Annabelle (12 page)

An evil-looking gatekeeper came limping out in answer to their summons.

“Fine day, Cap’n” he said, tugging his forelock. “Missus ain’t home and sarvents is out, but missus says her’ll be back drecktly and youse is to make yesselfs comfortable.”

The Captain threw the man a piece of gold, and the gatekeeper caught it as deftly as a monkey and bit it with the stumps of his blackened teeth.

They moved slowly up a pitted and unkempt driveway past mossy statues, obviously relics of some ancestor’s Grand Tour. The house was Palladian with a great central dome and porticoed entrance.

It was all very dismal, reflected Annabelle, and somehow sinister, wrapped in its atmosphere of autumnal decay. I am becoming too fanciful, she thought and allowed the Captain to escort her into the house.

He led the way into a drawing room on the ground floor, and then, muttering something about having to have a word with the gatekeeper, he left Annabelle alone.

The room smelled musty and damp, and the faded pink and green of its walls showed great stains of damp moisture near the ceiling. Someone had been recently and inexpertly dusting, for great cobwebs still hung from the cornices and there was at least half an inch of dust under the silent clock on the mantelshelf. A tarnished silver tray rested on a low table containing decanters and
a plate of biscuits. There was no other sign that they were expected or even that the house was inhabited.

There came a furtive scurrying sound from behind the walls.

Rats.

Annabelle began to feel cold despite the day outside. She wondered if the house was haunted by the dead soldier’s ghost. Out in the garden the statues bordering the drive stared back at her with their blind stone eyes. The day was very still and quiet apart from the sinister rustling in the wainscoating.

There was no sign of the Captain returning, and Annabelle began to feel increasingly uneasy. She decided to search the house and see if she could find some servant who might tell her where the lady of the house was. One by one she pushed open the doors of the downstairs rooms and stood and stared in amazement. They were thick with dust, their furniture shrouded under holland covers. In a green saloon the dust stretched in an unbroken gray sea on the uncarpeted floor.

A cold hand of fear clutched at her stomach. She walked slowly upstairs and pushed open door after door; at last she found one room prepared and ready. It was a vast bedroom which had been recently swept and cleaned by an inexpert hand. A fire was made up on the hearth, and clean sheets had been put on the bed. Annabelle breathed a sigh of relief. The lady of the house had obviously fallen on hard times and could only afford to live in two rooms and probably only had one or two servants.

Feeling more cheerful, she returned to the drawing room where the Captain was toasting his boots in front of the fire.

“No sign of anyone yet,” he said cheerfully. “Have some wine, Annabelle, and relax. Her name’s Mrs.
Creedy, and the gatekeeper said she should not be too long.”

They sat for a long time, watching the statues’ shadows lengthening on the uncut lawns and talking in a desultory fashion.

The sun went down in a blaze of gold and crimson, and the mist uncoiled itself from the dew-soaked lawns, and still Mrs. Creedy did not return.

L
ORD
Varleigh had called in at White’s in St. James’s Street. The harvests were in on his estates. He had assisted the farmers—hence his healthy tan—and now felt he owed himself an evening’s relaxation.

But for him the glamour of the famous club had gone. Beau Brummell and his cronies held court at the recently constructed bow window overlooking the street. Bloods and bucks, Corinthians and Dandies crouched over the gambling tables, and an almost religious silence prevailed.

He wished he had not come to Town and wondered if he should forego an evening of cards for the calm pleasure of a visit to Kensington Gore. What an incalculable, impertinent girl was Annabelle Quennell! At times he was not even sure that he liked her. But he would go after all. The girl was never boring and one never knew what she might say.

With a sinking heart he saw the club bore, Mr. Garforth, edging towards him. He rose to leave, but it was too late.

“Thought you knew all the gossip in town,” said Mr. Garforth petulantly, by way of an opening.

“What don’t I know?” asked Lord Varleigh, resigning himself.

“Didn’t know the Creedys were in residence?” said Mr. Garforth. “In fact, after old Creedy’s cheating at
cards and unpaid debts over half of London, I never thought he would dare to show his face this side of the Channel again.”

“He obviously has,” yawned Lord Varleigh, “if that is what you are trying to tell me.”

