There was silence and after a few seconds Lara saw that she was asleep.
She waited until she was quite certain that if she moved she would not disturb the child, then she blew out the candle and walked on tiptoe towards the door guided by the light that came from beneath it.
She went into the schoolroom to find it empty.
There was no sign of the Marquis and Lord Magor was no longer lying on the floor.
The Marquis, she supposed, must have carried him away and the only evidence left of the crime was that her father’s duelling pistol was where she had left it on the table.
She picked it up, carried it into her bedroom and hid it in the bottom of her trunk.
As she did so, she wondered if perhaps until the trial the Police would allow her to go home or whether she would be taken to prison immediately.
The idea was so terrifying that she wanted to scream, but instead she could only stand with her hands on her breast as if to stop the beating of her heart.
Her father would have to know what she had done and, although he would support and sustain her, she knew that he would be deeply distressed.
Jane, poor frightened Jane, would undoubtedly have to give evidence that she had told her about Lord Magor, which was why she had brought a duelling pistol with her to The Priory.
‘How could I have ever thought of doing anything so crazy – so idiotic?’ Lara asked herself desperately. ‘Oh Mama – help me! Help me!’
She cried out to her mother as a child might have done and indeed at that moment she felt that she was no older than Georgina.
She wanted to cry in her mother’s arms.
Then insidiously, so that she could not prevent it, the thought came creeping into her mind that, since her mother was dead, there was only one other place where she could feel safe and that was if the Marquis held her as he had done when he kissed her.
She wanted to cry because she was well aware of what he must think of her now.
Because she could not bear to see the condemnation in his eyes or hear him say how much he despised her. She wanted to run away immediately, so that she would never need see him again.
But she knew that wherever she ran she would be brought back and brought to justice.
She gave a little murmur of pain, mingled with contrition and horror, and put her hands up to her eyes.
As she did so, she heard a sound in the schoolroom and knew that the Marquis had come back.
There was nothing that she could do but go to him and face what was coming to her.
It flashed through her mind that she must not whine or complain, but should behave with the same dignity that he would show in any circumstances however cataclysmic.
Slowly, because it demanded an almost superhuman effort, she turned and walked into the next room.
The Marquis was waiting for her, standing with his back to the fireplace.
She could not look at him, but went to the table and stood with her hands resting on it because she was desperately in need of support.
Once again she was trembling. She knew that her face must be very pale because she felt all the blood had left it.
Yet she managed to hold her head high, although her eyes were downcast.
There was a little pause before the Marquis said in a low voice, as if he was afraid of disturbing Georgina,
“I have taken Lord Magor to his room. He is not dead.”
For a moment what he had said did not percolate her mind and then she thought that she could not have heard him aright.
She stiffened and her eyes were on his.
“Did you – say he is – not – dead?” she whispered.
The Marquis nodded.
“Yes! He is alive and actually your bullet did not touch him.”
“It cannot be – true,” Lara faltered. “When I fired he – collapsed and his – hands went to his – chest.”
Her words were almost incoherent, but her eyes were still on the Marquis’ face, looking at his searchingly as if she thought for some reason she could not understand that he was lying to her.
“He collapsed with a heart attack,” the Marquis said quietly. “He had suffered from his heart for some time and I have given him the medicine he always carries with him. He is now conscious and I have sent a groom for the doctor.”
“Is this – true? Is it – really – true?” Lara asked.
“I think you know it is.”
She sat down suddenly on the chair, as if her legs could no longer carry her.
“I was so – sure he was – dead,” she said almost as if she spoke to herself. “I believed that I would – have to – face a trial for – murder.”
“No one is to have any idea of what has happened here tonight,” the Marquis said sharply. “You must keep everything to yourself and not speak of it, do you understand?”
She thought that his voice was hard and unsympathetic.
At the same time she felt as if life was coming back into her body and into her mind and it was she rather than Lord Magor who had come back from the dead.
In a kinder tone, as if he understood, the Marquis went on,
“Go to bed! Everything will seem better in the morning. I will deal with everything.”
As he finished speaking, he looked at her for a long moment, almost as if he thought that she might faint.
Then reassured, he walked across the room and left the schoolroom, closing the door behind him.
It was only when she could no longer hear his footsteps going down the stairs that Lara stretched out her arms on the table and put her head down on them.
She had been saved by a miracle and perhaps by her mother’s prayers, but she knew only too well what the Marquis was thinking of her.
She sat for a long time at the table before she rose and, going into her bedroom, began to pack her trunk.
*
“I don’t say that Miss Cooper couldn’t have done with another week to put the roses in her cheeks,” Nanny said. “The rest has certainly done her good, which is more than I can say for you, Miss Lara.”
“I am just tired after the journey,” Lara said quickly “I had to leave very early in the morning.”
