Читать книгу Regency High Society Vol 1: A Hasty Betrothal / A Scandalous Marriage / The Count's Charade / The Rake and the Rebel - Mary Brendan - Страница 17

Urging Clipper swiftly through the woods, Harriet soon arrived at the dry-stone wall that bordered the estate. Clearing this without difficulty, she cantered up the lane that led, firstly, past the gated entrance to Westpark Manor, then past the old Butler property, Staines, and eventually towards the forked track that separated the crumbling cottages of Bottom Meadow from the newer dwellings in Top Meadow.

There was no sign of Ridgeway as yet, but she supposed that she could not be far behind him. She assumed he was making for the ruins—such buildings being a magnet for small boys. She hoped that Billy had not fallen and hurt himself, but this fate would be infinitely more preferable than her present thoughts concerning a more sinister explanation to the lad’s disappearance. Like Ridgeway, she had straight away connected his absence with the mysterious stranger at the lake and was afraid that either Billy or his friend had somehow discovered the man’s identity, which would have placed the two boys in serious danger, especially if this was the same man who was involved with her attack in the copse.

However, the track to Bottom Meadow was deserted and, although she could tell that there were stirrings of life in the new cottages further up the lane, she could see no indication of Ridgeway’s presence—nor any sign of his big, raw-boned grey. Momentarily undecided, she stared down at the derelict buildings, remembering that Meggy had warned Josh Potter to stay away from the dangerous ruins and, conscious of the fact that she had once again broken her promise never to leave the house without a groom, she reluctantly started to pull Clipper’s head up from the dew-sweet grass which the mare was presently enjoying.

Then she heard it. The faint sound of a cry of distress. Hesitating no longer, she dismounted and, throwing Clipper’s reins around an overhanging branch, she kilted up her habit skirt and sped down towards the ruins. Again came the cry—from the back of Potter’s cottage, she could swear. Gasping for breath, she rounded the end of the buildings and saw that the small cellar hatch at the rear of the cottage had been lifted from its mountings.

Kneeling at the portal, she called down into the gloom, ‘Billy? Billy—are you down there? Are you hurt?’

If there was any reply she did not hear it, for something very hard caught her a stunning blow on the back of her head and she felt herself tumbling down and down into the depths of unconsciousness.

Small hands were shaking her. She was dreaming about Billy Tatler. How strange! Her head hurt badly and one of her shoulders felt rather sore. She opened her eyes, but darkness still prevailed. She tried to sit up, but waves of concussion overcame her and she sank back on to her hard and lumpy mattress, insensible once more.

‘Miss! Oh, miss—do wake up—please don’t be dead, miss—oh, miss!’

The sobs cut through her clouded brain. Small hands were shaking her! Very gingerly Harriet reached out towards them. They were real enough! As was the pain in her head! The darkness was only too real.

‘Is it you, Billy?’ she ventured weakly, as her fingers were grasped tightly.

‘Oh, miss!’ came the child’s relieved cry. ‘I fort you was dead—I were that scared, miss! Will we get out, miss? Mister Ridgeway will find us, won’t he, miss?’

Harriet drew the boy towards her and put her arm across his thin shoulders. His whole body was shaking and, although she herself was experiencing the same terrors as he was, she knew that he was depending upon her for his salvation.

‘Everyone will be searching for us, Billy,’ she said, with as much calm as she could muster. ‘They have been searching for you all night—I found you first, it seems.’ A thought occurred to her. ‘Was there someone here with you when I—fell—into the cellar?’

‘You din’t fall, miss—he whacked you one! I saw him behind you with a bit of wood! He pushed you in and fixed the trap-door back!’

Harriet tentatively put her hand up to the back of her head. There was a sticky, wet mess of hair around a considerable contusion. Grimacing at the pain, she supposed she had better fashion some sort of a bandage for herself. She wriggled uncomfortable as she felt the lumpen mass beneath her.

‘What are we sitting on?’ she asked her companion. ‘It doesn’t feel like coal or logs.’

‘It’s turnips, miss—put down last year, I should think. Maybe potatoes, too, somewhere.’

‘I’m going to stand up for a minute, Billy—stay where you are. I just want to wrap something around my head—it seems to be bleeding a bit.’