“Well, I didn’t
see
the Creedy fellow,” said Mr. Garforth, “but they’re receiving callers. Drove past Chiswick—you know that deserted barn of a place they’ve got—and who should I see driving in to call but Captain Jimmy MacDonald and that girl, Miss Quennell. Know her, don’t you? Well, you might drop a word in her ear that it ain’t quite the thing to know the Creedys. Surprised at Jimmy MacDonald. He’s wild, that one, but he’s up to snuff when it comes to who one ought to know and who one oughtn’t.”

Lord Varleigh sat very still. “Are you sure the Creedys are back in residence?” he asked. “I saw them in Paris surrounded by a lot of fellow wastrels a month ago.”

“Stands to reason they must be,” said Mr. Garforth, pleased with the rare interest he was eliciting. “People don’t go calling on empty houses. I say, I haven’t finished yet.”

But Lord Varleigh had gone.

A
LL
Annabelle’s nervousness had returned. The Captain had nearly finished the contents of the decanters and resolutely and stubbornly turned aside all suggestions they should leave.

Annabelle at last came to a decision.

“I cannot remain under this roof with you for much longer, sir,” she said severely. “I feel I am being sadly compromised as it is.”

The Captain surveyed her from heavy-lidded eyes. “What a stubborn girl you are,” he remarked. “We ain’t going anywhere, so make up your mind to that.”

“What!”
cried Annabelle, outraged. “Take me home this instant, sir!”

“No,” said the Captain, refilling his glass.

Annabelle got to her feet. “Then I shall have to walk,” she said, resolutely turning towards the door.

A large hand pulled her back. “Unhand me, sir!” cried Annabelle while a corner of her brain marvelled that she had actually used those words, so beloved of fairy-tale heroines.

The Captain pushed her into a chair. “Don’t ask me to use force,” he said quietly, and Annabelle realised with a start of surprise that he was not drunk at all although his eyes glittered strangely.

“I have no taste for rape,” went on the Captain calmly as if he were discussing some new dish. “But yes, my dear, you are going to be compromised. I am going to keep you here for as long as it takes London to find we have gone off together. That prime bore, Garforth, saw us entering here and saw you going with me willingly.”

“But Mrs. Creedy…” began Annabelle.

“Mrs. Creedy,” interrupted the Captain with great good humor, “is, I believe, in Paris with her card-sharping husband.”

“And the son”

“Haven’t got one, Those trunks are full of any clothes we may find necessary, although if you behave like a sensible girl, we should not find clothes necessary at all.”

Annabelle went as red as a beetroot. A vivid picture of the cleaned and prepared bedroom upstairs sprang into her mind. And even if the should escape the Captain, the gatekeeper must be in his pay and would stop her before she reached the road.

“How could you
bear
to be married to someone who has to be
forced
to go to the altar with you?”

“Easily,” said Captain MacDonald, getting to his feet. “If she’s as pretty as you.”

He jerked her out of the chair and pulled her to him and forced his mouth down on hers. Annabelle felt her senses reeling from lack of oxygen rather than passion.

To the Captain’s surprise she went limp in his arms and, feeling that the battle was won, he relaxed his hold before bending to her mouth again.

She leaned round him, and her fingers groped for the Captain’s snuffbox. With a dexterity which would have drawn praise from Petersham himself, she flicked up the enameled lid and then freed her mouth from the Captain’s embrace.

“Darling,” she said huskily.

The Captain drew back and looked down at her in surprise and triumph.

She whipped round the snuffbox and threw the entire contents straight into his face. While the Captain clawed his face and coughed and spluttered, Annabelle picked up one of the decanters and, closing her eyes tightly, brought it down with a
crrump
on the Captain’s head. He sank to the floor and lay motionless.

With trembling fingers Annabelle felt for his pulse but, as always happens on these nerveracking occasions, could feel or hear nothing but the tumultuous beating of her heart. She drew a small steel mirror from her reticule and tried to keep her hands from shaking as she held it over his mouth, bringing a sharp memory of doing the same thing to her godmother. The glass misted, and the Captain let out a stentorian snore.

Annabelle fled out into the grounds and stood irresolute. A loud voice hailing the gatekeeper made her nearly jump from her skin. Friend or enemy? Probably enemy.