“Well, you might have let the Master know you were comin’,” Nanny said, “and he’d have met you at the station.”
“Farmer Jackson was there and he gave me a lift home,” Lara answered.
Nanny knew this already, but Lara wanted to keep talking to prevent her asking too many questions as to why she had returned home so unexpectedly.
She told Jane the reason when they were alone.
“You can go back to the Priory now, Jane. Lord Magor has had a heart attack and I expect he will be ill for some time.”
“That is good news,” Jane said. “You did not have any trouble with him?”
“He was not interested in me,” Lara replied, hoping that she would be forgiven for telling a lie.
“I was worried, very worried.”
“Before you go back,” Lara said, “I want to tell you what I have discovered about Georgina.”
She told her how musical the child was and how the Marquis intended to find the best teachers for her.
“In which case they will not want me,” Jane said at once. “I cannot play the piano and I have never liked music.”
“You can teach Georgina all her other lessons. But actually, Jane, I think you would be happier with younger children.”
“Perhaps I would,” Jane agreed, “and I don’t think anyone would mind if I left The Priory. Perhaps I could put my name down with one of the Domestic Bureaux that cater for Governesses.”
She did not sound very enthusiastic about it and Lara said,
“I think you would be wiser to ask Lady Ludlow if she knows any of her friends with young children who would need someone like you. Or, if you would like, I will ask Papa to write to her, since she is a relation.”
“That would be very very kind of you,” Jane replied.
Then
she added,
“I think perhaps I ought to go back this afternoon. I could stay the night at Keyston House in London. I am sure they will make arrangements to send me in a carriage to the Priory first thing tomorrow morning.”
“That’s a good idea,” Lara said. “I left a note for Georgina, telling her that you would be coming back. I feel sure that she will be looking forward to seeing you.”
This, again, was another lie. She was quite certain that Georgina would miss her, especially as there would be no one to ride with her except a groom.
She had written a note to the child, saying that she had to go home because her father needed her urgently and told her to be very kind to Miss Cooper after she had been ill.
She had also asked her to explain to her uncle that she had not been able to say goodbye because she had had to leave so early.
She ended,
“You must go on working hard at your music, dearest, because I know that you are going to be very very good at it and I will be thinking of you and praying for you. When you have time please write to me and tell me about all the things you are doing. You know I shall want to hear from you.
My love and God bless you,
Lara Wade.”
When she had finished writing the note, she had left it outside Georgina’s bedroom door, knowing that Nanny would take it in when she called her in the morning.
Lara had then dressed herself in her travelling clothes and waited until she had heard the stable yard bell ring at six o’clock.
She had gone downstairs and asked the first footman she saw, looking sleepy and in his shirtsleeves, to go to the stables to say that she requested a carriage to take her to the station.
When he returned, she had asked him to bring down her trunk.
There was no sign of any of the older servants when she left The Priory twenty minutes later. The young ones merely obeyed her orders and were not curious enough to ask why she was leaving.
It was all much easier than she had expected. She had caught a train that steamed into the station only ten minutes after she had arrived there.
She had, however, a long wait in London before there was a train to take her, stopping at every station, to the halt for Little Fladbury.
But she was home.
In contrast to The Priory, the Vicarage looked even smaller, more shabby and threadbare than it had before.
She tried not to think of anything except making Jane believe that, since now she was safe from Lord Magor, her job was waiting for her and her place was with Georgina.
Lara had driven Jane to the station, because her father had returned with Rollo and the trap was available.
But, after the train had gone, Lara felt so exhausted that when she reached home she lay down on her bed and instantly fell asleep.
When she woke it was dinner time.
But she looked so white-faced and limp that Nanny would not let her get up, but insisted on bringing her a dish of scrambled eggs and a glass of milk.
After she had finished them, Lara undressed, climbed back into bed and went to sleep again.
*
It was only in the morning, when Lara woke as the sun came streaming in through the thin curtains that covered the windows, that she could think of her love for the Marquis and realise that she had lost him for ever.
It was an agony that tore her to pieces.
‘How can I bear it?’ she asked. ‘To live here for the rest of my life, thinking of him, longing for him and knowing that I was right when I thought he was as out of reach as the moon.’
And yet for one moment she had been close to him and, although he might deny it and it meant nothing to him, she had become a part of him.
It had changed and transformed her so that she could never be the same again.
“I love him! I love him!” she whispered as she lay in the narrow bed she had slept in ever since she had been too big to use a cot.
She could see his face in front of her eyes, almost as if he stood in the room beside her.
She wondered what he would think when he learnt that she had gone, but she knew that he would be relieved now there would be no awkwardness to encounter when Lord Magor was better.
