65 A Heart Is Stolen (12 page)

“Then Markham has been cheating you!” Anthony observed.

“Exactly!” the Marquis replied, “and this is where I start my enquiries. Pull the bell!”

The note of command in his voice made Anthony realise how angry he was.

He knew if there was one thing that really infuriated him it was to think that he was being crooked or deceived in any way by those he trusted.

Neither man spoke until Travers opened the door.

“Tell Mr. Markham I wish to speak to him immediately!” the Marquis ordered.

“Very good, my Lord.”

Again there was silence and Anthony moved towards the window and, feeling the atmosphere was oppressive, he opened one of the long windows which, like those in the drawing room, led directly onto the terrace above the lawns.

Then he turned back towards the Marquis.

“Do you wish me to stay?”

“Of course!” the Marquis replied.

The door opened and Mr. Markham came in.

It was obvious that he was apprehensive and the Marquis saw the fear on his face when he walked across the room to stand in front of the desk.

“I have been looking at your ledger, Markham,” the Marquis began, “and I want an explanation as to why four footmen who are no longer in my employment are still listed here.”

“It may have been remiss of me – my Lord,” Mr. Markham replied in a voice that shook, “but as the other footmen – I engaged in their place were taken on a temporary basis and received the same wages – it seemed unnecessary to change the names each time.”

That was almost plausible, the Marquis thought, but he did not approve of such slipshod methods.

“How is it that the men were only temporary and why?”

“It is not easy to find men in this vicinity, my Lord, but I had to take what I could get and most of them were unsatisfactory.”

The Marquis looked at his agent. While Markham was very pale, he was also sweating and the Marquis was experienced enough in the handling of men to know that, while he had a tight control on himself, he was in fact very frightened.

“I also see,” the Marquis continued, “that you have not put on record when Bateman retired and Travers took his place.”

“No, my Lord, for the same reason.”

“But surely Travers seems a very experienced man and you hoped he would stay?”

“I was not certain that he would do so, my Lord.”

The Marquis turned over the pages.

“Now we come to the gardeners. Grimshaw tells me that he has sixteen men working for him at the moment. Surely that is an abnormal amount?”

“Grimshaw has not complained that he is over-staffed.”

“That is not the point,” the Marquis snapped. “The wages you have drawn for the gardeners every week have been for ten. How do you account for the extra?”

“Some are newcomers, my Lord, and I did not expect to pay them as much as those who have been with us for many years.”

The Marquis looked at the names and turned back the ledger to its beginning.

“Again the names have not been changed.”

“No, my Lord.”

“There is something going on here,” the Marquis said. “Something I don’t like and it points unpleasantly to fraud.”

“
No
, my Lord. That is not true, my Lord!”

Mr. Markham was now shaking and, as if Anthony found the interrogation too uncomfortable, he rose and walked from the library.

The Marquis brought his fist down suddenly on the desk so that the inkpot rattled.

“I want the truth,” he asserted angrily
, “the whole truth
!”

Mr. Markham drew in his breath.

At that moment from the open window a voice said,

“And that is what you shall have, my Lord!”

The Marquis stared in astonishment as Ivana Wadebridge walked into the room.

She was wearing the emerald green gown in which he had first seen her and it made her look very picturesque besides accentuating her white skin.

As she came nearer, he thought that she looked unnaturally pale, in fact frightened.

He was so astounded at her sudden appearance that he did not rise but remained sitting at his desk.

Then Markham who was standing in front of him exclaimed,

“No, no, Miss Ivana. Leave this to me. You must not be involved.”

Ivana smiled at him.

“But I
am
involved, Marky, and we cannot go on pretending. His Lordship had better know the worst.”

“No, please,” Mr. Markham pleaded.

‘Leave it to me,” she insisted firmly, “and I prefer to speak to his Lordship alone.”

Mr. Markham seemed about to go on protesting and then, as if he felt helpless, he merely made a gesture with his hands and went from the room.

