by Joan Smith
“It’s very urgent. I hope I can overtake him. He was to procure for me a certain vase from Greece.”
“He arranged to stop the night at the Twin Oaks Inn, just beyond Chertsey,” the servant told him, smiling, for while he was unaware of any kidnapping, he knew well enough his master had spoken of finding a buyer for the Clitias vase, and had in fact mentioned Lord Clivedon in that regard.
Still, Clivedon thought it better to take no chances of a foul-up, and took the precaution of going to speak to Smythe before leaving. “I want all roads covered, especially the Great North Road towards Gretna Green. Take that one yourself, George.” Mr. Smythe was Smythe when he was not in disgrace, and occasionally George when he was in high favor. “I’ve written notes and put my gaudiest seal on them, with orders for the local magistrate to stop them if they are caught, and hold them, preferably in jail,” he finished with a smile. “Send my valet towards Dover. The Greek may have a barge waiting to take her immediately to Athens. I’ll go west myself. I think Stapford Hall the likeliest destination. Don’t bother driving all night. Stop at a couple of tolls, and if they haven’t passed, return here and wait word from me. They can’t be far ahead of us.”
“Yes, sir. Is there anything else?” Smythe asked stiffly, still remembering the morning.
“That’s all I can think of. Enjoy yourself. I plan to. Good night, George.”
He handed him two sealed notes, took up his drab greatcoat with several fashionable collars, his hat and cane, and strode out the door, merrily whistling a country tune.
Clivedon headed his carriage west and was soon out of the city. He stopped at the first toll, and was informed that a crested carriage containing a young gentleman, an invalid wrapped in a blanket, and a great quantity of flowers had passed an hour ago. The flowers convinced him he was on the right track. The gatekeeper was surprised and gratified to receive a gold coin of a large denomination. Surprised too that the carriage proceeded at a leisurely pace, as though its owner were not at all eager to overtake his quarry. Nor was he. He had no notion of returning in time for any ball. He went on for an hour, after which time he had covered eight miles, though he could have gone faster. He stopped at the toll booth again to inquire for the passage of the vehicle he was following, and was amazed to be told it had not passed.
“It must have!” he exclaimed, feeling suddenly the surge of panic.
“Nothing anything like it,” he was told simply. “We don’t get that many crested carriages that I’d be likely to forget it.”
“But there’s nowhere else it could have gone.”
“Happen it pulled in at an inn.”
“No, not yet.”
“Accidents do happen,” he was reminded.
He knew well enough they happened to Babe, and with a vision of her playing coachman, he had his carriage turned around to retrace its steps at a much faster speed than that at which it had been advancing. Good God, he’d have to stop at every inn and coaching house along the way. He wondered as he went along whether Romeo, that bizarre article, had sent a flower-decked carriage out of London to confuse him. Was he crafty enough for that? He had no idea, but realized he had never quite plumbed the depths of that strange young mind. “Damn his eyes! And damn that girl. I’ll beat her!”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Lady Barbara had not the least intention of going nearly so far as Chertsey before making a first stop. Her abductor, however, was uncommonly heedless of her every polite request. Neither rest, food, drink, nor a delicate mention of some unspecified physical discomfort was sufficient to slow him down. “We don’t want to give Clivehorn a chance to catch up with us,” he told her. “He’d follow and steal you from me if he could.”
She quickly considered the efficacy of a bout of illness, which would need very little simulation, against a fit of amorousness, which would require a great deal, in bringing him around to do as she wished. “I am feeling very hot, Romeo,” she said in a small voice. Her head was indeed feverish.
“I am burning with desire,” was his answer, in a voice that sounded somewhat scorched with passion. “It is the excitement of running away that heats the blood. It is always so. Flight is the great aphrodisiac. My love, my beautiful Venus, it won’t be long now. Soon we two shall be one.” His warm hands caressed her arms, her shoulders.
She wrinkled her brow in the darkness, and opted for passion as a reason for having the coach stopped at an inn. “You call that soon?” she asked in a voice that held something of the sulky and sultry combined. From an inn she could escape. In the middle of a dark highway in a carriage galloping ahead at a rapid pace, it was impossible.
