The Cruel Count (Bantam Series No. 28) (6 page)

“Drink this,” he said.

She would have argued had it not been almost impossible to speak. Instead obediently she put out one hand, realised it was shaking and steadied it with the other.

She took the little cup from him and put it to her lips. The brandy seared her throat, but even at the first sip she felt better.

“Drink it all,” the Count said commandingly.

She obeyed him because it was easier to obey than to argue with him.

She could feel the spirit moving through her body like fire. Now her fingers were no longer numb and her hands were not trembling.

She could feel him towering above her and thought he must be gloating over her weakness.

“I am ... ashamed to ... say,” she managed to articulate at last, “that I felt a little ... sea sick ... or should it be ... land-sick? My Uncle who is an ... Admiral has always ... told me that it takes him ... forty-eight hours after he ... has been at ... sea a long time to get his ... balance.”

The sentence was really a triumph. Every word was difficult to enunciate but she managed it.

“Of course it is quite understandable,” the Count said in a deep voice. “I believe many people feel uncomfortable after a sea voyage, just as Lord Nelson used to be sea sick when he returned to his ship after leave ashore.”

Vesta handed the Count back the silver cup.

“I am all ... right ... now,” she said, “and of course ... you will want to ... continue the ... journey.”

She wondered how she would get to her feet, but he bent down and helped her.

For once she was grateful that he should touch her and did not hate him for doing so.

He picked up her hat.

“You have bruised your forehead,” he said unexpectedly.

“I ... I ... walked into a ... branch of a ... tree,” Vesta said quickly.

“It must have had sand on it,” he remarked dryly.

Then keeping his hand under her elbow he helped her back through the wood to where the horses were patiently waiting for them.

He picked her up in his arms and lifted her into the saddle.

“Do you feel well enough to go on?” he asked. “We have not far to go to the Inn where we must stay the night.”

“I am ... quite all ... right,” Vesta replied proudly.

“Do you wish to put on your hat?” he asked.

She realised he had carried it in his other hand and she had been too bemused to think of it.

“No, I do not ... need it,” she answered.

“Then I will take it with me,” he said.

“Not if ... it is any ... trouble.”

“It is no trouble,” he replied. “Tell me if you wish to stop again.”

“Your ... your brandy has cured my ... sickness,” Vesta said. “I am sure I shall be ... all right ... now.”

She did not dare look at him in case he should see through her pretence. She could not bear him to know that it was only her cowardice and her fear of heights which had made her feel so faint.

‘How he would despise me,’ she thought.

But sea-sickness was something no-one, however important they were, could prevent.

They set off again. Now the sun was low in the sky and the thickness of the trees made the wood seem dark and mysterious.

‘I wonder if there are dragons somewhere in the patches of green darkness,’ Vesta thought.

When she was a child she had always imagined that dragons lived in fir-woods and had told herself stories about how she was rescued from them by Knights in shining armour.

But no-one, she thought, would have imagined the Count was a Knight in shining armour. Rather he was like the Devil himself trying to tempt her into shirking her duty and, when she would not be tempted, evoking all the fires of hell to support his vendetta against her.

‘The fires of hell,’ she told herself, ‘are the right simile, for I would rather encounter them any day than the ride again along that cliff’s edge!”

Chapter Three

Their path now was straight and the woods were dense on each side. Then quite unexpectedly the trees cleared and Vesta saw ahead of them a building.

It was not a very prepossessing sight, for the building was rough half-timbered and its roof was held down with large stones.

It appeared at first sight to be derelict: most of the windows had no glass in them and some were blocked with what appeared to be rags.

Her expression must have shown her surprise, for the Count explained:

‘It is an Inn used only by woodcutters and an occasional hunter after bear or chamois. It is the only possible place to rest, and I cannot believe you will relish riding through the night toward Djilas.”

“No of course not,” Vesta said, “and at least it will be a roof over our heads.”

She tried to smile as she spoke, but they had now drawn nearer to the Inn and at close quarters it looked even more dilapidated than it had at first. What was more, she had the suspicion that it was extremely dirty. The Count dismounted and because Vesta was staring at the building she was not quick enough to reach the ground before he lifted her from the saddle.

“There will be stabling of a sort where I can put these animals,” he said.

“I will come with you,” Vesta said quickly.

She felt reluctant to enter the Inn alone and perhaps have to explain her presence.

The Count had been right in supposing there
would be
“stabling of a sort.” There were just two rough byres, into which he put the horses and removed the saddles.

There was water in a bucket in each byre and some rather mildewy-looking hay, which however the animals began to chew with apparent relish.

“They are used to roughing it,” the Count said with a smile as he secured the byres by a wooden bar which was attached with a piece of rope. “But what about you?”

