Patricia Veryan - [Sanguinet Saga 09] - Logic Of The Heart (8 page)

A twig snapped behind him. He halted abruptly and jerked
around. He had come into the fringes of the Home Wood, and had the
strongest impression that someone followed, but his keen gaze saw only
the trees, calm and stately; the dappled light flirting with ferns and
shrubs; a rook cawing at him from a high branch. 'Imagining things
again, you dolt,' he thought, and walked on. If his health failed—now
of all times—with this wretched betrothal business to be dealt with,
and Babs so frantically opposed to it. Though she'd do what she was
told, if—

A low growl interrupted his frowning introspection. The small
clearing before him was occupied by a dog. Part Alsation and part Great
Dane, it crouched with fierce eyes fixed on him, a bone gripped between
its jaws, the menacing rumble of sound coming from deep in its throat.

Montclair stood still. "Soldier! Go home!" he said firmly.

The dog dropped the bone. The hair standing up all across its
powerful shoulders, it presented a fearsome picture as it charged.

Montclair had neither pistol nor cane, but he knew that to
back away, or run, would be fatal. He raised his voice and his fist. "
Down
!"
he bellowed. For a second he really thought his only chance was going
to be to grab for the throat. Then, two yards from him, the savage
attack halted. The dog dropped to a crouch again, barked fiercely for a
minute or two, then turned, retrieved his bone, and trotted off, still
growling around it.

Montclair took a deep breath. "Damned ugly brute," he
grumbled, and just to be on the safe side, took up a hefty fallen
branch before walking on.

His attempts to think of a way to convince Barbara seemed
doomed. He had journeyed only a short way after his encounter with
Soldier when another meeting disrupted his concentration. His gaze was
on the ground before him and he paused when a pair of small, highly
polished boots came into his field of vision.

"Mices foots chew mire?" said a tenor voice enquiringly.

A small dapper gentleman sat on a fallen tree trunk, his
high-crowned beaver hat beside him. Very black hair sprang in thick
glistening waves from his rather sallow but unwrinkled brow. Equally
black eyebrows arched over bright dark eyes. His skin seemed to stretch
over the high cheekbones, his nose was a large thin arch, his chin long
and pointed. He was impeccably clad in a brown riding coat over
moleskin breeches, the only incongruity being the outmoded foam of lace
at his throat and wrists. Montclair guessed him to be anywhere between
thirty and forty, and that he was foreign was obvious, but the language
had been unfamiliar. He made an attempt. "
Pardon-nez moi,
monsieur
?"

"Angelo have say," the dapper one explained, looking irked,
"chew mices foots mire. Plain is not?"

'Plain is
not
!' thought Montclair, but
said a baffled, "Right."

"Right!" The little man beamed, stuck out his right leg, and
admired it. "Very much spense. Chew know goods, chess!"

Struggling, Montclair said, "Your—feet?"

"Chess. Foots." He stood on them. "Very good very nice chew
mire."

"Ah. I admire your boots, is that it?"

"It? Ay! It what?"

"I mean—did you ask if I admired your boots?"

A haughty frown drew down those black brows. "Chew make the
funny thing, but Angelo laugh ha-ha no! Many time this we talk. Chew
say right. Now chew say it what. Theses I know about no much. Splain
pliss chew doing what in trees."

'Saints preserve us,' thought Montclair. "I am walking through
the woods to visit someone," he said with slow and careful enunciation.
"May I be of help to you?"

"Poor cove very bad chew English spoke. Meece, Angelo,
comprende
mucho
."

Montclair gave a sigh of relief. "Ah!
Se habla
espagnol, senor
?"

A thin hand was flung up autocratically. The dark head tossed
high. "
Ingles, por favor
! Angelo speak now goodly.
But better spress mices elves soon will." He grinned broadly and put
out his hand. "Angelo Francisco Luis Lagunes de Ferdinand is mices
elves. Service your hat."

Preserving his countenance gallantly, Montclair shook his hand
and responded, "I am Valentine Montclair. At
your
serv—"

Senor de Ferdinand whipped his hand back as if he'd been
stung. "
Bandido
!" he howled, thrusting his face at
Montclair's chin. He sprang back, lifted both fists in a prize-fighting
attitude, and began to dance around the astonished Englishman at great
speed, his head tilted far back, his legs fairly twinkling as he
advanced and retreated, his fists flailing madly about, and all the
time shouting variously, "Sapristi!"

