65 A Heart Is Stolen (8 page)

He spoke so aggressively that Anthony looked at him in surprise.

“Really, Justin, I have never known you behave like a spoilsport before! Here are you and I with nothing to do except worry about some highwayman we are never likely to catch. We see the prettiest girl we have seen in a month of Sundays, and you say it is ‘hands off’ because she has a husband!”

The Marquis did not reply and Anthony continued,

“I cannot think what is the matter with you. Husbands have never worried you before, unless they were pointing a pistol at your heart.”

The Marquis still made no answer, but merely spurred his horse forward and Anthony had some difficulty in keeping up with him.

As they neared Heathcliffe, the Marquis asked,

“Did you notice how neat and tidy the garden was?”

“Of course I did!” Anthony replied. “In fact, I thought only a sailor could have kept it so spick and span.”

“Exactly!” the Marquis agreed. “But the only sailor we saw was the one who held the horses, and that is another thing – why should he be waiting for us when we arrived? And the door opened the moment we knocked on it.”

Anthony looked at him.

“What are you trying to say?”

“It seemed strange,” the Marquis answered, “but I am quite certain that Mrs. Wadebridge knew that we were arriving.”

“How on earth could she have known that?” Anthony asked.

The Marquis suddenly remembered the man he had seen riding away from the house as they arrived.

He tried to remember more clearly what he had looked like and he was sure that from his clothes he had not been a gentleman, in which case he must have been a groom or a servant and who else would have good horse flesh except himself?

“What are you thinking?” Anthony asked curiously.

“I am not certain I can put it into words,” the Marquis answered, “but I am becoming more and more convinced there is something going on that I cannot explain, but it is definitely out of the ordinary.”

“I should jolly well think it is!” Anthony remarked. “It is not ordinary to find amazingly beautiful women who can call parakeets out of an English lime tree and have them sitting tamely on their hands and arms.”

He gave a sigh.

“I have never seen anything so beautiful as that girl looked.”

“Woman!” the Marquis corrected.

“I bet you she is not a day over eighteen,” Anthony said, “and she cannot have been married long. Once a woman is married, she looks married.”

He paused as if searching for the right words and then went on,

“She loses something, the innocence that had made her appear untouched.”

The Marquis looked at him with undisguised astonishment.

“You never cease to surprise me, Anthony,” he said, “but I am rather inclined to agree with you, although, as it happens, I have known very few young girls.”

“There are very few as pretty as – what was her name? Ivana Wadebridge,” Anthony replied.

“Well, you will see her tomorrow evening,” the Marquis said. “In the meantime I intend to look further afield for our highwaymen and I have no intention of letting a pretty face and a covey of parakeets divert me from tracking them down.”

Anthony did not argue, but the Marquis had the feeling that he thought it was a forlorn hope.

*

The next day the Marquis and Anthony drove miles in their efforts to find anyone who had seen the highwaymen.

Despite Mr. Markham’s discouraging information that they had few neighbours, the Marquis made enquiries in the neighbouring villages and personally visited a number of people living on small farms or on the outskirts of hamlets, who were both astonished and gratified to be called on by the owner of Heathcliffe.

They had all heard of his father, they all admired Heathcliffe and they fawned on the Marquis in a manner that Anthony told him was extremely bad for him.

“It’s all inflating to your ego,” he said when they were going home after a fruitless day on which the Marquis had gained no information, but had collected a great number of admirers.

“I thought they were very pleasant,” the Marquis said. “The only trouble is that none of them have heard of the highwaymen.”

“I begin to think they don’t exist,” Anthony muttered. “The wine was too good and we just dreamt the whole incident.”

“In which case I would like my watch and my snuffboxes back,” the Marquis said sharply.

“Well, we can forget highwaymen for tonight and concentrate on the blue-eyed beauty. As she had a magic way with parakeets, she might be clairvoyant enough to tell us where they are hiding.”

The Marquis laughed.

“She might be hiding a dozen or more in that huge barn of hers.”

Even as he spoke he stiffened.

