Ariadne's Diadem (20 page)

Sylvanus was furious. “Fancy dress? How
dare
he make fun of me like that!”

The goat laughed, but was silenced by Sylvanus’s bleat of dire warning. “I can turn anything to marble, so don’t offend me!” As the goat hastily disappeared from the doorway, the faun caught Penelope’s hand again. “Come on, let’s find a quiet way in.”

“What if we’re seen? If we’re inside the inn, it might not be easy to escape.”

“You forget my power,” Sylvanus pointed out quietly, and then smiled. “I mean to use it on Hugh as soon as he’s surrendered the diadem.”

“You mean to turn him to marble?”

“He doesn’t deserve anything less.” Without further ado, Sylvanus led her toward the rear of the inn. There was no one around as they made their way up an outside staircase to a gallery that ran along the entire building. After climbing through an open window into a darkened room, they listened carefully at the door at the precise moment Hugh and Kitty returned from dining.

The meal had not gone well, for Kitty had wanted to wear the diadem, but Hugh had prevented her. She had eventually given in, but with exceedingly bad grace, and very little had been said at the dinner table. As Kitty haughtily prepared to go into her own room without a word, Hugh caught her arm. “Please don’t let’s part on a sour note.”

“Then apologize. All I wanted was to wear the diadem. I thought you’d be pleased, not disapproving.”

Sylvanus and Penelope exchanged glances behind the nearby door.

“I
was
pleased—it’s just that London togs would have looked a little too much in a place like this.” Hugh glanced along the deserted passage. “Look, I want to talk.”

“About what?”

“I can’t get this Danby business out of my mind.”

Sylvanus and Penelope looked at each other again.

Kitty hesitated, but then nodded. They went into her room, and the door closed behind them.

The faun and nymph immediately emerged to cross the passage to eavesdrop. The voices inside were muffled, but perfectly audible. Kitty tossed her reticule upon the dressing table. “Oh, do stop worrying about nothing! It simply slipped Critchley’s mind that this Danby person was coming here, and Danby had his own reasons for lying about where he was staying. Besides, if we should worry about anyone, it’s the Fanhopes, who might arrive earlier than expected. You are supposed to be here in order to see Miss Willowby, yet you’re using a false name and have me in tow as your ‘sister.’ Lady Fanhope may not know either of us, but Fanhope himself certainly does, and he has no reason to hold his tongue.”

“I’ve been thinking about that. He’s not going to say much in case we tell his wife a few things I’m sure he’d rather she didn’t know! His liaison with you, for instance.”

Kitty thought for a moment. “Yes, I suppose you’re right,” she said then.

“Of course I am. Forget them, for they will apparently soon be on the way to America.” Hugh was thoughtful. “Don’t you think it a little odd that they are to stay here?”

“Why?
We’re
staying here,” Kitty pointed out.

“Yes, but only because I must visit Llandower. What possible reason could Fanhope have? Sportsman he may be, but tourist he isn’t, nor is his wife, nor is this place exactly en route to Bristol.”

Kitty shrugged. “I neither know, nor care what their reasons are.”

“Well, I find it most curious, if not downright odd.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, let the matter lie.” He was sometimes like a dog with a bone, and Kitty found it boring in the extreme.

Her tone got under his skin. “You’re perfect, are you?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“What exactly did Gervase find out about you that disgusted him so?”

She flinched. “Find out? I don’t know what you mean.”

“Oh, yes, you do—it’s written all over you.”

“You’re wrong, because there is nothing to find out.” Kitty trembled within but managed to conceal it.

Hugh still didn’t believe her. Gervase had learned something, and one day he would find out what it was!

She found defense in attack. “Your Miss Willowby is more to your liking than you’ve said, isn’t she? Now you wish to find an excuse to back out of marrying me! That’s it, isn’t it? I’ll warrant you wish you’d never given me the diadem, so that you can give it to her instead!”

Sylvanus and Penelope stared, and the faun’s brow darkened. That the Lady Ariadne’s wedding crown should have fallen into Hugh’s hands was bad enough, but that such a doxy should be wearing it was too much!

Hugh tried to calm things. “You’re wrong, I’m
glad
you have the diadem. You’re also wrong about my feelings for Anne Willowby. Believe me, I intend to consign her beneath the Wye tomorrow night. Her body will be found somewhere downstream, and I will be exonerated because I will have gone to such visible lengths to rescue her.”

