The Danbury Scandals (34 page)

‘I reckon
there’ll be trouble...’ the boy said, pocketing the coin Adam had given him.

‘Trouble?’

‘At Beckford.
The villagers are up in arms about the enclosure. I heard they were marching
today. His Grace will be off to fetch the militia...’

‘Beckford!’
Adam shouted up to their driver. ‘And make haste.’

They could hear
the noise before the bend in the road brought the cause of it into view.
Beckford Common was packed with villagers milling about and shouting threats.
Maryanne was appalled to see men and women she had hitherto thought of as
law-abiding and peace-loving carrying pitchforks and rakes and other implements
as weapons, brandishing them as if they meant to use them.

‘What are they
going to do?’ she asked as they pulled up under an oak whose leafy shadow
helped to conceal them.

‘I don’t know.
They are shouting against the Duke,’ Adam replied.

No one paid
them the slightest attention because they had seen the Danbury carriage coming
down the hill and were surging towards it. It was forced to a stop as they
surrounded it.

‘We want the
Duke!’ they yelled. ‘Where is the black-hearted devil?’

They wrenched
open the door of the coach and pulled Mark out. It looked as though they
intended to lynch him.

Adam could
remain still no longer. Bidding Maryanne stay in the coach, he pushed his way
through to the front of the crowd. ‘Stop this madness!’ he roared. His powerful
voice carried across the heads of the mob like a roll of thunder before a
storm. ‘Don’t you know rioting is a serious offence? Listen to reason!’

In the sudden
silence that followed Mark looked up and realised who had caused it. His eyes
lit with sadistic pleasure. ‘What have we here?’ he said, ignoring the
villagers, although he was still firmly held by two of them. ‘Has my patience
been rewarded? Has the spider caught the fly?’

‘Go back to
your work and your homes,’ Adam said, ignoring him and addressing the
villagers. ‘And I guarantee you will have your grazing land back.’

Mark laughed
harshly. ‘Are you going to listen to the empty promises of a dead man?’ he
shouted. ‘You know this man is wanted for the murder of the late Duke of
Wiltshire and is not in a position to guarantee anything. I’ll give ten guineas
to anyone coming to my aid!’

The rioters
looked at each other doubtfully. Ten guineas was a great deal of money, and
might, in some measure, compensate them for the loss of their grazing land.

‘I will
overlook your behaviour today,’ Mark went on. ‘I will send the militia away.
All you have to do is seize that man.’ His arms were firmly held; he indicated
Adam with a nod of his head.

Maryanne,
fearful for the man she loved, forced her way through the mob to his side. ‘He
is innocent,’ she cried. ‘Do not turn against him.’

For a moment
she quailed at the look of annoyance Adam gave her, but then smiled up at him
defiantly. ‘I told you before, where you go, I go,’ she said.

‘How touching!’
Mark sneered. ‘And are you prepared to preach at Tyburn Cross along with him?’
He turned to address the villagers. ‘This woman, whom you once took into your
midst out of the goodness of your hearts, is his accomplice. I am a magistrate,
empowered to take them into custody, and I have the right to insist on
assistance. Seize them both and bring them to the Hall.’

Maryanne moved
closer to Adam, trying to shield him with her own small body. Knowing and
liking her, the villagers looked unsure of what to do. One of them took her
arm, but whether in obedience to Mark or as a gesture of reassurance she could
not tell. Another took a pace or two towards Adam. He dodged and went to stand
beside his half-brother.

‘His Grace and
I have a great deal to talk about and it were better done in private,’ he said
to the crowd, then, turning to Mark, ‘I will come with you, provided my wife is
allowed to go free.’ To Maryanne he said, ‘Go back to the coach.’

‘I will not,’
she answered promptly. ‘I am coming too.’

Mark’s mocking
grin of triumph sent trickles of ice running down her back. ‘Fetch the
constable from wherever he is,’ he ordered the blacksmith. ‘Bring him to the
Hall.’ Then, as the man hurried away, he called after him, ‘There is no need
for haste, the prisoners will be safe in my keeping.’

