Milady in Love (The Changing Fortunes Series, Vol. 5) Read online

  The wind was rising, and thunderheads piled up in the sky. The viscount quickly changed out of his evening dress into a shirt and breeches and, taking Gustave with him, mounted the stairs to Patricia’s bedchamber.

  This time Patricia awoke as they entered. Her eyes moved from the viscount’s worried face to the hard, suspicious stare of Gustave, who was standing behind him.

  “Where is my ward?” demanded the viscount.

  “I do not know,” said Patricia, sleepily struggling up against the pillows.

  “Her bed has not been slept in.”

  “Then she has probably gone out riding.”

  “Her horse is in the stables.”

  “Walking, then. You know how she is.…”

  Gustave gave a snort of impatience and went out and along to Yvonne’s bedchamber, hoping to find something the viscount might have missed. Perhaps she had left a note.

  He crossed the room and closed the window against the rising gale. The diamonds blazed and sparkled from the toilet table with a light of their own.

  Gustave felt a stab of dread. Yvonne would have never disappeared, carelessly leaving such jewels unprotected.

  He was about to leave and go back to join the viscount when little shreds of gold and red fringe lying on the floor of the bedroom caught his eye.

  He bent down and picked some of them up. They seemed to have been cut off rather than torn off.

  He saw they formed a sort of trail out into the passage.

  The little shreds lay here and there along the passage in the direction of the dining room.

  His heart beating hard, he went to get the viscount, some inner voice preventing him from blurting out his discovery until he had led the viscount outside the governess’s bedchamber.

  Outside in the passage, Gustave put a finger to his lips and pointed at the floor. Together, they followed the trail left by Yvonne until they found it mysteriously ended against the wall of the dining room.

  “There must be a secret way,” muttered the viscount. “It will take all day to find it. Get me an axe.”

  “No! The pieces of material stop right here,” said Gustave. “Let me try.”

  He felt along the carving on the paneled wainscoting, pushing and pressing until his fingers encountered the knob.

  Both men stood back as a panel in the wall slid open.

  “Get a lamp from Yvonne’s room,” said the viscount, his face grim.

  Gustave went back out into the passage and along to Yvonne’s room.

  Patricia was waiting at the door to her bedchamber. “What is it?” she cried. “Have you found her?”

  “Go back inside your room,” shouted Gustave. His eyes blazed with suspicion and dislike, and Patricia backed away before them.

  Gustave seized an oil lamp and returned to join the viscount.

  They lit the lamp and, with Gustave carrying it and the viscount leading the way, they followed the mysterious stair down and down.

  Near the bottom, the viscount stopped with an exclamation. “Yvonne told me of a secret entrance in the cellars,” he said. “Let us go straight there.”

  “But the little bits of material are still here,” said Gustave, “marking the way she must have gone. ’Tis best we follow them.”

  On they went again until they emerged from the closet by breaking through it—the viscount was in no mood to waste precious time searching for hidden catches—and found themselves opposite the cellar door. Patricia had forgotten to lock it behind her.

  The viscount darted into the cellar, looking desperately this way and that, and Gustave, holding the lamp and bending double, followed the little bits of fringe, but they ended in the middle of the floor.

  “She found this entrance when she was down here, ringing the fire bell,” said the viscount. “Bring the lamp over to where the rope is.”

  In his haste and anxiety, he tore barrels away from the walls and sent them rolling into the middle of the cellar.

  “Ah,” he said with a note of satisfaction. “I have it. Come here, Gustave.”

  There was the painted canvas, and there on the floor in front of it one little thread of red fringe.

  The viscount knelt down on the floor and pushed his way through into the blackness on the other side. From below came the thudding and pounding of the sea.

  “The lamp, Gustave,” he called over his shoulder. “Come through, man. She must be here somewhere!”

  Yvonne’s fall had been from the top of the stairs to the bottom. Had she hit the stairs themselves, then her neck would have been broken. But various tides washing into the old dungeons had formed a sort of sandy beach at the foot of the staircase. As it was, she plummeted down on this beach, and although she had been knocked unconscious by the sheer force of the impact, she had not broken any bones.

  The first wave of the incoming tide struck her on the face, and she stirred slowly and opened her eyes.

  All about her on the sand lay huge chunks of masonry. There had been a floor above that had been eroded by the winter tides and had fallen in.

  On jutting pieces of the old floor above, she could make out the dim shape of barrels in the light filtering in from the mouth of the cave. The cave entrance was actually a breach in the old dungeon walls made when the level of the sea had risen.

  Another wave struck her. Realization of the peril in which she lay caused her to struggle feebly and try to sit up. But her body was racked with pain, and she felt sick and dizzy.

