Love and the Loathsome Leopard (18 page)

In a few seconds he had picked out fifteen of the men he thought most experienced and told them to mount their horses.

The rest, including those who were slightly wounded, were left to guard the prisoners, but he knew there was little risk involved because the wagonette with the Officer in charge would be arriving shortly.

Actually he met them as they rode down the drive towards the village and he stopped just long enough to tell the Officer that the prisoners were to be taken to Chichester, where he thought the Magistrates were less likely to be intimidated than those in the towns on the open coast.

He then set off across country at breakneck speed towards Portsmouth.

As he went, a plan was forming itself in his mind as to what he should do.

At the same time, every nerve in his body cried out for Wivina and for the agony he knew she must be suffering at being the prisoner of Jeffrey Farlow.

He would not contemplate the possibility that he might be too late and would find her already married. If she was, he could only kill the man who had compelled her by force into such a degradation.

Equally, knowing what she felt about him, he was afraid of what horrors Jeffrey Farlow might have inflicted upon her.

Anyone who had served with the loathsome leopard would have known that as he rode ahead of his men, his face grim, his chin set, he was at his most formidable.

It was the way he looked on going into action against the French. There was a sense of power and purpose about him which the men who followed him recognised and which made them confident that whatever he undertook he would be victorious.

It took them under two hours at the speed they were riding to reach Portsmouth, and, as they hurried over the rough cobbled streets, Lord Cheriton turned towards the docks.

As he had hoped, the first ships he saw were two large Revenue Cutters tied up against the quay, and the men moving about amongst the gigs and galleys on their decks, dressed in red flannel shirts and blue trousers, were obviously getting the ships ready to go to sea.

Lord Cheriton was just about to dismount and go aboard when he saw a man standing leaning against a shed, watching the cutters – and at the sight of him his eyes lit up.

It was Captain Osborne, a man he was particularly pleased to see at that very moment.

Even as he rode directly up to him, he saw that just inside the harbour in the deep water there was a warship at anchor.

“Osborne!”

Lord Cheriton’s voice was low but commanding.

Captain Osborne started and looked round in surprise to see who had called him.

“I did not expect to see you here, sir,” he replied in a low voice, obviously keeping Lord Cheriton’s identity secret as he had been told to do.

“I need you,” Lord Cheriton said briefly. “What is that warship?”

“She is the
H.M.S.
Valiant
, sir, and she arrived in Port this morning.”

“Have you any idea where her Captain is?”

“As it happens, I have just seen him come ashore. I think he is with the Harbour Master.”

“Then get hold of the Officers in charge of the Revenue Cutters and bring them there immediately. Tell them they are required on important business, with direct orders from the Prime Minister.”

“Very good, sir.”

Captain Osborne ran across the quay towards the cutters while Lord Cheriton rode on to the Harbour Master’s office.

He was so precise and authoritative in his orders that in under an hour all three vessels had put to sea, Lord Cheriton sailing in
H.M.S.
Valiant,
the soldiers under the command of Captain Osborne divided between the two cutters whose Commanders had, once they knew what was required of them, recruited a number of other men to sail with them.

The cutters from the Customs Service, being required to stay at the sea for long periods in all types of weather, had to be more stoutly built than the smugglers’ vessels that could choose the time and the weather for their short runs.

They were therefore craft of low free-board and great depth of keel with enormous sail area for their size.

The higher deck levels were made up of bulwarks pierced for guns and Lord Cheriton knew that in a fight they could overpower by sheer weight the lighter luggers and other craft of the smugglers.

To have found the warship also in Port was a piece of good fortune he had not dared anticipate, and the Captain of the
Valiant
was a young, enthusiastic man who, once he knew what was at stake, was as keen as Lord Cheriton himself to get to grips with those who had bled Britain of her valuable gold all through the war.

“Vermin – that’s what they are, my Lord, the whole lot of them!” he said to Lord Cheriton as he stood beside him on the bridge. “Cut-throats and murderers! I’m glad the Prime Minister has realised that something has to be done about such scum!”

“I have half the Larkswell gang in custody, at any rate,” Lord Cheriton said.

He spoke automatically because his thoughts were on Wivina.

How could he feel that anything mattered unless he could save her, he asked himself.

His whole life had been devoted to the duty of soldiering and yet now there was not the excitement that he usually felt when going into battle, simply because all that really concerned him was to rescue one slight, helpless woman from the clutches of a villain.

‘I had no idea that I could feel like this,’ he thought to himself, as the ache in his heart became an agonising pain.

He had known Wivina for such a short while, but in actual fact he thought she had always been there in his mind and his imagination.

When other men had talked of their amatory conquests, he had remained silent, knowing that the women who had surrendered themselves to him had been of no real consequence in his life and were easily dispensable.

Wivina was different.

He had known the moment he saw her standing in the window, the sun on her hair and the flowers in her arms, that she was the embodiment of everything that was beautiful and sacred, everything that his mother had meant to him when he was a child, and very much more besides.

That he should have found her in the house he hated and which was haunted, or so he had thought, by the memory of his father seemed somehow incredible.

Yet Wivina had swept away the ghosts and the dark shadows of the past and he had slept peacefully in his father’s bed without even remembering how much he had suffered at a tyrant’s hands.

However, it was not the past that concerned him now, it was the future – a future which without Wivina would seem empty and pointless.

He had so often wondered what he would do after the war and what he would find to occupy his mind after so many years of active soldiering, but now he knew exactly what he wanted, as long as he could have Wivina.

The wind was North-West, which was exactly what they needed to reach Roscoff in record time, and, as the three ships seemed to skim over the sea, Lord Cheriton felt that he was leading an Armada that was one of both vengeance and hope.