Adam’s
behaviour was anything but that of a prisoner as he handed Maryanne up into the
Danbury coach before climbing in himself.

No one spoke on
the journey to the house, and when they arrived Maryanne was shocked by the
change in the place. It had a forlorn air, as if it knew the loving care that
had been lavished on it by its previous owner was no more. And when they went
inside she realised that Robert had not been exaggerating. It was easy to see
where the pictures had been taken from the walls, and there was only the barest
minimum of furniture and that not the best of what had once been there. The
library was bereft of books and held only a small desk against one wall and a
few chairs. She was reminded of the day she had entered this room for the first
time, when James had asked her to go to Castle Cedars with him. What would she
have said if someone had told her then that she would come back one day to be
accused of being an accomplice to his murder? She would have laughed at the
absurdity of it.

‘Coming back to
England was a foolhardy thing to do,’ Mark said, locking the door and turning
to face them. ‘And coming to Beckford was madness. You must have known you
would be arrested, so why return?’

‘To prove my
innocence and your guilt,’ Adam said.

Mark laughed.
‘There can be no proof, you know that. As far as the world is concerned, you
murdered my father.’

‘Our father,’
Adam corrected him. ‘And it was you who did the killing. Having caused the
death of the fifth Duke and got away with it, you became even more ambitious.
With Father dead, no one would know the truth except me, and if I were hanged
for murder there would be no one to dispute your claim. You would inherit an impoverished
dukedom and Maryanne would provide the capital when she came into her
inheritance.’

‘Now, I wonder
who would be believed if you were brought to court?’ Mark sneered. ‘A rough
soldier - and a Frenchman at that - or a respected peer of the realm whose
antecedents are without question? Everyone knows the late Duke of Wiltshire was
a faithful husband and a good father, and Caroline and I are his only
children...’

‘You are very
confident,’ Adam said coolly. ‘How can you be so sure my story will not be
believed? I have proof of my birth, and in wedlock too. Your mother was not our
father’s first wife. I may not have wanted my inheritance before, but I am
claiming it now. I suggest you withdraw with a good grace. Leave the country
and I will see you want for nothing.’

‘Where is this
proof?’ Mark demanded.

‘My lawyer will
provide it,’ Adam told him.

‘You bluff,’
Mark said. ‘You have no proof and no hope of being believed. Your
foster-parents are both dead, that much I know. . .’

‘You are wrong.
Madame
Saint-Pierre is alive and well and in London at this moment with
my lawyer,’ Adam informed him.

‘You lie,’ Mark
said, going over to the drawer of the desk and taking out a small pistol. ‘I
have captured a wanted murderer and no one would blame me if I took revenge for
my father’s death.’

‘No! No!’
Maryanne shrieked, flinging herself between them. ‘You can’t kill him, you must
not.’

‘I can and I
will, and you too, just as I did that old miser, our fathe.’

‘Stand aside,
Maryanne,’ Adam said quietly, putting her from him. ‘Move away.’

‘The constable
will be here soon,’ she said, more out of desperation than conviction. Now she
knew why Mark had told the blacksmith not to hurry.

‘And he will
find both prisoners dead, killed while trying to escape. I shall, of course, be
sorry that I had not been able to take you alive, but I had to defend myself.’
He took aim very deliberately and squeezed the trigger.

Adam, ignoring
the gun, hurled himself at his half-brother and the shot went wild. They
struggled together for possession of the weapon while Maryanne stood with her
fist in her mouth and her heart beating wildly. They were well-matched in size
and weight and neither was prepared to give an inch.

Maryanne
skirted round them and stooped to pick up the poker from the fireplace. It
could only have been seconds, but it seemed like hours, before she had a clear
view and then she brought the poker down on Mark’s head as hard as she could.
He slid to the floor and Adam turned and took a pace towards her, smiling.
‘Good girl!’ he exclaimed. The next moment he had crumpled at her feet and she
realised the shot had found its target after all.

