Victoria and the Nightingale (18 page)

He shrugged his tweed-clad shoulders slightly.

“You could try Manchester or Birmingham, or even Edinburgh. Edinburgh isn’t much farther from here than London is. In fact, it isn’t as far.”

He advanced to the kitchen table and set down a very small, beautifully wrapped paper package on it. It looked ridiculously small by comparison with the size of the table, and Victoria gazed at it in slight

astonishment.

“What is it?” she said.

Sir Peter backed toward the door.

“It’s for you,” he told her, in a colorless tone. “But you don’t have to open it now. In the train, perhaps, when you and Johnny are comfortably settled in your second-class carriage. After that you can pawn it or sell it, or even throw it away if you’d rather do that. So long as you don’t return it to me, since I’ve no desire whatsoever to see it again, I don’t mind. I made a journey to London to get it, and thought I’d broken all records getting back here in time to breakfast with you this morning; but apparently you haven’t any breakfast to offer me ... not even a welcome! So I’ll see if the cook can do better at the Park. At any rate, she’s not in a position to refuse me breakfast,” and he turned on his heel and swung out through the door.

Victoria raced after him and clutched at his sleeve.

“What do you mean? Broken all records?” she demanded breathlessly.

He glanced at her almost disdainfully.

“Does it matter?” he inquired icily. “Don’t let me make you miss your train. I believe I hear a taxi coming along the lane. Is that yours?”

“I—er—yes.”

“Then don’t keep the driver waiting. He’s probably got other fares besides you this morning.”

And he actually shook off her hand and walked at lightning speed away down the garden path.

Victoria, awakened almost rudely out of her lethargy, and saved from the very brink of a slough of despond, was completely uncertain about what to do next ... to race after him, or to open the package. Undoubtedly the package contained the answer to a riddle, but she had already read the answer to the riddle in Peter Wycherley’s face, and she knew that if she paused long enough to open the package she would lose him for good. She had probably lost him already, but she had to find out ... to put her fate to this final test. So, snatching up the package and grabbing Johnny by the hand as she passed him on the garden path, she flew down the path to the gate, and saw Sir Peter’s car shoot away from it just as the local taxi rolled to a halt outside it and the local taxi-man descended from his perch and greeted her with all the affability in the world.

“Good morning, miss!” He touched his cap to her. “The lady said I was to be on time so that you wouldn’t miss the train. Lovely morning, isn’t it? Seems a pity you’re going away.”

Victoria addressed him breathlessly.

“Catch that car,” she said. She cast a glance of agonized dubiousness at the ancient taxi. “Do you think you can possibly managed to catch up with it? It’s Sir Peter Wycherley’s car! You must!” she added imploringly.

The taxi man looked as dubious as her glance, but he agreed to have a good try.

“It’s surprising, sometimes, what the old girl can do,” he said. “Just you hang on to your seats, miss, and we’ll see what we can do!”

Sir Peter, most unfortunately, had a good start. And as, despite the bends in the lane—distinctly treacherous bends, Victoria realized, as they followed in pursuit—he was pressing his foot and his accelerator and getting all the speed he could out of a highly powerful car there seemed little hope that they would ever catch him up.

But the taxi man had once driven in a rally, away back in his youth, and he got the excitement of the chase in his veins. He gave the antiquated vehicle its head, and they roared along the lanes in hot pursuit of the sleek and glistening Bentley, until Sir Peter suddenly realized that a determined and highly dangerous attempt was being made to catch up with him and drew into the side of the road and kindly, but with a face of granite, allowed them to draw alongside—thus effectively blocking the road.

Sir Peter spoke briefly.

“If you don’t want to be cut off in your prime,” he advised the grinning taxi man, “you’ll allow your passengers to come in here and get on your way.” He held open the rear door of the Bentley, but Johnny scrambled triumphantly into the vacant seat beside him. Victoria, still clutching her precious package, subsided on to the rear seat, and knew that she was trembling all over—partly with excitement, partly with inexpressible relief.

