Henrietta (25 page)

Down the corridor, Lady Belding was also composing a hurried letter to a small town on the German border. “My dear Mr. Sandford,” she wrote. “You will be amazed to learn that Alice and I met no other than your sister, Henrietta, at tea this afternoon. She was looking prodigious old and her latest beau is an exceeding common young man who discourses on drainage….”

In the morning, the heavy travelling coach lumbered off across the square. Henrietta took a last look at the little town where she had spent such a long year with a tiny twinge of sadness. At least she had been secure from upset and violent emotions. What if Lord Reckford had forgotten her? Mr. Evans already had, she thought with a wry smile. When she had descended in the morning to take her leave, he was seated in the manager’s office surrounded by sheets of drawings and he accepted her goodbyes vaguely, his eyes shining with excitement as he assaulted the manager’s ears with a barrage of descriptions of intricate drainage systems.

“We shall not
race
back to London,” she said slowly to Miss Scattersworth. “We shall travel slowly and comfortably, stopping at places here and there.” Miss Scattersworth gave a resigned nod. They were at least on the road home and that was all that mattered.

Henrietta felt the bulk of her as yet unposted letter to Lord Reckford. Everytime she decided to mail it she stopped and wondered if perhaps this sentence or that could not have been changed. What if he had forgotten her?

Lord Reckford dropped his quill with a sigh and stared unseeingly across the sun dappled lawns of the Abbey. He owed it to his name to find a wife and continue the line and goodness knows, he had tried. He had paid court to pretty debutante after pretty debutante, rejecting each one in turn. They were all so
young
and their more mature sisters were either shrews, vulgar or timid. His masculine pursuits had palled and his fun-loving friends had been startled when he had declared that an excellent race between two pigs in Hyde Park was “damned childish.”

It had filtered back to him through the society grapevine that Henrietta was still in Luben where she had been for the past year. She must indeed be ill, he mused, to endure the suffocating life of a small resort peopled with chronic invalids and dowagers though it was said to be becoming fashionable.

The morning post was brought in and he seized on a heavy letter from his friend, Mr. Jeremy Holmes, who had been spending the summer, wandering about Europe. His letters were always lively and full of adventures and had passed many a tedious morning for the Beau.

He settled down to enjoy the latest of Jeremy’s adventures and then his mobile face went hard and tight as he read the first paragraphs over and over again. “I called in at Luben to visit Henrietta because, if you recall, the good doctor said nothing about
me
keeping out of her way.

“I was told that Henrietta had already left but she is to be wed! And to a very intense young man called Evans who talks of nothing but plumbing. Women are indeed strange creatures! And talking of strange creatures, I had this piece of information from none other than Lady Belding herself who assured me it was a definite love match and that Mr. Evans would be shortly returning to London where the marriage is to take place.

“She positively threw Alice at my head but after that little minx’s efforts to entrap you, I could not admire her beauty as before.

“Now comes the really worrying part. I escaped from the Belding clutches and travelled post-haste through Germany, stopping at a small town on the border with one of those jaw-breaking German names…. Kirchenhause Am Schleinsenstein… and there, sitting at the café in the square… was none other than the vicar! He calls himself
Lord
Henry Sandford and appears to be a leader of the town society. Now, I had gathered that Henrietta was making her leisurely way through Germany and I searched the towns and villages between Kirchenhause and Luben with no success.

“Feeling she was in need of a protector, I posted back to Luben to apprise her fiancé that she might be in need of protection and did he know which route she had taken.

“Well, the idiot removed his head from a hotel drain as though loathe to leave it and seemed to be surprised that she had gone. I told him the story of brother Henry to which he listened with ill-concealed impatience and then said I was suffering from Gothic hallucinations brought on by bad drainage and then put his head back down the drain. There really is no accounting for love….

Lord Reckford dropped the letter and stared with unseeing eyes across the room. She was to be married. And to some idiot with his head in a sewer when she might have had him. With a wrenching feeling of anguish, he realized that if he could not marry Henrietta himself, then he could marry no one.

