Blanchland Secret Read online

  Sarah tried to think clearly as she ran through the wood. Olivia had been lured from hiding by someone using her name, and she was certain that it had to be Lord Allardyce. Ralph had said that Allardyce and Marvell were in league, so possibly the servant had discovered Olivia’s hiding place. One or other of them must have dealt Tom a blow to keep him out of the way, and now Allardyce meant to use the revels as a cover to carry Olivia off…

  Dodging between the trees, Sarah drew nearer to the grotto and tried to keep in the shadows. Torches flared about the entrance and the chanting was much louder now, eerie in the quiet night. Sarah’s skin crawled. She could see a brazier burning in the centre of the grotto and a curious smell, sweet and woody, was floating towards her. It made her head spin but it was too late to go back now.

  Sarah crept around the outside of the grotto and approached the entrance with extreme caution. She was about to peer in at the door when several figures in long flowing robes came running from the entrance and began to scatter throughout the wood, shrieking and screaming in evident enjoyment. It was impossible to identify the masked revellers, but Sarah recognised a slender wraith that could only be Lady Ann Walter, being hotly pursued by a man in black robes. Catching her about the waist, he tumbled her into the snow and the two of them rolled about in evident and amorous excitement. Sarah drew back in disgust.

  A sudden sharp sound from inside the grotto made her jump. She edged forward and tried to see around the corner of the entrance without giving herself away, but the curve of the walls blocked her view. The smell of the brazier was much stronger now, making her eyes water and her head feel dizzy. If it was another of Ralph’s noxious aphrodisiacs…There was a scraping sound, followed by silence. Sarah hesitated, barely breathing. She knew that someone must still be inside the grotto. Perhaps Sir Ralph, as high priest of whatever ceremony had just taken place, had stayed after the others to prepare the next stage of the revels…Sarah paused. She had to find out if Lord Allardyce had brought Olivia here.

  Sarah drew herself up. Even if Sir Ralph were still in the grotto, he would hardly hurt her. And if it was Allardyce, or Marvell, or both…She shut her mind to that. Once he knew that everyone was alerted to his plan, Allardyce would surely not persist in his abduction of Olivia.

  Sarah stepped forward, suddenly resolute, and as she did so a cloaked figure crossed her view, walking directly towards the entrance of the grotto. He put his hood back as he approached and the torchlight gleamed on his fair hair. Sarah caught her breath in shock and disbelief as the flaring light illuminated his face, and revealed not the expected features of Lord Allardyce…but those of Guy Renshaw.

  Sarah felt as though all the breath had been knocked from her body. She was breathing hard and shivering violently. What was Guy doing at Blanchland when he had been summoned home to Woodallan? Why had he not told her of his return? What was his purpose at the revels? And why had she ever trusted him at all, when it seemed clear that he was utterly untrustworthy?

  All those thoughts raced through Sarah’s mind in an instant, followed by a wave of anguish so painful she could hardly bear it. She clung to the outside wall of the grotto to steady herself, calming slightly at the physical sensation of the cold snow and rough earth beneath her fingers. She would confront Guy. Now.

  The shadows shifted and he walked past her, so close that Sarah almost imagined she had felt the brush of the monk’s robes against her own cloak. He was moving purposefully, unlike the others who could still be heard shrieking and tumbling in the snow. Another worse suspicion grasped Sarah. She had assumed that it was Allardyce who had discovered Olivia, but supposing that it was Guy? He had claimed that he did not agree with his father’s plan to spirit Olivia away, but was that true? Perhaps he had lulled her suspicions in order to remove Olivia before Sarah could prevent it…

  Half of Sarah’s mind argued that this could not possibly be true, whilst the other half grappled with all her doubts and suspicions. She was tired and alone, worn out with her concerns for Olivia and the accumulated tensions of the day. She loved Guy, but her tired mind was telling her that she might have made a mistake.

  There suddenly seemed to be so many reasons to mistrust him; he had lulled her suspicions with soft words and kindness, had made her fall in love with him, and yet, what did she really know of him at all? Her instincts might tell her to trust him, but those instincts could be very wrong, and Olivia’s life was at stake…

  Sarah slid from her hiding place and began to follow Guy between the trees. She went slowly, keeping in the shadows, careful not to make a sound. Other figures in loose-flowing robes flitted across her line of vision. Her head swam with the lingering smell of the brazier. It was like another horrible dream. At one point a hooded figure with Sir Ralph’s girth loomed out of the trees in front of her, but before he could utter a word, she pushed him hard into a snowdrift and he collapsed without a sound.

