*
Because he felt he had wasted a day and a night he hurried along the main road and it led him out of the town and back into the countryside.
It was with a sense of relief that the Marquis found himself once again in open fields, birds were singing in the trees and butterflies were fluttering over wild flowers.
Firefly was feeling fresh so the Marquis galloped him for some distance before pulling in the reins.
“You had better take it easy, Firefly,” he muttered. “We have a long way to go. If nothing of interest happens in the next two or three days, I think we will go home and admit defeat.”
Firefly did not answer, but the Marquis considered he was making the right decision.
He felt as if these last few days had been almost like years passing over his head and they had actually left him with nothing.
He began to wonder why he had been such a fool as to accept the Duke’s challenge – it was impossible to meet anybody beautiful and exceptional when he was just riding along empty country roads and anyway he was apparently in a part of the world where there was absolutely no sign of his Social equals.
He had expected if he was travelling in the country to see extensive estates like his own or else to pass antique houses which had been occupied by Ducal or aristocratic families for centuries.
And somehow he would then be able to introduce himself and even though he was in disguise he would be accepted and not turned away from the door.
‘I must be raving mad to believe that anything like that would happen and the Duke is as stupid as I am,’ he blustered to himself.
So far he had been interested in the people he had met, but they had been the same sort he could have found on his own estate.
He wondered if he was being missed in London.
He was sure the number of invitations Mr. Harrison was dealing with had grown bigger and bigger day by day, and he had only to think about the comfort of his house in Berkeley Square and at Milverton Hall to know that most of his friends would think he was crazy.
Now here he was wandering about the country by himself staying in cheap and uncomfortable hotels like the one last night.
He had slept, of course he had slept, but there had been no valet to put out his clothes in the morning and no grooms to bring Firefly to the door.
As far as he was concerned this discomfort and list of irrelevant acquaintances could well continue for the next three months.
‘The whole thing is ridiculous,’ he reflected. ‘The sooner I go back to reality the better.’
As he rode on he kept asking himself how he had been such a fool as to have accepted the Duke’s challenge.
He had thought he would find it amusing.
“I am bored! Bored stiff!” he cried aloud. “You know as well as I do, Firefly, that the people we have met are not our sort and we cannot expect to be interested in them for more than three days at the most – if that!”
Firefly merely tossed his head and the Marquis felt that he was saying he found it uncomfortable too – he had been pushed into a small and sparse stall with none of his contemporaries to talk to!
“I will tell you what we’ll do, Firefly,” the Marquis said, as they rode on, “we’ll give tonight one more chance. Then we’ll be brave enough to admit defeat and go home. As long as we do not have Aunt Matilda to make a choice of my future wife, I daresay one of those pushed on me by the rest of the family might be acceptable.”
Firefly broke into a quick trot.
He was showing in his own way he wanted to hurry home.
The Marquis wondered again if he was missing any amusing and exciting events in London.
The beauties of the Beau Monde were surely more alluring than Flo and he laughed as he thought that she had really tried to join him in his room at that hotel – she had expected that he would accept her blandishments as he had accepted those extended by the Countess.
Then he told himself that he was wasting his time, his youth and the joy and excitement that London gave him in its own way.
If he went back there, he would not risk seeing Juno again and yet as he knew only too well there were a dozen beauties to rival her – they would all hold out their arms eagerly if he so much as paid them a compliment.
“We will go home, Firefly,” he cried aloud. “As far as I am concerned the sooner the better!”
He stopped for luncheon at the inevitable village inn where the food was scarcely edible.
The publican was surly and had no wish to talk to anyone except his wife and there were only two men eating there and one look at them told the Marquis they were dull and of no consequence.
As he rode on he resisted an impulse to turn back for home immediately, telling himself he would give the next village one last chance.
If it failed, then he would turn round and reach the Hall as quickly as possible and he would tell the Duke he had given up the challenge.
Then he would look intently at the girls the family would provide for him and he knew he had only to lift his little finger and they would come panting to the Hall or if he preferred it to Berkeley Square.
He had a feeling the proposed wives would all look very much like each other and there would be no particular excitement or adventure about any of them.
Nevertheless he would then have to marry one and at least he would do his duty to his title and his family.
And that would end the reproaches that had bored him for too long.
He rode on a little quicker as he realised that time was passing and if he arrived at a village and it was late there might not be a welcoming inn where he could stay.
He felt that Firefly was tired and he was tired too, but his tiredness was not only physical but mental.
‘I was absolutely crazy to have come here in the first place,’ he muttered to himself.
It was a joy a little further on to see the spire of a Church in the distance.
