The Saint and the Sinner (18 page)

She knew that Kitty at any rate suspected her of having designs on the Earl.

“You can tell Norvin as soon as he can listen,” Kitty said in a loud voice, “that I’ll be expecting him and if he doesn’t hurry up I’ll not be waiting too long.”

“That’s not a very encouraging message to send to a sick man,” Lottie protested.

Kitty tossed her head.

“Norvin knows he’s not the only pebble on the beach.”

“But most pebbles are not so generous,” Hettie said in what was meant to be a low voice, but Pandora heard.

Again Kitty tossed her head, making the ostrich feathers in her bonnet dance.

“I’m not playing ‘Weeping Widow’ for any man for long,” she said, “and mind you get that into His Lordship’s head!”

She added the last words furiously to Pandora. Then, without waiting for an answer, she swept across the hall and climbed into a Phaeton which fortunately was large enough to hold three.

“We’re going to race you!” Caro cried. “I bet you ten guineas that Richard and I reach Tyburn Hill before you do.”

“Done!” Kitty screamed. “But make it ten guineas and a champagne supper.”

“We’ll win that!” Lottie said to Clive.

“Freddie’s horses are better than mine,” Clive replied.

“But there’s three of them in the Phaeton and Kitty has more luggage than any of us.”

“Well, we will have a damned good try,” Clive said, “but do not count the guineas until they are in your hand.”

“Come on and don’t waste time!” Caro screamed. Then they were all driving off, shouting and yelling at one another as they went.

As the last Phaeton crossed the bridge, Pandora gave a sigh of relief that came from the depths of her heart.

She thought that the Doctor would leave, but instead he walked towards the Morning-Room, saying: “I want a word with you, Pandora.”

She followed him into the room in
which
she had first met the Earl, and she felt for a moment that she could still see him lying back in her grandfather’s chair, his leg over the arm of it.

How could she have guessed, how could she have known, that she would fall in love with him? “Now, Pandora,” Dr. Graham said, “I think you had better tell me what you intend to do.”

His question came as a surprise.

“I want to stay – here and – nurse my cousin,” Pandora answered.

“Alone, with no chaperon?”

“You can hardly look on the women who have just left as chaperons,” Pandora replied.

“I am wondering what your mother would say about your being in this house at all.”

“There was nothing else I could do,” Pandora said in a low voice. “Uncle Augustus intended to – marry me off to his Chaplain.”

“To Prosper Witheridge?” the Doctor asked.

“You have met him?”

“Once or twice at meetings in Lindchester.”

“Then you know what he is like,” Pandora said. “He is horrible and I hate him. How could I contemplate marrying such a man?”

“So you asked your cousin to save you from such an alliance!”

“I knew that if I stayed here, Prosper Witheridge would be so shocked he would not offer for me, and that is exactly what has happened.”

“Well, desperate ills sometimes need desperate remedies,” Dr. Graham remarked. “But what does the Bishop say about all this?”

“Uncle Augustus does not return from London until today,” Pandora said in a low voice.

The Doctor did not speak and after a moment she went on,

“I expect he will see me and tell me I am to return. If he does, would you – would you tell him that I am – needed here?”

The Doctor moved restlessly.

“Quite frankly, I do not know the answer to that question, Pandora,” he said. “I am well aware of the way in which His Lordship is regarded in Lindchester and of course in the village of Chart.”

“Things will be better now.”

Dr. Graham smiled.

“I have heard how you persuaded him to sack that ghastly man Anstey and reinstate Farrow. When I was told what had happened and also how you took him to call on the farmers, I felt it was just the sort of thing your mother would have done.”

“I am sure she was – helping me to do what was – right,” Pandora said simply.

“And do you really think your mother would wish you to stay here?”

Pandora made a little gesture and asked,

“What is the alternative? To go back to Lindchester? Even if Mr. Witheridge will no longer want me to be his wife, my aunt will make my life a misery that I cannot describe.”

