Inheritance Feud

Chapter 32

Chapter 32

There, it was said; and his great pallid face flushed pink. He tried to rise, and almost spilled his cup, and she put out a small cool hand to stop him. "Don't try to stand up," she said, "there is there is one thing." She looked down, stirring the contents of her cup carefully with the silver spoon. She sipped her coffee. It was hot and very, very refreshing and welcome. She remembered now, she hadn't had any breakfast before leaving, and Livia

"You must marry me today," she said, smiling. "Will you do that? You see, I-I never want to go back to Mains; I wasn't happy there. You could make me happier, I believe, and "She flushed, almost matching his own recent colour; for the first time, some of her newly acquired self-possession deserted her. "I will try, I promise, to become everything you would want in a wife. You-you love me, I think." Her voice trembled; it was pleasant, after all, to have someone who wanted her for herself, not as a part of a plan for regaining Baron. She saw the house, rising in towered newly-cleaned splendour behind; it could become a fitting home for herself and Godfrey, and the child. A determination, rising from more fierceness than she had ever known she possessed, rose in Hermione at that moment; whatever happened, the child should be born and brought up as Godfrey's own, he should believe it and so, from now on, should she. Already the notion that Godfrey's child lay in her womb possessed her; she'd make it so that it was a part of him, that they were part of each other. And everything else; he'd suffered so much, all his life till now, she knew. She'd make it up to him, as far as anyone could. She watched the dawning joy on his face with a kind of withdrawn pleasure; that was as it should always be between them, only pleasant things, things of interest and cultivation of the mind, being allowed to persist there. She saw him come nearer, moving with difficulty as he always did.

"May I-may I kiss you?" he said shyly. He was like a being transported; his joy made his whole body tremble, and when his lips found her cheek they slobbered uncertainly over it. She closed her eyes, and endured this.

Godfrey sought for something to say to cover his clumsi ness. He had never in his life felt so tongue-tied with sheer delight; a dream come true, in a moment when, as had almost been the case, he'd abandoned dreaming and given way, as he'd been doing before Hermione came, to misery, to lonely desolation again, like a monster at a fair after the crowd has departed. But now-what could he say to describe the images that already thronged his mind of the things he'd buy for Hermione, do for her? Gowns, bonnets, furs-a carriage of her own, so that she could visit and drive about where she pleased -a little dog, perhaps, like her mother had had in the port rait. Hermione hadn't ever, he knew, had anything of that kind in all her life; he remembered her great pleasure over the pony.

He almost forgot to agree to her latest request, and to say he'd order the carriage and they would go at once together to find the parson, as he still called the minister here, in the nearest town. He asked no questions. On the way he'd per haps tell her about the water-garden, and take her advice about plants... oh, they'd be happy! But he must speak to her again before that; he had, unaccountably and wretch edly, run out of anything at all to say.

He looked at Hermione. She was dressed in her usual bon net and cloak and, in that, looked more beautiful than any thing anyone could imagine, a princess of fairyland; and her little shoes, as always, were of satin and had got damp in the water running always by the gate.

"You've spoiled your shoes," he told her; it was a thing to say. "I'll-I'll buy you new ones." "Dear Godfrey," said Hermione.

It was to be a matter for some days' wonder, when the news leaked out, that Hermione Doon and Godfrey Devenham had married one another in secret, without so much as an advance word of the ceremony to the young man's mother, who was absent at Maddon, or to the girl's aunt. Even in the known state of poor Godfrey's health this seemed a trifle secretive; there might be other reasons; the county waited avidly. Agnes Galadriel-who was said to be ill, by the way, at Mains-had dangled the girl so openly and shamelessly, permitting her to go down on the beach alone with the young man, frequently all last year, that perhaps haste had become advisable; best to say nothing. The Doon fortunes needed retrieving, without doubt, both in the matter of money-there was plenty of that now, of course and in the continued lack of news about disgraceful young Theon. It was an unfortunate situation, and the young bride had perhaps acted advisedly in cutting loose from her family in so understated a way: one had better call.

However, calls at Baron were postponed, tactfully, as a result of the further terrible news of Theon: after which it was no longer advisable even to mention him in genteel con versation.

Theon had gone by night to the place where, all last year, he and Bart had hidden money together; bags of gold guineas and, in a small leather pack, a sum in louis d'or to bargain with the French runners on Man. Now it was a question of getting it back again near shore, and Abel dared not help him with the inn's dray. Theon had been up by himself twice now, carrying what he could and stowing it ready in the place below Aaron's double cellar; from there, when it was ready, he would get it to the boat.

