Fascination in France Read online

  It surprised him that there had been anything that she could throw.

  He then wondered how the linen napkins had got there.

  They reached the brick wall and Celita moved ahead of him.

  She put her hand down into the second packing case she had opened and pulled out one of the golden goblets that was set with precious stones.

  She held it up towards the light and said,

  “I think this is what you have been looking for.”

  The Duc stared at it in astonishment.

  Then, as if he could not believe it was real, he put out his hand to touch it.

  “Where has this come from?” he asked. “It must be part of the treasures that were stolen during the Revolution.”

  “Not stolen,” Celita said. “They were hidden here so that eventually you would find them.”

  The Duc bent over the packing case and pulled out more golden goblets.

  Then he moved to the first one that Celita had taken the napkins from and found the gold plates.

  “I don’t believe it!” he exclaimed. “These have been here the whole time I have been bemoaning their loss.”

  “There are other cases I have not opened,” Celita said. “I was just trying to find material that would tell you where I was.”

  “It was a long time before you thought of that?” the Duc asked.

  He remembered that he had not really been worried until late in the afternoon.

  There was a moment’s pause and then Celita said,

  “Madame Bédoin – tied me up – and it was – very difficult for – me to – pull myself loose.”

  “Tied you up?” the Duc asked incredulously.

  Celita pointed to where the ropes she had been tied up with lay on the floor.

  “It was one of your – Gods or – Goddesses who – saved me,” she said. “I managed to – rub the rope – against the broken neck– until it snapped.”

  The Duc’s lips tightened.

  He thought only a woman like Yvonne Bédoin would have thought of anything so cruel. And only jealousy would make any woman rope a young girl to make her immobile and leave her to die in a place where she would never be found.

  He remembered all too vividly bringing Yvonne as a visitor to the château.

  She had insisted that she must see it.

  When she arrived, he had taken her over to the cascade and she had been very intrigued with it.

  She had insisted on going behind it because it was something she had done in Germany at a schloss.

  “When the wind blows,” the Duc had explained to her, “it becomes very wet and slippery inside the cave, I have therefore forbidden anyone on the estate to use this door without my express permission.”

  “That is very sensible of you,” Yvonne had remarked. “But I want to see that water from behind and I think, René dear, that you will agree that it makes a very appropriate background for me.”

  She stood posed with the waterfall running behind her.

  She was well aware that it accentuated the whiteness of her skin, her dark hair and her flashing eyes.

  The Duc also knew without her saying so, that she was imagining how she would look naked in front of the water.

  Because he had no wish to take part in such a charade in the privacy of his own home, he hurried her away.

  He could understand that because he had left her she wanted to hurt Celita, in fact to annihilate her so that she could not marry him.

  It was then that she must have remembered the cascade.

  She had known that if Celita was imprisoned there she would die of starvation and cold and no one would ever imagine that she would find herself behind the cascade.

  The Duc could only thank God that Celita had had the intelligence to free herself and to think of a way of attracting attention.

  He put his arms around her and held her close.

  “You have not only saved yourself,” he said, “but given me back my fortune. How can it be possible for me to live without you?”

  “You are quite – sure you – want – me?” Celita asked.

  “It will take me at least eight hundred years to tell you how much,” he said. “And on the eight hundredth anniversary of our wedding you shall tell me that I was right!”

  Celita laughed.

  “I shall be wondering all that time,” she said, “whether – you are – happy with me or – missing the amusements of Paris.”

  “That is something again we will discuss on our anniversary,” he said.

  They were laughing as the door by the cascade was pushed further open and the estate carpenter and two of the gardeners came hurrying in.

  “You are just the men I want to see,” the Duc said. “Fortunately I found the key, but I have also discovered, or rather Lady Celita discovered for me, that some of the most valuable treasures from the château were hidden here during the Revolution. No one had the slightest idea where they were.”

  The estate carpenter looked behind him and gave an exclamation.

  “I thought that brick wall, monsieur,” he said, “was part of the cave.”

  “That is what we all thought,” the Duc answered. “Instead as you can see, it concealed a number of packing cases. First thing tomorrow morning, I want them brought up to the château.”

  He shut the top of the packing case nearest to him and said,

  “Close them and hammer them down before you bring them from here. I trust you not to talk to anyone else on the estate until they are safely inside the château itself.”

  The men understood that he was afraid of thieves and nodded their heads.

  “Lady Celita and I are now going back to the château,” the Duc said. “Lock the door and keep the key with you for the night.”

  He was talking to the astate carpenter who assured the Duc he would do so.

  Then the Duc and Celita started to walk back towards the château.

  By now the first evening stars were out in the sky and the last glow of crimson was sinking down behind the great trees at the edge of the garden.

  Yet the fountains still caught a glimmer of it and they seemed to Celita to give her a special welcome as they walked on.

