Sally James (18 page)

“They can both still walk,” was the ungracious reply.

“They are our young relatives. We were following and came upon the wreckage. Pray take us to them.”

Reluctantly the landlord moved forwards.

“I’ve only two rooms, and they’ve taken both, and we’re not used to providing dinner for the Quality,” he jerked out as he began to climb the somewhat rickety stairs.

“You need not disturb yourself, fellow. We would be grateful for whatever you can provide, and then if there is a larger inn nearby we will settle what we owe for these rooms and remove to it.”

At the prospect of getting rid of his visitors while still receiving payment, his countenance brightened, and he looked with a much friendlier air at Sir Ingram.

“You must be travelling strung out,” he commented. “First the young ‘uns, then the fellow what says he’s her father, and now you. Them’s the rooms.”

He nodded along the landing and stood aside to let them pass. Voices came from the further room and Sir Ingram went straight to it and lifted the latch, but the door was bolted on the inside. Unhesitatingly he put his shoulder to it and the flimsy structure gave way immediately, the sound of splintering wood mingling with an astonished protest from the landlord.

Beyond Sir Ingram Mary caught a glimpse of Teresa’s startled face, and then he stepped further inside the room and she could see into it. She had time to notice only that the three of them, Rodney Morris, Teresa and Matthew, were seated round a small table, before Mr Morris sprang to his feet with an oath and reached for his cane which lay on the table. He twisted it and pulled, and the innocent cane became a wickedly sharp pointed swordstick which he levelled at Sir Ingram.

Teresa screamed and clung to Matthew, while Mr Morris looked round.

“Oh dear, I was quite convinced we had been invaded by ruffians,” he murmured gently. “Dear boy, do you normally enter a room in such an alarming fashion? Could you not knock and wait for the door to be opened?”

“I do not take chances,” Sir Ingram answered grimly. “Not with murderers. Wyndham, pray keep the ladies well out of the way.”

Mr Morris did not lower his sword, but kept it pointed steadily at Sir Ingram. The others drew back into a corner behind the table.

“Are you deranged? What is this nonsense?”

“No nonsense. I have proof that will send you to the gallows on a charge of attempted murder of your stepdaughter. You need not trouble to deny it, for I have seen your wife, and the evidence will hang you.”

Suddenly Mr Morris sprang forward, aiming his sword for Sir Ingram’s throat. Sir Ingram leapt to one side, seized a small stool and twisted it before him, so that the next thrust of the sword was foiled by it, and before Mr Morris could draw back, his sword had been forced from his hand and fell to the floor. Sir Ingram kicked it aside, flung away the stool, and faced Mr Morris, who was aiming punches at him in what Matthew, somewhat astonished, realised was a far from amateur fashion. Sir Ingram was, however, a more skilful master of the art, and evaded the blows meant for him. He feinted with his left, and then, so swiftly that the watchers hardly saw what he did, he delivered a punch with his right fist that connected squarely with Mr Morris’s chin and sent him staggering across the room to collapse groaning against the wall beneath the small window.

Sir Ingram inspected him cursorily, then bent to retrieve the sword and laid it on the table.

“My, that were as neat a wisty castor as ever I’ve seen!” the landlord exclaimed, his dismay at these untoward doings submerged in his admiration of Sir Ingram’s expertise.

Sir Ingram glanced at him.

“I will pay for any damage,” he said briefly. “Can you hasten dinner for us?”

The landlord, his former surliness vanished, made haste to do as he was bid, and Sir Ingram turned back to the others.

“I beg your pardon, ladies, but it was unavoidable. I do not think he will trouble us much now.”

Teresa, who had remained clasped in Matthew’s arms, continued to sob unrestrainedly while Matthew looked at Sir Ingram and his sister.

“How did you find us? And what are you doing here, Mary?”

“Your sister has most kindly come to lend you countenance,” Sir Ingram explained smoothly. “We can all return to Bath in the morning, where we can discuss your future calmly. You are in no more danger, Teresa, so do, I beg you, cease these lamentations! It was this contemptible worm who was attacking you, not I, and he is powerless to do so any longer!”

