Angel's Touch (30 page)

‘
I
shall be discretion itself,’ he assured her, bowing. But as she
hurried away, his mouth curled into a smile of unholy glee and he
turned to go on his self-appointed errand.

Verity, relieved to
have got by so lightly, resolved to make a point of offering her
apologies in person the very next time she saw Mr Cumberland. But
he could not long occupy her mind, when she was on her way to
Braxted Place where the object of all her thoughts awaited her.

The
journey was beguiled by Wystan’s account of the aftermath of the
kidnap.

‘
The
militia went after those brutes, but ’course they’d runned off by
then. Kittle ain’t been seen since and they guess she’s gone with
them. Jed says Shottle was thick as thieves with Jim Brigg and Oily
Hargate in any event. Seems they’ve done lots of bad things
together.’

‘
But
are the militia not continuing to search for them?’ asked Verity,
diverted from thoughts of the marquis and the coming meeting. ‘They
surely can’t mean to let such criminals get away?’

‘
Oh,
they’re after them all right. They got good descriptions and they
reckon to run them to earth in a day or two.’

‘
They will certainly catch them,’ Inskip put in, ‘and they
have evidence enough to throw them all in prison for a long time to
come.’

‘
How
is that?’ Verity asked. ‘I mean, we are witnesses, of course, but
Wystan is a minor and I only saw Shottle.’

‘
They found a ransom note in the cottage,’ the secretary told
her. ‘It was in the man Oily Hargate’s hand, for it seems he was
the only one who could write. They apparently had the intention of
demanding ten thousand pounds for the children.’

‘
Yes,’ chimed in Braxted in indignant tones. ‘But when they
had you, they started to write another, for they thought they could
get another ten thousand for you alone.’

‘
How
very stupid of them,’ said Verity instantly. ‘To suppose that I
must be more valuable than the two of you.’

‘
Well, I don’t know about that,’ Braxted said, mollified. ‘I
dare say Papa would have paid handsomely to get you
back.’

There was a short,
embarrassed silence. Inskip broke it, tactfully veering off the
subject of ransom notes.

‘
We
suspect that the plot had been laid a long time ago, for the
militia have done some thorough questioning. It seems that Kittle
is in fact Shottle’s wife.’

‘
What?’ gasped Verity. ‘Are you saying she had this planned
since she came to nurse Peggy?’

‘
We
think so.’

‘
But
her references?’ protested Verity. ‘Surely you checked
them.’

‘
By
letter only. It is quite usual. But I sent grooms to check the
addresses of the two people who recommended the woman, and it
transpires that the impression of respectable households was false.
For instance, Tannery Lodge proved to be Tannery Cottage, and the
inmates—no longer in residence, I may add—common people who could
no more afford a nurse than they could a maidservant.’

‘
How
very dreadful! To think that such deceits may be practised so
easily.’ A sudden thought struck Verity. ‘Gracious heaven, I do
trust you have double-checked on the woman Bradshaw?’

‘
Have no fear,’ Inskip said, smiling. ‘I did so before we
hired her. You see, his lordship had meant in any event to get rid
of Kittle, just as soon as little Lady Margaret should have become
sufficiently acquainted with Bradshaw.’

‘
Oh,
so that’s what was in the wind, is it?’ interposed Braxted
importantly. ‘I thought Papa gave in over that one too
easily.’

‘
Then all unwittingly,’ Verity guessed, ‘you precipitated the
kidnap, for she must have guessed your intention.’

‘
Yes,’ agreed Inskip. ‘Which I dare say is why it was so badly
executed. Evidently they had no time to lay their plans
sufficiently well.’

‘
No,’ Verity said in a subdued tone. ‘I’m afraid they would
certainly have succeeded if it had not been for my stupidity—though
it all turned out for the best in the end—for it was something I
said that led Shottle to expand his scheme to include me. That must
have thrown them out, for I cannot think they expected to have to
contend with an adult.’

‘
That’s true,’ Wystan said eagerly. ‘For with Peggy and me
they could have travelled much further and gone a lot
quicker.’

Inskip laughed suddenly. ‘The wretched villains must have
thought Christmas had come early.’

They
all erupted into the laughter of relief which came to those who
recognise how close they have been to disaster. Not that Verity’s
lightened mood enabled her to face with equanimity the prospect
before her. Her yearning to see Henry, to know he was himself
again, warred with the fears evoked the other night by his
unprecedented outburst and the collapse that followed
it.

Unlike his father, it seemed as if the young boy was not a
penny the worse for his adventure. And, by his conversation, it
appeared that Peggy too had rapidly recovered. Verity longed to ask
about Henry, and searched Inskip’s face for a clue, but she could
not say anything in Wystan’s presence for fear of his asking
awkward questions. He had already shown that he was too young to be
trusted not to refer to it, if something should put it in his
head.

In
the event, Braxted led her straight up to the nursery and they did
not encounter the marquis at all. As Verity greeted Peggy and sat
down to tea with the children, Bradshaw in attendance, she wondered
if Henry was deliberately avoiding her, or whether he was merely
keeping out of the way to allow the children time with
her.

It
was the first time she had seen Braxted Place, and the vast marbled
hall and Italianate décor did nothing to ease the uncertainty of
her mind. While they were in the relatively unimposing nursery, it
did not trouble her, but when Braxted offered to show her around
she began to feel more and more depressed.

What
had she, Verity Lambourn of Tetheridge Vicarage, to do with all
this grandeur? As if Henry’s tragic past were not enough, here was
his milieu to distance her further.

‘
And
here are all the family portraits,’ announced Wystan, turning into
the long gallery.

Slowly they traversed
the length of it, the boy pointing out his forebears, stopping at
one that bore a marked resemblance to Henry.