  She now held a very different place in the Duc’s life than when she had left the château.

  She could hardly believe it was true that he loved her.

  She knew that she loved him.

  But she had not realised before that what she felt was love.

  Never having been in love, she was very innocent and the feelings she had had when she was with him had not been recognisable.

  Yet she knew now that, when she wanted to talk to him, when she loved arguing with him or, as he said, ‘duelling in words’, and when he smiled at her, she had really felt her heart leap.

  It had been because they were getting closer and closer to each other.

  ‘Now I am part of him,’ she told herself, ‘and, when we are married, I shall know what love means.’

  She looked up at him and she knew once again that he was reading her thoughts.

  “You told me I should find what I was seeking,” he said, “and I have lain awake at night wondering how I could ever make you understand that it was you.”

  “It was stupid of me not to realise I would fall in love with you,” Celita said, “and very stupid of you not to realise that it was inevitable.”

  The Duc’s eyes were twinkling.

  “Now you are making me feel conceited,” he said. “I don’t expect every woman I meet to fall in love with me.”

  “I am determined to make certain that you don’t escape, and now I am yours – hook, line and sinker,” Celita teased. “So I hope you will be very careful of me.”

  “You can be quite sure of that,” the Duc smiled.

  *

  When she appeared in the drawing room, the others gave a cry of relief.

  “Where have you been? What has happened?” Judy asked her frantically.

  Celi
ta had already thought that it would be a mistake to mention Yvonne Bédoin, but before she could speak the Duc replied.

  “Celita was being too adventurous. She found her way behind the cascade, but the door shut and she could not find a way out.”

  “Oh, poor Celita! How terrible for you!” Judy cried. “But now you are safe and I am sure you are hungry.”

  “I am, as it happens,” Celita responded. “I am sure you all ate a delicious dinner without worrying about me.”

  “As a matter of fact,” the Vicomte said, “we have only just finished and, as René has had nothing to eat, I expect that the chef is waiting for you to go into the dining room.”

  “That is exactly where we will go,” the Duc said. “We will come back later and tell you more of Celita’s adventures, but, thank God, for the moment they are over.”

  “I remember,” Lord Waterforde said, as if he wanted to say something of significance, “Celita, as a child, was always exploring places that were otherwise private. And there were innumerable occasions when her Nanny, or later a Governess, could not find her.”

  “I think on those occasions,” Celita laughed, “I was always in the stables. I used to crouch down and hide in the stalls when they came looking for me.”

  “Well, in future keep to the stables,” Lord Waterforde advised, “and then we shall know where you are.”

  The Duc drew Celita towards the dining room.

  When they were out of earshot of the others, he said,

  “That was much more sensible than letting them know too much.”

  “I am only hoping,” Celita said, “that all the other ladies who have loved you and whom you have abandoned, don’t wish to kill me too! Otherwise I shall have to employ a bodyguard.”

  “That will be me!” the Duc declared. “I have no intention of ever letting you out of my sight for a moment. So how soon will you marry me?”

  He sat down at the table as he made the last remark.

  Celita thought that it was not the usual place for a proposal of marriage.

  But then everything about the Duc was different from the ordinary.

  “I am not being romantic,” he went on, “I am being practical. I am certainly not going to wait while his Lordship arranges this pageant on which he has set his heart, with people throwing rose petals all the way from the Church and thousands of hands to shake before we can be alone!”

  Celita laughed and made a rather hopeless gesture with her hands.

  “You know that he will want to show you off!”

  “If he does, it will rather take the limelight off Judy,” the Duc suggested.

  “I had thought of that, René, but, of course, what I was really wondering was how we could manage to quarrel and part so that you could gain your freedom and start looking for your heiress.”

  “I have found my heiress!” the Duc insisted. “And with her a dowry that no other woman in the world could bring to her marriage.”

  Celita knew that he was referring to the treasure she had found in the cavern.

  The Duc then said after a moment,

  “Unless I am very much mistaken, at least one of the packing cases will be filled with nothing but gold Louis.”

  Celita stared at him.

  “How do you know that?”

  “I have a list of what was in the safes at the château when my family had to leave at a moment’s notice. They had heard officials of the Revolution were on their way from Paris to bring them to the seat of justice, which naturally meant that they would go to the guillotine.”

  “So they ran away?” Celita said.

  “Very wisely,” the Duc replied. “They reached Marseilles and went to live in Africa. That is why, I think, my grandfather was never told of what had happened to the treasures that were left behind.”

  He paused for a moment before he went on,

  “I have been thinking that it must have been the old and most trusted servants who hid them where you found them. Then, of course, they left the château themselves and, I suspect, died before imparting their secret to anyone.”

  “So you think that there was a lot of money as well as the ornaments which we have seen?” Celita asked.

