Lucky Logan Finds Love (12 page)

Then he would have found himself a prisoner in the carriage that was waiting for him outside.

Slowly the Englishman took a step forward into the room.

Marcus Logan, who was standing behind the door, did not move.

It was with the greatest difficulty that Belinda did not scream at him.

She could not understand why he was letting the man get so far.

The Englishman reached the bed and looked down at what looked like a body under the bedclothes.

It was then that the heavy brass top of the poker caught him a violent blow on the back of his head. The big man fell forward without a sound.

Even as he did so, Marcus Logan swept round the open door and punched the Russian with all his strength.

He struck him violently on the point of his chin with the expertise of a pugilist.

It sent the man crashing onto the floor, completely unconscious.

Throwing aside the poker, Marcus Logan pulled the hands of the unconscious Englishman behind his back.

“Quickly!” he called to Belinda. “The ropes that pull back the window curtains!”

She ran to the window to obey him and handed him first one rope and then another.

He tied the hands of the Englishman together behind his back, then his ankles.

He then turned to the Russian.

Belinda took the ropes from the bed curtains, which, like those from the window, were of heavy velvet.

Having secured the two men, Lord Logan went to one of the drawers.

He took out two linen handkerchiefs and gagged them both.

As he finished tying a knot behind the Russian’s head, he said,

“This will prevent them from making a noise and upsetting my mother.”

“There are – two more,” Belinda now told him, “waiting outside the – library window with a – carriage they – intended to take – you away in.”

Marcus Logan looked at her and smiled.

“Thank you,” he murmured. “I will see to them and I will also have these unpleasant characters removed.”

As he spoke, he pulled violently on the bell pull beside his bed.

Belinda knew he was ringing for his valet, and, as if to confirm it, Marcus Logan added,

“Grover and I will cope with everything and, as I do not want you to be involved in this mess, I suggest you go to bed now, before he appears.”

Belinda looked up at him.

“You were – marvellous!” she sighed. “But you are – quite certain that – the others will not – hurt you?”

“Quite certain!” Marcus Logan replied. “And thank you, Miss Brown, for saving my life!”

As if he knew she was reluctant to leave him, he took her by the arm.

He drew her out of the room and down the corridor.

He opened the door of her bedroom and said,

“Go to sleep now, and I promise you nothing will happen that you need worry about.”

Belinda looked up at him.

“Please – be – careful!” she whispered.

“I promise you I will be,” Marcus Logan replied.

He looked into her eyes and saw the anxiety in them by the light coming from candles in the corridor.

Then he bent his head and kissed her.

For a moment Belinda could hardly believe it was happening.

Then, as she felt the pressure of his lips, the moonlight seemed to strike through her breasts.

Feelings she had never known before vibrated within her whole body.

The terror that had been within her vanished and became a wild rapture.

Marcus Logan’s arms tightened.

His lips became more demanding, more possessive.

Then, as Belinda felt the world move dizzily around her, she was free.

“Go to bed!” Marcus Logan said in a deep voice. “We will talk about all this tomorrow.”

He pushed her gently into the room and closed the door behind him.

She could hear his feet running down the corridor.

She groped her way in the darkness towards the bed.

She found it and lay down without taking off her dressing gown.

As she did so, she knew she had fallen in love.

It was incredible,
unbelievable
!

While it was something she had often thought about and dreamt about, she had never imagined it would be what she was feeling now.

“I
love
– him!” she whispered in the darkness.

She knew that even as the words moved on her lips, it was hopeless.

Marcus Logan was as far out of reach as the stars in the sky.

“I love him!
I love him!”
she whispered again.

She knew it was the perfect love that she had read about in books, but for her there could be no happy ending.

Belinda awoke and looked at the clock beside her bed.

She felt it could not be true.

It was nearly eleven o’clock and no one had woken her.

She rang the bell and, when the maid appeared, she asked her incredulously,

“Is the clock wrong or is it really nearly eleven o’clock?”

“It’s all right, miss,” the maid said. “His Lordship told me you weren’t to be called, but allowed to sleep on till you woke.”

Belinda felt herself relax.

“And her Ladyship?”

“Her Ladyship woke early and said goodbye to ’is Lordship and went to sleep again. Her won’t want to see you, miss, till lunchtime.”

The maid went from the room.

Belinda wondered whether she should ask if anything strange had happened during the night.

Then she told herself that Marcus Logan and his valet would have dealt with the men outside the house.

They would have carried the two who were unconscious downstairs and none of the other servants would have been aware of it.

One thing he would want to avoid would be a scandal of any sort.

At the same time, she could not help feeling anxious.

Perhaps the men who were waiting with the carriage had attacked him.

She found herself thinking of him all the time she was waiting for her breakfast.

When it arrived, she enquired tentatively,

“Did his Lordship leave early – this morning – as he intended?”

“Of course!” the maid said with a surprised note in her voice. “His Lordship be always on time and ’e hurried away soon as ’e’d finished breakfast.”

He was safe.

He had not been harmed and in some magical way of his own he had coped with the whole unpleasant episode.

‘I saved him!’ Belinda thought triumphantly.

She felt a warm glow of satisfaction.

If she had not heard the men trying to break into the library, he would have been spirited away by the Russian and his English accomplices.

After that, it was probable that he would never have been seen again.

‘How can such – terrible things – happen?’ she asked herself and she knew the answer.

It was because everybody all over the world was greedy for money.

Like her stepfather, some of them were prepared to do anything in order to have it.

She felt both embarrassed and ashamed of deceiving Lady Logan as well as her son.

