The Lioness and the Lily Page 10

  She felt the tears come into her eyes and, holding Jason close against her, she thought of the Earl sleeping in the next room.

  There was a communicating door between them and she knew that she had only to open it to see him and hear him.

  She wondered what he would think if she asked if she could just sit and talk with him for a little while. Then she told herself that it would be a very pushy thing to do.

  After all she was just in her nightgown, and the Earl had never seen her like that, with her hair hanging over her shoulders. He had never suggested that she should even come and say ‘goodnight’ to him after she was undressed.

  ‘I will wait for him to – kiss me – then perhaps he will come to my – room,’ she told herself.

  But she was not sure of anything except that their marriage was not a real one.

  *

  The next day the Earl came downstairs soon after breakfast.

  Purilla had been late getting up and, as she came downstairs, he was waiting for her looking, she thought, so elegant and so athletic that it was difficult to believe that he could ever be ill.

  “I thought we might visit the stables,” he proposed as he reached her.

  “That is just what I expected you would wish to do,” Purilla answered. “The horses I am quite certain know that their Master is coming and are watching out for you.”

  “So they too have supernatural powers,” the Earl smiled.

  They had talked about that subject last night at dinner and the Earl had found it greatly interested her when he told her about the Temples in India and the many fakirs and Holy Men.

  “Have you any ghosts in this house?” Purilla asked.

  “The curator can show you certain references to them in the documentary records of the house,” the Earl replied. “Personally I have never seen one, although my grandmother used to swear that she had met a Cavalier walking in the passage and, when she asked what he was doing, he vanished!”

  Purilla laughed.

  “That must have been very disconcerting. Do you suppose it was a good or a bad omen?”

  “I should think it was bad for him,” the Earl replied. “He has had to hang about at Rock Castle all these centuries instead of going to the Elysian Fields or whatever type of Heaven you believe in.”

  There was a little pause.

  Then Purilla asked him,

  “Do you believe in – Heaven?”

  The way she asked him told the Earl that he must answer her seriously.

  “To be honest, I am not certain,” he replied, “just as I am not certain whether people really have supernatural powers or whether they are just primitive superstitions that have attracted belief down the ages.”

  “Perhaps one day you will be able to prove the truth for yourself, which I feel is something that we all have to do,” Purilla answered.

  Then they changed the subject.

  Thinking it over later, the Earl was certain that Purilla believed in the supernatural and he would not be in the least surprised if she told him that she had seen ghosts at Rock Castle.

  As they walked slowly, so that the Earl should not unduly exert himself, towards the stables he thought that Purilla having been far closer to her horse and her dog than to any human being would naturally expect them to have an instinct and an understanding where she was concerned.

  He realised, although she had not told him so, that she could call Jason without actually saying his name aloud.

  She would think of him and almost instantly he would come to her.

  It struck him as rather extraordinary, but he then remembered that a close affinity between men and animals had been established for centuries.

  He had not yet seen Purilla with her horse, Mercury, and this was something he looked forward to.

  As they entered the stables, there was a whinny from a stall some way from the one that they had reached first and he guessed that the noise was being made by Mercury.

  He was not mistaken.

  “That ’orse has been makin’ a noise now for the last three minutes, my Lady,” a groom said. “I notice each mornin’ he seems to know you’re a-comin’ afore you actually arrive.”

  Purilla smiled and did not contradict the assertion and the Earl ignoring his own horses followed her to the stall where Mercury by this time was making a tremendous commotion.

  He stopped the moment Purilla opened the door and at once nuzzled against her.

  The Earl saw that the horse was actually a well-bred fine-looking animal, although not quite in the same class as his own horseflesh.

  “This is Mercury!” Purilla announced unnecessarily.

  “So I gathered,” the Earl replied. “He was certainly trying to draw attention to himself.”

  “He has not been trained to do so,” Purilla answered. “He loves me and he knows when I am thinking of him.”

  She thought that the Earl looked a little sceptical, but he did not say anything and, after he had patted the horse, he said,

  “Now you have greeted Mercury you must come and look at my horses or else they will be jealous.”

  “Can Mercury come with us?”

  “Of course, if you want him to,” the Earl agreed.

  He thought it was what he might have expected that Mercury would follow them like a dog and walk quietly, almost respectfully, behind Purilla and stop as they went into each of the other stalls to inspect the Earl’s horses.

  They were certainly very fine and Purilla liked the most spirited and the most difficult ones the best, which again was what the Earl had expected.

  He had not thought of her as an Amazon, but now he knew that it was the love she gave the animals she handled that seemed to make them immediately amenable.

  Even those who would not respond to him, nuzzled their noses against Purilla and seemed to want her to touch them.

