A Duel of Hearts

2-2

“My lord!” he cried. “This is indeed a welcome surprise.”

“May I come in, Adam?” Lord Brecon asked, dismounting and adding, “I have brought a friend with me.”

The boy ran to hold the horse Lord Brecon dismounted then held out his arms to Caroline. She bent forward, felt his hands grasp her waist, was conscious as he lifted her of his strength, the nearness of his face to hers, and that her heart quickened suddenly. Then her feet were on the ground and Lord Brecon slipped a hand under her elbow.

“Let me help you,” he said.

He guided her over the uneven ground to the steps of the caravan and she climbed them with the helping hand of the man at the top.

“May I bid you welcome, Madam, as a friend of his lordship’s?” the man said.

“Thank you,” Caroline smiled.

“This is my old friend Adam Grimbaldi, Miss Fry,” Lord Brecon said. “His name is foreign, but his blood is English.”

“That’s true enough, as your lordship knows, and my heart is English too. Oh, but ‘tis good to be back in one’s own country.’

“I thought you would think that despite the triumphs you enjoyed in France,” Lord. Brecon said.

“Won’t you be pleased to enter, Madam?” Mr. Grimbaldi said to Caroline, indicating the door into the caravan.

“Thank you,” Caroline said again, and bending her head so that the feathers on her bonnet should not be caught on the carved lintel, she moved inside.

When she raised her head again, she almost gasped with astonishment. There was a woman in the caravan, and a stranger person Caroline had never seen in the whole of her life. She had been reclining on a bunk at the far end, and now as Caroline entered she rose to her feet.

She was very small and attractive in a piquant, foreign, manner, and she had long hair dyed the colour of guinea gold which hung in a great cloud to well below her knees. She was dressed in Turkish trousers made of some thin, gauzy material, and the upper part of her, body was bare save for two large silver breast-plates set with precious stones. Caroline was so surprised at her appearance that for the moment she could only stare, forgetting her manners, until the woman said politely with a French accent,

“Bon soir, Madame. You, have come, alas, too late to see ze animals!”

“I was afraid so – ’ Caroline began, but the woman was not listening to her. She was turning eagerly with a smiling mouth and sparkling, eyes to welcome Lord Brecon who had just entered the caravan.

“M’lord,” she cried. ‘I am so very happy to see you. I thought you had forgotten Zara.”

She sped towards him as she spoke, both hands, outstretched, and when he would have taken them and raised them to his lips she raised her face instead, and he kissed her. Caroline’s astonished eyes were round.

“And how do you like England, Zara?” Lord Brecon asked. He was looking fondly at this strange woman, Caroline noticed, and one hand was still held in hers.

“Ugh, but I detest it. It is cold, and ze audiences are slow to applaud. They are not warm like the French or noisy like the Germans. They are silent, and who can know if they are pleased or – how you say? – disgusted?”

Grimbaldi laughed.

“I have told Zara we are an undemonstrative people,” he said. ‘She will get used to us in time.”

“And your tigers? What do they think of us?” Lord Brecon asked.

“They think like me,” Zara said proudly. “If there is not a great deal of – what you call – clapping they think they are not a success – they sulk, they are sad – and they are very difficult for me to handle.”

“Poor Zara!” Lord Brecon exclaimed, and then he looked towards Caroline.

“I must introduce you to Madame Zara, Miss Fry. She is the greatest and probably the only woman tamer of tigers in the world. She has had a phenomenal success on the Continent and now we are honoured to have her in England.”

“I hope I shall have the pleasure of seeing Madame Zara perform,” Caroline said politely.

“Won’t you sit down Miss Fry?” Mr. Grimbaldi asked, bringing her a chair.

“Thank you.”

“Caroline accepted the chair and as she sank into it realised how tired she was.

“Miss Fry and I have had a fatiguing ride,” Lord Brecon said. ‘Speaking for myself I am both hungry and thirsty. Can we avail ourselves of your hospitality Adam?”

“But of course,” Mr. Grimbaldi answered, “though I am afraid the fare is not that to which you are accustomed, my lord. Would eggs and bacon be too simple a dish?”

“I should welcome it,” Lord Brecon said. “What about you, Miss Fry?”

“I cannot imagine anything I would rather eat,” Caroline said with a smile, “for indeed, having dined at six o’clock I am exceeding hungry!”

Then eggs and bacon it shall be, Adam, and if you have it a bottle of wine ?”

“There I have something I am not ashamed to offer you, my lord,” Adam Grimbaldi answered. “Champagne which I have brought from France.”

As he spoke, he drew a bottle from a cupboard at the back of the caravan and set it on a small table

Caroline looked around her and was amazed to see how compactly everything fitted in. There were cupboards and shelves, pictures and ornaments. The bunk bed was piled high with cushions while the floor of the caravan was concealed by a fine Persian rug.

“How cosy this is!” she exclaimed.

“My caravan is not so big as this one, but ‘tis far, far prettier,” Zara answered. “But you are tired, Madame. Will you not take off your bonnet and make yourself comfortable?”

“Yes, I would like to do that,” Caroline said, and raising her arms, she undid the strings of her bonnet and drew it from her head.

