72. The Impetuous Duchess Read online

  “Are you crazy?” he asked. “You cannot go in there.”

  “Why not?” she enquired.

  “Because it would be a mistake.”

  “Oh, don’t be so stuffy! Nobody will take any notice of us. I know they are soldiers, but I expect the local people come in from the village as well.”

  “It’s time you went to bed,” the Duke said. “We have to be up early in the morning.”

  “I want to dance,” Jabina said. “Just one dance.”

  “No!”

  The Duke’s voice was uncompromising.

  “Well you can do as you like,” Jabina cried. “I am going in – not to dance, but to watch the others.”

  Once again she put her hand towards the door.

  Then to her surprise the Duke took hold of her arm and, pulling her away, took her forcibly towards another narrow staircase that led, Jabina guessed, to the cheaper rooms in the inn.

  “You are going to bed!” the Duke insisted sternly.

  Because his voice was so authoritative, she felt annoyed.

  “You have no right to order me about,” she said, “and quite frankly I can see no danger in joining in the dancing for a few minutes. If we were really what we pretend to be, that is exactly what we could do.”

  “You are going to bed,” the Duke repeated firmly.

  “As usual you are making everything dull and depressing,” Jabina flashed at him. “Why can you not enjoy yourself for a change?”

  They were half way up the staircase by now and it was clear that it ran along the side of the tavern and the noise from the musicians and the dancers being almost deafening.

  On the side of the staircase a little lower than eye level there was a small glass window, little more than a peephole, which was undoubtedly used at times by the landlord if he wished to keep an eye on his guests without being observed.

  The Duke took a quick glance through it and, pulling Jabina by the arm, drew her nearer.

  “Is that the sort of spectacle you wish to take part in?” he asked harshly.

  Jabina looked through the window.

  The tavern, as she had expected, had a long bar on one side of it where the landlord was filling glasses and tankards of beer.

  There were two musicians, one playing an accordion, the other a violin and they were making a surprising amount of noise.

  There were two or three soldiers dancing, but they were quite obviously drunk and were dragging their partners around the floor in a manner which made it seem surprising that they could even keep on their feet.

  At tables around the room soldiers were sitting with their arms around women, who were attired in a tawdry manner such as Jabina had never seen before, their faces painted to match the flamboyant feathers in their hats.

  A number of them were unclothed to the waist. The rest were displaying their legs in a manner that seemed to Jabina to be shockingly indecent.

  One woman was screaming half with laughter, half with fear, as two soldiers lifted her onto a table.

  In corners of the room women and soldiers were lying embraced on the floor.

  Jabina gave a little gasp. She hardly had time to take in what she saw before the Duke drew her away.

  “Do you still want to dance?” he asked angrily.

  “I-I did not – know it would be – like that.”

  “Another time you might trust me to know what is best,” the Duke said coldly.

  They reached the top of the stairs where there was one cheap taper set in a candlestick to light a landing where there were four doors.

  The Duke opened the one nearest and taking up the candle carried it into the room.

  It was, Jabina saw, an attic bedroom, the whole room dominated by a large bed piled with mattresses in the French fashion, which made it very high.

  There was practically no other furniture in the room except for one hard chair and a china basin with a ewer beside on the floor.

  “Not very prepossessing!” the Duke remarked dryly.

  He turned from his contemplation of the room to look at Jabina as he spoke and saw that her eyes were still wide and frightened from all that she has seen happening in the tavern.

  “It’s all right, Jabina,” he said kindly. “Lock your door. You will be quite safe here.”

  “Where are – you going to – sleep?”

  “I will find somewhere,” he replied.

  “But the innkeeper’s wife said the inn was full – there will be people coming up to sleep in the other rooms – you cannot leave me – alone.”

  “I have already suggested that you lock the door.”

  He held the candle higher as he spoke. Both he and Jabina saw that the door, made in the cheapest possible way, had only a latch. There was no bolt and no lock and key.

  “Please don’t – leave me.”

  “Very well,” the Duke answered. “You get into bed and I will sleep on the chair.”

  “That is ridiculous!” Jabina exclaimed. “You need your sleep as much as I do. We can both sleep in the bed. It’s quite large enough.”

  It was true that it was a large bed, but for a moment the Duke was very still.

  Then he said in a matter of fact voice,

  “Of course, we will do that.”

  “Why not?” Jabina asked. “After all no one will know and we are married – really married.”

  “Yes, we are married,” the Duke repeated. “Get into bed, Jabina. I will wait outside until you are undressed.

  The way he walked from the room seemed to her abrupt and impolite and she thought with a sudden feeling of despair that he must dislike the necessity of being so close to her.

  ‘He hates me!’ she told herself. ‘I have been nothing but a handicap and a nuisance to him ever since we met.’

  It was, however, not a moment for introspection.

