The Rafael Sabatini Megapack. Rafael Sabatini
traitor. Failure attends him everywhere, and so unfailingly that one wonders is not failure invited by him. And that fool Monmouth! Pshaw! See what it is to serve a weakling. With another in his place and the country disaffected as it is, we had been masters of England by now.”
Two ladies passed them at that moment, cloaked and hooded, walking briskly. One of them turned to look at Trenchard, who, waving his arms in wild gesticulation, was a conspicuous object. She checked in her walk, arresting her companion.
“Mr. Wilding!” she exclaimed. It was Lady Horton.
“Mr. Wilding!” cried Diana, her companion.
Wilding doffed his hat and bowed, Trenchard following his example.
“We had scarce looked to see you in Bridgwater again,” said the mother, her mild, pleasant countenance reflecting the satisfaction it gave her to behold him safe and sound.
“There have been moments,” answered Wilding, “when myself I scarce expected to return. Your ladyship’s greeting shows me what I had lost had I not done so.”
“You are but newly arrived?” quoth Diana, scanning him in the gloaming.
“From London, an hour since.”
“An hour?” she echoed, and observed that he was still booted and dust-stained. “You will have been to Lupton House?”
A shadow crossed his face, his glance seemed to grow clouded, all of which watchful Diana did not fail to observe. “Not yet,” said he.
“You are a laggard,” she laughed at him, and he felt the blood driven back upon his heart. What did she mean? Was it possible she suggested that he should be welcome, that his wife’s feelings towards him had undergone a change? His last parting from her on the road near Walford had been ever in his mind.
“I have had weighty business to transact, he replied, and Trenchard snorted, his mind flying back to the council-room at the Castle, and what his friend had told him.
“But now that you have disposed of that you will sup with us,” said Lady Horton, who was convinced that since Ruth had gone to the altar with him he was Ruth’s lover in spite of the odd things she had heard. Appearances with Lady Horton counted for everything, and all that glittered was gold to her.
“I would,” he answered, “but that I am to sup at Mr. Newlington’s with His Majesty. My visit must wait until tomorrow.”
“Let us hope,” said Trenchard, “that it waits no longer.” He was already instructed touching the night attack on Feversham’s camp on Sedgemoor, and thought it likely Wilding would accompany them.
“You are going to Mr. Newlington’s?” said Diana, and Trenchard thought she had turned singularly pale. Her hand was over her heart, her eyes wide. She seemed about to add something, but checked herself. She took her mother’s arm. “We are detaining Mr. Wilding, mother,” said she, and her voice quivered as if her whole being were shaken by some gusty agitation. They spoke their farewells briefly, and moved on. A second later Diana was back at their side again.
“Where are you lodged, Mr. Wilding?” she inquired.
“With my friend Trenchard—at the sign of The Ship, by the Cross.”
She briefly acknowledged the information, rejoined her mother, and hurried away with her.
Trenchard stood staring after them a moment. “Odd!” said he; “did you mark that girl’s discomposure?”
But Wilding’s thoughts were elsewhere. “Come, Nick! If I am to render myself fit to sit at table with Monmouth, we’ll need to hasten.”
They went their way, but not so fast as went Diana, urging with her her protesting and short-winded mother.
“Where is your mistress?” the girl asked excitedly of the first servant she met at Lupton House.
“In her room, madam,” the man replied, and to Ruth’s room went Diana breathlessly, leaving Lady Horton gaping after her and understanding nothing.
Ruth, who was seated pensive by her window, rose on Diana’s impetuous entrance, and in the deepening twilight she looked almost ghostly in her gown of shimmering white satin, sewn with pearls about the neck of the low-cut bodice.
“Diana!” she cried. “You startled me.”
“Not so much as I am yet to do,” answered Diana, breathing excitement. She threw back the wimple from her head, and pulling away her cloak, tossed it on to the bed. “Mr. Wilding is in Bridgwater,” she announced.
There was a faint rustle from the stiff satin of Ruth’s gown. “Then…” her voice shook slightly. “Then…he is not dead,” she said, more because she felt that she must say something than because her words fitted the occasion.
“Not yet,” said Diana grimly.
“Not yet?”
“He sups tonight at Mr. Newlington’s,” Miss Horton exclaimed in a voice pregnant with meaning.
“Ah!” It was a cry from Ruth, sharp as if she had been stabbed. She sank back to her seat by the window, smitten down by this sudden news.
There was a pause, which fretted Diana, who now craved knowledge of what might be passing in her cousin’s mind. She advanced towards Ruth and laid a trembling hand on her shoulder, where the white gown met the ivory neck. “He must be warned,” she said.
“But…but how?” stammered Ruth. “To warn him were to betray Sir Rowland.”
“Sir Rowland?” cried Diana in high scorn.
“And…and Richard,” Ruth continued.
“Yes, and Mr. Newlington, and all the other knaves that are engaged in this murderous business. Well?” she demanded. “Will you do it, or must I?”
“Do it?” Ruth’s eyes sought her cousin’s white, excited face in the quasi-darkness. “But have you thought of what it will mean? Have you thought of the poor people that will perish unless the Duke is taken and this rebellion brought to an end?”
“Thought of it?” repeated Diana witheringly. “Not I. I have thought that Mr. Wilding is here and like to have his throat cut before an hour is past.”
“Tell me, are you sure of this?” asked Ruth.
“I have it from your husband’s own lips,” Diana answered, and told her in a few words of her meeting with Mr. Wilding.
Ruth sat with hands folded in her lap, her eyes on the dim violet after-glow in the west, and her mind wrestling with this problem that Diana had brought her.
“Diana,” she cried at last, “what am I to do?”
“Do?” echoed Diana. “Is it not plain? Warn Mr. Wilding.”
“But Richard?”
“Mr. Wilding saved Richard’s life…”
“I know. I know. My duty is to warn him.”
“Then why hesitate?”
“My duty is also to keep faith with Richard, to think of those poor misguided folk who are to be saved by this,” cried Ruth in an agony. “If Mr. Wildin is warned, they will all be ruined.”
Diana stamped her foot impatiently. “Had I thought to find you in this mind, I had warned him myself;” said she.
“Ah! Why did you not?”
“That the chance of doing so might be yours. That you might thus repay him the debt in which you stand.”
“Diana, I can’t!” The words broke from her in a sob.
But whatever her interest in Mr. Wilding for her own sake, Diana’s prime intent was the thwarting Sir Rowland Blake. If Wilding were warned of what manner of feast was spread at