  “Money and the jewellery that had accumulated down the centuries. It was always said to be better than anything owned by the Kings of France.”

  He smiled before he added,

  “You will look very lovely in it, my darling.”

  Another course was handed to them and finally the servants withdrew leaving the Duc with a small glass of brandy.

  As the door into the pantry shut, he said,

  “Now, my precious Celita, tell me how I can marry you without there being a row about it and without my having to wait and become the performing clown to please your stepfather.”

  There was silence for a moment and then Celita said,

  “There is one scenario he has not taken into account and that is that you are a Roman Catholic.”

  “Of course,” the Duc said. “Perhaps that will let me escape the actual Marriage Service, if nothing else.”

  Celita did not speak and after a moment he said,

  “What I would like more than anything else, is that we should marry here in my Chapel and spend a little of our honeymoon alone before we go to England for Judy’s wedding.”

  He saw just a touch of surprise in Celita’s eyes at his last words and he continued,

  “I believe that we should support them. And if your stepfather wishes to produce the Duc and Duchesse de Sahran like a pair of rabbits out of a hat, let him!”

  Celita laughed.

  “You are wonderful!” she sighed. “Only you could understand how much he wants to do that and how happy it will make him.”

  “Very well,” the Duc declared. “I will play my part with a false smile. But I want my own way first.”

  “I will tell you something which I think will please you,” Celita smiled.

  “What is it?” the Duc asked.

  “I was baptised a Roman Catholic.”

  The Duc stared at her.

  “How is that possible, when I know that your father and mother are Protestants?”

  “When Papa and Mama were married they went on a long honeymoon,” Celita began. “Papa wanted to show my mother all the parts of the world that he particularly loved. These included Constantinople and Greece.”

  “Then that is where I will take you,” the Duc proposed.

  Celita smiled at him and went on,

  “They had, Mama said, a glorious time, but there was some muddle over their return journey from Alexandria and they were therefore delayed in Egypt longer than they intended. I was on the way and, when the ship reached Malta, I was born prematurely.”

  The Duc was listening to her attentively.

  “That would not have happened” Celita explained, “if in climbing up and down in the various Churches Mama had not slipped and, after Papa had picked her up, he hurriedly took her to the nearest Convent.”

  “That was sensible!” the Duc murmured.

  “The nuns brought me into the world,” Celita continued, “and, because I was only a seven-month baby and very small, they thought that I must die. So a Priest was hastily brought to the Convent and baptised me. I was given the name of Mary, the Mother of God.”

  “And that is exactly how you looked,” the Duc chipped in, “when you were holding the farmer’s little boy in your arms and how you will look, my darling, when you hold my son.”

  Celita put out her hand to touch his before adding,

  “Of course, when we returned to England I was baptised in the family Church and given the name of Celita. My father never referred to my first baptism, but Mama told me about it when I was older and she actually showed me the Birth Certificate signed by the Priest who baptised me.”

  The Duc drew in a deep breath.

  “That solves everything! As Judy said so truly, you, my precious one, always have an answer to everything.”


  “What do you mean?” Celita enquired.

  “Lord Waterforde was saying today when you were missing,” the Duc explained, “that he intended to take you and Judy home the day after tomorrow. He shall certainly take Judy with him, but you, as my wife, will stay behind with me.”

  “You are going to tell him that we are to be married?” Celita asked.

  The Duc shook his head.

  “No, he will talk about it, argue about it and that, my precious, will spoil the wonder and glory of it for you and me.”

  He put his finger up to his forehead saying,

  “Now let me think. Tomorrow he will want to ride and talk even more about the horses than he has already. But I will arrange that, as they will be leaving at ten o’clock the next morning, we will dine early.”

  He was obviously working it out in a rather complicated way so Celita did not interrupt.

  She was thinking that she would always be able to rely on him to arrange things in the future.

  Whatever he wanted she wanted and that she told herself was the foundation of a happy marriage.

  “What we will do,” the Duc suggested, “is we will be married in the Chapel at nine o’clock tomorrow evening. My private Chaplain will perform the Service and there will be nobody there except Gustav, who will give you away and also be my Best Man.”

  Celita made a little sound, but did not intervene.

  “We will make some excuse to leave the rest of the party after dinner and later Gustav will go back and say that we were very tired and have therefore retired early.”

  The Duc drew in a deep breath.

  “Then we shall be alone,” he finished very quietly. “Lord Waterforde, Judy and Cunningham will leave at ten o’clock. You will stay with me as my wife.”

  “You are quite – certain we – can do – that?” Celita asked doubtfully.

  “Quite, quite certain. It just needs organisation. There will be no time for anyone to be disagreeable or to find fault. We will have given orders not to be disturbed and Gustav will give Lord Waterforde a letter from me explaining everything. You will finish your letter to your mother and I think she will understand.”

  “I do hope so,” Celita murmured.