If the woman in question had no money, it meant that the Marquis had not given her any. That was very different from his usual procedure, for he was exceedingly generous, almost absurdly so in some cases, Mr. Ashworth thought.
His suspicion was now growing stronger that the lady for whom they had bought the house was different from those whom the Marquis had known before.
His whole attitude about her was certainly strange and unlike anything Mr. Ashworth could remember in the past.
He had, of course, procured houses for a number of women who had come under the Marquis’s protection, but he had certainly never expended as much on them as he had paid for Lady Bletchley’s house.
In no instance that Mr. Ashworth could remember had the Marquis taken so much personal interest in supervising the details in the house itself.
Usually he had left everything to his secretary and the lady in question, insisting merely that, if he was to dine there, a stock of the claret and the champagne he fancied should be delivered before he did so.
‘This is different,’ Mr. Ashworth thought to himself. ‘His Lordship has certainly been hit hard.’
“I am wondering whether I should employ a Bow Street Runner,” the Marquis suggested at length.
“I should think it might be a good idea, my Lord.”
“I would not wish to frighten her by employing such a man, but otherwise I have no idea where to start looking.”
He put out his hand in a helpless gesture as he added,
“There must be thousands of lodging houses and small hotels in London. How can I search them all? How can I even begin to guess where two women would hide so that I would not be able to find them?”
This was plain speaking and Mr. Ashworth hesitated a moment before he asked,
“You do not think, my Lord, that the lady might change her mind and perhaps send you a letter or a message so that you can contact her and make up your differences?”
He could not help feeling that if the woman whom the Marquis fancied had done anything so drastic as to run away from him, she would soon regret having been so impetuous and would make every effort to be back in the Marquis’s arms once again.
To Mr. Ashworth’s surprise, the Marquis shook his head.
“I don’t think she will change her mind,” he said and there was a note in his voice that surprised his secretary more than anything that had happened so far.
“I am going to suggest, my Lord,” he said after an uncomfortable silence, “that you let me send for a Bow Street Runner. I happen to know of one who is extremely astute and at the same time discreet. He is employed from time to time by the very best people and I know that anything you say to him would be held completely in confidence.”
“Then I suppose you had better send for him,” the Marquis said, as if he thought the idea was a forlorn hope.
“May I remind your Lordship that you are dining at Carlton House this evening?” Mr. Ashworth went on. “It was arranged a week ago and, as you did not tell me to cancel the engagement, as I expected you would do this morning, I have actually done nothing.”
“I had forgotten,” the Marquis admitted.
As he spoke, he thought that he had no wish to go to Carlton House and would make some excuse.
Then he remembered that if he went there he could again see the Lochner painting of Cyrilla.
He also remembered at the same time that he had the Prince’s permission to take away the Van Dyck.
He had meant to send a carriage for it the next day, but then he had found Cyrilla and she had not only put the idea out of his mind, but there had seemed no point in having a painted image of what he could see, touch and kiss.
“I will go to Carlton House.”
He rose from his chair as he spoke, adding,
“I want to see the Bow Street Runner first thing in the morning immediately after breakfast.”
“Very good, my Lord. I will do my best to see that he is here.”
“God knows what else we can do,” the Marquis added as he left the room.
As he walked up the stairs, he was thinking that he had imagined tonight he would dine with Cyrilla in their own house together.
Afterwards he would make love to her and it would be the most perfect and wonderful thing he had ever done in his life.
Now he was back where he had started, having only a painted face to look at and the feeling, which he knew would intensify that, although he had thought he had found her, it had only been a dream, a figment of his imagination and she had in fact been dead for more than three hundred years.
‘Cyrilla! Cyrilla!’ he called out in his heart.
As he entered his bedroom, he saw standing on the mantelpiece the sketch of her, which had been done by Frans Wyntack and which she had given him as a present.
It was not as fine as the exquisite painting by Lochner, but it was Cyrilla with her eyes looking into another world, her hair haloed with light, her lips parted as if in sudden ecstasy.
The Marquis stared at it for a long time and then he shouted at the sketch,
“If it takes me my whole life I will find you again. That I swear! Then nobody and nothing shall stop me from making you mine, my wife!”
Chapter Six
The phaeton lurched and the Marquis remarked irritably,
“These roads are appalling!”
“It’s always the same when one gets far off the highways,” the Prince replied. “They would be much worse if it was wet.”
The Marquis glanced up at the sky.
“It looks as if that is a distinct possibility, Sire,” he said pessimistically. “Those are obviously rainclouds.”
The Prince said no more. He knew that the Marquis was depressed and had made no effort to hide his boredom ever since they had left London.
His Royal Highness was almost regretting that he had undertaken what he thought was a Samaritan’s act in forcing the Marquis to come with him to the country.
“You have refused every invitation I have offered you, Virgo, for the last month,” he had said, “and from all I hear, you spend your time riding round the back streets of London with God knows what object.”