“It is our last port of call, Firefly,” he announced. “I will make sure you are comfortable tonight, even if, like me, you find it lonely.”
As he spoke he thought he could see the Countess’s beautiful eyes looking up at him pleadingly and there were the soft hands and the eager lips of others he had loved.
‘I must have been totally mad to come here,’ he told himself again.
The village was only a little way ahead.
As he was about to quicken Firefly’s pace, a man came out of the trees ahead of him.
He put up his hand.
He was fairly decently dressed and looked quite a presentable young fellow.
The Marquis drew in his reins thinking that perhaps he had lost his way and wanted to ask his assistance.
Instead the man called out to him,
“I can see you be a traveller, sir, and I wondered if you’re a-comin’ to the village ahead, you’d be kind enough to patronise a new inn my friends and I have just opened.”
“A new inn?” the Marquis exclaimed.
“We bought up the old inn and then made it much more comfortable from the only other accommodation in the village.”
“What is its name?” the Marquis enquired.
“Waterfold,” the man replied, “and I can assure you we’d make you ever so comfortable at our inn.”
“That is very kind of you,” the Marquis said. “Of course I should be interested to see how you have done it.”
“It’s been so much hard work, sir, but we makes our customers really comfortable and one of us happens to be a good cook.”
The Marquis smiled.
“Now that really interests me. I had a particularly nasty luncheon and am actually very hungry.”
“I promise you won’t be disappointed, sir, and the quickest way to where our inn is, is through this wood and over the field, otherwise you has to go the long way round by the road.”
“Lead the way!”
The young man went ahead.
The Marquis saw there were thick trees on one
side of him and there was a mossy path running straight through them and into a field on the other side.
As the trees came to an end the Marquis saw ahead there was a field with a gate opening into another field.
He drew Firefly to a standstill and they stood in the shadow of the trees while the man tried to open the gate.
The Marquis heard him exclaim,
“What the devil’s happened here?”
Although he could not see clearly, the Marquis was aware that the gate had been tied up and he thought with some amusement that the farmer had found people using this route to the inn and had decided they should not use his land.
The man had drawn a knife from his pocket and was cutting through the rope.
Then the Marquis heard a little whisper beside him.
Looking down he saw to his astonishment that there was a young girl close by Firefly and looking up at him.
Before he could speak she said in a voice he could only just hear,
“Do not go with this man. He is going to steal your horse. I swear to you he is dangerous!”
The Marquis looked at her in surprise and when he would have spoken, she put a finger to her lips and added,
“Go straight down the road you were on before and past the Church. There are two large gates on the right hand side. Come there and I’ll tell you what is going on.”
She spoke breathlessly.
Then, as the Marquis was wondering what to reply, she turned and ran through the trees disappearing between the bushes that hid her completely from view.
He wondered if what he had heard was real or part of his imagination and he was also sure that he heard a horse riding onto the road he had just left.
Then as he turned his head back he saw that the young man in the field had cut the rope with his knife and was pushing the gate open.
On an impulse because he was curious the Marquis turned round and rode Firefly back the way he had come.
He heard the man who had opened the gate shout after him, but he galloped off down the road.
He went in the direction of the Church, the spire of which he could see in the distance.
CHAPTER SIX
The Marquis passed the Church.
A short way further on there were, as the girl had directed, two large rather impressive looking gates.
He reached them and turned into the drive and was surprised to find her just inside mounted on a good-looking horse.
“You came!” she exclaimed.
The Marquis smiled.
“Just how could I resist such a strange puzzle? You must tell me what this is all about.”
“Let’s go to the house,” she now suggested, “and perhaps it would be wise to put your horse in the stables.”
“You told me that man was going to steal my horse and as I cannot quite understand what you are trying to tell me, perhaps I should stay with my stallion.”
“That is very sensible of you,” she said. “Just as it would be very foolish of you to let that man persuade you to accompany him to his new inn.”
They were riding up the drive as she spoke and then the Marquis saw ahead of him a very attractive Elizabethan house and the sun was on its pale pink bricks and shining on its diamond paned windows.
“Is this your home?” he asked her.
“It belongs to my grandfather.”
He pulled Firefly into the courtyard near the front door and then, as if for the first time, he took a look at the girl who was riding beside him.
She was certainly very pretty in a soft gentle way due to the fact, he reckoned, that she was so young.
Her skin was the English strawberries-and-cream of which so much was written and her face was heart-shaped.
“I will tell you what we will do,” she said, as if she had been thinking it over, “as you are nervous of leaving your horse – and you are quite right to be so – we will let him and Silver Cloud free on the grass opposite us. They will come to no harm and you can keep your eye on your magnificent stallion which I can see is exceptional.”
