A Duel With Destiny Read online

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Prince Regent in his Field Marshal’s full-dress and wearing his English, Russian, Prussian and French Orders looked extremely impressive.

  There was nothing he enjoyed more than the congenial task of arranging a fête at Carlton House and this one, which he intended as a personal tribute to the Duke of Wellington, was very dear to his heart.

  The first act of his ‘unrestricted Regency’ had been to sign the Warrant for a pension for the hero of Waterloo and it was with the Duke in mind that the Prince Regent had designed the whole fête.

  A special polygonal building had been put up in the garden. It was a solid structure, one hundred and twenty feet in diameter, built of brick and with a leaded roof, but the interior was designed to give the impression of summer light, airiness and festivity.

  This effect had been achieved by painting the umbrella-shaped ceiling to resemble muslin and by decorating it with gilt cords, by fixing mirrors to the walls and hanging them with muslin draperies.

  The whole effect, enhanced by the sparkling illumination of twelve chandeliers, was delightful.

  Huge banks of artificial flowers were arranged on the floor in the shape of a Temple behind whose walls of blooms and foliage were concealed two bands.

  A covered promenade decorated with draperies of rose-coloured cords led to a Corinthian Temple where the guests were able to admire a marble bust of the great Duke by Turnerelli placed on a column in front of a large mirror.

  This was engraved with a star and the letter ‘W’.

  In the garden there were supper tents and refreshment rooms hung with white and rose curtains and with Regimental colours printed on silk.

  “What do you think of it, Swayne?” the Prince Regent asked the Marquis.

  “It does you credit, Sire,” the Marquis replied and the Prince Regent beamed at him.

  His Royal Highness had also concerned himself with the preparation of the Galas in the London Parks.

  Only The Times, in contrast to the eulogies written in the other newspapers, had struck a gloomy note in remarking that ‘the public would first gape at the mummery, then laugh at the authors of it and lastly grumble at the expense’.

  It seemed on the morning of August 1st that The Times’s peevish prophecies of disaster were about to be fulfilled when there was a heavy fall of rain. But between ten o’clock and eleven the sun came out and the celebrations began.

  The Marquis from his house in Park Lane had heard the noise and the rockets shooting in the sky each one containing ‘a world of smaller rockets’.

  There were also echoes from the Regatta on the Serpentine where a splendid ‘naumachia’ representing the Battle of the Nile ended with the French fleet being destroyed by fire ships.

  But he was kept far too busy by the Prince Regent at Carlton House to have time to see what was happening elsewhere.

  As a close friend both of His Royal Highness and of the Duke himself, the Marquis found himself making decisions on protocol, on the seating at the supper tables and on a thousand other matters.

  These completely occupied his attention until the first of the two thousand guests invited to Carlton House began to arrive at nine o’clock.

  They were received at the Grand Entrance by equerries who conducted them to the various rooms, tents and corridors on the garden front.

  The Prince Regent received those he knew well and from the first moment there was a queue waiting to shake the hand of the Duke himself.

  The Prince Regent prided himself on his good memory, but that did not prevent him from continually asking the Marquis the names of those advancing towards him and hoping for recognition.

  “Who is that lady?” he enquired now.

  The Marquis, looking up from the plans of the supper tables that he held in his hand, saw an extremely beautiful woman laden with diamonds and recognised her as an old flirt.

  “Lady Warburton, Sire.”

  “Of course! Of course!” the Prince Regent exclaimed.

  He held out his hand as Lady Warburton curtseyed and greeted her effusively, which made her smile at him beguilingly.

  “Damned pretty woman!” he remarked to the Marquis as she moved away. “See she is at my table at supper.”

  The Marquis sighed.

  He had already changed the supper plan a dozen times and he wondered now who he could remove to another table without causing offence.

  “And who is this?” the Regent asked him again.

  The Marquis raised his head and saw coming into the room a magnificent figure in full Highland dress. From the bunch of lace under his proudly held chin to the swing of his silver ornamented sporran it was easy to recognise that here was a Chieftain of great importance.

  For a moment the Marquis hesitated and then said with the air of a conjuror bringing a rabbit out of a hat,

  “I have it! The Earl of Dunvegan, Sire.”

  “Of course, I recognised him instantly!”

  The Earl bowed his head and the Prince Regent held out his hand.

  “I could not anticipate that we would be honoured by your presence, my Lord,” he said, “when I know that you so seldom come South.”

  “I consider it a privilege to be present on such an occasion,” the Earl replied.

  “Then I must tell you how very welcome you are,” the Prince Regent responded.

  “You are very gracious,” the Earl answered. “May I, Sire, present my granddaughter, who has not previously been to London?”

  “Of course! Of course!”

  Rowena curtseyed to the ground and the Prince Regent said,

  “She is very pretty, my Lord, very pretty indeed! You must be proud of her.”

  “I am!” the Earl replied.

  The Prince Regent was holding Rowena’s hand for longer than was necessary.

  “What is your name, my dear?” he enquired, looking down at her face with that swimmy look in his eyes that every pretty woman evoked almost automatically.

