The Importance of Love (14 page)

‘Yes,' he murmured, as he polished the gun with the cloth it had been wrapped in. ‘This Viscount is a fool if he thinks he can steal the woman who belongs to me. If I have to kill him to get Luella back, then so be it!'

Luella knelt by the raised flower bed and diligently plucked the weeds from it, making certain that she left none behind. The sun beat down upon her back and she felt a sense of enormous contentment.

Just along from her, Thomas and Johnny were busy digging a new bed that was on a patch of land once occupied by a recently demolished outbuilding.

Luella reflected that her life was almost perfect.

‘But that day will come when David and I are married,' she thought with a satisfied smile.

She missed her Aunt Edith a great deal as it was the first time since she had been to Finishing School that she was not at her side. Although they wrote to each other frequently and spoke on the telephone, it was not the same.

The Countess wrote eloquently of the comings and goings at Braemore Castle and commented that the raspberries were doing very well.

“Pardon me, my Lady, but would you come and supervise the planting of the bedding?”

Both Thomas and Johnny always referred to Luella as ‘my Lady', even though until the day that the Viscount's wedding ring was on her finger, she would not be entitled to it.

“Of course, Thomas,” she said, getting up and dusting off her hands.

She knew that Aunt Edith would have been very cross with her for not wearing gloves, but Luella loved to feel the earth as she worked.

She wore her engagement ring on a sturdy gold chain around her neck until the time she washed her hands and could return it to her finger with a sense of pride.

Johnny walked towards them carrying a tray of bedding plants already in bloom. “Where shall I put these, my Lady?”

“I think the marigolds should be placed at the edges of each area and then fill in with the zinnias.”

She fumbled in her apron and brought out a sketchbook with her designs.

“Yes,” she said finding the relevant page. “And next we shall plant the standard rose bushes in the middle of each bed in the autumn.”

Luella and the gardeners worked happily away completely unaware that a shadow had fallen over Bideford.

*

In the Red Lion Hotel, Frank Connolly was busy talking to whomever he could find in order to discover more about the Viscount and where he lived.

“Oh, he be the London gent who inherited the Frenchwoman's old house,” said the ancient doorman. “He's made a lot of friends hereabouts by employing local tradesmen to rebuild the place. And then there's that wedding – Bideford ain't seen the like of it for many a long year.”

“Do you know when it is?” asked Frank Connolly, slipping the man a shilling.

“End of September – the twenty-ninth, if I rightly recall.

They say that no one from London is coming which is mighty strange, mighty – ”

The doorman shook his head and Frank Connolly thanked the man before striding out into the street.

From the enquiries he had made so far, it was not going to be difficult to find the Viscount's house. Everyone had said that it could be seen from the river and that it was situated on the main road out of Bideford heading West.

“Torr House?” they had said. “You cannot miss it.”

He climbed the steep hill towards the market and looked for the chemist's shop that the doorman had told him about.

He had certain items he wished to buy.

At last at the very brow of the hill he found it. He walked inside and purchased a bottle of chloroform. He told the chemist he was a keen collector of butterflies.

“In that case, will you be needing lint pads as well?”

‘It is as if the Gods are on my side' thought Connolly with a self-satisfied air, as he left the shop and walked back down the hill.

The chemist had been more than helpful. When asked if there might be any disused buildings that might harbour a rare Camberwell Beauty, the man had directed him to an old shepherd's hut on the outskirts of the town.

“I could not say if you will find one up there,” said the chemist. “But I know that other lepidopterists have found many rare and collectible species there. It is quiet and rarely visited and is plentifully stocked with the kind of plants they love.”

He had even been so good as to provide him with a rough sketch on a piece of brown paper where he might find the building.

Without pausing to drop off his purchases, Frank Connolly set out on the long walk to the shepherd's hut. It was quite difficult to find and he almost gave up when he became hot and tired.

But a chance encounter with a farm worker pointed him in the right direction.

The hut was just what he desired. Inside was a room with an intact door that he judged he could wedge shut with a dirty wooden chair he had found outside.

‘Or I could go to the ironmonger's in town and buy some locks and chains,' he debated as he looked around the hut. ‘It is good that there are no windows that she can escape from.'

Later as he made a mental list of items to buy to put his plan into action, he returned to the hotel and ate a hearty dinner.

‘Tomorrow after I have made the hut ready, I will go to Torr House and see if I can spy Luella,' he mumbled, as the waiter took away his plate. ‘And if conditions are favourable, I will return to take her away.'

*

“David, you really must ask the builders not to dump masonry on the flower beds,” complained Luella, as she entered the dining room for breakfast the next day.

The Viscount was already seated at the table and put down the copy of
The Times
he had been reading.

“I will speak to Mr. Pensworth at once.”

“Thank you, darling.”

Luella kissed him on the forehead and took her place at the table. At once, Cork set down a teacup and saucer alongside a rack of toast.

“I want to start with the herbs soon and poor Thomas and Johnny have dug that bed twice already. But the builders will insist on dropping bricks all over it. It really will not do

once we have planted the seedlings.”

“He shall be told as soon as I have finished breakfast.”

He looked over at Luella and thought how she was blossoming by the day.

‘If I had thought her beautiful when I first met her, then now she is a veritable Goddess amongst women,' he said to himself. ‘The country air suits her and she has gained a little weight. I shall be the proudest man in England the day I wait for her at the altar.'

Cork came in with the morning post. As always, Luella hoped fervently that the Marchioness had written a reply to her letter. But so far there had been no response.

Cork set down the silver salver by the Viscount and she realised with a sigh that there was nothing for her today.

‘Perhaps she is not in London,' she thought, as she buttered a slice of toast. ‘There is the house in the country after all – or maybe they have gone to Biarritz.”

