Barbara Taylor Bradford – The Complete Ravenscar Trilogy: The Ravenscar Dynasty, Heirs of Ravenscar, Being Elizabeth (страница 52)

Edward pulled out a chair next to Meg, and sat down. ‘Tell me what’s troubling you, sweetheart. Perhaps I can help.’

‘I suppose you were right when you said I was frightened, Ned. Such terrible things have happened lately…too many for one family to bear. Papa and Edmund murdered, Uncle Rick and Thomas as well, then the attack on you. You could have been killed, all those blows to your head.’ A deep sigh rippled through her before she added, ‘It’s as if the Grants are trying to kill off all the men in our line, render us helpless by turning us into a family of women.’

Edward’s blood ran cold as she said this, but nonetheless, he smiled at her and teased, ‘You and Mother are my Amazons, my warrior queens. Neither of you is helpless, Meg. Just the opposite.’ He said this in a mild tone, then when he noticed her frown he continued, ‘I’m not trying to make light of what you’re saying. A lot has happened, but remember bad things do happen to everyone at different times. Life is very hard, you know, and often comes back to hit one in the face. The most important thing is learning how to survive, to fight back, to hold one’s own. That’s what we must all do.’

‘I know, I must be brave,’ she murmured. ‘I’ll try.’ She stared at her brother intently. ‘I worry about George and Richard, and you, too, Ned, about your safety.’

‘Listen to me, Meg darling. None of the Grants are going to destroy me. I’m going to get them first, don’t you know?’ He grinned at her, his bright blue eyes full of sparkle. ‘As for George and Richard, the Grants wouldn’t go after children.’ As these words left his mouth he knew, with a sinking feeling, that they would if they had to in order to pursue their cause.

Wanting to calm her, he insisted, ‘You’re quite safe, Meg, you and the boys, here in this house with Mother and the staff. And me. Don’t forget, I live here, too.’

‘You go to work with them, and they could hurt you again.’

‘Yes, I do work at Deravenels during the day, and I go out at night, but now I have two bodyguards…Will and Johnny. Anyway, I seriously doubt that the Grants will attempt anything in the very near future. They would be very foolish if they did.’

‘I hope they won’t. I love you, Ned, and so do George and Richard.’ She smiled. ‘He adores you, your Little Fish.’

‘Yes, I know, and I feel the same about him, about all of you, and really, you mustn’t worry about the Grants.’

‘When will they stop hurting us?’

‘Soon.’

‘How do you know?’

‘We’ll make them stop. Neville and I will put an end to them.’

‘Why have they been doing bad things to us?’

‘It’s a long story. Basically though for money and power. They stole those things from us, from our line of the family, sixty years ago, and they are desperately trying to hang onto that power. But they are going to lose it, and lose it to us. We are going to reclaim what is ours by rights.’

The fifteen-year-old looked at him, her eyes shining. ‘Do you promise me, Ned?’

‘I do indeed promise you, Margaret, and I want you to put these worries about the Grants out of your head. You must promise me that.’

‘I do promise.’ Leaning back in the chair, she murmured in a quavering voice, ‘I miss Papa and Edmund.’

‘So do I, and I truly understand your pain, your grief, Meg. I want to tell you something.’ Ned leaned closer, said sotto voce, ‘I carry them in my heart. Always. And you must do that, too. It helps to hold onto them and the memories of being with them, of having them in our lives.’

Slowly she nodded her head. ‘I will do that. And I know I’ll never forget them.’ She reached out, took his hand in hers, clung to it.

‘I promise I will always protect you,’ Ned reassured her.

‘And I will stand by you,’ she responded, meaning this. And she was to prove her loyalty some years later, and it was a loyalty that never wavered.

‘We’re going to be fine, the entire family is going to be all right. Trust me, the Grants will fall into oblivion.’

‘When?’

‘I told you, soon. However, I see you want me to be more specific. Neville thinks we’ll oust them in a few months. By the summer, he says, I’ll be running Deravenels. Now, Meg, tell me about your days here. Are you enjoying being in London?’

‘I prefer Ravenscar. I wish we were there now.’

‘Well, we’re going there for Easter, how about that, my girl?’

‘Did Mama tell you this?’

