“What was it?” Alecia asked.
“I received a letter from my Guardian.”
“From your Guardian?” Alecia echoed. “I did not know you had one!”
“Neither did I,” Charis replied. “I seem to remember that Papa said something about it in the past, but I had forgotten all about it.”
“Explain to me.”
“When Papa went to Portugal with Wellington’s Army right at the beginning of the War, I was twelve. One day shortly before they went into a battle, a senior Officer commanding them suggested that they all make wills, leaving everything they possessed to the people they really wanted to have it.”
“I can understand that was a sensible idea,” Alecia said.
“I think Papa told me that some Officers treated it very frivolously,” Charis continued, “and left ridiculous things to people who would not want them and treated the whole thing as a joke.”
She gave a little sigh before she said,
“But Papa, for no reason I can understand, made a friend of his my Guardian, Lord Kiniston, who is now a General.”
“I suppose he thought that he was a responsible person,” Alecia said slowly. “Have you ever met him?”
“Of course not! As I say, I really did not know he existed until two days ago, when I received a letter from France.”
“From France?” Alecia questioned.
“He is at Cambrai with the Army of Occupation and I gather from his letter that, just as I did not know or had forgotten about him, he had forgotten about me.”
“Then why should he trouble you now?” Alecia enquired.
“I have no idea why,” Charis replied, “but he has ordered me to join him in France now! Immediately!”
Alecia stared at her.
“Do you really mean that? But how can he suggest such a thing?”
“He has not only suggested it, but he expects me to obey him,” Charis replied, “which, of course, I have no intention of doing.”
“Surely you can write to say that it’s not convenient?”
“Harry thinks that would be a mistake and he thinks too that Lord Kiniston has some ulterior motive in asking me to go to Cambrai, where the English Garrison is quartered. He is also afraid that if I do go, Lord Kiniston will not let me come back.”
“I cannot think of any reason why he should wish to detain you,” Alecia said. “After all, if he is a proper sort of Guardian, surely he would be delighted for you to marry anyone as important as Viscount Turnbury?”
“He sounds as if he is such a stickler for etiquette and all that sort of thing,” Charis argued, “that he would not let us get married at once, which is what we are determined to do.”
Alecia gazed at her and then Charis said,
“Harry has it all planned out and no one will know except you that we are going to be married almost immediately.”
Alecia’s eyes widened.
“How can you do that?”
“Quite easily.” Charis smiled. “I am going to tell Aunt Emily that I am going away to stay with friends, you will do as well as anybody, but actually Harry and I are going to be married very secretly in some tiny country Church by Special Licence.”
Her voice showed how excited she was as she went on,
“Then we are going to a house Harry owns in Suffolk where no one will find us.”
Alecia drew in her breath.
“I am sure you – should not do – this!”
“It is something I have every intention of doing!” Charis replied. “I love Harry and he loves me more than anything else in the world. If I go away and leave him, there will be other women who will try to get him into their clutches and I might lose him.”
“If he really loved you, he would not look at anybody else.”
Charis gave a little laugh.
“Dearest Alecia, men are men and there is one particular woman, whom I absolutely hate, who has been trying to steal him from me for months. She is, I must admit, very beautiful and very sophisticated and I am afraid he might be unable to resist her and would forget me.”
“But surely that is impossible?” Alecia said. “No one could be as lovely as you, Charis!”
“Or as you!” Charis replied. “After all we have always been very alike. Do you remember when we were children how we used to be taken for twins?”
Alecia laughed.
“That was a long time ago and I certainly don’t look like your twin now.”
“You would if you were dressed like me and did your hair in a fashionable way.”
“What would be the point?” Alecia asked. “There is no one here to see me except Papa, who is absorbed in his writing and thinks only of Mama and how much he misses her, or old Bessie, who thinks of nothing but the food we do not have.”
As she spoke, she gave a little cry.
“Oh, Charis, are you staying for luncheon? Because if so, there is nothing to offer you.”
“What do you mean, nothing to offer me?”
Alecia looked embarrassed.
“I am afraid it’s the truth. You see, now that your father is no longer here, we don’t have the delicious produce from the gardens and farms as we used to and Papa’s last book made very little money.”
Charis looked at her and then she said,
“I am ashamed of myself! How can I have been so selfish as not to realise that Papa’s death would make such a difference to you? I am sorry, Alecia, I am really! You must forgive me.”
“Dearest, it’s not anything to do with you. It is just that things have been very difficult and I don’t know quite what to do about them.”
“I will tell you the first thing you can do,” Charis said. “You can tell the servants who brought me here to go out and buy some food for our luncheon.”
She opened the pretty reticule she wore on her wrist, and drawing out three gold sovereigns put them into Alecia’s hand.
“I-I cannot take – this!” Alecia said weakly.
“Don’t be so ridiculous!” Charis replied. “We shared everything in the past and what I am going to ask you to do for me is worth a great deal more than that. Now go and tell Bessie to give the footman a list of what she wants and to hurry up about it. Otherwise we shall both be hungry!”
