The Sleeping Sword (71 page)

‘This is not a good train,' my grandfather said. ‘You will have to change at Leeds and there might be a long wait. Now take care, lass—' And it was as I began to reassure him of my ability to travel alone, my understanding of the dangers of rape and kidnap to a life of sexual slavery in a warmer clime—although I did not use these words—that Gideon Chard came striding along the platform, a leather document case under one arm, a newspaper under the other, and, raising his hat to me with an automatic gesture, got into a compartment as far away from mine as he could.

‘Now what the devil—?' my grandfather began, for no matter how deep a grudge Gideon might bear the
Star
it was discourteous, it was ungentlemanly, it was downright peculiar of any man to refuse his company and his protection on this hazardous Scarborough to Cullingford line to any lady of his acquaintance —unheard of, if she happened to be a relation.

‘Grace, lass, what
is
all this?' But doors were slamming now, the train getting ready to pull out of the station, I was already on board, and there was nothing to do but stand at the window and wave to him, and then, feeling considerably shaken, to sit down and defend myself against the curiosity of my two elderly travelling companions by closing my eyes.

I had thought, in that first numbing moment of recognition, that he had come to meet the train, not travel on it, and I spent the first thirty or forty miles telling myself the many reasons he might have for doing so. The festivities, as such, were over now. A special train would be waiting that afternoon to convey his employees back to Cullingford, suitably provisioned with those luxurious little hampers of chicken and champagne, but few if any of the Barforths would be on it.

Uncle Blaize and Aunt Faith were to stay in Scarborough for the rest of the week and perhaps another with Lady Verity, who wished to bask for as long as possible in the renewed friendship of her sons. Blanche and Noel would not be leaving until Wednesday, perhaps longer if the weather should hold, and Gervase had declared himself in no hurry to get away. I had not been informed of Aunt Caroline's plans but it seemed unlikely that she would neglect this opportunity of persuading her brother to finalize the transfer of Tarn Edge to Gideon and might well stay at the Grand with Miss Madeley-Brown in tow until she had. And in that case it was not surprising that Gideon, who would have appointments tomorrow morning, should wish to avoid the special train, preferring to travel alone with his newspaper and his documents than in the effusive company of his managers'wives.

He could not have known I would be here. I had not known myself until last night and had told no one. He had been as shocked to see me as I was on seeing him, yet what real difference could it make? I would not have stayed in Scarborough even had I known he meant to leave it. What I needed was to return to my own home, my own atmosphere, my own life, and his presence, although awkward, could not hinder me in that. Yet throughout that hot, tedious journey I spoke not a word to those kind, well-meaning ladies, who whenever I closed my eyes began at once to tell each other how ill I looked, how pale; and by the time we arrived in Leeds I could not deny that I was feeling wretched indeed.

The station was busy enough, I suppose, and people who wish to avoid each other can usually manage to do so. I remained in my compartment until he had passed the window, walked slowly down the platform, giving him time to get far away with his long strides, and went at once to the waiting-room reserved for ladies. A half-hour passed—a dreadful half-hour—before I got up and went to find the Cullingford train, hoping that he was staying in Leeds or going to London, anywhere, since the small station-yard at Cullingford would be difficult; but he was there, as far down the platform as he could get, irritably pacing, irritably smoking—he was there—and it was then, in that moment of distraction, that something struck hard against the backs of my knees, and aware of wheels and shouts and, oddly, the shapes of boxes, cages, canvas, I realized to my complete horror that I was falling down.

I know what happened only because other people were there to tell me so, a great many of them, it seemed, in those first dizzy moments of returning consciousness, bending over me and arguing quite ferociously with one another as to whether the porter who had run into me with that trolley of bags and baggage had been drunk or just malicious, or whether
I
had been drunk or deaf or just plain slow-witted not to have got myself out of his way. But although I had certainly not been drunk a moment ago, I felt very drunk now, helpless and incapable and bewildered, and very willing to abandon myself to Gideon when he parted the crowd, helped me to my feet and then, when I found I could not stand erect, picked me up and carried me somewhere or other—did it matter where?—to remove my shoe and give orders that something was to be done about my ankle, which was swelling.

