Читать книгу Stand and Deliver your Heart - Barbara Cartland - Страница 2

Vanda rode through the woods thinking that it was the loveliest day they had had for a long time.

There were primroses and violets peeping through their leaves under the trees and the birds were singing sweetly.

She always enjoyed being able to ride in the great Park that encircled Wyn Hall.

Mr. Rushman had been the manager of the estate during the War with the French.

He had given her permission to go there whenever she liked as he knew how much she enjoyed every moment that she was on a horse.

The old Earl of Wynstock was bedridden and his son was fighting against Napoleon in the Peninsula.

“It would be very nice to see someone young about the place,” Mr. Rushman had said, “and there will be no need for you to take a groom with you.”

That to Vanda was more important than anything.

Her father had insisted that she was accompanied at all times when she rode elsewhere from her home.

They lived on the border of Wyn Park at the end of the village in the pretty and charming Manor House.

She had really only to cross the road under the trees to be, as she told herself, totally free.

She was thinking that it would be very frustrating now that the War was over and, when the Earl did return, she could no longer use his extensive grounds as if they were her own.

The young Earl, whom she used to play with as a child, had come into the title just three years ago.

He had distinguished himself at the Battle of Waterloo and received the medal for gallantry. He had then joined the Duke of Wellington’s staff in Paris to serve him in the Army of Occupation of France.

Soldiers were being demobilised and thousands began to return to England.

There was no sign, however, of the Earl.

‘Perhaps he will never come back,’ Vanda thought to herself happily.

She rode on towards the centre of the wood where she knew no one but herself ever went.

There, closely surrounded by trees, were the remains of an ancient Chapel.

It had once been used by a monk, who retired from the world to minister to the countryside birds and wild animals.

He was a very Holy man and there were many sorts of legends in the County of the animals he had healed.

Foxes, which had been caught in a trap, would have died had he not placed his hands on them. Cats and dogs that were injured and birds with a broken wing or leg were taken to him usually by children.

He prayed over them and gave them his healing touch.

They left, so the legends said, stronger and healthier than they had ever been before.

The tiny Chapel he had built for himself had fallen into disrepair and the villagers believed he haunted the wood and were afraid to go there by day or at night time.

“How can you be afraid,” Vanda asked one old woman, “of someone who was so Holy and who loved the animals and birds so much?”

“He were Holy right enough,” she answered, “but it be creepy-like a-seein’ he’s dead.”

No one in the village would ever put a single foot inside Monk’s Wood, however often they went in the other woods.

Vanda knew only too well that some of the boys went there to poach And she thought personally that they did very little harm.

With the Earl and his gamekeepers now away at the War, there was no one to shoot the pheasants and pigeons.

Nor for that matter the magpies and jays as well, which the gamekeepers thought of as vermin.

For Vanda the woods were therefore very much more enjoyable. She loved being alone so that no one could disturb her.

She loved listening to the buzz of the bees, the rustle of the rabbits in the undergrowth and the chattering of the red squirrels searching for nuts.

Sometimes too she thought that she could hear music that came from the trees themselves.

She tried to compose it into a music file that she could play on the piano.

Her mother had been an exceptionally good pianist and Vanda had tried to emulate her since she was a child.

She was thinking now that she should compose a song of spring and she was convinced that the trees were giving her inspiration.

The wind moving through the green leaves was creating a melody that she must try to remember.

Then suddenly she heard a strange sound.

It interrupted her thoughts and somehow seemed alien and coarse in all the beauty around her.

There was another sound and she drew in her horse.

Her father was always proud that he kept exceedingly good horseflesh in his stable and the stallion that Vanda was riding was called Kingfisher and he was her favourite.

Kingfisher responded at once to her pull on the reins and came to an abrupt standstill.

Vanda realised that straight ahead in the very centre of the woods, where she had never seen anybody before, there were men.

The sound she had heard was a coarse laugh.

Now listening intently she could hear their voices and she knew immediately that they did not belong to any local men.

The inhabitants of Little Stock, as the local village was named, spoke with a slow but distinct Wiltshire accent.

Sometimes she laughed with her father at what they said and the way they spoke. But she thought actually that it was quite attractive.

Whoever they might be ahead of her in the wood were talking harshly to each other.

Their accent was quite different and there was something about the sound of their voices that she did not like.