  “Rowena, Sire.”

  “Then you will certainly be one of the most beautiful women at my fête this evening.”

  As Rowena spoke, the Marquis had raised his head.

  For a moment his glance was casual because the name rang a bell.

  Then, as he saw who was speaking to the Prince Regent, the expression of astonishment on his face was very obvious.

  “Good evening, Swayne!”

  The Earl was speaking to him and it was with an effort that the Marquis managed to reply,

  “Good evening, my Lord. It is a long time since we last met.”

  “It is indeed. You came with your father, if I remember rightly, to stay at my Castle, perhaps seven years ago?”

  “I think it was eight, to be precise, my Lord.”

  “Eight then. We have all grown older in the intervening time.”

  “That is true, my Lord.”

  “She is enchanting! Quite enchanting!” the Prince Regent was exclaiming. “Swayne, make quite certain that the Earl of Dunvegan and his granddaughter Rowena are at my table for supper.”

  ‘Very good, Sire.”

  ‘I believe you know my granddaughter,” the Earl remarked to the Marquis.

  “We have met, my Lord.”

  Rowena’s eyes met those of the Marquis.

  As he looked at her, he could hardly believe that he was not dreaming.

  She certainly appeared very different from when he had last seen her.

  Her gown of white gauze was in the latest fashion, her fair hair was arranged in a style that he was aware had only just reached London from the Continent.

  Round her neck there was a collet of pure blue-white diamonds, which he supposed was part of the Dunvegan collection.

  He felt as if his brain was not functioning and it was impossible to find anything to say to her or even indeed to acknowledge the graceful curtsey she had made to him when her grandfather introduced them.

  “We shall doubtless see you again at supper, my Lord
,” the Earl remarked.

  Then, taking Rowena by the arm, he drew her out through the open window into the garden.

  There was so much to see, not only on the walls of the covered walk which, decorated in green calico was coloured with transparencies representing such appropriate subjects as ‘Military Glory’ and the ‘Overthrow of Tyranny by the Allied Powers’, but also inside the house.

  Rowena had always longed to see the Chinese Room and the Blue Drawing Room with its priceless collection of pictures and exquisite miniatures.

  But even while her grandfather showed her the treasures of the Regent’s collection she found it hard not to think all the time of the Marquis.

  She had surprised him, in fact astounded him, which was what she had set out to do.

  She knew too that the unimportant doctor’s daughter had struck him with a blow that was all the more powerful because it encroached on his special and personal hobby.

  No one could deny that the Dunvegan Family Tree not only equalled that of the Swaynes but, having played an integral part in the whole history of Scotland might be also said to exceed them.

  When Rowena had first learnt from her mother of the Earl’s fury at his only daughter wishing to marry an obscure country doctor, she had felt a bitter resentment against her grandfather’s snobbery.

  This had later transferred itself to a positive and personal dislike of the Marquis’s preoccupation with genealogy.

  It seemed incredible that her grandfather, although he might be the Premier Earl of Scotland, had not appreciated her father’s upright and noble character and had not cared that he had made her mother, as she had said so often, ‘the happiest woman in the world’.

  The fact that the marriage had been forbidden and her mother had rebelled to the point of running away had seemed to Rowena to make her grandfather into a tyrant with whom she had no wish ever to communicate.

  “I am telling you this as an absolute secret, Rowena,” her mother had said when she confided in her. “You must never speak about it to your father, because it upsets him.

  “He worries so much that I gave up my social life and the comforts I had as a girl to live with him in obscurity and to some extent poverty, but it has never mattered to me in the least.”

  Her face had lit up with a smile of almost perfect happiness as she had added,

  “No man in the world could be as wonderful as your father. As I have told you before, Rowena, he was my destiny.”

  “But Mama, if you had called yourself by your proper name, if you had let people know that you were Lady Elizabeth Winsford, perhaps it would have helped Papa to obtain more important and wealthy patients.”

  “That would have hurt your father’s pride,” Rowena’s mother had answered quickly. “My father had accused him of being unable to keep me so he was determined to do without any help from a family that had cast me out and told me that I no longer belonged to them.”

  “That must have been very hurtful, Mama,” Rowena had said sympathetically.

  “It only hurt me because they disparaged and tried to belittle your father. But our love was greater than rank or money and like Ruth, my people became his people, my country, his country.”

  Rowena had flung her arms around her mother and kissed her.

  “I think it was very brave and determined of you, Mama, to run away. I don’t believe that I would ever be brave enough in the same circumstances.”

  “I think you would be,” her mother answered. “Sometimes you are very like your grandfather. You have his obstinacy and his same tenacity of purpose.”

  That, Rowena told herself now, was why she had sought out her grandfather and enlisted his help in a battle which to her was more important to her at the moment even than her loyalty to her father.

  ‘Now the Marquis will be ashamed of his behaviour towards me,’ she thought.

  She wished at the same time that her triumph did not leave an ache in her heart from the thought that now, even if he did ask her to marry him, she could never accept.

