Never Laugh at Love Read online

  There was silence and, as Anthea realised what she had implied, the colour rose in her cheeks.

  “It is of course a question,” the Duke said, “of whether I shall produce a long line of any sort, intelligent or, as you say, addle-pated!”

  Anthea jumped down from the bed and went to the window.

  “Oh, look!” she exclaimed. “There is a man with a barrel organ with a monkey on top of it. The sweetest little monkey in a red coat. I wish the girls could see him!”

  “It’s a pity you cannot draw pictures of all you wish your sisters could see,” the Duke commented.

  Anthea held her breath.

  Just for a moment the idea came to her that she might tell him the truth.

  Supposing she told him? What would he say?

  Then she knew it would be impossible. He would be furiously angry. And he would never forgive her!

  They had in a strange sort of way, she thought, become friends on this journey – but that was not to say that he was not counting the days until he could return to the Countess.

  They would have to be careful how they saw each other in the future, but the Earl presumably had believed her story now that the Duke was married.

  ‘Once we get back to England,’ Anthea told herself, ‘the Duke will return to his own friends and his own interests. We will naturally appear together on formal occasions and perhaps he will want me to entertain for him occasionally, but otherwise – ’

  Her thoughts came to a full stop and she felt her spirits drop depressingly.

  She was quite certain that the ease with which they now talked to each other, the way in which she could make him laugh, was only because they were alone on a conventional honeymoon from which it was impossible for him to escape.

  “What are you thinking about, Anthea?”

  She heard the Duke’s voice from the bed and realised she had been silent for a long time.

  ‘I-I was watching the monkey,” she said quickly.

  “And wishing your sisters were with you!”

  Anthea did not reply and after a moment he said with a faint laugh,

  “I must admit it is the first time in my life that I have been alone with a lady who was pining for the company of someone else!”

  “Did I sound rude?” Anthea asked in consternation. “You know I have liked being with you. It has been very exciting and I have loved all that you have told me.”

  She looked at him anxiously, as she went on,

  “Although you are perhaps annoyed about what happened on the battlefield, to me it was a very moving experience to be there with – you.”

  She spoke very earnestly and for once she was not laughing or even smiling.

  “I too have liked being with you, Anthea,” the Duke replied in his deep voice.

  “Have you really?” Anthea asked. “You see, I have been very much afraid of boring you. You are so experienced. You have lived such a full life, while I have done nothing!”

  “But you have thought and felt,” the Duke said. “I realised when we were on the battlefield and you were thinking of your father that you were capable of deep feelings.”

  “I loved Papa,” Anthea answered, “but I was not only thinking of him. I was thinking of those other men who died and how their wives, their mothers and their sweethearts must have wept at their loss.”

  “As I have just said, you can feel, Anthea. That is very important. Most women do not feel very deeply about anything.”

  “Perhaps that’s true of the women you know,” Anthea added. “But when Papa was killed, part of Mama died too. They loved each other so much. One had only to see them together to know what love is like.”

  “And that is what you hoped to find!” the Duke said.

  Anthea looked away from him.

  “I suppose – everyone has secret – dreams.”

  “And yours have been spoilt by me. I am sorry, Anthea.”

  Anthea gave herself a little shake and suddenly her dimples re-appeared.

  “Can you imagine how your friends in the Beau Monde would laugh if they heard you?” she asked. “Apologising for marrying a little Miss Nobody from nowhere – a girl with no assets, who should be down on her knees thanking the Gods of fortune for having sent her a real live Duke!”

  “If you talk to me like that, I swear I will spank you, Anthea!”

  “You will have to catch me first,” Anthea teased, “and that you will be unable to do until you have recovered from the wounds inflicted on you at the battlefield of Waterloo!”

  She made a little grimace at him as she spoke.

  Then before he could answer her, she whisked out of the room, leaving him laughing rather weakly and trying to think of an answer to cap her repartee.

  He was well aware that Anthea was entertaining him with an ingenuity all her own,.

  He knew that ordinarily, had he stayed in bed with nothing to do and a persistent headache, he would have loathed every moment of his enforced captivity.

  But Anthea had contrived to keep him amused and he found himself waiting impatiently for her to return to him and watching the door for her to appear.

  *

  His bruised head and the fact that at times it ached intolerably kept them in Brussels longer than the Duke had intended.

  It was only because Anthea flatly refused to leave until the doctor permitted it, that he was forced to bow to the medical dictum that made them stay an extra week.

  Finally they left for England, their luggage considerably increased by the amount of presents that Anthea had bought for her family.

  “Are you really very rich?” she had asked the Duke soon after he was laid up.

  “I am not going to answer that question,” he replied, “until I know what it is you wish to buy!”

  The first purchase was an amusing peasant costume that she knew would fit Phebe and which she would find fascinating.

  The next day it was a gown for Thais, a riding hat for Chloe and an exquisitely painted picture for her mother.

  “What about yourself?” the Duke enquired after he had assured her be would not be bankrupt if she purchased all she wanted for her family.

