‘You can’t. She’s not … I mean, she isn’t well.’ Evaline appeared decidedly flustered.
‘Not here?’ She bit her lip and then nodded. ‘Where?’
‘She left for Combe yesterday morning, first thing,’ Evaline admitted.
‘Why?’ Evaline just shrugged, her pretty face showing as much bafflement as he felt. ‘Is she betrothed to someone?’
‘Oh, no.’ She seemed glad to have something she could answer. ‘Although it something about marriage, I am certain. I heard Papa and Mama … I should not repeat it.’
Alistair sat down without waiting to be invited, finding, for the first time in his life, that his legs were none too steady. As he realised it Person opened the door. ‘Do you wish refreshments to be served, Lady Evaline? Good morning, my lord.’ It was as close to a rebuke as he was going to deliver. Alistair smiled at him. Even disapproving butlers were to be tolerated now he knew that Dita was still not promised to another man.
‘Not on my account, thank you.’ He got to his feet and bent to kiss Evaline’s cheek. ‘I’ll go and see she is all right.’
‘Oh, good.’ She beamed back at him. ‘And tell her to come back to town soon—I need her help for all the shopping I have to do!’
The temptation to take his curricle was almost overwhelming, but Alistair controlled it. He had no idea how Dita would react when he arrived on her doorstep and he wanted his wits about him. Speculation about what was going on kept running round and round in his head, but he could make no sense of what was happening.
He ordered Gregory to pack for at least a week away, ordered a chaise and four and set out at midday with one terse instruction to the postillions. ‘Make the best time you can and there’s money in it for you.’
It took them fifteen hours to Bridgewater, and another five on the narrower, twisting roads, and then lanes, that led to the Castle.
By the time the chaise pulled up in front of the great doors it was eight in the morning, Alistair had taught his valet to play a variety of card games, they had snatched dinner in Bristol and had slept in moderate discomfort for the past five hours.
Two hours later, with breakfast inside him, bathed, shaved and dressed in buckskins and boots, Alistair rode up to the front door of Wycombe Combe. At least he had got inside the door this time before he was refused, he thought, confronting the Brookes’ butler.
‘Is Lady Perdita not receiving me, or is she not at home to anyone?’ he demanded.
‘Lady Perdita has given orders that she is not to be disturbed, my lord. She’s shut herself up in the Library Suite in the tower, my lord. And she hasn’t come down. We take her meals up to her and I have to knock; the door at the foot of the tower is locked, my lord.’ Gilbert had known Alistair since he was a boy and seemed grateful for the prospect of some guidance.
The butler would have a master key, Alistair reflected, but he did not want to put him in a difficult position; beside
s, he was experiencing a strong urge to do something flamboyant to make his point to Dita. She wanted romance? Well, if she locked herself up in a tower like Rapunzel, romance was what she was going to get.
Her grandfather had added an incongruous tower at one end of the house in a fit of enthusiasm for the Gothic, inspired by his friend Hugh Walpole. It overlooked the miniature gorge that the river made and created the impression that one of the turrets of his own castle had taken flight and landed there. Dita’s father had moved the library into the second floor and Alistair recalled from childhood games of hide and seek that there was a guest suite above that.
He wondered why had she abandoned her own rooms as he made his way along the frontage of the house, round the curve of the tower wall and along to a point where a mass of ivy clung to the stonework. Forty foot up a window was open. Alistair shed his coat and hat, gave the ivy an experimental shake and began to climb.
He had made harder climbs, and more dangerous ones, although the result of falling on to the slabs below would be terminally unpleasant, but the ivy was old and thick and made a serviceable ladder. He was within six feet of the window when a wren erupted out of the foliage, shrieking with alarm, a tiny brown bundle of aggression.
The ivy tore under his hands as he swung out reflexively, swearing, then he grabbed hold above the weak spot and threw his weight more securely across.
‘What the devil are you doing?’ Dita’s voice, immediately overhead, almost had him losing his grip again.
‘Climbing this ivy,’ Alistair said, while his heart returned to its proper place.
‘That is such a male answer!’ He looked up and found her glaring down at him, her arms folded on the sill. ‘The question, as you very well know, Alistair Lyndon, is why are you climbing the ivy?’
‘To get to you. I want to talk to you—I am worried about you, Dita.’
‘Well, I don’t want to talk to you.’ She straightened up and the window began to swing closed.
‘I can’t get down,’ he called.
‘Nonsense.’ But she poked her head out again.
‘Let down your hair, Rapunzel,’ he wheedled.
‘This is not so much a fairy tale, more a bad dream,’ she retorted, vanishing again.