  Jabina took off the ugly clothes the aristocrats had dressed her in and found in her wicker basket a nightgown made of coarse cotton that fastened at the neck.

  She washed in cold water and then climbed into bed.

  She seemed to be as far from the floor as the box of the coach had seemed above ground level.

  There were several mattresses, one on top of the other and on top of that one of feathers, which Jabina sank.

  She pulled the coarse cotton sheets and the blankets up to her chin and called out,

  “Drue!”

  She thought for a moment that he had left her and then the door opened and he came in.

  “It’s quite comfortable,” she said, “and I have pushed the feathers to make a little mountain between us. I will not make you uncomfortable. We could almost be in two different continents.”

  “That is undoubtedly reassuring,” he remarked and she was not certain if he was laughing at her or not.

  She had placed her clothes in a neat pile of top of her wicker basket.

  The Duke took off his coat and put it over the back of the only chair.

  Then he leant forward and blew out the taper.

  He undressed in silence and Jabina felt the bed heave as he climbed into it.

  She could feel the feathers fluff out like a balloon making a complete barrier between them.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “Perfectly,” he answered. “This is certainly more comfortable than where I spent last night.”

  “Where was that?” Jabina asked.

  “On top of a bed I shared with one of the flunkeys,” he answered. “We decided that there was not time to undress so we lay down as we were.”

  Jabina laughed.

  “I am sure that His Grace the Duke of Warminster never realised before what uncomfortable lives servants lead!”

  “I shall certainly be more sympathetic to my staff in future,” the Duke sighed.

  “Will we – reach England?” Jabina asked.

  “We have done quite well so far,” the Duke answered. “The General speaks to me as one soldier to another. I am quite certain that h
e is not in the least suspicious.”

  “Madame speaks to me as if I was a slave.”

  There was silence for they were both tired.

  Then, when the Duke felt that he was floating away into oblivion, Jabina said,

  “Drue!”

  “What is it?”

  “When two people sleep – together in a bed, they have a – baby – you don’t – think that we – ”

  “No!” the Duke said decisively.

  There was a silence and after a moment she said,

  “I expect – they do something more than just – sleep beside one another. I have often – wondered what it was, but – there was no one to – ask.”

  Again there was silence and she went on hesitatingly,

  “As we are – sort of – married, would you not like to – tell me?”

  “Another time,” the Duke said, “you should go to sleep now. You have a long day ahead of you.”

  He thought she must have obeyed him, but after a long pause she said again,

  “It is – nice what two people do – together?”

  “Very nice, if they love each other,” the Duke replied.

  “But you – don’t – love me – ?” Jabina murmured, her voice trailing away into silence.

  After a while, the Duke knew by her quiet breathing that she was asleep.

  He turned over very carefully so as not to disturb her.

  But he did not sleep for a long time.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  They arrived at Quillebeuf late in the following afternoon. It had on the whole been an easy journey despite the twisting road over the last part of the route.

  Quillebeuf, which stood on the Seine, was a small rather attractive little hamlet with one good inn.

  It seemed a strange place for the General to wish to stop until Jabina remembered that it would only take him under four hours to reach Le Havre the next day, when he could arrive early in the afternoon to be greeted with due ceremony.

  It had become very warm in the day and she had found the sun on her face and neck very tiring as they drove at the usual breakneck speed required by the General.

  The coachman had been pushing his horses with what Jabina thought almost amounted to cruelty.

  As on the previous day it was almost impossible to make conversation and she therefore contented herself by sitting close to the Duke and wondering if he thought of her as much as she thought of him.

  He had awoken her from a deep sleep at six in the morning and for a moment she found it hard to realise where she was.

  The big cumbersome bed had been very comfortable and she had hardly moved all night.

  The Duke was already up and dressed and the room was alight with the sun coming in through the uncurtained windows.

  “Madame will be requiring her coffee in another hour,” the Duke said. “You had best get dressed and go downstairs for something to eat, otherwise you may miss your breakfast.”

  Sleepily Jabina had smiled up at him, her red hair loose over the pillows, her eyes still dreamy with sleep.

  He looked very strange, she thought, with the patch already over his eye, his wound red on his forehead.

  “I was – dreaming,” she breathed drowsily.

  He looked down at her and for a moment she thought that there was an expression of kindness in his eyes.

  Then he turned away.

  “Hurry, Jabina!” he said. “We don’t wish to give our employers reason for being angry with us and it’s vital for us to reach Quillebeuf.”

  He went from the room shutting the door behind him and she heard his footsteps going down the uncarpeted stairs.

  It seemed strange, she thought, to know that they had slept side by side last night and yet there was the balloon of feathers still high in the bed and, as she had said to the Duke, they might just as well have been in two different continents.

  She wondered what he would have said if she had moved across the bed into his arms and said, “I love you!”

  In her imagination she could feel him stiffen and say that he did not love her and wished only to be free!

  ‘Why did I have to meet him?’ Jabina asked herself despairingly.