A capable-looking woman bathed my foot in cold water and applied a bandage, while I drank the brandy Gideon had sent for—all of it, every drop—although it made my head no clearer. And realizing dimly but with a weak inclination for laughter that he had obliged them to hold up the train, I allowed him, with complete docility, to lift me into the compartment of his choice and to place me exactly to his liking, my back supported by the pillows he had by some means acquired.

I was suffering, perhaps, from a slight concussion, certainly from a sprained ankle and a drop more brandy than I was used to at this hour of the day, and as the train began to ease its way out of the station—Gideon, no doubt, having told the driver to go slow and be damned to anybody who might be in a hurry—I began to wonder why I did not feel more ashamed.

‘Heavens, Gideon, what a ridiculous thing!'

‘Accidents happen.'

‘Oh—my bag—'

‘There, in the corner.'

‘Yes—oh lord, where
is
my hat?' For I had just realized it was not on my head.

‘Ruined, I'm afraid. The railway company will buy you another.'

‘Oh—
damnation
!'

‘What is it now?'

‘I don't know—I just feel so—'

‘Don't feel anything. Just be glad you were not alone.'

I drifted then, partly because it was easier to drift placidly, docilely, spinelessly, easier just for a little while to leave everything to him, to let him decide—since he so much enjoyed deciding—than to gather my cloudy wits together and decide for myself. And when I recovered sufficiently not merely to wonder where I was but to care what I was doing there, we were approaching Cullingford.

‘Will there be anyone to meet you, Grace?'

‘No. I am not expected until tomorrow.'

‘Then I will take you—'; and I allowed myself, like a dreaming child, to be ‘taken'in his carriage to a destination he did not name but which I knew, quite soon, must be Tarn Edge.

The butler, whose extreme elegance had long been the talk of Cullingford, greeted us without the faintest hint of surprise, as if he was accustomed to see his employer arriving home every day of the week with a bareheaded, bedraggled and probably slightly tipsy woman in his arms.

‘Sandwiches and coffee in the drawing-room, Sherston, and a bottle of Chablis if you have one chilled.'

‘Certainly, sir.'

‘And Mrs. Barforth, I imagine, will first wish to attend to her dress.'

‘Certainly—at once, sir.'

Two parlourmaids and a housekeeper with the bearing of a dowager duchess assisted me to a dressing-room, brought me hot water and warm towels, combs and brushes, and then returned me, no longer quite so bemused although still dangerously passive, to the armchair their master indicated. The drawing-room was cool and fragrant, a haven from the heat and dust of the long day, roses and carnations standing in very professional arrangements in silver-rimmed bowls of exquisitely cut crystal I had not seen before. Two nymphs in white biscuit porcelain, a foot high, were poised in graceful flight at each side of the hearth, more nymphs in costly groupings by Sèvres on the mantelshelf above them, the mirror I remembered replaced now by the portrait of a dark-eyed, curly-haired lady clad in the scanty muslin draperies of the Regency, unmistakably a Chard.

The sandwiches, when they came, were of smoked salmon very daintily garnished, the wine ice cold in its long, fluted glasses, delighting my tongue and rising at once to join the pleasant confusion in my brain.

‘Well, I wanted you weak and helpless, Grace,' he said, raising his glass to me. ‘And now I have you.'

‘Yes.' Not for long, of course, but for the moment I had, not surrendered precisely, but certainly ceased to struggle. My grandfather's fears for me had all been realized. I had exposed myself to the risks of travelling alone and a man had kidnapped me. Astonishingly, I laughed.

‘What is so amusing?'

I told him, and received a slow, almost unwilling smile.

‘Unfortunately it is not so simple.'

‘Unfortunately?'

‘Yes, Grace. If I took you away and locked you up and made love to you often enough, you would eventually stop trying to escape and then you would stop wanting to—or so the theory goes. I can't do that.'