“It is a trick,” Teresa declared, staring fiercely at her cousin. She indicated the still comatose Mr Morris. “
He
tried to trick us into going back with him, saying that he would obtain your permission for our marriage. As if he could have changed your mind,” she added scornfully.

“What was that about his wife?” Matthew suddenly remembered.

Sir Ingram smiled. “Oh, he has for some time been secretly married to Mrs Standish. I suppose we ought to say Mrs Morris now.”

Teresa stared at him. “What did you say? He and mama? And mama has been scolding
me
for trying to make what she called a clandestine marriage! Oh, this is beyond everything!”

“I agree that it was not the most felicitous example to set you,” her cousin said quietly. “He hoped, by killing you, to get control of your fortune through his wife. His first attempts were arranged to appear as accidents, but when none of them succeeded he grew desperate, knowing he had very little time before you married. Hence the attack in the caves.”

He explained what he had told Mary. “It was he, also, who killed the parrot when he visited his wife.”

“With his swordstick!” Matthew exclaimed, revolted. “But why do such a grisly thing to a harmless bird!”

“Not so harmless if his noise, or an incriminating phrase he had picked up, would betray Morris.”

“I am not going back with either you or him!” Teresa suddenly declared. “I don’t know which of you is telling the truth, and I am not going with
anyone
except Matthew, and I
shall
marry him and you will not stop me, and you will not marry me yourself, Ingram!”

“Have you any more money than the last time you eloped?” was all the reply he deigned to give to this challenge.

“Yes!” she retorted. “Matthew still has some he won at cards, and I have sold my pearls! Mama gave me that notion!”

“I might have expected that,” Sir Ingram commented. “You must be very weary after such a long and tiresome journey, so we will discuss it after we have dined.”

There was a scraping sound behind them, and suddenly recalling the recumbent form of Mr Morris they swung round to see that he had recovered his senses and quietly raised himself by pulling on the window sill. The noise was of his boot scraping on the sill as he began to clamber out of the window. A couple of feet away the branch of an oak tree was visible, and as Sir Ingram sprang across the room in an attempt to seize Mr Morris, he swung himself fully out of the window and grasped this branch.

For a few seconds his hands clung to it, but as it bent under his weight he gave a cry of terror, and his hands slipped gradually, slowly, until the branch, too weak to take the strain, fractured, and Rodney Morris plummeted down to fall with a sickening thud on the cobbled path below that led round this side of the inn towards the stables.

Sir Ingram gazed down at him for a moment, and then turned to run down the staircase and out of the front door. By the time he reached Morris the landlord and the ostler were already there, and Mary, following close behind him, saw them shake their heads dolefully.

They made way for Sir Ingram to kneel beside Mr Morris, but a rapid examination showed him there was no chance he could be alive, for the side of his head was crushed where he had struck it against the cobblestones.

“Can you find somewhere for him to be laid?” Sir Ingram asked, and the landlord, speechless, nodded. Sir Ingram turned to take Mary’s arm and lead her from the scene.

“It must be better this way,” he said gently. “Whether my Aunt Cecy loved him or no, she could not have borne the knowledge that her husband had attempted to murder her daughter. Now there need be no fuss, and no scandal. Truly it is better for all of us, even Morris, horrible though his death was.”

“It was so sudden,” Mary whispered, and shuddered. He felt her sway slightly, and led her to a bench set beside the door of the inn where he persuaded her to sit down, talking soothingly until she was calmer.

“Thank you, I am better now,” she said after a while, and rose to go back inside the inn. “I ought to go to Teresa.”

They went back upstairs, but the room they had left so precipitously was empty. The door of the other room that had been for their use was wide open and Mary went in, but it too was empty, and there was no baggage or other indication that the room had been occupied.

This room looked out over the back of the inn and Mary crossed to look through the window. Below her Sir Ingram’s curricle was being driven away from the stables by Matthew, and at that moment Teresa, seated in it, turned round and saw Mary at the window.

“Quickly!” Mary heard her exclaim, and Matthew whipped up the horses.

There was a low chuckle from behind her, and Mary swung round in dismay.

“Hurry, you must go after them! There is the horse Mr Morris rode, you could take that!”

He smiled and shook his head. “And leave you here, alone with that unprepossessing landlord, to explain a violent death to the magistrate who is, I have no doubt, being summoned here at this very minute? You cannot have a very good opinion of me.”

