"It most certainly is not. Clara belongs to me, and I won't let you kill her."
"What's the trouble?" The haughty woman had appeared again.
"She's trying to take our supper, Mama."
That did it. Rena had born much patiently but suddenly enough was enough.
"Once and for all," she said, "Clara is mine, and I am taking her with me."
She looked at the four of them ranged against her.
"If you take her from me," she said, slowly and emphatically, "that will be stealing, and I shall report you to the constable."
"Who's to say who it belongs to?" the unpleasant young man demanded. "That animal is parish property, and the constable will say the same."
"No, he won't," Rena flashed, "because he's met this chicken before (she could have bitten her tongue out for the idiotic words). In fact, his mother gave it to me."
"Which means," she added, recklessly casting aside Papa's teaching aside, "that he'll know that this is a den of thieves. Ask yourself how your brother will like that on his first day."
In sullen silence they stood back to let her pass. Still keeping a firm hold on Clara, Rena had to use her other hand to put one bag on the table, fitted her arm over it, and lifted the other with the hand of that arm.
She was horribly aware of what she must look like, staggering out of the house, laden down. It took her an hour to limp through the village to her destination.
But it didn't matter. Nothing mattered except that she had stood up against bullying and won. She could have cried hallelujahs.
Thus it was that Miss Colwell returned to The Grange in triumph, carrying all her worldly goods under one arm, and a chicken under the other.
CHAPTER THREE
Luck was with her. She found the front door of The Grange unlocked, and was able to slip inside. The house was in darkness, so she guessed that the Earl was still carousing in the tavern. That meant she could settle herself in peace.
Dropping the bags, she made her way to the kitchen, keeping firm hold on Clara, who was making contented little mumbling squawks, as though signifying that she felt safe now.
With Clara safely deposited in the kitchen, she lit a lamp and went hunting for a place to lay her head. She could find a proper bedroom tomorrow.
It was dark in the house with only the lamp, and the huge place seemed to echo about her. Suddenly she could hear how full it was of creaks and strange noises. It had stood here for hundreds of years, and seen all manner of history, births, deaths, perhaps even murders. Was it really fanciful to imagine that a ghost or two might walk? Well, suppose it did, she thought. She was drunk from her victory, exhilarated at giving free rein to something too long repressed in her nature. She had stood up for herself. And she had won. She was ready to take on any ghost.
It felt like being reborn as another person, and she wished there was somebody that she could tell. But who would understand? He would, she thought suddenly. She had known the Earl for only a few hours, yet instinct told her that she could confide this new feeling to him and he would sympathise.
If only he would return home so that she could talk to him! Now she had a chance to contemplate him at leisure, which she found herself very willing to do. There was delight in considering his tall, upright body, hardened by years on active service in the Navy.
She liked too the way he held his head, as though there was nobody alive whose eye he feared to meet. That was how a man ought to look.
His face was pleasing with its blunt, good looking features, and the amiable grin that was seldom far from his lips. His eyes were full of warmth and humour, and he seemed to laugh as easily as he breathed.
That had been startling at first. He spoke with a kind of half comical inflection, as though a remark could be amusing or not, depending on how his listener took it.
And Rena had discovered that dear Papa must have been right all along. She really did have a shocking inclination to levity, for part of her instinctively responded to this way of talking with a humour of her own.
Nothing in her experience had prepared her for a man like this. In fact nothing had prepared her for men of any kind.
The only man she had known well had been her father, who had taken life and the world with great earnestness.
Her parents had been devoted to each other. Rena had liked nothing better than hearing Mama tell how she and Papa had fallen in love.
It had been just like Romeo and Juliet, for the Sunninghills had not been at all pleased when their daughter fell in love with the young clergyman who had come to assist the elderly vicar in the church they visited every Sunday.
"Your father was one of the most handsome men I had ever seen," her mother said. "He told me he fell in love with me from the moment he saw me moving into the family pew we always occupied."
"So you both fell in love with each other at the same time," Rena said.
"I suppose we did, but I didn't know it then, because we didn't get the chance to speak for several weeks."
With a shy smile she had added, "Then when we met, he told me later he was so overcome by shyness that he couldn't say more than a word or two."
"I understood because I felt the same. I wanted to talk to him but I couldn't think of anything to say. The first time he came with the vicar to tea, neither he nor I said anything to each other."
"But you were excited at meeting him, Mama?" Rena had questioned.
"So excited that I think I dreamt of him every night until we met again. But that was a long time."
Finally when her parents gave a garden party, she somehow managed, although she could never remember quite how, to show him the strawberry bed. For the first time they had been alone together.
"How long was it, Mama, before he told you he loved you?"
"It seemed to me as if it took a thousand years. I admitted to myself I loved your father but was not certain if he loved me."
"But finally he told you so," Rena said.
"Yes, and I felt as if he took me into the sky and we were together in heaven. I hope, my darling, it will one day, happen to you."
They were certainly two of the happiest people Rena could ever imagine.
Sometimes she thought they had forgotten her and everything else in the world except that they were together.
