Читать книгу The Virtuous Cyprian - Nicola Cornick, Nicola Cornick - Страница 9

Lucille felt that the whole atmosphere of Cookes had changed after that one meeting with the Earl of Seagrave and her illuminating chat with Mrs Appleton. Instead of enjoying the tranquil silence, she began to feel oppressed and lonely. It was the greatest irony that when she had been in ignorance of the villagers’ attitude towards her she had not felt the need to leave the house and grounds—now she knew of their hostility, she longed to go out but did not dare. No longer could she lose herself in the pages of a book, or concentrate on her father’s esoteric research into eastern civilisations.

Fully awakened, her conscience nagged her and gave her no peace, calling her a stupid little fool for her thoughtless agreement to so damaging a plan as Susanna had suggested. Better by far to have stayed within the safe confines of Miss Pym’s school than to perpetrate such a deception.

Then there was the unfortunate effect that the Earl himself appeared to have on her. It seemed that the confusion he had thrown her into that day in Oakham was nothing compared to encountering him at close quarters. Lucille had led a sheltered existence, but none of the fathers or brothers of her pupils had ever made her pulse race in the disconcerting way Seagrave had affected her. His face had a disquieting tendency of imposing itself between her and the written page; the cadences of that mellow voice haunted her thoughts.

None of her reading could help her to understand this peculiar chemistry between them. She even caught herself daydreaming, an indulgence which both puzzled and horrified her. But none of her dreams of him could be in any way encouraging. He thought she was Susanna, after all, and even if he had met her under her own identity she did not flatter herself that he would have any time for a frumpish bluestocking. As for what he would think of her if he discovered her impersonation…She refused to allow herself to even consider that.

Fortunately for Lucille’s equilibrium, Seagrave did not appear again at Cookes, although his agent, Mr Josselyn, called with some long and convoluted legal papers for Lucille to sign. She perused these with intense concentration and made a list of points on which she required clarification. She then stopped dead, realising that it was not her place to query the lease, but Susanna’s. That inevitably made her recall the masquerade and she found herself out of sorts again. Normally she would have walked off her low spirits, but now she felt she could not even venture outside the gate of Cookes.

On the second day of enforced inactivity, Lucille threw her book aside in despair. It was Sunday evening and the church bells had been calling across the green. The shadows were falling now and all was still in the dusk. It was such a beautiful evening that Lucille was suddenly determined to go out. She put on her bonnet and coat, and slipped out of the front door.

The green was deserted and it was indeed pleasant to be outside now that the heat of the day had gone and the air was full of birdsong. Lucille left the shelter of Cookes’s gates and crossed to the duck pond, holding her breath lest anyone see her. But all was quiet. It felt astonishingly liberating to be in the open air. For a while she just stood and enjoyed the neat prettiness of the cottages about the green, their gardens bursting with verdant summer flowers, their white-painted walls reflecting the last rays of the sun. Then she walked slowly across to the ancient stone church, and paused with her hand on the iron gate, suddenly overwhelmed with the need to go inside.

The church, like the village, was deserted now that the evening service was over and the congregation dispersed. Lucille let herself into the green darkness of the interior, and sat in a worn wooden back pew, breathing in the mixture of flower scent and ancient dust. It was so evocative of her childhood with the Markhams that her breath caught in her throat. The familiarity was soothing in an existence that had become so unexpectedly difficult. She said a few heartfelt prayers before letting herself out of the door into the churchyard, which had become full of deep shadows.

The first intimation Lucille had that she was not alone came with the pattering of paws along the path, and then a magnificent chocolate-coloured retriever was before her, sniffing inquisitively at her skirts and pressing its damp nose into the palm of her hand. Lucille laughed at this shameless bid for attention, bent down, and fondled the creature’s silky ears.

‘What a beauty you are, aren’t you! I wonder what your name is…?’

The dog snuffled softly, rubbing its head against her hand, before turning, suddenly alert, its ears pricking up.

‘Her name is Sal, Miss Kellaway, short for Salamanca.’

The Earl of Seagrave had stepped out from the shadows of an ancient yew tree and was viewing Lucille with thoughtful interest. ‘She is not usually so friendly to strangers.’

Lucille watched Sal return submissively to her master’s heel, and smiled at the look of adoration in those limpid dark eyes. No doubt that was the type of gaze she should be perfecting in the interests of her impersonation. However, there was something about the clear evening, scented with herbs and yew, which made her rebel against the idea of acting a part. She looked up from the dog to see that Seagrave was still watching her.