It was big and rather cumbersome as was the fashion at the moment, and though she was aware that her hair must be untidy, she was too tired to worry about her appearance. It was only as she threw her bonnet down on the bunk and the light from the lantern which swung above their heads glittered a little in her eyes that she looked across the caravan to see the expression on Lord Brecon’s face and realised that he was seeing her face clearly for the first time.

There was a look of surprise as well as of admiration in his eyes, and after a second Caroline’s eyes dropped, conscious that she was blushing a little under his scrutiny. She had no idea how lovely she looked as she sat there with the light shining on the red-gold of the tiny curls which framed her white forehead.

Her face was a perfect oval, small and exquisitely set upon a long, white neck. Her nose was very short and straight and her mouth full and naturally red. There was something so exquisite in the drawing of her face and the grace of her body that, looking at Caroline for the first time, people invariably found it hard to believe that she was not just the illustration of some enchanting fairy-tale.

But her eyes were the loveliest thing about her. They were very large and vivid with life, laughter and mischief. Caroline’s beauty was not a set, statuesque type, but something so pulsatingly alive that no one could be with her for long without feeling both the tempo of their own mind and body respond to her natural gaiety and enthusiasm for living.

Tired as she now was, she could not hide the eagerness in her voice as she asked,

“Do tell me about your Menagerie. Have you many animals?”

“A fair number, Ma’am,” Adam Grimbaldi answered, “and I am especially proud of my lions. I have three and the eldest one, Caesar, is as tame as a lap dog. I brought him up from a cub and he will allow me to do anything with him.”

Mr. Grimbaldi was obviously intensely proud of his menagerie, and he would have talked of it for hours to Caroline had not he been interrupted by the boy with the dark hair bringing in the eggs and bacon so that he must cease talking of his work and see to the entertainment of his guests. When they had eaten, and drunk a glass of champagne, Lord Brecon said,

“Now, Adam, I want to tell you why I am here. You must be curious, although with the greatest forbearance you have not asked me any questions.”

“I knew you would speak in your own good time, my lord. You wish, I think, for me to be of service to you. You have but to command.”

“Do you mean that, Adam, even though it means unpleasantness with the magistrates?”

Mr.-Grimbaldi shrugged his shoulders.

“Magistrates are invariably unpleasant,” he said. “It is of little consequence.”

“In France we have a very rude word and a very rude name for them,” Zara said, “but I will not offend the ears of ze young lady by repeating it here.”

Lord Brecon laughed.

“All right, Zara, I know it.”

“Then you agree with me?” she asked.

“I agree with you,” he answered.

She smiled and then her expression changed.

“M’lord, you have not killed a man in a duel? You are not wishing to flee ze country?”

Lord Brecon shook his head.

“No, Zara, it is not as easy as that. Perhaps I had better explain from the beginning. You had best close the door, Adam.”

Mr. Grimbaldi rose and closed the door of the caravan. Lord Brecon finished his glass of champagne and said,

“I returned to England about three months ago. As you both know, I have been abroad for nearly two years, travelling in France and Italy. I came back to find a warm welcome from my mother, and my friends’ appeared equally glad of my return. I was, however, informed shortly after my arrival that a distant cousin had died and I had been made the guardian of his daughter, Melissa - a girl of fifteen, who was shortly going to Paris to finish her education at one of the more famous Academies for Young Ladies.

“I made my ward’s acquaintance and found her a pretty if somewhat brainless child. It was a shock to me when I learnt a week after she had left for the Continent that she had been having a clandestine love affair with a much older man and one with a distinctly unsavoury reputation. It was, I am convinced, quite an innocent flutter on the part of Melissa, but unfortunately she wrote to the gentleman in question several letters of a somewhat passionate nature. Through a lawyer of very doubtful antecedents this unutterable bounder requested me to pay him five thousand guineas for these letters, failing which he would use them to damage and defame irrevocably my ward’s reputation.

“I went to see the lawyer, a man called Isaac Rosenberg, and informed him that his client would receive from me but one thousand guineas on the return of the letters and not one penny more. I also told him that, unless this offer was accepted within three days, I guaranteed to horsewhip his client the length and breadth of St. James’s Street and have his name posted in every club as a blackmailer.”

“And what did he reply to that?” Adam Grimbaldi asked.

“I had a reply yesterday morning,” Lord Brecon went on. ‘It was a letter which somewhat surprised me It was signed by Rosenberg and said that he particularly wished to see me on a matter which he was certain would give me extreme satisfaction. For reasons which he could not enumerate he would like me to meet him this evening at the ruined cottage behind The Dog and Duck in Sevenoaks Lane. I was rather surprised at this because frankly, though the ruined cottage is well known as a local, meeting place for lovers, and also for those who wish to engage in a duel, it was not a place I should have thought would be known to a London lawyer. However, I was prepared to keep the appointment, and I repaired to the cottage at the time appointed only to find Rosenberg murdered with a knife stuck deep into his neck.”

“The Lord take us!,” Adam Grimbaldi ejaculated.

“But who had done it?” Zara asked.

“What! I have no idea,” Lord Brecon answered. “When I reached him, he had not been dead long. The body was warm and Miss Fry, who was in the wood, at the time, heard him cry out.”

‘You see ze man murdered?” Zara asked, turning to Caroline.

“No, I only heard his cry and heard someone leave the wood.”