But she realised now that it had left her in limbo. They did almost no entertaining, and since her mother's death her father had stayed at home except for his duties. She had met almost nobody.
A curate had stayed with them for a week, and she had sensed that he admired her. Papa had even asked her how she liked him, and reproved her for levity because she had disliked his red hands and wrists, and his habit of sniffing before he spoke.
But she knew he was glad that she did not want to leave home, and the matter was allowed to drop.
Despite her restricted experience she was not quite as unworldly as her father believed. Lacking any other companionship Rena and her mother had grown closer and had many long talks.
She learned that her grandfather Sunninghill had not been a faithful husband. With money to spare, he had indulged himself in the pleasures of the flesh, including mistresses.
Mrs Colwell had considered long before divulging this to her daughter, but had eventually decided that some worldly knowledge was essential, if the girl was not to be left completely vulnerable.
And so Rena knew of her grandfather's scandalous habits and the way he had broken his poor wife's heart.
But her greatest education had come from the kindly way her mother had spoken of these girls.
"They weren't really wicked, my dear, although the world calls them that. They were just sad, misguided creatures who loved him and mistakenly trusted him.
"One of them came to the house once. She was desperate, poor soul. My father had set her up in a fine house, lavished gifts on her, then thrown her out when she was with child. Even my mother pitied her, and gave her some money."
"Was Grandpapa a wicked
man, Mama?"
"He was like many a man, selfish and indifferent, concerned only with pleasing himself. That's why a kind, loving man like your father should be prized. There are so few like him."
In that modest, virtuous household there had been nobody to tell Rena that she was growing into an attractive young woman. Her hair was a pale honey colour, and her eyes which seemed almost too large for her small face, were the blue of the sky.
In fact, if she had been properly dressed and her hair well arranged, a man might easily have called her beautiful.
As it was, when she had seen herself in the mirror recently, she was not impressed. Her illness had left her thin, especially her face, so that her large eyes now seemed enormous.
"I look plain and haggard," she had thought, but without emotion, for what difference could it make to her now? But suddenly she remembered the Earl saying - "Hurricanes, mermaids, beautiful young women springing up through trapdoors - Her Majesty's Navy is ready for anything."
He had called her beautiful.
But he was only joking, of course.
But no man had ever used that word in connection with her before. And she couldn't help smiling.
She had come to the drawing room where the lamp showed her a large sofa that might do for a bed, just for tonight. Some moonlight came through the large windows and she decided to return the lamp to the kitchen.
Turning, she headed for the door and immediately collided with a chair that she hadn't seen in her path. It went over onto the wooden floor with a mighty clang that seemed to echo through the house.
She stood listening while the echoes died away. Then there was silence.
She made her way back to the kitchen where Clara was inspecting the floor.
"You'd better come with me," she said. "After tonight I don't want to let you out of my sight. Parish property indeed."
She turned out the lamp, scooped Clara up and returned along the passage to the drawing room. She had left the door open, so that although the passage was dark she could see her destination by the glow of moonlight.
But as she took the final step through the doorway a mountain seemed to descend on her. Clara escaped and flew upwards, squawking horribly.
After the first moment's blind panic Rena fought back fiercely, kicking out with her feet and threshing her arms. She even managed to launch some sort of blow, if the grunt from her assailant was anything to go by.
Then they were on the floor together, rolling over and over in the darkness, each trying to get a firm grip on the other, gasping, thumping, flailing, until at last her head banged against the floor and she let out a yell.
"What the devil - ?" said a voice that she recognised.
The fight had taken them into a patch of moonlight near the window. Rena found she was lying on her back with a hard, masculine body on top of her, and the Earl's face staring down at her with shock.
"M-Miss Colwell?"
At that moment Clara landed on his head.
"Miss Colwell?" he said again, aghast. "It's you."
"Certainly it's me. Kindly rise, sir."
"Of course, of course." He hastily sprang to his feet and reached down to help her up.
"Do you normally attack people who enter your home?" she demanded. She was breathless from the fight, and from strange sensations that were coursing around her body.
"Only the ones who come by night and don't ring the doorbell," he said promptly. "To be honest, I thought you were the ghost."
"Really!"
"Truly, I did. I heard a noise from down here and came to investigate. Then I heard ghostly footsteps coming along the passage, and then some creature came through the door, holding something under her arm. So naturally I thought you were carrying your head."
"I beg your pardon!"
"You were carrying something under your arm, so I thought it was your head. Headless Lady, you know."
"It was not my head," Rena said with awful dignity. "It was a chicken."
"A chicken? Yes - well, I quite see that that explains everything."
Her lips twitched. "You are absurd," she said.
"I beg your pardon, madam! You glide about the house at midnight, carrying a chicken under your arm, and I am absurd?"
"I can explain the chicken."
"Please don't," he begged, beginning to laugh. "I think I'd prefer it to remain a mystery."
"Whatever Your Lordship pleases," she said, beginning to dust herself down.
