Hiding from Love (6 page)

He brought out his pipe, caught her eye and gave yet another of his winks.

“No more worries about
your
future!” he muttered.

Leonora straightened up on her stool.

“I don't consider my future a worry.  I shall return to Fenfold and continue with my education.  When I leave, I hope to find employment as a Governess.”

Mr. Schilling lit his pipe.

“You can forget about Fenfold.  I'm not paying for you to return there.”

“I don't expect you to.  Mama has kindly offered to pay the fees.”

“Oh, has she?”

Mr. Schilling took a deep draw on his pipe and let out a trail of smoke before replying,

“And where, pray, will she find the money?”

Mama stared at him.

“Why, I have been saving up the dividend from my late husband's bond.  So there's a small amount there and I shall now sell the bond and capitalise on its full value.”

Mr. Schilling gave a strange smile.

“Can't sell what you don't have,” he remarked.

“D-don't have?”

Mr. Schilling pointed his pipe at her.

“It's just like this, you see.  Once a woman marries, what's hers is her husband's.  Surely you know that?”

“The issue n-never arose b-between us – ”

Leonora was watching Mr. Schilling.

“Why don't you get to the point, sir?”

He took another puff on his pipe.

“I took the liberty of selling that bond, as was my right,” he responded with ill-concealed relish.

“I spent so much renovating this cottage, I needed some funds to invest in new investments.  And so there you have it, Mrs. Schilling.  You no longer have any money, so Leonora can't go back to school and there's an end of it.”

“H-how could you do t-this to me – to us?”

Mama dropped her head to her breast and began to weep silently.

Leonora felt as if all the breath had been knocked out of her body.

She had guessed that her stepfather was a fortune-hunter as well as an opportunist – but that he also more or less amounted to a thief was too much to bear.

She took her mother's hand in hers.

“Don't cry.  It'll work out for the best, I'm sure, Mama.”

Mr. Schilling laughed and waved his pipe at her.

“And that's where you're correct for once, missy.  You can tell your mother that there's no need to take on so.  Not when she's got a fortune sitting right here at her knee.”

Leonora's fingers tightened on Mama's hand, while she looked up slowly and fearfully.

“W-what do you – mean, Mr. Schilling?”

“I mean just this, Mrs. Schilling.  Those clothes that were sent to your daughter have a purpose.  They're for her entrance into Society.”

Leonora could not believe her ears.

“Do you mean that
I
am the ‘investment' you have spent my mother's money on?”

“Sending you to Fenfold was an investment, wasn't it?  Well, I reckon I've found a better one, though for your information the money for those clothes didn't come out of my purse – or your mothers.  I had some other projects I wanted to invest in.”

Leonora and her mother stared at him blankly.

“Then just who – who paid for the clothes?” asked Mama in a low voice.

Mr. Schilling leaned back in his chair and surveyed his wife and stepdaughter with satisfaction.

“Her
fiancé
did,” he replied.

Leonora paled.

“My f-fiancé?  I haven't got a
fiancé
!”

“You have now!  And he's as rich as Croesus!”

“Explain yourself,” demanded Mama.

“Yes,” echoed Leonora.  “Explain yourself – sir.”

“With great pleasure, ladies.  One of my colleagues in Bristol invited me to his Club for a game of cards.

“We'd just taken a refreshment break when I was approached by a certain Lord Merton.  He has been living abroad for some years, but he recently returned to England to find himself a young wife.  He knew about my pretty stepdaughter and thought she was the ideal candidate.”

“But – this Lord Merton has never even seen me!” cried Leonora in utter bewilderment.

“Oh, yes, indeed he has,” returned her stepfather in a triumphant tone.

“Twice!  Once when his carriage ran through a puddle and splashed your gown and once when you were helping out at Broughton Hall.”

Leonora's head swam.

The masked gentleman
!

She had surely wished he might come for her, but could she ever have imagined that it would be in such an underhand way – to approach her stepfather over a game of cards in an inferior gentleman's Club that reeked of stale tobacco smoke and dirty ale glasses!

“I would have pressed for good terms, of course,” continued Mr. Schilling.  “But since he offered me a very lucrative business deal if I brokered the match, I shook on it there and then.”

Leonora gasped loudly, her disillusion complete.

“You and he –
shook
on it?  As if I was a horse or a mule or a bale of hay?”

Mama gave a low moan.

“You have sold her, Mr. Schilling!  
Sold her
!”

He looked surly.

“Now don't you two give me any trouble.  I've done the best that could be done for Leonora.  How else is she going to get a husband of worth?”

Leonora leapt up passionately from her stool.

“I don't consider a man who
barters
for a wife to be a man of worth!” she cried.  “I don't consider any man
you
choose for me to be a man of worth!”

The mask was stripped from her gentleman's face and what she saw in her mind's eye was an expression as greedy, cynical and immoral as her stepfather himself.

Mr. Schilling spluttered and rose to his feet.

“What else is there for you, eh?  Being a skivvy at the big house, invited to put on an apron and wash dishes?  You fouled up your relationship with your aunt and ended up left out of her will.  You're not going to foul up this arrangement.  You're going to do what's good for you and, more to the point, what's good for
me
!”

“I would rather die than marry a man I could not love,” cried Leonora.  “And there's one thing I'm sure of.  I could never, never love a man of
your
choosing.”

“Why you, you ungrateful little madam!” he roared.  “You'll do as I say or you both can go to the dogs.”

Mama from her chair caught at his arm.

“P-please, Mr. Schilling, d-don't threaten so.”

He threw off her hand and brought his face so close to Leonora's that she could smell the tobacco on his breath.

“I agreed with Lord Merton that you'll marry him next week and that's what you're going to do.”

Leonora lifted her chin defiantly.