There were tears in her eyes as she added,

“Oh, Dr. Graham, I have been so unhappy there, and not only through losing Mama and Papa. That was bad enough, but to live with hatred, incessant fault-finding, and knowing that everything I do is wrong, is a purgatory far worse than anything Prosper Witheridge could devise.”

She spoke with a passionate intensity which moved the Doctor.

He put his arm round her shoulders and said,

“I have been fond of you, Pandora, ever since you were a little girl. I was intensely proud to count your father and mother as my friends. Whatever happens, you can always rely on me to do what I can for you.”

“Do you mean that?” Pandora asked. “It is so kind that I do not know how to thank you.”

“It is, however, difficult to know what I can do,” the Doctor said gravely, “but I will think of something.”

“I cannot go back to the Palace – I cannot!” Pandora said.

“I will wait and see what your uncle has to say about it,” the Doctor said. “But surely there are other relations who would look after you?”

“If there are, they have certainly ignored me since Mama and Papa died,” Pandora replied.

She sighed and added,

“If only I could get some work of some sort, perhaps nursing an old lady, or looking after small children.”

“That is more or less the sort of thing I had in mind,” the Doctor replied.

He gave her an affectionate hug, then he said,

“I have half a dozen patients waiting to see me, and it is doubtful if I shall get any luncheon, but I will come back at about five o’clock.”

“Perhaps Norvin will be better by then,” Pandora said optimistically. “And thank you, Dr. Graham, for all your kindness. I knew you would understand.”

“More than anyone else will,” the Doctor said ruefully. “But even the most assiduous muckraker must agree that a man who is unconscious can hardly constitute a danger to a young girl.”

“I am in no danger from Cousin Norvin.”

She wanted to add: “Unfortunately!” but instead she walked to the front door with the Doctor and said good-bye.

When he had driven away she ran upstairs feeling suddenly joyful and excited because there were no more enemies in the house with whom to contend. For a few hours at any rate she had the Earl to herself. She sat in the darkened room all the afternoon and because she was tired she fell asleep for a little while.

She awoke with a feeling of guilt because she thought she had not kept watch over her patient as adequately as she should have done.

She looked at the clock and calculated that about this time her uncle and aunt should be arriving back from London.

She could imagine their being greeted by Prosper Witheridge and she knew that he would in his own way be delighted that he had her misdeeds to relate to them.

She was quite certain that he would never forgive her for saying that she hated him and had no wish to marry him.

He would take his revenge by exaggerating everything that had happened at Chart Hall, and she was certain that his description of the actresses would lose nothing in the telling.

“It will take Uncle Augustus at least an hour to listen to all that,” Pandora said to herself. “Then he will doubtless want to change and have something to eat and drink, so it is unlikely he will be here before half past six, or perhaps seven o’clock.”

She looked at the silent Earl and said,

“I need you! I need you to fight for me and protect me.”

As she spoke she admitted that she had always hoped at the back of her mind that when the time came he would defy her uncle as he had defied Prosper Witheridge.

Then she knew almost despairingly that the situation was very different.

He uncle was her Guardian. Whatever the Earl might say, the Bishop had a greater right to decide her life than did a distant cousin.

“I am a Chart,” Pandora said aloud. “The Strattons are so very different from anything I feel or am. Papa himself found them bores and avoided his relatives whenever he could. Why then should I be forced to obey them?”

As if the idea was so agitating, she rose from the big arm-chair in which she had slept and walked across the room to one of the three windows.

The curtains were drawn and she slipped behind them so that she could look out through the window. The gardens were bathed in sunshine glinting golden on the lake and making the colours of the flowers seem almost dazzling.

“I belong here!” Pandora said aloud. “This is where my roots are.”

It suddenly struck her that she would rather die than return to Lindchester. If she drowned herself in the lake or threw herself off the roof, then she would remain at Chart however much anyone tried to take her from it.

Then she knew she had no wish to die. She wanted to live, she wanted to live for the Earl, even if he never cared for her except in the casual manner he had shown so far.

