Dorothy Eden (2 page)

In this way the evidence became overwhelming, and it seemed that Ambrose, because of the return of the rightful heir, would lose Mallow Hall. And poor Sarah with her vivid stubborn face would lose Ambrose.

‘Did anybody recognise you in court?’ Aunt Adelaide went on, eyeing Sarah sharply.

‘Oh, good gracious, no! I stayed right at the back. Even Ambrose didn’t know I was there.’ She began to giggle with reminiscent mirth. ‘James was quite horrified when I asked him to wait for me outside a courthouse! But the dear faithful creature obeyed. Oh, no, Aunt Adelaide, no one saw me. I wore my grey cloak with the high collar that I drew right across my face. I expect I was thought to be an unknown admirer of the claimant. Heaven forbid!’

‘I believe you enjoyed yourself, you shameless girl!’

‘Indeed I should have if it hadn’t been a matter touching myself so deeply. It was a most novel experience. And the wife, Aunt Adelaide. I wish you could have seen her. The deceitful thing, with those great eyes opened so wide, so innocently. She must have known the truth, if anyone did.’

‘Is she beautiful?’ Aunt Adelaide asked interestedly.

‘She’s thin and sallow, not like English women at all. I suppose it’s from living in tropical countries. But she has a queer brilliant look. I don’t know how to describe it. Perhaps she is beautiful.’

‘They sound a well-matched pair.’

‘Oh, indeed. They well look as if they could scheme together. Yet when the judge asked her questions it was all meekness. Yes, my lord. No, my lord. As if lightning would strike her dead if she told a lie.’

‘How would she know if her husband were not what he said he was?’

‘He may always have deceived her,’ Sarah conceded.

‘But why? Until this opportunity presented itself, presumably by seeing the newspaper advertisement, would he ever have heard of Blane Mallow and Mallow Hall?’

‘No, I suppose he wouldn’t. So that means his wife is as guilty as he.’

‘If he is guilty.’

‘Oh, he is! I know he is! There were so many questions he couldn’t answer, obvious ones. They were excused because of this fall he once had from his horse, getting concussion badly. But it was a too convenient excuse. If it were not for his mother, who isn’t to be swayed, he would have been in trouble long ago.’

‘And the child,’ Aunt Adelaide added thoughtfully.

Sarah frowned.

‘Yes. There is the child. It’s very strange about the child.’

A little later Ambrose arrived. He flung off his cloak, handing it to a maid, and came striding into Aunt Adelaide’s drawing-room. One look at his face told Sarah his news.

‘He’s won!’ she whispered.

‘Yes, he’s won.’ Ambrose made belated greetings to Sarah’s aunt, then flung himself angrily into a chair. In contrast to his cousin Blane, he was fair, with rather pale thickly-lashed eyes and a slight stature. He was fashionably dressed, and had an elegance that Sarah found intensely pleasing. He belonged at Mallow Hall, there was no doubt of that. He would have been an ideal master, and his life, for the last ten years, when it seemed that Blane was surely dead in some foreign country, had been shaped to that end. True, he had continued his studies and been called to the bar, but only because he was an earnest young man with few frivolities. Indeed, so far, falling in love with Sarah, the third daughter of a destitute gentleman, had been his only frivolity. Now it seemed that if he wished to live in suitable style, with a house in town and his own carriage, he must sacrifice Sarah and find a wife with money.

It was an impossible position, and he was bitterly angry and aggrieved about it. It should not have happened at the last minute like this when his succession to the title had seemed certain. Moreover, it was doubly galling when he was so convinced that this fellow from the West Indies was an impostor.

But how to unmask him?

‘It was my aunt, Lady Malvina, who finally swayed the jury,’ he said. ‘She stuck absolutely to her story that this fellow is her son.’

‘She wanted him to be,’ Sarah said indignantly.

‘Exactly. Now she can live at Mallow Hall, all her debts will be paid, everything is fine. She knows it would have been quite different if I—and you, my dear Sarah—had been the new owners.’

‘No one knows about me,’ Sarah said quickly. Her eyes rested in anguish on Ambrose’s pale angry face. There was no denying it, secretly, as well as being Ambrose’s wife, she had longed to be the mistress of Mallow. Why had this wretched thing had to happen?

‘You aren’t bound to consider me,’ she went on, making herself speak the painful words. ‘That was always understood. I set you free, if you wish it.’

‘But I don’t wish it, my love.’

