The Duke & the Preachers Daughter Read online

  Then with an effort Richard broke the silence,

  “I have never known Cousin Nolan behave like this. He cannot mean it!”

  “He means it,” Benedicta said quietly. “I am sorry – I should not have come here.”

  “If it had not been you, there would have been somebody else he would have found for me,” Richard said.

  There was silence, then Benedicta asked,

  “Do you still – love her very much?”

  “Only in my mind.”

  He closed his eyes before he added,

  “I know it’s hopeless – impossible – I know exactly what she is, but I still want her!”

  “I can understand that,” Benedicta said, “and that is why you are right to go to India – to get away – everything passes and gets better with time – even pain.”

  “That is what I hope will happen, but I cannot know she is so near and not try to find her.”

  “I – understand,” Benedicta repeated.

  “You don’t wish to marry me, do you?” he asked with sudden anxiety in his voice, as if he had not thought of her before.

  She shook her head.

  “No. I told the Duke last night that I would not marry you when he suggested it.”

  “You have no choice,” Richard said, “although I don’t believe Cousin Nolan would really turn your father out when you have nowhere to go and no money.”

  “I would like to believe that too,” Benedicta answered, “but he is determined to have his own way, and you are dependent upon him. This is your whole life, although it is not mine.”

  “Then what are we to do?” Richard asked.

  “I will think of something,” Benedicta answered. “Do not worry but get well.”

  She rose as she spoke.

  Then she said,

  “You are tired and this has been too much for you. I will call Hawkins to help you back to bed.”

  “Thank you.”

  Richard leaned back in the chair and shut his eyes.

  Then as Benedicta tidied up the chessboard, he said,

  “You are quite sure you don’t want to marry me?”

  She gave him a very sweet smile.

  “Quite – quite sure.”

  “I have a feeling,” Richard said tentatively, “although I may be wrong, that you are in love with Cousin Nolan!”

  Benedicta was still and her eyelashes were dark against her pale cheeks.

  “You are!” he trumpeted in a voice of someone suddenly enlightened. “Of course you are! And it is not surprising. All the women fall in love with him, but he has sworn never to marry.”

  “Why?”

  Richard shook his head.

  “I don’t know. Something happened when he was young. That is what my mother told me and it made him determined he would die a bachelor.”

  Benedicta’s eyes were still on the chessboard and, after a moment, Richard went on,

  “I suppose if you really wanted to marry me, we could make a go of it. You are awfully kind, Benedicta, and I like being with you.”

  “And I like being with you,” Benedicta answered, “but you know as well as I do, that is not love. To be married and happy one must be in love.”

  “That is what I always thought and I don’t suppose I should have been really happy with Delyth. I was always so madly jealous of everything she said and did with other men.”

  He shut his eyes again.

  “It would have been – better if I had – died as I intended to do.”

  “You know you must not talk like that,” Benedicta admonished him. “Life is precious – a gift from God. It is a sin to throw it away stupidly and unnecessarily.”

  Her voice seemed to strengthen as she carried on,

  “I am quite certain that you will be a finer and better man because you have been through thus difficult and hurtful experience. I am quite certain too that there are important things for you to do in this world, things you will not only enjoy, but which will help other people.”

  Richard looked at her in surprise.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because I feel it is true. I can feel it inside me,” Benedicta replied. “I am quite certain that in one way or another you will reach India and it will give you what you are looking for.”

  “What am I looking for?” Richard asked.

  “Only you can find the answer to that question,” Benedicta replied. “But you will find it and what you have suffered will make you wiser and more understanding, which is what we all have to become eventually.”

  “You really think I will get to India?” he asked like a child being promised a treat.

  “I am sure of it!” she told him quietly.

  She put her hand on his shoulder and he reached up and covered it with his own. For a moment they stood there and she knew that she both comforted him and gave him hope.

  Then she went from the room to find Hawkins.

  *

  The Duke, having keyed himself up to take a strong authoritative line with what he told himself were two reckless children, was quite unreasonably put out when as the butler announced dinner, he was informed that Benedicta was dining upstairs.

  He could understand that it might prove slightly awkward for her to dine with him. At the same time, he had looked forward to a battle between them, a battle he was now certain he would win.

  It was all very well, he told himself, to let young people think they had minds of their own, but when it came to fundamental issues, it was essential for someone older and wiser, like himself, to direct them to do what was right.

  When they were older, they would be grateful to him for saving them from themselves.

  He was quite prepared to admit that it was partly his fault that Richard had got into such an impossible situation that he had killed a man and attempted to take his own life.

  Now the Duke thought he should have stopped Richard a long time ago, when he first began to associate with Delyth Maulden, from making a fool of himself.

  He was quite prepared to admit that he had believed a liaison with an older and very sophisticated woman might prove a useful part of his education.

  But he had most unwisely overlooked the fact that Richard was young and impressionable enough to fall wholeheartedly in love with a professional siren.