"El Diablo!" or similar uncomplimentary epithets. Abandoning
these aggressive tactics, he snatched up his hat, and flung it in
Montclair's face. "Chew dog dirtness!" he declared, and suddenly all
stately languor, stood very straight and still, his arms folded as he
enquired with a bored smile, "We with the pistolas shoot.
Mariana
—er,
threemorrow, chess?"

"I think you have escaped from Bedlam," gasped Montclair.
"I've no least intention to fight a lunatic! And the word is tomorrow.
Not
three
morrow."

Senor de Ferdinand's black brows rose and an eager light
brightened the dark eyes. "Ay,
bueno
!" He bowed
with a great many flourishes. "Tomorrow! Thankschew, senor! Mices hand
shoot it will true. Chew nothing feel very much!" He struck himself on
the chest. "Angelo he say theses!" He clapped the beaver at a jaunty
angle onto his head, and gave it a rap on the crown, whereupon it fell
off. He grabbed for it, juggled it an embarrassed second or two, and
then dropped it. With a rather guilty look at the fascinated Montclair,
he snatched it up and hurried off.

"Well, I'll be damned!" Still incredulous, Montclair shook his
head, and went on his way.

Not until later did it occur to him to wonder what the small
Spanish birdwit had been doing on Longhills land.

The Montclair Folly had been built to house a madwoman. In
1362 Sir dePuigh Montclair, grandfather of the first baron, had stolen
the enchanting young girl who had dared to reject him, and dragged her
to Longhills to become his bride. The poor girl had been in love with
the man he'd slain while capturing her; shock and grief had caused her
mind to give way and her abductor had found himself saddled with a
raving lunatic. A belatedly awoken sense of guilt had kept him from
doing away with her. He kept her locked in an improvised suite in
Longhills' second cellar for a year, while he built a tower for her in
the deepest part of the forest. His wretched victim only dwelt there
for eight months, however, before escaping it and life by the simple
means of jumping off the roof.

Years later, when the tragic story at length began to be
whispered abroad, the Montclair Folly became an object of curiosity for
lovers of the macabre, and inevitably with such a background came the
rumours that it was haunted. In 1624, when much of the tower was
destroyed in a lightning-caused fire, the superstitious villagers said
the devil had claimed his own, and after that even the family members
avoided the Folly. For over a century the windowless walls still stood.
But rain and mould took their toll, the insidious roots of creepers,
the invasion of insects proved once again their superiority over the
works of man, and early in the eighteenth century the rugged walls of
the Folly at last began to crumble away. Now, all that remained were
two ivy-covered half walls and assorted stone blocks scattered around
the yawning pit that once had been the cellar.

Lost in thought, Montclair had not noticed his proximity to
the Folly, and might have wandered past it had he not begun to be
annoyed by something that felt like a stone in his boot. He was still
carrying the branch he'd taken up when Soldier came at him, and he
tossed it on a small heap of the blocks, sat beside it, and began to
pull off his boot. He stopped abruptly when he heard a woman singing.
The voice was thin and high pitched, the words indistinguishable, the
melody set in a minor key and having some resemblance to a monastic
chant.

The hairs on the back of Montclair's neck started to lift and
a chill crept over his skin. With a pang of dread he thought that it
was probably his illness plaguing him again, causing his mind to play
him false, but he picked up his branch, tightened his grip on it, and
walked slowly towards the great glooming ruins.

The singing faded away. Had it ever really been a sound
outside his own head? Was he getting worse? Perhaps his family would
soon be building a Folly for him… Revolted by this lapse into
self-pity, he gritted his teeth and decided to have a closer look, just
in case there
was
something more substantial than
his erratic mind. He gave a gasp as the song rang out once more, much
closer now, and accompanied this time by another voice raised in an
unearthly wailing that turned his bones to water.

"Woe, woe, woe, woe.
I will go
And when I'm dead
He'll hang his head
And wish that I
Am here instead
Woe, woe, woe, woe!"

