Passage to Love, page 8
They would have too much respect for the Marquis, even in his absence, to go looking round uninvited.
In fact, while she had thought it a good place to hide, so had the highwaymen.
She wondered what the Marquis would say if he became aware of what was going on in his ancestral mansion.
Nanny was waiting for her and scolded her as she entered the nursery,
“You’re late. I was beginnin’ to worry as to what had happened to you.”
“I had a lovely ride on Apollo,” Imilda answered, “and I also rode another horse, a young one that is not being given enough exercise.”
“That must have pleased old Abbot,” Nanny said. “He fair breaks his heart over those horses.”
“Yes, he was very pleased and I promised I would ride another of the horses tomorrow.”
“Where did you get those books?” Nanny asked suddenly in a sharp voice.
“I went to the library before I came up here,” Imilda replied. “I just cannot live without books to read.”
“You should not have done that,” Nanny scolded her again. “I’ll get you any books you want, but keep away from the library.”
Imilda thought of telling her that she now knew the reason why, but decided that it would be a mistake.
She had a great deal more to find out.
If it was suspected that she was spying, perhaps even Nanny would side with the others to turn her out of Melverley Park.
“I am sorry,” she said aloud, “if I have done anything wrong. When I have read these books, I will ask you where I can find some others.”
“You tell me what you want,” Nanny said, “and I’ll get them for you. It’s just that Mrs. Gibbons does not like people walkin’ about in the State Rooms which are, of course, kept for his Lordship.”
As Nanny spoke, she looked guilty.
Imilda knew that it went against the grain for her to lie, just as she had brought up the children she looked after never to tell a fib.
At the same time Imilda was very eager to learn more.
She realised that it was growing late in the afternoon and the rest of the highwaymen would be coming back to the house from their business of robbing travellers and anyone else they encountered.
She was therefore expected to stay in the nursery and not go anywhere else.
‘As long as I can read, I shall be perfectly happy,’ she told herself.
At the same time she was intensely curious and she wanted to learn more about the men who had been clever enough to take over this house and make it their headquarters.
She was quite certain that they had dispensed with their own horses.
They would not have been as well-bred as the Marquis’s, which they undoubtedly were now using.
They also slept in the Marquis’s comfortable beds and their food was all cooked in his kitchen.
She could easily understand that the younger servants had been intimidated into leaving. Or they had run away because they had no wish to be involved.
The highwaymen were therefore left with a skeleton staff of the old servants who had nowhere else to go and had a horror of ending up in the workhouse.
There were a thousand questions Imilda wanted to ask Nanny, but she knew that it would only agitate her.
Moreover, she must not say or do anything that would end up in her being compelled to leave Melverley Park.
She was very fortunate to be hiding successfully where she was so comfortable.
Besides, being with Nanny she felt protected.
‘It would be very silly of me to make a fuss,’ she thought. ‘I shall just pretend my eyes are shut and that I neither see nor hear anything unusual.’
Equally she knew that the Marquis would have to deal with this situation sooner or later.
She wondered how he would manage it.
And soon she found that she just could not help longing to see what they had stolen from their unhappy victims.
‘I must see their loot! I must!’ Imilda mused.
There was a secret passage in their house at home and she had played in it as a child.
It was only a very short one, because when her grandfather added the new wing, they had blocked off most of it.
She was certain that the secret passage in Melverley Park would be a very important one.
It would have been used in the reign of Queen Elizabeth to hide the Roman Catholics whom she persecuted in the same way that her sister Mary had persecuted the Protestants.
And the Royalists would have used it when Oliver Cromwell and his Roundheads were harrying them.
Those who could not flee, as the future King Charles II had done, to France, could keep alive only by hiding in secret passages and sleeping in what had been the Priest’s room.
A maid, who Imilda had not seen before, who was also elderly, came up to take away the supper dishes.
Imilda went to her own room.
The door of the nursery was open and they did not realise that she could hear what they were saying.
“Is everythin’ all right downstairs?” Nanny asked in a voice a little above a whisper.
“They’ve had a good day and be drinkin’ themselves silly,” the maid replied.
“Then they’re all there?” Nanny asked.
“All eight of them,” the maid answered, “and Mrs. Gibbons be gigglin’ like a schoolgirl. I don’t know what my mother would say to the likes of her, that I don’t.”
“Be careful,” Nanny warned, “or she’ll push you out.”
“Her finds me too useful for that,” the maid answered. “There’s too much work for me as it is, lookin’ after eight men, as I tells her.”
Nanny sighed.
“I know you do your best, Edie,” she said, “but things aren’t what they ought to be.”
“You can say that again!” Edie replied.
She picked up the tray, which was now laden with plates and bowls, and walked towards the door.
