A Marriage Made In Heaven Read online

  “I thought of that myself,” the Duke said. “Perhaps that is the reason why I have left the wood as it is for so long.”

  Samala liked the way he was talking, as if he was sharing with her his care and concern for the estate and she knew that it was something she wanted him to share with her in the future, just as her father had done.

  But with The Priory it had been a long tale of frustration and misery because it was impossible to make any of the improvements that were so long overdue.

  However, she felt sure that Maureen would understand his difficulties and besides restoring the house as she was longing to do, she would also understand how every tree, every hedge, every field of the estate meant something very close and personal to her father.

  “Why are you looking so serious?” the Duke asked suddenly.

  “I was thinking about Papa, and hoping that my new stepmother will help him with the estate, which is in such a lamentable state of disrepair.”

  “I thought you and I were going to improve it for him.”

  He saw Samala’s eyes shine as if a thousand candles had been lit inside them and, as if he was afraid that she was going to thank him, he said,

  “We will talk about that tomorrow. Now, all you have to concentrate on is my secret lake. If we approach it quietly, we will not disturb the birds before you have a chance to see them.”

  He went ahead as he spoke and Samala thought it was a mistake to say any more.

  The wood of close-set fir trees was, as he had said, overgrown and they now entered a very narrow ride, which had once been wider.

  There was only room for one horse to go along it at a time and Samala therefore dropped behind him on White Knight.

  Because she loved the Duke she felt as if the trees were speaking to her and the pigeons that flew off at their approach seemed not to be frightened but only showing off the beauty of their plumage as they soared above the treetops.

  The sun percolated only faintly through the thick branches, making a golden pattern on the sandy ground. Samala thought that, like everything else connected with the Duke, the wood was beautiful and unusual and her imagination immediately began to turn it into a fantasy.

  The Duke rode on and they must have ridden almost into the centre of the wood, when suddenly from the right and the left of her there sprang two men.

  Their appearance was so unexpected that Samala started and instinctively tightened her rein on White Knight.

  As she did so, to her horror the man on the Duke’s left seized hold of his arm and started to drag him from his horse’s back.

  For a second she could not grasp what was happening. Then, as the Duke resisted and Crusader reared up, the other man hit the stallion with a bludgeon he held in his hand.

  The Duke was pulled to the ground and the horse galloped off wildly down the ride, the stirrups rocking loosely at his sides.

  As the Duke reached the ground, he fought himself free of the man who was holding him and started to fight him with a clenched right fist, at the same time holding off the blows from the bludgeon with his riding whip.

  It was then, almost as if she was in a nightmare of horror, that Samala realised that the second man, who had been separated from the Duke by Crusader, was now about to strike him with the heavy bludgeon he was wielding in both hands.

  The Duke had his back to him and, as the man swung the bludgeon over his shoulder, Samala acted.

  Without even thinking about it, almost as if a power outside herself told her what to do, she rode White Knight forward and drew the rapier clear of its sheath in the handle of the riding whip.

  It was not a question of timing, just instinct, and as White Knight, urged on by her spur, swept between the man and the Duke, she bent forward and thrust the point of the rapier between his shoulder and neck.

  He gave a hoarse cry, which echoed out in the wood.

  For a split second the other man took his eyes off the Duke to see what had happened and the Duke, with the skill of an accomplished pugilist, struck him with his right fist on the point of his chin and knocked him senseless.

  It took Samala all her strength to pull in White Knight, but she managed it and then turned back.

  Only as she did so did she realise that the Duke was standing in the centre of the track, where the two men who had attacked him were lying senseless on either side of him.

  She reached him and, as she pulled in White Knight, she realised how frightened she was and that she was trembling so violently that it was hard to keep in the saddle.

  The Duke looked up at her and said,

  “I am afraid you will have to give me a lift, as there is no question of catching Crusader.”

  He spoke quite calmly, as if nothing unusual had occurred and in contrast Samala’s voice was very low and frightened as she asked him,

  “You – are all – right? Those terrible men have – not hurt – you?”

  “I am all right,” the Duke replied, “but I think we should get away from here.”

  As he spoke, he reached out towards her saddle and, as she understood what he was about to do, she took her foot out of the stirrup so that he could put his into it.

  He swung himself up behind her and she moved forward as far as she could, thinking that it was fortunate that she was so small and the saddle was a large one.

  As he put his arms round her and took the reins from her, the Duke was aware that her whole body was shaking.

  Because Samala felt rather faint, she put up her hand and pulled her riding hat from her head so that it was easier to lean back against the Duke’s shoulder.

  She remembered it was what she had done as a child when her father had often carried her on the front of his saddle.

  Moving slowly and carefully down the ride, the Duke did not even look back at the men they had left lying on the ground and, only when it was possible to speak, did Samala say in a voice he could barely hear,

  “D-did I – kill that – man?”

