The House at Bell Orchard

THE HOUSE AT BELL ORCHARD

Sylvia Thorpe

She was beautiful, young, and an heiress.

Suddenly, she became an orphan—and the ruthless Colonel Fenshawe and his despicable family were offering her sanctuary. The Colonel cared nothing for Charmian, but he intended to force her into a marriage with his son, purely out of greed for her fortune.

Unbeknownst to them all, the dashing Sir Piers Wychwood, a neighbor, had caught a glimpse of Charmian and could not put her out of his mind.

Charmian did not know it then, but she’d already won the heart of her savior...

1

The Passer-by

The door of the house stood open, so that the light from within, mingling with that of the flambeaux which flared in the iron sconces flanking the entrance, spilled down the steps and over the coach waiting in the street. This was not one of the elegant town-carriages common enough in that modish quarter of London even in the early hours of the morning, but an old-fashioned travelling-coach, dusty and mud-splashed as though it had just completed a journey. Yet, in contrast to its travel-stained appearance, the four powerful horses harnessed to it were fresh to the point of restiveness; they pawed the ground and tossed their heads, impatient of the restraint imposed upon them by the grooms.

It was the incongruity of the scene which caught the attention of Sir Piers Wychwood as he walked by, for there was a sense of urgency about that dusty coach with its fretting team which seemed alien to the atmosphere within the house. A ball was obviously in progress there, for music came drifting faintly out into the warm summer night, and the open door afforded a glimpse of a spacious hall where liveried servants gossiped among themselves, their vigilance relaxed at this late hour when the stream of arrivals had ceased and the hostess long since abandoned her place at the head of the stairs.

Sir Piers knew the owner of that imposing house, and had, in fact, called upon him there only the previous day, but it was not that fact alone that halted him. He was essentially a practical man, yet something in the scene before him stirred his imagination. There was a hint of drama implicit in it. The play of light and shadow; the dark bulk of the coach with its driver huddled motionless in his seat; the gleaming coats and tossing manes of the horses; the distant music and the idling servants, all inspired in him an odd sense of expectancy. It was like a stage awaiting the entrance of the players, and a sudden, curious compulsion was upon him to see the play begin.

He halted just beyond the reach of the light, where the darkness seemed blacker by contrast, for he was convinced by the very nature of the scene that he would not be obliged to wait for long. Nor was he mistaken. After a few minutes the lackeys in the hall stiffened to sudden, statuesque silence, and a woman and two men emerged from the house. For an instant they paused on the threshold while one of the men spoke over his shoulder to someone within, but the unseen watcher was scarcely aware of him. It was the woman who captured and held his whole attention.

She was young, a girl in the elaborate finery of full balldress, over which a light cloak had been cast with obvious haste. Beneath it, a gown of pale-coloured satin shimmered in the torchlight as, with hooped skirts swaying, she came slowly down to the coach, and there were flowers in her powdered hair. Yet she moved as though in a trance, guided by one of her companions, her sweet young face frozen into a white mask of horror and grief from which her eyes stared as blankly as the eyes of a blind woman. To the man in the shadows there was something inexpressibly moving in the sight. The sense of incongruity investing the entire scene was sharpened and crystallized in the person of this unknown woman, in the bitter contrast between her festive attire and the stark tragedy in her face.

The stout old gentleman who held her arm handed her tenderly into the coach and then climbed in after her, while the tall master of the house stood looking into the vehicle’s dark interior. Then the girl must have spoken to him, for he leaned forward in a manner which suggested that he had taken her hand in his own, and his answering words came clearly to Sir Piers in the shadows.

“My wife and I will follow you as soon as we are free of our guests. My poor child, I wish it were possible to go with you now, but be sure that we shall not be long after you.”

He stepped back and signed to the waiting footman to put up the steps. The somnolent figure of the coachman stirred into life, the grooms sprang back from the horses’ heads, and the coach lurched forward along the street, two outriders falling into place behind it. The man who had spoken stood looking after it, his tall figure outlined against the light behind him, which set a faint, glimmering halo about his gold-laced coat and powdered hair. Then he turned to enter the house again, and that same light fell for a moment across a dark, secretive face with bony features and deep-set eyes; the face of a man older than was suggested by his spare, vigorous frame and upright carriage. He passed into the house and the door shut behind him, and only the torchlight was left to illuminate fitfully the dark, deserted street.