“Oh, I do not care for that! Obtain another carriage then! We must follow them!”

“Have you so great an objection to your brother marrying my cousin?”

She stared at him, nonplussed. “But you do!”

“She is safe now, and I have ceased to care what she does. If Matthew is prepared to take her with all her wildness and mad pranks, then he is welcome to the unenviable task of taking care of her!”

“But - but - a clandestine wedding!”

“They are welcome to that also, and I have the strong notion Teresa would feel deprived of a privilege if she were forced to have a conventional bridal! Let them go, and we can think about ourselves. It is too late to make arrangements for travelling back to Bath tonight, I fear.”

“Oh dear, I completely forgot!” Mary exclaimed remorsefully. “How very dreadful of me!”

“You forgot?”

“Yes, an - an appointment! The fact is,” she explained in confusion as he remained staring at her, his eyebrows raised, an enigmatic smile on his lips. “Mr Knowle was coming - to visit me.”

Sir Ingram laughed. “Poor man, to discover his bird flown! Will he reject you utterly when he discovers you have spent the night alone at an inn with me? I would imagine him to have very strong views on the propriety of the behaviour of a woman he wished to marry.”

“I suppose I need not tell him everything,” Mary said slowly, “and there has certainly been no impropriety! But how very dreadful of me to have forgotten him! I was so concerned for Teresa.”

“I am sure such a correct man would not understand, and might not wish to be connected by marriage to such a disreputable family,” Sir Ingram said solemnly. “I can see that, having utterly ruined your reputation, and with it the chances of so estimable a marriage, I shall have to make amends by offering for you myself!”

Mary stared at him, and slowly a blush suffused her cheeks.

“Do not be so ridiculous!” she managed to say, and turned away from him to hide her burning cheeks. “You have no call to make such a sacrifice!” she added in a tight voice.

He took her hand in his, tightening his clasp when she would have freed it, and turned her to face him. With an immense effort she forced herself to look up into his face, and encountered a most disturbing smile.

“Why in the world should you imagine it to be a sacrifice, my foolish one? It is what I have intended since the moment I saw you, my love! My previous attempt to speak to you was frustrated by that abominable cousin of mine yesterday morning, if you recall. I am hoping you will not feel constrained to accept me now because of our compromising situation, but because it is what you wish yourself. Can it be so, Mary my love?”

“You are merely being polite,” she whispered, her heart beating uncomfortably fast. “There is no need, truly!”

“Now it is you that is ridiculous, my sweet,” he said gently. “Have you accepted Mr Knowle? If you have you can always say that you were mistaken.”

“No. but I promised to give him an answer today! What will he have thought of me?” she said distractedly.

“What would that answer have been?” he insisted, taking her chin in his hand and tilting her face up so that she was forced to look at him.

“I was going to accept,” she admitted slowly.

“Is it possible that you love him?” he asked swiftly, his eyes narrowing.

“No, but - well, he said it was wrong to love before marriage, and that it would come, and besides - “

“He is a dolt, or worse. And besides what?” he demanded, taking his hand from her face and slipping it about her waist to draw her close to him.

“I - my father wishes to return to Oxford, and he had the impression I was about to marry,” she said reluctantly, trembling within his embrace, and bending her head to escape his intent gaze. “I could not disappoint him, for he was so looking forward to settling there!”

Suddenly he laughed. “That was because I told him,” he said calmly.

She looked up at him then, startled. “You told him? I do not understand!”

“Those two days I was away from Bath I visited him in Oxford and obtained his blessing.”

“That is where you were,” she exclaimed. “But how could you be so certain I would accept? What did you tell my father?”

“I read the look in your eyes and I had hopes. I may have misled your father a trifle, but my hopes were near certainty. So you see, my darling, I can prove to you I am not asking you merely because we are alone here, but because I have always intended to, since the moment I walked into your drawing room and found you defending Teresa so valiantly! It was then I understood how it was possible for two apparently rational people to succumb to a passion so overwhelming that nothing else mattered. I hope Teresa and Matthew are truly in love, as I am, and as I believe you are. But tell me, can you feel any love for me?”