The Angel and the Sword Read online

  The Angel

  and

  the Sword

  ROBERT HALE

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Epilogue

  Chapter One

  High above Loxley New Hall, on a grassy hilltop dotted with buttercups and daisies, Henrietta Arabella, second Duchess of Loxley, despised flame-coloured hair flowing in an iridescent cascade behind her slim back, whirled dizzyingly round before finally, and with a cry of deep and utter joy, throwing herself spreadeagled onto the ground, to lie gazing up at a sky cobalt blue with fluffy white clouds. Miraculously, school was finished and much as she was going to miss all the friends she’d made there, she wasn’t ever going back, no matter what anyone said, even her grandmother Katherine Loxley, the stern old matriarch who ruled their family with a rod of iron.

  The world stopped spinning and Hettie became aware of a bee buzzing dangerously close to her nose which she flapped away, laughing delightfully and looking over to her companion, a good-looking boy of roughly her own age with dark curly hair and a cherubic expression hinting at his personality.

  ‘No more school, Bill. Can you believe it?’ she asked, flipping over onto her stomach. Bill threw himself down beside her and grinned.

  ‘You’d better make the most of it, Het. They’ll be on at you for something else before you know it,’ he advised, as ever the voice of reason.

  Aware of the truth of this curb to her freedom, Hettie pulled a face. It was an occupational hazard of being a duchess, she’d discovered. ‘They can try,’ she replied, levering herself up onto her elbows to cup her head in her hands. Mercurially, her mood had changed though Bill couldn’t guess she was thinking of her late and much lamented father and how, school holidays and if only he’d still been here, they would have been off on one of their famous jaunts together. The Lakes, London, once even the giddy delights of Paris where they’d disappeared for a whole, blissful week together. Hettie still missed him; she still looked round for him, desperate to tell him some little happening in her life and then hurt like mad to find he wasn’t there. Grandmother said life went on and time was a great healer but, for the moment, her pain was still too raw. Worse, she couldn’t speak about it to anyone, not even Bill. But wasn’t she too young to know that life could be so cruel?

  Intuitively sensing more than she realized, Bill squeezed her hand, looking gratified when she didn’t pull free. He wanted to kiss her and Hettie felt relieved when he decided against it. Reluctantly he let go, pulling at a blade of grass and chewing it meditatively.

  ‘Mother’s having another baby,’ he blurted out.

  She sat up quickly, suppressing her first and unforgiveable desire to laugh. Following the loss in the Great War of the father he was named for, Lizzie, Bill’s mother, had married Sam Tennant, a Londoner, injured in the same war and who’d arrived in Loxley for what had been meant as a short spell of recuperation. Instead, he’d fallen in love with the place and with Lizzie Walker too, so he’d settled here for good, industriously building up the thriving little garage business in which Bill was currently employed. Poor Bill! However would they fit another child into that cramped little cottage next door to the garage? Hettie hardly knew what to say. But was it so very terrible? Her gaze slid towards him and she saw by his expression that it was. What an embarrassment parents were! ‘At least you’ll always have someone to talk to,’ she soothed. ‘Father always used to worry about me being an only . . .’

  ‘But that’ll make seven of us,’ Bill groaned and, woes accumulating, revealed the rest of it. ‘Mother’s on about me going to college again,’ he said.

  This was more serious. Hettie frowned. ‘But we’ll never see each other!’ she complained.

  ‘Suppose,’ he said, sounding uncertain.

  Hopefully that meant he didn’t want to go? ‘At least your parents are happy,’ she wheedled, quickly changing the subject onto safer ground. She was too happy; her spirits were too high to think about anything so unpalatable as Bill not being here, exactly where she wanted him. The summer stretched before them invitingly to do with as they would.

  ‘What are you doing next, Het?’ he asked.

  ‘Having some tea, I expect,’ she answered cheerfully and deliberately misunderstanding.

  ‘I meant with the rest of your life.’

  ‘Oh that. . . .’

  ‘Yes, that!’