‘Adam!’ She
stared at him in disbelieving horror and then threw herself down beside him,
cradling his head in her lap. ‘Adam,’ she said over and over again, ignoring
the sound of people shouting and banging on the locked door. ‘Oh, Adam.’

‘Adam! Adam!
For God’s sake, man, if you are all right, open the door!’ She heard, and yet
did not hear, someone throw his weight against it. She was numb with shock. Her
heart had cracked into a thousand pieces, dissolved and left a hollow space, a
void, a numbness, a dryness which could produce no tears. There was nothing
there to feel with, no emotion, only emptiness. She could only sit there,
stroking Adam’s face with a blood-covered hand in an unthinking gesture, as if
doing so would let him know how much she had loved him. She looked up with
unseeing eyes when the glass of the window shattered and Robert Rudge and the
constable climbed over the sill into the room.

Robert ran to
crouch beside her. ‘Maryanne, what happened?’

‘He shot Adam,’
she said dully, nodding towards Mark, lying across the hearth where he had
fallen, with the blood-stained poker beside him. ‘He didn’t want either of us
to live. I had to stop him.’ Her voice was flat, toneless; all life had been
drained from her.

Robert left her
to unlock the door. A crowd of noisy people invaded the room and began talking
and asking questions, and she could find no voice to answer. She clung to Adam,
refusing to leave him.

‘Fetch the
doctor,’ Robert said to someone behind him as he returned to Maryanne’s side.

‘Oh, why did
Adam have to come here today?’ she asked. ‘I told him it was too risky...’ She
looked up at Robert as if seeing him for the first time. ‘How did you get
here?’

He smiled.
‘When Jeannie found out that I had given in to Adam and allowed you to come
alone, she was furious. She sent me post-haste after you.’

‘If only you
had arrived sooner, you might....’ Still she could not cry. ‘You might have
prevented this...’ She looked round the room. It was a scene of chaos; there
was blood everywhere. The housekeeper had fetched blankets and cushions from
the servants’ quarters to make Adam comfortable and others were doing the same
for Mark, whose head was a mess of blood. He was moaning softly.

‘What
happened?’ Robert asked.

‘He said we
must die, just as his father had died. He took the gun out of the drawer
and...’ She took a deep breath. ‘He killed Adam.’

He had put his
hand on Adam’s chest and smiled suddenly. ‘You despair too soon, my dear. He is
not dead, though very close to it.’

‘Are you sure?’

He placed her
hand on Adam’s heart. ‘Feel it?’

‘Yes! Yes!’
What a fool she was! She had seen enough of the carnage after the battle of Waterloo
to know that a man did not necessarily die of a bullet wound. The relief did
something that her grief could not, it brought on the tears. They flowed down
her face as if a dam had burst.

‘I am sorry,
Maryanne.’

Maryanne raised
brimming eyes to look up at Caroline, still too shocked to show surprise. ‘You
here too?’ she gasped.

‘I was on my
way to visit my brother when I saw Mr Rudge. Oh, Maryanne, I just wish I had
spoken up before. I’ve been thinking about it ever since Richard and I left
London. He said I should come and see Mark, sort something out.’

‘Sort what
out?’

‘What I had
seen. The night Papa was... was killed. After you had gone to up to your room,
I went into the hall. I saw Adam leave and Papa was still alive then because I
heard him and Mark quarrelling. I had never before heard Papa raise his voice
in anger, and it frightened me. And Mark was shouting too. Then I heard a
scuffle and it all went quiet. When Mark came out of the library, I dashed up
the stairs to my room.’

‘You could have
proved Adam did not kill James? You could have saved all this...’ Maryanne was
too numb with shock to sound angry. ‘Why did you say nothing before?’

‘I didn’t want
to believe it; I kept hoping I had misunderstood what I saw and there was a
simple explanation. I kept telling myself that Adam must have returned later.
And you had disappeared too. Mark said he had seen you running upstairs
afterwards; he believed you knew exactly what happened, but it was not you he
saw, but me.’