by M C Beaton
Chapter Thirteen
HENRY SANDFORD RETURNED FROM Brighton in a sour humor. No, he snapped at his curate, he had not seen Henrietta. She had not been in Brighton, nor her town house nor her house in Sussex.
Henry was weary and puzzled. Henrietta had last been seen leaving the ballroom of the Ship with Lord Reckford. But now Mr. Symes had just informed him that Lord Reckford had called but a half hour ago demanding to see Miss Sandford and appeared very worried and upset.
Mr. Symes was just beginning to wonder uncharitably if his vicar were concerned over his sister’s welfare or the fact that she had not been on hand to pay his tailor’s bills or the extravagant wages he seemed to pay his new servants.
Three men servants for a vicarage, mused the curate. And such men! They would look more at home in a thieves’ kitchen than a country vicarage.
“Why,” he suddenly exclaimed. “There is Miss Sandford. And Miss Scattersworth too!”
Henry rushed to the window. Both were descending from a hired carriage. He heard his sister’s voice faintly through the glass, “Now, Mattie, you must promise not to say a word….”
Henrietta blinked at the massive ugly features of the footman who opened the door to them. But she was too glad to be on safe familiar ground to worry too much about it.
Henry rounded on the curate. “Take yourself off, Symes. You have parish duties to attend to, you know. Can’t stand all day flirting with the ladies,” he added hurriedly as he caught the look of surprise on his sister’s face. Mr. Symes relinquished Miss Scattersworth’s hand and went off slowly.
“Now,” said Henry, beaming all over his face. “You must have some refreshment.” He tugged the bell. “Some ratafia for the ladies,” he ordered.
“Where on earth did you find that peculiar servant?” demanded Henrietta. “And where is our housekeeper?”
“In the kitchen where she belongs,” answered her brother, ignoring the first question. “Ah, here we are. Now, drink up ladies! I have a homecoming surprise for you!”
Neither lady likes the taste of ratafia but Henry was beaming all over his face and it was so nice to feel safe, secure and welcome.
Henrietta set down her glass. “What is the surprise?” she asked with a smile. “Isn’t it exciting, Mattie?” She turned to her friend and her voice faltered. Miss Scattersworth was slowly slipping down in her chair. She was pointing weakly to the empty glasses.
Henrietta tried to get to her feet but the room began to spin. From very, very far away, she heard the mocking voice of her brother, “Surprise, dear sister! Surprise!” And then the world went black.
When she awoke, she recognized her old room. She felt sick and, in a second, realized that she was lying in her bed, gagged and bound. Now she was afraid as she had never been in her life before. All her brother’s former petty cruelties returned to her mind. When people say, ‘I nearly died of fright,’ she thought, they don’t know what they are talking about. However, I do.
The one thing that saved her sanity and gave her courage was the sudden overwhelming realization that Lord Reckford was guiltless. As it dawned on her frightened mind that the Beau had somehow guessed about her brother and had been trying to save her, her strength of mind returned. She would wait and plot and watch for any chance of escape.
A whole night passed and it was well into the next day when she began to wonder if Henry meant to starve her to death. But finally the door opened and he came in wearing a benign smile and carrying a tray. “Hungry?” he asked setting the tray down on a table beside the bed. He reached forward and untied her gag with his plump hands. “Now you may scream all you like. The neighbors have been convinced that you are mad. My Lady Belding has helped vastly in this. She only does it out of spite, of course. She has no place in this plot.”
“Just what is this plot?” asked Henrietta, resolutely starting to eat.
“Why to prove you mad, of course,” he said calmly, pouring himself a glass of wine. “This evening after dark you will be conveyed to the nearest madhouse and you will stay there for the rest of your life.
“I have all the necessary papers, the necessary corrupt physician and—in case you have any hopes—the necessarily corrupt director of the madhouse.”
“Then it was you who murdered the poor magician and that poor girl.”
