An Angel Runs Away (2 page)

He took the greatest care at Raven and in all his other houses to have the chimneys swept every month during the summer and every two weeks during the winter.

It was, he thought, quite unnecessary anyway at the beginning of May for a fire to have been lit at all and, as it had, it was unpardonable that it should have been allowed to smoke most unpleasantly.

As he knew the layout of the house, having been a guest of the Earl on several occasions in the past, when he did not have a
debutante’s
daughter on show, the Marquis left the library.

He moved a little way down the passage to where there was, he knew, a room in which the Earl and Countess habitually sat when they were alone.

It opened out of the blue salon, which was the main receiving room and, when there was a large dinner party, it was often used as a card room.

Cards were much more to his liking than the musical entertainment that so often took place after dinner in the country. He had on various occasions won quite considerable sums from the Earl’s guests, who were not as good or as lucky at the game as he was.

In this room, he noted, there was no fire and he imagined with a slight amusement that Lady Sarah intended to receive him in the blue salon, which was a fitting background for her beauty and also the right setting for a proposal of marriage.

While he was thinking of it, he heard voices and realised they came from the blue salon and that the door connecting it with the room he was in was ajar.

“But surely, Sarah,” a girl’s voice asked, “you are not going to keep his Lordship waiting?”

“That, Olive, is exactly what I intend to do,” Lady Sarah answered.

The Marquis had no difficulty in recognising her voice. At the same time there was not the sweet softness about it, which he had noticed particularly when she spoke to him.

“Why, Sarah?
Why
?”

He identified the other speaker now as a rather dull young woman he had encountered when he had attended a reception which the Chessington-Crewes had given in Park Lane.

He had learned that her name was Olive and he vaguely remembered that she was some relation.

As she was getting on for twenty-five, rather plain and, he thought, somewhat self-assertive, he had decided that she was a bore and had moved away from her proximity as quickly as possible.

Now in answer to Olive’s question, Lady Sarah said,

“It will do the noble Marquis good to cool his heels a little. He should have called on me at least three weeks ago, but as he had kept me waiting, I will now do the same to him.”

“But, Sarah dear, are you wise? After all, he is so important and personally, I find him very intimidating. Suppose, after all, he is not going to make you a proposal of marriage?”

“Nonsense!” Lady Sarah replied. “That is, of course, why he has come and I consider it an insult that he has taken so long in making up his mind.”

She paused before she added complacently,

“After all, as you well know, Olive, there is no one else in the whole of London who is as beautiful as I am and I have dozens of letters and poems to prove it.”

“Of course, dearest,” Olive agreed, “I am not disputing that, but unfortunately the Marquis has not written a poem to you.”

“He is far too self-centred for that,” Lady Sarah answered. “He is much more likely to write a poem to himself!”

There was a little pause and then Olive said tentatively,

“But surely, Sarah dear, you are in love with him? Who could fail to be when he is so handsome and so rich?”

“That’s the point,” Lady Sarah replied. “So rich, Olive, and undoubtedly the most eligible bachelor in the whole of the England.”

“And therefore you love him!” Olive insisted.

“Mama says that love, such as you are talking about, is for housemaids and peasants. I am sure that his Lordship and I will deal well together, but I am not blind to his faults and I am certain that he would not resort to threatening suicide like poor Hugo.”

“I should hope not!” Olive said quickly. “And what are you going to do about Hugo?”

Lady Sarah shrugged her shoulders.

“What can I do to cope with someone who loves me to distraction and says he would rather die than go on living without me.”

“But, Sarah, you cannot let him die.”

“I doubt if he will do anything so silly. If he does, I shall be extremely annoyed. It would be sure to cause a scandal and all those who are envious of me would be delighted to say that I had encouraged him.”

“I am afraid that is rather the truth.”

“Poor Hugo,” Sarah sighed. “I am sorry for him, but as you are aware, he could never offer me the Raventhorpe jewels or the position I shall have as a Marchioness.”

“You will certainly be the most beautiful Marchioness there has ever been!” Olive enthused.

The Marquis, whose lips were set in a sharp line, decided he had heard enough.

He walked across the sitting room and looked out into the passage, then quickly walked past the door into the blue salon and out into the hall.

There were two footmen on duty whispering together who sprang to attention as he appeared.

The Marquis passed them and, walking down the steps, set off towards the stables. The footmen were so astonished at his behaviour that they made no effort to try to detain him.

He reached the stables to find his phaeton standing in the centre of the cobbled yard, while his groom and two stable-lads were giving his horses a drink from buckets spilling over with water.

The Marquis frowned before he climbed into his phaeton, picked up the reins and, as his groom flung himself into the seat behind, drove off.

When he turned up the drive, down which they had so recently come, he was furiously angry in a way he could not remember feeling for many years.

How could he, with his discrimination and what he had always thought of as his perception, have considered marrying somebody who could talk in a manner that had not only been unpleasant but positively ill bred?

He had prided himself for so long on being a good judge not only of horseflesh and men, but of women too, that he was appalled at his own failure to realise that Lady Sarah, like so many of her sex, was interested only in a man’s position.

She wanted the place he could give her in Society, not what he was in himself, which to him was of sole significance.

He was used to the sophisticated women with whom he had
affaires de coeur
losing their hearts irresistibly to him and loving him to distraction. He could hardly believe that the young woman on whom he had looked with favour should have considered him in such a cold calculating manner.

He was genuinely shocked at the way she had spoken and at the same time humiliated that he should not have been aware of what lay behind her beautiful face.

Like any young greenhorn, he told himself angrily, he had been captivated into believing a superficial beauty covered a heart of gold. Perhaps even, an idea that was often laughed at, a soul.

It was something he wanted in the woman he would call his wife and who would be the mother of his children.