  They were heading for the Folly Tower. Sarah could see its dark shape against the lighter sky, and watched as Guy slipped inside. Now was the time to follow him in and confront him, but still she hesitated. She knew that it was the only way to learn the truth, to be reassured, to let Guy explain…

  The blackness of the doorway yawned before her. Tip-toeing as softly as she was able, Sarah trod up to the door and peered in. The moon was bright through the tumbledown walls; it lit up the whole of the interior, including what looked like a bundle of rags on the earthen floor.

  Sarah forgot her fear. With an exclamation, she hurried forward and turned the bundle over to reveal the white, unconscious face of Olivia Meredith. Her niece was as limp as rag doll and made neither sound nor movement. There was a bruise very similar to the one administered to Tom Brookes marring the perfection of her pale forehead, and a small cut that was sticky with blood.

  Abruptly the moon went behind a cloud and plunged the whole tower into darkness. Sarah heard a step on the earthen floor beside her and felt the brush of cloth against her face. Someone caught hold of her arm in a punishing grip, dragged her to her feet and thrust her hard against the tower wall.

  As abruptly as it had gone in, the moon re-emerged, flooding the tower with light again. It shone on Guy’s furious face as he roughly thrust the hood of Sarah’s cloak aside and stared down into her face.

  ‘You! What the hell are you doing here, Sarah?’

  Sarah struggled, but he held her tightly. He shook her hard. ‘Well? What are you doing out here on the night of the revels? Answer me!’

  Sarah’s mouth tightened into an angry line. ‘What do you think I am doing, sir, joining in? Surely the question is to you rather than me—what are you doing here? You are supposed to be at Woodallan, or so you let me believe! You are the one skulking around in those ridiculous robes! And what have you done to my niece?’

  Guy let her go so suddenly that she almost stumbled. His voice was drained of all expression. ‘You think that I did that?’

  ‘Why not?’ Sarah gave him a look full of flashing anger. ‘You told me yourself that the plan was to remove Olivia before anyone could know of her existence! Pay her off—bundle her out of the way…What does it matter how the thing is done? The honour of the Woodallans is paramount!’

  She saw the glitter of rage in Guy’s own face now and was perversely determined to provoke him further.

  ‘You lulled my suspicions, made me believe you in earnest! I thought that it was Allardyce who was the danger, but I have made a mistake, have I not?’

  Guy swore. He took a step closer, and suddenly Sarah was afraid. Her own pain had made her want to lash out at him, but now, belatedly, her instincts were telling her that she had made a terrible mistake.

  ‘Allardyce is in the grotto, tied up to prevent him from carrying off your niece,’ Guy ground out. ‘That is the extent of the danger he poses! As for me, I told you the truth this morning, though you obviously did not believe me! And to think you believe me capable of hitting a defenceless woman—my own flesh and blood! Yo
ur opinion of me is truly flattering, Miss Sheridan!’

  The sarcasm flicked Sarah on the raw. She recoiled from the disgust she saw in his face. ‘If you had told me the truth from the start—’

  ‘We shall leave the recriminations until later, if you please, Miss Sheridan!’ Guy said coldly. ‘Just now it is your niece—’ he stressed the phrase ‘—who needs your help.’ The tension had left him now, replaced by something that chilled Sarah more—a cold indifference. The tone of his voice, the way he addressed her as ‘Miss Sheridan’ rather than by her name, suggested that he was unlikely to forgive her quickly, if at all.

  Suddenly Sarah was overcome by an enormous lassitude. The light-headedness induced by the brazier’s fumes and the accumulated shocks of the night had left her feeling tired and faint. She slumped against the wall of the tower. Guy’s voice seemed to come from a great distance.

  ‘If this is intended to gain my sympathy, I fear it will not work…’

  ‘I’m sorry…’ Sarah’s words came out as a whisper. ‘The smoke…the brazier—’

  She heard Guy give an exclamation of exasperation, then his angry features swam briefly into view. ‘Damnation! Sarah—’ He shook her hard and her head swam all the more.

