disappeared, leaving Margaret unable to utter a word. They stared at her; one of them even lifted a quizzing-glass and moved it up and down inches from her face. ‘Ain’t seen you before,’ he said. ‘Where’d old Henry find you?’
‘He didn’t,’ she said coldly. ‘I am his great-niece.’
This was followed by another long silence, until Nellie came in and diverted them with cries of welcome. ‘It’s been dull,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing to do…’
‘Nothing to do, Nellie?’ one of the women laughed. ‘Don’t Henry satisfy you any more? Well, now we’re all here, things will liven up, don’t you think? Is the niece part of the entertainment?’
‘My, I could be entertained by that one,’ drawled one of the men, looking lecherously at Margaret. ‘It might be amusing, don’t you think? The quiet ones often turn out to have hidden fire. I had a mistress once, young she was, hardly out of the schoolroom and carefully brought up, but my, was she a demon in bed!’
He laughed heartily as Margaret turned and fled.
She ran up to her room, grabbed her bag and hurried down the back stairs to the kitchen. Mistress Clark was just taking a roast fowl from the oven. Margaret dashed past her and out of the door. They would surely catch her if she tried to go back along the only road. She turned and ran over the grass to the landing-stage. They could not follow her if she took the only boat. She threw her bag in the bottom, climbed in and cast off.
She had never rowed a boat before, but she had seen it done on the Thames and she bent to the oars with a will. At first she went round and round and kept bumping into the bank, but at last she found a kind of rhythm and discovered how to steer. Her direction was clear enough because Ely Cathedral stood out clear against the skyline. She had no idea how far away it was, because distances were deceptive where there were no landmarks except a few windmills, and the light was so strange. She rowed out of the wide water of the fen into the cut. She kept going until her back felt like breaking and her hands were covered in blisters, but still the great tower of the cathedral seemed no nearer. She knew that if she stopped the current would take her back the way she had come. She forced herself to continue, and inch by inch drove the boat forward towards a group of buildings surrounding a church, which she guessed was Winterford. There was a small landing-stage and sloping lawns to a large house. Thankfully, she pulled in and, throwing her bag before her, climbed on to dry land. And then, to her great consternation, she found her legs had become so numb with cold that she could not stand.
The house was two hundred yards away and much bigger than she had at first supposed. Built of grey stone, it seemed to have been put together haphazardly, with a tall main building and two wings, one with a lower roof-level which jutted out along the frontage and the other set at right angles. The central frontage had half a dozen evenly spaced mullioned windows and a massive wooden door, heavily studded. She began crawling over the grass towards it, dragging her bag with her, but, before she could reach it, she found herself looking at a kid-booted foot and a dark blue woollen skirt and heard the voice of a young woman. ‘Goodness, you poor thing, whatever happened to you? Charles, come here and help me.’
‘Mistress Donnington!’ Margaret recognised the voice of Charles Mellison, though she was all but fainting and could not see him clearly. ‘How did you get here?’
‘Never mind how she got here,’ the young lady said, before Margaret could find her tongue. ‘Help me get her indoors.’
He lifted her easily and carried her into the house and into a small sitting-room. Margaret saw nothing but the glowing embers of the fire, felt nothing but the warmth enveloping her, and then she fainted.
When she came to herself, she was lying in a beautifully furnished bedroom, covered with clean sheets and warm blankets, and the young lady was sitting in a chair beside the bed watching her. She smiled when she saw Margaret was awake.
‘I’m Kate Pargeter,’ she said, picking at the lace edging of the tiny apron she wore over a flower-patterned silk day-gown. It was almost a nervous gesture, as if she was unsure of herself, but then she laughed and revealed the mischievous look of a young girl. ‘Charles told me you were coming to visit us, but I never dreamed you would arrive in so spectacular a fashion. My brother is out on the land but he’ll be back soon. Wait till I tell him you could not wait for him to send for you and made your own way here.’
‘I wasn’t…’ Margaret stopped, wondering what Charles Mellison had said about her. Why should Lord Pargeter send for her? ‘I’m sorry, I’m confused,’ she said.
Kate’s tinkling laugh came to her as if through a fog. ‘You are nothing like as mystified as I am. I thought you came from London, from Society, but you can evidently row a boat with the best of fen women.’
‘I didn’t know I could.’ Margaret smiled. ‘I don’t think I am very good at it.’ She turned her hands over, but the blistered palms had been covered with salve and bandaged.
‘No, you poor dear. But how brave you were to try.’ She picked up a glass from the small table by the bed and leaned forward to help Margaret drink from it. ‘Charles said you had to go and visit your uncle before you honoured us with a visit, but he was quite sure you would not want to stay there…’
‘He was right about that.’
‘Is it as bad as they say?’ The question was asked with a conspiratorial giggle.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Oh, there are all sorts of rumours. Visitors, you know, riotous behaviour——’
‘Kate, you should not be bothering our guest with questions like that.’ The speaker stood in the doorway, tall, angular almost, in country breeches and muddied top-boots. He was not smiling.
‘Roly, you’re back. Look who’s here. Aren’t you pleased to see her?’
‘Very,’ he said laconically, without stepping over the threshold. ‘But I believe Mistress Donnington should be allowed to rest. You can question her all you like after I have spoken to her.’
Margaret looked up at him, recognising Master Mellison’s companion of the evening before and guessing he was Lord Pargeter. They must have been talking about her or how did he come to know her name? If they had, what had they been saying? And why did Kate say she was expected? The strange conversation she had had with Charles Mellison came to her mind and made her mouth lift in a little quirk.
‘I am glad to see you are able to smile,’ his lordship said. ‘Now, please sleep. We will talk as soon as you feel stronger.’
She wanted to say that they should talk now, that whatever mysteries there were to be solved should be uncovered at once. She felt like a pawn being pushed around on a great chess-board, not in control of the situation at all, and she did not like it. She turned to Kate, who stood up with the empty glass in her hand. Margaret just had time to register that it must have contained a sleeping-draught before her eyes closed.
The next time she awoke, it was snowing. She could see huge flakes of it sliding down the glass of the window, but the room was warm from a fire which blazed in the grate. Her bag had been unpacked; underclothes, white stockings, a cambric petticoat and a round gown of blue merino wool were laid over a chair near the blaze to warm. She turned her head. A maid was pouring hot water into a bowl which stood on the wash-stand in the corner. It was the sound of that which had disturbed her.
‘Oh,
