The Duke Comes Home Read online

  Author’s Note

  The ancestral homes in England thrill every tourist because so many of them are still lived in by their owners. Only by opening them to the public can they pay the rates, taxes, upkeep and repairs, which rise astronomically every year.

  But what a joy and delight it is to see a house complete with its treasures collected over the centuries and know that it is still a home. In France the Châteaux are empty and in other parts of Europe only museums.

  In England the Duke of Marlborough, descendant of the Great Duke, still lives at Blenheim Palace. The Earl Spencer, father of Diana, Princess of Wales, is the ninth Earl to live at Althorp and he and his wife, who is my daughter, are nearly always there at weekends to welcome the sightseers.

  At Longleat, the attractive Marquis of Bath and his family show their visitors round and so does the Marquis of Tavistock who follows the example set by his father, the Duke of Bedford, at Woburn Abbey.

  The National Trust owns and preserves more than two hundred historic buildings and they are visited annually by nearly five million people.

  The Nizam of Hyderabad, at one time reputed to be the richest man in the world, owned the most fabulous jewels. The diamonds came from his own mines, among them the famous Koh-i-Noor, which is now incorporated in the Crown of England.

  CHAPTER ONE ~ 1875

  “ – to my only surviving child, my daughter Ilina, the Nizam’s jewels.”

  The voice stopped and Mr. Wicker, the Solicitor, put down on the table the legal documents that he had been reading from.

  Lady Ilina Bury stared at him in such surprise that her eyes seemed to fill the whole of her small face.

  “Is that – all?” she asked in a voice that quivered.

  Mr. Wicker found it difficult to look at her.

  “I am afraid, Lady Ilina, that your father altered his will a year before he died. I argued with him at the time and hoped that it was just a passing phase, but then as you know he became unapproachable.”

  “Just the – Nizam’s jewels!” Lady Ilina murmured beneath her breath.

  Then the words seemed to burst from her lips as she added,

  “He hated me! He hated me violently from the moment David was killed, so I suppose I might have expected something like this to happen.”

  “Although I cannot believe,” Mr. Wicker answered, “that your father really hated you, if I am frank I would say that from the moment your brother died, his brain became a little deranged.”

  Ilina nodded.

  She knew that this was the truth and that her father was so desperately unhappy when his only son and heir was killed in Egypt in what was not even a battle but just a skirmish between British troops and some rebellious natives that he was no longer himself.

  And yet she could hardly believe that the only thing he had left her in his will was something that did not in reality exist.

  The Nizam’s jewels were a legend in the Bury family and it had amused Ilina and her brother David when they were children to search for them in the huge rambling house.

  All that was known was that when in 1805 the Marquis of Bury returned from India where he had been serving under Sir Arthur Wellesley, he brought with him what was reported to be a fabulous and extremely valuable collection of jewels that had been given to him by the Nizam of Hyderabad.

  History related that he had saved the Nizam’s life and in gratitude had been rewarded with huge diamonds from the Nizam’s own mines as well as emeralds, rubies, sapphires and inevitably large strings of pearls, which would be worth a fortune.

  The Marquis, who had later become the second Duke of Tetbury, was, however, already a rich man and he had given them to his wife for safekeeping until the war was over.

  When his father died in 1812 and he inherited the title, he set his estates in order and decided that he must fight again under the Duke of Wellington, who was now advancing into France with a large Army.

  He was apparently welcomed by the great Duke with open arms, only unfortunately to be killed at the Battle of Waterloo.

  It was a generation later that it was learnt from his letters, which had been kept by the Duchess, what had happened to the jewels.

  In one of them he wrote,

  “I would be worried my dearest wife, that you might be in fear of robbers and thieves had I not hidden the Nizam’s jewels in such a clever way that it would be impossible for any outsider to find them. Be very careful therefore not to mention where they are to any member of the household for, even though our servants have been with us for a long time, greed can sometimes undermine loyalty and, as we both already know, that particular treasure is worth a great deal of money.”

  He then went on to describe his activities as a soldier and there was no mention in that letter or any of his others of where the jewels had been hidden.

  The Duchess died soon after her husband it was said of a broken heart, but either she did not have time or did not wish to confide to anybody where the jewels were hidden.

  The story of their magnificence had intrigued and excited the children of each succeeding Duke and Ilina and her brother had been no exception.

  Often when it rained David would say to her,

  “Today we will go treasure hunting and I will bet you two sweets to one that we will find first the diamonds and then the rest of the spoils.”

  The way he spoke always made Ilina feel that she was betting on a certainty only to find herself at the end of the day the recipient of his sweets while the treasure still evaded them.

  Now, as she looked at Mr. Wicker in despair, she thought that despite the size of Tetbury Abbey they had over the years searched every nook and cranny from the attics to the cellars.

  In fact she had long ago begun to suspect that the jewels either had never existed or had been stolen long ago.

  That her father, whom she had tried to love, should have left her nothing else in his will was not only insulting but in his own rather cruel way was telling her how much he resented that he had no heir.