However, she reasoned, if she had not been there, he would now be a victim of the Russian.

The maid brought her some hot water and then she dressed.

She went downstairs to wait for her employer to join her.

Lady Logan came down looking, Belinda thought, a little tired.

“I am late today,” she admitted when she had greeted Belinda, “but I did not sleep well. I think it is excitement at seeing my son. As you know, I cannot help worrying when he is away for so long.”

“Of course you worry, my Lady, but now he is home, you must try to persuade him to stay in England for a long time.”

Lady Logan sighed.

“That is what I want to do, but it is difficult – very difficult!”

She did not say any more and they walked into the dining room.

It was a small luncheon, but a delicious one.

Belinda talked because she did not want to think.

She was aware that every nerve in her body was waiting for the moment when Marcus Logan returned.

Even to think of the way he had kissed her made her thrill.

She tried to tell herself sensibly that it was just because he was grateful to her for saving his life – any man would have kissed a woman in the same circumstances.

After luncheon Lady Logan said she was going to lie down, as she always did.

“I want to feel fresh and well for Marcus when he comes home,” she explained as they went from the dining room. “But if you will come upstairs with me, I will show you the other presents he has brought me. They are very unusual.”

“I would love to see them!” Belinda smiled.

They went into Lady Logan’s bedroom which was arranged so that, with the exception of the bed, it looked just like a sitting room.

On a small table a variety of objects were arranged.

As Lady Logan walked towards it, she sighed,

“Marcus always brings me such original presents. I think these are even more intriguing than any I have had so far.”

She picked up a snuffbox that Belinda felt certain was Russian. The lid held a picture of a handsome man who she thought would be one of the Czars. The box, which was made of gold, was decorated with emeralds and diamonds.

“It’s so lovely!” she exclaimed, as she turned it over in her hands.

“That is what I think,” Lady Logan agreed. “And here is another icon, though not as pretty as the one I showed you last night.”

The picture depicting the Virgin and Child was not so well painted and the frame was carved instead of being decorated with jewels.

“Marcus said,” Lady Logan went on, “that in the place he just came from, the people had little to sell except for their carvings and this is characteristic of their work.”

She put something into Belinda’s hands as she spoke.

Belinda, however, was still looking at the icon.

She put it down and then looked at what she was now holding and was very still.

What Lady Logan had given her was a tiger carved very skilfully in wood.

The tiger was snarling and the teeth were cleverly worked. It was painted and it looked different from the usual carving of wild animals done by primitive people.

Belinda did not speak.

She was just staring at it and, as she did so, she knew unmistakably the answer to where Marcus Logan had been.

Among her father’s possessions at home on a shelf were souvenirs he had brought back from his travels.

He had, when she was quite small, given Belinda a carved tiger to play with.

It was identical in every detail to the one she was now holding in her hands.

She could remember that when she was older her father had told her it had come from Zenjira.

“It is a very small country,” he had told her, “on the West of Turkestan and just North of Afghanistan.”

“And what is Zenjira like, Papa?” Belinda had asked him.

“I found the inhabitants interesting,” her father answered, “because the people came from Turkestan, the Volga basin, South Russia and even the Southern part of Siberia.”

Belinda remembered that she had laughed.

“And do they speak all those languages, Papa?”

“They have a language of their own,” her father answered, “which you will find described in one of my books. It is a mixture of all the languages of all the people who have settled in Zenjira. They are determined to preserve their independence and to resist the menace of Russia, who is always trying to aggressively expand her boundaries.”

As the conversation came back into Belinda’s mind, she knew exactly why Marcus Logan had gone to Zenjira. He had undoubtedly found some natural resource there which would make them prosperous.

Belinda put the tiger back on the table.

She knew that having discovered the information her stepfather needed, she must leave immediately.

Lady Logan’s maid was there to help her Mistress prepare for her rest on the sofa.

“I am not going to undress, since I got up so late,’ Lady Logan said, “but I will be down at teatime, when I expect my son will have returned.”

“That is when he said he would be back,” Belinda concurred.

She went to her own room.

Shutting the door behind her, she put her hands up to her eyes.

She was trying to think, trying to decide what she should do.

She realised that speed was important.

Marcus Logan would have gone to the City and she must inform her stepfather that she knew in which country he had been prospecting. D’Arcy Rowland had told her she was to leave at once without taking her luggage or anything else with her.

The Hackney carriage would be outside.

But Belinda knew that she could not go in such a way.

Lady Logan would worry as to what had happened to her.

Marcus Logan had taken a great deal of trouble to keep her unaware of what had happened last night.

Belinda locked her door.

She fetched her trunk from where it had been placed in a cupboard and threw into it everything she had brought with her.

She did not bother to fold her gowns, but just pushed them into the trunk.

On top she put her brushes, her shoes, and everything else.

She put on her hat and picked up her handbag which contained no money.

She ran down the stairs.

Going into the room beside the front door, she sat down at a desk that boasted a large golden inkpot.

There was also some writing paper engraved with the name of the house.

Quickly she scribbled a note to Lady Logan,

“I deeply regret, my Lady, that I have to leave immediately, as I have have received bad news from my home. Please forgive me for departing in such a way and thank you for all your kindness.

I shall always remember how happy I have been with you in this beautiful house.

I remain,

Yours sincerely,

Belinda Brown.”

She almost wrote Wyncombe’ by mistake, but there was no time to write the note again. She merely changed the W into a B.

She addressed an envelope to Lady Logan and went out into the hall.

There were two footmen on duty.

She guessed that the butler, who might have been curious had he been there, would be resting after serving the luncheon.