A Night of Gaiety (14 page)

“Thank you very much. You are very kind to me, but I do not want to be a nuisance and keep asking you for things.”

“You ask,” Banks replied. “I’ll tell you when you’re a nuisance, and it may be a long time before you are.”

She actually smiled before she left the room, and when she had gone Davita went to the window to look out at the view over the Park and the lake.

Then she gave a little exclamation of pleasure.

She had escaped! She was free. She had left Violet, Lord Mundesley, and the Gaiety behind her, and she was here!

Because it was in the country, even though it was very different from Scotland, it seemed like home.

She could see stags moving under the trees in the Park, there were birds flying overhead, and the sun was shining on the lake as it did on the river near the Castle.

It was all so different from London, and she clasped her hands together.

“Oh, please, God, let me stay! Please, God, do not let the Countess send me away.”

It was a cry that came from the very depths of her heart.

Then, because she realised time was passing, she hurriedly untied her bonnet and began to take off her travelling-gown.

Chapter
S
ix

D
a
vita
shut the
book with a snap.

“How could she have died at the end?” she asked, and there were tears in her eyes.

The Countess smiled.

“Most women like a good weep at the end of a story.”

“I am sure that isn’t true,” Davita replied. “I want everyone to live happily ever after.”

“I know you do, dear,” the Countess said, and her voice was soft. “Perhaps one day you will find happiness.”

“I hope so,” Davita answered. “Papa and Mama were very happy until she died.”

There was a little tremor in her voice because it was always hard for her to speak of her mother, and to think of what had happened when Katie had left her father always upset her.

She did not realise that her eyes were very expressive, and the Countess said quickly:

“Anyway, you have made me happy.”

“Have I really?” Davita asked.

“Very happy,” the Countess replied. “I feel sometimes that you are the daughter I never had.”

Davita gave a little cry of delight.

“You could not say anything which would please me more, because I feel that you are like the Grandmother I never knew. I would have loved to have had a Grandmother!”

“Then that is what I am quite content to be,” the Countess replied.

Davita smiled at her radiantly, but before she could say anything the door opened and Banks came in.

“Now, M’Lady,” she said briskly, “time for your rest, as you well know, and Miss Davita should be outside in the sunshine putting roses into her cheeks.”

Davita laughed.

“If they were there, I am sure they would clash with my hair.”

Banks did not reply but she was obviously suppressing a laugh.

“Before I go out,” Davita said to the Countess, “I intend to choose a book in the Library with a happy ending. That is what we both want to listen to.”

She did not wait for an answer but hurried from the bedroom.

When she had gone, the Countess began to take off her strings of pearls and said:

“That is a very sweet child, Banks. I am so glad she came here.”

“She’s one of the nicest young ladies I’ve ever met, M’Lady,” Banks replied. “None of those other complaining women ever offered to help me as Miss Davita does.”

Running down the stairs, Davita thought with delight that she had nearly an hour and a half to do all the things she wanted to do.

As soon as she had chosen a book in the Library—she was determined she would not read the Countess another unhappy one—she would walk down to the lake, and she wished as she had wished before that her father could watch the trout with her.

‘Perhaps one day I might suggest that I fish for them,’ she told herself.

Then she decided she would not wish to kill anything, not even a trout.

After that she would go to the stables. She drew in her breath with excitement as she remembered that the Countess had offered to give her a new riding-habit. It should be arriving any day now.

Ever since she had come to Sherburn House three weeks ago, every moment had seemed more thrilling than the last.

Davita sometimes thought it was as if she had come home and Sherburn House belonged to her.

Then she knew she felt this because in her dreams she, or her fanciful heroines who were a part of herself, always had a background which only a grand house could provide.

The paintings, the furnishings, the miniatures, the painted ceilings, and the huge State-Rooms were all part of her dreams, and sometimes she wandered through them pretending that she was in fact a Countess of Sherburn, and the history of the family was her history too.

She had seemed to fit in from the very moment she arrived. Not only did she amuse the Countess, but the servants liked her, and, although she was quite unaware of it, everyone treated her as if she were an entrancing child whom they wished to spoil.

“The Chef has made this pudding especially for you,” the Butler would say at luncheon or dinner.

The housemaids would tidy her room and press her dresses and the grooms would keep carrots and apples ready in the stables for her to give to the horses.

“I am so happy,” Davita would say to herself when she went to bed.

In her prayers she would thank God not only that she was happy but that she was safe.

“No-one can find me here,” she would say reassuringly to herself, almost every hour during the first week after she arrived.

Then, because there were so many new things to occupy her mind, she began to forget ab
o
ut Violet and Lord Mundesley and even the Gaiety.

In retrospect it became a dream that had ended in a nightmare, and even her thoughts shied away from recalling the terrible night when she came out of a drugged sleep to find the Marquis on the bed beside her.

The Library of Sherburn House was very impressive, most of the volumes being old and very valuable.

But the Countess’s eldest son, to whom the house belonged, had collected quite a large number of modern books when he was at home, and Davita felt grateful to him for affording her such a choice.