Alecia made a sound that was half a laugh and half a sob and then without saying any more she ran from the room.
She found Bessie in the kitchen and, as she expected, the coachman and footman who had brought Charis down from London were sitting at the kitchen table drinking cups of tea.
They both rose as she entered and she said good morning to them before she drew Bessie out of the kitchen into the passage and shut the door behind her.
“Now, listen, Bessie,” she said. “Lady Charis says she wants to pay for luncheon and you are to order her coachman and footman to go into the village and buy anything you want. Here is a guinea, and I have some more, which we will save for Papa’s food for the rest of the week.”
Bessie stared at the gold sovereign as if she had never seen one before, then putting up her work-worn hand she took it, saying,
“Glory be to God! And I was prayin’ for a miracle!”
“Then your prayers are answered,” Alecia said, “so hurry and tell them what you want.”
Alecia went back into the drawing room, saying as she entered it,
“I am very very grateful, Charis dearest, but I feel it is somehow wrong to impose on you.”
“You are not imposing on me,” Charis replied, “and how can you have been so foolish as not to tell me of the situation you are in?”
Alecia did not answer and Charis went on,
“All right, I have been very selfish in thinking only of myself, or rather of Harry, and that is why I am here now and why you have to help me.”
“You have still not told me what you want me to do,” Alecia quizzed her.
“It’s quite easy,” Charis replied, “all you have to do is to go to France in my place, so that I can m
arry Harry as he wants me to do and neither my tiresome old Guardian, nor anybody else for that matter, will be able to stop us.”
Alecia stared at Charis as if she thought that she had taken leave of her senses.
“I-I don’t know what you are – saying,” she stammered.
Charis drew in her breath.
“Both Harry and I think from my Guardian’s letter that, if I don’t do as he wishes, he will be furious. He has given me minute instructions and I am to travel next Thursday, that is in three days’ time, chaperoned by the wife of a Major in his Regiment, who is going out to join her husband. We are to be looked after by a competent Courier, chosen by him, and he has made everything he has arranged sound exactly like an Army exercise!”
“A-and you are suggesting that I should – go, pretending to be you?”
Because Alecia was so astonished, it was difficult for her to speak clearly.
“It will not be all that difficult,” Charis replied. “If I refuse to do as Lord Kiniston asks, I am sure that he is the type of man who will make a tremendous fuss and make it impossible for Harry and me to go away as we intend. Once we are married and have disappeared, there will be very little he can do about it.”
“But – why can you not write and tell him that is what you intend to do?”
“Don’t be stupid, Alecia,” Charis said. “He is the kind of General who is used to having his orders obeyed to the letter and he likes everything to be exactly correct, conventional, and punctilious.”
Her tone of voice was sarcastic and scathing and she went on,
“How could he possibly agree to my marrying somebody as important as Harry, when his mother has been dead for only a few weeks? Of course he will insist on our waiting for months and months, if not for the full year, and Harry agrees that we could not tolerate that or being separated from each other, as we should be if I went to France.”
“I do understand exactly what you are feeling,” Alecia said, “but surely your Guardian will not believe that I am you?”
Charis laughed.
“Why not? We look very much alike and in fact he has never seen me nor has the Major’s wife with whom I am to travel, nor, I am certain, has anyone in Cambrai.”
She made a little gesture with her hand before she carried on,
“It is not as though you would be going to Paris, where there might be people who have seen me in London, although I rather doubt it. After all my friends are not the slightest bit interested in the Army of Occupation and the men who have come home are sick to death of fighting and just want to enjoy themselves.”
“I can understand that,” Alecia said softly.
“All you have to do,” Charis went on confidently, “is to dress like me and you know me well enough to talk like me. Moreover we have the same relatives so that he can hardly trip you up on that score!”
“I-I know I could not – play a part like – that,” Alecia stuttered.
Charis put out her hand and took hers.
“Dearest, you have to help me – there is no one else. If I lose Harry through leaving him, I think I would want to die!”
Alecia was silent and then Charis said,
“Actually it was Harry who suggested before I came here that I might offer you a present for doing this for us. When he suggested it, I thought you might feel insulted, but now that I know what a mess you are in because Papa died, I am going to offer you five hundred pounds if you will go to France in my place and stay there until it is safe for Harry and me to admit that we are married.”
“Five hundred pounds?” Alecia gasped.
She was about to say that it was something she could not accept and was, as Charis had envisaged, an insult.
Then she thought of her father and knew that she could not deprive him of the food he needed and the freedom from worry.
As if she knew without Alecia saying anything that she had won her battle, Charis said,
“And now, dearest, we have a lot to do in a short time.”
“What have we – to do?” Alecia asked, bewildered.
“We have to bring in the clothes I have brought for you from London and plan exactly how you will pick up a great many more in the three days before you meet Mrs. Belton and set off across the Channel.”