“I dare say I shall manage as you will,” Vesta replied coldly.

She felt he was hoping that she would be uncomfortable. She moved ahead of him with her head high and told herself that however rough the Inn might be she would not complain.

They walked through the low door into a room which held a large fireplace in which a big log was smouldering.

There were two large wooden settles on either side of the fire and a table at the other side of the room with four rickety wooden chairs. There were no other furnishings of any sort.

A middle-aged woman appeared wearing native dress. She was dirty and untidy and very unlike the smiling attractive women Vesta had seen in Jeno.

Her apron was badly in need of a wash, her dress was stained under the arms and her dark hair was straggling down her back.

The Count greeted her, and she replied in a dialect that Vesta found impossible to understand.

It appeared that the Count was familiar with it, because after a long exchange of words between them he said to Vesta with what she thought was a mocking glint in his eye:

“Bad news, I am afraid. The woman says her husband is out hunting for meat and is not likely to return tonight. There is in fact nothing to eat in the house.”

“Nothing?” Vesta asked and realised as she spoke that, if not excessively hungry, she was certainly ready for a meal.

“The woman says there is nothing,” the Count repeated. “She keeps hens and she will kill and cook one for us to carry away tomorrow. But that will certainly take time.”

“If she has hens,” Vesta suggested, “then she should have eggs.”

“That is of course an idea.”

The Count turned to the woman and Vesta knew by the way she nodded her head that she agreed there were eggs.

“Listen, do not offend her,” Vesta said to the Count, “but ask her if she would mind if I cook the eggs. Explain to her that I have just come off a long voyage at sea and my stomach is very weak. I would not like to hurt her feelings, but I am sure I can cook better than she can.”

“Would it matter if her feelings were hurt?” the Count asked.

“Of course it would!” Vesta said sharply. “Tell her what I have said.”

The Count obeyed her and the woman shrugged her shoulders as if it was a matter of indifference to her who did the cooking.

She walked through a doorway, which Vesta was sure led to the kitchen. She had been right when she supposed it would be dirty.

There was grease on all the tables, the place smelt, and the pots and pans hanging over the fire-place burnt black were indescribably filthy.

Picking up a basket the woman passed on through a door which led outside the Inn, and Vesta knew she had gone in search of eggs.

A moment later there was a loud squawking and clucking from a hen, and she guessed that the InnKeeper’s wife was catching it to kill for their meal tomorrow.

She looked round the kitchen wondering where to start, and then finding a pan she followed the woman outside.

There was no sign of her and Vesta thought she must have gone into the wood after the hen who was reluctant to be slaughtered.

But as she had expected, only a little way from the Inn there was a small cascade of water coming down from the side of the mountain and running between the trees.

This was obviously where the Inn-Keeper procured his water, but Vesta realised that, while she could lift a bucket onto the stones under the cascade, once it was full it would be too heavy for her to move.

She went back to the front room where she discovered the Count taking logs from a big pile in the corner and putting them onto the fire.

“I am afraid I need some help with a water-bucket,” she said.

If she had not disliked him so much she would have been amused at the expression on his face.

“A bucket?” he questioned.

“I have to clean a pan before I can use it.”

He stared at her for a moment, then he smiled.

She realised it was the first time she had seen him smile in genuine amusement, and it suddenly transformed his features so that he no longer appeared so frightening.

In the kitchen Vesta handed him a heavy wooden bucket. She was sure he had never lifted one before.

At the back of the Inn there was a bleating nanny-goat tied to a post, a number of young chickens scratching among a debris of rotten vegetables, feathers, and unidentifiable objects which smelt.

Someone, presumably the Inn-Keeper, had attempted half-heartedly to grow a few vegetables. They straggled forlornly among a multitude of sturdy and aggressive weeds.

Nature had done its best to compensate for the ugliness of it all with a briar bush brilliant with pink blossom, and everywhere they could survive small flowers turned their yellow, blue and white faces towards the sun.

Vesta led the way to the cascade.

When they reached it, the Count saw she was carrying a blackened pan, a dirty cloth and a knife she had taken from the kitchen table.

“Will you first fill the bucket and lift it clear of the cascade so that I can clean these?” she asked.

He did as she requested, watching her with a twinkle in his dark eyes as she scraped the pan until at least some of the ingrained grease and dirt was removed.

Her expression was serious as she concentrated on her work, and her long lashes were dark against her clear skin.

The sunshine percolating through the trees made her hair shine with golden lights and a soft breeze moved little tendrils of it against her neck.

She looked unreal, a nymph who might have strayed from the woods, a small goddess who had come down from Olympus to bemuse human beings.

