearly as she could see him, at least ... She could see through him. He wasn’t really there at all. He held his hand out to her. There was something in it—a ribbon. Her ribbon! For a split second she saw his face in the moonlight; it was the fair-haired man she had seen in the London carriage! Who was he? What was he doing here? And why did she know she loved him so ... ? As she stared, he vanished as suddenly as he’d appeared, leaving just the path through the bluebell glades.
Ursula’s heart lurched sickeningly. She was seeing things! Was she ill? Was she losing her mind? Rufus Almore came to mind, and then the echo of Taynton’s words to Vera. “Remember, wench, I am your master!”
But even as the thought struck, a hand suddenly clamped forcefully upon Ursula’s shoulder, and she screamed in utter terror.
‘Don’t be afraid, Miss Elcester, it’s only me,” said Taynton’s soft voice.
She wrenched herself free and whirled about, not knowing whether to be relieved or still be frightened. “How dare you creep up on me like that!” she cried, taking refuge in attack.
He gave an apologetic smile. “I didn’t creep, Miss Elcester. Indeed I spoke to you several times, but you didn’t seem to hear me.”
Spoke? He hadn’t said a word! “Why are you here in the woods?” she demanded,
“I might ask the same of you,” he replied.
The retort angered her. “The woods happen to belong to Elcester Manor,” she reminded him.
“I know, Miss Elcester, but I thought you had more sense than to come here when it’s so dangerous. It’s as well I saw you, for who knows what might have happened,”
“There was a lantern ...” she began, then glanced back along the path where she had seen the gentleman.
“You saw it too? I wondered if someone in the village was helping the escaped prisoner. I came down to investigate, and then saw you. You really shouldn’t be here, miss, a young lady alone ... ”
She didn’t believe him; in fact she was sure he had been the person with the lantern. She couldn’t prove it, of course, but his use of the phrase ‘I am your Master’ was surely too great a coincidence. Nor could he be alone, for there had been a number of voices chanting. She wanted to challenge him, to confront him with her suspicions, but that would hardly be wise. No one at the manor knew she was anywhere but in her bed, and as he had pointed out, she was a young woman alone.
He gave her another of his facile smiles. “I will escort you safely home. Miss Elcester.”
“I am quite capable of finding my own way back.”
“I do not doubt it, but I feel it is my duty as a man of honor to see that you return unharmed.”
“Mr. Taynton—
“I insist, Miss Elcester,” he broke in, quietly but firmly.
She did not argue further, and without a word began to retrace her steps toward the manor. She hurried, obliging him to quicken his gait to keep up with her, and she was very glad indeed when they emerged from the woods. The eastern sky was lightening by the minute now, and the mist was beginning to lift. All the birds began to sing, and then a cockerel crowed at the Green Man; normal enough sounds, but this morning they unsettled her more than ever. Taynton’s close proximity made it worse. How Vera could have gone to live with him Ursula still could not imagine. Young, handsome, and eligible he might be, but he was also very strange, and not a little frightening.
They reached the door in the rose garden wall, and she hoped he would leave her there, but to her dismay he insisted on accompanying her right up to the house, where her disappearance had somehow been discovered.
Her father was in a great alarm, and a search party was being formed to look for her, so her sudden return with the innkeeper caused much relief all around. Relieved or not, Mr. Elcester wasn’t at all pleased with his disobedient daughter, whom he banished to her room without further ado. He didn’t care how many lanterns she had seen; she should have informed him, not gone to the woods on her own, especially when she had been expressly forbidden to do so. Taynton, on the other hand, was a grand fellow who received warm thanks for finding her and bringing her home. As Ursula left to go upstairs, she heard her father repeat his invitation to Taynton to assist in the locating of the lost villa.
She paused to look back, a dark expression in her eyes. Bellamy Taynton was up to no good, and after this she regarded it as her bounden duly to find out what it was. And she was going to seize the first opportunity to release his imprisoned squirrel from its cage!
* * * *
Earlier, as Ursula first entered the woods at Elcester, Conan was asleep in his London town house. His blue-and-white bedroom was furnished in classical style, and the curtains were tightly drawn to shut out the lamps of Bruton Street. The bells of the capital struck the hour, but he didn’t hear them. He was dreaming of being lost in a strange misty wood, his senses were stirred by the scent of flowers. He was holding the mysterious ribbon in his hand while he searched for the young woman, so beloved to him, who had left it on the St. James’s Square railing. He could see her on the path ahead, and went forward gladly to return the ribbon, but she didn’t take it. Hurt, he turned to walk away again, but looked back to see someone creeping up behind her! He couldn’t make out the man’s face, but sensed danger. He tried to shout a warning, but his voice would not obey him. The person behind her was going to grab her shoulder ... !
