Dennis Wheatley
THE IRISH WITCH
For
Pat and Marise Derwent A small appreciation of their many kindnesses to Joan, myself and the children
I
Only a Few Days from Home
On the last morning of the year 1812, in the chapel of the Royal Castle, Stockholm, Roger Brook married a girl he had first met nearly two years earlier. She had then been Lady Mary Ware.
When Roger had first become acquainted with his new wife she had been staying at the British Legation in Lisbon as the guest of the Minister's niece, who had been one of her friends at school. Lady Mary was an orphan with no close relatives, and very little money; for her father had been far from rich, and the greater part of his income was entailed so had gone with the Earldom to a distant cousin. Although no great beauty, little Mary had a piquant charm, and Roger had found her both intelligent and amusing. But he had not had the faintest intention of marrying her.
That was not because she lacked fortune and influence, as he had ample of both himself; and, when, having fallen desperately in love with him, she had plucked up the courage to ask him to make her his wife, he had told her gently that it would be disastrous for them to marry, because, for one thing, he was of an incurably roving disposition and, for another, as she was then only eighteen and he was just over forty, he was much too old for her..
But he had come to Portugal only to collect a legacy and, in fact, when he got home, intended to settle down for good; for he had high hopes of at last within a few years, marrying his adored Georgina, with whom he had been in love all his life. She had returned his love, ever since their teens; but a great part of his life, as Mr. Pitt's most resourceful secret agent, had had to be spent abroad, and it was not until the death of her last husband, the Baron von Haugwitz, that she had been free to agree to marry him.
Yet. alas, things had gone woefully wrong. In his second identity as Colonel Comte de Breuc, one of Napoleon's A.D.C.s, he had again got caught up in the Emperor's affairs and sent to Germany. In Berlin he had been falsely accused of the murder of Von Haugwitz, and condemned to death. A reprieve had led instead to several months in prison, but meanwhile Georgina had had seemingly incontestable evidence that he had been executed. Desperately distressed, and no longer caring what became of her, the beautiful Georgina had agreed to gratify the vanity of the old Duke of Kew by becoming his Duchess.
On Roger's escape and return to England, grieved beyond measure as the two life-long lovers were by this situation, they at least had the consolation that the Duke was in his mid-seventies and an habitually heavy drinker, which made it highly probable that, within two or three years at most, Georgina would again be a widow.
Alas for their hopes! When Roger got back from Portugal, he learned that the old Duke had had a stroke. Copious bleedings by his doctors had failed to revive or kill him, and his consumption of alcohol was now strictly limited. So the final opinion of the doctors was that he might, as a paralysed vegetable, live on into his nineties.
Faced now with the possibility that, for years to come, the lovers would be able to enjoy each other's company only when Georgina came up to London for the season, and for a few odd nights during the rest of the year, Georgina had urged Roger to marry again. He had been averse to doing so, but after a few months living on his own at Thatched House Lodge in Richmond Park—a grace and favour residence of which Mr. Pitt had given him a life tenancy—he had become so bored that he had agreed to go on a secret mission to the Crown Prince Bernadotte of Sweden. Bernadotte had persuaded him to go on as his emissary to the Czar, and that had led to his once more becoming involved with Napoleon, then in Moscow.
It was in October 1812 that, to Roger's amazement, he had again run into Mary, in St. Petersburg. On her return to London from Lisbon having no social background and very little money; she had married a merchant in the Baltic Trade, named Wicklow, and went to live in the City with him. Napoleon's Continental System had damaged British trade with Russia so severely that Mr. Wicklow was one of many who got into financial difficulties. As a last resort he had sold his house and possessions in London and, taking Mary with him, sailed on a final venture with goods for St. Petersburg. In the Gulf of Helsingfors his ship had been wrecked and he lost everything. After living on his wits for a while in the Russian capital, he had committed suicide, leaving poor Mary friendless and deeply in debt.
She was in such dire straits that Roger had not had the heart to leave her there; so resorted to the desperate expedient of taking her back to Moscow with him, in boy's clothes and in the role of his soldier servant. There had followed the terrible retreat in which Napoleon left half a million men behind him to die in the snow.
During those many ghastly weeks, Mary shared with Roger every type of danger and privation. Her unfailing fortitude and good humour had turned his affection for her into a much deeper feeling; so when at last they escaped into Sweden, he decided that, since he could not marry Georgina, he would never find a more loving wife than little Mary.
His abiding love for Georgina remained unaltered. Over the long years the unity of their hearts had impelled them to disregard the marriages that both had made, and between his long absences from England as a secret agent they had always renewed their passionate attachment.
That this would be so again he was well aware but, in spite of it, he was confident that he could make Mary happy. The dangerous life he had led ever since his youth had made him a past master of dissimulation. He would see to it that she never knew of the occasional nights of sweet delirium that he spent with Georgina and, for the first time in the seventeen years since he had lost his wife Amanda, his charming grace and favour residence, Thatched House Lodge, would again become a true home for him. Mary had been there once, loved it, and was eagerly looking forward to becoming its mistress.
He felt certain, too, that she would also delight in the children when they came to stay—although they were no longer children. When he had last seen his daughter, Susan, she had been sixteen and rapidly becoming a lovely young woman; while Charles, Earl of St. Ermins, Georgia's son, must by now have left Eton and be a handsome young buck about town.
On arriving in Stockholm after their escape from Russia. Roger had learned one piece of news that filled him with considerable anxiety. Although, under pressure from Napoleon, Sweden was officially at war with Britain, by mutual consent no hostilities were taking place. Commerce between the two countries was at a standstill but the ships of the United States were filling the gap by carrying goods between them, and Roger had supposed that he and Mary would have no difficulty in securing passages in one of them to an English port.
To his dismay he was told that America was now also at war with Britain. Although war had been declared by the United States as long ago as June 18 th, when news of it reached Russia it had been regarded as so relatively unimportant compared to the great war on the Continent that few people, either in St. Petersburg or with Napoleon's army, knew about it; so Roger had not even heard a rumour of what afterwards became known as 'The War of 1812'.
At first this new situation caused him considerable worry about how he and Mary were to get home. But when he consulted the Crown Prince Bernadotte, the latter swiftly reassured him by saying, 'Be not the least concerned, my friend. The British need our goods as much as we do theirs; so they turn a blind eye to American ships entering their ports, and you will find plenty of skippers in Gothenburg "willing to run you over.'