He cursed himself for a fool. The least he could do was to travel to Germany and make sure she was safe. The doctor had said he must not see her but better she have a shock at his reappearance in her life than be murdered by that maniac of a brother.

He spent the rest of the day in feverish preparation for his departure and by the following morning was ready to leave. As he stepped into the coach, his secretary, Monsieur Dubois, came running out with the morning’s post. Did his lordship wish to peruse it on his journey? No, his lordship did not. It could be thrown on the fire for all he cared. The heavy coach rumbled off down the drive.

Monsieur Dubois went in to the study and placed the correspondence on the desk and went about his duties.

Henrietta’s tender avowal of her love for the Beau—finally posted after much hesitation and mental anguish—lay on top of the pile of unwanted letters as the rumbling of his lordship’s coach wheels faded in the distance.

H
ENRY
S
ANDPORD LEANED BACK
in his customary café chair at the side of the town square. Things had worked out well, very well indeed. His comfortable income from home—and Henrietta would have been horrified if she had realized in the penny-pinching days of Nethercote just how comfortable that income was—went a long way in this little town. He was held in esteem, an English lord—though self-designated—and with none of the rigors of church duty to mar his life.

He sent his recently hired German valet on frequent trips to London to buy his clothes and he felt he looked a very Pink of the Ton in his long swallow-tailed coat with its shining silver buttons and his swansdown waistcoat—the latest thing in Autumn wear.

The leaves were turning red and gold just as they ought and the peasants were laboring hard in the fields around the town adding to his feeling of being some exalted being. The ladies of the town’s bourgeoisie fluttered around him—especially since he had carefully put about that the reason for his exile was a broken heart.

With one languid beringed plump hand, he waved forward the local artist.

Henry had his likeness taken almost daily. Not that he was vain, he had explained, but one must make sure these artist fellows earned their bread even if they were forced to draw such an unworthy subject as himself and the ladies fluttered their fans and exclaimed that he was too modest.

The artist, a young man called Heinrich Schweitzer, often woke sweating during the night, dreaming that his multitude of pictures of Henry had come to life and that he was condemned to a lifetime of sketching an infinity of plump and arrogant Henrys.

He had vainly tried to persuade the English milord to return to the land of his fathers. He felt that if he had to go on drawing portraits of Lord Henry that he would become ill. He could not refuse the commissions for my lord was now a social power in the town.

Henry started disparaging himself in his usual way in order to hear the pretty disclaimers of the ladies who formed his court. “Well, Schweitzer old man, all set for another sitting? Must give you some training, all the same. After painting me, it will be a delight to sketch any of the fair beauties here.”

Herr Schweitzer gave his hearty assent and then realized he had been too hearty. Henry’s plump mouth was forming into a pout The artist racked his brain for a new subject of conversation.

“My lord,” he ventured hurriedly. “You will be interested to know that there is another pretty face in town. Arrived late last night.”

“I fear since I was spurned by the Royal lady of my heart, I have little interest in ladies, pretty or otherwise.” He gave a fat sigh and his little court sighed sympathetically.

“But this lady was not attractive in the common way,” said the artist. “Her features were too round for beauty but she has a certain elegance, an elusive attraction.

“Well, well,” said Henry indulgently. “The fair charmer seems to have caught your attention.”

Mr. Schweitzer searched in his portfolio. “I made a rapid sketch of her as she was descending from the carriage. I did it very rapidly of course, but I feel I have caught a good likeness.”

Henry took the sketch from him. It was unmistakably Henrietta Sandford descending from a travelling coach.
His face turned mottled and his breathing became rapid. He could see all his comfort of being lord of the town fading before his eyes. He hated his sister as he had never hated her before.

“What is the matter, my lord?” cried the artist. “You look quite ill.”

Henry thought quickly. “This strumpet,” he said heavily, “goes by the name of Sandford although she has no claim to our illustrious family name. She is, in fact, a by-blow of one of my uncles.