  Why did he always have to be so serious? Feeling defensive and not sure why, she folded her arms around her knees and gave it some thought. ‘Well, there’s the estate,’ she answered. Though given the mess affairs had been left in following her father’s death and the swingeing taxes levied by Her Majesty’s Government, she was more than a little relieved even her grandmother agreed she wasn’t to trouble herself about that just yet.

  ‘And . . . and marriage . . . children. Stuff like that?’ Bill asked, colouring up but something – a death wish, he expected – driving him to ask. Some of Hettie’s joy in the day evaporated.

  ‘Someday, I’ll get married. I suppose I’ll have to, though thank goodness that day’s a long way off yet,’ she replied evasively.

  Irritatingly, even then he refused to take the hint and let the matter drop.

  ‘Hettie, you . . . you do know what I’m trying to say?’

  Hettie did and in the typically awkward manner she usually found so endearing. She scowled. She was so much more grown up than Bill, she mused, partly, she presumed, because of the serious business of being a duchess and partly because, well, girls simply were more mature than boys, weren’t they? Everyone said so! This time her hand sought his, lacing her fingers through his so his blush deepened delightfully. ‘If we want to be together then we will,’ she told him with a quiet authority unusual in one so young. ‘I won’t let them force us apart if that’s what you’re worrying over. Just let’s not . . . go too fast?’

  ‘If you say so, Het,’ he answered and a slow smile spread across his face, illumining it delightfully. ‘I still can’t believe you’re here.’

  ‘Nope, me neither.’

  ‘Oh, Het,’ he groaned, reaching towards her.

  He’d changed his mind again and now he really did want to kiss her. He’d have to catch her first! Laughing, she sprang up, neatly evading him. ‘Catch me!’ she hooted and was off like a young gazelle, running down the slope and taking no heed as Bill sprang up and, with a warlike cry, bounded after her.

  Watching the pair through the sitting room window stood a tall, fine-boned woman with a straight back and a remarkably forthright gaze telling any who cared to see it that this was a woman to be crossed at their peril. Katherine Loxley, Dowager Duchess of Loxley, frowned gloomily. With Hettie at boarding school and only home for the holidays; her grandmother had been praying she’d got young Bill Tennant out of her system long before now. With a rush of irritation, Katherine realized, since her son Harry had died, she’d let things slide, allowing situations to develop that once upon a time she’d have put a stop to long before now. Banging her stick to the floor, harrumphing quietly to herself, she swung away from the window, her gloom only deepening at the sight of her daughter-in-law, Bronwyn, entering the room, who, unforgivably to Katherine’s view, given the statutory year’s mourning was not yet out, had appeared at breakfast that morning dressed shockingly in a lilac skirt barely reaching her knees. There’d been words already. Quite frankly, Katherine hardly knew what society was coming to. Her brows rose,
her gaze raking her unfortunate daughter-in-law from top to toe.

  ‘Harry wouldn’t have wanted me dressed in black forever,’ Bronwyn murmured complacently, withstanding both look and frown with a fortitude brought about by long practice. She put down on the table a book of Katherine’s she’d borrowed and was returning and which, in reality, was only an excuse to see her. As if she needed one! She smiled firmly. Shocked as they all were over Harry’s death, Bronwyn could no longer avoid the fact, if this most pleasant part of England was not to fall into rack and ruin, economies would have to be made. Unpalatable as it was, it was time Katherine was made aware of it, too. ‘I think we should sell one or two of the paintings,’ she ventured, unsurprisingly nervous over the response.

  Katherine was genuinely shocked. ‘But things aren’t so bad, surely?’ she demanded, sharply.

  ‘I’m afraid they are,’ Bronwyn admitted quietly. ‘If only we’d known beforehand, made some contingency plans, we could have avoided the worst of the death duties. . . .’ Her voice trailed away. If only they’d known the fragment of shrapnel lodged in Harry’s brain would move, thereby putting an end to the years of suffering he’d endured and which had been so dreadfully upsetting to everyone and to Bronwyn especially, who’d borne the brunt of it. Headaches, mood swings, the feeling no matter how hard she tried nothing was ever quite right. The last years of their married life had hardly been easy and she was only relieved she’d managed to shield Hettie from the worst of it. Hettie had adored her father and he’d adored her, too. Katherine’s hand brushed hers, but so lightly she wondered if she’d imagined it. Despite the antagonism between them, she smiled gratefully.