  “Me?” Anthea enquired wide-eyed. “I want nothing. I have all these beautiful gowns. In fact so many of them that I think they will be out of fashion before you have seen them all!”

  “They certainly become you, Anthea. You look very different from how you appeared that first night at Almack’s.”

  “Do you remember that?” Anthea asked. “I shall never forget it. I hated you!”

  “Hated me?” the Duke exclaimed in surprise.

  “You did not want to dance with me and, when you did you looked so bored, I thought you were insufferable!”

  There was a note in her voice that told the Duke, that he had hurt her and he put out his hand to say,

  “I was obviously very remiss and exceedingly ill-mannered.”

  “It certainly made me hate you,” Anthea said, “which was why – ”

  She bit back the words on her lips knowing that quite inadvertently she had been about to say that this was why she had caricatured him.

  He was watching her face.

  “What were you going to say?”

  “Which was why – I was glad you never asked me for another – dance.”

  But he knew that was not the true answer.

  Although the Duke swore he was completely well, Anthea had a feeling that when he was tired his headaches returned.

  “You are not going to molly-coddle me any longer,” he said. “You and my valets are nothing more than a lot of old women! You forget I was a soldier and used to hardships.”

  “You are getting older,” Anthea said mischievously as she rose to leave him. “What you could put up with when you were a young man is not so easy when you are nearly middle-aged!”

  They were talking alone in the Duke’s bedroom. He had, with the doctor’s permission, dressed and was sitting in the window getting the fre
sh air.

  He reached out and caught her wrist.

  “I assure you I am well enough to give you the spanking you deserve! I have had quite enough of your sniping at me.”

  He pulled her towards him as he spoke and Anthea pretended to be frightened, striving to free herself as she cried,

  “No, no! You must not overtax your strength! Remember how weak you are!”

  “I will not be called weak!” the Duke asserted grimly.

  He caught hold of her other arm and held her in front of him so that it was impossible for her to escape.

  “You are my prisoner! I have to decide now whether I shall beat you or kiss you!”

  Laughing her eyes met his and suddenly they were both very still.

  Something passed between them, something magnetic and strange Anthea had never known before and yet it was unaccountably exciting.

  It was difficult to breathe and her eyes seemed to fill her small face.

  Then the Duke released her.

  “I think it is – time for your – tea,” Anthea murmured incoherently and fled from the room.

  *

  They left Brussels two days later and reached London without mishap, having stayed the night at Canterbury rather than undertake the journey from Dover in one day as they had done on the outward journey.

  They therefore arrived at Axminster House at four o’clock the following afternoon.

  “Welcome home, Your Grace,” the butler said to Anthea, as she stepped into the huge marble hall.

  “Is everything all right, Dorkins?” the Duke enquired.

  “Everything, Your Grace. There’s tea in the library, and wine, if Your Grace prefers.”

  “I think you should have a little wine,” Anthea said before the Duke could speak. “I am sure you are feeling tired.”

  “I am feeling nothing of the sort!” the Duke stated firmly, conscious of a headache he had determined not to acknowledge.

  Anthea glanced at him in a way that told him that she was not deceived, then walked ahead of him.

  The library, which looked onto the garden, was at the back of the house. She had learnt the Duke habitually sat there.

  Although it was called the library, it was in fact a very large and very beautiful sitting room and in Anthea’s mind far more comfortable and less formal than the big salons on the first floor.

  There was a tea table glittering with silver drawn up beside an armchair and on it every type of delicacy to tempt their appetites – sandwiches, scones and a number of different sorts of cake.

  “Can you really be hungry?” the Duke asked in an amused voice as Dorkins poured him out a glass of champagne.

  “It is teatime,” Anthea replied a little reproachfully. “At home we always have nursery tea with hot buttered toast and crumpets in the winter and cucumber sandwiches in the summer.”

  “I have a feeling you ate a large number while you were preparing them!” the Duke said.

  “That is why I am hungry now,” Anthea smiled.

  “If there is anything else you require, Your Grace, if you will just touch the bell,” Dorkins murmured.

  “I am sure we have everything!” Anthea answered him.

  “A great number of letters have arrived for Your Graces,” the butler said. “I have placed them on the table with the presents which came after you left. Some of them have been sent on from Yorkshire.”

  Anthea jumped to her feet.

  “Yorkshire!” she exclaimed. “Then of course there should be a letter from home!”

  She hurried across the room without waiting for Dorkins to bring the letters to her and found, as she had expected, one in her mother’s handwriting and one in Thais’s.

  “How exciting!” she cried. “We shall know now whether they received all the letters I sent to them!”

  She took the letters in her hand and returned to sit at the tea table.

  The Duke, who had followed her across the room, stood gazing at the pile of presents.

  They had been opened by his secretary, but were arranged neatly with the card of the sender tied onto each one.

  “More entrée dishes!” he groaned.