Conan awoke with a cry as his own shoulder was shaken urgently. He stared up to see Theo grinning down at him by the light of a candle.
“Are you all right, Conan? I fancy you were having a nightmare.”
“A-a nightmare?”
“Yes, judging by the racket you were making. I could hear you from my room.”
Conan hauled himself up in the bed. The fragrance of the woods was still with him, and he knew now what the flowers were—bluebells. He noticed a large white moth was fluttering around Theo’s candle, its wings beating audibly.
‘‘Better now?” Theo inquired, brushing the moth away.
“Yes, I think so.” Conan turned the bedclothes back and got up. He felt very unsettled, rattled almost.
Theo went to the door. ‘“Well, I’m getting some more beauty sleep. I want to be as fresh as a daisy for the journey.”
“Journey? Oh, yes. Gloucestershire.” Conan ran his fingers through his hair.
Theo gave him a curious look, then left. Conan pulled on his mustard paisley dressing gown, then lit a thin Spanish cigar from the dying embers of the fire and went to pull the curtains back. Mayfair was still quiet,
except for a street call from a milkmaid with two brimming pails on her yoke. The first rays of morning were fingering the eastern sky, and an early carriage drove past. Was it going home or sallying forth?
Conan couldn’t shake off the dream, and turned to a small mahogany table beside the window where he had left the lilac ribbon, neatly rolled. Picking it up, he put it to his nose. The scent was no longer of primroses, but of bluebells. His fingers closed slowly over the fine silk, and he looked out of the window again. Something very odd was happening, and he couldn’t imagine what it was, except that he had no desire to avoid it. The unknown lady meant too much to him. No, she meant everything to him.
Fate beckoned, and he was willing to follow.
Chapter 9
It was midmorning at Elcester Manor, and Ursula and her father were taking a very late breakfast in the sunlit dining room. They had been to Mrs. Arrowsmith’s very early churching, throughout which the twins had screamed themselves blue in the face. Nothing daunted, the proud papa had shouted a sermon that should have concerned the joys of parenthood, but instead was all about the profanity of stealing from the church. If the missing chalice was mentioned once, it was mentioned a thousand times, and on each occasion a quivering finger swung toward the glaringly empty spot on the altar where the treasured item used to stand. Ursula and her father had exchanged more than one wry glance at the spectacle of such holy indignation about such a decidedly pagan cup.
It was the custom for the whole village to turn out for a churching, so the congregation was larger than usual. Among the missing faces were those of Taynton and a number of his men from the Green Man, and of course, the usual absent faces, like Daniel Pedlar. There were a number of married couples who never attended church. Ursula found herself recalling Daniel Pedlar’s words, and wondered if they had married by the yew. Somehow she felt they had.
Rufus Almore always stayed away, but today he’d broken the habit of a lifetime. He did not look at all well, and kept glancing nervously around as if he feared something. He was pale and had lost weight, so that he now more resembled a beanpole than ever. His red hair was combed neatly back from his foxy face, and he clutched his prayer book in white-knuckled hands. Ursula and her father resolved to speak to him afterward, to find out what had happened in the woods, but he dashed from the church before they had even left their pew, and when they knocked at his cottage door on their way home, he refused to answer.
After the fright of her encounter with Taynton in the woods, Ursula was now much more prepared to accept what Daniel Pedlar had said. “There’s sommat bad down there, Miss Hursula. Sommat awful bad.” She therefore made no fuss when her father rode back to the manor along the Stroud road. Not a word had been said about her misconduct, for which she was thankful. In the cold light of day she couldn’t believe she’d been so utterly foolish, and she resolved not to repeat the exercise. But thinking about those strange minutes inevitably brought memories of the gentleman coming along the path toward her. Or rather, the gentleman who wasn’t coming along the path, but whom she’d seen anyway.
Just to think of him filled her with flutters of pleasure and longing. Oh, it was all quite ridiculous, she thought, as her common sense knew only too well; but common sense wasn’t receiving much attention at the moment. She had the feeling he was a real person, not the product of her fertile imagination. He was constantly in her mind, and the intrusion was a little too pleasing for comfort. How novel and satisfactory if he turned out to be the Honorable Theodore Maximilian Greatorex, for then the impending match would be far from disagreeable. But such a wish belonged in the land of cuckoos, she thought dryly as she applied raspberry preserve to her toast.
Dainty little white ribbons adorned the lace-edged day bonnet she resorted to when, as this morning, her hair was being difficult, and she wore an emerald-and-white checkered seersucker morning gown, high-waisted and long-sleeved, with a scooped neckline in which she had tucked a gauze scarf. A light cashmere shawl rested around her shoulders, and she looked very fresh considering her dawn excursion.
