Everard kissed his mother’s hand. He loved her deeply, and the strong sense of chivalry in his nature made him long to protect her from any unhappiness he might cause her by this consuming passion for Carolan.
“I will do anything except give up Carolan and that I cannot do!”
“I would not ask that. I begin to see how you love the child. It is only your happiness that I think of.”
“You are an angel, Mother.” His face was alight with happiness, so that he looked just a boy again.
“Listen, darling,” she said.
“You have your new living; go to it. There will be plenty of work for you to do. Go to it for three months. Do not see Carolan during that time.”
“Not see her…”
“You could write, my darling… Believe me, it is wise…”
And eventually he had agreed to do that.
“Three months? What is three months, Carolan?”
An eternity! said Carolan to herself.
She let him go. And he had gone fifty miles away to the new living, and he wrote to her often and told her of the events of his day.
With Everard gone, and Margaret pining, and the strange secret silence of the squire, life was grey indeed.
Charles came home. A big man of twenty-two, very like his father, causing a flutter among the females of the countryside. He too watched Carolan with something of the secret silence of the squire. From under his heavy lidded eyes he watched her, and there were traces of that childhood cruelty about his mouth.
Once he found her in the stables grooming her horse, and he stood leaning against the door watching her.
“Damn it, Carolan,” he said, for he used oaths like the squire, ‘you have grown quickly!”
“Naturally,” she said, “I am older.”
“And good to look at too!”
She was silent, wishing him gone.
“Everard evidently thought so,” he added.
She was still silent.
“You are a sullen devil, Carolan! Have you no welcome for your … for your … what am I, Carolan? I am not your brother, am I? I do not mind that though, do you?”
“I do not mind in the least,” said Carolan coolly.
“Why should you? Do you still bear grudges for past offences?”
“I dislike you intensely, just as I always did, if that is what you mean.”
“Hoity-toity!” he said.
“What a little Miss she is. I could make you like me, Carolan.”
“You would set yourself an impossible task.”
“Would I? Would I?” He pushed through the half-door.
“Not impossible at all, Miss Carolan. By God, you have a damned pretty face! And cheeky too. But I always liked a bit of cheek.”
“Stand back!” ordered Carolan.
“I am not a child of five now to be teased by you.”
“Oh, no, not five. Almost a wife, eh, Miss Carolan? Almost the parson’s wife! Still, is that going to stop you having a little fun?”
“Fun? Do you think dallying with you would ever be fun for me? I assure you it would be far from that in fact quite the most unpleasant thing that had ever happened to me.”
“Good God, Carolan! Do you think I will stand for that?”
“Stand for what you will. I want nothing of you!”
He caught her suddenly.
“Little prude! Are you such a prude with Everard, I wonder?”
She kicked his legs angrily, and he released her.
“What a spitfire!” He grimaced, for she had hurt him. and all the desire to kiss her had vanished momentarily; he would have liked to hit her. He almost did, but the thought of the squire’s anger if he heard of this reminded him that he needed money from the squire, and he had to sing small for a while.
He said: “Do you imagine that you are so very attractive that you can kick and still be kissed?”
“You are ridiculous! Conceited fool, that is you, and always was!”
“By God, there are those who are only too pleased to kiss me.”
There are those doubtless, but you probably have to pay them well.”
She walked past him arrogantly, her chin up, her eyes flashing her contempt. But her heart quailed a little at the expression in his eyes; it reminded her of the squire’s eyes.
So there was Charles, a hateful presence in the house; and that scene in the stables had brought home a sudden and horrible realization. She would not face it, for quite a long time; but she did eventually. She dreamed once that the squire gave her a horse for her birthday as indeed he had many years ago and they went riding together, and he said: “Kiss me for my present, Carrie!” And he seized her, and he had two heads, and one was his own and the other Charles’s, and he would not let her go. She awoke from that dream, screaming, and then she could no longer hide the truth from herself.
Sometimes at mealtimes she would watch the big hands of the squire, peeling a peach, cracking a nut; sometimes she would find his eyes fixed upon her.
She would wake suddenly in the night and think she heard footsteps in the corridor outside her door. Once she thought she heard the door handle turned. Her door was locked; she had long ago taken to locking her door.
Panic grew on her. She was afraid to be alone, afraid of his coming on her suddenly, afraid to sleep, afraid to be off her guard, afraid to ride out in case he rode after her. The squire was a great shadow over her life, and beside it was the smaller shadow of Charles. Terrified she was. Nervous and pale. The storm was gathering; one day it would break. Something frightful was going to happen to her if she stayed … something inevitable and inescapable.
She could write to Everard, but it was only three weeks ago that he had given his word to his mother that he would not see her for three months. She was terribly frightened and lonely and inexperienced, bewildered by the passion she aroused in the men around her.
She sought for escape. There was only one way of escape she would go to her father and mother in London. She would write to Everard from London. It was simple it was the only solution. All that was needed was a little courage. So, late one night, she packed a small bag and crept out of the house; all through the night she walked, and early next morning reached Exeter and caught the London coach.
“Are you going far?” asked the merchant’s wife.
“To London! It is a long way to go alone.”
“I am going to my father and mother,” said Carolan.
“Ah! You have been on a visit to the country then?”
“Yes. On a visit.”
“And you are looking forward to joining your parents, I can see.”
“Very much.”
The merchants wife decided to keep a watchful eye on the child during the journey, for the melancholy young man who had drunk too freely at luncheon was casting many a speculative glance in the young traveller’s direction.
“I am surprised,” said the woman disapprovingly, ‘that you arc allowed to travel alone.”
“I had to come,” lied Carolan glibly, for she had made up the story lest she should need one, and could not but congratulate herself on her foresight in having prepared it.
“My aunt was taken sick, so she could not accompany me. I can take care of myself.”
“You may believe so,” retorted the merchant’s wife, and noted that her own husband was more than a little interested in the child. She resolved with redoubled fervour to see that the girl came to no mischief during the journey.
So much for the first day, but as they left Honiton behind them Carolan wondered whether she had not been a little impulsive. Her parents would be delighted to receive her of course, but perhaps they would have liked to prepare for her in advance. If only she could have gone to Everard I Surely, had she told him what she feared from the squire and Charles, he would have been glad to receive her! But how could a young parson take a girl into his household? He would have to dispatch her at once, and what good would it be to go to him if it were only that he might send her away? And where could he send her but to his mother, and was his mother really a friend of hers?