  They visited all the horses before she said,

  “I think now you should return to the house. You have been walking about for over an hour and Nanny said that you were to have some strengthening soup halfway through the morning.”

  “I will not allow her to fuss over me much longer,” the Earl pointed out.

  “She will do that whether you try to stop her or not.” Purilla laughed, “and actually you should be grateful.”

  He knew that was not the end of the sentence and waited until Purilla asked,

  “Nanny not only thinks of you as her patient and her charge, but she is beginning to love you just as your horses will love you when they know you better. Mercury loves you already.”

  “I suppose he told you so,” the Earl said commented a little sarcastically.

  “When you touch him, he quivers in a special type of way, as he does when he is with me,” Purilla answered. “When other people pat him, it is not the same.”

  She spoke simply and the Earl knew that it was impossible to laugh at her fancy even though he thought that it was one.

  “As you say, I am very lucky,” he remarked, “and I presume you are envisaging this affection becoming an ever-widening circle until it embraces the whole estate?”

  “Of course,” Purilla replied. “Surely that is what you are aiming for? There is no point in calling it your home if it is not a place of love where people trust you and know that you care for them.”

  It flashed through the Earl’s mind that most landlords would think this an absurdly sentimental attitude.

  Then he told himself that, although it was indeed slightly embarrassing to think about it, Purilla was right.

  A home should be founded on love and those who worked for it either inside or outside must give their hearts as well as their labour if their work was to be worthwhile.

  In the hard somewhat austere life he had lived as a soldier, such thoughts and feelings had never entered his mind.

  He knew that all his men admired him. They were prepared to follow him, but he had never expected them to have any sentimental feelings for him. He told himself th
at what Purilla was saying was a woman’s point of view and something that he would agree with politely but otherwise ignore.

  Then he knew that she was right and that Rock Castle, because it meant so much to him and the generations before him, was worth more than lip service and paid labour.

  He would now infuse the right spirit into it, the spirit that animated and sustained the famous Regiments and which evoked a loyalty that was really equivalent to a kind of love.

  A man could indeed love his Regiment. It could stand for him for everything that was fine and inspiring and become so much part of his life that he was helpless without it.

  The Earl had a sudden memory of all the things that he had meant in his new position to do in London, the place he would occupy at Court, the friends who he could now afford to entertain and the places of amusement that he could visit.

  Then he knew that Purilla was right. Rock Castle came first. It had to be improved, renovated and modernised.

  Then and only then, when it was as perfect as he wanted it to be, would he be free to amuse himself elsewhere.

  ‘That will certainly be a long time ahead,’ he told himself.

  Somehow it was not a depressing thought but a challenge and an invigorating one.

  There was so much to be done and Purilla had shown him what it was.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Earl was feeling so much better that he had an irresistible impulse to ride.

  There was still two days left of the time set by Dr. Jenkins for him to rest and, although he thought it was unnecessary, he also felt that he could not face a long wordy argument with Nanny, Bates and, of course, Purilla.

  He told himself that he was most fortunate that there were three people who cared so much for his wellbeing.

  At the same time he found it irritating to be mollycoddled after years of the hardship that was an inevitable part of most soldiers’ lives.

  He, however, busied himself with the plans he was making for improving conditions on the estate and, when he discussed them with Purilla, he became more and more surprised at how much she knew about the difficulties of the farm labourers and how important their troubles were to her.

  Sitting in the library or in one of the magnificent State Rooms she looked in her new gowns so lovely, so fragile and Fairy-like that it just seemed impossible that anything mundane or commonplace should concern her.

  And yet she and the Earl had quite a spirited argument on what the increase in wages should be once the threshing machine had been installed and another concerning the building of cottages for his employees with large families.

  “If we make them too attractive, their families will increase out of all proportion,” he cautioned.

  He spoke more because it amused him to see what she would reply than because he felt very deeply on the subject.

  “I have always believed that large families are the happiest,” Purilla pointed out.

  “Having no experience of them, how would you know?” the Earl enquired.

  “I would like to have had a dozen brothers and, when Richard was killed, I was left all – alone.”

  There was something wistful in the way she spoke that the Earl wanted to put his arms around her and prevent her from ever feeling lonely again.

  He told himself that he had already decided not to be affectionate, but to keep their relationship on a friendly basis until he was well enough to talk of love, which inevitably he had to do sooner or later.

  He was still nervous, although he tried not to admit it to himself, that when he did so she would sense he did not love her in the idealistic way that she had wanted from the Prince Charming of her dreams.

  The Earl told himself rather cynically that this was something that did not really exist in a hard materialistic world.

  Eventually Purilla would have to face reality and realise that, whilst he would love her in his own way, it could not be the ecstatic rapture that she so longed for.

  He found himself lying awake at night wondering exactly how he could prevent himself from disillusioning her.