“It was she who brought about the downfall of my hopes, my romance. She told the Royal prin… excuse me, the Royal lady I was to wed that I was a common country vicar, masquerading as a lord. And she was believed for my lady never went into society and was kept apart from the world.”

The artist’s eyes narrowed speculatively. The fake Miss Sandford’s tale held an uncomfortable ring of truth. There was still a lot of the cleric about this English milord. But his court was shrieking and exclaiming in sympathetic dismay.

“So, dear ladies,” said Henry, putting his handkerchief to his face, “I beg you to tell everyone in the town not to mention my presence to this… this person. My nerves are shattered. I am quite overset.”

As he did indeed look quite faint, his sympathetic entourage assured him fervently of their support as he left to retreat to his house.

Henrietta and Miss Scattersworth had planned to spend a leisurely day in Kirchenhause and leave early on the following morning. Henrietta was suddenly overcome with anxiety to reach home. Miss Scattersworth had contracted a minor stomach disorder and had decided to spend the day in bed, leaving Henrietta to her own devices. Accordingly, she asked the hotel manager if there were any sights of interest in the town.

He looked at her in a most peculiar way, she thought, suggested she might like to view a Saxon church on the outskirts which was within easy walking distance, and then abruptly told her that he hoped she would be leaving in the morning as he urgently required her rooms.

With some little surprise, Henrietta assured him that she had already made plans to depart in the morning and could not help noticing the man’s obvious relief. She and Miss Scattersworth were the only guests in the hotel so why the desperation for rooms? She decided the manager was eccentric and put the matter from her mind.

Henry Sandford was sitting over his morning coffee. He decided he had been overwrought. The lady in the sketch could have been anyone. Why on earth should his sister be visiting this remote town anyway? Despite a certain itching in the big toe of his left foot which betokened the oncoming of another bout of gout, he felt quite cheerful as he sorted through the morning post, slitting open the letters with a thin silver Italian stiletto, a present from one of his admirers.

He gazed at the opening words of Lady Belding’s letter and thought he would faint from rage and bitter despair. There was no doubt left in him. The lady at the hotel must be Henrietta. He crossed to the window, peering down into the sunny street through the Brussels lace curtains.

And there she was!

A poke bonnet with a high crown hid her face but there was no disguising her figure, her walk or the turn of her head.

Her scarlet walking dress of merino wool was in the latest fashion and velvet half boots of the same color peeped out from beneath her skirts.

The veins stood out on Henry’s forehead and he found he was still clutching the stiletto. He could see himself ending up a fugitive, fleeing from town to town across Europe. He had meant Luben to be his final destination since Lady Belding had so warmly recommended it but had settled happily into his present little kingdom instead. For one awful moment, he was quite sure that Lady Belding had stage-managed this whole disaster.

Henrietta would have to be killed and immediately. His man was in London. Well, he would have to do the job himself.

He searched busily in his wardrobe, cursing his girth and his tight clothes, looking for something which would enable him the maximum of movement. He came across a priest’s black robe, grim relic of the austere earlier days of his training in the Anglican church. Stripping down to his small clothes and sending his heavy corsets flying across the room, he quickly donned the robe, pulled the hood over his face and slipped down the backstairs into the street.

Henrietta walked along briskly, enjoying the clear morning air. She soon left the town behind, feeling uneasy as she became aware of the stares of the peasants working in the fields. She had left her maid behind to attend to Miss Scattersworth, feeling it was not necessary to be accompanied in such innocent-seeming surroundings. But it was with a feeling of relief that she saw the square tower of the church a short distance ahead.

The sun was becoming unusually hot for autumn, dispersing the early mists from the fields on either side.

The hedgerows were alive with color, the scarlet of hips and haws mixing with the deep purple and black of brambles. A solitary white rose stood out bravely from the tangled bushes, last survivor of the summer. Henrietta plucked it from its stem and tucked it into her hair under her bonnet. Tall poplars stood sentinel along the road as it neared the church, their long, pencil-thin shadows stretching across the fields.