The Enchantress

by Denise Robins

Genres: Romance; Historical Romance

Synopsis

A darkly captivating love story from the 100-million-copy bestselling Queen of Romance, first published in 1929 and now available for the first time in eBook. Marion Grayle is in love! Overwhelmingly, totally in love. Wild and elemental as her native Dartmoor, with her flaming red-gold hair, challenging dark eyes and the supple allurement of her figure, she has always stood apart from the locals: like a creature from another world. She has spurned all suitors - until now. Now that she has found the one man she is determined will be hers, no one will be allowed to stand in her way. Neither convention, conscience nor scruple will stop her. Only the village wise woman, or mad woman, black-clad and second-sighted, forsees the terrible consequences of Marion's fated, obsessive love.

Release date: November 21, 2013

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 192

Sample

Across the rain-swept moors, picking her way carefully over the sodden by-path which led from Moorcoombe Village to a solitary inn which stood on the crest of a hill, a girl came trudging one stormy Autumn night.

She knew every inch of the road, otherwise she could not have found her way, for a heavy mist was billowing like a grey ghost over the purple and gold of the Dartmoor wastes this desolate evening; and a brief twilight had merged into the gloomy darkness of night.

The girl did not seem to mind the fog or the howl of the wind. She was sensibly dressed in a black oilskin coat, with a little, old-fashioned sealskin cap on her head, and she walked with her face slightly tilted as though she enjoyed the lash of the rain and the sharpness of the wind against her soft, pale skin.

Suddenly the silence, broken hitherto only by the murmur of the storm, was rent by the muffled clop-clop of horse’s hoofs over a roadway. The girl stood still and listened. A queer expression came into her eyes, and her body gave a little superstitious shudder. It was rumoured about Moorcoombe that the restless spirit of a murdered horseman haunted these moors after dark. Marion Grayle had heard that story from babyhood. Old Emm, who lived down in the Thatch Cottage, repeated it with relish, and tales of crime had a queer fascination for Marion.

Twenty years ago, a solitary rider had been attacked by an escaped convict from Princetown and brutally done to death. It was said that his headless corpse, seated upright on a spirit-horse, galloped wildly over the moors, seeking vengeance.

Clop … clop … clop. Marion stood motionless, her eyes straining to penetrate the misty darkness ahead of her, her heart racing. Then a shape loomed up before her. She gave a little scream that changed to a note of relief as she saw, not a gory, decapitated body, but a very virile, red-faced man on a grey mare.

‘Oh, it’s you, Jet!’ she said.

‘Why, Marion—you out in this rotten weather?’ said the man, pulling up his mare, and dismounting. ‘You ought to be home.’

‘That’s my affair,’ said Marion, tossing her head. ‘I’m not afraid of storms, anyhow.’

‘Nor of anything nor anybody,’ said Jet Saddleman a trifle gloomily, surveying the girl’s slim, supple body and the face which was famous throughout Devonshire for its rare beauty.

He wished that Marion were a bit more shy and dependent; the sort of maid who could cling to a man for protection; rouse his tenderness. But Marion was not that kind. She roused mad passion, hot admiration, deep interest—never tenderness. She was wild, independent; a true creature of the wind and rain and moors … a law unto herself.

Jet Saddleman had known her since she was a child. He owned Double-Styles Farm, the fields of which skirted the garden of Marion’s home. She lived at the ‘Travellers’ Rest’, Tom Grayle’s inn and the only public-house and hostel for miles around; it was three miles across the moors from Moorcoombe Village.

Marion had no mother. Mrs. Grayle had died at her birth, and Marion had had her own way with her father, who adored her for her beauty and strength and fearlessness, even while he dreaded that some harm might come to her one day; for she had a strange, deep mind, and a fierce temper when roused.

She could be adorable when she wished to, however, and Jet Saddleman was one of the many Moorcoombe men who had tried to woo and win her, in vain.

‘Can I take you back to the “Travellers’ Rest” on my horse, Marion?’ he asked. ‘You’re carrying a great basket—and—’

‘No, thanks,’ she broke in. ‘I prefer to walk.’

‘Why are you so proud and stand-offish with me?’ he said. ‘You know I’m crazy about you, Marion, and I’m not badly off as a farmer goes these days. There’s many girls roundabout would like to be mistress of Double-Styles Farm.’

‘Marry ’em, then,’ said Marion, with her most provocative smile.

Jet clenched his fists. Passion was rising in him, turning his sun-browned face a dusky scarlet. He was a huge man of some thirty years, handsome in a rugged way. But Marion did not care for him. She was a publican’s daughter, a child o’ the moors. But she had dainty, fastidious ways. If she married, it would be to a gentleman—a lover of refinement and brains. She was not going to throw herself away on a hulking farmer. A few months ago, just before her twenty-second birthday, she had amused herself by flirting with Jet. But she did not find him amusing any more. He had grown too serious, too insistent.