“I! Of course not. I am a man of God and do not soil my hands with murder. I have men who are paid to do that. As a matter of fact, you paid for their deaths yourself, my dear. You remember the gold snuff box I begged for so earnestly. That disposed of the tattle-tale magician. The girl was more expensive. The diamond studs you gave me for my birthday filled the bill admirably.”
“Miss Scattersworth…” began Henrietta faintly.
“Interfering old ratbag. She shall meddle no more. She has been heavily drugged and is reported to have gone into a decline because of your condition. When you are safely in the madhouse, we shall terminate her decline with a sympathetic overdose. A nice painless death. Like putting down an old tabby.” He gave a fat chuckle and helped himself to more wine.
“You are the one who should be in the madhouse, my dear brother,” said Henrietta.
He merely gave her a complacent smile.
She racked her brains from some way to annoy him. Some way to make him betray a weakness in his plan.
“Lord Reckford,” she exclaimed suddenly. “He will be looking for me.”
“He already has,” said Henry coldly. “He can do nothing. And after several months have passed, he will be married to Alice Belding. I have a plan… Lady Belding would reward me amply an’ I were to pull it off.”
“What need will you have of more money when you have mine?” she asked curiously.
“I need all the money I can get. I shall buy a peerage some way or another. I shall buy an abbey. I shall be my Lord Henry. I shall have power.” His bulbous eyes were glittering and flecks of spit were showing at the corners of his plump mouth.
Henrietta felt her new found courage ebbing. “At least have somebody to change my bed linen.”
“Smell, do you? All to the good. Mad people are supposed to be smelly.”
Tears of humiliation began to form in Henrietta’s eyes. “Oh, if you are going to blubber, I’m going. Be back for you after dark.” With that he ambled off taking the tray with him.
Henrietta bit her lip to try to stop the tears. Until the gates of the madhouse closed behind her, she would not give up hope. She lay wide eyed all the long afternoon, watching the lengthening shadows on the floor and reliving her happy times with Lord Reckford. By the time night had fallen, she had hit upon a dismal plan of action. When they took her from the house, she would fight for her freedom. If she did not escape, they would have to kill her and she would be better dead than condemned to a life of imprisonment.
But when her brother and his three servants came for her, even that hope died. She was to be taken out to the carriage bound and gagged.
“I have told all our neighbors that you are becoming violent,” said Henry cheerfully. “They have promised to draw their blinds and stay indoors as a last mark of respect.”
And so Henrietta was carried as easily as a parcel down the stairs and out into the night. She was thrown into the corner of a closed carriage, her large terrified eyes roaming round like a trapped animal.
Henry leaned his great bulk back in the opposite seat and lit a cheroot. “A few miles and it shall be all over. What a Gothic night! Appropriate, don’t you think?”
A strong wind shrieked around the carriage and a tiny moon raced through the black ragged clouds. The lights of Nethercote were left behind and Henrietta sent up a fervent prayer for Miss Scattersworth’s life.
If only Miss Scattersworth were here, thought Henrietta, she would have some mad scheme. Or even one of her fantasies to enliven this terror-stricken gloom, such as—Lord Reckford would seize her from the gates of the madhouse at the last minute. They would be married by special license that very ni
ght. Tears of weakness gathered in Henrietta’s eyes and she began to feel ill and faint.
All too soon, Henry announced blithely, “Here we are,” for all the world, thought Henrietta, as if they were coming to the end of some pleasurable outing.
She had a glimpse of massive spiked iron gates being swung back. The carriage lumbered forward and the gates swung to behind them with a clang like a death knell. “So this is reality,” said Henrietta to herself. “Oh, Mattie. No gallant gentlemen to ride to our rescue and no…”
“Hold hard!” shouted a stentorian voice and a shot whistled over the roof of the coach.
The coach jerked to a halt as the horses reared and plunged. “Highwaymen!” gasped Henry, his round face pasty in the light of the carriage lamps.
“What! In the grounds of the madhouse?” thought Henrietta incredulously.