She slipped off her petticoat and, tearing it into strips, set about padding and binding her wound in the well-remembered procedure that she had learned from her mother. She wondered just how long she had been unconscious and whether Sandford would have recovered sufficiently to come in search of her. She was reasonably confident that it wouldn’t be long before somebody found them. Then she remembered, with a tremor of fear, that somebody already knew where they were and that he would be doing everything in his power to ensure that they were not found!

‘The man at the lake, Billy,’ she said, as she seated herself next to him once more. ‘Who is he—and how came you to be in the cellar?’

‘Well, miss—Billy was feeling much more cheerful now that he was no longer alone in the cold and the dark ‘—me and Nick—him as was with me at the lake—fort we’d better find him before he found us, miss, but he took some finding, I can tell you! Turns out he’s one of the gardeners—but he’s a right queer cove and no mistake. Never goes down to the village—not even to the Fox. Probably drinks them queer potions and things he makes …’

‘Queer potions?’ interrupted Harriet, suddenly alert.

‘Yeah—he’s got bottles and bottles of ‘em all on the shelves of his hut—sort of a tool-store place at the far end of the gardens at Westpark. Grows all these herbs and things—and works in the kitchen gardens, too. Anyway, we seen him talking to the old butler bloke and we followed him to his hut.’

‘That was a very silly and dangerous thing to do. You should have informed Mr Ridgeway at once!’

‘Yeah—I know that now, miss.’ Billy wriggled uncomfortably. ‘We just fort it were a bit of a laugh, see? Only—well, he saw me and came after me. I weren’t even that scared then, you know, ‘cos I’m pretty quick on my heels—as they’ll all tell you …

Harriet smiled sadly into the darkness as the young urchin attempted to puff up his consequence.

‘Yes, and I seem to recall that you’re a slippery little eel, too!’ she said in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘However—go on with your story.’

‘Well, we didn’t know who you was then,’ said Billy, much affronted. ‘An’ it was ‘cos we found out who you was that we went looking for him in the first place.’

Harriet managed to persuade him that she was not at all angry with him over his part in the lake incident and pressed him to tell her the remainder of his tale.

Both boys had escaped the strange gardener’s clutches, it seemed, and had hidden themselves in the shrubbery of the old Butler property until nightfall when hunger pangs had tempted Billy to venture out. His friend Nick, it appeared, was a somewhat more cautious adventurer and had said he would remain hidden until he heard Billy’s ‘owl-hoot’ from the lane before he elected to join him.

‘Only he never heard it—'cos “matey” grabbed me when I jumped down off the wall. He must have been waiting there all the time!’ said Billy indignantly.

Harriet patted his shoulder. ‘Poor Billy,’ she said sympathetically, ‘and after all that time in the shrubbery.’

Billy snuggled up to her, his eyelids beginning to droop. After almost two days without proper sleep he was exhausted and, now that there was an adult present and a gentry-mort at that, he felt reasonably sure that all would be taken care of, for no harm would be allowed to befall the viscount’s new lady, he was certain. Harriet interrupted this cosy reverie.

‘Just one thing, Billy,’ she said, gently shaking him awake. ‘Did he hurt you? How did he get you into the cellar?’

‘There was two of ‘em, miss—his dafty friend was there wiv an ‘orse,’ he said drowsily. ‘He was the one what brought me up here, threw me down the hatch—but I fell on the pile of bracken so I weren’t hurt …’ His voice tailed off and he was fast asleep.

Harriet’s arm was beginning to go numb with the effort of holding the boy and she was eventually obliged to lay him down upon the sacks of turnips or whatever they were. Her head ached abominably and she too would have been glad to close her eyes and go to sleep, but she knew that this would be a very foolish thing for her to do in the circumstances.

In the circumstances! Good heavens! How could she have forgotten? She had been shut in a cellar before! Voluntarily, of course, and Mama had been with her as well as Martha—when the French were sacking the village near Badajoz where they were quartered. The thing to do first is to acquaint oneself with one’s situation, she recalled her mother’s words.

Carefully she rose and felt to her right, moving slowly until she made contact with the wall, which was only a foot away on that side. The sacks of vegetables seemed to be piled up in a corner, so she elected to work her way clockwise around the walls until she returned to them. This she did, cautiously and very nervously feeling her way and counting her steps until she could gauge the size of their prison, which appeared to measure approximately eight feet by twelve. This would be directly below the scullery, she surmised, desperately trying to recollect the layout of the cottage. The hatch, she knew to her cost, was at the rear of the property and there was certainly no other way out of the cellar—the log-ladder, as she quickly ascertained, having been removed. The pile of bracken or brushwood just below the hatchway must have been stored there for kindling, she thought, her brow furrowing. Although that in itself was odd, since it smelled fresh and, surely, none would have been brought since Josh left?

