A Hazard of Hearts

by Barbara Cartland

  Smiling, Serena allowed Eudora to drape her pelisse over her shoulders.

  “By rights you should be in bed,” Eudora went on in her complaining voice.

  “Stop finding fault with me,” Serena ordered her, “and I will tell you what occurred yester eve.”

  She sipped her chocolate as she spoke and discovered that she was hungry. She was glad to sample the dish of eggs, the pat of guinea-yellow home-made butter and a pot of freshly gathered honey. As she ate she talked and, when she had finished her tale, Eudora’s eyes were round with astonishment and anger.

  “The rascal! Was there ever a more black-hearted knave,” she exclaimed, “to lure you away and to believe that by such methods he would force you into acceptin’ him in wedlock!”

  “Methinks I should have had little choice when the moment came,” Serena said drily, “but luckily no harm is done.”

  “No harm indeed!” Eudora retorted, “when his Lordship brought you up here blue with cold, bruised and bleedin’ and cryin’ your heart out! Where did he find you?”

  “Who?” Serena asked, knowing full well who Eudora was referring to.

  “His Lordship, of course.”

  “Oh, I-I encountered him on the stairs.”

  Serena’s tone was purposefully light, but she knew that Eudora was not deceived. Her tale had ended with the highwayman bringing her within a few hundred yards of Mandrake.

  She felt curiously loath to speak to anyone of her meeting with Justin. Not for worlds would she have recounted his accusations or later her own anger in response to his taunts.

  It was he who had caused her to lose her self-control and to break down, but Eudora attributed her tears as being the result of Lord Wrotham’s attentions.

  And who should say it was not the truth?

  “I have finished now,” Serena said, pushing the tray from her and anxious to change the subject.

  Eudora sensed that this was her desire and her brows knit together. It was with worried eyes that she watched Serena move about the room.

  “’Tis a lovely day,” Serena said. “I will get dressed and take Torqo for a walk.”

  “And her Ladyship?” Eudora asked.

  “Oh, the Marchioness.”

  Serena’s heart suddenly stood still. She had forgotten the ordeal that lay ahead of her.

  What should she say? What should she do?

  Then suddenly, as quickly as her fears had arisen, they subsided again. But, of course, how stupid of her to be worried! Justin would have told his mother that she had returned and doubtless appearances would be kept up in one way or another.

  Perhaps the Marchioness would not speak of the episode at all, perhaps a tactful silence would cover such recriminations as might have been made on either side.

  It was sufficient in itself that Lord Wrotham had left the house and was not likely to return.

  “I wish to go for a walk,” Serena repeated out loud and Eudora brought her clothes and assisted her into them.

  She was dressed and a footman had been despatched for Torqo when there came a knock at the door and Eudora opened it.

  Martha stood outside.

  “Her Ladyship would be obliged by Miss Staverley’s presence in her bedchamber.”

  “I will see if madam feels disposed to accept her Ladyship’s invitation,” Eudora said, her voice hostile and her whole body bristling with enmity.

  “Be kind enough to wait a minute,” she added and shut the door sharply in Martha’s face.

  Turning round she looked across the room to Serena.

  “Will you go to her Ladyship?”

  Serena hesitated and then she made a little gesture of compliance with both her hands.

  “I will have to face her sooner or later, Eudora. I somehow expected that – well, never mind. Tell the maid I will give myself the pleasure of waiting upon her Ladyship within a few minutes.”

  Eudora opened the door, repeated Serena’s words in a voice that suggested that there would be no pleasure in the meeting and closed the door abruptly as she finished speaking.

  Serena put her bonnet back on the chair.

  “Keep Torqo here,” she said. “I will be as swift as I can and then return for him.”

  “You are not afraid?” Eudora asked.

  Serena was, but she would not admit it.

  “Methinks her Ladyship will be genteel enough to hide her anger,” she said. “She may even be preparing to offer me an apology, Eudora. ’Tis unlikely, but let’s give her the benefit of the doubt.”