Henry jerked down the window and leaned out, “What is the meaning of…” That was as far as he got. The carriage door was jerked roughly open and he tumbled out on to the ground. The air seemed to be full of shouts and shots and the clash of steel. Then the face she never thought to see again appeared at the door of the carriage. Lord Reckford lifted her carefully out, untying the tight ropes that bound her and releasing her gag. A strange sight met her eyes. Henry and his three servants were being trussed up as ruthlessly as Henrietta herself had been. Standing over them, on guard, with a naked sword in his hand and his grey hair standing up round his head like an auriol stood the timid curate, Mr. John Symes.
“Miss Scattersworth,…” cried Henrietta. “They are going to kill her!”
“I rescued her,” said Mr. Symes simply and with great pride. Then he grinned, “Just like a book, she told me.”
Relief and reaction were making Henrietta feel faint. She clung to Lord Reckford’s arm as if she would never let go.
He lifted Henrietta gently in his arms. “Come, my dear,” he said. “Let us go home.”
He helped her up onto his horse and sprang up lightly beside her. “We will leave Jeremy and Mr. Symes to take care of the prisoners.”
They cantered off in silence while Henrietta leaned back against him. “I will take you to the vicarage at Nethercote. Miss Scattersworth has quite a tale to tell. And so do you, my love, after you have had a bath.”
Henrietta wrinkled her nose in disgust and then blushed. How could she ever hope to marry this handsome lord who had so many fair beauties to choose from? Beauties who did not get tied up in their bedchambers by their brothers and then dragged to the madhouse.
“What will you do with my brother?” she asked eventually. “Will you take him to the magistrate?”
“What a passion you have for law and order.” he teased. “No, Miss Sandford, I am anxious to avoid scandal at all costs. Your brother will be forced to sign a confession and then we will send him out of the country. As for his servants, I will leave their fate to Jeremy. He’s very good at disposing of little matters like that.”
Henrietta shuddered and did not reply.
The house round the vicarage was still ablaze with light and what a tale the neighbors had to tell for many years to come. Of the famous night Miss Henrietta Sandford came home from the madhouse, dressed only in a filthy nightdress, and with no less than the famous Beau Reckford to carry her indoors.
Looking not a whit the worse for her harrowing experience, Miss Scattersworth rushed to meet them, chattering non-stop about her adventures. She knew that she was being drugged so she had only pretended to eat and drink what they had put in front of her. But her door was securely locked and when she saw Henrietta being dragged from the house, she nearly gave up hope. But then Mr. Symes had broken down the door of her room. “He was magnificent,” sighed Miss Scattersworth. “Like Sir Lancelot and King Richard and Joan of Arc all rolled into one.”
Henrietta giggled faintly, feeling the world beginning to right itself again. “Joan of Arc. Really, Mattie!”
After she was bathed and dressed in clean clothes, Henrietta insisted on going downstairs again. “I must thank Lord Reckford for rescuing me, Mattie,” she said firmly.
Miss Scattersworth felt her brow. “You are a trifle hot, my dear. Do you not think you should go to bed and have some camomile tea or something of that nature?”
Henrietta shook her head and led the way downstairs. She blinked in surprise as she entered the drawingroom. Half the town seemed to be there, congratulating Lord Reckford who, lying cheerfully, had told them that the vicar had been suffering from a crise des nerfs and had persuaded himself that his sister was mad and that he, Lord Reckford, had managed to rescue Miss Sandford in time.
Henrietta’s head began to feel very hot indeed. Voices rose and fell around her as meaningless as the sounds of the sea.
Lord Reckford appeared very far away and inaccessible. She wanted to be near him, to break down her reserve, to tell him that she loved him and would have him on any terms.
Everyone seemed to have grown a foot taller and her faint “excuse me” as she tried to work her way through the press was to no avail.
“My lord!” she shouted with all her strength. The guests stared, Lord Reckford took a step forward, and Henrietta collapsed in a heap on the floor.
Next day, the house was hushed and silent, the drawingroom deserted except for Lord Reckford and Miss Scattersworth. Both sat silent, listening to the faint sounds above stairs as the physician moved around Henrietta’s room.
“She has been through so much,” whispered Miss Scattersworth.
