There was silence. Leona curtseyed automatically and raised her eyes.
It was difficult in the candlelight to see anything except that the Marquis was very tall.
His face seemed a blur before her eyes. Then, almost as though he was instructing a child, the Duke said again, “Say good evening to Leona, Euan.”
“Pretty – Leona – very – pretty!”
The words were spoken singly, took a long time in the saying and were slightly slurred.
For a moment the idea flashed through Leona’s mind that the Marquis was drunk. Then she looked at him more closely.
He had a large egg-shaped head, the hair receding from a high forehead. His eyes were small but protuberant and too close to his nose. His lips were thick, his large mouth hung open.
Then Leona understood.
He was not drunk – there was something wrong with him! He was mentally disabled in some way!
She had seen boys like him before. There was one in the village where they had lived. Not mad to the point where he would be put away in an asylum, but abnormal, with a brain unable to function in an abnormally large body. A small boy forever trapped in a man’s body.
As she realised the truth, she wanted to scream and, as she fought for self-control, the Duke said,
“Give Euan your hand, Leona.”
She was too bemused to disobey him and put out her hand. The Marquis stretched forward to take it in both of his.
“Pretty – Leona! Pretty!” he said again and now he was peering into her face. “Wife – wife for – Euan!”
There was a note of triumph in his voice.
“Pretty – wife – Leona!”
His hands were hot, his skin was soft and yet Leona sensed he had a strength that frightened her.
She tried to pull her fingers away, but was unable to do so. The other man who had been standing in the shadows came forward.
“That is enough, my Lord!” he said sharply. “Leave go!”
It was a voice of authority and, almost reluctantly, it seemed to Leona, the Marquis did as he was told and she was free.
But she felt she was going to faint.
As if the Duke was aware of it, he put his hand under her arm and turned her towards the door.
“Goodnight, Euan,” he said. “Goodnight, Dr. Bronson.” “Goodnight, Your Grace.”
Afraid that her feet would not carry her, yet somehow moving automatically at the Duke’s insistence, Leona found herself in the corridor outside.
Then, as the Duke shut the door behind them, she heard a sudden cry.
“Leona – pretty – Leona! Bring her – back! I – want her! I – want her! I want – ”
The door of the wing was shut behind them and there were no more sounds.
Leona sank against the Duke and he put his arm round her.
“Come, you have had a long day and it is time for bed.”
She found it impossible to reply and he half-carried her along the passage to the door of her own room.
The lights were lit, but there was no one there.
He took her to the bed so that she could sit down on it.
“My son is a little excited tonight,” he said in a conversational tone. “He was told you were coming and that you are to marry him. Usually he is very quiet and extremely obedient.”
“I – cannot – marry – him!” Leona protested weakly. She forced the words through her lips and wondered if the Duke had heard them.
“You will feel differently in the morning,” he said. “I have pointed out the alternatives. I have made it quite clear, Leona, that, once you have fulfilled your part in producing a child, you need never see your husband again. I am told that those who are afflicted in such a manner do not live to be very old.”
He paused and said,
“You are young and beautiful and you will be rich and powerful. I don’t need to be fey to know there will be many men in your life. Men who will love you and to whom doubtless you will give your heart. There will be nothing in the least reprehensible about it.”
Leona did not answer. She felt as if she was stricken by dumbness and her whole body was paralysed.
“Be sensible about this,” the Duke said. “It would be a mistake to think about it for too long. In fact I am sure that it would be in your best interests if you were married tomorrow night!”
His hand was on the bell-pull as he spoke and, without waiting for the maids to appear, he went from the room.
*
It was very quiet in the darkness and Leona felt herself listening as she had done so often since she came to The Castle.
In the hours that had passed since going to bed, she felt as if a battle had taken place within her that had depleted her strength and in some horrible manner changed her very personality and character.
On the one hand, her whole being was weeping because of her love for Lord Strathcairn, on the other hand, she shrank in horror and disgust from the poor creature that the Duke must call his son and who he intended to be her husband.
Her mother had told her that such people were to be pitied.
“Few people understand any form of mental illness,” she had said often enough. “In London lunatics are locked up and treated as criminals. In the country they are allowed to roam about as long as they are not violent. But nothing is done to help them and no one even tries to understand their problems.”
But the Duke had tried, Leona told herself.
All the many doctors he had consulted on his son’s behalf, the many treatments the Marquis had undergone, had not been able to restore his damaged brain.
There was no understanding why such a deformation of nature had occurred, but it had! And to think of being married to such a man made Leona feel physically sick.
She was very innocent, having no idea what was involved in the begetting of a child or how a man made love to a woman so that they became in actual fact man and wife.
She was only sure it was something close and intimate.