‘Were you at Salamanca, my lord?’

‘I was.’ He straightened, coming towards her down the path, the dog now close at his heels. ‘It was my last battle, Miss Kellaway. I had been in the Peninsula for four years, first serving under General Sir John Moore and then under Wellington—Sir Arthur Wellesley, as he was to begin with. It was July when we came up against the French just south of Salamanca; July, just as it is now. I remember it well.’

Seagrave took a deep breath of cool, scented air. ‘It was hot, with the kind of oppressive, airless heat you can get in Spain in the summer. The land around was arid, dry as dust. The dust was everywhere…in our mouths, in our noses, in our clothes…We sat on the flat top of our hill and watched the French lines to the south of us, on the higher ground.’

His voice had taken on a still, reflective quality. ‘You may have read that the battle was a great triumph for Wellington. So it was. The French were cut to pieces with at least fourteen thousand casualties. It was carnage. I was wounded advancing across the valley between the two hills. We were in the range of the cannon and I fell with shrapnel in the chest and shoulder. So I was invalided out, and shortly after that I inherited the title and thought to stay at home.’

He stirred slightly and gave a short, bitter laugh. ‘My apologies, Miss Kellaway! It is unforgivable to speak of such matters to a lady. You must forgive me.’

Lucille shook her head slightly. She had become caught up in the tale, could almost feel the heat of the Spanish sun and taste the dust. War was an experience so far removed from the lives of most people that it was almost impossible to begin to imagine it. Many did not want to try, finding the contrast with their own easy existence too uncomfortable to contemplate.

‘I am sorry,’ she began, unsure what she was really apologising for, but aware that the undercurrent of bitterness which had touched his voice briefly was present in that still, shadowed face. ‘It must have been very difficult to adapt to civilian life after such experiences.’

Seagrave gave another harsh laugh. ‘Indeed it was, Miss Kellaway! After the immediacies of life and death, the delights of the ton, whilst entertaining, seem damnably shallow! But it is hardly fashionable to speak so! No doubt you think me most singular!’

‘No, sir.’ Lucille caught herself just as she was about to express her own preferences for reading and studying over routs and parties. The shock of realising that she had almost betrayed herself caused her to fall silent, her mind suddenly blank. It was impossible to be forever remembering that she was supposed to be Susanna.

‘I am glad to see you have overcome your aversion to dogs,’ Seagrave observed suddenly, watching as Sal lay down with her head at Lucille’s feet. ‘I thought you once said that you hated them.’

Lucille froze. Did Susanna hate dogs? She had no idea. Seagrave was looking quite bland, but she suddenly had an unnerving feeling that he was deliberately testing her. She shrugged lightly.

‘I do not recall…’

‘When you were driving in the Park one day last summer…or was it two summers ago?’ Seagrave mused. ‘Harriette Wilson’s dog bit your arm and I am sure I remember you saying you thought they were hateful creatures and should all be destroyed. You were quite vehement on the subject!’

Lucille mentally added another item to the list of things about Susanna which she found unattractive. The list was getting rather long and she was learning far more about her sister than she had known from the first seventeen years of their lives together. As for Harriette Wilson, Lucille knew her to be a legendary Cyprian in the same mould as Susanna, but her choice in pets was beyond her. ‘Oh, well…’ she managed to sound quite vague ‘…that dreadful little, yapping creature—’

‘Miss Wilson has a wolfhound, as I recall,’ Seagrave commented, with mild irony. ‘Scarcely a small creature, and one which left a scar on your arm.’

Lucille glanced down instinctively, although she was wearing a jacket whose sleeves covered her arms from shoulder to wrist. Which arm would Susanna have injured? How could she tell? This was getting ridiculous. She cast about hastily for a change of topic.

‘And what do you call your horse, sir?’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Seagrave sounded mystified at the sudden change of direction.

‘Your horse—that magnificent creature I have heard that you ride about your estate. Surely it must have some equally magnificent name?’

Seagrave laughed. ‘I named him after Alexander the Great’s steed, Miss Kellaway! A conceit, I suppose, though he is worthy of it!’

‘Bucephalus,’ Lucille said absently, then recollected herself again as Seagrave shifted slightly, giving her a look that was quizzical to say the least.

‘You have an interest in classical history, Miss Kellaway? I would never have suspected it! You must have inherited some of your father’s scholarly nature, after all!’

