CHAPTER NINE #3
“His lordship did not say, my lady. He told me only that he would be from home for he knew not how many days, and that we should not look for him to arrive at any particular moment.”
Rosina had been at first overwhelmed with relief.
The evil day had been postponed. But the waiting was proving a good deal worse.
Her nerves were beginning to fray, and just three days after that quarrel, with still no sign of Raith, she was fretting herself into a state of unalloyed affliction.
Between apprehension that an accident had befallen him, and the fear he would walk in unannounced at any moment, and belike treat her to a thunderous scold, Rosina was in constant dread.
She was losing flesh, and her wan looks drew comment even from the butler.
As if sent on purpose from the gods to increase her distresses, Saturday had also brought visitors.
Fearful of one particular individual, she gave orders no one was to be admitted without their name having first been brought to her.
She was tempted to deny herself, feeling unequal to the task of meeting anyone without her lord’s support.
But recalling how little support she was likely to feel in his presence after what had passed, she suffered a change of front, deciding that she would do better without him.
As it chanced, the callers were of so much humbler station, expressing their fervent wish not to be backward in paying Lady Raith a visit, that Rosina was not put to any impossible or impertinent questions.
Not even the pastor had remained today longer than strict propriety dictated.
Rosina saw him go with a sensation of relief, hoping she would not be obliged to receive many more visitors before Raith’s return.
Which thought served only to depress her with the remembrance of what must await her when her husband chose to come home.
“This is ridiculous, Ottery!” Impatient, Raith set down the tankard of ale with which he was refreshing himself from the dust of the country roads. “It may take weeks to cover the ground. Where the devil are we, by the way?”
“Paylington, my lord,” answered the lawyer, with a slight smile which Raith found distinctly irritating. “I do not wonder at your finding difficulty in recalling the name of the place. We have covered so much ground.”
“Yes, and much good have we got by it!”
“Patience, my dear sir. We will find the needle, if we take apart the haystack.”
“I’m beginning to believe we are in the wrong area altogether,” Raith said, sighing as he attacked the thick portion of beef slapped between two slices of bread with which he had been supplied by the landlord of this particular hostelry. “I can’t for the life of me remember where we have been.”
“Have no fear, my lord. I have kept a careful account.” Ottery took out a pocketbook and consulted its pages. “We have so far searched through Conib Abby, Newnham Regis, Fifsenhill, and —”
“Spare me the list!” He did not wish to hear it.
Suffice it that they had hunted high and low, relentlessly, even through this Lord’s day, disturbing simple folk at their well-earned rest. He was sick of jolting over rutty tracks.
Parton was loud in disapproval of the wear and tear on his phaeton.
But had they found hide or hair of Rosina’s blind nurse? No, they had not.
“Well, we have made some progress, my lord. People have been helpful. We have been regaled with local histories by at least three sightless old women, and as for cottages —”
“If you are seeking to raise my spirits with a pleasantry, Ottery, you may spare your breath. If we have seen one cottage, we have seen fifty. I am full to the brim with cottages.”
He saw, with despair, that his lawyer was regarding him with that knowing look. There was no fooling Ottery. He was well aware of the cause of his client’s frustration. How could he not be?
“I am but poor company,” he said, laying his hand briefly on the other’s arm. “You are patience itself, my friend.”
“Why do you not go home, my lord, and leave the business to me?”
Raith looked away, picking up his tankard again. “You know the answer to that.”
He had been entirely open with the man. After that disastrous night, he had been in need of solid guidance from a well-disposed source.
Ottery was the only person he could trust. He had fled his own home, and driven to Banbury, where he had found his lawyer almost upon the point of setting forth to begin his enquiries on Raith’s behalf.
Ottery had ushered him into his private sanctum, that hidden little room behind his office, from where Raith had first secretly seen the disastrous enchantment of his vulnerable waif. Oh, how vulnerable! So destructive had been his treatment of her that she had been driven to lash out.
“She said that I had deserved it of her, Ottery, and by heaven, I had!”
“If you drove her to hitting you, my lord, I must say that I agree with you,” had been the lawyer’s uncompromising comment. “You are not married to a termagant.”
“Far from it.”
He had called her a vixen in the heat of his shocked response.
But he had not meant it. Within two seconds of the door closing behind her, he had been smitten with horror at the remembrance of what he had said to her.
She had taken it to herself. He had become confused by the memory.
Had he applied that vicious word to her?
Surely he had not meant to suggest for one moment that she was herself a strumpet?
How had he put it, that she should take that meaning from his words?
For he could not doubt but that it was what she had thought. His cheek had smarted for some moments, but that was a small affliction. Much worse was the dread consequence of that bitterest of quarrels. Whichever way he looked at it, he could see no possibility of mending.
Rosina had escaped from him and locked the door.
He would not pursue her. To what end? His state of mind was too uncertain to permit him any rational resolution.
He knew only too well how uncontrolled was his temper.
A family failing. In Piers, it had been vicious.
His half-brother had made no attempt whatsoever to control it.
In his father, he had seen it only once, although Ottery had told him this was due to a steadfast rein that had curbed it through the years.