  She collapsed again and lay with her cheek against the sand, tears of weakness from her eyes trickling down to mingle with the salt water of the sea.

  Then she gasped as a huge wave poured over her and started to drag her back.

  Panic lending her strength, she began to painfully crawl on her hands and knees toward the staircase.

  The tide was rising fast.

  The air was full of the wash and thud and clamor of the water.

  The wind outside had risen, and it shrieked and moaned above the noise of the water. Yvonne closed her eyes, thinking she was hearing the screams of the condemned. They would have been chained to the walls in the room that used to lie above, hanging in their chains, night after night, listening to the wild, free surge of the tides.

  She clawed her way up the first few stairs, but a huge wave crashed over her, plucking her from the staircase and dragging her back like some huge monster dragging its prey back to its lair.

  She clutched onto a broken piece of masonry until the wave subsided.

  “Anselm!” cried Yvonne piteously. “God help me. God have mercy and give me the strength to escape.”

  She raised her eyes and thought she saw a sign from heaven.

  A golden light was descending the staircase, a golden glow far above her head.

  With a tremendous effort, she crawled forward again, scrabbling up the stairs, sobbing for breath.

  But a giant wave like some watery demon’s hand plucked her body from the steps, and with a despairing cry, Yvonne de la Falaise disappeared in a tumult of black and green water.

  Saltwater filled her mouth and roared in her ears. She had no strength left. She could feel the next wave picking her up and knew she would be dashed against the broken, jagged foot of the staircase.

  And then she felt strong arms close about her. She heard a beloved voice cry, “Yvonne!” and then she lost consciousness again.

  Carrying her limp, inert body, the viscount struggled out of the water.

  “Up,” he said to Gustave. “Go ahead with the lamp and light the way. Then ring the fire bell. Summon everyone.”

  Patricia sat huddled in a chair in her room. Gustave had looked at her as if he knew.

  Getting rid of Yvonne had been so simple. Just one push. Patricia had intended to take her to France. But when she had heard of the viscount and Yvonne embracing, she had decided on the spur of the moment to kill her. She shivered, imagining Yvonne’s body being tossed and tumbled by the sea.

  Never before had s
he been troubled with religious thoughts. Now she began to fear for her immortal soul.

  “If You did not want me to do it, God,” she muttered, “then why did You bring me up in violence and poverty?”

  And then the fire bell began to ring.

  She put her hands over her ears to block out the sound.

  The viscount must be ringing for help.

  She must be brave. She must go down with the others and join in in their surprised exclamations and questions.

  Patricia scrambled into her clothes and went out into the passageway. The whole castle seemed to reel under the deafening sound of the bell.

  She looked along in the direction of the dining room and stiffened.

  The door to the dining room lay open, and she distinctly remembered having closed it behind them.

  Like a sleepwalker she went along to the dining room, stifling a scream when she saw the secret panel lying open.

  It was then that she looked at the floor and saw the trail of scraps of bright silk fringe.

  She took a deep breath to steady her nerves. It would appear as if Yvonne had gone exploring and had found the secret passage.

  If she kept her head, then nothing could be proved against her.

  She squared her shoulders and walked out of the dining room, back along the corridor, and began to descend the stairs. Sleepy and alarmed guests were tumbling out of their bedchambers.

  The violent clamor of the bell ceased. Down below in the hall there came the rise and fall of voices, like the rise and fall of the sea.

  She walked down to the first landing.

  And stopped.

  All of the staff were assembled in the hall. White faces stared up at her.

  Mounting the staircase with Yvonne cradled against his chest came the viscount. And behind him came Gustave, his eyes shining with a red light of rage when he saw the governess.

  For Yvonne had recovered consciousness in the cellar for one brief moment, and in that brief moment she had murmured, “It was Patricia. She is Black Jack’s granddaughter,” before passing out again.

  Gustave made a leap for the stairs, and Patricia turned and fled.

  Up and up she ran with the whole household, headed by Gustave, at her heels.

  She ran to the top of the castle and mounted the ladder that led up through a skylight onto the roof.

  The day was black and stormy. Wind tore at her skirts and sent her golden hair flying about her head.

  She stood at the edge of the battlements overlooking the sea and watched as Gustave’s grizzled head and broad shoulders rose above the skylight.

  He looked at her and said clearly and distinctly in English, “Do not worry. You shall not live to hang. For I am going to break your neck.”

  He advanced on her with clutching hands.

  Patricia whirled about and dived clear from the top of the battlements.

  Gustave dashed to the edge and looked over.