‘Tut, tut!’ said Aunt Adelaide. ‘Sarah has been indiscreet enough already. She should now have her position made clear.’

‘You must marry an heiress,’ Sarah told Ambrose earnestly. ‘It’s the only way.’

‘If your own father, Sarah, had not been so irresponsible,’ put in Aunt Adelaide, ‘you, too, could have been an heiress. As well as your stupid sisters who, I might say, need a dowry much more than you do, my dear.’

Sarah was too honest for modesty or shame. ‘I’ve told you that my father was a desperate gambler,’ she explained to Ambrose. ‘He lost all his fortune and my mother’s as well. That’s why I’ve been dependent on dear Aunt Adelaide. But now I must make some sort of a future for myself.’

‘With me,’ said Ambrose firmly.

Sarah’s face began to light. Then sadly she turned away. ‘No, that can’t be. There’s no way.’

‘Yes, there’s no way,’ Aunt Adelaide agreed. ‘Unless you’re both content to live in obscurity. That, I promise you, neither of you will be. Ambrose has lived for the last twenty years in the belief of inheriting a fortune. And, if Sarah will allow me to say so, I know her better than she does herself. She’s not meek or self-sacrificing. She’s too strong-willed. Oh, I warn you, Ambrose, even with an estate Sarah would not be an easy wife. But as a contented housewife in poor circumstances—no, a thousand times.’

Sarah’s chin went up.

‘Be quiet, please, Aunt Adelaide. All she means, Ambrose, is that I, like my father, am a gambler. I do love you, but what might I do to you? Besides, you deserve so much better than struggle and poverty.’

Ambrose had appeared to be detached from the two women’s conversation. He was looking into the distance, his eyes narrowed and thoughtful. He was so handsome, Sarah thought with a pang. A little austere, perhaps, but with all the signs of good breeding. So different from the buccaneerish look of that impostor in court.

‘You’re both wrong,’ he was saying in a dry, cool voice. ‘There is a way out of this trouble. I’m sure there is. But you, Sarah,’ his eyes flew up suddenly, taking her off her guard by their intensity, ‘will have to help me.’

‘What can I do?’

‘You can help prove this man an impostor.’

‘Why, I’d like to, Ambrose. Nothing would give me greater satisfaction. But the judge and jury have made their decision. Whoever would believe a British jury at fault?’

‘They’ve made their decision because of the weight of evidence. Evidence this scoundrel has had months, perhaps years, to prepare.’

‘But he has a certain look of your cousin Blane, hasn’t he?’

‘Vaguely, as far as one can remember. But there are too many discrepancies, too many things he forgets and conveniently attributes to his amnesia. My Aunt Malvina, whatever her ulterior motives, helped him over the worst patches. So did the head groom Soames. I never did trust him, and he knows where he would be if I became master of Mallow. Can you explain Blane forgetting the day I locked him in one of the attics? I left him there until long after dark and he came out as white as a sheet. It’s the first time I’d seen him frightened.’

‘Why was he frightened?’ Sarah asked.

‘Because that was the room where a maidservant once hanged herself. She was—in trouble. Oh, a long time ago, in my grandfather’s time. But they say that room has been haunted since.’

Sarah had a brief recollection of the tall black-haired man standing so straight and arrogant in the courtroom. Had those piercing black eyes ever held fear? She had a moment of complete incredulity that this could have been so.

She did not comment directly on Ambrose’s statement. She said in some perplexity, ‘Why did you do that to your cousin?’ Ambrose’s voice held unrestrained bitterness and dislike. ‘Because he deserved it. He was always fooling about with the maids himself.’

‘He was only sixteen,’ Sarah said involuntarily.

‘But a grown man.’

‘Tut, tut,’ said Aunt Adelaide. ‘The question doesn’t seem to be why Ambrose did this curious thing to his cousin, but why his cousin shouldn’t remember it. Did he flatly deny it had happened, Ambrose?’

‘No. He was too clever for that. He said perhaps it had. But that so many extraordinary things had happened to him since, a few hours in a presumably haunted room were merely trifling. Anyway, he said in that mocking way of his, who believes in ghosts in these enlightened times?’

‘So the question was cleverly evaded.’

‘Yes. But I saw he couldn’t remember. Just for a moment he looked quite blank. Then there were the names of servants that he couldn’t remember, his classmates, the master who taught him Latin…’

‘On the other hand,’ said Aunt Adelaide drily, ‘he could describe Mallow Hall to the last detail.’

