CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR (Part Two)
Cedric Trevellian glanced over his shoulder as he rode down the driveway towards his waiting companions. Rosalind was standing at the doorway, watching him.
He felt a great surge of joy. Rosalind loved him. In that brief moment when he had held her in his arms he knew it. He had never believed it possible that he would find the true love he longed for in his lifetime. He had never found it with Cynthia.
At the thought of his wife, he was suddenly ashamed that he had spoken of love to another woman while his wife lay cold and alone somewhere, awaiting her burial.
But he was alive and in love, he told himself. Surely his love and desire for Rosalind could not be wrong. Surely he had a right to be happy. And if his father objected to the match, well...
Coldness came over him as he recalled the dreadful news Rosalind had told him. His father too, lay dead. The knowledge that Rosaline loved him had momentarily blotted out that tragedy. And now Cedric felt a great torment as two powerful emotions raged in his breast. Grief and desire.
And yet there was another emotion which strained at him. Revenge. James Gilbert had killed his father and had almost taken Rosalind, his love, from him. Bringing the guilty man to justice must be his endeavour now. Death and love must wait.
As he reached the three waiting horsemen, Twm Beynon waved an arm in the direction of the road that served around the back of the estate.
‘Think we’ve spotted him, sir,’ he called. ‘For some mad reason he seems to be making for the cliffs.
Cedric was silent, feeling suddenly overwhelmed by events.
‘What is wrong, Cedric? Is all well at the house?’ Richard asked.
‘Sir Leopold is dead,’ Cedric said simply. ‘James Gilbert killed him.’
‘What?
‘Oh my God!’
Richard looked concerned. ‘My sister and my nieces...’
‘The womenfolk are unharmed,’ Cedric said. ‘They have now secured themselves inside the house.’ Cedric clenched his fist. ‘We must find this murdering daemon and deal with him.’
‘We best split up again,’ Mr Dunbar suggested.
‘He intends to escape by sea,’ Cedric told them. ‘He’s attempting to get to the village and the beach to secure a boat. We must prevent that. Once at sea he will be lost to us.’
‘He’s probably on the path now somewhere,’ Twm Beynon opined. ‘May I suggest, sirs, that two of us ride the road behind the estate and get onto the cliff path higher up? At the same time, two of us remain concealed here amongst these bushes. We can then trap him between the two.’
‘Sound thinking, Beynon,’ Richard Whillowby said. ‘You and Mr Dunbar take the road. Mr Trevellian and I will remain here. Be careful of that pistol.’
Twm Beynon and Mr Dunbar rode off immediately, and Cedric and Richard, leaving their horses out of view on the road, took refuge in the dense shrubs that gathered along the path at this point.
‘I am sorry about your father,’ Richard murmured. ‘But what made Gilbert kill him do you think?’
Cedric was silent for a moment. He was ashamed of the amoral life his father had led and yet Richard was family. He had the right to know.
‘James Gilbert was my father’s illegitimate son,’ he said in a quiet voice. 'I have known that such a son existed for some time, but only recently became aware that he was in the village. My father's reluctance to face-down the curate made me suspect he was the one.'
‘The devil you say!’
‘Gilbert wanted recognition, I suspect, and a share of the estate, but my father was too proud a man to acknowledge him. And so they fought.’
‘When Gilbert is tried and hanged all this will come out and there will be a great scandal,’ Richard said in a serious voice. ‘It would be wise to get my nieces away from the county before that happens.’
‘My father, a scandalous man in truth, ran in terror of scandal all his life,’ Cedric said grimly. ‘I will not do the same.’
‘Don’t you understand, man?’ Richard said angrily. ‘Your daughters will be ruined. No respectable man in society will want them as wives.’
Cedric was about to answer when hurrying and faltering footsteps could be heard approaching. He would have rushed out of cover to challenge him, but Richard’s hand held him back.
‘The pistol!’ he hissed ‘Wait until he is nearer. We can then surprise him.’
The wanted man was almost alongside when Richard shouted from the cover of the shrubs.
‘Give yourself up, Gilbert. There is no escape.’
There was a cry of surprise followed by two shots wildly placed, which did neither man harm.
‘This is the Law here!’ they heard Twm Beynon shout from a short distance away. ‘Surrender your weapon in the name of the Law!’
