The House Of Lanyon. Valerie Anand

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СКАЧАТЬ be on the safe side and assume it is, anyway,” Christopher said. “Come on! Let’s ride for it! We’ll look for another side lane and try to dodge into it and let them go past. If it is them. Come on!”

      It was the best plan he could make. He had kept his voice steady, but he too was now afraid, for her as well as himself. He could endure whatever they did to him for this, but what would happen to Liza? He had done horribly wrong in bringing her away, but what else was there to do, other than let her go forever?

      Side by side, alert for a secondary track, they urged the ponies into a gallop, taking advantage of the moonlight. But providence wasn’t with them. There was no break in the banks to either side, no escape from the track, and sturdy though their ponies were, their short strong legs could not match the stride of the Luttrells’ big horses behind them. They heard the hoofbeats catching up, and then a rider swept past them and swung his horse right across the track to block their way. They found themselves looking up into a dark, square face which Liza did not recognise, though Christopher did. “Gareth!” he said.

      “Look round,” said Gareth, grinning, and they turned in their saddles to find that Nicholas Weaver and Father Meadowes had pulled up behind them.

      Nicholas rode forward. To Liza’s astonishment he didn’t even look at her, but instead made straight for Christopher. “Have you taken her? Is that what slowed you down on the road? Come on! I want to know!”

      “We kept missing our way and then turned aside to look for shelter,” said Liza in a high voice. “We’ve taken vows to each other, but we haven’t…Christopher hasn’t…”

      “I’m glad to hear it, but no doubt it was just a pleasure postponed,” said Nicholas. He spurred his horse right up to Christopher’s pony and his fist shot out. It landed with immense force on Christopher’s jaw and the younger man reeled sideways, out of his saddle. His pony plunged. Christopher, who had clung on to the reins, scrambled up again, his spare hand pressed to his face.

      “Father, don’t!” Liza cried it out in anguish. “Oh, please let us go! Let me go with Christopher! I can’t marry Peter Lanyon. I can’t. I tried, so hard, to make myself willing to marry him, but I can’t do it. It has to be Christopher…and we’ve bound ourselves…oh, why won’t you understand?”

      “I understand that you’re talking nonsense and one day you’ll know it, my girl. I’ve come to take you home,” said Nicholas.

      CHAPTER NINE

      REARRANGING THE FUTURE

      “Go to her, Margaret,” Nicholas said. “Bring her downstairs and get her thinking about her bride clothes. She’s got to at some point. Saints in heaven!”

      His normal robust heartiness was dimmed. He was sitting by the kitchen hearth while Margaret and Aunt Cecy helped the maids with supper, and he could hear his young sons, Arthur and Tommy, laughing over some game or other in the adjacent living room, but just now these pleasant things could not comfort him. His shoulders were hunched and his face drawn with misery, and the two maids, aware of it, were unusually quiet.

      “We never had this sort of trouble with either of our girls,” said Aunt Cecy righteously. “Maybe that was because we walloped them when they needed it instead of bein’ soft, the way you two are.”

      “We haven’t been soft this time!” Margaret snapped, and continued obstinately stirring a pan of pottage.

      “No, we haven’t!” Nicholas agreed irritably. “But at least we had good reason. Cecy, you used to slap your girls for a bit of careless stitching or a speck of flour dropped on the floor, as if there weren’t worse things! Reckon they were glad to be pushed off when they was barely ripe!”

      “Well, really!” said Aunt Cecy. Nicholas ignored her.

      “There’s never been anything really truly bad in this house in my time, till now. I never thought our Liza would do this to us! I never thought I’d…I’ve never raised a hand to her, all her life, afore this and to have to take a stick to her…it broke my heart and I’m half afraid it’s broken hers.”

      “Then the sooner she’s married and away, the better,” Aunt Cecy said sharply. “We’ll all be happier, her included.”

      “I wouldn’t have believed it of her either,” said Margaret, still stirring. “It’s a mercy we got her back in time and that there’s been no more gossip.” She eyed the maids, who had become very busy about the cooking. “And if I hear of you tattling, either of you, you’re out! I mean it.”

      “If you ask me, half of this business is Peter Lanyon’s fault,” said Nicholas. “And you’ve said it, too, Margaret. He should have come to see her and done a little wooing! Margaret and I hardly knew each other before we were betrothed, but once it was agreed between the families, I came courting, didn’t I, Margaret? You had your share of stolen kisses. I don’t know what young Peter thinks he’s about, and that’s the truth!”

      “Bah! She ought to do as she’s bid, with wooing or without. A few more days in the attic ’ud do her no harm,” said Aunt Cecy. “And Margaret here thinks the same, even if she won’t say so.”

      “I don’t care what either of you think!” shouted Nicholas. “I’m her father and I’m the one who’s giving the orders this time! She’s had enough days up there, enough time to study her conscience and get over things, so do as I tell you, leave that damned pan you’re stirring, Margaret, and fetch her down here, and let’s pretend things are normal even if she don’t ever smile at me again. Go on!”

      “Oh, very well,” said Margaret, threw down her spoon and went.

      When she entered the small room under the thatch, where Liza had been locked in now for six days, she found her daughter, as she had found her every time she went up there to take food in or remove the slop pail, lying on the bed and staring at the wall. “Time to get up,” she said. “Your father says so. He’s heartbroken, let me tell you, over what he had to do to you. To run off like that, and with a priest…well, I always thought I was the one who cared about bein’ respectable, but the state your father’s in—sayin’ he’s heartbroken is hardly sayin’ enough!”

      Liza looked at her miserably but said nothing.

      “Forget all about this clerk,” Margaret said. “He’s to finish his studies in St. George’s monastery. Your father and I have seen him—went to the castle and all, and he said to us that he was sorry for the grief he’s caused us all. So that’s the end of it.”

      “We swore oaths, taking each other as man and wife…” Liza began, but her words sounded empty, even to her.

      “Moonshine and you know it!” Margaret snapped. “A man in orders is no more free to swear oaths about marriage than a married man is. Now then. Master Richard Lanyon’s sent us a message by that big hulkin’ fellow of his, Higg. He’s sorry that Peter’s not been over to see you, but there’s been so much to do on the farm. We’ve fixed a weddin’ day in November. So you get off that bed, and put on fresh things and come down to supper. No one’ll say anythin’ to you. No one knows outside the family, or ever will. We’ve not gossiped and the maids daren’t, believe me. Master Luttrell’s promised he’ll order his men not to talk. Everythin’ll be just as usual. You’ll see.”

      There was a long pause. Then Liza said, “You don’t understand how it was between Christopher СКАЧАТЬ