  Serena smiled and then walked slowly down the passages that led to the Marchioness’s bedchamber.

  As she went, it was impossible not to remember that the night before she had come this way held high in Lord Vulcan’s arms. Had he despised her weakness? For a weakness it had been to betray her feelings in so uncontrollable a fashion. What should she say to him when she saw him? Should she thank him? How difficult it was to know what to do!

  Serena reached the Marchioness’s bedchamber. A footman who was on duty outside the door opened it for her. She entered.

  The room was dim, for some of the windows were still curtained. For a moment she wondered if the Marchioness was indisposed and then as she drew near the great curtained four-poster she saw that there was no need for anxiety on that score.

  The Marchioness was sitting up in bed and her eyes, bright and shining, were more intensely alive than Serena had ever seen them before, her mouth, to which she had just applied a crimson salve, was vivid and startling against the whiteness of her skin.

  “Ah, there you are, girl!”

  The Marchioness’s voice was strong and resonant and seemed to echo loudly in the great room.

  Serena curtseyed.

  “You sent for me, ma’am.”

  “Indeed I did! I wish to hear what you have to say for yourself.”

  “Say – for myself?” Serena repeated.

  “Don’t pretend to be stupid, child,” the Marchioness snapped. “You know full well what I am referring to.”

  “To last night, ma’am?”

  “Of course!”

  There was a moment’s silence and then Serena said,

  “Do you wish me to recount to you what occurred or have you already heard it from your son?”

  “My son!” The Marchioness gave a little scream. “Yes, that is what I wish you to tell me. What you said to my son, what wicked lies you concocted to incite him, to drive him, yes, drive him, to take this crazy action. For it is your fault and your fault alone.”

  Serena looked bewildered.

  “What action, ma’am? I am afraid I do not understand.”

  “You understand well enough,” the Marchioness retorted angrily. “You drove him to it. ’Twas you with your exaggerated and doubtless false witness against an old friend who sent Justin off on this wild chase.”

  “I have sent – Lord Vulcan?” Serena asked. “But where has he gone?”

  “Where do you expect he has gone? What alternative was there for him after listening to you?”

  “You mean that he has gone to find Lord Wrotham?”

  “Find!” the Marchioness cried. “Find is indeed a good word. He has gone to call him out, girl.”

  “A duel!”

  Serena hardly whispered the words. Her face had suddenly gone ashen and her hands clasped together.

  “A duel! Yes, indeed, a duel!” the Marchioness repeated grimly, “and all on account of an insignificant country chit who – ”

  She broke off suddenly, for the door was opened hastily and Martha, looking pale and agitated, came swiftly into the room.

  “My Lady, oh, my Lady,” she cried, “a groom from Grosvenor Square has arrived. He has news, my Lady.”

  “News? News of his Lordship?” the Marchioness cried. “Bring him in here, bring him swiftly, woman, do you hear?”

  “Yes, yes, my Lady, he is outside.”

  Martha bustled from the room.

  Serena stood waiting. It seem
ed to her at that moment as if a great hand squeezed her breath from her body, she felt as if she could not breathe and could do nothing but stand at the end of the Marchioness’s bed feeling as if she was turned to stone.

  It seemed to her almost an eternity, though it was in reality only a few seconds before Martha returned, followed by a groom in the claret and silver Vulcan livery.

  He was twisting his cap awkwardly in his fingers and his boots were splashed and stained with mud and, although he was a red-cheeked country lad of a robust constitution, he looked tired and his face was streaked with dust and sweat as if he had travelled hard and fast to reach Mandrake.

  He was obviously tongue-tied at the sight of the Marchioness.

  Impatiently she said to him,

  “What news, lad? Speak.”

  The groom moistened his dry lips and then stammered,

  “Your Ladyship, I-I came to – to tell you that – this mornin’ at dawn – his Lordship fought – a d-duel.”

  “Yes, yes, I guessed that,” the Marchioness said, “Tell me the result, boy – the result?”

