“That,” said Ruth, still retaining the letter, “is what you propose to do?”
“What else?”
She shook her head. “It must not be, Richard,” she said. “I’ll not consent to it.”
Taken aback, he stared at her; then laughed unpleasantly. “Odds my life! Are you in love with the man? Have you been fooling us?”
“No,” she answered. “But I’ll be no party to his murder.”
“Murder, quotha! Who talks of murder?” Her shrewd eyes searched his face. “How came you by your knowledge that this courier rode to Mr. Wilding?” she asked him suddenly, and the swift change that overspread his countenance showed her that she had touched him in a tender spot, assured her of the thing she had suddenly come to suspect – a suspicion which at the same time started from and explained much that had been mysterious in Richard’s ways of late. “You had knowledge of this conspiracy, she pursued, answering her own question before he had time to speak, “because you were one of the conspirators.”
“At least I am so no longer,” he blurted out. “I thank Heaven for that, Richard; for your life is very dear to me. But it would ill become you to make such use as this of the knowledge you came by in that manner. It were a Judas’s act.” He would have interrupted her, but her manner dominated him. “You will leave this letter with me, Richard,” she continued.
“Damn me! no.. .” he began.
“Ah, yes, Richard,” she insisted. “You will give it to me, and I shall thank you for the gift. It shall prove a weapon for my salvation, never fear.”
“It shall, indeed,” he cried, with an ugly laugh; “when I have ridden to Exeter to lay it before Albemarle.”
“Not so,” she answered him. “It shall be a weapon of defence – not of offence. It shall stand as a buckler between me and Mr. Wilding. Trust me, I shall know how to use it.”
“But there is Blake to consider,” he expostulated, growing angry. “I am pledged to him.”
“Your first duty is to me…”
“Tut!” he interrupted. “Blake feels that he owes it to his loyalty to lay this letter before the Lord-Lieutenant, and, for that matter, so do I.”
“Sir Rowland would not cross my wishes in this, she answered him.
“Folly!” he cried, now thoroughly aroused. “Give me that letter.”
“Nay, Richard,” she answered, and waved him back.
But he advanced nevertheless.
“Give it me,” he bade her, waxing fierce. “Gad! It was folly to have told you of it. I had not done so but that I never thought you such a fool as to oppose yourself to the thing we intend.”
“Listen, Richard.. .” she besought him.
But he was grown insensible to pleadings.
“Give me that letter,” he insisted, and caught her wrist. Her other hand, however – the one that held the sheet – was already behind her back.
The door was suddenly thrust open, and Diana appeared. “Ruth,” she announced, “Mr. Wilding is here.”
At the mention of that name, Richard let her free. “Wilding!” he ejaculated, his fierceness all blown out of him. He had imagined that already Mr. Wilding would be in full flight. Was the fellow mad?
“He is following me,” said Diana, and, indeed, a step could be heard in the passage.
“The letter!” growled Richard in a frenzy, between fear and anger now. “Give it me! Give it me do you hear?”
“Sh! You’ll betray yourself,” she cried. “He is here.”
And at that same moment Mr. Wilding’s tall figure, still arrayed in his bridegroom’s finery of sky-blue satin, loomed in the doorway. He was serene and calm as ever. Neither the discovery of the plot by the abstraction of the messenger’s letter, nor Ruth’s strange conduct – of which he had heard from Lord Gervase – had sufficed to ruffle, outwardly at least, the inscrutable serenity of his air and manner. He paused to make his bow, then advanced into the room, with a passing glance at Richard still spurred and booted and all dust-stained.
“You appear to have ridden far, Dick,” said he, smiling, and Richard shivered in spite of himself at the mocking note that seemed to ring faintly at the words. “I saw your friend, Sir Rowland, in the garden,” he added. “I think he waits for you.
Though Richard could not fail to apprehend the implied dismissal, he was minded at first to disregard it. But Mr. Wilding, turning, held the door,addressing Diana.