He was remembering something; something that he had not thought about until this moment.

“What is it?” Anthony asked.

“Do you know,” the Marquis said, “when she had those parakeets fluttering all around her, I am convinced that we were not the only people watching them.”

“What do you mean by that?” Anthony asked.

“Now I think of it I am almost sure, although it made no impression on me at the time, that I saw a face at one of the windows in the barn.”

“She said it was locked up.”

“I know. She also said that she and her old nurse were alone in the house. If that is true, where was the man to whom the wooden leg belonged?”

“He was obviously a gardener,” Anthony suggested.

“Maybe, but one gardener could not have kept that garden as tidy as we saw it to be. What is more, I don’t believe her old nurse, who must be over sixty, could have polished those stairs, the furniture, the floors and the brass. I could see my face in them.”

“You are concocting a good story,” Anthony laughed. “But at the same time, if you ask me, you are making mountains out of molehills. Ivana is a simple, charming, open country girl with blue eyes and if you think she has highwaymen locked up in her barn – ”

“It is as likely as if she had parakeets in a lime tree!” the Marquis finished before Anthony could end the sentence himself.

“All right, you can cross-examine her tonight and I bet you ten sovereigns she will not give you a single clue.”

“Taken!” “If we are taking sides,” Anthony warned. “I shall align myself with Ivana against you and you will certainly get nowhere.”

“That is a challenge!” the Marquis smiled, “and you know I can never resist one!”

*

Dressing for dinner in the best gown she had which was a very simple one, Ivana listened to Nanny saying over and over again that she had been foolish to accept the Marquis’s invitation.

“Why do you think he has asked you except to make trouble?” the old woman enquired.

“It would seem very unfriendly if I had refused,” Ivana replied.

She sat down suddenly on the stool in front of the mirror and, looking at her reflection, she said,

“Perhaps it was wrong – but at the time I could think of no plausible reason for refusing.”

“We could send a message to say you be feelin’ ill.”

Ivana thought of the Marquis’s firm mouth and had the feeling that if he wanted her to dine with him he would go on asking her until she had run out of excuses and there was nothing she could do but accept.

“I will go and get it over with,” she said. “After all, it will be an ordinary social evening with doubtless both fine gentlemen yawning with boredom by the time we reach the dessert.”

“I hopes that’s what’ll happen,” Nanny snapped. “Equally, if you asks me, it’s too much to hope for!”

Ivana laughed.

“It is no use being faint-hearted now, Nanny, when we have been through so much,” she said, “and it’s not like you to be afraid of anyone, even the Marquis.”

As she spoke, Ivana thought she personally was, in fact, rather frightened.

She had heard about him all her life, but, although she had known that he was good-looking, dashing, raffish and also brave, she had not expected him in the flesh to be quite so overpowering or indeed to be so outstandingly handsome.

As many women had thought before her, the Marquis and Sir Anthony together were almost breathtaking.

Never had she imagined two men could look so elegant, almost dandifiedly smart and at the same time be so unmistakably masculine.

There was no doubt, she thought when they had gone, that Sir Anthony had admired her, but she had the uncomfortable feeling that the Marquis was feeling something very different.

Could he be suspicious? And if so, of what?

She gave a cry of vexation when she realised after they had left that George’s wooden leg had been left in the garden and he had hobbled away on his stick without it. Then when he realised what he had done, he was afraid to go back and fetch it.

Perhaps the Marquis had not seen it, but Ivana was sure his penetrating eyes that made her feel shy and rather frightened had missed nothing, especially something that he was not meant to see.

She thought now that perhaps it had been a mistake to call the parakeets down from the tree, but at least it had diverted the gentlemen’s attention.

She had been worried for the rest of the day after they had gone and found it hard to sleep last night. Now Nanny had grumbled and complained all the time she was pressing her gown.

“Why can’t we be left in peace?” she asked. “Who’d have imagined the Marquis of Veryan would have come here? Your poor grandfather must be a-turnin’ in his grave?”