‘Goodnight, Jet,’ she said, sweetly. ‘See you at church on Sunday, maybe.’

‘When are you going to church with me, Marion?’ he asked hoarsely, seizing one of her hands … a slender, soft hand, yet strong as steel, and tanned to gold by the summer’s sun.

‘Never, you great mutt!’ she laughed at him.

His body shook. He stared at her with bitter, furious eyes, through the mist and rain. She was beautiful; a maddening, lovely creature; an enchantress, with flame-gold hair which was bobbed and curled crisply over her small head; a smooth, milky skin, a small red mouth with a short upper lip; and wonderful eyes, darkly brown, sparkling under thick dark lashes and straight, narrow brows.

‘You’ll come to no good, Marion,’ he shot at her. ‘You tempt men and play ’em up—you’ve played with me—but I swear I’ll get you yet.’

‘Pooh!’ she said. But her pulses stirred uneasily as she looked up at him; there was such bitterness, such thwarted passion in the man’s blue eyes. Jet Saddleman was not a callow youth … he was a full-blooded man, as lawless and savage in his way as she was in hers. Could he do her any harm? Then she laughed and moved away from him. ‘Goodnight,’ she repeated. ‘Great boob! I’m not likely to marry you—I’ve other ideas.’

He ran after her, caught her roughly in his arms, and before she could resist, had pressed a hot, fierce kiss on her mouth. Then he released her, jumped on to his mare and galloped off, vanishing in the thick fog which continued to curl up from the valley.

Marion stood staring after him, her brows knit with anger, her breast heaving. Clop … clop … clop—the horse’s hoofs grew more muffled and finally died away. The girl drew a hand across her lips and spat on to the turf.

‘I’ll pay him back for that,’ she said between her teeth. ‘The beast!’

She felt that if Jet had stood before her now, and she had a revolver in her hand, she would have shot him for daring to desecrate her lips.

She hurried on home. The fog was not so thick here as below. Her father’s inn came in sight; an old Tudor house with gabled roof, diamond-paned windows and timbered walls. A charming place in the summer. But in the autumn and winter very lonely and depressing. The sign, jutting out from the roof, flapped dismally in the wind. ‘The Travellers’ Rest.’ There were no lights to be seen save in the bar-parlour. There were no visitors at the inn at the present time.

As Marion walked toward the door, carrying her basket of parcels, she was stopped again; this time by an old woman in an ancient black bonnet and shawl, who came tapping along on an ebony stick. The old woman was not pleasant to look at; wrinkled, red-nosed, with one eye blind and one open, which had a queer, malevolent expression.

‘Oh, good evening, Emm,’ said Marion, pleasantly. She hated old Emm from the Thatch Cottage, because she knew that Emm hated her. Emm was a weird, Celtic creature, believed to have second sight. Marion was pleasant because she was afraid of her—the only person in Moorcoombe she did fear. She was superstitious, and dreaded the uncanny powers the old woman was supposed to possess.

‘A wild night, my lass,’ croaked old Emm, peering with her one eye at the girl’s lovely, rain-wet face. ‘’Tis time you were safe in the inn. The Travellers’ Rest … ha! ha! ha! ’Tis the last long rest for many a one that sleeps in there. Ha! ha! ha!’

Marion shivered. The old woman’s cracked laughter disturbed her. Her significant words were sinister enough to disturb any girl. The last long rest … hateful old woman! She was forever making those remarks about Grayle’s inn … and not without reason, which Marion well knew. The pretty, Elizabethan inn had a sinister reputation with the natives of Moorcoombe.

Many a traveller during the past hundred years had stayed there, gone out and never come back. A mile away there was a dark, gloomy spot avoided by folk around Moorcoombe, a stagnant pond known as ‘The Suicide’s Pool.’ Inmates of the ‘Travellers’ Rest’ had sometimes been found in that pool, drowned; dragged forth with pale, agonised faces and staring eyes.

Marion, when a child, had seen one of the suicides, and never forgotten it. It had been a Londoner—one of her father’s visitors, staying on Dartmoor for the fishing season. A clear case of suicide. Another proof that the evil place was haunted …

Old Emm clutched at Marion’s arm:

‘There’s dark, treacherous thoughts behind your pretty face, my maid,’ she croaked. ‘Dark thoughts … leading to the dark death … and tonight … who knows but tonight there’ll be a handsome stranger knocking at your gates … one to tear the heart out ’o the body o’ you, and squeeze the life-blood from it with the passion o’ love you’ll bear him …’

‘Oh, be quiet, you raven!’ interrupted Marion with a gasp, half of fear, half of anger. ‘You’re crazy, you old witch!’