Alecia gave a little cry of protest.
“How can I do this, Charis? I shall let you down, I know I shall! And Lord Kiniston will be furiously angry if he finds out that he is being deceived.”
“Not if he does not find out too quickly!” Charis said. “Then it will be too late for him to do anything about it and he will not want to cause a scandal by exposing Harry as heartless for having married so soon after his mother’s death and putting me under suspicion of being obliged to marry in such haste!”
She saw by the expression on her cousin’s face that Alecia did not understand what she was implying and went on quickly,
“Just keep him calm and amused until I let you know what Harry and I are doing and, dearest, we shall both be so wildly and ecstatically happy that I know you will feel rewarded for your kindness to us.”
Alecia felt as if her head were spinning and that unexpectedly she had been swept into a whirlwind.
It was only when she and Charis had gone up to her bedroom and her cousin was arranging her hair in the same style as her own that Alecia said weakly,
“What – am I to – tell Papa?”
“Tell him I am taking you with me to London, which is something I should have done a long time ago, and will therefore not surprise him. In case you are worried about him while you are away, I suggest if that nice Mrs. Milden is still living in The Towers at the end of the village, you could ask her to keep an eye on him.”
“Yes, she is still there,” Alecia said, “but how could I suggest that she look after Papa?”
“Easily!” Charis said. “If I know anything about it, she was always saying how wonderful he was and how much she enjoyed reading his books, which is more than most people do! And now I come to think of it, as she is very well off, you have been very stupid not to make use of her before.”
“I-I never thought of it,” Alecia said. “I suppose I thought of her more as Mama’s friend than Papa’s.”
“If you ask me,” Charis said with a worldly-wise air, “Mrs. Milden was much more eager to be friends with your father than she ever was with your mother, but, of course, she was too careful to say so.”
Thinking of Mrs. Milden, who was an attractive widow nearing forty, Alecia realised that every time she met her she had always suggested that she and her father should come to luncheon or dinner with her. She had seemed very disappointed when her father had refused.
“I am too busy with my book to be sociable,” he had replied to every suggestion Alecia made.
Now she thought that she should have insisted that Mrs. Milden and perhaps other people in the neighbourhood, should visit him to give him something else to think about.
But, because they had so little to offer by way of hospitality and after her mother’s death her father was so distraught, she knew it was impossible for him to mix with other people.
She had just let things drift and now she said,
“I will do as you suggest, Charis, I will go to see Mrs. Milden and ask her as a great favour if she will look after Papa while I am away.”
“I am sure she will be only too delighted,” Charis replied, “and actually I always liked her.”
“I like her too,” Alecia agreed, “and it was very stupid of me not to realise that if we had gone to dinner there as she suggested, we would at least have had one good meal!”
“That is something you will be able to have in the future,” Charis said, “and, if you do not see to it, I will! After all since Papa died I have a very large income of my own, although I am not allowed to touch the capital until I am twenty-one.”
“Is Harry, the man you are going to marry, well off?” Alecia asked.
“He will be very rich w
hen his father dies, but we have enough between us to do everything we want. Incidentally, what we both want most is a racing stable!”
“A racing stable?” Alecia repeated in surprise.
“That is another reason for our wanting to marry. I have not yet told you that my horrible old Guardian was reminded of my existence simply because I asked my Solicitors to let me have twenty thousand pounds with which to buy horses.”
She made an exasperated little sound as she added,
“I see now it was silly of me, but Harry was planning the stable and saying we would manage it together as a joint concern. So while he was buying horses for it, I wanted to do the same.”
“So that is why Lord Kiniston remembered about you!” Alecia exclaimed.
“Yes, and if only I had been sensible and realised something like that might happen, all this need never have arisen. At the same time Harry says he always meant to run away with me for the simple reason that he cannot possibly wait for months and months before it is conventional to announce our engagement and then wait again to be married.”
Suddenly Charis threw her arms around Alecia’s neck and kissed her.
“Now everything will be perfect,” she said, “and thank you, thank you, dearest Alecia, for being so kind!”
“I-I am frightened!” Alecia said in a very small voice.
“Nonsense!” Charis retorted. “It will be an adventure and it is high time you had one!”
Chapter two
Just before she reached The Green Dragon on the Dover Road, Alecia began to think that she was crazy.
How could she have let Charis stampede her into doing anything so absurd as to impersonate her not only to her Guardian but also to a large number of people she would obviously meet at Cambrai.
She had an impulse to turn the smart travelling chariot drawn by four horses that Charis had provided and insist that they take her home.
Yet she knew that because she loved her cousin she could not do anything so heartless or so cruel as to prevent her from marrying the man she loved.
In London Charis had talked and talked about how wonderful Harry Turnbury was and, when Alecia met him, she could understand why she was in love.
He was not only a very handsome charming young man, but she knew perceptively that he was intelligent and reliable, qualities that would make him a good husband.
Love Casts Out Fear Page 2