The floor of the cellar was quite dry and for this mercy, Harriet was very thankful, for, she suddenly realised, it was becoming very cold and, remembering old Cooper’s warning that a storm was brewing, she wondered if rain would seep into the cellar and make their incarceration even more miserable.

Surely she had been missed by now? She had no way of reckoning the hour, but knew that by the time of the morning service somebody would have noticed her absence. Sandford, if he had recovered from his night’s libation, would certainly have expected her to keep her promise to meet him on the terrace. Young Davy would have been sent up to North Lane after her, for the young man had assured her that he would pass on her message …

She stopped her conjecturing at this point as a chill disquietude overcame her. The young man who had directed her to the cottages—who was he? Could he be one of the men who had attacked her in the woods—and possibly the same one who had brought Billy to this place? He had been eager to suggest that she went through the woods to North Lane—perhaps there was a quicker route which he had used to arrive here without her knowledge. He could have travelled over the fields, she realised, so that she would have remained unaware of his presence until he was upon her and, as she had learned from Billy, he had an accomplice who might already have been here!

Sandford would not be best pleased with her actions, she admitted to herself ruefully, and he was, of course, right as usual. Her irresponsible and impetuous behaviour had really dished her this time and his lordship, she was sure, would be forever bringing it up for the rest of their lives—given that he found her and still wanted to spend the rest of his life with her! All at once, the thought of any alternative filled her with the most terrible heartache.

A rustling came from the turnip sacks and Billy’s voice cut across her dismal thoughts. ‘Miss! Miss—are you there?’ He sounded terrified and she went to him immediately.

‘It’s all right, Billy,’ she said, with a confidence she was far from feeling. ‘I was just trying to work out the size of the cellar.’

The boy started to weep. ‘I fort I was dreaming, miss,’ he sobbed. ‘Why ain’t nobody come for us? I fort they’d come for you—even if I weren’t important!’

‘You are important, Billy,’ said Harriet, gathering him to her, with tears in her eyes. ‘Your mother must be in an awful state of worry.’

‘Well, I’m hungry, miss,’ came the snivelling reply. ‘I ain’t had nuffing to eat since Friday morning!’

Glad of the change of topic, Harriet set her mind to Billy’s present problem and quickly came up with a solution.

‘We are sitting on a bed of vegetables, Billy,’ she reminded him. ‘We shan’t starve.’

‘Turnips, miss—and not even cooked!’ Billy was not impressed.

‘Let me tell you, young man,’ said Harriet, unmoved by his cavalier attitude to such largesse, ‘that when I was in Spain, such bounty would have kept a whole brigade in fodder for a week—including the horses, probably, so I beg you not to turn your nose up at it!’

She felt in her skirt pocket for the ‘necessaire’ which she had, in her youth, learned to carry at all times. This particular little roll, containing scissors, needles, pins and thread, she had constructed as a replacement to her own long-serving lost one as soon as she had been able to collect the required items from the housekeeper at Beldale House, regarding it as a vital accessory, for it had proved its worth many times in the past and was like to do so at present. She carefully unrolled the strip of cotton and, feeling for the scissors and a nail file, she extracted them and returned the ‘necessaire’ once more to the safety of her pocket.

‘Now,’ she said, with a feigned cheerfulness, ‘we have the tools—so we can eat our dinner!’

Billy attacked the turnip sacks with misgivings but once opened, it was clear that their contents were still in good condition and quite edible. Harriet had eaten worse things in her time and entertained Billy with several stories of much more inferior provender she had been obliged to consume when she was not much older than he was now. Highly impressed, he tucked into sufficient of the vegetables to stay his hunger and begged for more anecdotes of her Peninsular experiences.

In this way Harriet managed to allay the boy’s fears, although, as time passed, she found herself growing more and more concerned at the absence of any rescue. Where are you now, my reluctant hero? her heart cried out forlornly, but her battered head responded immediately with the sure and certain belief that Sandford would not rest until he found her. Clinging to this knowledge, she found some comfort of her own.