Vengeance on the men who had disgraced the name of their country and played traitor to those who were fighting for her, and hope that he would find Wivina alive.

He was sure that when it came to the point she would die rather than submit to the degradation and horror of Jeffrey Farlow’s advances, and he could only pray, as he had not prayed since he was a child, that God would permit him to be in time.

He was well aware that he was twenty-four hours behind the boat which had carried Wivina and Richard across the Channel.

In twenty-four hours a great deal could happen, and, as he thought of it, Lord Cheriton clenched his fists and his face was so stern and grim that the Captain of the
Valiant
looked at him in surprise.

“We’ll teach them a lesson, my Lord, have no fear of that!” he said.

But Lord Cheriton did not answer him.

They came into Roscoff just as dawn was breaking, and as they saw the lights in the houses and buildings clustered round the port, Lord Cheriton made ready to step ashore.

The two Revenue Cutters went ahead and sailed right into the harbour, making for the quay nearest to the warehouses, while the warship could only just get inside the outer boom.

She hove to, and as the anchor-chain ran out, the guns were hauled into position and, as the Captain and Lord Cheriton had arranged, were aimed at the warehouses.

Before they could be fired and before the Revenue Cutters had reached the side of the quay, Lord Cheriton was already in a boat that had been lowered over the side of the
Valiant
, and he stepped ashore at the end of the jetty.

With pistol in hand, he started to move quickly over the rough stones towards the street.

He considered it likely that Wivina would have been conveyed to Tom Johnson’s house, but he had no idea where it was.

He thought he would look first for Jeffrey Farlow in the warehouses, and having found him would throttle the information out of him as to where he had put Wivina.

Then, as he reached the end of the jetty and the beginning of the street which lay to the right of the warehouses, he saw Jeffrey Farlow come out of a door at the far end of it, holding a pistol in his hand.

He was some distance away, but there was no mistaking his flamboyant clothes and his hat set on the side of his head in a rakish manner, which Lord Cheriton remembered well.

He drew nearer, and as he did so, Jeffrey Farlow, who had been staring at the warship and the damage its guns were doing to the warehouses, saw him.

He raised his pistol to fire, but Lord Cheriton was faster, and with the aim of an expert marksman, he shot him dead.

It took him only a moment to reach the fallen man’s side.

Then, as he looked down at him, realising it was too late now to demand to be told where Wivina was hidden, he saw her, her white frightened face and wide eyes looking at him from the window above.

A few seconds later she was in his arms.

She met him at the top of the stairs and he pulled her close to him.

As he did so, she burst into tears.

“Oh, leopard – leopard!” she sobbed. “I prayed that you would – save me – ”

“You are safe, my darling,” he answered.

*

Wivina sat in the Captain’s cabin on the
Valiant
and waited.

It seemed to her that she had been waiting for a very long time, but there was only one person she wished to see, one person she longed to be with.

A steward had brought her coffee and food, and because she had no wish to disappoint him, she tried to swallow what he put in front of her, although she had no idea what it was.

Even now she could not believe that the nightmare was over and she need no longer be afraid.

Lord Cheriton had taken her aboard the ship, then had gone back to superintend the chaos that was taking place in Roscoff.

The fire from the guns of the
Valiant
had set two warehouses blazing with an almost intolerable heat once the kegs of brandy had been set alight.

The smugglers had tried to fight off the invaders, but they were taken by surprise and most of them had been captured before they even had time to pull their pistols out of their waist-bands.

Only a few had escaped, and Lord Cheriton was to be glad later when he learnt that eight of the younger men from Larkswell had taken a boat belonging to another gang and in the confusion had rowed away, without being seen, keeping close to the coast until they were clear of the Port.

The rest, sixty to seventy in all, were being put in chains and taken aboard the Revenue Cutters.

While Wivina was waiting for him, Lord Cheriton was in fact making a search of the whole village for Tom Johnson.

But as soon as he had heard the firing, he must have slipped away, and the only person they found in his house was a woman who swore at the men who questioned her and who tried to scratch their faces when they searched unavailingly for its owner.

As the last smuggler was taken into custody and the flames of the warehouses vied with the rising sun, Lord Cheriton gave up the search for Tom Johnson and knew that in this particular mission, at any rate, he had failed.

He was sorry, but, at the same time, nothing mattered except that he had found Wivina and she was safe.

He knew how frightened she had been from the way she had trembled against him and from the tears she had shed against his shoulder.

He told himself it would soon all be an ugly dream which she would forget in the happiness they would find together.

He put his pistol away and walked down the jetty to where the boat was waiting to take him back to the
Valiant.

As he stepped aboard, he saw Richard, accompanied by two midshipmen exploring the ship with an expression of delight on his face.

Wivina had already told Lord Cheriton how Richard had done his best to protect her, and there was a red mark on his face which would soon turn black and blue.

‘The boy is made of the right stuff,’ Lord Cheriton thought.

He would not only send him to Oxford, he decided, but he would also arrange for a first class Surgeon to examine him to see whether his leg could be reset so that he would no longer walk with a limp.

Then with a smile on his lips, his thoughts only of Wivina, he walked towards the Captain’s cabin.

She was standing at the porthole, looking out, the sun turning her hair to a golden halo as it had been the first time he had seen her.

She did not hear him open the door and for a moment he stood looking at her.

She was, he thought, the embodiment of everything he had ever wished for and never dreamt might one day be his.

Then, as if she knew instinctively that he was there, she turned and he saw her eyes light up with an incredible radiance, as with a little cry of joy she ran towards him.

He put his arms round her and she whispered:

“I was – so afraid – you were so long – I thought something might have – happened to you.”