The eavesdroppers were appalled.

Hugh spoke again. “Then, when the sensation dies away, I will marry you. Kitty. I promise.” He added the last two words in the soft tone of a man hoping to wheedle his way into a woman’s bed for the night.

Kitty decided the time had come to be warm and loving again. “Oh, Hugh, I find it so
exciting
that you are going to do this just to have me.”

“Then let me make love to you now. Give me your hand—let me place it somewhere that will prove how ardent is my need for you.”

“Why, sir, how flatteringly rampant you are, to be sure,” Kitty murmured huskily.

In the ensuing silence Sylvanus and Penelope drew back across the passage and entered the darkened room opposite. The nymph was frightened as she looked at the faun in the darkness. “Oh, Sylvanus, do you think he
really
intends to—to do away with...?” She couldn’t finish.

Sylvanus remembered what Hugh had done to Gervase in the grove and nodded. “Oh, yes, he intends to do it—there’s no mistake of that. Come on, we must return to Llandower to tell Gervase! I only hope he’s managed to make Anne say she loves him, because if
that
has happened, it’s all over anyway.”

* * * *

But as they slipped swiftly out of the inn and began to run back along the road toward the bridge and the riverside meadows, Gervase was seated forlornly in the rotunda with his head in his hands. Tonight he’d resorted to all the wiles in his sexual repertory, but still Anne had refused to confess her heart. Never had he encountered anyone who could adhere so resolutely to the very last letter of her principles, or who could suffer such tortures of the flesh without whispering a few unguarded words. He knew only too well how passionate she was, for the fire in her nature had seared his very soul, but if she was so determined to turn her back on her true self in order to keep her word, there was nothing else any mere man could do.

 Chapter Twenty-two

When Anne ran tearfully back to the house, her intention had been to avoid all chance of encountering any of the servants— who knew nothing of her sortie—by going directly upstairs, but on the landing she was dismayed to see candlelight approaching from the direction of the drawing room. A moment later, Mrs. Jenkins appeared. The housekeeper was pale and anxious, and her hand was shaking so much that the candle flame shook and shadows reeled over the landing. Anne’s first guilty thought was that the meeting on the jetty had been observed from an upper window, but it soon became apparent that something else had upset Mrs. Jenkins.

“Oh, Miss Anne, I think I’m going mad!” she said in a shaking voice, too distracted even to notice her mistress hastily wiping away tears of her own.

Anne concernedly put an arm around the woman’s plump shoulders. “Whatever is it, Mrs. Jenkins?” she asked.

“You will indeed think me mad if I tell you.”

“I’m sure you’re perfectly sane. Please tell me what is upsetting you like this,” Anne urged gently.

“It—it’s that nad.”

“Nad? Oh, you mean wooden naiad on the lamp stand?”

“That’s it, the nad. Well, twice now I’ve gone into the drawing room to tend the fire for the night, and both times the nad hasn’t been there.”

“But it was there earlier.”

Mrs. Jenkins looked warily into Anne’s eyes. “The
stand’s
there now. Miss Anne—it’s the nad that isn’t, and what’s more, there’s no damage to the wood, and the tray she holds has even been put on the table, for all the world as if she just upped and went.”

Anne stared at her. “That can’t possibly be,” she said after a moment

“There, I
knew
you’d think I was mad!” The housekeeper’s voice choked.

“No, Mrs. Jenkins, I just think there must be some mistake, a trick of the light, perhaps. Come on, we’ll go and look together.” Anne took the candle and led the way.

But Mrs. Jenkins halted nervously at the drawing room door. “I don’t know whether I want the wretched thing to be there or not. If it’s there, then I’m imaging things and should be locked away; if it’s not there, well, it will be more than passing strange, won’t it?”

Leaving the housekeeper in the passage, Anne went inside. As she drew closer to the smooth, undamaged lamp holder, she saw there was no sign of Penelope, and that the candle tray lay on the table, just as Mrs. Jenkins had said. Her eyes widened with shock as she halted right by the deserted stand. “You’d better come here, Mrs. Jenkins, for your eyes didn’t deceive you. She’s gone.”

“You’re sure?” came the wary response from the passage.