In fact she felt unaccountably afraid,

Who, she then asked herself, could possibly be making so much noise in the one place in the wood that many people thought of as Holy?

She supposed that they must be some village hooligans, but from which village?

How dare they trespass in the private estate of the Earl of Wynstock?

These were unanswerable questions and she knew that it would be a mistake to try to find out the answer.

The laughter came again and then the chatter of coarse voices.

She could not understand what was being said, but she was sure that there were three or perhaps more men speaking.

She turned Kingfisher round and went back along the moss-covered path by which she had come.

When she could no longer hear the odd sounds behind her, she felt angry that the strictest privacy of the wood was being violated by unseemly strangers.

She wondered just what they could be doing there in the wood and why they found it so amusing.

‘I shall never know the answers to those questions,’ she told herself. ‘But I do hope they will go away and never come back.’

It suddenly struck her that they might do damage to the great house itself.

Wyn Hall was a magnificent example of the work of the Adam Brothers. It had been completed in the middle of the previous century on the site of a much older house.

The Earls of Wynstock dated back to King Henry VIII.

They had grown more important down the centuries and each one had improved the house that they lived in and they had also bought more land.

Having been brought up in the shadow of the great Wyn Hall, Vanda had a deep affection for it.

In the same way she loved the old Earl.

He was a distinguished man who enjoyed the company of her father, who was nearly the same age as he was.

The Earl had never been in the Army, but he liked to hear of the life that Vanda’s father, General Sir Alexander Charlton, had lived.

He told him about the many years he had spent with his Regiment in India and how well it was doing under British rule.

When the Earl died, Vanda knew that her father felt lost without him.

He had been shattered by her mother’s death and, when she was no longer there, he was just like a man who had been crippled.

He was, however, able to forget his unhappiness when he had a friend of his own age to talk to.

Now she thought sadly that he only had her.

Although she tried very hard to fill the gap in his life, it was difficult to do anything but listen when he talked on and on endlessly about his long life.

Fortunately ‘the General’ as the village liked to call him, was now writing a book and it was taking him a long time because he had so much to remember and so much to record.

At least, Vanda thought now, he must have reached the year when she was born.

She was certain that when it was finished it would be of great interest to the public.

She in fact had had considerable difficulty in persuading her father to write down the stories he told so amusingly.

Her mother had loved them all hugely even though she had heard them told hundreds of time

“Then tell Vanda,” she would plead with him, “how you quelled a mutiny among your sepoys.”

Or else she would say,

“Describe the real beauty of the Palace belonging to the Maharajah of Udaipur and the pink one you liked the best in Jaipur.”

Vanda adored her father’s tales.

She knew that the task of writing his reminiscences was making all the difference to his life.

He had been writing when she had left the house and he would not realise how many hours she had been away.

It was only for the last eighteen months that he had been unable to accompany her on horseback.

At first she felt guilty, knowing how much he enjoyed being on one of his well-bred horses.

Sir Alexander’s legs were swollen with rheumatism and it hurt to walk let alone ride.

Vanda now reached the end of the wood.

She wondered if she should go home and tell her father about the strange men in the centre of it.

Then she had a better idea.

She would ride up to The Hall and tell the caretakers to be on their guard.

If the hooligans were really intent on making trouble, they might stone the windows of the house or perhaps try to break some of the stone statues in the garden.

‘I will warn the Taylors, the caretakers of the house,’ she decided.

She rode Kingfisher quickly through the Park under the ancient oak trees, across the bridge that spanned the lake and straight into the stables.

She was so used to going there that it was almost like coming home.

As she then reached the yard, the Head Groom, who had known her since she was a child, came out of the stable.

He smiled a greeting before he said,

“Afternoon, Miss Vanda, it be a sight for sore eyes to see thee.”

“Thank you. I hope you are feeling better and that the cut on your hand has healed, Repton,” Vanda replied.

“It ’ealed immediate after you tells me what to do with it,” the Head Groom replied.

He took Kingfisher from her and led him into a stall.

Vanda walked along the path through the big banks of rhododendrons which led to the kitchen door.

She did not knock, but went along the flagged passage to the kitchen.

It was a very large room with a high ceiling. There was a large beam on which they had hung game and dried hams in the past.

Now there was nothing on the beam but one small rabbit.

The caretakers were sitting at a large deal table drinking tea.