  Then she knew that even if the Duke did not love her and that when she must leave him they might never meet again, yet he would always be in her heart.

  “I love him – I love him – ” she said aloud.

  But she must not annoy him by being late in attending to Madame Delmas.

  Jabina dressed quickly. Then, packing her nightgown away in her wicker basket, she carried it downstairs.

  She fancied that she would have little time to climb again to the attic once the General decided that he wished to be on his way.

  She was right in her assumption.

  She had hardly finished dressing Madame Delmas before there were a number of messages telling her that the General was waiting and the coach was at the door.

  Sitting on the box seat, Jabina felt that she ought to be looking at the countryside, taking an interest in the peasants in the fields and the small hamlets they passed through.

  The Seine meandered on the right of them, the silvery water appearing always to be in view however twisting the road.

  But instead Jabina found herself thinking of the Duke.

  So much seemed to have happened so quickly that her recollections of everything that had occurred had become jumbled in her mind.

  She found herself remembering his appearance when she had walked into the salon to find that his sombre garments had been discarded and instead he was a ‘beau’ in the real sense of the word.

  She thought how much fun it had been when they had danced together in the garden to the gay music of the noisy bourgeois band.

  Most of all she found herself thinking of what the Vicomte had told her and wondering if this strange adventure they were taking part in together would propel the Duke out of the dull austerity into which he had fashioned his life.

  ‘He is no longer dull where I am concerned. I love him,’ Jabina told herself.

  Whatever he was like, she still wanted to be with him.

  It was difficult sitting close beside him not to let him know that she thrilled to the strength of his arm around her waist and from the nearness of his shoulder.

  She had slept against him yesterday afternoon, but then she had rested her head unconsciously. Now she longed to rub her cheek against him; to look up into his eyes and tell him of her love.

  She pulled herself together sharply!

  She knew only too well what the Duke’s feelings about her were and she was quite certain that, if he was thinking about her at all, he was considering how he could be rid of her.

  If he had taken her to the South of France, as he had intended, she was quite certain that after he had left her there he would have found it convenient to forget her very existence.

  He was not a Scotsman and vaguely Jabina thought that there must be some way he could extricate himself from a marriage he had been trapped into by force of circumstances.

  Perhaps the Scottish law did not apply to Englishmen?

  It was all very difficult to contemplate, but at the same time Jabina was certain that whatever happened the Duke would somehow contrive that they need never see each other again.

  As he had no wish to marry, it would not affect him if he had to remain tied to a woman he never saw.

  Yet, as far as she was concerned, the future was too horrible to contemplate.

  To be separated from the man she loved and unable to marry anyone else was a fate, Jabina told herself, that could prove worse than the fires of hell!

  She wanted to beg the Duke to think of some alternative, but there was no possibility of their discussing it with the coachman beside them.

  Besides there was nothing either of them could do about their predicament until they were safely in England.

  Jabina felt a little tremor of fear go through her at the thought that they might never reach the s
ecurity of their own country.

  Even when they arrived at Quillebeuf, they had to find the smugglers, escape the sentries and cross the Channel, which in itself might prove very difficult.

  She remembered hearing stories of the Revenue Cutters firing on smugglers’ boats and of smugglers fighting desperately for their lives so that many people were killed in the ensuing battle.

  Quite suddenly her spirit of adventure left her and she felt weak and afraid. A woman faced by violence!

  Then she told herself that somehow the Duke would protect her.

  He might be uninterested in her as a woman. Nevertheless he would deem it his duty to keep her from harm.

  She remembered how stern he had been the night before, when she had wished to go into the tavern and join in the dancing.

  Even now she could not think of the drunken soldiers and their flamboyant women without feeling slightly sick at what she had seen.

  She had not realised that people, especially women, ever behaved in such a manner.

  She had known soldiers were rough, coarse and often brutal, but she had never connected the crimes they committed on battlefields with the sort of licensed indecency that she had seen last night through the window on the stairs.

  ‘How could I ever have thought that I could travel across France alone?’ she asked herself.

  For the first time she realised that the Duke was not being stuffy or repressive when he had averred that she must be chaperoned.

  “I must tell him I am sorry that I argued about it,” she whispered beneath her breath.

  As soon as they arrived at the inn at Quillebeuf, Madame Delmas announced that she was going to bed.

  “I will have supper upstairs,” she said and the General did not protest.

  It was not only that Madame was tired, Jabina found when she helped her undress, but that she intended to look her best when they arrived at Le Havre.

  Therefore she required a special beauty mask to be applied to her face and the usual massage to be performed on her feet, hands and back.

  It all took a long time, but at last Jabina was released and she was not only exhausted but hot!

  The weather was unexpectedly warm for the month of May.

  Leaving Madame Delmas in the darkened room with the blinds lowered, Jabina went up another flight of stairs to the room she had been allotted.