The Golden Songbird

by Sheila Walsh

  ‘Oh come! You’ve been looking positively hagridden for days. I’m surprised no-one else has remarked on it.’ Lucia’s voice softened. ‘Can you not tell me what is wrong?’

  Hetty gave a great sob. ‘Oh Lucy! I’m in such terrible trouble!’

  Knowing Hetty’s capacity for exaggeration, Lucia sat on the bed and said quietly, ‘You had much better tell me.’

  Hetty sat up, pushing back her hair. ‘It … all started on the night of the firework display … you missed it for you were ill … He was so charming … it was the first time he had noticed me … and … I suppose I was flattered …’

  Lucia felt suddenly cold. ‘Who was so charming, Hetty?’

  ‘Why, your Sir Gideon of course! You must know how fascinating he can be. Before I was aware of it, he had teased me into playing piquet with him.’

  ‘Oh, Hetty! Not for money?’

  ‘Yes. Oh, I know!’ she said irritably. ‘I was very silly, but somehow at the time it all seemed terribly romantic! There are so many little clandestine corners at Vauxhall and nobody saw us.’

  ‘You lost, of course.’

  ‘Nothing of the kind! I won quite easily at first; I am very good you know …’ She saw Lucia’s look of disbelief and said grudgingly, ‘Oh well, I suppose he let me win some of the time, but I thought … Oh never mind, the thing is, he made it all seem very light-hearted, and … and though I signed some I.O.U.s …’ She looked quickly at Lucy and hurried on, ‘He treated it as a joke and suggested I should play him again to redeem them.’

  ‘You didn’t agree?’

  Hetty nodded miserably. ‘At the Cavanahs’ house … I was so sure I could win!’ Her lovely eyes were brimming with tears. ‘Well, I didn’t know what he was like! You never said!’

  ‘And if I had said ‒ would you have believed me? Still ‒ that matters little now. You lost again of course.’

  ‘He was still quite charming about it …’ Hetty was busy pleating her handkerchief. ‘I don’t know what happened ‒ perhaps he got tired of waiting for you to re-appear, for he suddenly turned quite nasty … insisted on the debt being settled.’

  ‘How much did you lose to him?’

  Hetty cleared her throat nervously. ‘Not much above two thousand pounds.’

  ‘Oh, Hetty!’

  ‘It’s all very well for you to say “Oh, Hetty!” I daresay gambling isn’t in your blood.’

  ‘Sir Gideon must have known you didn’t have that sort of pin money.’

  ‘Well, I did tell him and … he offered me a sort of sporting challenge …’ Lucia waited in stony silence as Hetty continued haltingly ‘… he has a little house out at Knightsbridge. He proposed that I should g-go there and play one last hand for the I.O.U.s …’ Her voice tailed away.

  ‘And if you lost yet again?’

  ‘He ‒ he said I could redeem them … with a kiss.’ Her voice sank to a whisper and she blushed scarlet; even in her own ears it sounded highly improbable. ‘If you say “Oh, Hetty” again I shall scream! Lucy! What am I going to do?’

  ‘Do? You must tell Hugo, of course.’

  ‘No!’ Hetty was off the bed in a welter of skirts and flying curls. ‘He would send me home ‒ you know he would. He has already been monstrously disagreeable about my behaviour.’

  She turned despairing eyes on Lucia. ‘I must trust Sir Gideon; if I don’t, he will take the notes to Hugo! He said Hugo would be glad to pay for them ‒ and for his silence on other matters. What could he mean?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ lied Lucia with a sinking heart. ‘Could you not tell Charles?’

  Hetty let out a little shriek. ‘I couldn’t! He would call Sir Gideon out ‒ and I know he’d be killed!’

  ‘So you really do love Charles?’

  ‘Well, of course I do! Oh, if I can only get out of this coil, I’ll never give Charles cause to doubt me again!’

  Lucia’s mind was working. ‘When is the assignation for?’

  ‘Tomorrow evening. I am to retire early with a headache. A coach will be waiting on the corner between seven and eight. Effie is to let me out at the back door and be waiting to let me in again. He promised I should be back for eleven.’

  Hetty couldn’t be so naive, so gullible ‒ she couldn’t! ‘Don’t go! Hetty ‒ promise me you won’t go. I will see Sir Gideon and make him return your notes.’