His fingers tightened painfully on her shoulder. “One day, my goddess,” he crooned. “I knew the flight would arouse you to passion. I wish you hadn’t thrown away the ouzo. You are fire and ice, moonbeams and sunshine. Oh, how I look forward to possessing you.”
“That’s still a long time,” she pouted, and took his caressing fingers in hers.
He squeezed them fervently, then lifted them to his lips to kiss. “My splendid Barbarian, I am aflame with the need of you.”
“Oh, look, my love, there is an inn just ahead,” she pointed out. “We have not formally pledged our troth. We should do so, in champagne. Only it affects me so wickedly—just like ouzo does you. I get tipsy and so foolish after a few glasses.”
“Do you, my little pet?” he asked with an eager interest. Then, in his usual guileless way, he went on to give the show away. “Only we are not married, and it would not be at all proper for me to take advantage of you, much as I want to. Of course, we are to be married tomorrow. One day can make very little difference. You are already mine, and I am yours, totally, completely, eternally. Forms and services and signing papers are for the hoi polloi. Aphrodite has no need of such trappings. You will be mine tonight.”
“How quaint the place looks,” she pointed out. “There is something Grecian about it, is there not?”
He was too besotted to mention the lack of any Grecian features in a half-timbered Tudor structure. Indeed, till he had the carriage stopped, neither of them saw more than a bunch of lighted windows and a torch to awaken passersby to the driveway leading in. They drove up to the inn door to alight, and the carriage was taken around to the stable by the groom. Romeo selected a handful of the less-withered blooms for her to carry with her. “We shall make a potpourri of these, and burn them as incense to Janus,” he told her.
“What a splendid thought, Romeo,” she answered, trying not to wince as a thorn pierced her fingers.
“My wife and I want a bedchamber right away,” he told the proprietor.
“A private parlor, my dear,” she corrected with a gentle smile. “You are not forgetting our champagne.”
“To be sure, it slipped my mind. You need your champagne first. A bottle at once, my good fellow. A large bottle, and a private parlor.”
They were shown into a cozy room, where he helped her off with the woolen blanket she had around her shoulders. “I must slip out to comb my hair and freshen up,” she told him, smiling to forestall suspicion.
“The landlord mentioned there is a water closet here, en suite,” he told her. To her utter consternation, this convenience was available without leaving the private parlor. She had no choice but to enter. There was no window to aid her escape. There was a mirror, which showed her a feverish face and a pair of dark, staring eyes, along with a hairdo greatly disheveled, and a badly wrinkled gown. She tidied her appearance, while scanning the room for a weapon. A water pitcher was impossible of concealment; a chair the same. There was nothing. She would have to return and find one in the private parlor.
She began to wonder at this point whether she was likely to get help from the city. For some inexplicable reason, it was not the man who professed to love and want to marry her she thought of, but Lord Clivedon. He had not been seen all day, had excused himself from the dinner, and might very well miss her ball, for all she knew, but it wa
s he that she thought of as possibly coming to her rescue. As it was by no means certain, however, she planned to do the thing herself. She had handled equally difficult situations in the past, but none of equal importance to her.
Squaring her shoulders, she settled herself down to calm determination. Her feverishness and headache lessened to a manageable extent, and other than a strange itching on her back and arms, due, she thought, to the blanket that had covered her, she felt much better. A glass of champagne to steady her nerves, and she would strike her amorous Romeo a blow that would, she hoped, knock him senseless for at least an hour.
When she emerged into the parlor, he had already poured two glasses of the wine, and sipped one tentatively. “My Aphrodite!” he greeted her, with an exultant smile, quickly handing her the other glass. “We shall lock arms and drink a love toast. To the goddess of my heart,” he proposed in his low, sweet tones, then linking his arm through hers, they both drank, while he stared at her with eyes that would melt stone, so hotly did they glow. With their heads nearly touching, half a glass was gulped down, giving them both courage.
