The House at Bell Orchard Read online

  “You are acting like a spoiled and naughty child,” Piers informed her coldly. It was plain that though he was still furiously angry, he now had his temper under control. “Neither Miss Grey nor her prowess as a horsewoman has anything to do with the present situation.”

  “Yes, it has!” Dorothy retorted wildly. “You mean to propose to her, which is what she has been waiting for years for you to do, and she will come here and make us all wretched, and you will regret it for the rest of your life! And I was so sure that you were beginning to care for Charmian, and would persuade her to marry you!”

  Piers swung abruptly away from the desk and stood with his hands gripping the carved mantelpiece as he stared down at the empty hearth. Dorothy’s words bit deep, stirring the pain which for days had been clawing at his heart, recalling the hopes he had cherished and which had been irretrievably shattered by Miles Fenshawe’s lazy, mocking voice. He could endure her persistence no longer, and there was only one way to end it. True, Miles did not wish the betrothal to become known, but he had demanded no promise of secrecy, and what loyalty did he, Piers, owe to Miles or to Charmian Tarrant? After a strained and awkward pause, he said in an expressionless voice:

  “That would be impossible. Miss Tarrant is betrothed to Miles.”

  “What?” Dorothy had been leaning forward to add emphasis to her words, but at that she dropped limply back into the chair. “I don’t believe it!”

  “Yet you may do so! I was informed of it by Miles himself.”

  For a few seconds Dorothy sat staring blankly before her, and then she said in a bewildered voice: “When did he tell you, and why was it kept secret?”

  Without moving from his position by the fireplace, Piers told her, recounting briefly his conversation with Miles at the Wychwood Anns. She listened with growing astonishment, and at the end said flatly:

  “I still do not believe it! Charmian is not in the least like that, and to my mind the whole thing is a pack of lies.”

  “Why should he lie about such a thing?” Piers asked wearily. “What could he hope to gain, when Miss Tarrant herself would certainly deny it at the first opportunity?”

  “But that is the whole point!” Dorothy got up and came to join him; her voice was eager. “The opportunity will not arise. Miles knows you well enough to guess how you will behave in such circumstances, and he has been very careful to see that I have no chance to speak to Charmian alone.”

  Piers turned his head and looked at her with a frown. “It is true,” he said slowly, “that he suggested I should say nothing of this to you or to my mother. I wonder—but no! It is too fantastic!”

  “It is not fantastic at all,” Dorothy retorted. “Miles is the younger son, and we know from Aunt Elizabeth that Charmian is a considerable heiress. Depend upon it, he means to marry her himself, and you know that he has never allowed any considerations of truthfulness to stand in his way of obtaining something he wanted.” She paused, her eyes searching his face. “Dear Piers, you do care for her, do you not?”

  After only the briefest hesitation, he bowed his head in assent. Dorothy smiled, and, slipping her hand through the crook of his arm, pressed it affectionately.

  “Then give me your word that you will do nothing irrevocable until I have found out the truth. If Miles was not lying, I promise to end my friendship with Charmian and plague you no more on this subject. But if he was, and you discovered it when it was too late, you would never forgive yourself!”

  Piers did not reply at once. Unlike his sister, he found it difficult to credit so intricate a piece of double-dealing as she attributed to Miles Fenshawe, and yet her suggestion had sown a doubt in his mind. That Miles was capable of such treachery he knew beyond all doubt, but in the shock and pain of the past few days such a possibility had never occurred to him.

  His thoughts went back to the previous day, when Charmian and Miles had come to Wychwood Chase. The intolerable jealousy with which the sight of them together had filled him had provoked then only the desire to wound, but now he remembered the look in Charmian’s face as he turned from her, the hurt disbelief so painfully reminiscent of the first time he had seen her, that night in London. If Dorothy was right, and Miles had been lying to serve his own selfish ends, then Charmian must be suffering as much, and more than he.

  “Piers, promise me!” Dorothy insisted, tugging at his arm. “For your sake, and hers, you must be sure!”

