Lord Tony’s Wife, Baroness Orczy [bill gates best books TXT] 📗

touch the cup of chocolate which she had prepared for him with her own hands.

“I shall be quite myself again in Bath,” he declared, “and in a day or two when you can spare the time⁠—or when milor can spare you⁠—perhaps you will drive over to see how the old father is getting on, eh?”

“Indeed,” she said firmly, “I shall not allow you to go to Bath alone. If you will go, I shall accompany you.”

“Nay!” he protested, “that is foolishness, my child. The barouche will take me back quite comfortably. It is less than two hours’ drive and I shall be quite safe and comfortable.”

“You will be quite safe and comfortable in my company,” she retorted with a tender, anxious glance at his pale face and the nervous tremor of his hands. “I have consulted with my dear husband and he has given his consent that I should accompany you.”

“But you can’t leave milor like that, my child,” he protested once more. “He will be lonely and miserable without you.”

“Yes. I think he will,” she said wistfully. “But he will be all the happier when you are well again, and I can return to Combwich satisfied.”

Whereupon M. le duc yielded. He kissed and thanked his daughter and seemed even relieved at the prospect of her company. The barouche was ordered for eleven o’clock, and a quarter of an hour before that time Lord Tony had his young wife in his arms, bidding her a sad farewell.

“I hate your going from me, sweetheart,” he said as he kissed her eyes, her hair, her lips. “I cannot bear you out of my sight even for an hour⁠ ⁠… let alone a couple of days.”

“Yet I must go, dear heart,” she retorted, looking up with that sweet, grave smile of hers into his eager young face. “I could not let him travel alone⁠ ⁠… could I?”

“No, no,” he assented somewhat dubiously, “but remember, dear heart, that you are infinitely precious and that I shall scarce live for sheer anxiety until I have you here, safe, once more in my arms.”

“I’ll send you a courier this evening,” she rejoined, as she extricated herself gently from his embrace, “and if I can come back tomorrow⁠ ⁠…”

“I’ll ride over to Bath in any case in the morning so that I may escort you back if you really can come.”

“I will come if I am reassured about father. Oh, my dear lord,” she added with a wistful little sigh, “I knew yesterday morning that I was too happy, and that something would happen to mar the perfect felicity of these last few days.”

“You are not seriously anxious about M. le duc’s health, dear heart?”

“No, not seriously anxious. Farewell, milor. It is au revoir⁠ ⁠… a few hours and we’ll resume our dream.”

V

There was nothing in all that to arouse my lord Tony’s suspicions. All day he was miserable and forlorn because Yvonne was not there⁠—but he was not suspicious.

Fate had a blow in store for him, from which he was destined never wholly to recover, but she gave him no warning, no premonition. He spent the day in making up arrears of correspondence, for he had a large private fortune to administer⁠—trust funds on behalf of brothers and sisters who were minors⁠—and he always did it conscientiously and to the best of his ability. The last few days he had lived in a dream and there was an accumulation of business to go through. In the evening he expected the promised courier, who did not arrive: but his was not the sort of disposition that would fret and fume because of a contretemps which might be attributable to the weather⁠—it had rained heavily since afternoon⁠—or to sundry trifling causes which he at Combwich, ten or a dozen miles from Bath, could not estimate. He had no suspicions even then. How could he have? How could he guess? Nevertheless when he ultimately went to bed, it was with the firm resolve that he would in any case go over to Bath in the morning and remain there until Yvonne was able to come back with him.

Combwich without her was anyhow unendurable.

VI

He started for Bath at nine o’clock in the morning. It was still raining hard. It had rained all night and the roads were very muddy. He started out without a groom. A little after half-past ten, he drew rein outside his house in Chandos Buildings, and having changed his clothes he started to walk to Laura Place. The rain had momentarily left off, and a pale wintry sun peeped out through rolling banks of grey clouds. He went round by way of Saw Close and the Upper Borough Walls, as he wanted to avoid the fashionable throng that crowded the neighbourhood of the Pump Room and the Baths. His intention was to seek out the Blakeneys at their residence in the Circus after he had seen Yvonne and obtained news of M. le duc.

He had no suspicions. Why should he have?

The Abbey clock struck a quarter-past eleven when finally he knocked at the house in Laura Place. Long afterwards he remembered how just at that moment a dense grey mist descended into the valley. He had not noticed it before, now he saw that it had enveloped this part of the city so that he could not even see clearly across the Place.

A woman came to open the door. Lord Tony then thought this strange considering how particular M. le duc always was about everything pertaining to the management of his household: “The house of a poor exile,” he was wont to say, “but nevertheless that of a gentleman.”

“Can I go straight up?” he asked the woman, who he thought was standing ostentatiously in the hall as if to bar his way. “I desire to see M. le duc.”

“Ye can walk upstairs, zir,” said the woman, speaking with a broad Somersetshire accent, “but I doubt me if ye’ll see ’is Grace the