The young man who had been a silent and unsuspected witness of that brief scene remained for several moments studying the unrewarding frontage of the house, and then he turned and walked slowly away, feeling that in some subtle yet indefinable way the past few minutes had been of profound significance. What connexion, he wondered, could there be between Colonel Fenshawe and the girl whose sweet, tragic face, glimpsed for a moment by flickering torchlight, had made so profound an impression upon him? She had the look of one lost and bewildered, stunned by a blow so brutal and so unexpected that the enormity of it could not immediately be grasped, and he was conscious of a desire, as compelling as it was illogical, to assure himself that she would find the comfort and protection of which she so plainly stood in desperate need.

He quickened his pace, telling himself impatiently that no man of sense would permit himself to be moved by a passing incident, a chance encounter which was unlikely ever to be repeated. The business which had brought him to London was infinitely more important than the troubles of an unknown girl, and it was with the failure of his errand and consideration of the next step to be taken that his thoughts should be filled, rather than with the memory of a woman’s face. It was mere coincidence that she had emerged from the house of Colonel Fenshawe, where he had himself gone only yesterday in the vain hope of finding there some support for the purpose which had brought him from his native Sussex. The visit had achieved nothing, save a widening of the existing breach between the families of Wychwood and Fenshawe.

The Colonel, meanwhile, having re-entered his house, avoided the ballroom and salons where his guests were amusing themselves, and made his way instead to a study at the rear of the house. In that quiet room, where the sound of music penetrated but faintly, his elder son was standing by the window with a glass in his hand.

Harry Fenshawe was twenty-eight with his father’s height and lean vigour and dark complexion, but with a greater degree of good looks than the elder man could ever have possessed. There was a suggestion of recklessness and self-will in his face, and more than a hint of a hasty temper. He was in riding-dress, his black hair unpowdered, his coat and spurred boots dulled by a film of dust.

“Well?” he said impatiently as his father came in, but the Colonel paused to close the door gently behind him before he replied. Then he said:

“Miss Tarrant has left for Richmond with the good magistrate. The shock of the news he brought was so great that it will be some hours, I think, before full realization of what has happened dawns upon her. By that time your stepmother and I will have joined her.”

Harry continued to frown at him. “It might have been wiser if one or both of you had gone with her now.”

“With the house full of guests?” Fenshawe retorted coldly. “That would scarcely be seemly, since, thanks to your obstinacy, we are not yet bound to her by any ties of kinship.”

“Not yet?” Harry gave a short angry laugh. “Do you suppose we ever shall be, after what happened tonight?”

“I see no reason to doubt it,” his father replied curtly. “Miss Tarrant finds herself alone in the world, in sore need of help and guidance which I shall do my best to provide, and of comfort, for which she can easily be persuaded to turn to your stepmother. Tonight’s events, properly handled, cannot fail to draw her closer to us, and you could, if you wished, turn the whole situation to your own advantage. She is already more than half in love with you.”

“God help her!” Harry retorted flippantly. He drained his glass and moved across to the table to refill it, adding more seriously: “For the last time, sir, I do not intend to marry Charmian Tarrant! Devil knows why you still try to insist upon it, when you might all this while have been arranging her marriage to Miles.”

“You are well aware that her father, naturally enough, would not consider her marriage with my younger son while the elder is still unwed,” the Colonel replied shortly. “Nor could I afford to alienate him by insisting upon it.”

“Her father is dead!” Harry stood for a moment staring sombrely at the contents of the glass, and then swallowed them at a draught and reached out again for the decanter. His father’s hand shot out to grip his wrist and he said sternly:

“Leave that! This is no time to be addling your wits with brandy.”

“My wits are sharp enough!” Harry’s voice was sullen, but he set down the glass and, breaking from his father’s hold, moved away to the centre of the room. “Sharp enough, at all events, to mislike what happened tonight.”

“I like it no better than you do,” Fenshawe broke in coldly, “but there is no remedy for it, and nothing to be gained by quarrelling among ourselves. Your temper, Harry, is ugly enough even when you are sober, and I will not permit you to inflame it by drinking so that you may pick a quarrel with your brother as soon as he returns. Why in the fiend’s name am I burdened with sons who are for ever at each other’s throats? By God! I could wish you both a modicum of young Wychwood’s level-headedness, irritating though it may be.”