  In spite of all the exciting things there were to see and the superlative supper she enjoyed at the Prince Regent’s table amongst a glittering and distinguished company, Rowena found it hard not to keep looking for the Marquis.

  She saw him at supper, but he was sitting far away from her at almost the other end of the table.

  She felt a little pang of jealousy because on either side of him were two of the most attractive and beautiful women that she had ever seen, both resplendently bejewelled.

  The Marquis was obviously well satisfied with his supper partners and, as they leant towards him, their bare shoulders frequently touched his close-fitting evening coat embellished with numerous decorations.

  ‘Those are the sort of women he prefers,’ Rowena thought, ‘and what have they in common with a doctor’s daughter?’

  The supper came to an end, but there was no question of anyone leaving.

  The Queen, who had entertained three hundred guests to a banquet at Buckingham House, arrived late and did not sit down to supper until two o’clock in the morning.

  The people who had come with her were all talking of the disaster in Green Park when the Pagoda with its Japanese lanterns and gas-jets spluttering on its blue roof, had burst into flames.

  It had collapsed into the waters of the lake, killing a lamplighter and injuring five other workmen, but this was accepted by the crowd as yet another brilliantly contrived spectacle.

  The Earl of Dunvegan had been greeted effusively by the Duke of Wellington and had found a number of friends amongst the Commanders of the Scottish Regiments.

  There was so much conversation about Scotland that Rowena wandered away by herself to admire the artificial streams trickling through the gardens and the exquisite arrangements of flowers.

  She was staring at some that were unfamiliar, and she thought that they must have been brought in from abroad, when a deep voice behind her asked,

  “Why did you not tell me?”

  She felt her heart leap, she had enough control over herself not to turn around.

  She did not answer and after a moment the Marquis asked,

  “How could I have guessed that the Earl of Dunvegan is your grandfather?”

  “He disowned my mother on her marriage,” Rowena replied, “and I had no desire to make his acquaintance until I realised that I might find him a protector.”

  There was no need for her to elaborate what she meant. She was quite certain that the Marquis would take her meaning.

  “Have you told your family that you are here?”

  This was the weak point in her whole scheme and it was typical, she thought bitterly, that he should put his finger on it at once.

  “No,” she replied, “and I can only ask you not to hurt my father by telling him.”

  She paused and then, turning round, she said,

  “It’s none of your business, as you well know! And now I hope, my Lord, that you will realise that I am serious in asking you to leave me alone and not to bother me as you have done in the past.”

  “Do you really mean that?” the Marquis enquired.

  Rowena forced herself to look up at him. His face was very clear in the light of the Japanese lantern that hung from the branches of an adjacent tree.

  He did not wait for a reply, but after a moment he said,

  “You look very lovely! I have never before seen you looking fashionable and wearing diamonds. I only wish they were mine that encircle your neck.”

  “You realise now that I have asked my grandfather to protect me.”

  “And you think he can manage to do that?”

  “I think you will consider that he speaks to you as an equal when he commands you to leave me alone.”

  The Marquis laughed softly.

  “Your eyes are flashing, which you know I find extremely alluring,” he said. “Do you really believe, Rowena, that I am so faint-hearted that I accept defeat so easily? That I am afraid of the clay
mores of the Scots?”

  There was amused scorn in the Marquis’s voice as he went on,

  “Where you are concerned I will never acknowledge defeat. I will go on fighting for you until you surrender as your heart longs to, however much your brain may tell you otherwise.”

  “I hate you!” Rowena exclaimed.

  “On the contrary,” the Marquis answered, “you love me, my darling, just as I love you. We belong to each other.”

  “You are quite wrong and I refuse to listen to you.”

  Some people passed by near them and, knowing that the Marquis dare not make a scene, Rowena turned and walked away from him back to her grandfather’s side.

  *

  They did not leave the party until what seemed to her to be very late, but, as they were driving towards Curzon Street in the Earl’s carriage, she said,

  “I would like you, Grandfather, to speak to the Marquis and tell him to leave me alone.”

  “I saw him talking to you,” the Earl answered. “Has he now, knowing that you are my granddaughter, proposed marriage?”

  “He merely said he would go on fighting for me,” Rowena said. “I don’t think that even he would sink so low as to change so quickly simply because he realises that I am not so common as he thought me to be.”

  “If I was a younger man, I would doubtless challenge him to a duel,” the Earl remarked. “But as it is, I will tell him in no uncertain terms what I think of his behaviour.”

  “Please do, Grandfather! Perhaps he will call on me tomorrow before I leave London.”

  The Earl was silent for a moment.

  Then he said,

  “You intend to return home?”

  “Yes, Grandfather. I would not wish the family to know where I have been or why I had to come to London. There would be too many explanations to make.”

  “I can understand that,” the Earl replied, “and at the same time I shall be sorry to lose you.”

  This was a concession that she had not expected to hear from him and Rowena impulsively slipped her hand into his.

  “I think Mama would have been glad that we met each other,” she said. “Perhaps one day I could see you again.”