  ‘Can you do that?’ whispered Hetty, hardly daring to hope.

  ‘I’m sure I can, for he has employed the shabbiest of tricks.’ Lucia put as much conviction into her voice as she could muster.

  ‘And you won’t tell Hugo?’

  ‘No, but I wish I might have persuaded you to do so.’

  Hetty however remained stubbornly adamant and Lucia racked her brains through a sleepless night, but every avenue she explored led her inexorably back. There was only one thing she could do.

  The next day she reassured Hetty that all was in hand, and in the early evening, when they were sitting with Lady Springhope, she excused herself and went to her room.

  There, she donned the dark cloak left in readiness, whilst Chloe sniffed dolefully and protested that her mistress had proper taken leave of her senses!

  ‘Don’t be a fool, girl!’ snapped Lucia. ‘Just see if the way is clear and do exactly as I have instructed you.’

  She picked up her reticule and followed Chloe down the back stairs, narrowly avoiding detection as Saunders came unexpectedly from a room in one of the dimly lit passageways.

  It was some time before the truth dawned on Hetty ‒ she left her aunt and ran to Lucia’s room, where a distraught Chloe was by now sobbing noisily. Hetty thrust her to one side ‒ and the empty room told its own tale.

  ‘Oh, good God!’ she gasped, turning pale. The maid’s cries threatened to escalate and Hetty slapped her. ‘Be quiet, stupid creature, and let me think …’ But her mind could grasp nothing, save that Lucia had gone in her place.

  She made Chloe promise to say nothing and walked with dragging steps back to the drawing room ‒ straight into Charles.

  ‘Hetty! I thought I would seize this opportunity of seeing you,’ he said with dry humour. ‘When we are out, you are by far too popular!’

  She stared at him blindly ‒ and then with a sob she flung herself upon him.

  ‘Why, dearest!’ Over her head he met Aunt Aurelia’s raised brows. ‘Come ‒ I was only teasing!’

  Suddenly the whole story came pouring out; Aunt Aurelia reached for her hartshorn and Charles’s expression gradually hardened.

  When Hetty finally fell silent, he put her away from him and said sternly, ‘Lucia has gone to keep this … this disgraceful assignation in your stead?’

  She nodded speechlessly.

  ‘Where is this house? I must go after her!’

  ‘I don’t know ‒ I was to be conveyed there and back.’

  ‘Ah, wicked, wicked girl!’ raged Aunt Aurelia. ‘I knew your capers would end in disaster ‒ but that you should involve Lucia!’ She pressed a handkerchief convulsively to her mouth. ‘Whatever am I to tell Rupert? How can I face him?’

  Hetty, thoroughly frightened, burst into fresh floods of tears, but Charles looked at her with cold anger.

  ‘Don’t worry, Lady Springhope,’ he said in a tight voice. ‘I shall find her. The house must be known. In the meantime, we must all pray that she comes to no harm.’

  Hetty let out a low moan and sank helplessly into a chair.

  Chapter Eleven

  The street was deserted. The night was cold and clear and brilliant with stars; a full, frosty moon hung low in the sky looked absurdly like a yellow paper lantern.

  An unexpected fall of snow was already crisp underfoot as Lucia hurried to where a coachman was stamping back and forth, beating his arms against his sides in an effort to keep warm.

  She pulled her hood well forward as he bundled her unceremoniously into the coach, and she sat well back in one corner of the musty vehicle hardly aware of anything until, all too
soon it seemed, they were turning in at a gateway.

  The coachman helped Lucia down with a complete lack of curiosity, as though he had done it many times. He jerked a thumb towards the front door and disappeared round the side of the house.

  It was a small house, little more than a cottage. Lucia stepped nervously to the porch and pulled the ancient brass bell-pull. A tall, thin-nosed man answered its clanging and she was in a narrow hallway. A solitary sconced candle guttered feebly in the draught. At the far end, light streamed through a partly open door.

  ‘Come along in, Lady Hetty m’dear. I feared you would not come.’

  It was too late to turn back; Lucia went in and closed the door.

  Sir Gideon sprawled in a chair, a half-empty glass in his hand. He made no effort to rise. He was without jacket or waistcoat and his full-cut silk shirt was carelessly unbuttoned. From the slight slurring of speech, Lucia guessed he had been drinking ‒ and for a moment her courage almost failed her.