  He looked down at her again, and she saw that he had grown very pale. “Yes,” he said in a low voice, “I must be sure. My God! if Miles was lying—” he broke off, and laid his hand over hers. “Can you do this for me, Dorothy? If you can, it will mean more to me than I can say.”

  “I will do it,” she assured him firmly. “Tomorrow I will go to Bell Orchard, and somehow or other I will find out the truth, even if I have to speak of this supposed betrothal in front of Miles. Who knows? That may be the best and simplest way. But, come what may, I will, do it!” She squeezed his arm again, looking up at him with mischievous affection. “You will see, my dear, that even a spoiled and meddlesome sister has her uses.”

  11

  The Man With Red Hair

  Charmian rode back from Wychwood Chase in a daze of misery, and, arriving at Bell Orchard, fled to her room and flung herself, weeping, upon the bed. She knew that, to Miles at least, she had completely betrayed herself, but that fact seemed of no importance at all beside the intolerable hurt caused by Piers’ inexplicable coldness. What had she done? What had happened to transform the gentle suitor of a few days ago into a stern-faced man who looked at her with cold, contemptuous distaste?

  As she lay sobbing there she realized, with a growing sense of urgency, that she must somehow contrive to leave Bell Orchard. She had suffered more that day than bitter hurt. Whatever the reason for the change in Piers feelings towards her—and that was a mystery which would torment her for the rest of her days—it meant more than the destruction of her dearest hopes and dreams. It meant the withdrawal of the only help upon which she could rely, her only protection from the insidious menace of Bell Orchard. Now there was only one person to whom she could turn for aid; her father’s old friend, Mr. Brownhill, at Richmond.

  She got up from the bed and, drying her eyes, sat down with no more delay to write to Mrs. Brownhill, trying to convey her own desperate sense of urgency without committing too much to paper. When the letter was sealed and directed, she rang for the servant girl who acted as her personal attendant.

  When she came, Charmian regarded her with some misgiving. She was a willing but somewhat simple-minded creature who had taken the place of the fashionable maid Charmian had brought with her to Bell Orchard. Within a week of arriving there, Mrs. Fenshawe had accused the woman of dishonesty, giving Charmian convincing proof of it, and dismissed her immediately. Charmian had made no protest at the time, but had since come to regard the affair as one more step towards isolating her completely, and now knew a momentary doubt of the wisdom of entrusting her letter to her personal attendant. Then, reassuring herself with the thought that no one knew what it contained and could not possibly think it odd that she should write to so old a friend, handed it to the girl with instructions that it was to be sent off without delay.

  Had she but known it, her doubts were fully justified, for the maid, obedient to instructions which had been thoroughly and painfully impressed upon her, carried the letter straight to the housekeeper, who in her turn, delivered it to Mrs. Fenshawe. Miles was with his stepmother when it was brought in, and as soon as Martha Godsall had left the room again, he took the letter from Lavinia’s hand, glanced at the superscription, and then broke the seal. He glanced quickly through the message it contained, and laughed.

  “It seems, Lavinia, that your guest has had her fill of Bell Orchard,” he remarked lazily, “though I fancy that the outraged indignation of our friend Piers has a good deal to do with her decision to leave us. This is a request to old Brownhill to fetch her home to Richmond, and cont
ains, moreover, certain dark hints that all here is not as it should be.” He tore the letter across and across, and thrust the pieces into his pocket. “How fortunate, my dear, that our servants are so loyal to our interests!”

  Charmian, ignorant of the fate of her appeal for help—for the maid, when questioned, assured her earnestly that it had been sent—resolved to wait with such patience as she could muster for it to be answered. Next morning, there being no longer any object in riding, she wandered disconsolately out into the garden, for Lavinia, who often lay in bed until noon out of sheer boredom, had apparently elected to do so that day, and Harry and Miles were nowhere to be seen. Charmian was thankful to be left alone, and for a time strolled aimlessly along the formal walks and bleached alleys of the old-fashioned garden, wondering wretchedly, as she had wondered all the previous day and for most of a sleepless night, why Piers had turned so suddenly and mysteriously against her.