“Your name is unusual,” the Count remarked.

“Vesta was the Roman goddess of the hearth,” Vesta replied.

“And thus goddess of fire,” he added.

She did not answer and he asked:

“Is there any fire in your veins? Most English women are as cold as the snow on the mountains!”

“How many English women do you know?” Vesta asked. “If we appear cold and reserved as a race, it is because we have self-control ... and pride.”

“I was not talking about the English as a race,” the Count answered, “but of English women and yourself in particular.”

“Why should you be interested in what I feel?”

Vesta spoke truculently, her blue eyes wary as if she suspected he had some ulterior motive in speaking in such a manner.

“Naturally I am interested in the wife of my reigning Prince,” the Count answered disarmingly.

“Y ... yes ... of course,” Vesta answered.

“And you have not answered my question. Is there any of your namesake’s fire in your make-up?”

“I do not ... think ... I understand what ... you are trying to say,” Vesta faltered.

“I think you do,” he replied. “Do you yearn to love and be loved? Could a man make the breath come quicker between those two soft lips? Could your eyes become warm with desire?”

For a moment Vesta could not believe she had heard him correctly. The colour rose in her cheeks as she said stiffly:

“Your questions are quite unanswerable, Count, even if I accepted that you had the right to ask them.”

The Count laughed softly.

Putting down the pan, Vesta washed out the cloth, wringing it in her small hands until it was possible to use it to polish the pan.

“Now, if you will be kind enough to refill the bucket!” she said coldly. “I would like to wash before I go to bed.”

“Cleanliness being of course next to godliness,” he said mockingly.

“And much more comfortable,” she retorted.

“Of course, Ma’am,” he agreed.

She was sure he was laughing at her efforts to provide them both with a meal.

“You did not expect to have to cook and clean for your first dinner in Katona,” he said.

She thought that perhaps he was trying to make their conversation more normal and bridge the awkwardness he had caused by his impertinent questions.

“No indeed!” Vesta answered. “I imagined I should be entertained with much ceremony in magnificent surroundings!”

“And you would have enjoyed that?”

“It would be exciting to be ... important!”

The Count raised his eyebrows, and Vesta said:

“I have five sisters older than I am. I have always had to wear their outgrown gowns, sit in a carriage with my back to the horses and do all the jobs no-one else wishes to do!”

The Count laughed.

“So you thought being Royal would be all you had dreamt of in splendour, pomp and circumstance.”

“In ... a ... way.”

Vesta’s head was bent over the pan she was polishing.

“When it happens you may be disappointed,” the Count warned.

“Why should I?” Vesta enquired.

“You may find the anticipation more exciting than the reality!”

He paused before he continued:

“We have a fairy story in Katona about a Princess who fell asleep for a hundred years to be awakened by a Prince with a kiss.”

“That is the tale of ‘The Sleeping Beauty’,” Vesta exclaimed, “and it was written by a Frenchman.”

She was pleased to show off her knowledge.

“I often think,” the Count continued as if she had not spoken, “that the Princess might have disliked having to face the world again and regretted the loss of her dreams.”

“But she fell in love with the Prince,” Vesta protested.

“Is that the French version?” the Count enquired. “Perhaps the Katonian story has a different ending.”

Vesta was still.

“Perhaps the Prince ... did not ... wish to ... kiss ... her,” she said without thinking.

Then the colour rose in her cheeks again and she asked herself how she could have been so indiscreet as to speak of anything so intimate to the Count.

She half turned away from him, angry and embarrassed by her impulsiveness in speaking without thinking.

She rinsed the cloth again and wrung it out almost fiercely.

As if he sensed her tension and understood it, the Count asked lightly:

“Can you really cook?”

“You shall answer that question after dinner,” Vesta replied with an effort. “I must admit to preferring a better equipment for the task than this.”

The Count lifted the heavy bucket which leaked with every step he took, and carried it back to the door of the Inn.

Just as they reached it the woman appeared with a dead hen, head down, in her hand.

She said something which sounded defiant, and the Count translated to Vesta.

“Our hostess says she has killed an old hen. Not even for the Prince himself would she sacrifice one of her young ones.”

“I am sure His Royal Highness would be most disappointed at such lack of patriotism!” Vesta smiled.

The woman passed by them into the kitchen.

“You would be more comfortable sitting in front of the fire, Count,” Vesta suggested. “If I have any further need of your services I will ask for your help.”

“You are very gracious,” he said sarcastically, but he walked obediently into the other room.

Besides the dead hen, the woman had brought in a number of eggs. Some of them looked dirty and old, and Vesta was wise enough to crack them separately finding, as she had anticipated, that some were bad and extremely smelly.