Chapter Eighteen
Cilla
Papa had nohesitation in permitting Cilla and Livy to join Aunt Ginny and her daughters for a garden party two-hours’ drive outside of London. He insisted on sending his own coach driver and a couple of footmen, but none of them expected trouble.
After all, the troublemakers were safely in Brighton.
The garden party was just outside of Watford. The house belonged to a friend of Aunt Ginny’s, and the garden was beautifully landscaped into dozens of different spaces, some enclosed with shrubberies, others sunk into the ground, still others with hedges or stone walls. Indeed, though more than one hundred people must have been at the party, Cilla and Livy found themselves following Beryl along a path with no one else in sight except one of Papa’s footmen, who had attached himself to the party.
“Are you certain Aunt Ginny said to meet her along here?” Livy asked Beryl.
“She did,” Beryl insisted. She seemed sincere, and Beryl had always been an open book, so the sisters descended a flight of stairs and followed a path around a fountain and down another flight from which they could look across a picturesque stand of trees to the spreading waters of a lake.
“I wonder what she wants us for?” Livy commented.
“Surely, it is not much further,” Cilla said. They had been walking for a good five minutes, and she could no longer hear the sound of the band that was playing on the terrace outside of the house.
“It cannot be,” Beryl agreed. “Mama said through the rose garden, along the yew walk, down two flights of stairs, and across the park to the trees. She is going to meet you there. She did not tell me why. Come on. This is the park and those must be the trees. We are nearly there.”
It was still several minutes’ walk. Livy was frowning as they strode out across the grass. “After all,” whispered Cilla, “what can happen? We are in a private garden, and we have Henry with us.”
Livy’s frown deepened, but she kept walking, following Beryl.
Then she stopped. “Cilla, this is stupid. If it happened in a horrid romance, we’d be shouting at the heroine, ‘Do not go into the woods!’ Let us go back to the party. If Aunt Ginny needs us for something, she can find us and tell us.”
She was right. Cilla nodded her agreement.
“Mama will be so angry,” Beryl whimpered. “She told me it was important. She said she was depending on me.”
“We shall tell her not to blame you,” Livy assured her. Cilla imagined that Aunt Ginny would be cross with Beryl anyway, but what Livy said about horrid romances had set alarm bells pealing in Cilla’s mind. No, not that, exactly. Rather, Cilla had been suppressing her instincts that something was wrong, telling herself that she was being silly. But after all, how much did she trust Aunt Ginny?
Not very much.
When they turned back, Henry looked relieved, but they had only taken a few steps before rapidly approaching hoofbeats had them turning. Four men on horses had burst out of the woods and were galloping toward them.
Everything happened so fast! Henry flung out his arms, as if he thought he could stop four horsemen. Three of them swerved and one charged straight at him, swerving to brush past him at the last minute.
Cilla was occupied with the others, but from the corner of her eye she saw the rider raise some kind of a club and strike Henry down.
Beryl had started to scream. The riders were all wearing handkerchiefs over the lower part of their faces, but one of them swore at Beryl in Jasper’s voice. “Shut up or I’ll lock you in the cellar with the spiders. In the dark.”
Beryl subsided into sobs and whimpers.
“Jasper. I might have known,” said Livy. She eyed another of the riders. “Curston, I shall not marry you.”
“You shall,” said Curston, as he dismounted. “Once you are ruined, you will have no choice. Jasper, we are going to have to take your sister, too.”
“Idiot girl,” Jasper complained. “Why couldn’t you leave them to find their own way like you were told? You were not meant to be here.”
Jasper was now on the ground and so were the other men. One of them was left to hold the horses while Curston produced rope and he and Jasper proceeded to tie Cilla’s hands behind her back. “Don’t attempt to run away,” Jasper told Cilla, “or I shall tie your legs and throw you over the horse. Livy, stay put.”
“I am checking to see whether your accomplice has killed Henry,” Livy replied, calmly, and kept walking the few steps to where Henry lay on the grass.
“He’s not dead,” said the man who had hit him. He sounded nervous. Cilla could not place the voice, but it was not quite an upper class one. He tried, but some of his vowels hinted at an origin in Birmingham or some other Midlands city.
None of the men interfered when Livy bent over and placed her hand on Henry’s neck to take his pulse. He shifted at her touch, and Curston growled, “Enough. He is alive. Come here and be tied up.”
“No,” Livy replied, and without warning, began to scream at the top of her voice.
