“I DON’T think I want any champagne,” said Claire smilingly, as Nick filled a glass and handed it to her. “Being utterly free like this produces much the same effect. I feel drunk, Nick—drunk with happiness. Oh, why can’t I be always free——”
She broke off abruptly in her speech, her face whitening, and stared past Nick with dilated eyes. Her lips remained parted, just as when she had ceased speaking, and the breath came between them unevenly.
Nick followed the direction of her glance. But he could see nothing to account for her suddenly stricken expression of dismay. A man in chauffeur’s livery, vaguely familiar to him, was approaching, and it was upon him that Claire’s eyes were fixed in a sick gaze of apprehension. It reminded Nick of the look of a wounded bird, incapable of flight, as it watches the approach of a hungry cat.
“What is it?” he asked quickly. “What’s the matter? For God’s sake don’t look like that, Claire!”
Slowly, with difficulty, she wrenched her eyes away from that sleek, conventional figure in the dark green livery.
“Don’t you see who it is?” she asked in a harsh, dry whisper.
Before Nick could answer, the man had made his way to Claire’s side and paused respectfully.
“Beg pardon, my lady,” he said, touching his hat, “Sir Adrian sent me to say that he’s waiting for you in the car just along the road there.” He pointed to where, on the white ribbon of road which crossed the Moor not far from the base of the tor, a stationary car was visible.
Claire, her face ashen, turned to Nick in mute appeal.
“Sir Adrian? I thought he left for London this morning?”
Nick shot the question fiercely at the chauffeur, but the man’s face remained respectfully blank.
“No, sir. Sir Adrian drove as far as Exeter and then returned. Afterwards we drove on here, sir, and they told us in the village we should find you at Shelston Tors.”
Meanwhile the other members of the party were becoming aware that some contretemps had occurred. Claire’s white, stricken face was evidence enough that something was amiss, and simultaneously Lady Anne and Jean hurried forward, filled with apprehension.
“What is it, Claire?” asked Lady Anne, suspecting bad news of some kind. “What has happened?” Recognising the Charnwood livery, she turned to the chauffeur and continued quickly: “Has Sir Adrian met with an accident?” She could conceive of no other cause for the man’s unexpected appearance.
“No, my lady. Sir Adrian is waiting in the car for her ladyship.”
“Waiting in the car?” repeated Jean and Lady Anne in chorus.
The little group of friends drew closer together.
“Don’t you see what it means?” broke out Claire in a low voice of intense anger. “It’s been all a trick—a trick! He never meant to go to London at all. He only pretended to me that he was going, so that I should think that I was free and he could trap me.” She looked at Nick and Jean significantly. “He must have overheard us—that day in the shrubbery at Charnwood—you remember?” They both nodded. “And then planned to humiliate me in front of half the county.”
“But you won’t go back with him?” exclaimed Nick hotly. He swung round and addressed the chauffeur stormily. “You can damn well tell your master that her ladyship will return this evening with the rest of the party.” The man’s face twitched. As far as it is possible for a well-drilled servant’s face to express the human emotion of compassion, his did so.
“It would be no good, sir,” he said in a low voice. “He means her ladyship to come. ‘Go and fetch her away, Langton,’ was his actual words to me. I didn’t want the job, sir, as you may guess.”
“Well, she’s not coming, that’s all,” declared Nick determinedly.
“Oh, I must, Nick—I must go,” cried Claire in distress. “I—I daren’t stay.”
Lady Anne nodded.
“Yes, I think she must go, Nick dear,” she said persuasively. “It would he—-wiser.”
“But it’s damnable!” ejaculated Nick furiously. “It’s only done to insult her—to humiliate her!”
Claire smiled a little wistfully.
“I ought to be used to that by now,” she said a trifle shakily. “Put Lady Anne is right—I must go.” She turned to the chauffeur, dismissing him with a little air of dignity that, in the circumstances, was not without its flavour of heroism. “You can go on ahead, Langton, and tell Sir Adrian that I am coming.”
The man touched his hat and moved off obediently.
“Nick and I will walk down to the car with you,” said Lady Anne. She was fully alive to the fact that her escort might contribute towards ameliorating the kind of reception Claire would obtain from her husband. “Jean dear, look after everybody for me for a few minutes, will you? And,” raising her voice a little, “explain that Claire has been called home suddenly, as Sir Adrian was not well enough to make the journey to town, after all.”
But Lady Anne’s well-meant endeavour to throw dust in the eyes of the rest of the party was of comparatively little use. Although to many of them Claire was personally an entire stranger—since Sir Adrian intervened whenever possible to prevent her from forming new friendships—the story of her unhappy married life was practically public property in the neighbourhood, and it was quite evident that to all intents and purposes the detestable husband had actually insisted on her returning with him, exactly as a naughty child might be swept off home by an irate parent in the middle of a jolly party.
It was impossible to stem the flood of gossip, and though most of it was kindly enough, and wholeheartedly sympathetic to Lady Latimer, Jean’s cheeks burned with indignation that Claire’s dignity should be thus outraged.
The remainder of the afternoon was spoilt for her, and Nick’s stormy face when he, together with Lady Anne, rejoined the rest of the party did not help to lighten her heart.
“I’m so sorry, Nick,” she whispered compassionately, when presently the opportunity of a few words alone with him occurred.
He glared at her.
“Are you?” he said shortly. “I’m not. I think I’m glad. This ends it. No woman can be expected to put up with public humiliation of that sort.”
“Nick!” There was a sharp note of fear in Jean’s voice. “Nick, what do you mean? What are you going to do?”
There was an ugly expression on the handsome boyish-looking face.
“You’ll know soon enough,” was all he vouchsafed. And swung away from her.
Jean felt troubled. She had never seen Nick before with that set, still look on his face—a kind of bitter concentration which reminded her forcibly of his brother—and she rather dreaded what it might portend.
Her thoughts were still preoccupied with the afternoon’s unpleasant episode, and with the possible consequences which might accrue, as she climbed into Burke’s high dog-cart.
She had had a fleeting notion of claiming Claire’s vacant seat for the homeward run, but had dismissed it since actually Claire’s absence merely served to provide comfortable room for Blaise in the Willow Ferry car, which had held its full complement of passengers on the outward journey. Moreover, she reflected that any change of plan, now that she had agreed to drive back with Burke, might only lead to trouble. He was not in a mood to brook being thwarted.
A big, raking chestnut, on wires to be off, danced between the shafts of the dog-cart, irritably pawing the ground and jerking her handsome, satin-skinned head up and down with a restless jingle of bit and curb-chain. She showed considerable more of the white of a wicked-looking eye than was altogether reassuring as she fought impatiently against the compulsion of the steady hand which gripped the reins and kept her, against her will, at a standstill.
The instant she felt Jean’s light foot on the step her excitement rose to fever heat. Surely this must mean that at last a start was imminent and that that firm, masterful pressure on the bit would be released!
But Burke had leaned forward to tuck the light dust-rug round Jean’s knees, and regarding this further delay as beyond bearing the chestnut created a diversion by going straight up in the air and pirouetting gaily on her hind legs.
“Steady now!”
Burke’s calm tones fell rebukingly on the quivering, sensitive ears, and down came two shining hoofs in response, as the mare condescended to resume a more normal pose. The next moment she was off at a swinging trot, breaking every now and again, out of pure exuberance o............