Luella resolved to write again enclosing an invitation to the wedding. She knew that the Viscount would be overjoyed if his grandmother could attend their special day.

“What are you doing today, Luella?” he asked. “More gardening? If you are not careful, you will soon be as brown as a field hand and everyone will think that my bride-to-be is either a foreigner or a fruit-picker!”

Luella laughed.

It was true. Her hands and arms had begun to tan, in spite of wearing a large-brimmed hat. She spread them out before her and thought that, if she was here, Aunt Edith would tick her off for not covering herself more efficiently.

“I shall ask Mrs. Cork to buy some lemons so that I can whiten my skin with the juice,” she remarked. “The weather has been so glorious this past week that it has been too hot to wear long sleeves.”

“My little nut-brown gypsy!” he teased, getting up and nuzzling her hair. “It is a good job that my Mama is not still alive, as she would have been scandalised by a lady working in her own garden.”

“It is, I believe, the most genteel of pastimes.”

“Not when the lady in question is matching the gardeners for the amount of heavy work she is doing. wonder where you get your strength from.”

“Aunt Edith says it is my good Scottish blood.”

“Then, I pray you will pass that blood on and we will have good strong sons.”

He kissed her goodbye and vanished outside to speak to the builders. Luella passed her hand over her cheeks and found them burning.

‘
Children
,' she murmured.

She thought of her aunt's last letter in which she had lectured her on a woman's marital duties.

Luella was both scared and thrilled at the thought that soon she and the Viscount would find themselves in each other's arms after they had said goodnight.

“Do not be frightened of the physical side of marriage,” her aunt had counselled. “Far from being the terrible torture that some would make you believe it to be, it is, in the right man's arms, like touching Heaven itself.”

It was true that the Viscount had awoken a burning desire in her that she had never felt before, not even with Jean-Marie Bouillicault.

She remained at the breakfast table, dreaming of the walk she had taken in the gardens with the Viscount the previous evening.

When he had taken her in his arms under the full moon and kissed her, she had felt something wild and tumultuous unleashed in her that had made her respond enthusiastically to his caresses.

‘I would dearly love to experience what Aunt Edith calls ‘touching Heaven',' she sighed. ‘And I know that David is indeed the right man.'

Her reverie was interrupted by Grace, informing her that the dressmaker had arrived for her fitting.

‘There is still so much to do,' she thought as she followed Grace upstairs.

*

Later, after luncheon, Luella donned her old clothes and went out into the garden. A very contrite Mr. Pensworth had come and apologised for the mess his men had made and had offered to clear the beds completely for her.

She hurried to the beds and found Johnny and Thomas supervising two labourers as they ferried wheelbarrows full of rich new earth to the area.

“Good afternoon, my Lady,” said Thomas. “With this fine soil we shall be able to plant the seedlings and the shrubs at once.”

“Excellent,” replied Luella.

Once the labourers had finished tipping the new soil onto the beds, Johnny brought seedlings and a selection of rosemary, lavender and verbena bushes. Thomas took trays of tiny camomile plants and placed them in a good sunny site.

“Yes, I think Mrs. Cork will soon be harvesting a modest amount of herbs for the dinner table,” she said, stroking the delicate fern of a fennel plant.

“Pardon me, my Lady, but can we go up to the terrace and look at the old japonica?” asked Johnny. “If we're going to move it, then we should decide on where it's going.”

“Of course. Thomas, can you manage here?”

“Yes, my Lady.”

Luella followed Johnny through the kitchen garden until they reached the far edge of the gardens.

A large japonica had survived there and Luella fingered the glossy green leaves and noticed signs that it could possibly flower this year.

“We should not move it until it has finished flowering next spring,” she remarked. “Johnny, would you go to the potting shed and bring the insect spray? There are signs of infestation around the buds and we should treat it now.”

Johnny touched his cap and lumbered off down the slope.

Luella bent down to pull out a patch of weeds.

‘This weeding is never done,' she sighed, pulling out handfuls of chickweed.

*

As Frank Connolly crept along the drive of Torr House, he instinctively stroked the hard outline of the gun inside his jacket.

He had stood at the gates for some time before starting on the long walk towards the house.

It had been simplicity itself for him to find the house. He had crossed the bridge, walked for a while and then, there it was!

“If everything else goes as smoothly as things have done so far, then Luella and I will be on our way to Ireland by the morning,” he said out loud.

He planned to hire a carriage and have it drive them both to Liverpool and from there they would take the ferry to Dublin.

He would wire his father and ask for a carriage to meet them and to have the Priest ready to marry him and Luella in the family Chapel on the estate at Kilsharry.

He had now reached the end of the drive. In front of him, he could see the heavy front door of the Jacobean building and its tessellated windows. One side of the house was clad in scaffolding and there was a builder's cart in front of the house.

‘I did not expect there to be so many people around,' he said to himself, as he crept nearer and waited. ‘But that man has stolen Luella from me and
he has to pay
.'

He realised that it would now be a great deal more difficult to abduct Luella without being seen. He cursed his ill-fortune and remained crouched behind a hedge.

As he did so, Bennett came roaring up in the Daimler. With a swift movement, he stopped the car and applied the handbrake. Whistling, he jumped out and entered the house.

Immediately Frank Connolly was struck by an idea.

‘If I take the motor car, I could take Luella away much more speedily than if I used a horse and cart. And the stupid fool appears to have left the keys in it.'

He felt as if something or someone else had taken over his body as he moved stealthily towards it. He had some experience of driving motor cars and had once driven this very same model.

With a quick look around to see that no one was about, he crept over to the car, jumped in and started it up. Still no one came out to see what was going on.

Moving forward, he followed some old tyre tracks that led around the side of the house.