He hadn't imagined all that! He felt the blood drain from his
face. "Dear God!" he whispered, and stood motionless, quite incapable
of taking another step.

The dark walls towered above him. The mournful wind wailed
softly and set the branches rustling. The air seemed to have become icy.

An oddly penetrating voice wailed, "Who comes to my tower?"

He sent a swift glance around the clearing. He was quite
alone. So there really
was
a ghost! He knew he
was behaving like a spineless coward, but his one thought was to run.
He obeyed the impulse, spun about, took a long stride, collided with
something, and a piercing screech rang out. The trees seemed to ripple
before his eyes.

"Now see what you've gone and done!"

The voice came from the ground at his feet. He looked down and
relief was overwhelming.

A small girl lay sprawled on her back, looking up at him
reproachfully.

"Oh—Jupiter…" he gasped.

Her solemn little face was framed by a lopsided sun-bonnet
from which untidy dark brown curls strayed erratically. A bent pair of
spectacles hung from one ear, and two big grey eyes frowned at him. "I
'spect you're prayering to be forgived," she said. "While you're
talking to the angels you better ask my papa to help me. You hurt me.
Very bad."

"I'm so sorry." He knelt beside her and retrieved the
spectacles. "I didn't know you were there."

"Yes you did. You heered me singing and comed. I creeped round
and hid 'hind you, just a'case."

She seemed remarkably self-possessed for such a small girl.
"Just in case—what?" he asked.

"Just a'case you were bad. Are you bad?" She hooked the
spectacles around her ears and scanned him, her head tilting, her face
anxious as she awaited his reply.

He thought, 'She can't be much more than five or six.'

"I don't think so," he answered, smiling at her. "At least, I
try not to be. Sometimes, I'm afraid, I don't try hard enough."

A moment longer those grave eyes searched his face, then all
at once she beamed sunnily. "I know," she said, sitting up. "When you
hasn't tried hard enough to be good, you have to make 'mends. So I'll
rest here and be brave, and you can mend my toe. But you better wait
while I make myself 'spectable."

She leaned forward, arranging the skirts of her pretty pink
muslin frock with great care, then ruining the effect by sticking her
foot in the air and directing the beam at him once more. "Mend it now,
if you please," she commanded.

The dress, he noted, was of excellent quality and workmanship,
and when he removed her little shoe he found that it also was of fine
leather and design.

"You've got pretty hands," she remarked.

"Thank you." The toe of her shoe was caved in, and her
stocking was torn. He set the shoe aside, and touched her foot gingerly.

"Is my toe all broke into hund'eds 'n thousands of pieces?"

"I certainly hope not." He looked up in alarm. "Does it feel
like it?"

"It feels squashed. I shall prob'ly die. And it'll serve him
jolly well right!" She added with a thoughtful nod, "Then he'll be
sorry, and he'll come to my grave an' cry buckets'n buckets."

"Who will?"

"My Uncle Andy. He whipped me with a great club. With spikes
onto it. And I din't do anything
very
bad, 'cept
go near the river." The great eyes came tragically to meet his, and she
appended, sighing, "He'll beat me again if he finds I've goed out
'stead of doing my sums. Don't you tell him, will you?"

"I think he's far more like to beat
me
,"
he said bracingly, "for knocking you down."

She considered that and agreed it was very likely, adding the
warning that if Uncle Andy did come, it would be better to run away
quick, "'Cause he's hugeous big an' fierce as four lions."

Montclair grinned and wiggled the tiny big toe with care.
"Does that hurt?"

"Hidjus. I'd scream an' have the foggers if I wasn't so brave."

Foggers… He suggested dubiously, "Vapours… ?"

"Oh, that's right. Is my shoe full of gore?"

"No. But a hurt can be just as painful even if it doesn't
bleed. I think you're very brave, and I really am sorry for being so
clumsy."

She giggled. "I was trying to fright you. I was 'tending to be
the Fury. I 'spect you'll say I din't fright you. Grown-ups always do.
But"—she giggled again—"you should have seen your face!"

"I think you're a rascal, miss," he said with a twinkle. "And
you see what happened because you played a trick on me. You might have
been really hurt when I knocked you down."