“
Never
!  Never!”

Provoked beyond control, Mr. Schilling drew his lips back in a snarl and raised his hand as if to strike Leonora across her cheek.

Before any blow could fall, Mama rose with a cry from her chair.

“Mr. Schilling!  This I cannot permit.  Lay a finger on my daughter – and I shall – order you from my house.”

Mr. Schilling rounded on his wife in fury.

“
Your
house?  You forget.  You're married to me so it's
my
house now.  Obstruct me and it's
you
who will be ordered out!”

Blood drained from Mama's face.  She staggered back and fell in a dead faint to the floor.

*

Leonora scrutinised the doctor's face anxiously as he emerged from her mother's room.

“H-how is she?” she asked fearfully.

The doctor hesitated.

“Miss Cressy, your mother's heart is weakened, she needs peace, rest and freedom from strife of any kind.”

“I see,” mumbled Leonora faintly.

The doctor patted her arm kindly.

“So you see, it is up to you and your stepfather to help her recover.”

Leonora bit her tongue from replying.

She was convinced that it was the strain of being married to Mr. Schilling that had made her mother ill in the first place.  It was not
possible
for her to recover under his ministrations.

Not that Leonora harboured any illusions as to the likelihood of Mr. Schilling helping to nurse his wife.  He had shown so little concern except to mutter complaints at now being saddled with an invalid as well as a fool.

And he had not relinquished his determination to make Leonora marry Lord Merton.

Leonora watched the doctor descend the stairs and then turned and went in to her mother.

Mama's eyes fluttered open as Leonora approached the bed and she noticed that her mother's cheeks were wet.

“God, Leonora. I am so, so sorry.”

“Sorry, Mama?”

“If I had not married that man.”  Mama began to grow agitated.  “I thought to better our situation, but I – ”

“Hush, Mama, hush.”

Leonora knelt down by the bed and reached for her mother's hand.  At her touch, Mama grew calm.  Her eyes closed again and she slept.

She needed to get her away from Schilling House.

But how?

Aunt Doris might have offered sanctuary, but she was dead and her nephew by marriage had not even troubled to reply to Leonora's letter of condolence.

Even after she had tiptoed away quietly to her own room, Leonora still wrestled with the problem.

If only she could talk to Isobel, the one friend in the world she could divulge her plight to, but Isobel was now far away in Brazil.

She had only recently received a letter from her.

Isobel had written that a wealthy family in Rio were seeking an English Governess.  If only, she added wistfully, Leonora could take up the employment.

Leonora sighed as Brazil was the other side of the world and she feared that she would never see Isobel again.

She climbed into bed and lay staring at the ceiling.

She knew that this time was when she was at her most vulnerable.  This was when the image of the masked gentleman and the memory of how it had felt to be in his arms would come to torment her.

Since she had discovered his true nature, however, she felt even more determined to dispel him from her mind.

*

During the next couple of days Leonora contrived to keep out of Mr. Schilling's way.  She spent much of her time at her mother's bedside, wracking her brains as to how she might affect her Mama's escape.

It was Mama herself who came up with the answer.

In a melancholy mood she now asked Leonora to go through her personal possessions.

“In case I – don't recover,” she explained.

“Don't be silly, of course you are going to recover.”

Mama persisted,

“My jewellery is in that box.  I don't want it to be appropriated by anyone else.  I want you to take them now and hide them.  There is a lovely ruby ring that was given to me by my dear friend Phyllis.”

Leonora gave a start.

Phyllis.  
Of course!

“Mama,” she ventured.  “Do you happen to know where Phyllis is now?”

“I think she is living somewhere in Norfolk, on the coast, I have heard.”

“
Where
on the coast?” persisted Leonora.

Mama looked troubled.

“Well, my dear, I-I don't rightly know.  She was brought up in Cromer.  She might have returned there.”

Leonora thought this was as good a guess as any.

Later that day she sat down to compose a letter to Phyllis Godwin, care of the Post Office, Cromer.  Someone at the Post Office may know of her, surely?

She had just sealed the envelope and sent Finny off to post it in the village when she heard the sound of hooves on the road beyond her window.

Thinking it might be the doctor calling in to see her mother, she hurried to greet him.

She stopped in her tracks at the top of the stairs. In the absence of Finny, Mr. Schilling had answered the door.

“Lord Merton, what a pleasure!” she heard him say.

She sank down and peered through the banisters.

She could make out a tall figure in a green velvet coat turned away from her, his head slightly inclined as he conversed with Mr. Schilling.

It was he –
her masked gentleman
!

She gazed down at his head and her lip curled.

Some of his hair was
grey
!

She frowned to herself. Not only was Lord Merton importunate and presumptuous, he was also obviously far too old for her.  He must be
at least
thirty!

She slipped back to her mother's room.

When Mr. Schilling appeared, as she knew he would, and invited her in whispered tones to come to the parlour to meet a visitor, she refused.

She said she well knew who the visitor was and she had nothing of any interest to say to him.  Besides, she was unable to leave her mother's side while she was so ill – as a gentleman like Lord Merton would surely understand!

Outmanoeuvred, Mr. Schilling withdrew in a huff and shortly Leonora heard Lord Merton mount his horse and ride away.  She would not let herself go to the window to watch his departure.

When Finny returned, he reported that a fellow on a horse had lifted his hat to him as he passed by.

“Did you see the gentleman's face, then?”

Finny shook his head.

“Not really, miss.  I was thinkin' I liked his hat.”

Leonora gave a shrug.

What did it matter?

She did not care what Lord Merton looked like anyway.

*

A reply arrived from Cromer.

Phyllis wrote that she would be only too delighted to offer Mama refuge.  Sadly she could not extend hospitality to Leonora as well as the house she lived in was too small.