  She put back her hood. ‘It is not Hetty, sir.’

  ‘Lucia! By all that’s holy!’ He tossed off his drink and set the glass down clumsily on the dresser. A circular table stood between them, but it afforded scant protection. ‘You’ve come alone?’

  ‘Yes. I persuaded Hetty to let me come in her stead.’

  ‘Did you, be damn! How enterprising of you!’

  ‘I have come for Hetty’s I.O.U.s.’ she continued icily. ‘You played false, Sir Gideon ‒ you gave your word that you would leave her alone.’

  ‘Oh come! One should never be expected to keep one’s word in affairs of the heart. You were not there ‒ and she is a taking little thing. But you’ve no cause to be jealous, me darlin’, so let me be having your cloak.’ He lurched forward, a muscle jerking at the corner of his mouth.

  ‘Don’t come near me!’ Lucia backed away, keeping the table between them. From her reticule she drew a small, pearl-mounted pistol; she levelled it, praying that her hand would remain steady. ‘Pray do not make the mistake of thinking I cannot shoot, Sir Gideon, for my father taught me from an early age. We travelled a great deal you see ‒ and in strange houses one is often troubled by rats!’

  He flushed at the implied insult. ‘Damn me, Lucia! Aren’t you full of surprises? I declare you interest me more by the minute.’

  ‘The I.O.U.s, Sir Gideon! Put them on the table, if you please.’

  He laughed, took a package from his jacket hanging on the chair and pushed it across the table.

  ‘There, me darlin’, you are welcome to them. It was a tedious business anyway, but one is obliged to play it to a finish.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Now this situation is much more ‒ piquant ‒ don’t you think?’

  Lucia pushed the package into the pocket of her cloak.

  He watched with folded arms, swaying slightly on the balls of his feet. ‘And what do you do now ‒ shoot me dead?’

  ‘Not if you allow me to leave.’

  A slow smile twisted the sensual lips. His eyes began to move over her in a way that brought the hot colour flooding into her face.

  ‘You aren’t going anywhere, little love. D’ye think that I will let you go, when I have you so exactly where I have always wanted you?’

  Panic constricted her throat. She must have been mad to think she could handle him.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, sir! You cannot f-force me to love you!’

  ‘Can I not?’ His eyes burned red. ‘Well, little ladybird, we shall see … for I am about to complete your education! We’ll tear away all that damned touch-me-not aloofness and find out what lurks beneath; who knows what delights we may uncover!’

  ‘No!’ The cry was torn from her. ‘You are drunk!’

  ‘Not too drunk to pleasure you, Miss High and Mighty! My God, you’ve obsessed me for too long! I’ve a mind to discover if you are worth all the agonies I have suffered! Be sensible and you might even enjoy the experience.’ His breath caught in his throat. ‘Now put down that silly toy and come here ‒ or by God I’ll fetch you.’

  The gun was shaking uncontrollably. Lucia put up her other hand to steady it ‒ and knew that he had seen.

  ‘Keep away,’ she pleaded, ‘or I will shoot you!’

  With a wild burst of laughter he lunged forward, seized the table and sent it crashing into the hearth.

  Terror gripped Lucia. She strove to remember what she had been taught. With a supreme effort of will she steadied her hand, took careful aim and squeezed the trigger. The explosion was deafening in the small room; the acrid smell made her choke. Sir Gideon was staring at her; she heard him gasp an obscenity and then he swayed and pitched forward, hitting his head on a jutting table leg.

  She daren’t look ‒ daren’t even breathe. The door was flung open behind her. The manservant! Dear God ‒ she had forgotten the manservant!

  ‘My dear, Miss Mannering!’ drawled a cold voice. ‘You do have a positive genius for getting embroiled in impossible situations!’

  Hugo! Was she delirious? No ‒ it was Hugo! How he came there she neither knew nor cared! Relief threatened to engulf her. There was a loud buzzing in her ears; her teeth were clamped tight to stop them chattering …

  The Marquis, seeing her sway, pushed her roughly into a chair and removed the smoking pistol from her nerveless fingers. He took out a brandy flask and poured a small amount. Lucia brushed it aside with a shudder of revulsion.

  ‘I’m all right,’ she muttered through shut teeth.

  ‘Drink it!’ he snapped.