Taylor would have risen when Vanda appeared, but she said quickly,

“Don’t move, I only came in for a moment or two to tell you something.”

“Now sit you doon, Miss Vanda. Mrs. Taylor said, who was a large and rosy-cheeked woman. “I’m sure you could do with a cup of tea and Taylor and me were a-just havin’ one.”

“I would love a nice cup of tea,” Vanda replied.

She knew that it was what they expected to hear.

Although she did not really enjoy the strong dark Ceylon Tea they always drank, they would have been disappointed if she had refused a cup.

When it had been poured out and the cup was beside her, Vanda began her story,

“Such a strange thing has just happened. I was riding in Monk’s Wood and what do you think was right in the centre where no one ever goes except myself? There were men!”

She paused for a short moment.

Then, as Mr. and Mrs. Taylor did not speak, she went on,

“They were all strangers and they most certainly did not come from Wiltshire. There were quite a number of them too and laughing in what I thought was an unpleasant manner.”

It was then that she was aware that Mr. and Mrs. Taylor were looking at each other.

She felt, although it just seemed incredible, they were not surprised at what she had said to them.

“They be in Monk’s Wood?” Taylor asked at last very slowly. “Now what on earth do you think that they’d be doin’ there, Mother?”

He looked at his wife as he spoke.

She did not answer, but seemed to be busying herself pouring out more tea into her cup. Although it was already nearly full.

Vanda looked from one to the other and then she asked them,

“Have you heard of these men before?”

“No, no,” Mrs. Taylor answered quickly. “We knows nothin’ about ’em.”

She was obviously becoming agitated and so spoke in a way that was not in the least like her.

Vanda next looked at Taylor.

She did not speak, but he was well aware that she was asking him a question,

“I knows of nothin’ we can tell you, Miss Vanda,” he said at length. “They ’as nothin’ to do with us.”

“But you are aware they exist,” Vanda insisted. “Have they been here causing any trouble?”

Mrs. Taylor put down the teapot and laid her two hands palm down on the table as she turned to say to Vanda,

“Now just you listen to me, Miss Vanda. Go home and say nothin’ of what you’ve heard. There be nought you can do about it and we wants no trouble.”

“Trouble?” Vanda asked in a bewildered tone. “What sort of trouble are you talking about and how can it possibly affect you?”

Mrs. Taylor looked helplessly at her husband.

“We be alone ’ere, Miss Vanda,” he said, “except for the grooms and Repton be an old man while Nat and Ben be high on a horse but small on the ground.”

Vanda would have smiled at the description of the two younger grooms, who did in fact look rather like jockeys, if she had not been feeling so worried.

‘What can be going on?’ she wondered. ‘And why are the Taylors being so mysterious about it?’

When she then thought about it, there was really no one to tell.

Mr. Rushman, the Manager, was over seventy and could no longer ride a horse on the estate, but instead drove a gig.

He was not in good health and in the winter was laid up with bronchitis and rheumatism, which kept him in his house week after week.

She pulled her chair nearer to the table and, resting her chin on her hands she said,

“Now tell me what it is that is troubling you both. You know I will help if I can and, if you want me to remain silent, I will say nothing to anybody.”

Taylor looked at his wife.

Mrs. Taylor let out a big sigh that seemed to shake her whole fat body.

“We’ll tell you,” she offered at length, “but I for one be too afraid to even speak of them.”

“Speak of who?” Vanda asked.

Taylor cleared his throat,

“It be like this, Miss Vanda. We be ’ere as you knows to look after the ’ouse till ’is Lordship comes back ’ome.”

“No one could do it better,” Vanda said encouragingly.

It was true that, with the help of three women from the village, the house was as well looked after as when the old Earl was alive.

Granted there were not four footmen in the hall as had been usual or a butler in charge of them.

Nor was there a chef in the kitchen, the equal of the one employed by the Prince Regent and with four scullions under him.

When the Earl had died, Mr. Rushman had appointed the Taylors as caretakers of the house.

They had certainly lived up to that name and had taken the greatest care of Wyn Hall and they had always in the past told Vanda how much they enjoyed their job.

She just could not understand what could have occurred now to make them so frightened and reluctant to talk of their fears.

“Go on,” she prompted Taylor.

“They comes ’ere first about two weeks ago,” he began,

“They?” Vanda asked. “Who are they?”

“That be what we ain’t supposed to know,” he replied, “but they be men.”

