Виктория Холт - Time of the Hunter's Moon

"You should have waited," I said. "The police would have got him. They were on the trail. They've arrested Elsa."

"When would they have got him? After he had murdered Fiona? No. We were dealing with a practised murderer, a man whose business was murder. I knew they would have come in time, but I had to be there ... right away ... as soon as I knew. I couldn't let it be too late."

"What happened to him?"

"The best thing. He was lucky. He broke his neck. I broke lots of things but my neck was intact. I landed in a heap of snow ... I was buried in it. He went onto hard rock."

"Does it upset you to talk of it?" I asked.

"No. It does me good. It's Fiona who worries me." "I'll see what I can do."

"Try to explain to her. She won't believe you, but you have to make her. I know it's hard but she can't go on shutting her eyes to the truth. Cordelia... it was wonderful of you to come. I suppose I kept asking for you when I didn't know what I was saying."

"Would you have only asked for me when you didn't know you were?"

"I knew about Epping. Eugenie has kept me well informed. I guessed the rest."

"Well, I came here instead."

"Foolish of you."

"I think it was rather wise. Do you remember you once asked me to marry you?"

He smiled faintly. "A bit of a braggart, wasn't I?"

"Is the offer still open?"

He did not answer and I went on: "Because, if it is, I've decided to accept."

"You're carried away by the emotion of the moment. Pity for the man who will never again be what he was. That is not how it should be between us. There's that paragon awaiting you. He will give you all that a woman could want."

I laughed.

"What's amusing?" he asked.

"I have been telling you for a long time that I never wanted to see you again and you were insisting that I must. Now, I'm saying I will and you are pointing out the reasons why I should marry someone else."

"What a perverse pair we are. We've changed. It's been a complete turnabout. You have left the practical schoolmistress in England and I have left the swaggering scoundrel halfway down a mountain. How can people change so much?"

"They don't. It is just little facets of their characters being revealed. Do you really love me?"

"Do I have to answer?"

"I want a clear answer."

"Oh? The schoolmistress is not far away. If it isn't the right answer, take a hundred lines. Of course I love you."

"Then the matter is settled. You may be the wicked villain with a trace of the devil in him, but haven't I always known how to cope with him?"

"Even in the Devil's Den."

We were silent. We dared not look at each other for fear of betraying the depth of our emotion. I took his hand and laid it against my cheek.

I said: "Ever since this happened I have been doing a lot of thinking about you and myself, and coming here in the train when I did not know what I was going to find, I understood myself ... my feelings ... and what I wanted. If I had found you dead, I shouldn't have cared very much about living myself. I realized that I had never felt so alive, so much in love with life, as when I was fighting with you. I mean our verbal contests. To whip up my defiance of you, that was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me. I learned how dull and meaningless life would be without that. I suppose antagonism sometimes conceals attraction."

"You are talking nonsense," he said. "You are carried away by sentimentality. My dear little schoolmistress is doing what she considers the Right Thing."

"If you don't want to hear any more I'll go."

"Stay."

"That sounded like a command."

"You don't like commands. You make your own decisions."

"Yes, and I have decided that I am going to stay as long as I like. You're going to get well. I'm going to see to that, and the only way I can do it efficiently is by marrying you. There is only one thing which will stop me and that is if you tell me you don't want me."

"Listen to me," he said. "You must wait, Cordelia. You must see what has been done to me."

"You've saved Fiona's life. Remember that."

"She won't thank me."

"She will in time. Now what do you say?"

"You'd be better off with the banker."

"Shall I go back then?"

"No," he said. "Stay. Suppose you married me. How do you know I wouldn't give you a dose of laudanum?"

"I'll take the risk."

"And suppose I murdered you and put you in the fishponds, or buried your carcass in the Abbey grounds?"

"I'll take that risk too."

"Imagine the scandal! Mrs. Baddicombe will have a field day."

"I'm feeling rather grateful to Mrs. Baddicombe at the moment. I'd be quite happy to provide her with a few items for her repertoire."

"You won't be serious."

"I'm deadly serious. I'm going to see the doctor. I want to know exactly what state you're in. I'm going to stay here until I take you back with me."

I hid my face because I was afraid he would see my tears, and when I looked at him there was a kind of wonder and immeasurable joy in his face.

IT was not until the spring that I married Jason. By that time he was able to walk with the aid of a stick. I had been with him for three months in Austria. Aunt Patty had gone home after three weeks. She said that she thought I could manage without her and she wanted to see what Violet was up to.

She had been a great help with Fiona who would not believe that she had been married to anyone other than the romantic hero whom she had always known. He had been tender and loving. I thought how strange that was and I wondered afresh at the complexities of human nature. I supposed that when he was with her he was all she said he was-and yet all the time he was waiting for the opportunity to kill her. I wondered what sort of man he could be to play two such parts with conviction.

There had been a great deal in the papers about the case which was called that of the Satanic Bride-groom. It was revealed that Hans Dowling was the son of a German mother and an English father; he had murdered two women. There was one before Lydia. Evidently it was a method of amassing wealth, for each of the murdered women had left money to him. His big killing was to be that of Fiona and her sister, through which he would get not only Fiona's fortune but that of her sister-which would pass to Fiona on Eugenie's death. It was the prospect of getting Eugenie's money as well as Fiona's which had kept Fiona alive. But for that she would have been despatched long ago.

Jason was my main preoccupation. Together we concentrated on getting him well. There were hours of exercising in which I helped; I was with him all through the days and we often engaged in those stimulating verbal battles which had been a feature of our relationship.

I was happier than I had ever been, once I knew that he was going to recover; and I often marvelled that so much happiness could come out of so much that was evil.

Daisy was grieved that I had not returned to school and that a little of the glory of Schaffenbrucken influence was removed from the school's prospectus; but she made it clear to parents that the young lady who had brought in the Schaffenbrucken influence was to become Lady Verringer, wife of the largest landowner in Devon. And I think she took some comfort from that.

Elsa was extradited and stood on trial in Austria. She had not actually killed, though she was accused of attempted murder and of complicity in murder. She confessed ail, which helped Fiona to accept the truth, and she was given a long prison sentence.

There must have been a great deal of talk in Colby and I could imagine what took place in those across-the-counter-parleys in the post office. Daisy wrote to me, most gratified, because no parents had seen fit to remove their daughters.