‘Oh, Lady Malvina could have coached him on that. He must have had other accomplices besides. This is the task ahead of us now, Sarah, to unmask these people.’

‘Wasn’t it the task of the prosecuting counsel today?’

‘No, not at all. That’s just a detached courtroom scene. These things can only be done by someone who lives with these people and watches them day by day to catch them out in small things. That’s the true way to build up evidence.’

‘And who is to carry out this extraordinary task?’ enquired Aunt Adelaide. ‘Are you going to bribe the butler, or one of the maids?’

‘One of the maids, yes. In other words, you, my dear Sarah.’

‘Me!’ exclaimed Sarah in astonishment.

‘Yes, you. For you say you won’t marry me if I’m a pauper.’

‘You’re not a pauper, Ambrose. But no, I won’t marry you and ruin your future for lack of money. I’m quite determined about that.’

‘Then there’s this other thing you can do for me. For us both.’

‘Spy!’ whispered Sarah.

‘It would be very simple. I know already that they want help with the little boy. Blane—I mean the claimant—had the nerve, when the verdict was announced, to invite me to drink with him. To his good fortune, if you please!’

‘And you did?’

Ambrose grimaced.

‘One has to behave outwardly like a good loser. All the time I was longing to wring his neck. We had a pint of ale at the Three Crowns. I had to listen to his impudent plans for the future. The family intends to move down to Mallow Hall almost immediately. They think the country air will be better for the child, who isn’t strong. Since he’s too young yet to be sent to school, he’s to have a governess. It was then that the idea came to me.’

‘That I should go?’ Sarah cried. ‘But—granted I must now begin to earn my own living—how am I to get the opportunity to find out anything if they know of my connection with you? They’ll be doubly on their guard.’

‘But they won’t know of it. No one will tell them. Fortunately we’ve kept our attachment a secret. Only you and I and Lady Adelaide know of it.’

‘She’s been visiting the court every afternoon,’ Aunt Adelaide put in. ‘If she was noticed, won’t she be recognised again?’

‘Sarah, you fool!’ Ambrose exclaimed.’

Sarah’s colour rose. She defended herself heatedly.

‘But I would never be recognised again. I was right at the back among all those gaping people, and I kept my collar high round my face.’

‘But what on earth made you go there?’

‘Because it was my future at stake as well as yours.’

Ambrose’s voice grew softer.

‘It was, of course. Though you could have trusted me to report the proceedings to you.’

‘I wanted to watch those people. They fascinated me.’

‘Fascinated?’ The quick suspicion was in Ambrose’s voice.

‘In a repellent kind of way. They lied so smoothly, as if it were second nature to them.’

‘Then you didn’t believe them?’

‘Of course I didn’t. Not even Lady Malvina. Although she is your aunt, Ambrose, I couldn’t trust her one inch.’

‘She prefers a stranger at Mallow,’ Ambrose said bitterly. ‘She’s always disliked me. It wouldn’t surprise me if she concocted the whole plot herself, except that she isn’t clever enough.’

‘She talks a great deal,’ Sarah said thoughtfully. ‘One could encourage her in that. Sooner or later she must say something significant.’

‘That’s exactly what I mean. If you were in the house day after day you must discover things.’

‘Listen at keyholes?’ Sarah said distastefully.

‘In what better cause, my love. Don’t you care enough for me to want to right this injustice?’

‘You know very well that I do.’

‘All this plotting,’ said Aunt Adelaide disapprovingly, ‘isn’t quite seemly.’

‘Ah, Aunt, hush! I believe Ambrose is right. This is what we must do.’ Sarah was growing excited and enthusiastic. Life since her father had died and they had been so poverty-stricken had seemed without zest. Then she had met and fallen in love with Ambrose, only to find that brilliant future also taken from her. The prospect she had faced, if this case were lost, of obtaining a position as companion to some perhaps eccentric and bad-tempered elderly lady, such as her sisters had been forced to do, was bleak in the extreme. But the kind of position Ambrose suggested would be entirely different. It would be stimulating and perhaps a little dangerous. She would be able to pit her wits against that impudent black-browed impostor and his sallow-faced wife, and also against the garrulous Lady Malvina. She would be living in that beautiful old house which should have been her own. And indeed one day would be, if she were skilful enough. Yes, Ambrose’s idea was a brilliant one. It appealed to her enormously, even though the thought of it also made her heart flutter nervously. She did not know how good an actress she could be. But she had inherited her father’s gambling spirit. She would not be easily deterred.