‘No, she didn’t. I just decided it now, on the spur of the moment. So it’s our secret, for the time being. Now, tell me about Perdita Willis…do you like her as much as you did last year?’

‘Yes, I do. More, really. She loves botany as much as I do and she’s teaching me such a lot of new, interesting things. I was studying a special book before I became sad and started to cry. I want you to look at it, you’ll see how lovely the illustrations are.’ She pulled the large book towards her, and confided, ‘I found this in the library at Ravenscar, and I was fascinated by it. So is Richard. He keeps saying that it’s his, that it belongs to him.’

‘Why is that?’ Edward asked, looking somewhat amused at the idea of his Little Fish asserting himself.

‘Because it does have his name on it.’ Opening the book, she showed Ned the name inscribed on the faded bookplate on one of the front end papers. In beautiful copperplate it announced: Richard Deravenel: His Book.

Looking down at the page Meg was showing him, Edward realized at once how old the book was. Very early Victorian, he thought. It was undoubtedly a gem. At that moment Edward remembered the story of the boy who died, and he exclaimed, ‘There was another Richard Deravenel, other than Father, many years ago. And that is his name on the bookplate, I feel sure. He died when he was about your age, Meg, of typhoid fever, I think. His full name was Richard Marmaduke Deravenel. This did belong to him, there’s no doubt in my mind. It must have been his.’

Edward turned the page and looked at the front. ‘What an odd title,’ he exclaimed. ‘Fatal Flowers…how very weird.’ He glanced at his sister a little quizzically.

‘It’s about flowers that are deadly, so poisonous they can kill. There are lots of them, Ned, growing in everybody’s gardens. But please do look at the pictures, they’re so lovely.’

‘More than lovely, Meg,’ Ned remarked as he turned the leaves of the book. ‘These watercolours are simply superb, of the highest quality indeed.’

Edward stared at the two pages now open in front of him. He stiffened. There was a painting of the tall and elegant foxglove on the left, and on the right the name of the flower in bold letters:

THE FOXGLOVE (DIGITALIS)

He read the heading again, hardly able to believe his eyes. Digitalis, he read once more, and then dropped his eyes to the details of the flower written below. Startled and excited, Edward’s eyes widened as he read:

The common foxglove grows in almost every Victorian garden. It is a flower beloved by all. Tall and graceful, it has many other names such as fairy thimbles, fairy gloves, fairy bells, and dead man’s thimbles, because its flowers do resemble the fingers of ‘fairy gloves’. The curious names originated here in the British Isles where our ancient people believed that the small spots on the bell of the flower were the fingerprints of fairies, hence the name ‘folks gloves’, meaning the gloves of the little folks. The elegant and colourful foxglove is often referred to as ‘dead man’s thimbles’ because of its shape and the poison it contains. The Latin genus, Digitalis, refers to finger or thimble. This beautiful natural ornament for the Victorian garden, so graceful, so tall, is fatal if eaten.

Oh, my God. Edward sat there motionless, frozen in the chair, continuing to stare down at the book, unwilling to lift his head at this moment. He knew that Meg was anxious for his opinion of the book, wanted to talk about it with him. Whereas he wanted to think. Was that how Aubrey Masters had died? Had he eaten foxgloves? Had they been ingested with his vegetarian dinner? An accident? Suicide? Murder? Which was it?

His brain raced. If Masters had been murdered, then who had done it? And how had the perpetrator managed to put foxgloves in his food?

‘Ned, Ned,’ Meg exclaimed, ‘what is it? Why are you so interested in the foxglove in particular?’

Finally he lifted his head and forced a smile. ‘Because it’s so strange, isn’t it, that a thing of such beauty is so deadly. Now I understand the title of the book.’

Will Hasling was waiting for Edward in the library of White’s, the gentleman’s private club in Whitehall where he and his father were members. Arguably the most famous club in London, many believed it was the first to open its doors, that it had begun as a chocolate house in 1693, and that Pope and Swift were among its regulars. Certainly it was a male bastion where members could go to eat, drink, smoke, gamble, play billiards and read. Women were barred. None of them really wanted to go anyway, preferring the men in their lives to have places where they could be left to their own devices.

Whilst waiting for his friend, Will had been perusing The Times, but he had now read enough, and took it back to the table where the newspapers were always placed after use.