  ‘We must do what’s needed,’ Katherine agreed quickly and, as ever, resolutely refusing to give in to her own grief. What an iron-force the woman was!

  ‘What are your plans for Hettie over the summer?’ she asked, abruptly.

  ‘Why . . . nothing in particular!’ Bronwyn smiled. ‘It’ll just feel good to spend some time together. The theatre, shopping, that sort of thing?’ Her face, largely untouched by the passing of the years, lit up happily at the thought.

  ‘And long-term?’ Katherine persisted.

  ‘Something worthwhile – just until she’s old enough to manage the estate. It is her birthright, remember?’ she added teasingly and taken aback that Katherine, who was such a stickler that Loxley’s numerous and occasionally irritating traditions must always be observed, had to be reminded of the fact. More sanguine as their relationship had been since the terrible fire, years since, when Loxley had nearly burnt down to the ground, Bronwyn sensed trouble. ‘Feel free to join us, if you like?’ she offered, wondering if, with Hettie having been away so much at school, Katherine had felt left out and that this was the problem.

  ‘Better my company than her idling about with young Bill!’ came the forthright reply, instantly making everything so much clearer.

  Bronwyn frowned. ‘Bill’s a lovely young man,’ she answered quietly.

  Katherine’s brows rose. ‘You can’t mean to say you haven’t noticed how close they’ve grown of late? It simply won’t do, Bronwyn! We don’t want any unnecessary attachments forming. You know how headstrong the child is.’

  Pots and kettles sprang to mind if she’d ever dare to express the thought. Bronwyn suppressed a smile. ‘And if they have formed an attachment?’ she demanded obtusely, deep down not wanting to understand.

  Katherine’s ire was stirred. ‘You surely want more for her than the chauffeur’s son? Think of her position, Bronwyn, for Heaven’s sake!’ she barked.

  ‘The chauffeur’s grandson,’ Bronwyn corrected bravely, taking pleasure in putting the old curmudgeon right. As soon as he’d returned from the Front, thankfully in remarkably good shape, Alf Walker, Lizzie’s father, had resumed the reins of his old employment on the estate. Lizzie had only been guarding the position for him. Chauffeur he’d been before the war and chauffeur he would remain. But no matter how delicately Bronwyn put it, young Bill came from a working-class family and as far as Katherine was concerned, it simply wouldn’t do. ‘In any case, she’s still only seventeen and that’s far too young to be making any kind of an attachment yet, Bill or otherwise,’ she persisted.

  Katherine’s eyes gleamed, leaving Bronwyn with the vague impression she’d been misunderstood and bringing to her mind the time when Harry had first introduced her as his prospective wife and new Duchess of Loxley. Daughter of a simple country doctor, she hadn’t been considered good enough and it had taken the fire some several years later for Katherine to realize exactly where her true values lay. She couldn’t have forgotten already, surely?

  ‘Better nip it in the bud all the same. She should go away a while, see something of the world,’ came the swift reply, so swift it was obvious she’d been mulling over the idea. Unfortunately, she’d forgotten the salient point and it was up to Bronwyn to put her right.

  ‘Katherine, we simply can’t afford for Hettie to go gadding about,’ she reminded her.

  Katherine shook her head pityingly. ‘I have some money put by,’ she persisted. ‘She should travel. Paris, Venice, Rome. . . . It won’t put you out, Bronwyn, if that’s what you’re thinking. Miss Pettigrew must be brought out of retirement. Blessed woman’s nothing else to do other than to sit twiddling her thumbs.’

  Dolores Pettigrew, known fondly by all as Dizzy, had been Hettie’s governess before she’d been sent away to school. So neatly outmanoeuvred, Bronwyn bowed her head. Bang went her plans for the summer! Clearly irritated, she subsided into a silence fuelled by the thought that no matter how much Katherine desired it, the plan was doomed. The simple fact was if it meant she had to leave Bill behind, Hettie wouldn’t want to go. Knowing how stubborn her young daughter could be once her mind was set, Bronwyn also knew, much as Katherine might wish it, there was no way she could force her.