“Drink it all up, my dear,” he urged, holding the bottle in his hand to replenish her glass to the brim. “Two glasses, you say, make you drunk?” he asked, ever transparent.
She smiled shyly. “Don’t rush me, or I’ll get the hiccoughs,” she cautioned playfully.
“Oh, please, don’t do that! I abhor such low physical effects when I am trying to make love. I like to think of it as the merging of two souls, not bodies. Adele belched,” he told her sadly. “It ruined the evening for me. Take your time, love, sip slowly. I don’t want you to hiccough. And I wish you will put some powder on that spot on your neck, my dear. A pity you had to throw out a spot so close to your bosom, tonight of all nights. That snowy, immaculate bosom.”
She sipped again, ignoring all his foolish chatter and skimming the room for her weapon. It was totally incredible, but there was not a jug or poker to help her. There were no andirons by the cold grate. The only crockery was a bowl on top of a cupboard that nearly reached the ceiling. With a sinking heart, she glanced back to him, to see him trying to get another ounce into a nearly full glass in her hand. The champagne bottle was large. He had asked for a big one. It was still full enough, too, to carry considerable weight.
“Romeo, my love,” she said, “you must drink from my slipper. It is not a Grecian custom—well, one could not drink from a sandal—but in England, you know, it is the custom for a gentleman to drink from a lady’s slipper.”
“That’s disgusting!” he said at once. Then he went on in a more conciliating line. “It sounds very unsanitary. And it would not be at all comfortable for you to have to put on a wet slipper. You would not like it.”
“You don’t love me,” she said, tossing her head and pouting.
“I adore you.”
“Do it then, for me.”
With an eye less smoldering, quite annoyed in fact, he set down his glass and bent down to undo her slipper. She reached out for the bottle, which movement he regarded closely. She feared he had tumbled to her stunt, but he said only, “Damme, you’ve got a spot on your hand now. I hope you are not subject to spots, Barbara. They are not at all romantic.”
“No, I never get spots,” she assured him, and, raising the bottle high as he bent to unbuckle her slipper, she lowered it on his head with all the force she could muster. It did not break. A quantity of champagne bubbled over him and her own gown, unnoticed. She was too concerned at the dreadful, hollow, ominous sound the bottle made as it hit his head, for all the world as though his head were empty. He fell over with an unromantic grunt, into a heap at her feet. She leaned over to examine him. He was perfectly inert. When she lifted a hand, it fell limply as soon as she released it. His head, too, lolled on his shoulder in a terribly dead-looking way. She looked at the door, and escape, then she looked back at Romeo, who appeared of a sudden as vulnerable as a baby. She didn’t want to leave him quite helpless like this. For a moment she tried to rouse him, all in vain. She was seized with the idea that she had accidentally killed him, or at least hurt him worse than she had intended, and ran to the door calling the landlord.
“Lord R—my husband has fainted,” she said, frightened. “Pray call a doctor at once. Quickly.”
“What’s happened to him?” he asked, walking forward to the heap on the floor. “He’s been koshed! You hit that cove yourself, miss.”
“Call the doctor at once, you silly man. Why should I hit my own husband?”
“Husband—pshaw. Lover is more like it. You don’t wear no ring, I see. We get plenty of your kind in here.”
She fixed him with an imperious eye, to hide her anxiety. “If he dies, you will be hanged,” she told him, feeling a dreadful quiver that it was herself who was for the gibbet after this night’s work. Even Clivedon had never prophesied this fitting end for her. “Go, I say!” she commanded, as he was not impressed with her threat. “It was likely your poison wine that killed him. Get a doctor this instant or I’ll have you reported.”
At last he stomped off, muttering disapproval of the habits of “Lunnon ladies.” She went into the hallway and garnered up a serving wench and a rough man-of-all-work to help her get Romeo lifted onto a sofa, still completely unconscious, to fetch her sal volatile and brandy, while she knelt on the floor, fanning him with a tattered magazine and occasionally speaking to him, urging his silent lips to speak. She was so distraught and worried that she made a silent promise that if she had killed him, she would marry him, without recognizing any incongruity in this moral bargaining. She only wanted to make up in some manner for what she had done to him. When five minutes had passed without bringing any doctor, or any sign of life in Romeo, she began to tremble in fright. A turmoil worse than she had felt all day was taking place within her, threatening nausea from sheer fear.