What did he mean, ‘after all’? Lucille bit her lip. She was bristling with indignation at the slur on her intelligence but since she knew Seagrave was actually criticising Susanna rather than herself, she realised she should not regard it. She reminded herself that Susanna would shudder to be thought a bluestocking. ‘Lud, we were always being fed such tedious facts at school,’ she said, as carelessly as she could. ‘How tiresome to discover that some of it remains with me! I would rather die than become an intellectual!’

‘No danger of that!’ Seagrave said laconically. ‘I imagine your talents must lie in other directions!’

The comprehensively assessing look he gave her made Lucille tingle suddenly with an awareness which was completely outside her experience. She shivered in the cool air. Strangely she felt no insult, as she had done with Sir Edwin. The shadows were deepening with every moment, creating a dangerously intimate atmosphere about them. The thin, sickle moon rising above the branches of the yew and the scent of honeysuckle on the breeze did nothing to dispel this illusion.

Seagrave took another step towards her. He was now so close that he could have reached out and touched her but as yet he made no move to do so. Lucille’s pulse was racing, the blood singing quick and light through her veins. Her mouth was dry and she moistened her lips nervously, watching in fascination as Seagrave’s gaze followed the movement of her tongue, the look in his eyes suddenly so sexually explicit that she caught her breath. Then Sal ran forward, barking at shadows and Lucille turned hastily towards the lych-gate.

‘I’ll bid you good evening, sir.’ She hardly recognised her own voice, so shaken it sounded.

Seagrave caught up to her at the gate. ‘I saw you coming out of the church, Miss Kellaway,’ he said abruptly. ‘Can this be some remarkable conversion to moral rectitude?’

The mocking undertone in his voice banished the magical spell his presence had cast on Lucille. She had read about physical attraction, she reminded herself sharply, and knew that it had nothing to do with loving, liking or respecting another person. No doubt she should just be grateful that Seagrave was indeed no Sir Edwin Bolt, with his insultingly lewd comments and disgusting mauling of Susanna’s naked flesh. Only she, Lucille, in her inexperience, had for a moment confused that intense physical awareness with feelings of a deeper and more meaningful kind.

‘Did you imagine that I was there to steal the candlesticks?’ she snapped, angry with herself for her susceptibility and with him for his sarcasm. She gathered up her skirts in one hand to enable her to walk away from him more quickly. ‘Do you exercise the right to decree whether your tenants attend church or not, my lord? Take care that you do not assume too many of the Almighty’s own privileges!’

Seagrave’s eyes narrowed at this before he unexpectedly burst out laughing. ‘A well-judged reproof, Miss Kellaway! What a contradictory creature you are! Come, I shall escort you back to Cookes!’

Lucille preferred not to torment herself with his company. ‘Thank you, but there is not the least need! Good night, sir!’

Seagrave, who was used to having his companionship actively sought by women rather than abruptly refused, found this rather amusing. He wished he had kissed her when he had had the chance. He watched with a rueful smile as her small, upright figure crossed the green and disappeared in at the gates of Cookes. Susanna Kellaway…He frowned abruptly, recalling what he knew of her. His wits must be a-begging to find her remotely attractive.

He knew she was supposed to exercise a powerful sexual sway over her conquests, but the attraction he had felt had been far more complex than mere lust. God alone knew what had prompted him to tell her about Salamanca. If he had not forcibly stopped himself, he imagined he would have blurted out all about his alienation from normal life, the driven madness which had possessed him when he had returned from the wars…Damnation! This sojourn in the country must be making him soft in the head! He called Sal sharply to heel and set off across the moonlit fields back to Dillingham Court.

The good weather broke the following day, and Lucille spent the morning curled up in the drawing-room with an ancient map of Dillingham that she had found in her father’s study. Each lane and dwelling was carefully labelled; Cookes was there, though at that time it was still a row of individual timbered cottages, drawn with skill and precision by the cartographer’s pen. On the other side of Dragon Hill, the only high land in the area, lay a beautifully stylised house named on the map as Dillingham Court and surrounded by its pleasure gardens. Lucille’s curiosity was whetted, but she knew it was unlikely that she would ever see the Court in real life.

There had still been no word from Susanna, and two weeks had already passed. Lucille no longer really believed that her sister would return in the time she had promised, and she itched to be away from Cookes. Wearing Susanna’s character, even without an audience, suddenly grated on her. If only Seagrave had not come to Dillingham! Lucille shifted uncomfortably in her chair, her conscience pricking her again.