  He told himself that she was so childlike in many ways, especially in her innocence, that he was facing a problem that he had never had to face before with any other woman in his life.

  He had the feeling that like the lily he had identified her with, it would be very easy to besmirch something that was fresh and beautiful and which ideally should never be touched by human hands.

  Then he told himself roughly that his imagination was running away with him and Purilla after all was only an ordinary young girl, a species that he had very little experience of.

  He thought that in the days that they had been at Rock Castle they had developed a pleasant intimacy and he often found surprisingly that she read his thoughts before he expressed them.

  He too had an instinct for what she was feeling even though he did not express it in words.

  Now, as she joined him in the Silver Salon, which, decorated with many flowers, looked more feminine and more used than since he had inherited, he told himself that the love he saw in her eyes was becoming more obvious day by day.

  ‘She loves me,’ he told himself and knew that it was a different love from what he had ever been offered before.

  Purilla came to his side and he put out his hand and she slipped hers into it.

  “Are you well enough to do something very exciting this afternoon?” she asked.

  “I feel well enough for anything,” he replied. “As a matter of fact I was just wishing I could go riding.”

  “No! It is too soon,” she said quickly. “But I thought perhaps we might explore just a little of the house together. I am finding it very difficult to keep my eyes closed as I promised you I would.”

  The Earl laughed.

  “I am convinced you have cheated a little and peeped from time to time, but, of course, I will take you on a Grand Tour. I think we should start with the State Rooms on the ground floor.”

  “That is just what I was thinking too,” Purilla said. “So that you would not be tired by going upstairs.”

  “There is so much to see,” the Earl said, “that it will be several days before I have introduced you to everything I possess.”

  Purilla’s fingers tightened on his and she gave what he saw was a little skip of excitement.

  “Please let’s start now,” she said. “I cannot tell you how thrilling it will be for me.”

  She looked so lovely as she spoke with her eyes shining and her lips parted that the Earl felt an almost irresistible impulse to kiss her.

  He had lain awake last night thinking that he had never kissed a woman who had never been kissed before and he was sure that Purilla’s lips would be very soft and somehow defenceless.

  He felt a wild throb of excitement at the thought of being the teacher in a new and hitherto unexplored territory of love.

  Always in the past sophisticated women who had given him themselves almost over-eagerly had been as passionate as he was and it had in fact been a case of two fires blending together into a burning blaze.

  But with Purilla the Earl knew it would be very different and he would have to control himself strictly so as not to frighten or shock her and at the same time to initiate her into the joy of love so that she found with him the happiness she was seeking.

  Because he wanted to kiss her, he looked away from her excited little face, which seemed to have a light behind it and said almost abruptly,

  “We will start with the State Drawing Room, which I have only seen open in the past on very special occasions.”

  Still holding her hand they moved towards the door when it opened and the butler came into the salon to announce,

  “The Duke of Torrington, my Lord, and Lady Louise Welwyn.”

  The Earl stood still with Purilla beside him and he thought that he might have expected nemesis to catch up with him at an inconvenient moment.

  He released Purilla’s hand and walked forward.

  “Th
is is a surprise, Your Grace,” he remarked.

  The Duke inclined his head, but he did not hold out his hand and the Earl managed to prevent himself from making the expected gesture of welcome.

  He was aware without even looking at her that Lady Louise was staring at him with dark resentful eyes and he could not ignore the scowl on the Duke’s face that made him look even more formidable than he usually did.

  “I wish to speak to you privately, Rockbrook,” the Duke asserted.

  The Earl realised that this was to be an uncomfortable interview and was not a social call.

  He was about to turn his head to ask Purilla to leave them, but with her usual intuition where he was concerned, she was already moving towards the door.

  As she passed through it, the Duke said,

  “I consider, Rockbrook, that you have treated my daughter extremely badly and I require an explanation.”

  There was no doubt that his tone was aggressive and that the hidden threat behind the words was that he intended to make things very awkward.

  There was just a moment’s hesitation before the Earl said in what he hoped was a surprised voice,

  “I am afraid I don’t understand, Your Grace. Whatever feelings Lady Louise and I had for each other, I cannot believe that you would have accepted a penniless Captain who could not afford to live on his pay as a suitable son-in-law.”

  His reply was obviously not what the Duke had expected and there was a distinct pause before he said,

  “Are you telling me that you were married before you inherited your uncle’s title?”

  “My uncle and his son were killed the third week in March.”

  “But the announcement spoke of ‘family mourning’.”

  “My wife’s only brother was killed in India last year.”

  Again there was a pause.

  Then, as if the ground had been cut from under his feet, the Duke turned to his daughter.

  Now the hostility had left her eyes and she was looking round at the Earl in a very different way.

  “Why could you not have waited?” she asked in what was little more than a broken whisper.