“That is true enough, Nanny,” Ivana agreed. “For a Veryan to stand on the soil of Flagstaff Manor would be an insult in itself!”

But how could she carry on that ridiculous vendetta which, Ivana thought, had ruined her childhood because she was never allowed to go to Heathcliffe?

She remembered sitting on top of the wall and staring at it far away in the distance with longing eyes.

“Could I not just go to the stables to see the horses, Grandpapa?” she had asked once.

The request had called down an avalanche of abuse upon her head, which had left her in tears and made her determined that she would never mention Heathcliffe again.

Of course tales of the Marquis had percolated into Flagstaff Manor and anyway they talked of nothing else in the village.

When he was at Brighton with the Prince Regent, the local people who saw him reported his extravagance, the lovely ladies he squired and the way his horses romped home first at Lewes Races.

Now Ivana thought, she had not only seen him but was to dine with him.

She looked at herself in the mirror, anxiously wondering if because she had nothing smart or fashionable to wear, she would be wise to listen to Nanny and stay at home.

‘Perhaps he will despise me for being so countrified,’ she told herself, ‘and that will be good, for then he will leave me alone.’

She had the feeling that even if the Marquis decided to do that his friend, Sir Anthony, would be more concerned with her face than what she was wearing.

Anyway, when the carriage arrived, there was nothing she could do but pick up the scarf that matched her gown and let Nanny put a plain woollen shawl over her shoulders to keep her warm during the short drive to Heathcliffe.

“Now be careful what you says, dearie,” Nanny admonished, “and come home as soon as you can. I’ll be prayin’ everythin’ will be all right and there’s no nasty pitfalls when you least expects them.”

“Yes, do that, Nanny.”

Ivana kissed her old nurse’s cheek and stepped into the carriage that was more comfortable and luxurious than any carriage she had ever travelled in before.

When she reached Heathcliffe to find four footmen on duty in the hall and Travers greeting her politely, she had a sudden impulse to run away and return to the quiet security of Flagstaff Manor.

Then pride made her lift her chin and she followed Travers towards the drawing room asking herself why should she be afraid of the Marquis or any other man.

“Mrs. Wadebridge, my Lord!” Travers announced.

The Marquis walked towards her and Ivana thought that it would be impossible for a man to look more magnificent and it was difficult not to be aware how drab and insignificant she must look beside him.

As it happened, the blue gown that Nanny had made for her the previous year gave her a picture-like appearance so that she might have stepped down from one of the portraits on the walls of Heathcliffe.

‘She should be painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds,’ the Marquis thought to himself.

He was aware that, while he bowed in response to her curtsey, Anthony, taking advantage of the fact that she was a married woman, kissed her hand.

“Come and sit down,” he was saying. “I feel sure you would enjoy a glass of champagne.”

“It would certainly be a treat,” Ivana replied.

“I suppose, as your house is a sort of Naval establishment, your guests are provided only with rum!” Anthony suggested, his eyes twinkling.

“In case you are suspecting we have not paid excise duty,” Ivana flashed, “let me inform you, Sir Anthony, sailors are just as civilised in their tastes as soldiers!”

“That is right, Mrs. Wadebridge,” the Marquis agreed. “Don’t let him tease you. And to prove that soldiers can still appreciate the sea, I hope you will enjoy after dinner looking at the ship pictures that this house contains.”

“They are superb – ” Ivana said and added quickly, “so I have always – been told.”

There was just a faint pause before the last words and the Marquis looked at her enquiringly.

He thought the colour rose in her face, but she turned her head to speak to Anthony and he was not certain.

He, however, watched her every move and he was sure that she knew the way to the dining room. He also thought, although he could not be certain that once during the evening a look passed between her and Travers that made him sure that they had met before.

“I believe my agent, Markham, Mrs. Wadebridge,” he said apropos of nothing, “was a friend of your father’s?”

For a moment he thought Ivana Wadebridge’s eyes widened, and then she asked,

“Did he tell you so?”

“He spoke of your father in glowing terms, so that I was sure they were acquainted and Markham agreed that was so.”