‘Would you even want to?'

‘Oh yes. There was a time when I might just have succeeded. My misfortune has been that I wanted you to come as a willing captive. I have not been able to achieve that.'

‘Oh Gideon—
Gideon
—'

Never in all the years I had known him had I seen him look so weary. Never in the whole of my life had I felt such a desire to reach out, in body and in spirit, to another person. Never before had I lost sight of my own needs, my own futile, fussy dignity, my own most precious common sense, very nearly my own identity, in my need to give whatever I could give—whatever he would take. And it seemed to me advisable that this impulse of quite overwhelming devotion should not last long either.

‘I thought I had made you hate me, Gideon.'

‘You did. I understood why and played the same game. I have hated you very well—by fits and starts.'

‘Yesterday you couldn't bring yourself to speak to me.'

‘I do not forget it.'

‘That is why I took the early train today. I was running away from you.'

‘Is there anything new in that? You have been running away from me, have you not, ever since—'

‘Ever since I was eighteen and you came to have a look at Fieldhead as if you might buy it and me with it—or so I thought—and made yourself pleasant to my father's wife instead of arranging to meet me at the bottom of the garden and trying to kiss me, and telling me—telling me—lord, why am I prattling on so?'

‘Telling you that I loved you? But I didn't love you then, Grace. That happened later—would have happened no matter what the circumstances. But before I say another word—since I retain my pride in these matters, or such of it as you have left me—I must know that you have loved me too.'

‘Yes. Yes, of course I have.'

‘That will not suffice me, Grace. If you came upstairs with me now and gave yourself to me in the most slavish fashion I could devise, it would not suffice me.'

‘How, then?'

‘You have taken every opportunity you could to hurt me and humiliate me, have you not?'

‘Yes—I am afraid so.'

‘Now make atonement for it. You are a clever woman. You will find a way.'

‘Will it serve a purpose?'

‘At this stage I don't much care for that. You are very accomplished when it comes to wounding me. I think you must now show me your skill as a healer. I need that much from you, Grace.'

‘Yes.'

I had been asked only the night before if there was anyone in Cullingford who needed me and I had not expected it to be Gideon, yet now, although I could never have spoken the words and would be very likely, I believed, to deny them tomorrow, my thought urged him: ‘Yes, need me and go on needing me. Need me so that I am filled to my capacity with it and strained even beyond the limits of my need for you. Ask more of me than I can possibly give and see—just
watch
—how I shall find the means to give it.' This was the consuming emotion Venetia had felt for Robin Ashby, the crusade of which I had not believed myself to be capable. I loved him.
Naturally
, I loved him. I had lived in the shadow of it for years. The only difference now was that I wanted to tell him so.

‘It was fear,' I said slowly. ‘A physical fear to begin with because I desired you—quite acutely—and didn't understand it. How could I? Young girls of eighteen are not supposed to understand desire. They are not even supposed to feel it. And I am not going to take all the blame, Gideon, for you were older and you were not a virgin. You could have understood and helped me get over it—couldn't you?'

‘No,' he said, smiling slowly, sadly almost, as if at a very distant memory. ‘I was behaving as I had been told a gentleman ought to behave, you see—with a virgin. I was a little older, and had a little more experience, yes, but not enough—believe me—to know that I'd have done better to drag you off somewhere by the hair. That kind of knowledge came much later. And even then, Grace, when you were eighteen, there was more to your fear of me than that. My dear—I
know
you didn't trust me in those days and I know why, but you are going to
tell
me.'

‘Yes. I knew you needed a rich wife and I understood that. I had money and I had been told, at an early age, that men would want to marry me for it. I understood that too. My father had educated me to believe that marriages should be made with a cool head. I couldn't name my feeling for you at that time but it was not cool, and we have all seen the pathetic spectacle a woman makes when she has married for love but has been married only for her money. That was my fear and you did nothing to alleviate it. Your marriage to Venetia suggested to me that I had been right.'