‘How can I have been such a damned fool?’ he asked himself furiously.

Only years of self-control prevented him from pushing his horses hard in his desire to distance himself from Chessington Hall with all possible speed.

‘I will never marry –
never
!’ he told himself. He passed through the iron gates and set off down a side lane that would bring him out onto the main road.

He realised that in one aspect of the matter he had had a very lucky escape and he felt now like a man who by a hair’s breadth had been saved from total destruction.

He was well aware that the fact that he had called at Chessington Hall and then not ‘come up to scratch’ would infuriate the Earl and he could only hope that it would upset and distress Sarah.

Although he felt contemptuous of any woman who would sell herself to the highest bidder, he knew that he was more shocked than by anything else that he should have been so obtuse!

How could he have been beguiled as actually to be prepared to offer marriage, which he had never done before, to a girl who was completely and utterly unworthy of bearing his name.

His chin was square, his lips were set in a tight line and his eyes beneath his drooping eyelids were dark with anger as he drove on.

Then nearly a mile along the main highway he saw ahead and there was no one else in sight, a small figure running along at the side of the road, who turned to look back at the sound of his approach.

Then she deliberately stepped into the centre of the road and held out her arms.

He was surprised, but there was nothing he could do but pull his horses to a standstill only a few feet from the slight figure with her outstretched arms.

She had not moved and had not in fact shown the slightest fear that he might run her down.

As the phaeton came to a stop, she ran to his side saying in a breathless little voice,

“Would – you be very – kind, sir, and – give me a – lift?”

The Marquis looked down, seeing a small flowerlike face turned up to his, dominated by two very large grey eyes that were surrounded by wet lashes which were accounted for by the tearstains on her cheeks.

It was a very pathetic little face.

He could see that, with the speed at which she had been hurrying along the road, her bonnet had been pushed onto the back of her head and her hair, which was curly, was rioting untidily over her forehead.

As he looked, wondering what he should reply, to his astonishment, the girl, who was so young she seemed little more than a child, exclaimed,

“Oh – it is –
you
!”

“Do you know me?” the Marquis enquired.

“Of course, but I thought you would be with Sarah at The Hall.”

The Marquis looked at her in astonishment. Then before he could speak the girl went on,

“Please – please – if you are going back to London – take me with you – if only a – little way.”

The Marquis realised now that she was not a village girl as he had first thought, but spoke with an educated voice and her reference to ‘Sarah’ told him that she must obviously have something to do with the Chessington-Crewe household.

“Surely,” he said, “you are not going to London alone?”

“I have to! I cannot – stand it any longer and, if you will not take me – I shall have to – wait and find somebody else – who will!”

There was a desperation in the young voice that made the Marquis say,

“I imagine that you are running away and I will give you a lift on condition that you explain to me what you are doing and where you are going.”

“Thank you – thank you!”

Her eyes seemed suddenly to hold the sunshine in them. She ran around the back of the phaeton and without waiting for the groom who was getting down to help her, climbed up onto the seat beside the Marquis.

“You are very kind,” she said, “but I never expected it to be – you – when I heard your horses coming down the road.”

The Marquis drove on slowly.

“I think you should start at the beginning,” he said, “and tell me who you are.”

“My name is Ula Forde.”

“And you come from Chessington Hall?”

“Yes, I am living there or – I
w
as!”

There was a little break in the words and then she said quickly,

“Don’t try to – make me go – back! I have made up my mind, and whatever – happens to me – it cannot be – worse than what has been happening already.”

“Suppose you tell me what it is,” the Marquis suggested. “You must be aware that if I behave correctly I should take you back.”

“Why?”

“Because you are much too young to go to London alone, unless there is somebody there who is waiting to look after you.”

“I will find – somebody.”

The Marquis thought dryly that this was very unlikely, but aloud he said,

“What has upset you so much at Chessington Hall that you have been forced to run away?”

“I-I cannot stand being – beaten by Uncle Lionel and slapped by Sarah and told that – everything I do is wrong – simply because they – hated my father.”

The Marquis turned his head and looked at her in complete astonishment.

“Are you telling me that the Earl of Chessington-Crewe is your uncle?”

She nodded her head.

“Yes.”

“And that he beats you?”

“He beats me because – Sarah makes him – and also because he will never forgive Mama for running away with my father – but they were so happy – so very very happy – and so was I until – I came to my uncle’s house – where it is exactly like being – in Hell!”

The Marquis thought Ula must be deranged. Then he realised that she was not speaking in a hysterical manner, but in a sincere and collected tone of voice that made it difficult for him not to believe what she was saying.

“What was wrong with your father,” he asked after a moment’s silence, “that made the Earl dislike him?”

“My mother – who was his sister – was very beautiful – and she ran away with Papa the night before she was to be married to the Duke of Avon.”

“And who was your father?”

“He was a Curate – the Curate of the village Church of Chessington. Afterwards he became Vicar of a little village in Worcestershire – where I was born.”

“I can understand if your mother ran away the night before her marriage, it must have annoyed the family.”

“They none of them ever spoke to Mama again – but she was so happy with Papa that it did not matter and, although we were very poor and often had very little to eat – we used to laugh and everything was wonderful – until they were – both k-killed last year in a carriage accident.”

Again her voice was not hysterical, but the Marquis could hear the pain in it and realised how deeply it had upset her.

“It was then,” she went on, “that Uncle Lionel came to the funeral and – when it was over – he took me back with him – and I have been miserable ever since.”

“What have you done to make him angry?” the Marquis asked.

“He just hates me for being – Papa’s child – and I cannot do anything that is right – and it’s not only the beatings and the slaps – and Sarah pulling my hair – but the fact that there is no – love in that big house – while our little Vicarage was always full of love – like sunshine.”