She looked wildly round for a place to hide, and then as she heard the sound of shouts and blows from the
gatehouse, plunged headlong into the tangled shrubbery and lay still.

Carriage wheels rattled up the drive and swept past her hiding place, but Annabelle was too frightened to look out.

Resplendent in a many-caped driving coat and with his long riding whip clutched in his hand, Lord Varleigh sprang lightly down from his carriage and, tilting back his curly brimmed beaver, stared up at the house which seemed to stare back at him with a sad and deserted air. Then he noticed a light burning in one of the downstairs windows.

With an oath he strode into the dark hallway and with a great crash swung open the double doors of the drawing room.

One look at the villainous gatekeeper had been enough to convince Lord Sylvester Varleigh that Captain MacDonald was up to no good. The wretched little man had tried to bar his entry and had gone down under Lord Varleigh’s punishing left. What he expected to find, he did not know, but the last thing he expected was the scene that met his eyes.

Of Annabelle there was not the slightest sign. But Captain MacDonald was sitting up in the middle of a large pool of Burgundy, nursing his head and groaning.

Lord Varleigh seized him by the lapels and dragged him to his feet. “Where is she?” he demanded, giving the groaning Captain a shake.

“Gone,” moaned the Captain. “Hell cat! Threw snuff in my face and crashed me on the head with the Burgundy decanter. Gone!”

“What did you do it for? Why?” said Lord Varleigh, shaking him again.

“Don’t do that!” said the large Captain crossly, jerking
himself free. “I’m in love with her, that’s why.”

“It’s a funny way of showing love,” said Lord Varleigh. “You must have terrified her out of her wits.”

“What do you know of love?” said the Captain, slumping down in an armchair and holding his aching head in his hands. “Don’t like to get personal, Varleigh, but all you know is what you pay for. I’m crazy out of my head with love for Annabelle. She’s everything a woman should be—feminine and kind and good—except,” he added wryly, “when she’s hitting me on the head.”

Lord Varleigh looked at him in silence, two spots of color burning on his thin cheeks under his tan. The Captain’s remarks had struck home—“all you know is what you pay for.” He compared Lady Jane’s vulgar, sensuous, rapacious greed with Annabelle’s delicate virginity and was overcome with a wave of fear for her welfare.

“We must not stay here bandying words,” said Lord Varleigh. “She may be wandering through Chiswick, and God knows what evils could happen to her this time of night.”

“You’re right, egad!” cried the Captain, staggering to his feet. The room swung round, and he sank back in his chair again with a groan. “You’ll need to go, Varleigh,” he said. “But I put you on your honor as a gentleman. Swear you will present my case to Miss Quennell fairly. Tell her I did it because I love her. Swear!”

“You have my word,” said Lord Varleigh quietly. “If I should not return, you will know that I have found her.”

He swung himself into his carriage outside the Creedy mansion. Frost was rimming the grass, glittering like diamonds under the pale light of a thin, new moon. He
was about to set off when his eye was caught by what seemed to be a scrap of material lying under the shrubbery.

He got down and walked towards the bushes. There was a flash of white and the material disappeared. Must be a rabbit, he thought and was about to turn away when his sharp ear caught the faint sounds of quick, frightened breathing. He pushed back the bushes and bent down. The chalk-white, tearstained face of Annabelle Quennell stared up at him.

“Come out,” he said gently. “It’s all over now. I will take you home.”

He helped Annabelle to her feet. She was shivering with cold, and her thin muslin dress was plastered to her body in a way that would have delighted the eye of her rakish godmother.

“Let us go in first and tell Captain MacDonald you are safe.”

“No!” squeaked Annabelle. “I won’t. I won’t go back there!”

“Very well,” said Lord Varleigh. “I shall go myself and tell Captain…”

“No!” cried Annabelle again, clutching his arm. “Don’t go! Please don’t leave me. Take me away from here!”

Lord Varleigh saw that she was nearly hysterical. Best to get her away.

He helped her up into the carriage, wrapped her tenderly in a large bearskin rug, and apologised for the fact that she had to travel in a high-perched phaeton on such a cold evening.

“Oh, cease the gallantries,” snapped the ungrateful Miss Quennell. “I don’t care if I have to go home in a
wheelbarrow
.”