She buttoned her gown and tidied her hair in the mirror and then walked resolutely back to the wardrobe to take down her coat.
By now she knew it must be getting on for noon and, as there was nothing to eat for a midday meal, the sooner she was in the river the better.
She had just lifted down the coat when she heard, to her surprise, a knock on the front door.
She wondered who it could possibly be.
In the last week no one had called at the house and the only time she spoke to anyone was when she had gone into the village.
It was about a quarter-of-a-mile away and she had found it too far.
Yesterday she had made a special effort to collect the eggs that she had just eaten.
The sharp rap on the door came again.
She put her coat down on the bed and, going down the uncarpeted stairs, she reached the hall and opened the door.
Outside to her astonishment she saw three gentlemen in hunting pink and behind them their horses with two grooms.
Then she saw that the gentlemen were carrying a woman wearing a riding habit.
“May we come in?” one of the men asked. “Lady Barton has had a fall and hurt her arm rather badly. Yours was the first house we could find.”
Valessa opened the door further.
“Yes – of course,” she murmured.
The three men carried Lady Barton into the house, two lifting her at her shoulders and one at her feet.
As they crossed the hall, Valessa went ahead to open the door into the drawing room.
She saw then that blood was dripping down Lady Barton’s hand onto the floor.
The only piece of furniture in the drawing room was a very dilapidated sofa that had not been put away in an outhouse.
Valessa had managed to drag it into the room after all the furniture had gone as she wanted to sit in front of the fire as she had done when her father and mother were alive and pretend that they were still there.
The gentlemen laid Lady Barton, who had her eyes closed, down on the sofa.
One of them took out a knife and slit the sleeve of her riding habit, which was a very smart one, up to the shoulder.
It was then easy to see that there was an ugly gash on her arm that reached from her elbow to her wrist.
“We need water and bandages!” one man said.
With a start Valessa realised that she had just been staring at Lady Barton and doing nothing.
As she hurried from the room to the kitchen, she knew who Lady Barton was and had heard a great deal about her.
The village of Little Fladbury was very isolated, but it was extraordinary how they were always aware of the gossip of what was happening elsewhere in the County.
The carrier who called once a week supplied most of it, but two of the cottagers had sons who worked in grand houses and when they came home they had plenty to tell.
Lady Barton was, Valessa remembered, as she took the kettle from the stove, enormously rich.
She had bought a huge house called Ridgeley Towers and she owned the best racehorses and the best hunters in the whole country.
Valessa had been told that she was very attractive.
Even apart from her fortune they said that every eligible man in London was pursuing her.
“You should just see ’em!” the son of the grocer in the village said when he came home. “Like flies round an ’oneypot they be.”
Valessa had heard talk of riotous parties and, although she had been more interested in the horses, she had been curious enough to ask why Lady Barton was so rich.
“’Twere ’er father,” she was told. “Made a mint of money with ’is ships, ’e did, and some say as it were ’cos he used ’em for collectin’ slaves!”
Valessa had been shocked.
She had read denunciations of the slave trade and she understood that it brought in huge profits for those who were prepared to take part in it.
There was no doubt that Lady Barton entertained lavishly. Not only was the local Hunt Ball held at Ridgeley Towers but there were numerous other balls.
The grocer’s son said they caused so much work that the staffs were ‘nearly dead on their feet’!
When Valessa first heard of Lady Barton, she had thought that she must be quite old. Then she learnt that, although she was a widow, she was not yet thirty.
‘She is certainly beautiful!’ Valessa thought as she collected a basin.
She picked up a linen towel that was too ragged to be sold, but which she had fortunately washed and hurried back to the drawing room.
Lady Barton now had her eyes open and was being given brandy from a flask that one of the gentlemen was holding to her lips.
“Oh, here you are!” the man exclaimed who had told her to fetch the water.
She put down what she was carrying and said,
“I will just go upstairs and get some linen for a bandage.”
“And something to wipe away the blood,” he said sharply.
Valessa realised that he was treating her as a servant, but she thought that she should expect it, seeing how shabby she looked.
She went up the stairs knowing that the only linen left in the house were the sheets on her bed.
She pulled off the top one, knowing that it was something she would not need again.
She was thinking as she did so that she had already sold all the blankets except for the one on her own bed. To keep warm she had piled on top of it some old and tattered curtains that were past repair.
She found a pair of scissors she had overlooked in a dressing table drawer.
‘They might have been exchangeable for at least an egg,’ she thought.
Then she went down the stairs again.
By this time Lady Barton was talking.
“That’s enough, Harry,” she said, pushing the flask to one side with her uninjured hand. “I shall be tipsy if you give me anymore!”
“All that matters is that you are alive, Sarah,” one of the men remarked.