  “Why were you not a boy?” he had asked furiously after David was killed.

  Then in a different tone he shouted,

  “I must be married. I am not too old to beget another son. Find me a wife. God damn you, there must be some woman who will have me!”

  That he was crippled and unable to leave his bed would have made him an object of pity if he had not been so intensely disagreeable and so often cruel to Ilina that at times she felt that she would rather be dead like her brother.

  Her father, the fifth Duke, had lived his life fully, handicapped only by the restriction of not having enough money.

  When a fall out riding left him partially paralysed and unable to move unless he was carried, he railed against Fate.

  He then found life so intolerable that the only solace he could find was in drinking until his fingers were distorted with gout.

  Alcohol, however, did not make him merry but merely more aggressive and, as Ilina was the only person who would stay with him and tolerate his behaviour, she found herself enduring a life of such misery that, although she was unwilling to admit it, her father’s death was a merciful release.

  And yet now he was stretching out beyond the grave to hurt her again.

  Because she had known the grey-haired Solicitor all her life she said after a moment,

  “What – can I do – Mr. Wicker?”

  “I have lain awake asking myself that very question, Lady Ilina,” he replied, “and to be honest, I have not found an answer.”

  Ilina rose to her feet and walked to the window to stand gazing out, not seeing the overgrown garden, the ancient oaks in the Park or the few remaining swans on the lake which would have died or flown away long ag
o if she had not remembered to feed them.

  The sunlight touched her hair and Mr. Wicker thought as he had so often before that she was one of the loveliest girls he had ever seen.

  Her gown, threadbare and out of date, did not disguise the elegant and youthful curves of her body.

  He suddenly remembered with almost a start that she must be nearly twenty-one, having spent the last two years tied to a sick man’s room and having practically no contact with the outside world. And no longer a girl but a woman.

  Now he said a little hesitatingly,

  “I suppose there is no relation who you could go and live with?”

  Ilina turned from the window.

  “Who?” she asked. “You know that Papa quarrelled with everybody we are related to. He disliked them even before David was killed and afterwards refused to have anything to do with them.”

  “Nevertheless, ‘blood is thicker than water’,” Mr. Wicker replied.

  Ilina sighed.

  “What do you think my life would be like if I foisted myself onto some distant cousin and could not even pay for the food I put into my mouth?”

  Mr. Wicker’s lips tightened.

  “I agree it is an intolerable situation and I only wish that there were something I could do about it.”

  “Everything in the house and on the estate is entailed,” Ilina said as if she was talking to herself, “and I suppose the only things I could claim are the few pieces of furniture that belonged to Mama and there are not very many of those.”

  Mr. Wicker was aware of this and said,

  “There is just one thing which may help you, although I admit it is not very much.”

  “What is that?”

  “My partners and I sold a cottage on the outskirts of the estate a year ago,” Mr. Wicker explained. “I reckoned at the same time that you had spent some of the money your mother left on her death on things that were needed in the house.”

  Ilina was listening intently as he went on.

  “As we were aware of this cruel clause in your father’s will, we set aside fifty pounds of what we received for the cottage, which we considered to be yours, should necessity arise.”

  Ilina smiled and it made her look lovelier than she was already.

  “That was very kind of you, Mr. Wicker, and I shall be very grateful for the fifty pounds. It is almost exactly the amount I spent on a new kitchen stove when the old one was burnt out and Papa refused to replace it.”

  She gave a little sigh before she continued,

  “The rest of the money, which, as you know was less than one hundred pounds, has been spent on food, clothes and charities. The last, I regret to say, claimed a very small share.”

  There was a faint smile on her lips and just a fleeting glimpse of two dimples one on either side of her mouth.

  Then, as she walked back towards the old Solicitor, she declared,

  “So I have fifty pounds and, of course, Pegasus! He is mine and nobody can dispute that.”

  As Mr. Wicker knew, Pegasus was her adored horse, which her brother David had given her as a birthday present before he went abroad never to return.

  He had then been only a foal, but Ilina had loved him and brought him up so that he followed her everywhere and came when she called as a child or a dog would have done.

  She sat down on a chair facing the Solicitor and asked,

  “What can I do? Shall I set off on Pegasus with my fifty pounds to seek my fortune or do I stay here and throw myself on the – mercy of the – new Duke?”

  There was a note in her voice that told Mr. Wicker how disagreeable the second idea was to her.

  “I am sure that His Grace will do his duty,” Mr. Wicker replied hastily.

  “Duty! Duty!” Ilina cried. “I know exactly what that means. Christian charity and the expectation that I shall grovel and be effusively grateful for every crumb he allows me.”

  The way she spoke made Mr. Wicker give a little laugh before he replied,

  “Now, Lady Ilina, it need not be as bad as that. After all we know nothing about the new Duke and he may in fact be a charming man.”

  “That was not Papa’s impression. He had always hated the new Duke’s father and used to refer to him as my ‘crooked cousin’.”