“Yes.”

Slowly, Mrs. Jenkins came in to join her, and they both stared at the lamp holder. Anne drew a long breath. “It is indeed as if she just put down her tray, then upped and went,” she murmured.

“But how. Miss Anne? It’s simply not possible for part of a carving to just disappear without leaving some sign of having been broken off. Joseph made her from one piece of walnut, not three.”

“You say it happened before?”

“Yes. It was after I’d helped clear up at my sister’s. I came in here to see if the fire was safe for the night and saw the nad was missing.” Mrs. Jenkins cleared her throat uncomfortably. “Now, as you well know, ordinarily I’m not one to partake of too much alcohol, but I have to admit that on that occasion I
had
taken a sip or two of elderberry wine, so that’s what I put it down to. Anyway, I thought nothing more of it because the nad was there again the following day. Now it’s gone again, and you’re here to see as well, so this time it’s not elderberry wine
or
imagination, is it?”

“No.”

“What shall we do?”

“I really don’t know,” Anne confessed, for it wasn’t exactly the sort of situation to which she was accustomed. She managed a weak smile. “Maybe she’ll be back in the morning, and we can convince ourselves we didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.”

Mrs. Jenkins smiled sheepishly as well. “Maybe.”

Anne thought for a moment. “Actually, there were other odd things that night. Mog got in a terrible state in here and knocked things over, including that little Cupid, which not even Joseph could mend. Then later there was that strange business in the kitchens, which couldn’t have been Mog because the courtyard door was open. Actually, I’d feel happier if it
had
been Mog the second time, for at least that would mean there wasn’t a stranger poking around in the kitchens, and possibly the rest of the house too.” Anne shivered a little, for it wasn’t a pleasant recollection that while she and Charles were in the study, someone else had clearly entered the house.

“Mr. Danby was here that night, and it wouldn’t be the first time he’s pried uninvited,” Mrs. Jenkins observed darkly.

“He was with me,” Anne replied uncomfortably.

“Maybe so, but if you ask me, he’s as mysterious as the rest of this.”

“I didn’t ask you, and anyway, he’s
not
mysterious.” But he was, and Anne knew it. There was something undeniably odd about the way he simply appeared from nowhere. She hadn’t once heard him ride up, or even seen his horse, come to that. She drew herself up sharply. This was foolish, for he had always offered perfectly logical explanation for everything. She was simply allowing her imagination to be carried away by the present undeniably eerie situation.

Mrs. Jenkins sighed. “Well, whatever the rights and wrongs of Mr. Danby’s presence here, it’s still a fact that someone else came in that night, and Joseph is convinced they were hiding somewhere here on the premises.”

“On the premises?” Anne repeated uneasily.

“Yes. Mog isn’t the only creature behaving oddly at the moment; that mangy lurcher is too. Joseph reckons the dog has scent of someone nearby. He’s going to see if Jack can pick up any trail.” The clock on the mantelpiece began to chime the hour, and the housekeeper laughed nervously. “Dear Lord, I’m all of a pother now! Let’s go downstairs.”

“I think I’ll just go straight to bed,” Anne said quickly.

Mrs. Jenkins looked at her properly for the first time. “Are you feeling unwell, Miss Anne?”

“I have a headache. I went out for a walk in the fresh air, but it hasn’t helped.”

“Then you go to bed right now. You’ll feel as right as rain for your birthday tomorrow, and you’ll look as fresh as a daisy for the duke,” the housekeeper added with a smile.

Anne had to look away. After what had happened on the jetty tonight, she didn’t know how she was going to look her future husband in the eyes. She had betrayed both him and her conscience in Charles Danby’s arms.

Mrs. Jenkins misunderstood. “The duke is as fine a gentleman as any young woman could wish. You’re very lucky, indeed, and I know he’ll soon make you forget all about that rascally lawyer. Just you wait and see. After tomorrow night’s picnic and trip on the river, you’ll have changed your mind completely about both of them.”

* * * *

In the maze Gervase roused from his despondency as swift footsteps approached through the maze. He began to straighten uneasily, but then realized that it was only Sylvanus and Penelope returning. As the nymph and faun hurried exhaustedly into the rotunda, it was plain that they’d come from the White Boar without pause. He looked anxiously from one to the other. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”