"Don't you think, after this, that you might bring yourself to call me John?"
"Yes, I do. And I'm Rena. And the chicken is Clara. She lays excellent eggs, as you will find."
"I'm moved by this concern for my appetite, but I assure you tomorrow would have been soon enough."
"Yes, but I - oh heavens!" she said, as the evening's events came back to her.
"My dear girl, whatever has happened? I can't see your face properly, but I can tell you're very depressed. No, don't answer now. Let us go into the kitchen and have some tea, and you can tell me all about it."
His kindly concern was balm to her soul. In the kitchen she relit the lamp and he made her sit down on the old oak settle by the stove while he boiled the kettle. She told him the whole story of her arrival at the vicarage, her discovery of the family, and her battle with them.
"I behaved terribly," she said, shocked at herself.
"It sounds to me as though you behaved very sensibly," he said, handing her a cup of tea, and sitting down beside her. "They may not be a den of thieves exactly, but they're certainly a nest of bullies. And the only thing to do with bullies is stand up to them."
"Well, that's what I think too," she said, delighted to find a kindred spirit. "And yet - oh, goodness, if you could have heard the things I said to them."
"I wish I had. I'm sure it would have been very entertaining."
"Oh no, I'm sure that's wrong," she said, conscience stricken. "How can a fight be entertaining."
"Very easily if you have righteousness on your side. Nothing like a good fight. Engage the enemy and turn your ten-pounders on him."
"Ten-pounders?"
"Guns."
"They said - " her voice began to shake from another reason, "they said they'd tell the constable that Clara was parish property, and I said - " mirth was overcoming her, "I said - "
"Don't stop there," he begged. "I can't stand it."
"I said he would take my side because - he'd met this chicken before."
His crack of laughter hit the ceiling. Rena gave up the struggle not to yield to her amusement, and the two of them sat there, holding onto each other and rocking back and forth.
"That's not a ten-pounder, that's a twelve-pounder," he gasped at last. "It must have blown them out of the water. I shall always regret that I wasn't there.
"I ought to have been, of course. I should have walked back to the vicarage with you, and then I would have been there to help. When I think of you struggling back here - and what do you mean by creeping in by stealth?"
"I thought you would still be at the tavern, and the house would be empty."
"No, I didn't stay long. I began to feel rather uncomfortable."
"You mean you felt unwelcome?"
"On the contrary, they welcomed me with open arms. They've decided that my arrival means the good times have come again, that I'll be wanting to restore the house and the gardens and that will provide work for them. I now know the names of every artisan and gardener in the district.
"How could I tell them that I have no money to fulfil their dreams? And my dream too if the truth be told."
"Is it really your dream too?" she asked excitedly.
"Yes. In the short time I've been here I've fallen in love with this place. I'd like to do all the things they want, and live in a house that's as lovely as it ought to be. But not only for my sake. For theirs too."
He gave an awkward laugh. "I've really been thinking only of myself since I inherited the Earldom. I never though
t of how it might affect other people, or how they might hope it would affect them. But tonight I was confronted by the reality of other people's lives, and it made me stop and think."
He looked at her ruefully. "Thinking isn't something I've done a lot of in my life. I've done my duty as a sailor, but for the rest I've been heedless, and content to be so. But now - " he sighed. "Their need is so desperate and frightening. It made me feel I should do something about it. And yet - what can I do? Except pray that we find more coins, and they turn out to be worth a lot."
"Yes," she said. "We'll pray."
"So, I escaped, because I wouldn't give them false promises. I came home and started writing letters, until I heard this crash from downstairs."
"That was the chair."
"And why were you going to sleep on the sofa? Do we lack spare bedrooms?"
"I thought I'd find one tomorrow, in the light."
"You can't stay down here tonight."
"Yes I can. And I'm going to."
"Rena, be sensible."
"I am being sensible. Besides, I want to stay with Clara, and I can't very easily take her upstairs."
"Talking of Clara, she's busily pecking my boots. No doubt she thinks she still has to defend you. Will you kindly call your chicken off?"
She laughed and did so, then drained her tea.
"Now, sir - "
"John."
"Now, John, please will you be sensible and go to bed?"
He gave her a naval salute. "Ay, ay, ma'am. I'll see you at seven bells."
As she snuggled down on the sofa later Rena remembered how, in her childhood, she'd longed for other siblings, especially a brother. And that was what John was, of course, the brother she had never had; someone she could talk to and laugh with, because they saw the world in the same way; someone who would care for her and let her care for him.
She fell asleep feeling happier than she had for months.
* She was up at 'seven bells' next morning, and immediately went out to buy fresh milk from Ned. She found Jack, the postman, in the shop, and told him about the new arrivals at the vicarage. "I don't live there any more. I'm housekeeper at The Grange." "Got a letter for you here," he said, looking in his bag. "And one for The Grange." She took them both and set off for The Grange. It was a lovely morning, fresh and springlike, and there was a skip in her step. She found John in the kitchen, triumphant because Clara had laid two eggs.
The Cross of Love Page 4