“You can be sure them lot’ll be drinkin’ until they’re under the table,” she said. “They’ve had a haul and the way they talks they might have got the Crown Jewels.”
She laughed at her own joke and went out into the passage and Nanny closed the door after her.
Imilda knew that she had heard what she wanted to know.
She waited until Nanny had gone to bed and everything was quiet.
Then she crept out of her bedroom and went downstairs bare-footed so that she did not make a sound on the thick carpet.
There was, of course, no night footman present in the hall as there would have been if the Marquis had been in residence.
There were a few lights burning in the passages, so it was not difficult for Imilda to find her way to the library.
It was in darkness, but she took a candle from one of the sconces outside.
Carrying it carefully she found her way to the mantelpiece.
The panel that Bill and the other man had disappeared through was beside it.
Because she knew how to open the secret panel at home, it was not difficult for her to find a catch in the decorative carving that was very much the same.
When she pressed it, the panel opened slowly and she stepped inside.
Holding the candle in her hand, she saw on the floor that there was a candle-lantern.
It was obviously kept there for anyone who wished to use the secret passage.
She lit the candle in it and then, to avoid arousing any suspicion, she replaced the candle in the sconce outside the library.
Then, very slowly and feeling extremely excited, she walked down the narrow passage.
It was made so ingeniously that there was fresh air coming in from outside, but she could not see how or where it actually came from.
She did not have to walk very far before she came to what she knew was the Priest’s room. It was where he had said Mass for Roman Catholics in secret.
She lifted the lantern to see what was on the floor and gave a gasp.
The highwaymen’s spoil was very impressive.
They had not bothered to pack up what they had stolen, they had just put it down on the floor in heaps.
There was a large pile of jewellery, diamond and emerald necklaces, brooches, earrings and finger rings, all jumbled together.
They glittered in the light of the lantern.
There was another heap of fur coats, coats trimmed or lined with fur, capes that must have been worn by women and a number of fur rugs that were used in travelling carriages.
There were many other miscellaneous articles, but Imilda did not stop to inspect them.
What she wanted was to see how far the passage extended and what could be seen from it.
Having walked some way further along, suddenly she was startled by the sound of voices and laughter.
It was then she realised that she was nearing the dining room.
Imilda put her lantern down on the floor in case it should shine into the room.
She soon found what they had in the secret passage at home, a peephole.
It was just large enough for her to see through it and she thought that it was part of the panelling which again was near the mantelpiece.
Now she could see clearly that there were eight men seated round the dining room table.
It was laden with bottles of wine, which she suspected came from his Lordship’s cellars.
She looked at the men one by one and they were all rather coarse common types and she had the idea that two or three of them might well have been soldiers.
They would have had no other way of earning a living.
The man sitting at the head of the table in a chair on which was carved the Melverley Coat of Arms was obviously the leader.
He looked rather better bred and he spoke in a slightly more educated voice than the rest of them.
Looking at him, Imilda was certain that it was he who had banded the men together and it was he who had led them into the dangerous trick of robbing the rich.
He was not drinking as much as the other men.
Watching his eyes flickering over them, Imilda knew that he was evil.
She felt that he would stop at nothing to get his own way.
She gave a shiver, then closing the peephole, she picked up the lantern from the floor.
She did not turn back, but walked a little way further on and she soon found, as she had anticipated, a ladder built into the wall, which led up to another passage on the first floor.
She climbed up to the top of it.
It took her just a little time to find the catch and, when she did so, a panel opened and she found herself in a bedroom.
Because she had lived in a great house herself, she recognised that this was the Master Bedroom.
There was no doubt at all that the huge four-poster bed with the Melverley Coat of Arms embroidered at the back of it would be slept in by the Marquis when he was in residence.
To her surprise she saw that it was not being used at the moment since the bed was not made up.
She thought that maybe Mrs. Gibbons was being cautious in case the Marquis arrived unexpectedly.
She stepped back through the panel and closed it.
Then, out of sheer curiosity, although she knew that she should go back to her bed, she walked further along the passage from the Master Bedroom.
She was not in the least surprised to find that there were peepholes into almost all the other bedrooms on that landing.
She looked into one and realised that this was where a highwayman was sleeping.
She went on, moving slowly, just to see if there was a way of reaching the floor above.
Sure enough at the very end of the passage there was another ladder built into the wall.
When she climbed up it, she knew that when she opened the door at the top she would be on her own landing.
She reckoned that it had all been most ingeniously thought out.
When the door, which again was a panel, opened, she found herself only a short distance from the nursery.
She blew out the light in the lantern she had been carrying, put it down just inside the secret panel and then closed it.