“You are quite right,” replied the Marquis. “That is exactly what Firefly is and if anyone is thinking of stealing him I would fight very hard to keep him.”
“Of course you would, sir, and it is something I am afraid you might still have to do.”
She slipped down from her horse as she was talking and the Marquis also dismounted.
He tied the reins on Firefly’s neck and noticed that the girl did the same with dexterity.
As the two horses trotted eagerly out onto the green grass, the girl indicated with her hand a wooden bench that was outside the front door.
The Marquis sat down on it, took off his hat and crossed his legs.
“Now tell me what all this is about,” he quizzed.
The girl pulled off her riding cap and put it down on the ground beside her.
She had very fair hair which, when it caught the sunshine, looked as if it was part of the sun itself.
“That man you were talking to,” she began, “is a horse thief and for the moment I don’t know quite what we can do about it.”
“I think you and everyone else in the village should do a great deal if he really does steal horses.”
“I know,” she sighed, “but he does it so cleverly.”
“Suppose that we start at the very beginning. First of all please tell me who you are and why apparently you are warning passers-by like myself against horse thieves.”
“I am Vita Shetland and this is my grandfather’s house. His name is Sir Edward Shetland.”
The Marquis thought that he had heard the name somewhere before, but he did not interrupt her.
“These three men have only just taken over an old dilapidated inn at the back of the village. They repaired it themselves and now they have started to steal outstanding horses from travellers in a most outrageous manner.”
There was so much emotion in her voice that the Marquis paused before he asked quietly,
“How do they do it?”
“You can hear the story direct from a man who is staying here simply because I found him so desperate and crying because he had lost the horse he loved.”
The Marquis thought this all sounded very strange as she went on,
“It is what I understand has happened to a number of passers-by since, but I dare not interfere.”
“Why ever not?” the Marquis asked.
“Because they are really clever. It was only today when I was riding back to the village and saw your horse ahead that I realised how magnificent he was. I knew then I somehow had to save him.”
“For which I am extremely grateful, Vita. Do you really think they would have taken Firefly from me?”
“I will tell you exactly what would have happened.”
She paused for a moment and it was as if she found it hard to speak quietly and calmly on the subject.
“There is no hurry! Firefly is safe now!”
“I hope that’s true!” Vita exclaimed.
He thought perhaps she was being rather theatrical, and therefore suggested,
“Do go on with your story. What would the man struggling to force the gate open have done, if you had not warned me to ride away?”
“I bound up the gate last night. I must have known instinctively or perhaps it was God who told me that a very special horse would be coming here today.”
She was looking at Firefly and added,
“He is superb, he most beautiful horse I have ever seen.”
“That is exactly what I felt when I bought him.”
Vita was so entranced with Firefly that she just sat still looking at him until the Marquis urged her,
“Go on. Do tell me why you tied up the gates and prevented me from following this man to the inn.”
“When you reached it, he would have given you, sooner or later, a drugged drink, which is what he gave the poor man in the house, who you will meet and who still cries when he talks about it.”
“You would have stayed the night in the inn. When you woke up in the morning, feeling, I imagine, extremely ill, you would have paid your bill and your horse would have been led out of the stable already saddled for you.”
The Marquis looked puzzled.
“My horse?” he questioned.
“That is what they would have told you. Of course it was not your horse, but some tumbled down animal they had picked up cheap. While they had spirited away your thoroughbred to sell it at the next sale for a high price.”
“How could they possibly do that? I should have pointed out that the horse was not mine and demanded the one I had arrived on.”
“There are three brothers who own the inn and they employ, I believe, three or four men who are as crooked as they are themselves.
“They would all swear it was the horse you arrived on and by the time you called in the Police, your own horse would be miles away.”
The Marquis was shocked.
He could understand that the average traveller had little money and no influence, and it would be impossible for him to protest very effectively that his horse had been changed for another when there were so many witnesses to say the contrary.
It was certainly a clever trick!
Because he was silent, Vita was watching him and then she laughed.
“You do see, sir, that I have saved your horse for you. I only wish I could drive those wicked men out of the village and send them all to prison!”
“It should be done,” agreed the Marquis, “although after all you have told me, I realise it’s rather difficult. Do they stop travellers every day?”
“I think they do, but I did not want them to know I was watching them. I therefore ride very quickly past the trees where one of the men waits for a stranger to pass by.”
“And they have not tried to take your horse, Vita?”
“They would not dare. Grandpapa is an important man in the village and owns most of the houses. It would be very stupid of them to offend him, even though he is so ill at present.”
Search For a Wife Page 9