“Piers Wychwood?” There was a subtle change in Harry’s voice, a sharpness, almost a hint of concern. “What the devil brings him into your mind?”

“The very good reason that what he conceives to be his duty brought him into my house yesterday. He is visiting his uncle, Lord Corham, in Hanover Square.”

“Is he, b’Gad? And his duty, as he sees it, is to come carrying tales to you?”

“Tales?” Fenshawe repeated quietly. “What tales, Harry?”

There was a brief and, on Harry’s part, somewhat awkward silence, while he obviously cursed himself for his hastiness. Then he said with a touch of bravado:

“How the devil should I know? If Piers considered it his duty to call upon you, ’tis certain it was not merely to pay his compliments. He has grown too damned respectable for my taste.”

“That I can believe, your tastes being what they are,” the Colonel replied acidly, “but do not flatter yourself that you were the object of yesterday’s visit. He came to take
me
to task for neglecting my obligations, and wasting my substance here in London instead of looking to the conduct of my estate. Sir Piers takes his responsibilities as landlord and Justice of the Peace very seriously.”

Harry laughed, on a note of relief which did not escape his observant parent. “I told you sir, that he has become confoundedly respectable since he inherited. Did he really have the impudence to criticize you?”

“He did, and vastly irritating I found it to be instructed in my duty by a man no older than yourself, and one, moreover, whom I have known since he was in leading-strings. Oh, he was courteous enough, but he left me in no doubt of the opinion he holds of me. If I spent more time at Bell Orchard, he suggests, the activities of Jack Godsall and his fellow smugglers there might be less blatant.”

Harry, who had flung himself into a chair and stretched his long legs out before him, stared at his father for an instant and then threw back his head and roared with laughter.

“Oh, b’Gad!” he exclaimed. “I’ve heard it rumoured that Piers wants to put an end to smuggling in our neighbourhood, but I never imagined he would be fool enough to attempt it. Why, there was a time when he liked nothing better than to help in running a cargo, and even now I have yet to hear of a few kegs of brandy or bales of silk being unwelcome at Wychwood Chase.”

The Colonel, eyeing him with disfavour, showed no inclination to join in his merriment.

“There appears to be a good deal you do not hear of, Harry, even though you spend more time at Bell Orchard than any of us. Did you know, for example, that for the past two months Piers Wychwood has been doing his utmost to persuade the local Excise officers to take active measures against Godsall?”

Harry shrugged. “I know it! I know also that he might as well throw himself against a stone wall.”

“Precisely, but do you know why he is so determined? It is not, as you seem to think, because he has suddenly become conscience-stricken at the thought of the illicit cargoes being brought ashore along our stretch of coast He is convinced that Godsall is bringing Jacobite agents into the country along with his contraband.”

The laughter faded from Harry’s face and his black brows drew together in a frown.

“This is merely suspicion,” he said slowly. “There has been talk of strangers coming ashore from the
Pride of Sussex,
but I’ll swear no one has any proof of it.”

“Give thanks that they have not,” his father replied curtly, “and see to it that no one acquires any, least of all Piers Wychwood. He was obliging enough to tell me that the purpose of his visit to London is an attempt to stir the authorities here to action, since he has failed to do so in Sussex. He wants them to make an investigation into this alleged Jacobite activity.”

Harry was sitting erect now, gripping the arms of his chair, plainly disturbed by this piece of information.

“Was he successful?” he asked curtly.

“I believe not. His comments upon the indifference of the appropriate officials leads me to suppose that he met with little encouragement. The truth is, of course, that with Prince Charles just across the Channel there are rumours of so many plots that none are credited without substantial evidence. If Piers could produce that, it would be a very different matter. He is a man of sufficient standing for his word to carry considerable weight.”

“I do not like it!” Harry got up and began to move restlessly about the room, the frown still darkening his brow, his lips tightly compressed. “This could not have happened at a worse moment. Suppose Miles cannot discover what became of Rob Dunton after he left Richmond tonight? Dunton is a known Jacobite agent, and if he were taken, he might turn King’s evidence out of sheer malice. Damn Piers Wychwood and his confounded highmindedness! Why must he choose this time of all others to start stirring up trouble?”