‘That watchman should be made Sheriff of the County,’ Richard murmured with the ghost of a smile in his voice.
‘Stand back,’ Gilbert shouted back. ‘I’ll shoot the next man that I see.’
‘There is nowhere for you to run,’ Mr Dunbar hollered with surprising menace for a man of the cloth.
‘Enough of this!’ Cedric said angrily and stepped out of the shrubs. Richard quickly followed.
James Gilbert stood just a few feet away. He looked a sight. His coat was gone and his shirt was torn. There were bramble scratches on his face. His gaze as he stared at them was wide and wild.
‘Stay back I say!’ His voice was almost a screech. He looked half-crazed with fear.
Behind him Twm Beynon and the clergyman were edging cautiously ever closer to their quarry.
Becoming aware of them, James Gilbert trained the pistol first on the men approaching him from behind and then, swinging around, on Cedric.
‘Our father is dead,’ he said in a quavering voice. ‘I killed him. He would not concede my birthrights as a Trevellian.’
‘Put the pistol down,’ Cedric said to him. ‘We are too many for you.’
A look of abject hatred darkened James Gilbert’s features. ‘You, my dear brother, the favoured one,’ he gasped. ‘Why should you have it all and I be denied.’
He lifted the pistol higher; pointing it directly at Cedric’s face.
‘Don’t be a fool,’ shouted Richard Whillowby.
‘If I am to die, then I take you with me.’
Gilbert steadied the pistol and deliberately aimed. Suddenly, as though out of nowhere, a figure rushed at the wanted man. There was a loud report as the pistol was discharged, and for a second Cedric thought he had been hit.
Then he saw that Twm Beynon had snatched the pistol from the man’s hand.
James Gilbert, taken completely by surprise, stepped back towards the edge of the path. The ground gave way under his feet and before any man present could do anything to stop it he tumbled backwards over the edge. There was an agonised ear-shattering scream and then abruptly there was complete silence.
Cedric stood transfixed, unable to comprehend that it was over.
‘You all right, sir?’ Twm Beynon was talking to him, but he could only stare.
‘Here’s the pistol, sir. Looks like an old ‘un to me.’
Cedric looked at the pistol in Twm’s hand and found he recognised it.
‘That was my father’s,’ he said as though waking from a dream. ‘It never did fire correctly.’
Mr Dunbar and Richard Whillowby were at the edge of the cliff looking down. With a feeling of revulsion Cedric forced himself to join them.
James Gilbert lay sprawled on the rocks below, his limbs twisted and his head at an awkward angle.
‘He cheated the hangman, after all,’ Twm said at Cedric’s shoulder.
‘That death was too good for him,’ Richard said grimly.
Cedric turned away from the sight. Would death never leave them be? All he wanted from now on was the living warmth of Rosalind’s love.
‘I’d best get back to the village, sirs,’ Twm said matter-of-factly. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. ‘Get the beach cleaned up after the curate’s accident.’
‘Accident?’ Cedric was startled.
‘Accident it were, as I reckon,’ Twm nodded positively. ‘Nobody pushed him.’
The watchman moved away to look for his horse and to get on with his duty.
Richard approached Cedric. ‘Beynon is right,’ he said. ‘With Gilbert dead there will be no trial and a scandal can be averted.’
‘I told you,’ Cedric said harshly. ‘I’ll not shy from scandal as my father did. It was his undoing.’
Mr Dunbar joined them. ‘Sir Cedric, take time to think of your family in this serious and life-shattering situation.’
Cedric stared at him. ‘What did you call me?’
Mr Dunbar looked surprised. ‘On the death of Sir Leopold Trevellian, you, his only living son, succeed to the baronetcy.’
Suddenly, the realisation of his father death fell upon his mind like a great stone weight.
‘Sir Cedric, think,’ Mr Dunbar continued. ‘In consideration of your father’s reputation and the future happiness of your innocent daughters, let it lie; let it be hushed up.’
The image of Rosalind’s lovely loving face came into his mind’s eye, and the weight seemed to lift a little. His greatest wish was that they should be married. Could he really let her share the burden of the scandal? She who had been through so much because of his father, and who was so innocent herself.
‘You may be right, Dunbar,’ he said tiredly. ‘I must think of those I love and who love me.’