CHAPTER TWELVE #4
For a moment Raith stood just where he was, gazing unseeingly out of the window, struggling with his baser self.
How cunning was this history. Marching readily with Rosina’s tale, and yet parting from it in just those details guaranteed to strike precisely at his questing jealousy.
It had to be intended. He strode away, pacing across the little parlour, and back again.
Then he faced Forteviot. He spoke in a low tone, laced with a vibrant chord of hatred.
“You black-hearted devil! I don’t believe a word of this!”
A laugh escaped Forteviot. “How should you? Who can blame you, my dear Anton? Your affections are deeply engaged.”
“So deeply, that I will trust my own knowledge of her before your trumped-up fictions.”
“In your place, my dear fellow, I should feel precisely the same,” said Forteviot gently. “You are bound to wish to think the best of her. She is so very innocent and sweet, is she not? On the surface.”
“Enough!” Raith drew several tight breaths before he was able to command himself.
“I know what you would be at, Forteviot. I tell you now that you will not succeed. Neither in this, nor in your vile scheme. If you persist —” with a raking glance that made the other flinch, his voice dropping to a menacing hush —“I will kill you.”
Raith cantered his sweating mount into the stable yard, and brought him to a standstill. Leaning forward, he caressed the beast’s warm neck. “I have ridden you too hard, old fellow. You will have to forgive your master’s blue devils this accursed day.”
He had galloped the animal, in an attempt to rid himself of the seed of doubt planted by the wilful evil of Rosina’s enemy. There had been enough of suspicion in his marriage. She had been too much injured already. He would not be cozened into belief.
Dismounting, he looked in concern at the stallion’s heaving flanks, the steam rising from his coat. “We must get you properly looked to, my buck.” Turning, he called into the stable block. “Parton!”
There was no reply. What in thunder ailed them all? If his groom was not present, one of the two stable lads always came running forth on his approach. He set his hands to either side his mouth. “Hο, there! What, is no one by?”
He was obliged to call out several more times, before the sound of running feet at last answered him. They came from the side of the mansion, and belonged, he saw in a moment, not to either of the stable boys, but to one of the maids.
“My lord!” she gasped, as she caught sight of him. “Oh, my lord, thank goodness you are come!”
Quick alarm gripped him. Keeping hold of the horse’s rein, he moved forward. “What is amiss, girl?”
“Her ladyship!”
Raith’s heart stopped. With a claw-like hand, he seized the maid’s arm as she came up. “What has happened to her ladyship?”
Wincing, the girl panted out her frantic news. “Gone, my lord!”
Hoarsely, his mind blank, he repeated it. “Gone?”
“Aye, sir. Mr Kirkham — he found the front door open. He asked us all if we done it. Only no one didn’t know nothing about it, my lord.
Then Mrs Fawley, she thought of her ladyship.
Joan went looking for her, my lord, and she weren’t nowhere to be found.
Every one of us has been out this half-hour and more, searching. ”
Raith heard her with a mind incapable of any form of action. Only one solid thought drummed insistently in his head: Rosina had left him.
Vaguely he noted the maid’s round eyes popping at him. He must seem a very ninny. But her amazement was differently explained. “You’ve gone all white, my lord.”
Raith made an effort to pull himself together. He held out the bridle. “Take this. Where are they looking?”
The maid accepted the horse’s rein from him, and pointed towards the front of the house. “All the way along the woods, my lord.”
A sudden distant shout arrested Raith’s attention. He strode forward a few steps, and heard answering calls. The maid, he found, had kept pace beside him, leading the horse.
“Likely they’ve found her, sir!”
“Keep hold of my horse! I’ll send one of the boys directly.” Then he was running.
He was operating on the instinct of command, the long years of campaigning shifting into play.
An officer in battle did not think. He took an instant survey and acted.
Raith met the oncoming figures of his servants, and took in what they said without stopping to consider what they meant, or to bandy unnecessary words.
He barked orders, handing away his whip, hat and gloves. With effortless remembrance, he sent someone to attend to the needs of his horse back at the stables. Then he followed without question the direction indicated towards the apparent whereabouts of his wife.
But unlike a charge in the field, where the same burst of energy was demanded by the exigencies of warfare, he was driven here by an undercurrent of desperate need because Rosina’s safety was in question.
When at last he came upon the woeful figure, huddled in a heap against the trunk of a tree, he froze for an instant of stopped time, torn between relief and dread.
She was shivering, and her hair had come loose. But she panted as if with heat, and the black eyes were glazed. She was bent forward over herself, her hands hugging her stomach. Then he saw the blood.