60 The Duchess Disappeared Read online

  She felt her whole body respond to him so that her heart was beating in time with his heart and her mind was part of his.

  ‘I love you!’ she wanted to shout, but it was quite unnecessary.

  Only a love so strong, so omnipotent, so majestic and so divine could have united them so completely and so irrevocably.

  At last, after time had stood still, the Duke raised his head.

  “My precious, my darling!” he exclaimed, his voice deep and unsteady. “Do you still love me?”

  “I intended to – ask you the same – question,” Fiona whispered.

  “You know the answer,” the Duke replied, “but if you thought I was tardy in coming to you, please believe me that it was really impossible for me to get away until now.”

  “I – tried to – understand, but – I wanted you.”

  “Just as I wanted you!”

  Now he was kissing her again and she saw a fire in his eyes and knew that he needed her with an intensity that was inexpressible.

  The Duke kissed her until the breath was coming fitfully from between her lips and her eyes were shining like stars.

  Then he said,

  “Let me look at you. I would not have believed it possible, but you are even more beautiful than when I last saw you!”

  “I – want to be – beautiful for – you,” Fiona said, “and if I had known you were coming I would have taken more – trouble about my appearance.”

  “You look lovely as you are! So lovely that I am half-afraid you are part of a dream that will vanish and I will find that you never existed at all.”

  “I am not a – dream but very – real.”

  As Fiona spoke, she lifted her lips to his again, but, although he pulled her closer to him, he did not kiss her.

  “We have so much to discover about each other,” he said, “and now there is no reason to wait. We are being married tomorrow morning!”

  “Tomorrow – morning?”

  “Then I am taking you away.”

  “Where?”

  “First to Paris, then to Rome.”

  Fiona made a little sound of excitement and the Duke asked,

  “You will like that for your honeymoon?”

  “It sounds – wonderful! At the same time, I will be happy – anywhere as – long as I am with – you.”

  “As I will be, but we are going abroad until the autumn and our marriage will only be announced just before we return.”

  He put his cheek against hers as he added,

  “When we go back to Scotland, my darling, my country will give you the right sort of welcome. You will find it very different from what it has been up till now.”

  “Nothing is important in Scotland or anywhere else,” Fiona said, “as long as you – love me and we are – together.”

  “You are quite certain of that?” the Duke asked. “I love you so much that I find it hard to express my feelings.”

  As he spoke, Fiona knew that he was telling her that for years he had bottled up everything he had thought and felt and had inflicted upon himself a reserve that would be hard to discard.

  Then she knew that her love for him and his for her would be like sunshine dispersing the darkness of his dungeon.

  As he had told her before, she had brought him light and now she had opened the door of his prison and he was free.

  Words to express what he felt were unnecessary. What mattered was that they responded to each other and in their thoughts they were so close that each knew what the other was thinking.

  “I love you!” Fiona murmured. “And when I am your wife I will be able to – tell you how – much.”

  She saw by the expression in the Duke’s eyes that that was what he wanted her to say.

  Then he was kissing her again, kissing her until her heart was beating as frantically as his and their need for each other burned like a fire within them both.

  *

  “It is so beautiful!” Fiona murmured.

  “And so are you, my precious,” the Duke replied.

  Fiona smiled at him from the window where she had been looking at the dawn turning the City to gold.

  They were staying on the outskirts of Rome in a palazzo which had been lent to them by one of the Duke’s friends and below Fiona could see the Tiber, the roofs of the Eternal City and the great dome of St. Peter’s.

  In the pale morning sunshine the whole vista seemed to sparkle as if it was touched with a celestial light and the cypress trees in the garden were like human prayers pointing towards the cloudless blue of the sky.

  From a huge painted and carved bed the Duke watched his wife, knowing that she was not aware that her body in its thin nightgown was silhouetted against the light.

  He thought that none of the statues of the Goddesses which graced the grounds of the palazzo had a perfection to equal Fiona’s and he felt a sudden throbbing in his temples which told him that her beauty stirred him as he had never been stirred before by any woman.

  He thought to himself that he worshipped her for her beauty. At the same time what he loved about her was the depth and intensity of her love, which made her surrender herself to him completely and absolutely without reservation.

  She was his as he had never expected or thought a woman could be.

  Yet even in her surrender she still retained her individuality, so that she stimulated his mind and they were attuned in a way that he had not thought it possible to be.