She had the feeling that perhaps the Marquis might have made him apologise for his behaviour and that would have been an embarrassment she could not contemplate, or worse still, if the Marquis had apologised for his friend.
She would also have to confess more fully her contrition in having been so foolish as to take the law into her own hands and shoot at a man who, however he behaved, was still a guest of her employer and under the same roof as the Prince of Wales.
‘It was all crazy,’ she thought, ‘and part of a world that only exists in my imagination and has nothing to do with reality.’
When she packed her trunk she found her manuscript books, but suddenly she had no wish to go on writing the novel that had absorbed her up to now.
What was the point of trying to tell a tale about people who, even though she had seen them and heard about them, were so far removed from her own thinking and feeling that she could never make them seem real and human to the reader?
‘I will write a book,’ she told herself, ‘which will be about country people, of whom I know a great deal, not about Society with its strange code of behaviour and which would be better left unknown to people outside their own special
*
“It’s nice to have you back, dear child,” her father said the next day, as they had breakfast together.
When he said the same at luncheon, Lara realised that he had genuinely missed her.
“I love being with you, Papa.” she answered. “I have no wish to go away again.”
“I was glad for you to have a change all the same,” Lord Hurlingham said, “for I am well aware, darling, how dull it must be for you here. I wish I had the chance of moving, but I think, if the truth were known, the Bishop has forgotten I even exist.”
“We are very happy in Little Fladbury,” Lara said loyally, “and everyone here loves you, Papa, as you well know.”
At the same time it passed through her mind that the Marquis must have many livings on his vast estates.
It would be so easy, if he was willing, to appoint her father to a much bigger Parish with a far larger stipend. But she thought bitterly that that was something that would never happen!
Although she tried to busy herself about the house, she could not help wondering what was happening at The Priory and if the Marquis even gave her so much as a passing thought.
She lay awake thinking of him all that night and, when Monday came, she knew that the Prince of Wales and Lady Brooke and all the rest of the guests would be leaving in a flurry of goodbyes.
A mountain of trunks would be carried downstairs and placed on the brakes, which would take them with the ladies’ maids, valets and other servants to the station.
The Prince, Lady Brooke and some of their more intimate friends would travel on the Royal train.
She wondered if the Marquis would go with them or perhaps because he might want to ride Black Knight or one of his other superlative horses, he would stay until later in the day.
She imagined that he and Georgina would go to the Racecourse and wondered if they would miss her and if Georgina would say, as she had done before, that it was more fun with three horses.
‘I have to forget – I cannot go on thinking about it like this,’ Lara told herself severely.
She put on her bonnet, the old one, which was all she possessed, Jane having taken the one with blue ribbons back with her to The Priory and set off down to the village.
There was an elderly woman whom she often called on when she had the time and who was growing blind and could only sit in her small cottage waiting for a kind neighbour to tell her what was happening in the world outside.
Lara had picked her a few sprigs of fragrant white lilac in the garden, which was now coming into bloom.
This, of course
, made her think of the shrubs at The Priory, which she had walked through when she had heard Lady Louise saying how much she loved the Marquis.
If Lady Louise had joined the list of women who had loved and lost him, so had she. Only he would never know about it and would certainly not have her complaining or arriving, as Lady Louise had, as an unwanted guest.
‘The Marquis is lucky on that count,’ she told herself bitterly.
She spent an hour with the blind woman and because it was difficult to talk about anything else she told her about The Priory and Georgina. Although she tried not to mention the Marquis, somehow his name crept into the story.
When she rose to say goodbye, the old woman held her hand in both of hers and said,
“You’ve been hurt, dearie, I can hear it in your voice. I pray things’ll come right for you. God often listens to my prayers.”
“I am sure He does,” Lara answered.
“And you’ll find happiness, that I know in my heart. You’re a good girl and like your mother. There was never a finer or kinder lady than her.”
“That is true,” Lara said, “and thank you for saying I am like her.”
“She was happy, very happy with your father, and you’ll be happy too and don’t forget I told you so.”
“I will not forget.”
Lara thought that she was speaking of the happiness she so wanted, but which would never come to her.
She walked back along the dusty road that twisted between the small thatched cottages and passed the village green before there was the first sight of the grey stone Church.
But she was seeing the velvet lawns slipping down to the stream, where once the monks had fished and the rose-pink of The Priory walls and the Great Hall with its beamed ceiling, where she had first met the Marquis.
Try as she would she could not escape him and she knew that he filled her mind and her heart.
It was no use to fight against love and even if she could not reach the moon, she could look at it and know that it was there in the sky.
She opened the Vicarage door and left it open to let in the sunshine. She knew her father was out visiting a farm, where the wife of the farmer was very ill.
Nanny was shopping in the village and, although Lara had seen her in the distance, she had not stopped but walked on.
The Poor Governess Page 14