“Send your bill to me,” Sir Peter ordered, and the other man touched his peaked cap to him. His highly gratified expression stated that it was completely all right by him.

“The lady said catch up with you, and I caught up with you, sir,” he revealed.

Sir Peter simply looked astonished.

As soon as the taxi had gone on its way Sir Peter turned and looked inquiringly at the girl on the back seat of his car.

“The station?” he inquired coldly.

She shook her head.

“No, please. I want to talk to you, Peter,” she begged humbly. “Can’t we go somewhere where we can ... talk?”

“Back to the cottage?”

“It’s as good a place as any.”

“Very well.”

He turned the car, and in the space of a very few minutes they were back at the little white gate set in the high hedge, and Johnny was urged to scramble out with as much speed as he had scrambled in. He looked acutely disappointed at first, until Sir Peter, after ordering him to make himself scarce for a short while, comforted him by promising to take him for a drive in the Bentley later on.

“When Miss Wood has handed you over to my custody,” he said with a good deal of grimness, and Johnny glanced at him in fresh alarm. But something about Sir Peter’s expression—despite its grimness— reassured him, and he ran off happily to find out whether his toad had wandered very far after all, and to recapture it if possible and provide it with its favorite lettuce leaf breakfast.

But Victoria knew she had transgressed far beyond the bounds of being easily forgiven. She and Peter remained in the garden, and it wasn’t until he invited her that she dared to join him in the seat beside the driving seat. He noticed she was still holding on tightly to the package he had flung down on the kitchen table.

“So you haven’t opened it,” he said.

“No.”

“Have you the least idea what’s inside it?”

She didn’t make the mistake of shaking her head. It was, in a way, such an obvious package.

“I think it’s something small,” she said.

“It’s a sapphire and diamond ring.” He turned and looked at her coolly ... so coolly that she turned cold, despite the fact that it was already a beautiful morning. “An engagement ring. But I take it you no longer contemplate becoming engaged to me?”

Her blue eyes looked haunted, and utterly unhappy. She knew if she told him that she had been taking herself and Johnny away simply because the woman he had once been engaged to had told her a series of deliberate untruths he would despise her. He would never be able to trust her, or believe in the quality of her love.

And yet—since it was the truth—what else could she tell him?

She licked her lips, swallowed convulsively, took a deep breath ... and was about to admit to the truth when he laid a hand firmly and comfortingly over both of her.

“It’s all right, darling,” he said, softly. “In a way, I’m the one to blame. I didn’t actually ask you to marry me, and Georgina said she would smash things up between us. I take it that she had a good try?”

In a mortified voice she whispered:

“Yes.”

He smiled at her—tenderly, and with complete understanding. After all, she was such a slip of a thing, and she had no real idea how important she was to him. She had a kind of natural humility which made it easy for someone full of self confidence like Georgina Islesworth to get at her and undermine what little selfconfidence she had completely.

He squeezed her hand so tightly that she winced, and then he slid an arm along the seat and drew her to him. In a slightly muffled voice, with his lips against her hair, he ordered her to open the package and try the ring on for size, and when they discovered that it fitted perfectly and her blue eyes gazed at him wonderingly he took her face between his hands and looked at her as if the sun was actually rising at the backs of his eyes.

“You like it?” he asked. “I went to London for it because I wanted something as near perfect as I could possibly get for you.”

“Oh, Peter!” she breathed.

“But if I’d had the least idea you’d come hurtling after me as you did in that ancient taxi I’d have contented myself with giving you something that could have been bought locally, and then you wouldn’t have had to risk life and limb. Was it a bone-shaking experience?”

She nodded, with her head against his shoulder.

“It was an experience I’ll never forget,” she said.

“Nor I.” There was a sudden laugh in his voice. “And I don’t suppose Johnny will, either!”