The Duke's Agent (25 page)

Light gave up the struggle and shadows overran the ground. The garden grew cold under a flushed carmine sky. Fancy appeared with a large shawl and began to envelop her mistress in it.

‘I've had Miss Henrietta's carriage brought round, my lady.' The maid exchanged a brief glance with Miss Lonsdale. ‘Mr Finlay says that, since he has given the gentleman's horse a good rub-down and made him comfortable, he might like to leave him in the stables for tonight. I've taken the liberty of having one of Sir Thomas's saddle mounts readied for the gentleman.'

‘She's right. A gentleman always has a care of his horseflesh, my father used to say. He was a fool but a good horseman. You take the horse, Mr Frederick Raif Jarrett. Finlay can ride yours over to you tomorrow when it is rested.'

‘My horse and I are most grateful for your hospitality, Lady Catherine.'

‘Fiddle-faddle! Be off, the pair of you. It's growing dark and I'm chilled.'

*

Jarrett was calculating how long he had to allow to reach Woolbridge in time for his meeting. He had hoped for the leisure to locate Duffin, thinking that the poacher's local knowledge and brawny frame might be of assistance to him in his next encounter with the miner. As he escorted Miss Lonsdale to her carriage he considered how he might extract himself from his present duty without causing offence.

Henrietta watched the agent's abstracted face. Miss Lonsdale had a secret. She knew that the propriety she assumed in society was a sham; a deceit by which she disguised the shameless, inquisitive person she really was. Henrietta Lonsdale took an infinite interest in people – people of all sorts and degrees. She took pleasure in observing them, learning about their lives, speculating as to their secrets. Her private sense of exile from the person she ought to be was the basis of the affection she held for Lady Catherine. The spirited old woman embodied in her extraordinary exterior the dilemma that Henrietta herself wrestled with inside. Miss Lonsdale examined the tanned features of the man beside
her. He looked tired and drawn. She considered how much he was likely to have seen of their performance in the rose garden. In a half-amused way she wondered whether she had shocked him. A sudden sense of freedom bubbled up inside her. She did not regret that it was he who had glimpsed the nature she hid from the general world.

As he was about to hand her into her carriage she turned to him.

‘You have spent so much time on horseback today, Mr Jarrett, would you care to ride the short distance to Longacres with me?'

His plans of evasion crumbled before her open-faced enquiry. So long as he did not linger he would still have time to make the churchyard before midnight. He cast a quick look at the coachman. Evidently a family servant. Surely he would be chaperon enough for country ways. He bowed acceptance of her invitation and saw the saddle horse tethered securely behind the carriage before climbing after her into the cramped interior. They sat side by side. There was little space between them and Jarrett had to clasp the window strap to hold himself at a proper distance. Miss Lonsdale noticed the stiff way her escort pulled one leg into the carriage after the other and the almost imperceptible unease with which he settled into his seat.

‘Is your leg troubling you?' she enquired kindly. ‘You have been ill, I think.'

Jarrett found her unpredictable character unsettling. Despite her maidenly status Miss Lonsdale habitually carried herself with the composure of an established matron. He was at a loss how to behave towards her.

‘I am a soldier, ma'am – serving with the 16th Light Dragoons in Portugal,' he explained. ‘I sustained a wound in February that sent me home on leave, but I am recovered. As for this,' he cast a light-hearted look at his leg, ‘it is merely bruised and I playing for sympathy.'

He found himself talking to her of his impressions of Portugal and Spain – the landscape, the people, the customs. Her dove-grey irises were flecked with charcoal. They radiated intelligence, blended with a sympathetic interest that solicited confessions.

Henrietta understood why Lady Yarbrook was so taken with Mr Jarrett's reading. His voice was charming of itself; deep with just a touch of a husky catch to it. It had a tone that seemed to reverberate inside her. He was telling her of some friends he had made in Spain. A married couple, charming hosts on whose country estate he had idled one summer.