  “His Lordship fell, my Lady.”

  “Fell!”

  The Marchioness shrieked the word.

  “Yes, my Lady.”

  “You mean – Lord Wrotham – ?”

  “Fired before – the ready, my Lady. ’Twas a trick! ’Twas wicked! I seen it all.”

  “And – Justin fell?” the Marchioness repeated.

  Her voice was dull as though she could not comprehend what had transpired.

  “Aye, my Lady, his Lordship had said to me, he said, ‘If anything ’appens to me, Jansen, post at once to Mandrake and inform her Ladyship.’ I thought he was but jesting, for I’d no idea that anything could rattle his Lordship. Strong as a lion he seemed. Then the gentlemen met. They chose their pistols and started to pace it out. Ten yards ’twas to have been, my Lady.”

  “Ten yards! It was murder.”

  “Aye, my Lady. But his Lordship’s opponent turns at three and fires.”

  “The Devil he did!” the Marchioness exclaimed.

  “His Lordship fell. I didn’t wait to see no more, my Lady. I came galloping off ’ere as his Lordship had instructed me.”

  “Then he may not be dead, for you did not wait to see what had happened. He may not be dead. Who was with him?”

  “Sir Peter Burley, my Lady, another gentleman and his Lordship’s own groom with the horses.”

  “Where did this take place?” the Marchioness asked.

  “About five miles outside London, my Lady. A place called Cross Trees.”

  “I know it well,” the Marchioness said. “’Tis a quiet and lonely spot.”

  She put her hand to her head.

  “’Tis queer to think that Harry Wrotham should do such a dastardly deed as to fire before Justin was ready.”

  She put her hands over her eyes and Martha, who had been hovering solicitously in the background, piped up,

  Now, now, don’t you distress yourself, my Lady. His Lordship may only have been wounded. ’Twould have been better if the lad had waited to see what happened than to come chasin’ here upsettin’ you with his wild tales.”

  “I only does what his Lordship told me to do,” Jansen said sullenly.

  “That’s enough,” Martha said. “You get downstairs and ask for somethin’ to eat. We have heard enough of your ill-tidings for the present.”

  The boy shuffled awkwardly from the room and then, as the door closed behind him, the Marchioness uttered a cry.

  “Don’t let him go! Don’t let him go! There may be more he can tell us.”

  “He has told us all there is to know. Now don’t you take on, my Lady. Ten to one the silly fellow has got the wrong end of the stick from beginnin’ to end. Why, his Lordship is the equal of any man in a duel.”

  “But not if there was treachery, not if he was struck down in such a dastardly manner. Besides – ” the Marchioness raised her voice suddenly, “ – Roxana warned me. She warned me that there was death coming to the house. She saw it, she saw it in the cards. There is death,’ she said, ‘ – death and blood.’ She meant Justin. Oh, God, she meant Justin – my son.”

  The Marchioness’s voice was vibrant with misery.

  “If anyone ought to be shot it ought to be that old witch for frightenin’ your Ladyship like this,” Martha said sharply. “I don’t believe a word of her gruesome tales and never have.”

  “Death and blood!” the Marchioness repeated. “Send her here. Let’s learn from her own lips whether Justin is dead. Fetch her, woman, fetch her.”

  The Marchioness made an imperious gesture with her arms and Martha looked at Serena.

  “Will you stay with her Ladyship while I go and find the gipsy?” she asked.

  Serena nodded.

  For the moment she found it impossible to speak. She still felt numb. The shock of what she had heard seemed to have petrified her to the very spot where she stood. She could not move and could not even feel the pain of her own fingers knit together until the knuckles showed white.

  Martha went from the room and with an effort Serena moved a little nearer to the Marchioness, who had fallen back against her pillows, her face crumpled and wrinkled, her shoulders hunched and her fingers spread across her eyes.

  Her whole attitude was exaggerated and her voice was distorted out of its usual tones into a note of shrill suffering. There was something odd and unpleasant in the abandon of her grief, for the Marchioness had always had dignity.