“Mistress Horton, said he, “will you give us leave?”
Diana curtsied and passed out, and Mr. Wilding’s eye falling upon the lingering Richard at that moment, Richard thought it best to follow her example. But he went with rage in his heart at being forced to leave that precious document behind him.
As Mr. Wilding, his back to her a moment, closed the door, Ruth slipped the paper hurriedly into the bosom of her low-necked gown. He turned to her, calm but very grave, and his dark eyes seemed to reproach her.
“This is ill done, Ruth,” said he.
“Ill done, or well done,” she answered him, “done it is, and shall so remain.”
He raised his brows. “Ah,” said he, “I appear, then, to have misapprehended the situation. From what Gervase told me, I understood it was your brother forced you to return.”
“Not forced, sir,” she answered him.
“Induced, then,” said he. “It but remains me to induce you to repair what I think was a mistake.”
She shook her head. “I have returned home for good,” said she.
“You’ll pardon me,” said he, “that I am so egotistical as to prefer Zoyland Chase to Lupton House. Despite the manifold attractions of the latter, I do not intend to take up my abode here.”
“You are not asked to.”
“What, then?”
She hated him for the smile, for his masterful air, which seemed to imply that he humoured her because he scorned to use authority, but that when he did use it, hers must it be to obey him. Again she felt that everlasting calm, arguing such latent forces, was the thing she hated most in him.
“I think I had best be plain with you,” said she. “I have fulfilled my part of the bargain that we made. I intend to do no more. I promised that if you spared my brother, I would go to the altar with you to-day. I have carried out my contract to the letter. It is at an end.”
“Indeed,” said he; “I think it has not yet begun.” He advanced towards her, and took her hand. She yielded it, unwilling though she was. “This is unworthy of you, madam,” said he, his tone grave and deferential. “You think to escape fulfilling the spirit of your bargain by adhering to the letter of it. Not so,” he ended, and shook his head, smiling gently. “The carriage is still at your door. You return with me to Zoyland Chase to take possession of your home.”
“You mistake,” said she, and tore her hand from his. “You say that what I have done is unworthy. I admit it; but it is with unworthiness that we must combat unworthiness. Was your attitude towards me less unworthy?”
“I’ll make amends for it if you’ll come home,” said he.
“My home is here. You cannot compel me.”
“I should be loath to,” he admitted, sighing.
“You cannot,” she insisted.
“I think I can,” said he. “There is a law..”
“A law that will hang you if you invoke it,” she cut in quickly. “This much can I safely promise you.
She had need to say no more to tell him everything. At all times half a word was as much to Mr. Wilding as a whole sentence to another. She saw the tightening of his lips, the hardening of his eyes, beyond which he gave no other sign that she had hit him.
“I see,” said he. “It is another bargain that you make. I do suspect there is some trader’s blood in the Westmacott veins. Let us be clear. You hold the wherewithal to ruin me, and you will use it if I insist upon my husband’s rights. Is it not so?”
She nodded in silence, surprised at the rapidity with which he had read the situation.
“I admit,” said he, “that you have me between sword and wall.” He laughed shortly. “Let me know more,” he begged her. “Am I to understand that so long as I leave you in peace- so long as I do not insist upon your becoming my wife in more than name – you will not wield the weapon that you hold?”
“You are to understand so,” she answered.
He took a turn in the room, very thoughtful. Not of himself was he thinking now, but of the Duke of Monmouth. Trenchard had told him some ugly truths that morning of how in his love-making he appeared to have shipwrecked the Cause ere it was well launched. If this letter got to Whitehall there was no gauging – ignorant as he was of what was in it – the ruin that might follow; but they had reason to fear the worst. He saw his duty to the Duke most clearly, and he breathed a prayer of thanks that Richard had chosen to put that letter to such a use as this. He knew himself checkmated; but he was a man who knew how to bear defeat in a becoming manner. He turned suddenly.