  Once, as she walked slowly along a winding path through the thick shrubberies at the edge of the garden, she had a strange and sudden conviction that someone was following her. She stopped and turned sharply about, but there was no one to be seen, and though she stood for some moments, listening intently, no sound reached her ears but the normal ones of a summer day. For a little she stood looking about her with a puzzled frown, and then with a sigh and a slight shrug walked on along the path.

  It led her at length to a shrub-bordered patch of grass fronting a small natural grotto, where a spring bubbled among ferns and moss-grown boulders. This was the part of the garden farthest from the house, where the rising ground encircling the hollow lifted most steeply, so that the tree-clad slopes seemed to overhang the grotto and trailing branches swept low over it. It was a lonely and somewhat sinister spot, which had repelled Charmian the first time she saw it, but today it exactly suited her mood. She sat down on a flat stone near the spring and gazed wistfully into the tiny pool, and as though it were a seer’s crystal, pictures formed and vanished upon it. Piers, riding with her through the sunlit woods, rescuing her from the smugglers, bidding her farewell in the rain by the garden gate; Piers looking at her with eyes cold with bitterness and disgust. Charmian bowed her head upon her hands and wept.

  It might have been one minute, or five, before she became aware, in some subtle and uncanny way, of another human presence, and looked up through a mist of tears to see a man standing on the opposite side of the spring. For an instant she thought it was Miles, but as she blinked her vision clear she realized that the man was a stranger to her, a gaunt and shabby stranger in a rusty cloak, with a battered hat pulled low over red hair which fell, loose and unkempt, about his face. She was starting up with a gasp of alarm when he spoke, softly and urgently, in a cultured voice which contrasted strangely with his rough appearance.

  “Do not be afraid, Miss Tarrant! I mean you no harm, and have come here as your friend.”

  She sank down again on the stony seat, bewilderment now mingling with her first, involuntary fear. At a second glance the stranger did not seem unduly alarming. He was about forty, she judged, of lean and wiry build, with a lined but not unprepossessing countenance. He looked, she thought, like a fugitive; weary, hunted, but not yet defeated.

  “Who are you?” she asked in a quavering voice. “How do you know my name?”

  “Who I am does not matter. I know your name because I have come seeking you, to tell you how and why your father died.”

  “My father?” she repeated in a whisper, and a nameless dread began to lay hold upon her. “My father took his own life!”

  “Did he?” The stranger’s question was sardonic. He came quickly round the little pool and dropped to one knee beside her, speaking in a voice no louder than a whisper, yet with an urgency which brought conviction with it. “Listen to me, Miss Tarrant, and pay heed to what I say, for if what I suspect is true, you stand in grave danger.” She started to speak, but he raised a hand to check her. “No, let me finish, for time is short and I risk my life in coming here at all. Did you know that your father was loyal to King James?”

  She nodded. “Colonel Fenshawe told me so, when I wanted an inquiry made into the disappearance of my father’s fortune.”

  A sneer twisted the stranger’s lips. “Did he so? That was a shrewd move, for an inquiry is the last thing he would want. I suppose he told you that he and his family hold similar loyalties?”

  She nodded again, staring at him while that indefinable dread tightened its hold upon her, bringing with it a foreboding that as yet she had barely glimpsed the secrets of Bell Orchard, but that this man could lay them bare before her. There was no question of doubting what he said; a fierce sincerity burned in every word and look.

  “A few weeks ago, Miss Tarrant,” he went on, “I crossed from France aboard a vessel called the Pride of Sussex, which, under the guise of fishing, plies a brisk trade in contraband. Stealth was necessary because I came upon the Prince’s business, and am too well known to the Elector’s spies to enter England openly. Also aboard the ship were Harry and Miles Fenshawe.”

  Charmian stared at him. “On a smuggler’s ship?” she repeated. “Was their errand then the same as yours?”