As the door closed behind him, Ivana turned to face the Marquis standing in front of his desk as Mr. Markham had done.

“You seem to have taken charge of my servants,” the Marquis said in an icy voice, “but I am prepared, Mrs. Wadebridge, to listen to your explanation of what has been occurring here at Heathcliffe.”

He looked down at the ledger as he spoke and then, as he was aware that Ivana was feeling for words, he asked sharply,

“Why are you here in the first place? And why have you entered the house in such a strange manner?”

“I came to see Travers,” she answered. “And I was told that you had taken the ledger from the estate office into the library.”

“You were – told?” the Marquis queried. “Does everything that happens here reach your ears?”

“A great deal of it.”

The Marquis made an exasperated sound and sat back in his chair.

“I am listening,” he said, “and, as I have already said to Markham, I want the truth.”

Ivana gave a little sigh.

“I realised as soon as you arrived so unexpectedly that we could not go on as we were.”

“It was obviously unfortunate that I decided to visit my own house,” the Marquis murmured sarcastically.

“It was, as far as we were concerned.”

“Who is ‘we’?”

“Nanny, Marky, Travers and, of course, the men we have been helping.”

The Marquis’s lips tightened and then he said,

“I am waiting to hear about these men. I imagine they are sailors.”

“Of course.”

“Suppose you start at the beginning.”

Then, as if even in his anger, he was aware he should be showing good manners, he said somewhat grudgingly,

“Do you wish to sit down?”

“No, thank you,” Ivana replied. “I would rather stand. I am well aware, my Lord, that you are sitting in judgement upon me.”

The Marquis did not reply.

His eyes were hard and he was thinking that, although he was curious to know how he had been tricked and made to look a fool of by his servants, it was something he disliked intensely and to the offenders he intended to show no mercy.

As if she knew what he was thinking, Ivana said after a moment,

“I think perhaps as you said, I had best start at the beginning.”

“I should have thought that was obvious,” the Marquis said coldly.

“It all began three years ago when my brother Charles came back to England with his ship after the Battle of the Nile.”

“In which your father was killed.”

“Yes. Charles was a Midshipman and he survived.”

Ivana paused and the Marquis thought that there was a suspicion of tears in her eyes and there was certainly a throb in her voice as she went on,

“Charles told me how bravely Papa had died and he also brought home with him a sailor who, he said, had saved his life, but who had afterwards been badly wounded.”

Ivana paused a moment before she said,

“As I am sure your Lordship is aware, nothing is done by a disgracefully ungrateful country for those who have been injured at sea. They are just dismissed and cast off as paupers to live on what they can beg or – steal.”

“I am aware of that,” the Marquis replied, “and I consider it a scandal, but there is nothing I can do about it.”

“I thought that would be your attitude,” Ivana said scornfully, “and that was why I felt justified – ”

She stopped and said,

“I had better continue with my story.”

“That is certainly advisable,” the Marquis said, “rather than become side-tracked into recriminations which will get us nowhere.”

He saw the flash of anger in Ivana’s blue eyes before she went on,

“Nanny and I nursed George back to life, although he will always be a hopeless cripple.”

“I suppose that is the man with the wooden leg?”

“So you did notice it!”

“I notice most things,” he declared dryly.

“I was afraid you might be curious about it.”

“Only because you lied to me and said that you and your nurse were alone in the house, although I suppose actually the man sleeps in the barn.”

“Why should you think that?”

“Because I saw a light in the window after Sir Anthony and I had driven you home.”

“That was careless,” Ivana said, “but I could not have anticipated that you would accompany me.”

“Of course not, but, when one is telling lies, one has to take every precaution against being found out.”

The Marquis spoke scathingly, but Ivana went on,

“When George was a little better and Nanny and I were very proud of what we had been able to do for him, we went shopping in Brighton one day. I saw two other sailors there begging in the streets from the fashionable ladies and gentlemen parading themselves in their jewels along the Steine.”