He had teased her, argued with her, defied her, and yet every moment, every second, she had been with him had been an inexpressible delight.

‘Perhaps if I offered to work in the still-room or in the gardens he would let me stay,’ she thought. ‘He need never see me unless he wished to do so, but I would be here and it would be wonderful to be near him.’

She went back into the room and now as she moved towards the bed, adjusting her eyes from the sunshine to the dimness, she had the idea that perhaps she could communicate her longing and love to his subconscious mind.

She reached the bed and knelt down beside him. “I love you! And I want you to love Chart. I ask nothing for myself except that I may stay here, where I belong, because I know that one day Chart will give you happiness if only you will let it.”

She spoke with such intensity that tears came into her eyes.

But the Earl did not move and she thought in desperation that he could not hear her and time was ticking on so that soon her uncle would come and take her away.

She knew that if he insisted on her returning with him there was really nothing she could do but obey, for it was very doubtful that he would listen to Dr. Graham, whom he would despise as an unimportant country doctor.

‘Once I am back at the Palace, Norvin will forget about me,’ she thought, ‘and when he returns to London there will be Kitty waiting for him.

She felt as if she stuck a dagger into her heart and twisted it.

‘There was no use pretending,’ she thought. ‘Kitty would be waiting, and however drunk and vulgar she might appear, she would still amuse him, still be the type of woman whom the Earl, Freddie, Richard, and Clive all preferred.’

Pandora rose from her knees and as she did so the door opened and Mrs. Meadowfield returned. “I’ve had a nice rest, Miss Pandora,” she said in a whisper. “Now you go out in the garden and get some fresh air. It’s not right for you to be cooped up in here when it’s such a lovely day. Burrows has laid tea for you in the Salon, so have a cup first. It’ll do you good.”

Pandora felt touched that the servants were thinking of her.

But it made her remember with a shudder that her aunt with her fault-finding and her punishments of making her repeat everything two or three times would be getting ready for her return to the Palace. The tea-table was laid, in all its glittering glory, by the window, and the sunshine came pouring in over the terrace as Pandora drank the fragrant China tea which her mother had preferred to any other.

She ate one of the sandwiches; then, finding them delicious and cut almost paper-thin, she took two more from the plate and walked through the French-window into the garden.

She remembered how she had done the same thing last night, an action which had resulted in Sir Gilbert challenging the Earl to the duel from which he was now suffering.

‘So much has happened since I came here,’ Pandora thought with a sigh.

She walked across the velvet-like lawns and into the rose-garden. The sun-dial was very ancient and she leant against it, wondering how many Charts had done so before her.

“Perhaps they were as frightened and apprehensive over their future as I am,” Pandora told herself, “but whatever happened, it did not really matter because when they died, Chart went on living.”

She tried to convince herself that it would not matter what happened to her. But she knew that she longed to live, to experience all the emotions that were possible for a human being, and most of all love. It was impossible for her thoughts not to keep returning to the Earl.

She kept remembering the sensations she had felt when he held her in his arms on the horse and she had been so close against him that she could feel his heart beating.

Could anything seem more reprehensible to her uncle and aunt than that she should be abducted when she was wearing nothing but a thin dressing gown over her nightgown?

They would be appalled that she had been so close to the Earl that she had been able to hide her face against his shoulder.

But there had been nothing wrong about it, Pandora thought to herself. It had been right and somehow good at that moment. Good as Prosper Witheridge might be, he would never understand, nor would Aunt Sophie, nor Uncle Augustus.

The Earl had been like a Knight saving her from destruction. Yet, those who abused him were so convinced that everything he did was evil that they could never imagine him doing anything good.

She thought now of how he had come to her bedroom to save her from Sir Gilbert.

It was the first time she had considered that the world would think it very reprehensible that he, the wicked Earl, had come into her room and she had not screamed for him to leave it.

“I did not think of him as a man – then,” she told herself.