  The stranger shook his head. “No, Miss Tarrant, it was not,” he said grimly. “They were aboard that craft because smuggling is their business, the source of much of their wealth. Jack Godsall is known hereabouts as the leader, but behind him stands Colonel Fenshawe. He it is who bribes the Excisemen to turn a blind eye to what goes on along this stretch of coast, and it is not only in Sussex that he has Government officials in his pay. Even in London there are those who accept his bribes and see to it that any attempt to enforce more rigorous action comes to nothing.”

  Charmian continued to stare at him in astonishment, trying to accept the things he was telling her, realizing now why Piers’ efforts to stir the authorities to action had made so little headway. She said doubtfully:

  “But the Jacobites—?”

  “Ah, yes!” Her companion’s voice was bitter. “There, too, the ingenious Colonel plies a thriving trade. He will ship us across the channel, bring us secretly ashore, provide us with horses—at a price! That is his only connexion with our cause.”

  “Then how did he discover where my father’s loyalty lay?”

  “Simply enough! There are many places in London where English Jacobites meet to talk and make plans—God knows most of them do nothing more!—and for his own purposes Fenshawe frequents such places. That was how he met your father. He professed to share his feelings and then persuaded him to place his fortune at King James’s disposal. But not a penny of it ever reached His Majesty! It went no farther than Fenshawe’s pocket!”

  Charmian uttered an inarticulate exclamation and buried her face in her hands, her heart pierced by the thought of her father, the idealistic, unworldly scholar, tricked and cozened by Fenshawe’s plausible lies. Without looking up, she asked:

  “How do you know this?”

  “As I said, Harry and Miles Fenshawe were aboard the Pride of Sussex that night. They were quarrelling, as they usually do, and I overheard them and so learned of their double-dealing. I resolved then to go straight to your father—for they had mentioned his name and spoken of his house at Richmond—and tell him the truth. That money had been intended for the King, and God knows he needs every penny he can obtain! And when they had bled your father white, they might well try the same trick elsewhere. I had to stop them!

  “They took me to Godsall’s cottage in the woods, and early the next morning a horse was made ready for me and Godsall himself set me on the road for London, but somehow I must have betrayed myself. Harry Fenshawe and his brother followed me, but I have had some practice in evading pursuit and managed to throw them off the scent for a while. All this took time, and though I reached Richmond ahead of them it was growing late, and by the time I discovered your father’s house all was in darkness there, save for one window on the lower floor. I approached it stealthily and, looking wi
thin, saw an old gentleman seated at a desk. I attracted his attention, and, when I had satisfied him of my identity, he admitted me to the study by the garden-door. I told him my story, and he was profoundly and righteously angry at the manner in which he had been duped.”

  Charmian nodded in silent understanding. Her father had been a gentle man, but sometimes, if the cause were great enough, moved by a strong, quiet anger which never spent itself in idle word or gesture; and this stranger’s story must have angered him as few things had ever done.

  “It was about an hour before midnight when I left him,” her companion continued, “and he had then formed the intention of going to London next day and denouncing Fenshawe, even though it meant revealing where his own political sympathies lay. The knowledge that he had ruined himself merely to enrich a greedy, lying rogue had, I think, dealt him such a blow that he no longer cared what became of him. He spoke of you, and thanked God that, by the terms of your uncle’s Will, you were amply provided for, and said that before laying information against Fenshawe, he would see the lawyers and make certain that your future was properly safeguarded, so whatever befell him, no harm could come to you.”

  Charmian shook her head, the tears running unheeded down her cheeks.

  “He did neither, sir,” she said in a stifled voice. “There was nothing, save for his debts, to explain why he took his life.”

  “But did he take it, Miss Tarrant?” the man asked earnestly. “I do not think so! I can give you no proof of what I am about to say. Thus far I have given you facts, but my certain knowledge ends when I parted from your father at the garden-door, and heard him lock it behind me. Yet consider this! His intention to denounce Fenshawe was unshakable, and Fenshawe’s sons had followed me from Sussex. And an hour after our parting, your father lay dead.”

  She stared at him in horror, and said in a whisper: “You do not mean that they killed him?”