She ran into the inn and banged the door in Emm’s face. Long afterwards she heard the croaking, discordant laughter mingling with the sobbing of the storm. As she took off her soaked mackintosh, put on dry shoes and brushed her red-gold hair into flaming glory about her head she remembered Emm’s words:

‘A handsome stranger … at the gates … one to tear the heart out of her body …’

Was that a prophecy? So many of Emm’s prophecies came true. Marion looked at her reflection in her looking-glass, holding a small oil-lamp close to it. Her beautiful, radiant face smiled back at her. A face for a lover to worship … to kiss … not for Jet Saddleman, anyhow …

‘Come soon, come soon, my lover,’ Marion crooned to herself. ‘If I love, I shall love to the death … nothing shall come between me and the man of my choice …’

Her father’s voice interrupted her reverie, shouting from the kitchen below:

‘Marion—Marion, come down. You’re wanted. Charlie Hodges says there’s been a motor accident just down the road, and there’s a young man injured … come and help get him in.’

A queer, excited look flashed into the girl’s eyes. A stranger … Emm’s prophecy … had he come already? Would he be handsome? Would he be her lover? She snatched up a shawl, and rushed downstairs, her heart beating madly as though she were suddenly intoxicated with life.

In the fog-bound road about two hundred yards away from the ‘Travellers’ Rest,’ there had been a nasty accident. When Marion joined her father and Charlie Hodges, the barman, she found a two-seater car in the ditch, turned on its side, and a girl kneeling beside the prone figure of a man.

‘Thank heaven you’ve come!’ said this girl, in a hysterical voice. ‘I can’t stop the bleeding … he must have been cut by broken glass … and his arm is twisted … broken … I’m sure …’

‘What happened, miss?’ asked Tom Grayle, flashing a torch-light on the scene.

‘We were … driving over the moors … and got lost in the fog … then ran into this ditch,’ she sobbed.

Marion ignored the girl, and stared eagerly down at the injured man. He was young and looked as though he would be tall and slim. His leather motoring-coat was splashed with mud and blood. His neck was bleeding, but his face and head seemed untouched. Marion gasped a little as she looked down at him. The stranger was the most handsome man she had ever seen. It was a pure Greek head, pillowed on the lap of the girl who had been his companion; a fine head with thick dark hair, now dishevelled and spattered with mud. The face was pale, as though carven out of ivory, with straight features; a boyish, chiselled mouth, a square dented chin. Marion felt a strong desire to push the other girl away; to take that dark attractive head on her own lap and watch for his eyes to open. What colour would they be?

She moved nearer.

‘I’m Marion Grayle,’ she said. She had a rich, caressing voice; more cultured than one would expect to hear from a publican’s daughter on the wilds of Dartmoor. ‘Let me help you, Miss—’

‘Marshall,’ filled in the girl. ‘And—and this is—Mr. Courtland.’

She sounded frightened, and she was crying now. Marion looked at her a trifle contemptuously. Miss Marshall was smartly dressed in a fur coat and tailored skirt, but in the light of Tom Grayle’s torch, she looked a pale, insignificant little thing. Marion spoke to Miss Marshall with great sweetness, however:

‘You poor little soul … what a frightful shock for you … come along in and have a drink and warm up, and my father and Charlie’ll carry the gentleman in.’

Half-an-hour later the handsome victim of the accident had been put to bed in one of the best rooms of the inn. A fire had been lit, and a doctor sent for. While this medical man was attending Mr. Courtland, Marion took Miss Marshall into her own bedroom where she could wash and recover from her fright.

Marion stood by the dressing-table, watching the other girl brush her hair. Without the big fur coat, in a dainty georgette jumper, with Eton collar and silk tie, Miss Marshall looked quite pretty. She was exceedingly fair—with a silky, shingled head—and had sweet eyes of gentian blue, and an innocent, rather wistful mouth. Her expression was at once gentle and appealing. She was not more than nineteen or twenty. She was of that clinging, dependent type that invariably attracts strong men. Marion thought her weak and silly. But as a matter of fact, Hope Marshall was a charming little thing, with a heart of gold and an unusually white mind. Life had not been very kind to her, nor had she had much chance to find happiness. She was unnerved and shaken by the accident on the lonely moors, and glad to confide in Marion Grayle, who seemed to her a veritable tower of strength.

‘It’s the most dreadful business,’ she said, as she laid down the brush and sat down on a chair to drink the hot coffee Marion had brought upstairs for her. ‘I ought not to be with Dion … and now it’ll be found out for sure.’

Marion’s eyes narrowed.

‘Dion?’ she murmured. ‘You mean—?’

‘Mr. Courtland … the gentleman I was with.’

‘Ah,’ said Marion, with a secretive smile. She liked the name, Dion. She was burning with impatience to go to the man in the room opposite; to sit by him, nurse him, watch and wait for Emm’s prophecy to justify itself. But first she wanted Hope Marshall’s confidence, and she got it by keeping silent and subtly giving Hope the impression that she was to be relied upon.