Vanda knew that from the voices she had heard so she did not interrupt and Taylor continued,

“They asks for water and they says to the Missus and I, ‘you keep your eyes to yourselves and your lips closed and no harm’ll come to you’.”

“They said that!” Vanda exclaimed. “And what did you reply?”

“They be not the sort of men you’d make any reply to,” Taylor said.

“Then what happened.”

“Don’t tell ’er, don’t you tell ’er,” Mrs. Taylor said in an agitated manner.

“I had much better know the whole truth,” Vanda said, “and then if anything happens I will be able to help you.”

“Nothin’ll happen, but nothin’.” Mrs. Taylor chimed in. “They promised that if we said naught.”

“I don’t count,” Vanda said with an encouraging smile, “and I don’t like to see you both so upset.”

“We be upset right enough,” Taylor said, “but there be nothin’ we can do about it. Nothin’!”

“So where are these men?” Vanda asked.

There was a pause.

Then lowering his voice to little more than a whisper Taylor informed her,

“They be in the West wing, Miss Vanda.”

Vanda looked at in astonishment.

The West wing had been shut up for a long time before the old Earl had died. He had decided that the house was too big and the West wing had a good number of rooms that were never used.

In the East wing there was the fine Picture Gallery, the ballroom and a few bedrooms on the top floor and the West wing was just some rooms of no particular historical interest.

Vanda thought that the architects had built it merely to balance from the outside the other wing of the house. At the same time it was definitely a part of Wyn Hall.

She could not imagine anything more horrifying than having hooligans, or whatever these strangers were, living in the house.

It seemed extraordinary that the Taylors had not gone to see Mr. Rushman and demanded that these men were turned out.

She knew, however, that it would be a mistake for her to criticise their behaviour in any way.

She therefore said,

“If they have threatened you, then it must have been very frightening. But surely they don’t intend to stay for long.”

“We don’t knows about that,” Mrs. Taylor replied. “We just keeps ourselves to ourselves and pretend that they ain’t there.”

“But they are trespassing,” Vanda pointed out quietly.

“We knows that,” Taylor said, “but they are dangerous, Miss Vanda, and we ’ears tales of things that ’ave ’appened, which might ’appen ’ere.”

“What sort of things?” Vanda enquired.

Again he lowered his voice so she could hardly hear and she was really reading the movements of his lips as he said,

“Murders.”

“I don’t believe it!” Vanda exclaimed. “And if these men are murderers, then how can we allow them to be here in The Hall and near the village?”

Taylor glanced over his shoulder because he was afraid that they were being overheard.

“Not so loud, Miss Vanda,” he begged her. “If anythin’ ’appens to thee we’d ne’er forgive ourselves.”

“No indeed,” Mrs. Taylor agreed at once. “Now you say nothin’ aboot it, Miss Vanda, and perhaps they’ll go away.”

“And if they stay?” Vanda asked.

The Taylors looked at each other and she realised how frightened they really were and she wondered what she could say to comfort them.

At the same time she was trying to decide quickly who could turn out these trespassers.

They had taken possession of an empty house with no one to protect it but two elderly people.

‘I suppose,’ she thought, ‘it would be foolish to believe that something like this could never happen especially after a war.’

Men after risking their lives in fighting for their country had been turned out of the Services without a pension. Even those soldiers who had been wounded or had lost a limb had been granted no compensation.

Her father had been informed of what was happening in the coastal areas.

Sailors who had been dismissed from the Navy roamed the countryside in search of food and demanded money from quite humble householders.

“I can hardly blame them,” Sir Alexander had remarked bitterly. “They won the War, but no one is concerned about them now that there is peace.”

“Surely the Government should do something,” Vanda had suggested hotly.

“They should,” her father had replied, “but then I doubt if they will.”

They had gone on to talk about how the men who had fought came back to find that their jobs had been taken by those who had stayed at home.

Many men in battle were lost altogether and could never be traced

Now that hostilities had ended there was no longer the desperate requirement for food that there had been over the last fifteen years.

And farmers could not now sell their crops in an open market.

Also a great many aristocratic landowners had suffered financially from the War.

They could not employ the large numbers of staff they had been able to do before it began.

Tenants needed their houses repaired, but the landlords did not have the necessary money to spend on doing it.

It was so difficult to know exactly where England could find purchasers of what goods there were available for sale.