  Beyond his shoulder, another face appeared and then another. Sarah closed her eyes. She knew she must be dreaming now. It sounded like Justin Lebeter’s voice. ‘Guy? What in God’s name—?’

  And then, to her immense gratitude, Sarah felt herself slide from Guy’s grip into a dead faint.

  Sarah opened her eyes. She was in her bedroom at Blanchland, a room that was becoming almost familiar to her. The bright light that crept around the closed curtains suggested that it was daylight outside, but the bedroom was gloomy and Amelia, sitting beside the bed, was holding a magazine up to the meagre light.

  ‘Open the curtains if it would help you to read better,’ Sarah suggested.

  Her cousin jumped. ‘Oh! You are awake! How do you feel, Sarah?’

  ‘I am very well.’ Sarah sat up and attempted to push back the covers and swing her legs out of bed, but her head started to spin and she lay back with a groan. Amelia tutted with annoyance.

  ‘You see! You are not well at all! Pray keep still, Sarah!’

  Sarah obeyed whilst her cousin moved across to the window and pulled back the curtains. She winced as her eyes adjusted to the flood of daylight.

  ‘Oo-oof! What time is it, Milly?’

  ‘About midday, I think. You have slept the clock around!’

  ‘Olivia!’ Sarah said, memory suddenly flooding back. ‘What has happened? Is she safe?’

  Amelia put a soothing hand on her arm and sat down beside her. ‘Olivia is quite safe. In fact, she awoke before you!’

  ‘And Tom?’ Sarah struggled upright again, fighting sheets and blankets that seemed to have a mind of their own. ‘What happened, Milly?’

  ‘I shall not tell you if you do not keep still,’ her cousin reproached. ‘Tom is much better, although his wife is insisting he rest, which goes against the grain! All of Sir Ralph’s guests have left, except Lord Lebeter, who seems barely able to leave Olivia’s side! Guy has packed that poisonous Lord Allardyce off—a night tied up in the grotto soon cooled his ardour and I do not think he will approach Olivia again! Oh…’ she smiled ‘…and Sir Ralph himself is a little sickly, I fear—we found him asleep in a snowdrift and he has taken an ague!’

  ‘Oh, dear!’ Sarah pressed a hand to her mouth, assailed by guilt at the memory of the portly figure she had pushed over in the snow. ‘I seem to remember…It was all so extraordinary, Milly! Robed figures running everywhere, and that dreadful smell from the brazier—’

  ‘Yes, Guy tells me that it was some kind of opiate used by Allardyce to induce hallucinations,’ Amelia said with disgust, then stifled a giggle. ‘You would have thought that there had been quite enough of that sort of thing! No wonder they were all rolling around in the snow regardless of cold! The doctor believes that you suffered an adverse reaction to it, Sarah, and that, coupled with the natural anxiety of the situation, led you to swoon! It is lucky it was not worse! That is twice that you have been fortunate!’

  Sarah was beginning to remember just how bad it had been. She wondered briefly whether she could claim that it was a hallucination that had affected the balance of her mind and made her level those accusations at Guy, but concluded sadly that he was unlikely to believe her. Amelia was laughing again.

  ‘Poor Sir Ralph, I would not wish you to misjudge him! Apparently he had not intended to hold the revels, but Allardyce needed them as a cover for his own actions, so he and Marvell conspired to arrange it all. Apparently Marvell let Allardyce down by running off with Lady Ann Walter! Meanwhile Ralph came rushing out to see what was happening and caught a chill for his pains!’

  Sarah tried to smile, but the thought of Guy’s anger made her feel stiff and cold. Amelia had not yet noticed.

  ‘When we first saw you with Guy in the tower, it looked as though he was trying to strangle you, Sarah—’

  ‘I expect he would have liked to do precisely that,’ Sarah said, so bleakly that her cousin stopped laughing and frowned.

  ‘Why, what can have happened?’

  ‘Only that I accused him of having attacked Olivia!’ Sarah’s hand smoothed the bedspread nervously. ‘It is a little difficult to explain, Milly, but I knew that Guy had been asked by his father to find Olivia and spirit her away before her relationship to the Woodallans became public—so I thought that he—’

  ‘Oh, dear!’ Amelia looked stricken. ‘Oh, Sarah, surely you could not think that Guy would do such a thing—?’