The thought of being touched by those hot hands with their warm skin and a hidden strength made her whole body shudder in disgust.
She knew that, while the Duke had pleaded with her and put his case logically and persuasively, he was determined that she should obey him. In fact she had little chance of escape.
He had made it quite clear that, if she refused, he would turn her out of The Castle without a penny with which to support herself.
But would she in fact be able to escape?
Had the strange feeling of being a prisoner that she had had ever since coming to Ardness Castle become a reality?
Tomorrow, however much she might protest, however desperately she might fight against it, she felt that inexorably the Duke would drag her again into the Marquis’s presence.
The Minister would be there and almost before she knew what was happening they would be man and wife!
And after that?
Leona’s mind shied away from the very thought of it.
That the Duke had suggested that later, when she had produced the heir he wanted, she would be free to take a lover, shocked her to the point when she thought she was being tempted into sin by the Devil himself!
“Mama! Mama!” she cried in the darkness. “What am I to do? How can I escape?”
She had the feeling that the servants would be told not to let her ride alone again with only a groom for company.
All tomorrow the Duke himself would be watching her, breaking down her resistance, refusing to listen to anything she might say to bring about any alteration to his plans.
‘I cannot – do it! I – cannot!’ she told herself.
She heard the Marquis’s voice slurring over her name and the cry that had come from the room after they had left it.
At the back of her mind, there was a memory of something that occurred many years before.
She had never thought about it again until this moment and yet now it was coming back to her thoughts. She had been q
uite young at the time, but she remembered there had been some trouble over a girl who lived in the village.
Leona could not even remember the girl’s name, but she could recall her father being very angry.
“It is a disgrace!” he had declared. “The man is not sane not normal! He should be shut up and not allowed to roam free to molest decent young girls!”
“He is quite quiet, darling, except when the moon is full,” her mother answered.
“The moon! The moon!” her father ejaculated angrily. “It is an excuse for every sexual crime in the calendar! If it really does send these beasts roaming after innocent girls, then they should be constrained.”
“It is very unfortunate,” Leona’s mother murmured.
“Unfortunate?” her father shouted. “And what will become of the wretched little bastard who will be the result of this moon-struck monster’s act of violence?”
Her mother had not answered and her father had gone from the room slamming the door behind him.
“What has happened? Why is Papa so angry?” Leona had asked.
“It’s nothing you would understand, darling,” her mother replied.
“But who is this girl who has been hurt, Mama?”
“It is just one of the village girls who helps in the garden at fruit-picking time,” her mother replied.
Then she had sighed.
“Poor child. I must go and see her and do what I can to help.”
Now Leona could remember the anger in her father’s voice and the way he had said,
“The moon-struck monster’s act of violence.”
Fearfully her eyes went towards the window and she saw, as she expected, a silver light on either side of the curtains!
It was all a tangled tale that she could not unravel, but the horror of it pervaded her mind so that she could only lie tense, knowing that inexorably tomorrow would come and she would have to face what was waiting for her.
Suddenly she heard a sound.
It was something she had listened for night after night but never heard.
Now it was there!
Someone was coming down the corridor with slow stealthy footsteps. She tried to tell herself it must be Mrs. McKenzie, but she knew that the tread was too heavy for it to be a woman.
She sat up in bed, her heart beating wildly and remembered with relief that, after the maids had left her, she had locked the door.
This was something she had never done since she had stayed at Ardness Castle.
But tonight she had thought that she was going to cry, to burst into bitter weeping because she had lost the man she loved and she did not wish anyone to see her humiliation and despair.
Several times since she had come to The Castle, Mrs. McKenzie had returned to her room after she was in bed to bring her a warm drink or to make up the fire.
She knew it was only a respectful attention on the housekeeper’s part.
Although once she had been nearly asleep and disliked being disturbed, she had managed to thank Mrs. McKenzie politely.
But tonight she could not bear to answer the questions Mrs. McKenzie might ask if she came in and found her crying. So she had locked the door and it was reassuring to know that whoever was outside could not get in.
But it was far too late, Leona realised, for it to be Mrs. McKenzie or one of the housemaids.
The footsteps stopped outside her door.
She was very still in the big bed and, although she could not see the handle of the door, she sensed that it was turning.
There was just the faint sound of it.
Then, outside, there was the deep and heavy breathing of a man who, she told herself, was excited at the thought of what he was about to do.
She realised then that it was the Marquis who was seeking her and she pressed her hand hastily over her mouth to still the scream of fear that rose in her throat.
The handle turned again and now there was nothing surreptitious about it. Rattling loudly, it turned right and left.
Then there was a heavy bang as if someone had put a shoulder to the door, but it was strong and some part of her mind told her it would not be possible for anyone to break in easily.