Hope poured out her story—was more talkative than usual, possibly because she was in a nervous condition and frightened … and Marion seemed sympathetic and kind.

Hope belonged to a good family in Torquay, but her mother was mid-Victorian—distressingly strict and down on the ‘moderns.’ Hope had no liberty; was given clothes and luxuries but no chance to spread her wings as she yearned to do. A few months ago, at a dance she had met Dion Courtland, only son and heir of Sir George and Lady Courtland, who lived in London and had recently been in Africa after big-game. He was ‘terribly attractive,’ Hope shyly confided in Marion. But he had a reputation for being a flirt. Mrs. Marshall disapproved of him, although really he was only an impulsive charming boy of twenty-five. He had fallen in love with Hope … she was crazily in love with him, but the Marshalls would not hear of an engagement … at least until Hope came of age.

‘Dion ran down from town in his car this morning,’ Hope finished, her pretty, pale face puckered and wet with tears. ‘He persuaded me to go out on the moors and lunch at Princetown I told Mummy a lie about it … and this is my punishment …’

Marion gave her a few encouraging words, but inwardly despised her. The little fool! Why care what her people said, if she loved Dion Courtland. How could Dion want to marry a baby like this … a mere child who could not know the wild, tempestuous passion of love as Marion visualised it.

Hope blurted out more. Dion wanted her to become engaged, despite her parents; she yearned to agree; she adored him; he gave her the tender love her starved little heart desired; but she was under her mother’s thumb; life-long habit, the obedience of years, had made her refuse Dion …

‘Now what shall I do? How shall I get home?’ she finished. ‘If I stay here, where Dion is, mother will never get over it.’

Marion thought a moment. Then she said:

‘You can get back. The fog is lifting. We’ve got an old Ford we use for marketing. Charlie can drive. I’ll make him take you back to Torquay at once. You’ll have to confess about your drive, but you can say you were nearly killed, and your mother will be so glad to get you back, she won’t rate you much.’

Hope gave a nervous laugh.

‘Thank you most awfully,’ she said. ‘If you could arrange that, I’d be so relieved.’

Marion’s heart leaped. Splendid! She wanted Hope Marshall out of the ‘Travellers’ Rest’… for many reasons.

‘I’ll see Charlie about it now,’ she said.

‘Just let’s come and see how Mr. Courtland is,’ said Hope timidly, laying a hand on Marion’s arm. ‘And I shall never forget your great kindness, Miss Grayle.’

Marion wanted to shake her, but she kissed the pale face Hope offered, and accompanied her to Dion’s room. There they found him more comfortable, his arm in a splint, his cuts bandaged; lying back on his pillows, watching the firelight flicker in the big, old-fashioned grate.

As the two girls entered, he looked at them … his gaze met Marion’s. For the first time she saw his eyes open … they were brilliant, hazel-green eyes with thick black lashes; arresting eyes that made Marion’s heart shake. She bowed to him demurely.

‘I hope you’re better,’ she said. ‘I’m just going to arrange for Miss Marshall to be driven home. She is so worried about her people.’

‘By jove, yes … my poor little Hope,’ said Dion, a trifle weakly. He was in pain, and still suffering from shock and loss of blood. But he held out his uninjured hand to Hope, who ran to him and knelt by the bed, weeping. ‘I’m terribly sorry for getting you into this mess, sweetheart.’

‘That’ll be all right. I … I shall manage mother,’ she said, trying to be brave.

‘If only you’d take the plunge,’ he said. ‘Brave ’em all, and marry me, Hope …’

‘Oh, I daren’t,’ she said, her face flushing painfully. ‘But I’ll write tomorrow … every day … try and come to see you, Dion darling.’

‘Do,’ he said. ‘Promise you’ll try and fix up an engagement.’

‘I promise,’ she said.

She bent her fair head, and kissed him. Dion was an ardent lover, and very much in love at the moment with this gentle, charming child whose life had been so dull and tiresome. But even while his lips touched hers, his eyes were drawn, in a curious, magnetic fashion, to the other girl in the room. She was standing at the foot of the bed, looking straight at him. He thought he had never seen a more beautiful woman than the innkeeper’s daughter … Marion, with her exquisite brown eyes and straight brows, and curling scarlet lips; Marion in a grey frock with a frilly apron and Puritan collar and cuffs; her red-gold hair curling about her head.

Half-an-hour later, Hope had gone back to Torquay with Charlie Hodges, and Marion prepared to act night-nurse to Dion Courtland. She was glad that he was left entirely to her care now, and that she had knowledge of nursing. She had been taught a lot by an aunt who was at Guy’s Hospital, and who came to the inn for he. . .