  “I hope so,” the Duke replied, “but don’t worry. Leave everything to me. I do not intend that you shall be involved in this.”

  “B-but – I am – involved.”

  “No!” he stated sharply. “That is something I will not allow.”

  She did not understand, but she felt too faint to argue, knowing that it might well have been the Duke who was lying on the ground.

  She had seen a bludgeon before and she knew that what each of the men had carried was a stick with a bulbous and heavy head to it, with a great number of nails driven into the wood.

  Her father had told her how footpads and robbers carried bludgeons and if a man was hit squarely on the head with one it could kill him.

  She knew now, although it had all happened too quickly even for thought, that that was what would have happened if the second man had struck the Duke on the head as he was preparing to do.

  ‘I saved him!’ she told herself.

  Yet the screams of the man she had struck with the rapier seemed still to ring in her ears and she knew that, when she had ridden back to pick up the Duke, she had seen a crimson flood of blood over the rough handkerchief he wore round his neck.

  Now they were free of the trees and the Duke was riding a little faster and, when the house was in sight, he said,

  “I want you to go straight upstairs to your room, Samala, and lie down. You are not to talk to anybody about what has occurred, but rest until I come to you.”

  “I-I was afraid – very afraid that he might – kill you.”

  “I know,” the Duke answered. “You saved my life and we will talk about it later. Now I want you to do exactly what I have told you.”

  They were moving along the bottom of the Park, when, as they reached the drive, they saw ahead of them a string of horses being exercised by the stable boys, heading in the opposite direction to the one the Duke and Samala had taken.

  He called out to them and they stopped to stare in astonishment at seeing their Master and his wife
on one horse.

  The Duke rode up to them.

  “Four of you,” he said authoritatively, “go at once down the ride in the wood, where you will find two footpads. They are unconscious, but tie them up so that they cannot escape and keep guard over them until I send a brake to collect them.”

  The boys appeared to understand, but they did not reply and the Duke went on,

  “You, Jed, are to ride to the Chief Constable’s house. I expect you know where it is.”

  “Yes, Your Grace.”

  “Then hurry across country. Ask him to come here as quickly as possible to see me and tell him it is very urgent.”

  Jed touched his cap and, without waiting, set off at a gallop.

  “One of you go through the wood and look for Crusader by the lake,” the Duke said to the other young men, “and the rest of you continue to exercise the horses as you intended to do.”

  With that he rode past them down the drive towards the house.

  He pulled White Knight to a standstill at the bottom of the steps and said to Samala,

  “Do exactly as I told you and don’t worry.”

  “You – are all – right?” she asked in the voice of a child who wishes to be reassured.

  “I shall be all right,” he said with a smile. “Just trust me and try to rest.”

  She gave a little sigh and it was hard to leave him because the closeness and strength of his arms round her had made her feel safe.

  Then, because he was waiting and a footman had hurried down the steps to assist her, Samala slipped her knee over the pummel and slid down to the ground, feeling for a moment as if her feet would not carry her any further.

  Then with an effort she started to walk up the steps as the Duke turned White Knight and rode off in the direction of the stables.

  She knew as she went through the hall that Higson was longing to ask her what had happened and why they had returned without the Duke’s horse.

  But it was impossible for her to speak, impossible to do anything but carry out the Duke’s orders and reach her bedroom.

  Her maid was there, a sensible elderly woman who saw by Samala’s pale face and the way her hands were trembling that something had upset her.

  Without talking, she helped her take off her riding habit, brought a pretty nightgown trimmed with lace and turned down the bed.

  Because she was still feeling faint and shaken by what had happened, Samala slipped between the sheets as if she moved in a dream and lay back against the pillows.

  “Perhaps Your Grace would like something to drink?” the, maid asked.

  “I think – that would be a – good idea,” Samala replied.

  The maid hurried away to come back with a glass of hot milk sweetened with honey.

  Because she knew it was the sensible thing to do, Samala drank a little of it. Then she lay back again, waiting and longing to know what was happening, aware that she was tense and still very frightened.

  It seemed impossible that anything so horrible should have occurred on what she had thought was the happiest day she had ever known.

  All she could think of was the danger the Duke had been in and that she had killed a man to save him.

  ‘Why should anybody want to kill or injure him?’ she asked herself and could find no answer except that the footpads, if that was what they were, wished to steal from him.

  The Duke, however, knew the answer very clearly.

  He was determined to substantiate his suspicions and to use the man whom he had knocked unconscious and the other, if he was still alive, as evidence against his cousin Edmund.

  He had thought once or twice while he was convalescing from his concussion that Edmund might not take his marriage lying down, although he had never envisaged anything so criminal as an attack on him on his own ground.

  He had thought that Edmund’s fury at his marriage and the fact that he was deeply in debt, might perhaps result in his taking some desperate action with which he would have to deal forcibly.