  Now with her mouth twisted in a grimace and her knees drawn up under the bedclothes, she looked like a sick monkey and there was something utterly distasteful about her. Yet, because she felt that she must say something, Serena forced the words of consolation to her lips.

  “It may not be as bad as you fear, ma’am,” she suggested softly.

  “As I fear?” the Marchioness repeated. “’Tis not what I fear, but what the Fates have told me. Death and blood! Roxana saw it! Last night she warned me.”

  Serena remembered then how pale the Marchioness had seemed when she came down to the salon. She remembered too how she had seen the gipsy move along the corridor stealthily and yet quickly as if she fled from something.

  She felt her heart beating in a frightened way. Had there really been a warning? Had Roxana seen clairvoyantly and predicted truly what had now occurred?

  Even as she wondered Serena felt again that suffocation and that difficulty in drawing her breath that she had experienced a few minutes earlier.

  She felt the room swim around her, she felt dazed and utterly bewildered.

  The door opened and Martha came in.

  At the sound of her footsteps the Marchioness took her fingers from her eyes.

  “Where is Roxana?”

  “My Lady – ” Martha said and then paused.

  “Well, speak, woman. Where is she?”

  “She has gone, my Lady. She left early this mornin’.”

  “Left?”

  The Marchioness’s question was a shriek.

  “Yes, left, my Lady. She called for a conveyance to take her to Dover. It is understood that she took the stagecoach from there to London.”

  “Left!”

  The Marchioness threw herself back against her pillows.

  “She saw it coming! Death and blood! Death and blood!” Her voice rose higher and still higher. “Death and blood!”

  She shuddered, gave a shrill, horrible, ghastly shriek and then flung herself frantically from one side of the bed to the other.

  “Death and blood!”

  Again she shrieked and yet again, her hands clawed at the neck of her bed jacket as if she could not breathe.

  “Pull yourself together, my Lady.”

  Martha bent over her, taking her hands and holding them and then over her shoulder she whispered to Serena,

  “Leave us, miss. ’Tis better when there is no one to hear her.”

  Quickly and only too glad to go, Serena
reached the door and let herself out. The Marchioness was still shrieking. Serena heard her cries as she ran from the room down the corridor and even when she was out of earshot she could still hear those ghastly sounds echoing in her ears.

  It was horrible, beastly, but more important than that, far more urgent in Serena’s mind, was the thought of Justin. He had fallen. If he was not dead, he was wounded and how long must they wait to know the truth?

  She stood suddenly very still on the landing and realised that it was the very spot where the night before she had met him. It was here that he had spoken to her with such sharpness. It was here he had reached out his hands and gripped her by the shoulders. It was here that she had collapsed and here he had released her to fall against the wall, when her very weakness revealed to him the scratch on her white skin and the bruises on her arms.

  She could see now the expression on his face as it had changed from contempt and anger to consideration and concern.

  She could recapture for a moment the feeling that had been hers when he had taken her up in his arms.

  She could feel again his arms around her and know the comfort of finding her head against his shoulder.

  And now Justin – Justin so strong, so invulnerable and authoritative – had fallen!

  For a moment Serena felt an overwhelming sense of dismay envelop her. Almost blindly she stretched out her hands and felt the cool solidity of the wall against which she had fallen the night before.

  Death and blood! Again she could hear the Marchioness’s voice, her shrieks and cries.

  Suddenly Serena knew what she must do. She could not wait, could not let the day pass slowly until a second messenger brought the dread tidings.

  She would find out for herself, she would wait for no one.

  There was only one thing she could not face and that was to be alone with her fears, alone with the horror of that voice repeating over and over again ‘death and blood’.

  She started to run down the corridor and sped along the staircase that led to her room. She burst into her bedchamber where Eudora was tidying her things.

  “Quick, Eudora, quick,” she demanded, “my riding habit.”

  Eudora stared.

  “What has happened?” she asked.