  Had the wind not been so very stormy and very violent, Patricia might well have dived clear into the sea and, being a powerful swimmer, might have managed to escape.

  But a great gust of wind snatched at her, as the incoming waves had snatched at Yvonne’s body, and hurled her down onto the stone flags of the terrace below.

  Gustave felt the other servants crowding behind him.

  “Do not look,” he said, turning around to face them. “It is not a pretty sight.”

  Patricia’s two accomplices, Abel and Jeb, were found hiding on the moors. A whole army of constables, soldiers, magistrates, and excisemen descended on the castle during the following days to examine the old dungeons and take away evidence of smuggling and spying from the remains of the old cells. A naval party rounded up the Breton smugglers from their island off the coast.

  Yvonne, weak and ill, answered questions as best she could.

  Jeb and Abel might have escaped, for Yvonne did not recover consciousness until the day after her rescue, when she was able to give the authorities their names.

  The viscount could barely bring himself to leave her side.

  He slept on a chair beside her bed, watching anxiously and waiting, talking to her in a soothing voice when she started up with one of her many nightmares.

  He was tortured by a bad conscience. How could he have been so stupid, so blind, as to view a murderess with complacency, thinking her a paragon of all the virtues and even at one point contemplating proposing marriage to her?

  He was now more than ever determined that Yvonne should go to London when she had recovered. There she might meet some man worthy of her.

  She looked little more than a child, lying asleep with her hand on her cheek and her black hair tumbled on the pillow.

  The physicians had recommended a change of scene for Yvonne when she recovered. It was important, they said, to remove her for a while from Trewent Castle and its memories.

  Stormy days passed, one after the other, as summer fled before the gales of autumn.

  Color returned to Yvonne’s cheeks and brightness to her eyes.

  She and the viscount talked at length about Patricia—Patricia, who was really Ellen Tremayne, the pirate’s granddaughter.

  At last, Yvonne was able to get up and go out.

  She lived for each moment she saw her guardian and happiness enhanced her beauty.

  But gradually she became aware that although her guardian treated her with loving tenderness, it was the love of someone toward a delicate child and not the love of a man for a grown woman.

  Her near escape from death and her subsequent illness had removed much of Yvonne’s confidence. She felt she could no longer tease him or ask him to kiss her.

  And so when her guardian finally went off to London and returned a month later to say he had made arrangements for her to be chaperoned by a certain Lady Baillie, Yvonne brightly thanked him and said she was very excited at the proposed visit to the metropolis.

  And the viscount thought he had finally learned his lesson when it came to dealing with the fair sex and did not even guess that his little ward spent her last night at Trewent Castle in tears.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  London, with its social glitter, its noise, its fashions, parties, routs, and scandals, swirled around Yvonne.

  Lady Baillie was a distant connection of Lord Anselm. She was a widow, tall, autocratic, and frigid of manner. But she knew where her duty lay. Yvonne de la Falaise was to be presented to as many members of society as were still to be found in town.

  She was hardly a suitable companion for a young girl, but the viscount had wanted his ward guarded by a dragon.

  Yvonne had come to assume in the easygoing atmosphere of the country that English misses were blessed with a great deal of freedom.

  In London she found the opposite. The scandalous free and easy days of the last century, when women rode astride to hounds and even attended assemblies in men’s clothes, had gone. The rising middle class, although still banned from the temples of the haut ton, had made their mark.

  Strict morality was the order of the day, before marriage. It appeared no one cared much what one did after marriage.

  Had not Lady Caroline Lamb startled her husband’s guests by allowing herself to be served up for dinner in a huge silver-covered dish? When the cover had been removed, there she had been, stark naked, without even an orange in her mouth.

  But she was still to be seen gracing Almack’s, the holy of holies where assemblies were held on Wednesday evenings and a virgin could be cast out of its august doors for tying her garter in public.

  Virginity was worshipped as never before, and a debutante must do nothing to make it appear she had lost it, or her value on the Marriage Mart would plummet. And among the things she must not do were laugh too loudly or boldly, wear too much rouge, cross her legs in public, and sit down on a chair whose seat was still warm from some gentleman’s bottom.

  Lady Baillie lived in South Molton Street in a bleak, well-run house. She never entered into a
companionable conversation with Yvonne, merely confining any remarks to instruction as to which events to attend and how to go on when one got there. She also shouted very loudly at Yvonne when she did speak, being under the impression that all foreigners were stone deaf.

  The days were dark and cold. One woke in darkness and went out for the evening in darkness. Only occasionally was a small pale sun, like a burnt-out planet, to be seen dimly through the fog that blanketed the winter city.