‘
That’s the one who built this place, my great-grandfather.
That was before they made him a marquis, so he called it Braxted
Place.’

There were the ancient
earls, who had inhabited the medieval manor of Haverigg Hall, and
the lords and ladies who had followed them to the Elizabethan pile
which had been razed to the ground by the Earl of Braxted, who had
become the first Marquis of Salmesbury, and rebuilt in the latest
Palladian style at enormous expense on the same spot.

Verity began to feel crushed by the weight of Henry’s
ancestry, so that he seemed less and less the Henry Haverigg she
had met and learned to love, and more and more the third Marquis of
Salmesbury, a personage whom she did not know and to whom she never
could be equal—in station, in stature, or in anything
else.

Then they paused
before a more recent portrait. It was of a woman, and Verity
stared, her heart plummeting. For in the sweet face, with its
gentle smile, its dreamy eyes of blue, and the frame of corn-gold
hair, she recognised in an instant the ghost that haunted the man
she loved.

‘
That’s Mama,’ Wystan announced, as if Verity needed telling.
‘You see, both Peggy and me are like her, not Papa. I ’member her
very well. She always smiled like that. Like as if she was thinking
of something secret, something nice.’

He paused, his head on
one side, considering the portrait. Verity found herself unable to
say a word. Face to face with the barrier that would stand forever
between herself and Henry, she experienced such resentment as she
had never known before. She wanted to drag her nails across the
canvas, rip that lovely face to shreds.

Shocked at the ferocity of her thoughts, she stepped back
from the picture, as if afraid the devil in her might take her over
and make her perform that act of hideous desecration. She stood
trembling and sick to the stomach while Wystan’s light treble grew
and jangled in her head as he began to speak again, the words
echoing and re-echoing until she wanted to scream.

‘
I
asked Mama once why she smiled as if she had a secret, and she said
she smiled whenever she thought of Papa. She said whenever Papa
laughed, it was because he thought of her. She said they had fun
together, they enjoyed each other.’

Fun
together. .
fun together. . .enjoyed each
other. . .enjoyed. . .fun. . .fun. . .fun. . .

The
word hammered in her ears and she saw them—Henry laughing, the
ghost smiling, on and on. The lovely woman smiling that secret
smile. Mouth opening wide, jagged as it began to laugh, turning
into a jeering, sneering, undulating gash. The gold hair rippling,
flowing about her head, flying high as she opened wide her arms and
rose into the air, screaming her evil laughter as she drew the man
up to tangle in the invisible web she wove about him to hold him
there forever. And somewhere far away, a tiny voice, crying
hopelessly,
Henry, Henry. . .

‘
Ah,
there you are,’ said Henry’s voice.

Verity snapped out of the vision and her head jerked round.
Henry! He was smiling, moving, limping along the gallery towards
them. He was speaking, but she did not hear the words. For behind
him, her overwrought imagination painted the ghostly form of Lady
Margaret, smiling in triumph over his shoulder. . . smiling her
secret smile.

‘
No!’ Verity cried out, shaking her head. ‘I
can’t.’ She was backing from him.
‘Henry,
I can’t.’

Spinning on her heel,
she sped away, oblivious to the voices calling her.

‘
Verity, wait!’

‘
Verity, where are you going?’

‘
Verity!
’

Away she ran, through
the gallery to the great staircase that took her down to the hall
below, past the marbled glories, over the mottled floors, to the
front door where she very nearly collided with the butler as he
hurried to find out the cause of the commotion.

‘
Miss?’ Cradoc said. ‘Can I assist you?’

‘
Please
,’ she
begged breathlessly. ‘Ask the coachman to catch me up. I must
go.’

She went as if to
wrench at the double doors, but Cradoc was before her, pulling them
open. Out she ran, speeding across the stone patio and down the
steps, past the statues that decorated each corner of the three
shallow flights of the double stairway.

As she started down
the sweeping driveway, she began to slow and discovered that tears
were streaming down her face. They continued to fall as she
stumbled on, waiting for the coach to take her up and whisk her
away from this dreadful place that gave her so much pain.

Inside the mansion, the marquis kept a tight hold on his
son’s shoulder.

‘
But
shan’t I go after her, sir? I can catch her easy.’

‘
Let
her go, Wystan,’ answered Henry wearily. ‘Let her be.’

‘
But
Papa—’

‘
Enough.’ He summoned a weak smile. ‘She will be back. I
promise you. I will fetch her back.’

Braxted’s lower lip drooped. ‘What if she don’t want to
come?’

His father was looking
at the portrait of his dead wife, quite unaware that this was the
first time he had done so without the sliver of that pinprick in
his heart.

Was this the trigger?
Poor Margaret. If he could have felt this for her, perhaps she
would not have died that night.

Then
he answered his son, as his hand tightened on the boy’s shoulder.
‘I don’t think I could endure it, if she does not want to
come.’

Chapter
Twelve

Verity had pleaded a headache, sending a servant with a
message to Lady Crossens, and hiding in her room until she could
learn to master her emotion. Her patroness, however, when she
showed her brave face at the breakfast table next morning, was not
deceived.

‘
Is
your headache better?’ she demanded, looking at the girl from under
lowered brows.

‘
A
little, ma’am,’ Verity answered, toying with a small helping of the
ham and eggs with which she had been served.

Lady
Crossens snorted. ‘Pho, don’t tell me! You are at loggerheads with
that marquis of yours, I’ll be bound.’

Verity bit her lip, looking away. ‘It—it is not like
that.’

‘
Well, how then is it? Come, child. Can you not tell me what
ails you?’

‘
I
would if I could, ma’am. Only there is nothing you can do. No one
can do anything.’

‘
Except
him
,
I dare
say,’ said her ladyship shrewdly.

Verity looked up at her. ‘No. He—he cannot help it. The past
is—is—’