  “Just listen to what Thais says,” Anthea cried. “She is very funny about the reception and she says that without us it was like Hamlet without the Prince! Phebe ate six pieces of wedding cake and felt sick all the way home. Oh, and listen to this – ” she continued, reading aloud,

  ‘Everyone said you were the most beautiful couple they had ever seen. The Duke was so handsome that Chloe swears she saw several women almost fainting when he walked down the aisle and you looked lovely, dearest, you did really!

  We were all so proud of you. Come back soon! We long to see you and we want to hear all about your honeymoon. Mama says that it is when two people visit ʽthe blessed Isles of Bliss’.

  All our love, Your affectionate sister, Thais’.”

  Anthea was just about to read the postscript out too when she stopped.

  She saw that Thais had written,

  “A lot more of your cartoons arrived and, as I thought you would like to see them, I have put them in the same box as a quite nauseatingly ugly garnet necklace, which has been sent to you by a cousin that no one has ever heard of! They are very funny, Anthea, and made Chloe and me laugh a lot!”

  Hastily Anthea folded the letter and put it into the pocket of her travelling gown.

  For the first time she realised that the wedding presents had been unpacked and feeling suddenly afraid she walked quickly across the library to where the Duke was standing.

  As she reached him, he held out a letter he had been reading and said in a voice she hardly recognised,

  “Perhaps you would like to explain this?”

  Anthea saw the heading on the writing paper and felt as if she was turned to stone.

  Automatically, hardly knowing what she did, she took it from him and the words seemed to flash in front of her eyes like a streak of lightning.

  “Dear Miss Dale,

  I enclose copies of the other eight of your cartoons, which we have published all together as there has been such a demand for the first two.

  I know you will be interested to hear that ‘The Love of the Pussycats’ has now sold over three hundred copies! Please let us have some more of your work as soon as possible.

  I remain,

  Yours respectfully,

  Hannah Humphrey.”

  Anthea looked up at the Duke, saw the expression on his face and gave a little cry.

  Clutching the letter tightly in her hand, she turned and ran from the room in a panic, frightened as she had never been frightened before.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Anthea came out of the back door of the cottage and threw a basin of water over the marigolds.

  When she had done so, two cats followed her back into the house to sit watching her with unblinking green eyes as she stirred a saucepan on the ancient stove.

  “Dinner is not ready yet,” she said to them, “so you will have to wait.”

  She found it comforting to talk, to the cats.

  Having always lived in a family, she found the silence and the loneliness of Elderberry Cottage at times so oppressive that she felt she could bear it no longer.

  And yet, she asked herself, what else could she do?

  She had run away from Axminster House because she could not face the Duke.

  Afterwards she wondered how it could have been so easy? She had not had to think or plan, but had acted merely on impulse.

  She had rushed from the library upstairs to her bedroom and found there were three housemaids unpacking her trunks.

  She saw that her travelling cape and bonnet were laid on a chair. Beside them she noticed a valise, which during their travels had contained most of what she required for one night.

  Without considering, hardly realising what she was doing, Anthea put on her bonnet and cape and said to one of the maids,

  “Carry this valise downstairs for me
.”

  She had gone ahead down the grand staircase to find that there was only one footman on duty in the hall.

  “I require a Hackney Carriage.”

  The flunkey looked surprised, but hurried out obediently into the street to find one.

  Two minutes later Anthea was driving away from Axminster House and the Duke.

  She had told the coachman to drive to ‘The Lamb’ at Islington, meaning to take a stagecoach home. But as she drove there, she had thought that Yorkshire was the first place the Duke would look for her.

  She was afraid not only of his anger but also of her mother’s distress.

  Anthea realised only too well how horrified Lady Forthingdale would be that she had lampooned her Godmother and precipitated such a disastrous sequence of events.

  It would be impossible to keep the knowledge from her that the Duke had proposed not out of affection but merely to save himself and the woman he loved from being implicated in a scandalous divorce.

  ‘Mama would be shocked and miserable!’ Anthea told herself.

  By the time the Hackney Carriage had arrived in Islington she had made up her mind.

  She would not go back to Yorkshire. Instead she would go and stay with her old Nanny.

  No one would suspect that she was there and in weeks or perhaps months, everything would have calmed down and she herself would be able to face the music.

  It was not going to be easy, Anthea was aware of that.

  The thought of the Duke’s anger made her tremble, but it was not only his anger she feared.

  As she journeyed towards Cumberton in Worcestershire where her Nanny lived, she began to face the truth.

  She was indeed afraid of what the Duke might say to her, but most of all she regretted losing his friendship.

  ‘I liked being with him. I enjoyed listening to him talking to me. It was wonderful when I made him laugh,’ she reflected.

  Then, even as she half put into words what she felt, she knew it was not just friendship she had for him but something far deeper and far more disturbing.

  ‘I love – him! I love – him!’ she finally admitted to herself when she stayed the night at a posting inn and was allocated a small hard bed in the attic.

  It was very different from the luxury she had enjoyed on her honeymoon.