‘There must be somebody who could make these men behave,’ Vanda was thinking.

She felt she could hear again the sharpness of the voices and the rough way they spoke in the wood.

But she knew that there were few men available in the village who could stand up to them.

Finally she decided that it was something that she must discuss with her father as soon as she could.

He would know if there was any Military in the vicinity.

If the worst came to the worst, they could get soldiers to turn out the intruders who were causing trouble.

‘That is what I must do,’ she mused.

But equally she knew that it would be a mistake to tell the Taylors what she was intending to do about this serious problem.

“I can see you have been very brave,” she said gently, “but at the same time it is something that cannot continue.”

“Now don’t you be doin’ anythin’ about this yourself, Miss Vanda,” Taylor said hastily. “If you do, they might ’urt thee and the General.”

“I doubt that,” Vanda answered. “They can hardly come into the village, bursting into people’s houses and beating up or murdering ordinary citizens.”

“That’s exactly what these men will do,” Taylor said stubbornly.

Vanda stared at him.

“Now you are a sensible man, Taylor,” she said, “and you know as well as I do that we cannot have rough people taking the law into their own hands in this County.”

“This lot,” Taylor remarked with the jerk of his thumb, “be above the law.”

Vanda shook her head.

“Nobody is above the law and no one has the right to interfere with or to threaten ordinary citizens ‒ ”

“You don’t understand,” Mrs. Taylor interrupted.

She looked at her husband and went on,

“You’d better tell who they be.”

“It’d be a mistake,” Taylor replied sharply.

Then he added,

“Well, as Miss Vanda knows so much, she ’ad better understand that unless she keeps ’er lips closed we’ll be in bad trouble.”

Again Vanda was staring from one to another.

She was trying to understand exactly why they were so frightened and why they were so determined that she should do nothing.

She was suddenly afraid that these men might break into the rest of the house.

Wyn Hall was so beautiful inside and she felt as if every piece of furniture and every picture and all the books in the great library belonged in some way to herself.

She had known and loved them ever since she was old enough to appreciate such exquisite possessions.

Wyn Hall had definitely become as familiar to her as her own house and she knew that, if any of it was damaged, it would break her heart.

Now she thought with horror of the miniatures that hung on the walls in the drawing room.

The portraits of the Wyns that hung on the beautifully carved stairs and the pictures in the Gallery, which had been added to by every Earl.

She clasped her hands together.

“We must protect The Hall from these terrible people,” she asserted. “Supposing they ransack the State rooms and supposing they set the whole place on fire?”

“They’ll not do that, Miss Vanda,” Taylor said, “so long as we give ’em shelter. But if we tries to then turn ’em out anythin’ might ’appen.”

“They cannot stay here indefinitely,” Vanda persisted.

“They’ll go when it suits ’em,” Taylor said. “They just want somewhere to rest and ’ide their ’aul.”

“Hide their haul?” Vanda repeated. “What do you mean by that? What can they have to hide?”

They were questions that once again seemed to leave the Taylors silent and fearful.

In fact Vanda began to think it was ridiculous. Taylor was a well-built man. Why should he be shaking in his shoes when he thought about a few riotous young men who so far had done no harm as far as she knew?

“Now what I want you to let me do,” she said in a soft voice, “is to talk to my father. You know how clever he is and he has been a soldier all his life.”

Mrs. Taylor suddenly gave a scream.

“Soldiers!” she cried. “If soldiers come here they’ll kill us. We’ll both be dead, that’s what we’ll be, Miss Vanda, and it’ll be you who’s done it.”

Vanda reached out to put her hand on Mrs. Taylor’s

“Please don’t upset yourself,” she said. “The soldiers will not come here if it frightens you, I can assure you of that, but we have to do something.”

“There be nothin’ we can do and that be the very truth,” Taylor insisted.

“Just you go away and forget us,” his wife begged. “We be all right so long as we do nothin’.”

Vanda felt as if she was up against an insurmountable obstacle.

After a moment she suggested,

“Tell me where these men come from and who they are. Surely you must know that.”

“Yes, we knows that,” Mrs. Taylor said in a whisper.

“Then tell me so that I can understand why you are so frightened,” Vanda pleaded.

She looked at Taylor.

Again he glanced over his shoulder towards the door as if he thought someone might come through it at any moment.

He then leant across the table and admitted,

“They be ’ighwaymen!”