He paused for the Marquis’s reply, but as there was none, he went on,
“You have lost weight and if you are not careful you will lose your looks.”
As the Prince spoke, he thought this was very unlikely.
But the Marquis was in fact very much thinner and there was a hollow look about his eyes, as if he had not been sleeping.
The Prince was bewildered, as were all the Marquis’s other friends, but now he was determined to get to the bottom of what they were all describing as ‘Fane’s strange behaviour’.
“I want you,” he had said aloud, “to drive me down to Searle’s place in Hampshire. I suppose you have heard he is selling his stable?”
“Selling his stable?” the Marquis repeated incredulously and the Prince knew that at last he had captured his friend’s attention.
“Gambling debts,” he explained before the Marquis could ask the question. “He has been selling everything else for the last year and now his horses have to go.”
The Marquis certainly found it inconceivable, because the Earl of Searle’s horseflesh was outstanding and he had won several classic races that would have brought in good prize money.
“What I am determined,” the Prince went on, “and I am sure you are too, is to get the pick of the sale before we are outbid and Searle has agreed that we should be the first to look over the horses.”
“That was certainly a very astute move on your part, Sire,” the Marquis commented. “I wonder how you managed it?”
There was a faint smile on the Prince’s lips before he answered,
“I am not going to tell you all my secrets, but, as I consider you to be a better judge of horseflesh than anybody else in the country, I am asking – no, commanding – you to drive me to Hampshire tomorrow.”
There was nothing
the Marquis could do but agree, although he admitted to himself that the idea of buying some of Searle’s outstanding animals did for a moment raise his spirits a trifle from the despondency they had been cast into for the last four weeks.
It was true, as the Prince had said, that he had spent his days riding round the back streets of London, praying and hoping that he would catch a glimpse of Cyrilla or Hannah.
Wherever they were living, they would have to go out sometime during the day and they would have to go to the poorer shops. He was quite certain that by now they would be desperately in need of money.
The Bow Street Runner he had employed had visited a great number of different places where the staple foods could be bought, but, although he had given a very vivid description of Hannah, no one recalled having seen her.
When the Marquis was alone night after night in Berkeley Square, he thought sometimes he would go mad at the thought that he had lost Cyrilla through what he admitted was entirely his own stupidity.
‘How could I have been such a fool,’ he had asked himself, ‘not to understand her better, not to realise that she is not like other women?’
But rebuking himself did not help to find her and the next morning he was riding again and inevitably, because hope died hard, he found his way at least twice a day back to the little house in Islington.
He would tie up his horse and enter through the back door and look searchingly to see if he could detect whether anyone else had been there except himself.
Surely, he had thought, Cyrilla would come back for her gowns.
But they still hung there exactly as when he had first seen them and he could have sworn that no one had touched anything else in her bedroom.
Again inevitably at some time of the day or night he would tell himself that he had in fact dreamt the whole episode.
Because her face as portrayed in the sketch was etched on his mind, he tried to convince himself that to believe he had found her was nothing more than a hallucination.
Then he knew that when he had touched her lips, it had been more real than any other kiss he had ever given or received and, if he lived to be a hundred, he would never forget the ecstasy and the rapture he had found at that moment.
In his own misery the Marquis had no idea how much Mr. Ashworth and the rest of his household worried about him.
Because by this time they all knew that he was searching for the beautiful girl whose portrait stood on the mantelpiece in his bedroom, they too walked about the streets, looking to see if they could find her, knowing that their Master would never be happy until someone did.
Because he was determined to be more practical in his help, instead of just gossiping as they did in White’s over the Marquis’s unpredictable behaviour, the Prince had been thinking for some time of an excuse to get him alone.
It had not been easy for the Marquis had refused every invitation the Prince had given him and it was almost with an air of triumph that the Prince stepped into the Marquis’s phaeton where it was waiting for him outside Carlton House.
“The landau with our luggage has gone ahead,” he announced, “so our valets will have everybody ready for us when we arrive. I will say one thing for Searle – he has a good cellar!”
“How many horses are you thinking of buying, Sire?” the Marquis asked as they drove off.
As the Prince pondered the question, the Marquis thought slightly cynically that really the answer should be, ‘as many as you are prepared to give me’, because he was quite certain that he would have to pay for the Prince’s purchases.
He was ready to do so. At the same time, there were, he remembered, several horses of Searle’s that he would wish to own himself and that was the only reason he was prepared to leave London and abandon his search for Cyrilla for two days.
At the beginning of this week he had engaged two more Bow Street Runners and he had told Mr. Ashworth before he left that, if there was any news of any sort, to send a groom post-haste to the Earl’s house and he would return immediately.
“I can only hope it is something I shall have to do, my Lord,” Mr. Ashworth had said.
As he spoke, he could not help thinking that it was a very unlikely contingency.