  There was a strong smell of charring wood. My lord put up his glass and surveyed the room with distaste; then crossed unhurriedly to the hearth to set the smouldering table to rights. ‘I infer you succeeded in defending your virtue?’ he observed, with a total lack of expression.

  ‘Have ‒ have I killed him?’

  ‘I doubt you are that good a shot,’ Hugo said blightingly. He bent over Sir Gideon’s sprawling figure. ‘Hit in the shoulder. He’ll live ‒ more’s the pity!’

  ‘How did you find me?’ Lucia asked in a small voice.

  ‘Lucky for you that I know this house ‒ and that I happened to choose this evening to call on my aunt, whom I found in a state of near collapse.’

  ‘Oh dear!’

  ‘Quite! If you are now sufficiently recovered, would you be so good as to go outside and send Colbert, my groom, to me.’

  ‘What of the servants?’

  ‘They have been dealt with. Pray do as you are bid and don’t waste my time with unnecessary questions.’

  Colour tinged her pallor. ‘If you are going to be disagreeable, I shall be sorry you came,’ she said in aggrieved tones. ‘I have just been through a most wretched experience.’

  His lordship’s voice was cutting. ‘If you are looking for sympathy, Miss Mannering, you have come to the wrong shop.’ He held the door open for her and she stalked through, head in air.

  She found Colbert leaning up against the porch quietly picking his teeth and keeping a weather eye on the curricle, where Hugo’s team of greys stood steaming slightly in the frosty air. He was a funny, misshapen little man, an odd choice of groom for so elegant a man as Hugo. He peered at her, open curiosity mingled with concern. ‘You all right, Miss?’

  ‘Thank you, yes.’ She forced a smile and he beamed back, exposing a large gap in his front teeth. ‘Lord Mandersely wishes you to go in.’

  ‘Right, Miss.’

  It was bitterly cold, but Lucia couldn’t bear to enter that awful house again, so she walked about trying to keep warm.

  In a few moments both men came out and Colbert disappeared round the side of the house, to return almost at once leading a horse.

  ‘It’s a bit of an old nag, m’lord.’

  His tone implied that only as a special favour to ’is lordship, and because it was in the nature of an emergency, would he be seen on such a one’s back.

  ‘I’ll be off to fetch the doctor then, m’lord.’ He touched his hat and rode away slouched over the saddle.<
br />
  ‘And now, Miss Mannering,’ said the Marquis harshly, ‘we will return home, if you please. And I warn you, do not provoke me, for at this moment I am fighting an overwhelming urge to lay this riding crop about your sides.’

  ‘Well really!’ she cried, entirely disregarding his grim advice. ‘I came here to save your sister from the consequences of her indiscretion …’

  ‘Which would have been unnecessary had you not been responsible for her association with Benedict in the first place.’

  ‘Oh how unjust! When I think what I have endured in order to keep him from Hetty!’

  ‘With little success, it would seem!’

  ‘Well, if this is all the thanks I am to get …’

  He glared furiously. ‘For what am I supposed to be thankful? That I did not find you raped ‒ or worse?’

  Lucia glared back. ‘Don’t be melodramatic! As if I would have come unprepared! You are forgetting that I had already dealt with Sir Gideon when you arrived.’

  ‘Oh yes! With the result that I am now unable to call the blackguard to book. And pray, how were you proposing to make good your escape? Hit the servants over the head and steal the coach, perhaps?’

  This observation only served to infuriate her the more. ‘At least I retrieved Hetty’s I.O.U.s.’

  ‘Which I will take, if you please.’

  ‘Thank you, my lord. I prefer to hand them to Hetty myself.’

  ‘Give them to me at once!’

  Lucia glowered at him in silent defiance, then slammed the package down on his outstretched hand.

  ‘There! Take them!’ she snapped, fighting back tears of rage and almost petrified with the numbing cold that was creeping up her legs. ‘I know what rankles with you. The truth is, I managed very well and you, my lord Marquis, are just plain jealous! You can’t bear that I shot Sir Gideon and deprived you of your big moment!’

  ‘Why you damned little shrew! It’s high time that temper was schooled!’ He seized her, dragging her forward so ruthlessly that she cried out and almost fell. Hugo swore. ‘Oh, good God! You idiot girl! You are half-frozen!’

  ‘Of course I am frozen,’ she sobbed angrily. ‘What do you expect on such a night? I have not felt my feet for an age!’