He walked across the moor quickly, head down and wearing a hat; it was bright moonlight, a fact which he had forgotten. One lost count of time and the days, the hours, alone, and the tides running to the moon, though almost second nature to Theon by now, had caused him to alter the time of the boat's leaving tomorrow. For tomorrow, he'd planned it all, he and Livia should leave the mainland for a while; only till things had blown over, Theon told himself. The future was vague, and involved many journeys back and forth across the water, to see Hermione, by then at Baron, and his son. Livia would tell her about that tomorrow, and then... He smiled, pleased, up at the moon.

The money was still there, hidden under a stone in a cer tain place. In summer the heather had concealed it, and in winter the ground was fissured with frost and the place itself not noticeable. He opened the bag and ran the golden guineas through his fingers, not from miserliness but with a pleasure able sensation of what he would buy with them; a silk gown for Livia, a French lace cap, a christening-robe for the baby to be born on Man. The other, at Baron, would in due course wear the time-yellowed silk, embroidered with ferns and flounces by some far-off Doon lady, which he himself had worn, and Hermione, and Uncle Philip or his own father, he was uncertain which; and their father, and theirs, back to the time of the Civil Wars. But this child, his child and Anna bel's, would bear the name of Devenham; a pity.

He would carry the bags two in each hand; there were others to come, and he replaced the stone. No need to take all the money; he could come back at any time during the year, by night, and replenish his coffers; by then, with the boat, he'd be making more. He made his way down to the cottage, quiet as death now Aaron slept alone within. Aaron, even if awake, would know nothing of what was going on; in a lifetime between the sea and the smithy, he had learned to hold his tongue. Theon slewed round the sill-shaped stone from its base by the cellar, pivoting it with his foot, and stowed away the bags he had brought from the moor, beside the rest already placed inside. As he stood again after replac ing the sill before its aperture, the moon flung his own long black shadow on the wall. Theon frowned. A fool's night to choose! If he were not already certain that they'd abandoned the search, being as ever short of government-men, not to mention cutters for constant cruising back and forth, to watch the shore

A shadow moved. Theon stepped back suddenly, and whipped out the sword he carried, hung by its scabbard to a loop in his belt. The moonlight glinted along the blade.

Nothing befell, and he put back his sword. Then he left the place swiftly. If there had been as he'd imagined for a moment someone watching nearby, he'd as soon they didn't lay hands on the money, in its hiding-place. At least half his hoard was brought down by now, and the boat wouldn't be in until tomorrow. One day he'd buy a sailing-cutter . . . per haps, when he and Livia were on Man, he'd take up the calling in a larger way, as certain men did, owning storehouses for smuggled goods in places as law-abiding as Edinburgh and Leith, and their own fleets for sending back and forth to France. He smiled, and walked on. Baron, his house, was over the rise; round the next corner he'd see it, clear black and silver in the light of the moon, with the trees behind; he, Doon of Baron, with a house and ships

They closed in on him then, two before and one after; coming down out of the concealing shadows of the greystone wall, where a gate broke it and they had defiled, in watchful silence, maintaining the advantage on a lone man walking below them on the open road. One raised his bludgeon, and struck, but missed; Theon spun round a second too soon, and drew his sword, and swept it in a wide curve, like a janissary's. The gauger screamed, caught in the place between the neck and shoulder, and went down clutching his throat; the other two, who were armed, flung themselves on Theon, when they could; still wary of the terrible sword. He used it, like a man possessed, as if he knew this hour, this moment, might be his last of freedom and of sight. When and how he killed the first officer he did not know; the other drew his pistol, and fired straight at the back of Theon's head. It was at this second man, and the first with the wounded shoulder, that he hurled himself in the last instants before darkness overcame, the colour of blood; and in a welter of grunting injury and pain, a grappling of limbs already aware of growing weakness and bled to the bone, he went down with them; in the end, struggling up to sitting positions on the abandoned road, they saw a dead man, their comrade, and one another in their wounds; and that fourth, whom they had come to take, lying face down with his skull's base shattered, and the dark blood staining his neck-linen and dripping slowly down on the road

where he lay. They thought that, like Bart Judd, he was dead. One other came then; out of the dark, having been sum moned by whatever means they never knew; the shots had been fired later, as she came running down. She was a young woman with a veil of loose dark hair which fell now over the prone body of Theon Doon like a pall; she knelt down by him, her skirts soaking up the blood and the night's dew, and slid her hands tenderly beneath his head, and raised it; crad ling him against her like a child. The pale face in the moon light was that of a corpse, the features in profile waxen and fine. Livia crooned over it, in a tongue none of them later knew, from what place beyond memory she could not herself remember. This was her love, her king, and he was dead; this was her dead lover.