Immediately after luncheon the rain ceased, driven away by a brisk wind that hurried the ragged clouds across the sky. Lucille was tired of being cooped up all day. She put on a pair of stout boots to protect her from the puddles and called for the carriage to be brought round.

‘I wish to go to the seaside, John,’ she told the startled coachman.

It was six miles to the sea at the nearest point, which was Shingle Street, and the journey was a slow one over rutted tracks. Clearly John thought that she was mad to attempt such an expedition, but Lucille did not care. Once out of the village environs, the lush green fields soon gave way to thick forest and heathland, flat, dark and empty to the horizons. On such a grey day it was both forbidding and desolate, but Lucille found it a fascinating place. When they finally reached the sea, she descended from the carriage to be met by the full force of the wind and was almost blown over. The fresh salty tang of the air was exhilarating.

Feeling much better, Lucille told John that she would walk along the shore for a little way and asked him to meet her at the gates of the only house she had seen in the vicinity. Scratching his head, the coachman watched her walk off along the shingle beach, a slight, lonely figure in her outmoded coat and boots. How could two sisters be so different? he wondered. Miss Susanna Kellaway never walked anywhere if she could ride; more fundamentally, she had never said please or thank you in all the time he had worked for her.

The walking was hard along the shingle, and the power of the waves was awesome at close quarters. The sea was gunmetal grey, a heaving, bad-tempered maelstrom as it hurled itself on the shore. Seabirds screamed and wheeled overhead. Here and there, sea wrack was scattered across the beach; flotsam and jetsam from ships, bent and misshapen after their time in the water. Lucille stooped to consider a few pieces and picked up a piece of wood that had been worn smooth by the force of the waves.

She had reached a point where there was a set of ancient, worn steps cut into the shingle and she turned away from the sea to follow them up the small cliff. On the headland the turf was smooth and springy, the path skirting an ancient fence which marked the boundary of the house Lucille had seen earlier. She paused, wondering who could have chosen to live in so desolate a spot. The house itself was hidden from her view by a well-established shrubbery and cluster of gnarled trees, but it looked a substantial dwelling. And as she considered it, leaning on the fence, a voice from near at hand said:

‘Goddess! Excellently bright!’

Lucille jumped and spun around. The voice was of a rich, deep-velvet quality and would have carried from pit to gallery at a Drury Lane theatre. Emerging from the shrubbery was an extraordinary figure, a large woman of indeterminate age, wrapped in what seemed like endless scarves of blue chiffon and purple gauze in complete defiance of the climate. Over her arm was a basket full of roses and at her heels stalked a large fluffy white cat. The most worldly-wise, disillusioned pair of dark eyes that Lucille had ever seen were appraising her thoughtfully.

‘That, Miss Kellaway,’ the lady said impressively, ‘was in tribute to your beauty and was—’

‘Ben Jonson,’ Lucille said, spontaneously. ‘Yes, I know!’

The pessimistic dark eyes focussed on her more intently. ‘Would you care to take tea with me, Miss Kellaway? I have so few visitors here for I am not recognised in the county!’

For a moment, Lucille wondered what on earth she meant. It seemed impossible that such a character would remain unrecognised wherever she went.

‘I am Bessie Bellingham,’ the lady continued, grandly. ‘The Dowager Lady Bellingham! Bessie Bowles, as was!’

She paused, clearly expecting the recognition she deserved, and Lucille did not disappoint her.

‘Of course! I have read of you, ma’am—your performance as Viola in Twelfth Night was accounted one of the best ever seen at Drury Lane, and the papers were forever arguing over whether comedy or melodrama was your forté!’

‘Well, well, before your time, my child!’ But Lady Bellingham was smiling, well pleased, and the cat was rubbing around Lucille’s ankles and purring. ‘My own favourite was Priscilla Tomboy in The Romp, but it was a long time ago, before I met dear Bellingham and ended up in this mausoleum!’

She took Lucille’s arm and steered her through the shrubbery towards the house. ‘You have no idea how delighted I was when I saw you on the beach,’ she continued. ‘Of course, I had heard that you were staying in Dillingham—my maid, Conchita, knows everything! And I thought that, as we two are the black sheep of the neighbourhood, we could take tea and talk of the London this provincial crowd will never know!’