Chapter Four
The day’s events had so excited Drusilla that she found it difficult to sleep that night—especially since the night was warm, even for summer.
For some reason she could not get out of her head the sight and sound of m’lord Devenish. One moment she was remembering his mocking voice, and the next she had a vivid picture of him holding little Jackie in the crook of his arm, displaying a strange tenderness of which she had not thought him capable.
Worse, he stirred her senses after a fashion which no one had ever done before—not even Jeremy. She was reluctantly beginning to understand that what she had felt for Jeremy was nearer to friendship than to passionate love.
And why was she thinking of Lord Devenish and passionate love in the same sentence? Could she passionately love such an apparently cold-blooded man? Especially since it was not his beautiful face which attracted her, but his beautiful voice saying shocking, unexpected things.
The kind of things which quiet, respectable Mrs Drusilla Faulkner had often thought but had never dared to say!
This insight into her deepest mind set her wriggling in the bed, her cheeks hot and her body strangely alive. She decided against calling for her personal maid, Mary, who had slept in a room near to hers ever since Jeremy’s sudden death. Mary deserved her night’s rest—and of what use could she really be? There was a pitcher of water and a glass by her bed, and she could surely pour a drink for herself without disturbing another’s sleep.
A sound outside around eleven of the clock—a bird or a wild animal calling, perhaps—had her sitting up and deciding to open one of the windows to let in a little air.
Without using her tinder box to light a candle since it was the night of the full moon, she rose and threw back the curtains and opened the window just as the noise came again. It was neither a bird nor a wild animal, but stifled human voices, one of them laughing, the other murmuring ‘Hush’.
Drusilla looked down. She saw, briefly in the moonlight, a man and a woman, fully dressed and holding hands, running across the back lawn, down the steps from it, and into the avenue below. She was unable to see their faces or identify them in any way.
Silence followed, broken only once by the cry of an owl. The man and the woman did not reappear. Who could they be? Servants, perhaps, but doing what—and going where? And who else would be in the grounds of Lyford House in the middle of the night. She would speak to Mrs Rollins, the housekeeper, in the morning.
This strange disturbance, added to her mind’s refusal to let go of her memories of Lord Devenish, made sleep impossible for some time, but she heard nothing more.
A long time later she fell asleep for a few short hours before morning arrived all too soon. She ordered breakfast to be brought to her room and drank chocolate and ate buttered rolls in blessed silence.
Why did she think blessed silence? Because her mind was still in turmoil after yesterday’s strange events. Cordelia Faulkner begged to be admitted, but Drusilla fobbed her off with a fib, saying that she had a megrim and would go to church only for the evening service.
One person whom she did admit was Mrs Rollins, the housekeeper. She was a tall, austere woman in early middle age, the terror of the under-servants. The Mrs was an honourary title for she had never married.
She had terrified Drusilla in the early days of her marriage, until she discovered that Mrs Rollins possessed a sense of loyalty to the Faulkners which was almost fanatical. That loyalty was now transferred to her.
Drusilla began without preamble, speaking of what she had seen the night before and asking if it were possible that she had witnessed a pair of servants who had left the house after nightfall without anyone’s knowledge or permission.
Mrs Rollins heard her out before saying, ‘It is quite impossible, ma’am, for any of the servants to leave the house at any time, particularly at night, without the knowledge of Britton or Letty Humphreys.’
Britton was the under-butler, a young man who had a room off the menservants’ dormitory in the attic, which was locked by him at ten o’clock at night. The same arrangement held good for the maids who were similarly supervised by Letty, the chief parlour-maid, a stern elderly woman.
The senior servants had rooms of their own, but they were all of mature years and Drusilla was sure that the pair she had seen were young.
‘Someone from one of the villages, ma’am,’ Mrs Rollins suggested. ‘Larking about the grounds at night.’
‘But we are such a long way from either Tresham Magna or Tresham Minor,’ Drusilla said, frowning. ‘And why should they come here? It might be more sensible of them to lark in the grounds of Tresham Hall.’
‘Harder to break into them,’ suggested Mrs Rollins practically.
Drusilla had to let that be the last word, but for some reason the little incident had disturbed her—and why it should was mysterious. She told herself not to be troubled by such mental cobwebs, brought on, no doubt, by a poor night’s sleep. She went downstairs where she found an anxious Miss Faulkner about to set off for morning service at Tresham Magna, Lyford Village possessing no church of its own.
‘You look pale, my dear,’ she told Drusilla agitatedly, ‘It must be all the excitement yesterday. Lord Devenish may be a great man, but he is scarcely a restful person.’
Drusilla thought that Lord Devenish’s sharp tongue must be catching for she found herself saying, ‘One imagines that great men are rarely restful, Cordelia, but in any case I find his manner refreshing. We practise a deal of hypocrisy, you know.’
Consequently she said nothing of what she had seen the night before to Miss Faulkner for she did not wish to disturb her further.
She might have saved herself the trouble; when Miss Faulkner arrived back in the middle of the morning instead of at the end, her face was pale and she was trembling violently.
‘Whatever can be the matter?’ exclaimed Drusilla. ‘What brings you back so early?’ She poured out a glass of wine and handed it to her companion, ‘Here, drink this, it may help you to compose yourself.’
‘Nothing can do that,’ gasped Miss Faulkner, ‘nothing,’ shivering as she drank the wine down in one unladylike gulp. ‘I shudder to tell you, but I must. Of all dreadful things when Mr Williams arrived at the church this morning he found—oh, I cannot tell you, it is too dreadful.’
‘My dear,’ said Drusilla gently, ‘I fear that you must.’
‘Yes, I must, mustn’t I? Oh, my love, of all things he found a dead sheep on the altar and the bishop must reconsecrate the church—Lord Devenish had been sent for, and I regret what I said of him earlier this morning. He was so kind. We are to use the chapel at Tresham Hall, he says, to save us having to go all the way to the church at Tresham Minor. So very gracious of him!’
Drusilla sat down, plainly shocked. ‘Who could have done anything half so dreadful—and why?’
‘No one knows. It seems that Farmer Ramsey had an argument with Parson Williams over the tithes—which he lost. But one cannot imagine such a jovial fellow as he is doing such a thing in revenge.’
‘No, indeed,’ said Drusilla faintly, thinking of the jolly red-faced man who had often given her sweet milk to drink, fresh from the cow, when she had been a little girl.
And so she told Devenish when he visited them that afternoon to reinforce his invitation to use his chapel.
‘I thought that I ought to come to inform you that we shall make every effort to identify and punish the miscreants,’ he told them.
Giles said eagerly, ‘Vobster, our head groom, believes that it may have been Luddite sympathizers at work. Even down here, he says, there are those who talk and plan sedition.’
Devenish