She told herself at the same time that, as soon as the highwaymen left the next morning, she must put the lantern back where she had found it.
In the light from a sconce on the landing there was nothing to suggest that the closed panel concealed anything so important as a secret passage.
‘I have found it,’ Imilda told herself. ‘Who knows, I may, if things go wrong, find it very useful.’
She turned and then hurried back to her own bedroom.
There was no sound from Nanny’s room next door.
Imilda thought with relief that there need be no explanations to make on the following morning.
‘Now,’ she reflected, ‘I know exactly what is happening at Melverley Park. Although his Lordship may not be interested, it is very very dangerous.’
Chapter five
The Marquis left Harsbourne House as early as possible and drove back to London in a towering rage.
He was furious that he had been tricked so easily into marriage.
He had decided a long time ago that he would not marry for many years yet and then only to have an heir.
He was well aware of his own consequence and that ambitious Mamas longed for their daughters to become the Marchioness of Melverley.
He therefore had refused to take any notice of debutantes and concentrated on enjoying himself with the acclaimed beauties of the Beau Monde.
Unlike most of his friends, he did not keep a Cyprian in a discreet little house in Chelsea or St. John’s Wood.
He told himself that he disliked paying for favours received, not because he was mean, but because it somehow disgusted him.
He certainly did not need to pay for them.
Apart from being extremely handsome, he was amusing and excellent company.
As a matter of fact he was generous with his money.
He sent the object of his affections a mass of flowers that would fill any Conservatory.
He gave her any present she desired and which it was conventional for her to receive.
Fans, sunshades, gloves and bottles of expensive French perfume were received almost daily by any beauty in whom he was interested.
Unfortunately his affaires-de-coeur never lasted long.
The Marquis certainly could not understand it himself.
Why did a woman whom he had found utterly and irresistibly desirable one day suddenly irritate him?
Why did he suddenly find her conversation too boring to listen to any longer?
After the long years of fighting with Wellington’s Army in France and the time he spent with the Army of Occupation, the Marquis had found London extremely amusing.
It did not perturb him that there were bets in White’s Club on how long his love affairs would last just as there were bets as to which of his horses would win at Newmarket.
“I have never worried about what people say behind my back,” he said once, “as long as they are polite to my face.”
This was a bon mot that was repeated a thousand times, but he really did mean it.
He had accepted the invitation to stay at Harsbourne House because he wanted to win the Earl’s Steeplechase. It was considered one of the most difficult and demanding in England.
He was at the time considering whether he should or should not have an affair with the Contessa di Torrio.
He had been warned by some of his friends that it would be a mistake.
Yet the Contessa had made it clear the few times they had met in other people’s houses that she would welcome his advances.
She was indeed a very beautiful Italian with black hair and huge dark eyes.
There was no doubt, the Marquis thought, that making love to her would be, if nothing else, a very fiery experience.
His close friends, however, had said to him,
“Don’t be a fool, Vulcan! The Conte, who is a professional Diplomat, is wildly jealous, as he may well be, of his beautiful wife. To touch her would be putting your head into the lion’s mouth.”
To the Marquis this made the idea of approaching her even more interesting than before.
When he won the Steeplechase, he told himself his luck was in, but it might be a mistake to strain it too far.
There were a great number of other women who would look at him with an expression in their eyes which he knew only too well.
The message was unmistakable!
There was the wife of an elder Statesman, who just before he left London invited him to dine with her.
“It is only a small party,” she told him, “as unfortunately my husband will be away in the North.”
This meant, as the Marquis was well aware, that when he arrived there would be only an elderly couple and they would say immediately after dinner was finished that they had to go home.
This would leave the Marquis alone with his hostess.
Convention had been observed. No one could say there was anything wrong in dining so well chaperoned.
The Marquis had almost made up his mind that was where he would dine on the evening following his return to London.
Then when the Countess of Harsbourne accused him of compromising Lady Imilda by being found in her bedroom, he realised that he had been had for a mug.
Many of his friends had told him of the hazards that they had encountered where young girls were concerned.
One of them, a young Viscount, had been forced to marry an extremely plain girl.
Her mother was clever enough to enlist the help of the Prince of Wales in persuading him that he had damaged her reputation.
He had unwittingly taken her into the garden after dinner one evening as someone had claimed that there was going to be an eclipse of the moon, which he had thought would be interesting to watch.
Actually it had not happened. What did happen was that the Prince of Wales told the Earl that the girl’s mother was deeply distressed.
The least he could do under the circumstances was to ask her to marry him.
The Marquis had been determined that this sort of thing should never happen to him.
He had in fact not given a thought to Lady Imilda until she spoke to him at dinner about the suffering in the country.