The Countess had had two sons, one of whom had been killed fighting in what she described as “one of Queen Victoria’s little wars.”

The elder, the Earl of Sherburn, was now Governor of Khartoum in the Sudan. Because he was so often abroad, having been Governor in other places before this appointment, he had persuaded his mother to live at Sherburn House and “keep it warm” for him.

“The servants have all been with us for years,” she told Davita. “We really would not know what to do with them if my son closed the house, and quite frankly I am happy to live in what was my home for so many years.”

“It is a very lovely home,” Davita replied, “even though it is a modern building.”

“Built onto an ancient foundation,” the Countess said sharply.

Her eyes were twinkling because the age of Sherburn House was a joke between her and Davita.

Now Davita ran to the far end of the Library where the modern books had been neatly arranged and catalogued by the Curator.

She took one down from a shelf and put it back again.
Then she pulled out another one by Jane Austen, wondering if it would amuse the Countess or if she already knew it too well.

She was turning over the pages when she heard someone come into the Library and thought it must be Mr. Anstruther, the Curator.

She was just going to ask him if the Countess had read
Pride and Prejudice
recently, when she looked round and was suddenly rigid.

It was not Mr. Anstruther who was walking slowly from the doorway towards the mantelpiece, but the Marquis!

For a moment she thought he could not be real and she was imagining him, because he looked just as handsome, imperious, and cynical as he had been in her thoughts.

Then he saw her, and he was obviously as surprised as she was.

After a silence which seemed to last a long time, in a voice that did not sound like her own Davita asked:

“Can you ... are you ... looking for ... me? Why ... are you ... here?”

The Marquis did not reply, he merely walked nearer to her until he was standing facing her.

“I should be asking that question,” he said. “Why are you in the house of my Great-Aunt?”

“Your ... Great-Aunt?”

Davita repeated the words under her breath, and then she said almost frantically:

‘Please ... please do not ... tell her about ... me. If you do, she will ... send me ... away. I am so happy ... here and ... safe. Please ... please!”

Even as she pleaded with him she thought it was useless and she would have to leave. Yet she knew that if he made her go, it would be like being turned out of Paradise.

“I heard you had disappeared,” the Marquis said slowly, “but I certainly did not expect to find you here.”

“Who ... told you I had ... disappeared?”

“
The Prince, as it happens. I am sure your friend Violet was waiting to accept my money on your behalf.”

Davita gave a little cry.

“How could you think ... how could you ... imagine I would ... touch any of your ... money?” she asked passionately. “I swear to you I had no idea what they had ... planned or what they ... intended to do. It was horrible ... degrading! That is why I ran away ... hoping they would never ... find me, and therefore they would not be able to ... to ... blackmail you.”

She said the dreaded word, and added:

“Perhaps ... because I was a ... party to their ... plot, you will ... want to send me to ... prison.”

Now she was trembling. Her eyes as she looked up at the
M
arquis were piteous.

“I think you must be well aware,” he said coldly, “that I have no wish for the Police to be involved in this very reprehensible affair. The Prince discovered you had vanished, and I have not communicated with either Violet Lock or Lord Mundesley since the night of the party.”

“I am glad ... so very glad you did not ... give them any ... money,” Davita whispered. “How did the Prince ... discover I had ... gone?”

“He went to your lodgings to apologise to you, as he had apologised to me, that we should have both been embroiled in anything so unpleasant in his house.”

The Marquis’s voice was hard as he went on: “Mundesley tricked the Prince by pretending it was just a joke that would have no serious repercussions.”

“Lord Mundesley has not ... still got the ... photographs?”

“The Prince took them from him and tore them up,” the Marquis replied.

Davita felt a wave of relief sweep over her that was so intense that she put down the book she was still holding in her hand and steadied herself against a chair.

Then as the Marquis did not speak, she said in a very small, frightened little voice:

“What are ... you going to ... do about ... me?”

“What do you expect me to do?” he enquired.

“I suppose you ... will want me to ... leave,” Davita said dully. “Please ... if so, do not tell your ... Great-Aunt what ... happened.”

“Why should she not know the truth?”

“Because it would upset and shock her, as it ... shocked me.”

“Do you really mind what she thinks?”

“Of course I do!” Davita replied. “She has been so ... kind to me ... so very ... very kind. Only just now she said I was ... like the ... daughter she had ... never ... had.”

As Davita spoke, the tears that had been in her eyes overflowed and ran down her cheeks. She made no effort to wipe them away and merely said in a broken voice:

“
If you will say ... nothing, I will make some ... excuse to explain my ... having to ... leave.”

“What excuse will you give?” the Marquis enquired.

Davita made a helpless little gesture with her hands. “I could say I must go ... back to ... Scotland. But as the Countess knows my home is ... gone, I would have to ... think of something very ... convincing, but I am not ... certain what it ... can be.” Now the tears ran from her cheeks down the front of her gown.

Davita groped for her handkerchief which was concealed in her waistband, and she wiped them away, thinking despairingly as she did so that once again she was alone and frightened.