  He had also not anticipated, and for this he blamed himself, that Delyth would wish to become eventually the Duchess of Kingswood and that his own attitude towards marriage had, together with Richard’s adoration, paved the way for her to seize the prize when it was offered.

  ‘It was my fault – my fault from the beginning,’ the Duke told himself, ‘but now I have found exactly the right sort of wife for the boy. He will marry her and they will settle down under my eye and we will have no more nonsense in the future!’

  There was undoubtedly a warning at the back of his mind that it might not be as easy as he anticipated.

  The difficulty, he knew, lay with Benedicta.

  However, she had to be provided for, and also for another reason, he was anxious to dispose of her satisfactorily.

  She might protest, she might try to pretend that she would not do as he told her, but after all, what woman could, when she thought it over, resist the enticement of being eventually, a Duchess and Mistress of Kingswood?

  The Duke’s lips twisted cynically, as he thought how avidly he had been pursued for those very attributes, and how Delyth Maulden was still believing that they were within her grasp.

  ‘I will announce the engagement next Monday,’ he told himself.

  He had planned to spend the time at dinner telling Benedicta what sort of trousseau she would have and what special furniture from Kingswood could go over to the Dower House.

  She could do it up to her own taste.

  ‘I will provide them with the right sort of servants,’ the Duke thought, ‘and of course they can use my horses.’

  It was rather dampening therefore, to find that his plans f
or the evening had been circumvented and he sat down to dinner in an ill humour, sending away many of the dishes that the chef had prepared so carefully.

  ‘Tomorrow I will give a dinner party,’ he told himself as the butler left him alone with his port.

  He decided he would also instruct his secretary to order the best dressmakers in London to send their representatives to Kingswood to plan Benedicta’s trousseau.

  She would certainly make a beautiful bride.

  He found himself thinking how she would look in her wedding gown with a veil that traditionally her husband should raise when the ceremony was over – to kiss her lips –

  The Duke rose suddenly from the dining room table, upsetting his half empty glass of port as he did so. Abruptly he walked across the room and along the corridor that led to the library.

  ‘What the hell am I doing?’ he asked himself as he entered the room.

  A fire was burning in the grate, candles illuminating the volumes that covered the walls and which contained, he had often thought as a boy, all the information in the world.

  Now it struck him that the books would reveal nothing to him, nothing that would help him at this moment.

  He flung himself down into a chair and stared into the fire and his thoughts were not easy –

  It was nearly one o’clock when finally the Duke rose to retire to bed.

  He would have continued to sit there except he remembered that Hawkins would be waiting for him and he did not wish to keep the little man up too late as he had so much to do during the day.

  Slowly he walked from the library into the Great Hall and two night-footmen on duty sprang to attention as he appeared and watched him as he climbed the staircase to the first floor.

  He had just reached it when he heard the sound of footsteps coming quickly down the secondary staircase.

  The Duke turned his head in surprise and saw Jackson, the footman who had been nursing Benedicta’s father, come down the steps two at a time.

  He started to run along the corridor before he saw the Duke, then pulled himself abruptly to a standstill.

  “What is it, Jackson? What has happened?” the Duke asked sharply.

  “I was a-going to fetch Mr. Hawkins, Your Grace. I thinks the Reverend gentleman has passed away!”

  “You will find Hawkins in my bedroom,” the Duke said and turning walked up the stairs to the second floor.

  The door into the bedroom of the Reverend Aaron Calvine was open and the Duke found it lit by only one candle and the flames from the fire.

  There was enough light, however, for him to see that Benedicta was standing by the side of the bed.

  She must, he thought, have just come from her own room that was adjoining.

  She was dressed only in her white nightgown, her hair falling over her shoulders and she stood very still, her hands clasped, staring down at her father.

  As the Duke joined her, he looked down at the bed to see that the Reverend Aaron Calvine was in fact dead.

  He had not passed away in a coma, as might have been expected, but must have awakened for a brief period, as his eyes and his mouth were open.

  As the Duke looked at the dead man, Benedicta turned and with a movement like a child who seeks comfort, hid her face against his shoulder.

  The Duke’s arms went round her and he felt her trembling against him.

  “Your father is dead,” he said quietly, “but perhaps it is for the best. He could not have gone on as he was.”

  Benedicta did not reply and he felt that she was crying, but gently and softly, the tears running down her cheeks.

  Holding her against him, the Duke was aware of how slender she was and somehow insubstantial, as if he held a waif rather than a woman in his arms.

  Her head which was only an inch or so away from his lips, smelt of violets and he thought, as she cried against him, how young, vulnerable and helpless she was and how desperately in need of protection.

  “Go back to your bedroom, Benedicta,” the Duke said gently. “Hawkins will lay out your father and I will have him carried to the Chapel. When he is resting there, you shall see him again and know that he is at peace.”

  Benedicta did not speak and the Duke knew without words that she wanted to obey him, but somehow was unable to move.