“You are right,” the Prince said now. “It’s going to rain and it’s unfortunate that your phaeton has no hood.”
“I never bother with one,” the Marquis replied. “It makes the vehicle heavier.”
“Heavy or not, I have no wish to arrive looking like a drowned rat,” the Prince said irritably.
The Marquis, feeling the heavy spots of rain on his face, touched his horses with the whip.
Then, as they responded, moving a little too fast for caution round the corner of the lane, for it was little more on which they were travelling, there appeared a farm cart driving in the centre of the road and the yokel in charge of it was half-asleep.
“Look out!” the Prince shouted unnecessarily and the Marquis with remarkable expertise managed to draw his horses almost into the hedge to avoid a head-on collision. But a wheel of the phaeton scraped against a wheel of the farm wagon.
There was a shout from the yokel and an oath from the Prince as the Marquis drew his startled horses to a standstill.
“What d’ye think ye’re a-doin’ of?” the yokel shouted, obviously frightened out of his complacency.
“It would be better, my man, if you did not drive in the centre of the road!” the Marquis retorted.
“’Ow was I to know ye were a-comin’ round the corner like a whirlwind?” the yokel asked.
The groom ran to the horses’ heads and the Marquis stepped down from the phaeton to inspect the damage.
As he had anticipated, the wheel was buckled, not badly but enough to require immediate attention.
“What has happened? Can we proceed?” the Prince demanded.
“Where is the nearest blacksmith, my man?” the Marquis asked the yokel.
He considered the question before he replied,
“There be one up at The Castle.”
“Which castle?” the Marquis questioned.
The yokel pointed with a dirty finger towards some trees.
The Marquis’s eyes followed the direction and he could see the top of a tower and on it was flying a standard.
“Who lives there?” he asked.
“It be ’is Grace.”
“The Duke of what?” the Marquis asked.
“That be Holm Castle, where the Duke of Holmbury lives.”
“Hmm – ”
“And this be ’is cart ye’ve bin a-knockin’ about,” the yokel added.
The Marquis drew a guinea from his pocket and flicked it in the air and the yokel caught it with the bemused expression of one who cannot believe his good luck.
Then as he bit the coin to see if it was real, the Marquis climbed back into the phaeton.
“I suppose we have to go to Holm Castle,” the Prince said as the horses, now held on a tight rein, proceeded very slowly.
“I doubt if there is another blacksmith within miles,” the Marquis mused.
“Holm dislikes me and always has,” the Prince said. “I have always known that he sided with my father in rows over my debts and that he is hand-in-glove with my mother. I can tell without asking what he thinks of me.”
The Marquis gave a laugh with no humour in it.
“I am certainly not one of his favourites either. He has cut me ostentatiously ever since a short affair I had with one of his cousins. It was something I regretted because she was uncommonly boring, but I doubt if he would accept that as an excuse!”
The Prince laughed.
“I can see we shall not have a warm welcome. How long will the repairs take?”
“About two hours,” the Marquis said.
The Prince looked up at the sky,
“I would be prepared to sit with the devil himself rather than be outside in the rain. Let’s hope the Duke will at least offer us a glass of claret.”
; The Marquis did not reply.
If he had been a little more intuitive, he might have been aware that not only the Prince but Fate was laughing.
*
Cyrilla tidied away the game of chess she had been playing with her father.
“You are too good, Papa!” she smiled. “But I shall go on trying to beat you and I think it’s a fascinating game and requires more intelligence than any other.”
“That is true,” the Duke agreed, “and it has always struck me as strange that men who otherwise have a good brain should waste their time gambling on the turn of a card and believing in something called ‘luck’.”
“It’s ridiculous, I agree,” Cyrilla said.
As she put the chessboard in the corner of the room, she wondered whether the Marquis gambled.
It seemed unlikely. At the same time she thought how little she really knew about him except that she loved him and everything she did or thought brought him more vividly to her mind.
“I see it is raining,” she remarked, glancing out the window. “That is disappointing, as I did want you to come and see if the new goldfish have settled down with the others.”
“We shall see them tomorrow,” the Duke replied, “and instead today we will go into the orangery. I have ordered some new orchids that I am sure you will approve of.”
“Oh, Papa, how exciting! And the orange trees are in blossom. I had forgotten how lovely they were.”
She found there were quite a lot of things in The Castle she had forgotten and even after she had been there a month, every day she found something new to discuss with her father.
She tried to hide from him her feeling that everything was a waste of time and that every smile she gave was an effort.
She believed that he thought she was completely happy and that Hannah was the only person who knew the truth.
“There are some more plants I intend buying for the orangery,” the Duke continued, “and you must tell me – ”
The door opened and Burton announced,
“His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales!”
For a moment the Duke was so surprised that he did not rise to his feet.
Then, as he did so, the Prince, looking large and flamboyant and oozing charm, as he could do most effectively when he pleased, bore down upon him.
Who Can Deny Love Page 12