This was what came of her wretched way of carrying on. She ended up murdering a sweet, helpless boy, who only loved her and wanted to marry her. Tears welled up in her eyes, and slipped down her cheeks, as she lifted his head tenderly in her hands, speaking softly to him, apologizing, urging him to speak, to recognize his own Aphrodite.
When she heard a firm tread at the door, she turned anxiously, expecting a doctor. “Thank God you’ve come!” she said, then stopped, struck to silence.
Clivedon stood one pace within the room. He did not look angry, as she expected. His appearance was of a man who beheld a ghost, the sight of which froze him to the spot. One foot was extended, indicating a long stride, with an arm to balance, but he stood stock-still, staring at the scene before him. In a heartbeat he had resumed motion towards her. “Babe, what is it?”
Her first shock at seeing him was overcome by a wave of great relief. “Oh, Clivedon, help me! I think I’ve killed him,” she said, and pitched herself into his arms to heave two convulsive sobs before recovering her voice.
“Hush,” he said, in a low but commanding voice, bending his head to hers to conceal the word from the servants. She could perceive no point in trying to hide it, when the corpse lay before them all, but sensed some purpose in him, knew him well enough to trust him. How glad she was to let him take over her problems once again. The third sob was a sigh of relief. The idea came to her that she had reached a calm port after a stormy voyage. Weary and worried, she wished she could close out the world and stay forever in his arms.
Clivedon glanced at the prostrate and very pale body on the sofa, at the goggling servants, at the champagne bottle on the floor, its contents making a dark mark on the carpet, and formed an idea of what had happened. “We’ll handle this now, thank you,” he said to the servants. They stood on, staring, till he said more forcibly, “Go!” Then they straggled from the room, looking over their shoulders in fright.
“What happened?” he asked, releasing her and going to the sofa to lift a wrist and feel for a pulse. He put his head down to Romeo’s heart to listen for a beat, and exhaled a very relieved breat
h at what he felt and heard.
She babbled incoherently about kidnapping and drinking champagne from a slipper and accidents, mingled with animadversions on her own infamous conduct, but indeed she had not meant to hit him quite so hard.
“All right—self-defense at the very worst,” he assured her. “He kidnapped you and was forcing you to yield to him.”
“Yes—but not exactly forcing,” she corrected scrupulously. “I mean—I gave him the idea to get the carriage stopped before we had gone all the way past Chertsey, for I knew I would never get back in time for the ball if we went so far. Oh, how stupid it seems now, to have worried about missing a ball,” she said wistfully. “It’s like you once said, Clivedon, I got manners and morals all mixed up.”
She was interrupted by a low moan from the sofa, as Romeo’s hand came up, reaching for his head. Without more ado, Clivedon reached down for the champagne bottle and poured the remains of its contents over the abductor’s head. He sat up, spluttering. “You!” he said in a grim voice, looking at Clivedon with a black scowl. “You Nemesis!”
“Oh Romeo! Thank God you are alive!” Babe declared, and ran to take him in her arms.
His arms went around her possessively, while he looked at Clivedon over her shoulder. “My dear heart, forgive me,” he said. “What very bad form, for me to have got drunk. Champagne does not usually affect me so quickly. Pray go away, Clyesdon,” he added politely.
Babe opened her lips to correct Romeo, but received a warning stare from her guardian, who spoke up rapidly. “Very bad ton, to become drunk in mid-seduction, Romeo,” he said.
“I agree. It never happened to me before. Next time I shall be more careful. You can go now, Cliveston. I am taking Barbara home to meet my family.” To Barbara he added, in a voice nominally lowered, “I think we had better wait till after the wedding, my pet. I really do not feel at all the thing. I’m not up to it tonight.”