  As he gave orders for the brake to be sent immediately to the wood to bring the two men back to the stables, where they could be kept prisoner until the arrival of the Chief Constable, he told himself that this was something which must be dealt with once and for all.

  Riding back from the wood, he had been at first deeply concerned with the effect that it had had on Samala.

  Then, as he felt her tremble in his arms and when she had put her head against his shoulder, he knew that she was feeling faint and he must look after her.

  As they rode on, the full realisation of how she had saved his life made him understand not only how brave she was but how quick-witted.

  He was sure that no other woman he had ever known would have behaved in the same way in such extraordinary circumstances.

  Any other would certainly now be screaming and crying hysterically.

  ‘She is behaving as I would like my wife to behave,’ he thought.

  It was at that moment that he knew, almost as if it was written in front of him in letters of fire, that he loved her.

  He could at first hardly believe that the feeling that swept over him was not just the reaction of relief that she had saved him and surprise that, being so small and frail, she could have done anything as drastic as kill a man in his defence.

  Yet he knew that what he now felt for her was what he had been fighting against admitting to himself for the last few days.

  She was the white and pink orchid he associated her with. She was pure and very young. When he least expected it, she had crept into his heart and had filled a place in it that had never been taken by any other woman.

  ‘How can she be so unique?’ he asked himself,

  He felt the blood throbbing in his temples and his body pulsating with desire because she was close to him. But it was so much more than what he had felt for a woman dozens of times in the past.

  It was something so overwhelming, so tremendous, that he could hardly believe it himself. Yet it was indisputably here and it was love as he had envisaged it and sought when he was young and idealistic.

  It was love as the artists had portrayed it, as the musicians composed it, as the poets wrote of it. It was the love of Romeo and Juliet, Dante and Beatrice and the Troubadours of Provence.

  ‘It cannot be true!’ the Duke argued to himself.

  But he knew it was, because, although Samala was a woman, she was different from any other woman he had ever known before.

  He knew, as he rode towards the house, that Yates was right when he had said that she gave everybody something they wanted, but had no idea what it was until they received it from her.

  It is love, the Duke thought.

  He wanted to mock at himself for being sentimentally romantic, while at the same time he knew that was what he was feeling.

  It was love that had invaded his mind, his heart and his body and he was aware that for a very long time he had wanted to kiss Samala.

  He had restrained himself from doing so simply because of his prejudice against being married, and also because something fastidious in him as a perfectionist was waiting for the right moment.

  But now he thought that, except for her courage, the right moment might never have come and he could have been lying dead on the ride while Edmund became the fifth Duke of Buckhurst.

  ‘You are different from anybody in the whole world,’ he told Samala silently, ‘and you are what I have been looking for all my life, although I was not aware of it.’

  But he knew that for the moment he must protect her and that whatever happened she must not be involved in the mess that Edmund had created.

  When he had sent her into the house and rode towards the stables, he was planning to himself exactly how he would explain what had happened. He was determined to make it plausible and ensure that Samala should not be in any way implicated.

  He told his version first to his Head Groom and several other members of the stable staff, who all listened with gasps of hor
ror.

  “I was attacked by two footpads,” he said, “who were waiting for me in the ride in the North Wood. Fortunately I had discovered soon after we left the house that Her Grace had taken with her as a riding-whip the one I brought back from India which had a rapier concealed in the handle.”

  As he spoke, he knew it was a weapon they had previously seen or heard about and he went on,

  “I thought it might be dangerous for Her Grace to use that whip in case the catch slipped loose, and I was just about to attach it to my own saddle when two men came out of the trees on either side of the ride to attack me.

  His audience drew in their breath and he continued,

  “I managed to fend off the first man and I struck at the second with the rapier, which entered his neck. I then dismounted from Crusader, who galloped off as I knocked the first man to the ground.”

  The way he described it was, he knew, exactly what the men listening to him would expect and he saw by the admiration in their eyes that he had convinced them that his account was the truth.

  After sending the brake to collect the two men, he went back to the house to await the arrival of the Chief Constable.

  Fortunately Colonel Stoner was an old friend whom he had known all his life and when he heard what had occurred he immediately agreed that the miscreants must be interrogated.

  “It is imperative to find out who is behind this attack,” he said firmly, “and who has paid them.”

  After the Duke had given to Colonel Stoner his account of what had happened, they walked to the stables, where the men had by now been brought back from the wood and were imprisoned in one of the empty stalls.

  Their legs and arms were bound tightly so that there was no chance of their escaping.

  The man whom Samala had stabbed was undoubtedly dead and the other one was frightened to the point where to save his own skin he was only too ready to talk and explain that he was only carrying out the instructions of the gentleman who had paid him.

  The ten guineas they had each been paid were in their pockets and, not only the position of the house, but also a rough map of how they could reach the ride in the wood from the stage coach on which they had travelled, was drawn on a crumpled dirty piece of paper.