‘Their property lay in the path of the enemy's advance last autumn. Some weeks into that campaign I was in the district and passed by to see what the French had left.' There was a stillness within the carriage. The sounds of the wheels on the road seemed to belong to a separate world. ‘It was a dark winter night. I had been scouting in the hills for some days. I had hopes my friends had been absent when the soldiers came. The French are not well-behaved visitors. Through a window, by candlelight, I looked in on a scene of great wreck and destruction. My friends sat on a sabre-torn sofa sharing a meagre picnic laid out on a handkerchief between them. They looked at each other with such clarity…' Jarrett paused, suddenly seeming to recollect his companion's presence. ‘They sprang up to welcome me: Come in, friend! Share our good fortune!' He threw up a hand in a Latin gesture.

‘Good fortune!' Henrietta exclaimed. ‘What did they mean, Mr Jarrett?'

There was a look in his eyes, as if he had grasped the edge of a distant truth. ‘They were both well and unharmed, Miss Lonsdale. The enemy had been unable to destroy what they valued most.'

‘And will you return to Portugal, Mr Jarrett?'

‘I must travel to London to see the army's medical men in a week or so. Once I am pronounced fit …'

‘But you do not wish to go back?'

The seamless way she picked up on something he hardly knew himself astonished him. ‘I have spent the last ten years of my life a soldier, Miss Lonsdale. Yet lately I have begun to wonder if I might not try another kind of life.'

‘Perhaps you should become a painter of portraits,' she said lightly. She looked away to the country outside the window for a moment. ‘That likeness of Sally Grundy was remarkable. Have you painted portraits?'

‘Occasionally, but I prefer landscapes – and the army prefers my topography and maps.' As he smiled at her he noticed she was looking at the hand with which he held on to the strap by his head. The bracelet of hair he wore about his wrist was in plain sight. He took his hand down hurriedly.

‘Have you been recently bereaved, Mr Jarrett?' she asked quietly.

This was the last thing he wanted to discuss.

‘No, ma'am.' He heard the roughness of his tone and cursed his own clumsiness.

Miss Lonsdale privately scolded herself. She had no right to pry and now she had offended him. It was as she suspected. The strange bracelet was a token from an absent love. Mr Jarrett was contemplating selling out so that he might settle down with some flaxen-headed maiden. He had no doubt been pledged to her for years.

The atmosphere in the little vehicle was close, despite the leather flaps being tied back from the windows. He smiled awkwardly at his companion, racking his brains for some way to bridge the silence.

‘It is very kind of you to come to speak to Mrs Grundy, Mr Jarrett,' the lady remarked politely.

The gentleman murmured something about it being nothing.

‘Mrs Grundy is most unhappy,' Henrietta ventured at
last. The remaining ride to Longacres was not so short as to be conveniently passed in total silence. ‘There are some dreadful rumours being spread that Sal took her own life, Mr Jarrett. My cook is a religious woman and the thought that there might be objection to her niece being buried in sanctified ground is almost more than she can bear.' Miss Lonsdale's elegant features took on a determined set. ‘I will do everything in my power to prevent such a terrible thing. The Reverend Prattman must not pay heed to such malicious gossip.'

He could feel the warmth of her indignation beside him. He regretted the sense of intimacy that had just evaporated. She was a woman of passionate concern. A man might consider himself fortunate to be an object of such warmth. He began to mouth some soothing remark but she interrupted him almost before he had spoken.

‘Just this morning poor Mrs Grundy found dishes of salt placed about the body!'

‘Salt, Miss Lonsdale?'

‘The ordinary folk hereabouts believe it stops unquiet spirits from walking. I suspect it is the work of Betsy, the scullery maid – she is a simple, deluded child – but someone will have put the notion into her head. I'd give money to know the mischief-maker.'

‘But who would give this story of suicide any credence, Miss Lonsdale? The evidence at the inquiry was all against it.'

‘Country gossips hardly care for evidence, Mr Jarrett. It concerns me. Why should people be conspiring to make poor Mrs Grundy yet more wretched still? Hardly a handful of people have come to pay their respects and Mrs Grundy is generally known to be a good, honest woman. Is the death of her only family not tragedy enough?'

‘I shall do my best to find out, Miss Lonsdale. Have you no suspicion as to the source of these rumours?'

Henrietta hesitated a moment, an anxious frown between her eyes.