At the same time she was terrified to the point when her lips were dry and her forehead was wet.
The breathing grew more intense.
“Leona! – Pretty Leona!”
Leona pressed her hand even tighter over her mouth.
The Marquis spoke again.
“My – wife – Leona! I – want – you! I – want – you!”
It was impossible to move, impossible to breathe.
Then, when she felt she must suffocate from holding her breath, Leona heard the footsteps moving away.
Slowly the sound of them retreated into the distance.
She listened and listened until she thought that she heard a door slam.
Only then did she collapse against the pillows, trembling violently in her horror of what might have happened.
Then suddenly a question arose in her mind that would not be denied.
Had the Duke deliberately planned that the Marquis should come to her room tonight and force her into a position where she would be obliged to marry him, whatever her feelings in the matter?
It was an idea she could hardly credit and it seemed extraordinary that all the time she had been at Ardness Castle she had not even been aware that the Marquis was there.
Yet tonight, at a moment when what he had intended to do would prove a far more forcible argument than anything the Duke might say, he had escaped from the doctor who looked after him and had come from the secrecy of his own rooms to find her.
He had been excited by seeing her, excited too by the moon outside and tomorrow this monster – this lunatic would be her husband!
Frantically, in a panic that swept everything from Leona’s mind but a determination to escape, she jumped out of bed and started to dress.
There was no need to light a candle – she had only to pull back the curtains to let in the moonlight.
It flooded in, gloriously silver, illuminating the whole room.
A full moon, beautiful in itself, yet, Leona knew, instrumental in driving that creature who was not really a man to the point when he desired her physically – as his wife!
CHAPTER SIX
The heather was deep and Leona had to struggle through it.
She felt, as she climbed up the hill, that it was trying to prevent her escape, pulling at her, catching at her gown, impeding her progress, so that every moment the panic within her seemed to be rising.
Frequently she looked back over her shoulder and saw by the light of the moon that The Castle looked more grim and frightening than ever.
The darkness of the valley behind it was menacing and every moment she expected to hear shouts and to find that she was being pursued.
A bramble caught her gown and, as she wrenched it away, she heard its thin material tear.
She had been so frantic to escape that she had put on the first gown on which her hand had rested in the wardrobe.
She realised now that it was not one of the new elaborate frocks that the Duke had given her, but one she had made herself of pink batiste, which was most unsuitable for walking over the moors.
At the same time, although the skirt was full, she was not encumbered by a whalebone crinoline, which would have impeded her further.
She had snatched a woollen shawl from a drawer and, without arranging her hair which fell loose over her shoulders, she had gone to her bedroom door to stand holding her breath and listening.
How could she be sure that the Marquis was not still outside in the corridor, perhaps waiting until she should appear?
But there was no sound to be heard and, after a few minutes, very very cautiously and slowly, Leona unlocked her bedroom door and peeped outside.
The corridor was almost in darkness save for two or three sconces in which the candles had not been extinguished.
They gave
enough light for her to see that there was no one there to watch her creep on tiptoe towards the main part of The Castle.
She was well aware that it would be foolish to try to leave by the front door, even if she was able to turn the massive lock or pull back the heavy bolts.
But there was, she knew, a door that opened onto the garden and here she found the lock was not beyond her strength.
She let herself out, felt the night air on her face and then ran as fast as she could across the lawns to find cover in the bushes of rhododendrons that bordered them.
She made her way through a wild shrubbery beyond the cultivated gardens and then, by climbing over the fence, she was on the moor itself.
She had moved so quickly that already she was breathless and the climb up the steep sides of the hill through the thick heather was progressively exhausting.
Driven by panic she struggled on, feeling that if she was captured now and taken back to The Castle there would be no hope of ever escaping again.
Up, up, up she climbed, making no effort to find the sheep tracks that would have made her ascent easier, but just taking a direct and increasingly steep route up towards the Cairn.
It was impossible to think of anything except getting away. She did not even remember for the moment that Lord Strathcairn had betrayed her love.
All she knew was that she must be off the Duke’s land before he discovered that she was not in The Castle.
Finally, when her heart was beating so violently with the exertion that she felt it must burst from her breast and her breath was coming in short gasps, she reached the top of the hill.
Now she could that see the Cairn was a little way to her right. As she looked at it, she caught her foot and fell forward, fighting for breath and clutching at tufts of heather as if they were a lifeline to save her from drowning.
For a few minutes it was impossible to breathe, impossible to go further until, with a supernatural effort, she forced herself to her feet and struggled on.
She knew now where she was going.
There was only one sanctuary where she would find safety.
She hurried down from the summit and, before she reached it, she could hear the sound of the cascade falling into the rocks beneath it and see the water shimmer silver in the moonlight.
The Secret of the Glen Page 11