  His arms tightened about her for an instant, then he bent and picked her up and carried her from the room to her own next door.

  Here there was only the light from the fire to show him the way to the bed.

  He laid her down against the pillows and then pulled the sheets and blankets that she had flung back, over her. Now he could see her white face and the tears glistening in the light from the flames, as they ran down her cheeks.

  “I know you are sad, Benedicta, but you said once that your father might be happier with your mother, and that is where he is now.”

  “I – know,” Benedicta said in a voice that broke, “he will be – happy – but I shall – miss him terribly.”

  On the last words her eyes overflowed with tears and the Duke took his handkerchief from the pocket of his evening coat and, sitting down on the bed, wiped her cheeks.

  “Try to sleep a little,” he said, “and tomorrow when you see your father, you will know that he is at peace.”

  He rose and going back into the adjoining bedroom, he closed the door quietly behind him.

  Hawkins was already there and the Duke gave him the necessary instructions.

  “I’m sorry Miss Benedicta should have seen him like this, Your Grace,” Hawkins said, looking down at the dead man. “I always thought he’d die without regaining consciousness.”

  “It must have been for only a second or two,” the Duke said.

  “Jackson said he only heard him make one murmur, Your Grace, and when he went in to him, the Reverend gentleman had gone.”

  “That is what must have happened,” the Duke agreed, “but I do not wish Miss Benedicta to be upset.”

  “No, Your Grace, and Jackson and I’ll get him down to the Chapel as soon as possible.”

  “I know I can rely on you, Hawkins.”.

  When the Duke reached his own room, he undressed himself and climbed into bed and yet, when the lights were extinguished, he knew it would be impossible for him to sleep.

  He could only think of Benedicta crying alone upstairs and knew that he wanted to comfort and protect her.

  ‘How can that child face the world alone?’ he asked himself.

  He could still smell the violets in her hair and feel the soft warmth of her slender body.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “For as much as it has pleased Almighty God of His great mercy to take unto Himself the soul of our dear brother here departed, we therefore commit his body to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust – ”

  The old Vicar intoned the words and the Duke, who had heard them many times before, wondered if they sounded gloomy and depressing to Benedicta.

  She was standing on the other side of the grave, her head bowed, the black gown that Mrs. Newall had hurriedly made for her, accentuating the white translucence of her skin.

  She looked very ethereal and more waif-like than usual, and the Duke longed to put his arms around her, as he had the night her father had died.

  He found it impossible to speak to her the last two days before the funeral took place.

  He knew that she had spent every hour of the day in prayer beside her father’s body in the Chapel.

  The Reverend Aaron Calvine may, in his old age, have been a travelling Preacher, but he had lain in state in the same grand manner as the previous Dukes of Kingswood.

  In an open coffin banked with flowers, he had looked most distinguished with four huge gold candlesticks to light him in the darkness, and the Duke had ordered that the Chapel itself should be decorated with flowers from the greenhouses.

  He hoped somehow, they would make the solemnity of death a little easier for Benedicta, but she had not spoken to him since t
he night that he had carried her to bed and the only news he had of her came from Mrs. Newall.

  “How is Miss Benedicta?” he had asked his housekeeper that very morning.

  “Very brave, Your Grace, as one might expect,” Mrs. Newall replied.

  Then, as if she felt she had to explain, she went on,

  “It’s those with faith, Your Grace, like Miss Benedicta, who realise death is not the end, even though it’s always a sad parting.”

  “Yes, I understand,” the Duke replied.

  At the same time he thought it was a strange conversation for him to be having with his housekeeper and that only Benedicta could have caused her to speak in such a manner.

  “Is Miss Benedicta eating proper meals?” he asked her.

  Mrs. Newell shook her head.

  “The chef has tried to tempt her with many special dishes, Your Grace, but as I told her myself, she eats hardly enough to keep a mouse alive!”

  “We must alter that,” the Duke asserted firmly. “I hope when today is over we can persuade her to have her meals downstairs again.”

  He thought as he spoke, how much he had missed her and how he was looking forward to their dining together and riding in the mornings as they had before the Reverend Aaron’s death.

  Equally the Duke was honest enough to admit that the death of the Preacher would make things easier both for himself and for Benedicta.

  She had been right in saying the presence in the house of someone who was dying cast a shadow and the Duke knew that he had in fact been acutely aware of the man on the second floor who lay unconscious in a coma.

  It was strange how it had affected him. He thought that as he had seen so many men dead or dying, one more would have made no difference.

  But because the Reverend Aaron was connected with Benedicta, he had always been aware of him in the background and in everything she thought and did.

  Now he told himself it would be easy to make her understand how concerned he was for her future and how essential it was for her to consider him her Guardian and allow him to plan for her in the way he wished.

  The Service came to an end and as the Vicar murmured the last ‘amen’ Benedicta turned and walked away from the graveside.