‘Mrs Grundy swears they can be traced to Will Roberts's new family. His father-in-law, Sergeant Tolley, is a dreadful man if only half they say is true. I pity Will. I cannot imagine how he managed to saddle himself with such a connection. But I will swear Will Roberts is a good man, Mr Jarrett.' In her conviction Miss Lonsdale laid a gloved hand on his sleeve, willing him to understand her. ‘It is easy to see how Mrs Grundy's resentment might pin on him – he did a cowardly thing in letting Sal down so. And yet, is it not understandable that a young man, far from home and seeking to better himself, might make the match he did? Sal being the creature she was, Will had no means of knowing she would wait for his return from Ireland.' Henrietta sighed as she looked out of the carriage window. ‘Oh, but this is a sad business.' The falling light had leached the colour from the landscape, rendering every feature in subtle tones of grey. ‘We are nearly at the house. I hope perhaps speaking with you may give poor Mrs Grundy some relief.'

As Miss Lonsdale spoke the words a woman's scream ripped through the calm of the night. It wavered and choked, then began again; a dreadful banshee wail that offended the senses of the listeners with its extraordinary note of alarm. Jarrett heard running steps pounding towards them in the night. A dog barked. He thrust open the door of the carriage as it drew to a halt and tumbled out into the arms of Ezekiel Duffin.

‘Men!' the poacher cried into his face. ‘They've taken the corpse! That way!'

Jarrett had just enough wit about him to detour to the rear of the carriage and snatch a loaded pistol from his saddle bag before dashing off after the receding figure of the poacher. Duffin led him towards the back of the house. The sky had grown overcast and what light there was showed the outline
of densely packed trees at the horizon. A cloud passed, allowing the moon to gleam out a moment. It gilded the edges of things with silver, then faded. Perhaps a hundred yards off the moonlight caught the movement of a party of men carrying a glowing light and a bundle. Then the glimpse was obscured among the branches shifting in the warm wind. Reaching the edge of the wood minutes behind the raiders, Duffin and Jarrett plunged into the darkness.

His eyes saw nothing but varying degrees of dark. The lack of light blurred definitions between shades and solids, damaging his perception of space. All nature seemed to conspire to jostle him. A filigree of razor-edged twigs whipped his cheek, then a sturdy branch struck him full chest, robbing his lungs of air. He ran with the cocked pistol held by his side and the other arm up to protect his face, lurching crabwise between the obstacles that crowded about him.

The gentle incline of the wood grew steeper. He sensed a drop in temperature, like the cold breath of danger on his cheek. There was a cavernous space beyond the line of trees that terminated suddenly to his left. His foot slid on leaf mould and propelled a dry stick out into nothing. He heard it drop and bounce down a long way. Shouting a warning to Duffin he veered back into the depths of the wood. It was then that he realised the poacher was following his dog's lead. Bob's yellow form jumped surefooted through the wood, pausing every now and then in his excitement to look back, his eyes reflecting a gleam of light. The tilt of his head and his pricked up ears seemed to urge his master to hurry on, puzzled as to why, all at once, these humans should be rendered so clumsy and uncertain. Jarrett focused his attention on the dog, trying to divine the terrain ahead from the way the yellow shape moved over the ground.

The light Duffin and he followed swung crazily ahead of them through the night. The crashing sounds they made rang out so unnaturally loud, he thought the whole world
must hear them and wake. A ditch dropped away, clogged by a fallen tree trunk. The yellow dog scrambled over it and then Duffin's bear-like shape. He half-vaulted, half-rolled after them. They could hear shouts from the men ahead. The voices had a slurred edge of panic. They're drunk, he thought, that and the body should slow them.

His foot sank into a scratchy pillow of moist leaves and ferns and met the root of a tree cloaked within it; a spiny ridge of bone that jarred his ankle. He wrenched himself upright only to step out and trip over another root. Duffin was beside him, his large hand clasping his arm like a band of iron, pulling him up. Together they ran on through the thickening night of the wood.

The longer they ran the more attuned his sharpened ears became to the sounds beyond the vivid noise of their own progress. They seemed to be catching up with the moving life-forms ahead of them. The light they followed dropped suddenly and steadied. Jarrett levelled his pistol and fired. The red flash blinded him briefly to all but its colour. There was a squealing grunt and the slump of a weighty sack flopping down in the undergrowth. Powder smoke filled his nostrils with the rotten tang of sulphur. There was a scrabble up ahead and a confusion of voices. A harsh voice, full of authority, bore over the rest snarling orders. Jarrett could not hear the words but he recognised the tone.