  “I have heard His Grace say it,” Mr. Wicker admitted, “but I was never brave enough to ask the reason.”

  “It was something quite simple,” Ilina said. “He either had charged my father too much for a horse he had bought for him or Papa suspected, without there being any foundation in fact that he cheated at cards.”

  She gave a little sigh as she added,

  “You know what Papa was like once he had an idea in his head.”

  “I do indeed,” Mr. Wicker agreed, “and I know that there was no love lost between His Grace and Mr. Roland Bury.”

  “Papa always said that his son Sheridan was a ‘chip off the old block’ and just as crooked and unpleasant as his father.”

  “You have never met your cousin Sheridan?” Mr. Wicker enquired.

  “You don’t suppose Papa would ever let Cousin Roland come here and his son being tarred with the same brush. Papa barred him too.”

  “That all happened a long time ago,” Mr. Wicker pointed out in a tone that tried to be consoling. “After all the new Duke is now thirty-four or thirty-five and his father has been dead for years.”

  “I know that, but Cousin Sheridan has been abroad for so long I doubt if he will understand English – ways and English requirements.”

  The way Ilina spoke made Mr. Wicker aware that she was worrying about the estate, the pensioners and the few people they still employed who were really too old for a long day’s work.

  “I am sure that His Grace will not be ungenerous,” he said hoping that what he was prophesying would be the truth.

  “Supposing he is as hard up as I am?” Ilina asked. “I know his father did not have much money and the reason Cousin Sheridan went abroad was that he could not afford the gaieties he wished to enjoy in London.”

  Mr. Wicker had no reply to this. He was only thinking that it would require a very rich man to restore Tetbury Abbey to what it had been in the past.

  Originally until the time of King Henry VIII it had been a Monastery. Then every successive owner had added to it and altered it until it was difficult to believe that there had ever been anything sanctified about the building.

  Even so Ilina often imagined that there was an air of Holiness about the Chapel, although it had been rebuilt and the cloisters, which had been preserved even when the rest of the house had been altered.

  The first Duke had employed the leading architect of his time to practically rebuild the house altogether and its Palladian appearance was very impressive.

  And yet there were parts dating from Queen Anne, Charles II and even Queen Elizabeth tucked away behind the great facade which made it, Ilina thought, very lovable and different from anybody’s else’s ancestral home.

  Whatever her difficulties and unhappiness with her father, she had always felt as if she was part of The Abbey, that it protected her and as long as she was underneath its roof nothing could really harm her.

  And yet now a stranger had inherited it, a stranger who was coming here to take her father’s place and every instinct in her rebelled against asking him to support her.

  ‘What can I do?’ she asked herself wildly and knew that Mr. Wicker was asking the same question.

  Aloud she said,

  “I shall have to find employment of some sort.”

  “That is impossible.”

  “Why?”

  “I could give you a number of reasons,” Mr. Wicker replied. “The first is because you are who you are, and secondly you are far too lovely to earn your living in any way and to attempt to do so would be dangerous.”

  “Dangerous?” Ilina queried.

  Then she said,

  “I suppose you are thinking that I might be – pursued or – insulted by
men.”

  “Of course I think that,” Mr. Wicker answered, “and you know that, if your mother was alive, by this time you would have made your curtsey to the Queen and had a Season in London. And doubtless by now you would be married.”

  Ilina laughed and it was a very musical sound like the song of a bird.

  “Oh, Mr. Wicker, you are a romantic! And even if Mama had been alive, I doubt if there would have been enough money for a Season in London and, if there are any eligible bachelors in this part of the world, I have yet to meet them.”

  “You have not had the chance.”

  As that was an indisputable fact, Ilina did not argue.

  She only thought of how gloomy it had been, hour after hour, day after day, month after month, tending a sick man who growled and shouted at her and who refused to allow anybody to come into the house.

  Her father had always been quarrelsome and after his accident he had a horror of being seen or pitied.

  Looking back Ilina could only remember the doctor and Mr. Wicker and occasionally a local farmer or two ever coming to see her.

  “It has been very depressing,” she said frankly, “but I cannot see that things will be very much better if I have to live in one of the cottages in the village. Fifty pounds will not keep me from starving for ever and I have to feed Pegasus.”

  The urgency in her voice when she mentioned her horse was very obvious and Mr. Wicker answered,

  “Yes, of course. We must not forget Pegasus.”

  Then, as if he had made up his mind, he bent forward to say earnestly,

  “Quite frankly, Lady Ilina, there is nothing you can do but stay here and, as there is nobody but you to run the house and the estate, I feel that the new Duke will find you very useful.”

  “I doubt it. If he is like most people he will be a new broom wanting to sweep clean and the last thing he will want is somebody like me hanging round his neck and telling him how things were done in the past.”

  The Solicitor did not reply and after a moment she asked him,

  “There is not much – alternative – is there?”

  “I am afraid not and quite frankly, Lady Ilina, you cannot be here on your own, as you must be well aware.”