“How can I have been such a fool – as to fall at that fence?” Lady Barton asked hesitantly.
Valessa reached her and realised that nothing had been done about her injured arm as they were waiting for her.
“I wonder,” she said to one of the men, “if you would mind cutting off a piece of this sheet to clean up her Ladyship’s arm and then some strips for a bandage?”
He looked surprised.
She turned to kneel down beside the sofa and poured the warm water into the basin.
The man she had given the sheet to was just staring at it.
“Get on with it, Cyril! Make yourself useful!” called out Harry.
“I cannot see why I should have to do all the dirty work,” Cyril replied, “while you give me orders!”
“If you cannot do a little thing like that for me,” Lady Barton said plaintively, “I shall not ask you to stay again.”
“Of course I will do anything for you,” Cyril said quickly.
“And that goes for all of us,” Harry added.
Cyril cut a piece of linen the size of a handkerchief and handed it to Valessa.
“I hope that this is not going to hurt,” she said to Lady Barton, “but I must get the wound clean!”
Lady Barton looked at her for the first time.
“Who are you?” she asked. “And what are you doing in this empty house?”
“I am – leaving,” Valessa said quietly.
She started very gently to wash the gash on Lady Barton’s arm, who gave a little scream.
“That hurts!”
“I am sorry,” Valessa said.
“Have another drink!” Harry suggested.
“All right, anything is better than feeling pain!” Lady Barton agreed.
Harry handed her the flask and she poured a great deal of its contents down her throat.
“Dammit!” she cried. “That was a fine run for the beginning of the Season. I would miss it!”
“It’s just bad
luck that you fell at that particular fence,” Harry said. “Wyndonbury took it in style!”
“He would!” Lady Barton remarked. “I hope he broke his neck at the next!”
“Good Heavens!” the man exclaimed who had first spoken to Valessa. “I thought that like every other woman you were worshipping at his feet!”
“That’s a good way of expressing it, Roland!” Harry remarked.
“If you want to know the truth,” Lady Barton said, “I hate his guts!”
Valessa drew in her breath.
Lady Barton might be very rich and very attractive, but she knew that her mother would have been shocked to hear a lady swear and talk in such a vulgar manner.
Harry sat down at the other end of the sofa.
“Now what is all this about?” he asked. “I was just saving up for a Wedding present!”
“Well you can keep your money!” Lady Barton snapped.
“But why? What has happened?” Harry asked.
“You go and ask the noble Marquis and he will give you the answer to that question.”
Lady Barton seemed to almost spit out the words.
Valessa, washing the blood away from her arm as gently as she could, thought that what Lady Barton had been drinking must have been very strong.
She suspected rightly that it was brandy.
Cyril had cut two long bandages from the sheet and now he asked,
“If you have been insulted by Wyndonbury, we will knock his head off!”
“Then knock it off!” Lady Barton asserted. “It’s what he deserves!”
“What can he have done?” Roland enquired. “I thought that you two were cooing like doves together.”
Lady Barton pressed her lips together before she said as if she could not help herself,
“If you want to know the truth, and there is no reason why you should not as you are all three such close friends of mine, he told me that I was not good enough for him!”
There was a moment of stupefied silence.
Then Harry blurted out,
“What do you mean? What are you saying?”
“I suggested to His Majesty last night,” Lady Barton replied, “that, as we meant so much to each other, we might team up together.”
Roland made an exclamation of surprise, but Harry said,
“That is what I thought you would do. After all, united you would have the most remarkable stable of horses in the whole country!”
“That is what I thought too,” Lady Barton said, “and even he had to admit that my mares are better than his!”
“So what happened?” Roland asked.
“I have just told you!” Lady Barton replied. “He said to me,
“‘My dear Sarah, you are very attractive and very exciting! At the same time, when I marry it has to be to someone my family will consider my equal!’”
“I don’t believe it!” Harry said. “No man could talk like that!”
“Oh, yes, he could!” Cyril exclaimed.
He drew himself up as he spoke and. talking in an entirely different voice, he added,
“After all, you must all realise how unimportant you fellows are, and that I am a Marquis and of great social consequence!”
The way he spoke was, Valessa was sure, a very good imitation of the man they were talking about, because both Harry and Roland threw back their heads and roared with laughter.
“That’s him to a ‘T’, Cyril!” Harry cried. “I had forgotten that you were such a good impersonator!”
“Why did you not tell me he was?” Lady Barton asked.
“I never thought of it,” Harry replied. “When he was at Eton, he was always getting thrashed for taking off the Masters and making fun of the Head.”
He laughed before he went on,
“He could impersonate anybody, so that if he gave the boys an order they would think it was their House Master speaking and would do the most ridiculous things before they realised that it was only Cyril!”
“Do the Marquis again,” Lady Barton suggested.
Cyril straightened himself.