There was a contemptuous note in her voice as she carried on,

“They were almost skin and bone and anyone who was not blind could see that they were half-starved. But nobody stopped to help them, no one would give them a fourpenny piece out of the hundreds of pounds which we are told are gambled away every night in the Royal Pavilion!”

“So you brought them back to Flagstaff Manor with you,” the Marquis remarked.

“Of course I did! How could the people of this country leave men, who have nearly died to keep us free from Bonaparte, in such a condition?”

As she spoke, Ivana was almost spitting the words at him, but he said in a deliberately calm and indifferent voice,

“Continue with your story.”

“I suppose the word got around of what had happened. Anyway, more men came to ask our help and I could not – turn them – away.”

She looked at the Marquis as if she appealed to him to understand, but he said after a moment,

“Then I imagine you ran out of money?”

Ivana nodded.

“I sold all the jewellery Mama had left me and spent every penny of the small allowance I receive from Charles. I could not sell the furniture because that belongs to him.”

“So instead you appealed to Markham to help you.”

“He had always been a tremendous admirer of my father’s and, when Papa was killed, he was almost as upset as I was. He knew I felt that in helping these sailors I was doing something of which Papa would have approved.”

“So he began to ‘cook the books’?” the Marquis said harshly.

“It was not exactly like that. As the footmen left one by one, he did not replace them. He handed over to me the money he received from you for their wages.”

“And that was not enough?”

“We managed,” Ivana replied, “until about a year ago. Then more and more men begged our help and, although I tried to be firm and send them away, I could not bear their helplessness, the manner in which they did not plead with me – but merely said, ‘I understand, ma’am, I’ll manage somehow’.”

Her voice broke and she added,

“I knew they could not manage – not with their wounds turning gangrenous. Some of them had lost an arm or a leg, some could not even think properly and were – half-dazed from the – horrors they had been – through.”

“So what did you do?” the Marquis asked, but he thought before Ivana replied that he knew the answer.

“I sold a snuffbox.”

There was silence while the Marquis stared at Ivana and she seemed incapable of continuing her story.

Then with an effort she said,

“It was not one of the best ones, in fact I thought it rather ugly. But the dealer who had bought my mother’s jewellery gave me a surprisingly large sum for it.”

The Marquis remembered the box he had been shown by Peregrine Percival.

“But one was not enough. So you went on stealing.”

“Y-yes,” Ivana stammered. “Having taken one and Marky had no idea I had done so – I took another – then another.”

She made a helpless little gesture with her hands.

“They were not the best, they were the ones I thought, if you learnt about it, which seemed very unlikely as you never came to Heathcliffe, you would miss the least.”

“So you actually did consider me in this extraordinarily reprehensible behaviour!” the Marquis said cynically.

“I knew how much they had meant to your father, because Marky told me. But as you had so many other interests over and above Heathcliffe, I did not think you would miss what you obviously did not value personally.”

“That was a quite unwarranted presumption,” the Marquis snapped.

“I realise that now, since you have been here and seem so interested in the pictures. But at the time I thought an absentee owner was less important than a war and the men who were fighting in it.”

Ivana said this defiantly and, as her eyes met the Marquis’s, it was as if she battled with him.

“Go on,” the Marquis ordered. “I am wondering where Bateman comes into all this.”

“Bateman resented being without footmen,” Ivana replied, “and actually he was incapable of doing anything because, having the keys to the cellar, he just drank and drank until half the time he was in such a drunken stupor that he could not even move.”

“Markham should have reported it to me,” the Marquis said angrily.

“He wanted to, but I persuaded him not to,” Ivana answered, “because we needed the money. Then I sent Travers here regularly to keep the place clean and tidy.”

“Travers was with you?” the Marquis asked.

“Yes, he came to me from Charles. He was only slightly wounded, but it meant that he could not go back to his ship for six months and before he was well enough to do so the peace came. Then I needed him desperately.”