  Sarah’s face crumpled and two huge tears rolled down her cheeks. ‘I know it was the height of folly—no, it was worse than that, it was a lack of trust that he will never forgive! I could have cut my tongue out when I realised the truth, but by then it was too late!’

  She dabbed ineffectually at her tears, eventually giving up and crying wholeheartedly into the handkerchief that Amelia pressed into her hand.

  ‘Well, this is very bad,’ Amelia said at length, with an understatement that made Sarah laugh a little bitterly, ‘but perhaps Guy will understand that you were distraught. After all, you had been through an unpleasant experience the night before, and with the tensions of the day…’

  ‘Pray do not make excuses for me,’ Sarah said with desolation. ‘Guy has behaved to me as a gentleman should, and I have repaid his trust with base suspicions. Oh, I wish I had never been born!’

  ‘I will send a tray up to you,’ Amelia said, getting up. ‘You will feel better once you have eaten, and when you are well enough I will let you get up! It seems we are forever ministering to one another—it is enough to induce a fit of the megrims!’

  ‘The Earl!’ Sarah said suddenly, when her cousin was almost at the door. ‘I thought he was ill? What has happened—?’

  ‘The Earl is quite well. The message summoning Guy to Woodallan was as false as the one from yourself to Olivia!’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Later,’ Amelia said inexorably, closing the door behind her with an emphatic click.

  Sarah got out of bed and wandered listlessly over to the window. The short winter day was already closing in, and Sarah shivered at the cold view. Despite Amelia’s optimism, she knew that Guy would not forgive her. She should have been running to him for help, after all, not hurling accusations at him.

  Sarah dressed slowly, ate a little of the food Amelia sent up, drank a glass of spring water and went down the corridor to visit Olivia. It was easy to work out which room her niece was occupying, for Justin Lebeter was sitting outside the door in the attitude of a man who is prepared to wait all day just for a glimpse of the object of his devotion. He leapt to his feet as Sarah approached.

  ‘Miss Sheridan! Are you feeling better, ma’am?’

  ‘Yes, I thank you, sir.’ Sarah smiled at him. ‘I am come to see how Olivia is going on.’

  Lord Lebeter
’s face glowed. ‘Oh, she is much recovered! I am sure she will be glad to see you! Lord Renshaw is with her, with Mrs Brookes acting as chaperon, although as he is her uncle—’ He broke off. ‘Indeed, it seems odd to consider Renshaw as anyone’s uncle, but I suppose…’

  Sarah laughed. ‘I see that he has told you the whole!’

  ‘Well, a little.’ Lebeter looked diffident. ‘I understand that I have you to thank also, Miss Sheridan, for your efforts to protect Miss Meredith. Indeed, she has been speaking most highly of you. I had no idea…’

  Sarah felt a swift rush of guilt. ‘It was my fault. When you spoke to me of Olivia’s whereabouts I was anxious only to protect her from Lord Allardyce. I had no wish to mislead you, but I thought it safer to tell no one what I knew. I am sorry.’

  Lebeter shook his head. ‘No apology necessary, ma’am, I assure you. I understand why you acted as you did. You will know now that I am hopeful of securing Miss Meredith’s affections and I swear that my intentions are honourable.’ He flushed endearingly. ‘The discovery of her…erm…her antecedents is of no consequence to me.’

  Sarah wondered fleetingly whether the Dowager Lady Lebeter would be so sanguine about a daughter-in-law with so dubious a family history. Justin Lebeter’s mother was known equally as a demanding mama and a rampant snob, but young Lord Lebeter seemed quite determined; perhaps it would only strengthen his love for Olivia if he had to overcome adversity for her sake. The thought of adversity led Sarah to wonder about the Earl of Woodallan. If his granddaughter were to become Lady Lebeter, and take her place in society, he would have to come to terms with the fact that he could not sweep Catherine’s shame aside. Those were issues for Guy to discuss with his father, but she acknowledged with a sinking heart that she could not avoid her part in the debate. As Olivia’s closest relation on her father’s side, she would have to be consulted.