“What I want you fellows to understand,” he said, “is that I only associate with common chaps like you because we are all interested in horses. Otherwise I find you distinctly inferior and of, course, to me your blood is the wrong colour!”
They all laughed uproariously and Valessa could not help smiling.
She had made Lady Barton’s wound clean by now and, as the laughter stopped, she said to Cyril,
“Could you please cut me a piece of linen to make a pad to put over the wound under the bandage?”
“Yes, of course,” he said. “I can see that you are a very skilful nurse.”
“I have had to look after my father on a number of occasions when he had a fall.”
“Your father kept horses?”
“One or two,” Valessa replied.
She spoke in a stiff voice because she had no wish to discuss her father with these rowdy young men.
She had a feeling that they would have heard of him.
It would be embarrassing for them to know that his daughter was living in an empty and obviously dilapidated house.
“I tell you what I would like,” Lady Barton said as Valessa began bandaging her arm. “A bite of something to eat.”
There was silence and Valessa thought that they were all looking at her.
“I – am very – sorry,” she said, “but there is – nothing in the house.”
“Why not?”
Lady Barton was staring at her and Valessa said quickly,
“Because I am – going away and I have – eaten everything – there was for – breakfast.”
She thought it was a mistake to tell the truth and yet there was nothing else she could do.
She was then aware that everybody was looking at her as if they had not noticed her before.
“You are very thin,” Lady Barton said slowly. “Are you telling me – ?”
“I have done everything I can for your arm, my Lady,” Valessa said quickly, “and if you will excuse me, I will take this dirty water away.”
She rose to her feet as she spoke and, picking up the basin in which the water was red from blood and the kettle, she went from the room.
Only as she closed the door did she hear Lady Barton say,
“I have an idea! Now listen to me all of you – !”
Chapter Two
Valessa emptied away the dirty water and put the basin down on the floor beside the sink.
Then she suddenly felt exhausted and sat down on the only chair that was left in the kitchen.
Beside it was a small deal table that had a broken leg and was therefore propped up on a brick.
She put her elbows on the table and her hands over her closed eyes.
Because she had hurried up and down the stairs to collect the sheet for Lady Barton everything seemed to be swimming around her.
She knew that it was just weakness and it flashed through her mind that she might not be able to reach the river.
She sat there for some time trying to breathe deeply, thinking as she did so that Lady Barton would soon be leaving.
She expected to hear them laughing and talking in the hall and thought that when she did she ought to show them out of the front door.
Then she asked herself why should she trouble as she would never see any of them again.
There was a sound of footsteps and she looked up to see the man called Harry coming into the kitchen.
“I wondered what had happened to you,” he said.
“Am I – wanted?” Valessa enquired wearily.
She knew that it would be an effort to rise and go back into the drawing room.
Harry looked at her.
She did not realise that he was taking in her pale thin face and the expression of despair in her large eyes.
“Wait a minute,” he said.
He went out of the kitchen and she heard him crossing the hall and she thought that he
had opened the front door.
She wished she could go and look at their horses, which she was sure were outstanding, but she was feeling too limp even to go to the window.
She had intended to watch as Lady Barton and her three friends in their pink coats departed.
To her surprise, however, Harry came back into the kitchen.
He was carrying something in his hand and, when he put it down on the table, she saw that it was a silver sandwich box like the one her father used to carry in his saddle out hunting.
There was also a flask with a silver top, which she suspected held brandy.
“I think what you need is something to eat,” Harry said.
Valessa did not reply.
She merely thought it was a strange thing to say unless he was clairvoyant or else particularly observant.
He opened the silver box and she saw the sandwiches he had intended to eat for luncheon were untouched.
Without saying anything he walked to the dresser, which was fixed to the wall and therefore could not be sold.
On it were a few plates that were all cracked and a glass that Valessa had kept. The others had been bought by a farmer’s wife for people who came to the farm to ask for a glass of milk.
Harry put the sandwiches from his silver box onto a plate and handed it to Valessa.
“Now eat,” he said, “while I talk to you.”
“About – what?” she questioned.
“I have something important to say,” he replied, “and I think that you should also have a drink.”
He poured some brandy into the glass and added a little water from a jug that Valessa had left on the side of the stove.
It had been an effort this morning to work the water pump that was outside in the yard.
It was rusty and became stiff when there was a frost.
She had brought in enough water to fill the kettle and some was left for her to drink now.
Having put a glass on the table, he said,
“Drink a little before you start eating.”
“I-I had better not,” Valessa answered.
“Do as I tell you!” he ordered.
Because it was easier to do what he said than argue, Valessa obeyed him.
As the fiery spirit went down her throat she felt as if she came back to life and, as the colour returned to her face, Harry said,
Revenge Is Sweet Page 2