Lord Reckford made as if to reply and then they heard the heavy tread of the doctor slowly descending the stairs.
Both rose to their feet and faced the door.
The doctor bustled in and came straight to the point, “Miss Sandford is running a high fever and is much disturbed in mind. She keeps calling for you over and over again, my lord.”
Lord Reckford started for the door but the physician caught him by the sleeve.
“I very much fear, my lord, that you might be the root of her problem. She appears to fear you. I regret that if you wish to help Miss Sandford in her recovery, it would be better that you do not see her again.”
Lord Reckford stood very still and quiet.
“And Miss Scattersworth,” the doctor went on, “as soon as Miss Sandford is in the least recovered and able to travel, it would be as well to remove her from any place or persons that may remind her of her sad ordeal.
“And now, if you will forgive me, I have other patients to see.” He looked enquiringly at Lord Reckford who still stood motionless by the door. “Ah, well, well! I shall call tomorrow to see how our patient does. I shall of course not be seeing you again, my lord. I earnestly beseech you to follow my wishes. Perhaps… in years to come… when Miss Sandford… well, well, good day to you.”
Miss Scattersworth fluttered around Lord Reckford exclaiming and crying, “Poor, poor Henrietta! I shall do my best to nurse her, my lord. I shall not even mention your name.”
Lord Reckford made her his best bow and stood for a few seconds looking round the room. Then he left.
He felt immeasurably desolate.
Chapter Fourteen
THE LITTEL SPA OF Luben in south Germany had suddenly woken up and found itself fashionable overnight. And in the mysterious way of fashion, no one could quite say exactly what had brought about the change. One day, it was a small provincial town and the next, bustling with lords and ladies and their innumerable servants. The walks and gardens rang with high clipped British voices and the hoteliérs had called in all the available labor to build extensions grand enough to please their new clientéle.
“I declare, all peace and quiet has fled,” said Henrietta, throwing down her book. “Even the night is made hideous with the rattle of arriving carriages and the eternal bang-bang-banging of the builders.
Miss Scattersworth set another crooked stitch in her tapestry, looked down at her sensible walking shoes and sighed.
“I must say, I welcome all
the bustle, Henrietta. Life can be too quiet, you know.”
“But we are better as we are, Mattie,” said Henrietta, looking at her friend anxiously. “We are having a pleasant stay here and I have been able to read… oh so many books. You must confess the London Season became boring after we had got used to all the balls and parties.”
Miss Scattersworth sighed again and then bit her lip. Her friend’s recovery was all that was important and if a certain silly old spinster pined for the noise and excitement of the city, then she must keep her thoughts to herself.
A year had passed since Henry Sandford had tried to lock up his sister. As soon as Henrietta had recovered, Miss Scattersworth had travelled with her to Luben, determined to sacrifice her life in caring for her friend.
Although Miss Scattersworth’s moods changed like quicksilver, she was good-hearted and very grateful to Henrietta for rescuing her from a life of genteel poverty. Had her friend shown any signs of remaining sickly, then Miss Scattersworth would happily have given up any thoughts of her own entertainment.
But Henrietta seemed to be completely recovered. Admittedly, she had not mentioned Lord Reckford’s name once, which was still a bad sign, but she did seem to be enjoying the fuddy-duddy life of the small spa and had taken to wearing caps again, saying that, since she was doomed to spinsterhood, she may as well look the part.
Miss Scattersworth reflected that her brief Season had spoiled her own tranquility. For years, she had endured a dull tedious life in the rooms above the bakery. So why should she find her present existence nigh unbearable?
The day began with early breakfast at nine o’clock. Then she and Henrietta would stroll along one of the many paved walks and then visit the pump room to watch the octogenarians imbibing the sulphur-laden water. Luncheon at twelve was followed by a long afternoon of reading and sewing, lasting until tea at four. Dinner was served at six sharp and then, to all appearances, the whole town went to bed.
Henrietta had engaged suites of rooms for herself and Miss Scattersworth at the principal hotel, which, from the sound of frenzied banging, was now rapidly in the process of turning itself into a palace.