Sunlight poured in through the windows, for the room faced due south over the first terrace, where the gardeners had today placed the potted bay trees that always overwintered under glass. The room itself was oak-paneled like the rest of the house, with heavily carved Elizabethan furniture that must have been made actually within the four walls, because it was all far too big to pass through either the doors or the windows. A fine display of silverware shone on the great sideboard, and a fire danced in the hearth, making the room so warm that Ursula resolved to stop the lighting of fires until the onset of autumn.
Mr. Elcester’s mood was one of disgruntlement, for he had come to breakfast hoping to find the latest edition of The Times newspaper, a previous one having failed to be delivered when it should have been. Once again it was nowhere to be seen, and his annoyance was considerable. “Great heavens above, with all those stagecoaches calling at the Green Man, you’d think the delivery of a newspaper was not beyond their capabilities! It’s not satisfactory, not satisfactory at all. I cannot abide breakfasting without my newspaper!”
“Shall I bring the last edition? I’m sure you haven’t read it all.”
“I have read every inch,” he replied testily, drumming his fingers upon the table. Then he looked at her. “I have to ride to Stroud afterward,” he said suddenly.
“Oh?”
“A message arrived while we were at church. It seems the cellar walls of Fromewell Mill are giving cause for concern again.”
“Again? I didn’t know anything was wrong with them.”
“Yes, I’m afraid there has been a little subsidence, which in turn has weakened the foundations. If there’s rain and the river rises, the cellars will flood and a great deal of other damage might result. I’d best take a look. Who knows, maybe I’ll find a copy of The Times in the town.”
“I’m sure yours will be delivered soon,” Ursula said patiently.
“I like my news to be reasonably current, not ancient history,” he replied as he spooned some more kedgeree onto his plate. “Will you come to Stroud with me?” he asked then.
“I thought I’d make a start of Macsen Wledig.”
“Hmm.” He plunged his fork into a portion of hard-boiled egg in the kedgeree.
She knew the tone of voice. “Is something wrong? I-I mean, if you really wish me to accompany you, then of course I will.”
“It’s not that I wish you to come, m’dear, rather that I do not know if I can trust you not to go to the woods again.”
“You have my word.”
“I thought I had that before.”
She colored a little. “This time I really will obey.”
He looked at her for a long moment, and then nodded. “Very well, you may stay here with your translating.”
She nibbled her toast, thinking about the woods again. “Father, I am very suspicious about Taynton’s so-called escaped felon. There were a number of men in the woods at dawn, at least, it sounded as if they were all men. I heard them. They were chanting.”
He lowered his fork. “Oh, come now—
“It’s true.” She told him about the dusky bluebell ring game.
Mr. Elcester gave a guffaw. “Ursula, m’dear, I think you are imagining things. I fancy you returned to your bed and dreamed.”
“It wasn’t a dream.”
“Dusky bluebells, indeed. It’s a children’s game, not something adults would indulge in.”
“I know, but—
“But nothing, m’dear. You dreamed it, and that is that. Besides, I hardly think Rufus Almore would have been terrified witless by the sight of grown men cavorting around in the bluebells, do you?”
Put like that, it did indeed seem silly, but she knew what she had heard. And she knew that Taynton was involved in it. She decided to change the subject. “What about dinner tonight? Will you be back from Stroud, or will you put up at the Golden Cross again?”
“I’ll c
ome back late today. I like to sleep in my own bed. My business at the mill shouldn’t take all that long.” He paused, as if there was something he needed to say.
“Yes?” she prompted.
“Ursula, I’m afraid I still haven’t been quite honest with you about things.”
“What things?” she asked suspiciously.
“Er ... about Mr. Greatorex’s arrival at Carmartin Park today. You see, I’ve sent him an invitation to dine here with us tomorrow night.”
“You’ve what?” she said faintly.
“I rather think you heard.”
“Yes, I rather think I did too. I’m surprised you didn’t arrange it for tonight, to cause even more of a panic in the kitchens!” To say nothing of in me as well ...
“Don’t be like this, m’dear. I agreed it with Lord Carmartin.”
“Oh, Father, the cook needs more warning when an important dinner is to be prepared, even if there are only three at the table!”
“Well, I’m sure the larder will have something suitable. I’m very partial to a nice bit of boiled mutton.”
“Boiled mutton? Father, I refuse absolutely to serve mutton, boiled or otherwise!” Flustered, she tried to think what was at its best right now? Was there time to send to Gloucester for some Severn salmon?
“I also rather like guinea-fowl,” Mr. Elcester went on.
“Guinea-fowl? Oh, yes, I suppose that will do. Daniel Pedlar is sure to let us have a couple of his.”
Her father beamed. “There, it’s settled then.”
“Is there anything else you mean to spring on me? Lord Carmartin, the Prince Regent and the Bishop of Gloucester aren’t coming as well, by any chance? Maybe they’re lodging here as well?
