I spent a sleepless night and at dawn I heard the sounds of his departure and was at my window to see him as he rode away. He turned and saw me there. He lifted his hand in acknowledgement.
I was up early and fully dressed when the maid arrived with my petit dejeuner. She brought a letter with her.
“Monsieur Ie Comte said it was to be given to you,” she told me. There was a certain avid curiosity in her eyes.
It was written on his crested notepaper the same as that which had been attached to the stone which had been thrown through the window.
My dearest [he had written], I had to write a few lines after I left you. I want you to take especial care from now on. Be patient. One day we shall be together. I have plans for us. I promise you, all will be well.
Charles Auguste.
I read and re-read that letter. Charles Auguste. Oddly enough the name seemed strange to me. I thought of him always as The Comte . the Devil Comte . the Devil on Horseback, the name I had given him long ago when I had first seen him. These fitted him. But not Charles Auguste. I had of course learned a great deal about him since the days when I had thought of him as the Devil on Horseback. He was arrogant, of course. He had been brought up to believe that he and his kind were supreme. It had been so for centuries. They took what they wanted and if anyone stood in the way that person was brushed aside. That was firmly embedded in his nature. Would anything ever change that? Yet there was kindliness in him. Had he not taken Leon and looked after him? He had at least made some reparation for the harm he had done that family. He had cared about little Chariot and had made sure that he was well looked after and had even visited Yvette to assure himself of the child’s welfare. And for me? Was that real tenderness I had seen? How deep did it really go? Did he really love me differently from the way in which he had loved others? What if I married him and failed to produce a son? Should I one day be given a double dose of some fatal poison? Would they come one morning and find me dead?
So I did believe he had killed Ursule, It had been so opportune, hadn’t it? She had died at the right moment. Why should she, who had been a peevish invalid all her life, suddenly decide that she was going to take it?
So I thought him capable of murder and still I wanted him. I wanted to make love with him. I might as well face the truth. It was what my mother had always said one should do. I had always thought of love between men and women as that which my mother had had for my father. A woman should always look up to her husband, admire his good qualities. But if the man who excited one more than any other could possibly do, if the man in whose company one found the utmost pleasure was possibly a murderer, what then?
I should have loved to talk to her of these matters-but had she been alive I should never have been in this situation. She would never have approved of my coming to France in the first place and I knew that if she were here now she would say: “We must leave for England without delay.”
While I was brooding thus Margot came in with her petit dejeuner.
I hastily thrust the Comte’s letter in a drawer and she was so absorbed in her own thoughts that she did not notice my doing so.
“I have to talk to you, Minelle,” she said.
“It’s been worrying me all night. I’ve scarcely slept.”
I wondered then if she was aware of her father’s departure and if she had seen him turn and wave to me. But it was hardly likely. When Margot was wrapped up in her own affairs she never noticed what other people were doing.
I was so shocked,” she said.
“I would never have believed it of them,” “Of whom are you talking?”
“Of Mimi and Bessell. Of course the servants have changed such a lot.
You must have noticed. They can be so insolent now. But Bessell .
and Mimi most of all. Of course it is Bessell’s doing. She would never have done it without him. “
“What has happened?” I asked, my heart sinking for I had thought from the first that it had been unwise to share the secret with them.
“Mimi came to me last night and said that Bessell wanted to speak to me. It didn’t occur to me then what it meant. I thought it was something about the horses. When he came, he was different somehow .. not a bit like the old Bessell. He stood there with a rather unpleasant look on his face and didn’t offer any excuse for coming in like that. He said there was a cottage vacant on the estate and he wanted to have it so that he and Mimi could get married right away.”
“Well, I suppose that’s a natural request.”
“I said I thought he should see the head groom and he said that the head groom was not sympathetic towards him so he thought he would go over his head to me. He said that he’d heard through a friend of his who worked on the Grasseville estate that they were all looking forward to the wedding and they only hoped nothing happened to stop it.”
I caught my breath.
“Yes,” I said, ‘what then? “
“He implied that he was very friendly with this man at Grasseville and others there too. They were sorry that the wedding was delayed through my mother’s death and they were just hoping that nothing else would happen …”
“Oh Margot,” I said, “I don’t like it.”
“Nor did I. It was the way he said it. He thought that after our trip he’d got to thinking that I might be kind enough to speak for him about the cottage because a word from me could settle the matter.”
“It’s blackmail,” I cried.
“He’s hinting that if you don’t get the cottage for him, he’ll tell his friend at Grasseville about the trip . and this friend of his will see that the gossip reaches the family.”
Margot nodded slowly.
There is only one thing to do,” I told her.
“You should never submit to blackmail. You must see Robert before he has any chance of hearing of this from anyone else. You must tell him the truth.”
“If he knew that I had already had a child he wouldn’t want to marry me.”
“He would if he loved you.”
She shook her head.
“He wouldn’t. I know he wouldn’t.”
“Well then, there would be no marriage.”
“But I want to marry him!”
“You wanted to marry James Wedder once. You ran away to do just that.”
“I was young and foolish. I did not know what I was doing then. It’s different now. I’m grown up. I have a child. I have plans for the future … and they include Robert. I’ve fallen in love with Robert.”
“All the more reason why you won’t want to deceive him.”
“You are very hard sometimes, Minelle.”
“I’m trying to think what is best for you.”
“I can’t tell Robert. In any case I have already told Bessell he shall have the cottage. Oh, it’s no use your looking shocked. I’ve said it is for Mimi who has worked well for me.
I shall marry Robert; they will stay here, and I shall never see them again. “
“Blackmailers don’t usually work that way, Margot. The first demand is rarely the last.”
“When I am married to Robert I shall tell him, but not before. Oh, I do wish there was not this delay over the marriage.”
I looked at her sadly. I felt that events were closing in around us too quickly and too menacingly.
We never rode out unless we were accompanied by a groom. That was the Comte’s orders. But I was beginning to notice that curious looks came my way. At one time I had been aloof from the hatred of the crowds. I was a foreigner and although I was at the chateau they had at first thought I was there in some menial capacity. Now they had changed. I wondered whether the rumour that I had had a child by the Comte had spread to them.