  It wouldn’t stop her trying, she conceded, wearily. Battle, it appeared, was about to commence.

  ‘I’m not going!’ Hettie’s voice brimmed with resentment and if she hadn’t, at that moment, looked the very spit of Nell Loxley, her high-spirited ancestor, the first Duchess of Loxley, whose portrait hung in the great hall, Bronwyn would have said the one person her daughter most resembled was her formidable grandmother. What a pair they were, the one so stubborn, the other so set in her ways and poor Bronwyn as usual caught in the middle, so whatever she did was wrong.

  It was breakfast the following morning and Soames, their elderly butler, was refilling the coffee cups when Katherine first mooted the idea of Europe. Sensing trouble, Soames did as he always did at such times and discreetly withdrew, pulling the baize double doors quietly to behind him.

  ‘Nonsense, child! It’s just what you need,’ Katherine answered, sanguinely.

  ‘But I have plans!’ came the indignant response. Hettie glared at her grandmother. Like spending as much time as she could with Bill, for one, though she’d no intention of telling her formidable relative so. In desperation, she turned to her mother. ‘You can’t want to send me away again already? I’ve only just got home!’ she wailed.

  Bronwyn sipped her tea, answering with as much calmness as she could muster. ‘I can’t deny your grandmother has a point, darling. Think how marvellous it would be – all those wonderful places. You might never get another chance!’

  They were ganging up on her and it wasn’t fair but the situation could still be turned to her advantage. Hettie smiled sweetly. ‘I thought you said we needed to economize?’ she pointed out, unable to hide her triumph at stating this one, undeniable fact.

  ‘I’ll take care of the cost,’ Katherine said, at once.

  But if she went away now, she’d never be able to see Bill! This thought was hotly followed by the next, which was that somewhere here was the real reason for this wretched plan. Exactly what she might have expected from her grandmother but her mother, too? How could she! Hettie set down her cup with a clatter. She was furious with them both and not afraid to sho
w it.

  ‘They’re trying to split us up,’ she burst out crossly to Bill as soon after breakfast as she could decently get away. They stood together on the garage forecourt beside the battered old Ford motor which, with Sam’s blessing, Bill was in the process of doing up. He stood, running a hand through his hair, leaving a smudge of oil on his cheek that instantly Hettie longed to smooth away. Events were moving too fast, even for her, leaving her emotions all over the place so she scarcely knew what she wanted any more. She frowned, looking past Bill and into the garage where Sam Tennant lay flat on his back under a motor’s exhaust pipe which, given the fact he’d lost the biggest part of his left hand when the Boche had tried to blow up the bus he’d driven transporting troops along the front line, he was fixing with remarkable dexterity. In the garden of the cottage next door, numerous children of varying sizes were playing happily whilst Lizzie, their mother, grown comfortably plump over the years and already filling out with her pregnancy, hung the washing out. She saw Hettie and waved happily.

  Hettie waved back. ‘What are we going to do?’ she demanded, if having no expectation of an answer.

  Bill was at a loss too. ‘I knew this would happen,’ he grumbled miserably, looking young and confused and something else now too, forbidden fruit when Hettie wouldn’t be forbidden anything, not now, not ever and certainly not when she was nearly eighteen and already a duchess. Not for the first time, Hettie considered the power of her position. She would have what she wanted and no one was going to stop her, not even her grandmother, well-intentioned as she might be. Uncaring that Lizzie might see and perhaps unforgivably considering the way she knew Bill felt about her, she reached up and dropped a light kiss on the young man’s cheek, gratified when at once he attempted to pull her into his arms. Teasingly, she sprang away and, experiencing one of her abrupt mood changes, laughed happily up at him.

  ‘Sorry, Bill, I shall have to go. . . .’

  ‘Hettie, don’t. . . . Stay a while!’ She shook her head. It was tempting but she really did need to get back. ‘I’ll be back. And don’t worry,’ she encouraged him. ‘They’ll send me away from Loxley over my dead body. . . .’