“I admired you from the moment I saw you,” he said. “It was a great regret to me that we did not become better acquainted in Venice. It is my urgent desire that we should repair that unfortunate state of affairs.”
“Will you please say clearly what you mean.”
“I should have thought it was clear.”
I stood up.
“Don’t be hasty,” he warned. “You will regret it all your life if you are. Think of your father. Think of your mother.”
I closed my eyes. I was thinking: I shall have to save him. I shall have to save them both. I must. And this man knows it. Oh, Leigh, where are you?
Yet what could Leigh do to save my father?
“Come,” he said, “be reasonable. Sit down. Listen.”
I sat. I felt hypnotized by those cruel golden eyes with the long, almost feminine lashes and the beautifully marked golden brows.
“You cheated me … in Venice,” he went on. “That brute came and snatched you from me. If you had only come to me then I should have so delighted you that we should have been happy together. But I lost you, and ever since I have thought of you. Then I saw you today and I knew your father was here. I can save him. I can bring many favours to people who seek them. My family is an influential one. I will save your father. I promise you … but I need my reward.”
“And your reward is …”
“You.” He leaned forward and spoke almost breathlessly. “I will send a carriage for you at sundown. You will be brought to my house. You will stay with me until the dawn. During that time you will be my beloved little slave. You will be mine entirely, denying me nothing, wishing only to serve me.”
“I think you are despicable. You are in a position—so you say—to save a man’s life, and you ask payment for that!”
“Oh, come, you are a young woman who would be too proud to accept charity. You would want to pay your debts, would you not?”
“I hate you.”
“That may be, but it is not a question of your emotions, but of mine. I am the one who has to be paid.”
“It … is not possible,” I said.
He shrugged his shoulders. “So you will let your father die?”
I looked at him wretchedly. “Is there nothing else? … We could pay.”
“I need money. I always need money. They say I am rather extravagant. But in this case there is something I want more, and I am afraid it is the price for this particular service.”
“How could it be brought about … my father’s release, I mean?”
“I would see that he walked into the inn on the day that followed.”
“Can you be sure?”
He nodded.
“But how can I be sure?”
“It would be a gamble,” he said.
“Then I shall have to find some other means.”
“How? What will you do?”
“I will find some way.”
“There is not much time. Do you propose to seek out the judge and say, ‘Fair sir, I offer you this … or that … for my father’s life?’ I warn you his price might be the same as mine.”
I felt dizzy. I kept thinking of my father and imagined him, swinging on a rope … or worse still. I thought of my mother and I realized how dear they both were to me—he no less than she was—and that I had wanted my father’s love all my life. I had longed to shine in his eyes; I had wanted him to be proud of me and his indifference to me had not really changed my feelings towards him. Perhaps it had made me more eager for his approval.
“What if you do not keep your part of the bargain?” I asked.
“I give you my word that I shall. I can and I will do it.”
“How can I trust you?”
“You can’t be sure, can you? You will have to take that chance. I am not, as you may have guessed, noted for my virtue, but I have a deserved reputation for paying my gambling debts. When I give a promise to pay I consider it a point of honour to do so.”
“Honour. You talk of honour?”
“Honour of a sort. We all have our standards, you know. Well, what is it to be?”
I was silent. I could not bear to look at him. But even while I hesitated I knew I had to save my father.
“I will send a carriage for you at dusk,” he said. “It will bring you back the following morning. The next day you will be able to return with your parents.”
I felt numb. I had prayed for a solution, and here it was offered to me, but at what a price!
He was regarding me with glittering eyes. I thought of the first time I had seen him in St. Mark’s Square and how this had really grown out of my love for Jocelyn and had begun when I discovered him in the haunted flower garden.
I turned and hurried from the room.
My mother’s fever had not abated and the doctor came again.
“How ill is she?” I asked. “Is there not something that can be done?”
“What she needs is her husband safe beside her.”
I thought: Everything is telling me that I must do this. I could save them both. Surely what happened to me was nothing compared with their future happiness. I must save them both, no matter what it cost me.
I hated this man with an intensity I had never felt before. It was in his power to save my parents, yet to do so he insisted on my utter humiliation. One moment I wished I had never seen him, and then I remembered that if I had not there might not have been even this opportunity of saving my father.
I thought of the tangled web of my life and how one event was so closely interwoven with another. I tried to think of anything but the coming night.
For one thing I was thankful. There would have to be no explanation to my mother. She would sleep deeply through the night and if she needed anything there was a bell rope by the bed which would bring one of the serving maids to her. I trusted she would not wake and find me missing.
There seemed no fear of that. The doctor had given her a potion which he said would make her sleep, for forgetfulness was what she needed more than anything.
So, as the shadows were falling I put on my cloak and went down to the inn parlour to wait.
I did not wait long. A liveried servant came asking for me, and there was the carriage waiting to take me to my doom.
We rode through the streets of that old city which had been built hundreds of years before when the Romans came to Britain. The streets were full of strangers and there were soldiers everywhere. It was a town of roystering and tragedy, for many a Dorset man would come to a sad end within the next few days. Through the town we went, past the almshouses known as Nappers Mite, past the grammar school founded by Queen Elizabeth, and the old church with its tower which was two hundred years old.
I saw these things as though in a dream. If I save my father, I thought, I shall never want to see this place again. Then I was praying silently for help to get me through this night.
On the edge of the town was a mansion. We turned in at the gates and went up the drive. The house loomed before us—sinister, I thought, like an enchanted dwelling conjured up by evil spirits.
I tried to appear calm as I stepped down and entered the hall.
It was not unlike our hall at Eversleigh—the high vaulted roof, the long refectory table with the pewter utensils on it, the swords and halberds hanging on the wall—a typical baronial mansion.
A woman came forward. She was rotund, middle-aged and heavily painted, with a patch on her cheek and another on her temple.
“We are waiting for you, mistress,” she said. “Please follow me.”
With a heavily beating heart and a warning within me to be prepared for anything terrible and strange which might happen to me, I followed her up a staircase lined with family portraits.
We went along a gallery to a door. I was taken into a room at the end of which was a dais; curtains were half drawn across this.