  “Oh, Aiden, you must come and look at the sun shining on the fountains,” Fiona urged him. “It makes the whole place look unreal, as if we had stepped into a Fairyland.”

  She smiled as she spoke and added,

  “And that is exactly what we have done. Come and look!”

  “I have something else to do.”

  She turned her head in surprise.

  “What is that?”

  “I will tell you if you come here.”

  “I want you to see the fountains.”

  “And I want to see you.”

  She looked at him irresolutely, tempted to do what he wanted and yet wishing to have her own way.

  “Come here!” the Duke said in his deep voice and now it was a command.

  Because she could not disobey and had no wish to do so, Fiona ran back to the bed and, as she reached it, two strong arms pulled her into it and the Duke held her close again him.

  “I cannot bear to let you leave me,” he said, “not even for a moment.”

  “Oh, darling, when you say things like that, you make me so happy that I want to cry.”

  “If you cry on our honeymoon, I shall be very angry!” the Duke replied. “Besides, I dislike women who weep to get their own way.”

  “I will never do that,” Fiona promised, “because your way is mine. It is a vow I made when we were married and one I intend to keep.”

  The Duke kissed her forehead.

  “What is it about you,” he asked, “that makes you so irresistible? I find it hard to think of anything else.”

  “Are you telling me you have forgotten Scotland?” Fiona teased.

  “Almost,” he admitted. “I have put it at the back of my mind and all I can think of is how soft and adorable you are, how much I want to kiss you and how impossible it is not to make love to you twenty-four hours a day.”

  There was a sincerity in the Duke’s voice that was unmistakable and Fiona put her arm round his neck to whisper,

  “I love you until at times I am frightened that I shall bore you by saying so over and over again. At the same time, my beloved wonderful husband, I think soon we must plan to go home.”

  “Why?” the Duke questioned.

  “Because, although nothing could be more perfect than being here alone with you, I know there are things which you have to do which no one else can do for you. I also know that now that you are reinstated in the hearts of your countrymen, you must take your rightful place amongst them.”

  The Duke knew that she was talking sense.


  Equally it astounded him that anyone so young and in a way so inexperienced in life should not only know what was right but actually suggest it before he did so himself.

  “How do you know such things?” he asked aloud. “How are you so knowledgeable about the things that really matter?”

  “If I am right, it is only where you are concerned,” Fiona replied. “Because I love you, I want everything in your life to be perfect and that is what I shall try to make it”

  With a little passionate gesture she pressed her lips against his shoulder before she went on,

  “You have made me so happy. You have given me the sun, the moon and the stars to play with and you have made me aware that I am the luckiest woman in the world, but now we have to think about you.”

  “Scotland seems very far away,” the Duke sighed against her hair.

  “That is the greatest compliment you could ever pay me,” Fiona replied. “At the same time, my dearest one, you are wanted there and I think you will find, because you have been out of things for so long, that there will be a thousand new duties piled upon you. Also – ”

  She paused.

  “Also – ?” the Duke questioned.

  “There is – another reason – for going – home!”

  Her voice was so soft that he could barely hear what she said.

  His arms tightened but he asked in an ordinary tone,

  “Now what can that be?”

  There was no answer and after a moment he asked very tenderly,

  “Shall I guess?”

  “Oh, Aiden, you know – and, darling, I want you to be glad.”

  “Glad! I am ecstatic, but, my precious, are you sure?”

  “I think so – and it would be so wonderful if I could give you a son and a future Chieftain.”

  The Duke moved Fiona backwards so that her head was on the pillow and he was looking down at her.

  “I suppose all men,” he said slowly, “long to find the perfect, ideal woman whom they see in their dreams and all men, if they are honest, think cynically that it is impossible. But I have achieved the impossible – I possess perfection.”

  “That is what I – want you to – think,” Fiona answered. “But please – do not probe too – deeply or you may find all the – flaws. Then you will be – disappointed.”

  “That will never happen.”

  Then he was kissing her with slow, burning kisses that awoke a fire in her to complement the one raging within himself.

  It made Fiona feel, as she had felt before, that they were part of the beauty that surrounded them, part too of the beauty of love that lay within their hearts and seemed to grow deeper and deeper every day.

  It was a love that she knew was unique and yet they had found it because each was the other half of the other and they were only complete when they were together.

  The Duke’s lips became more insistent, his hand was touching her body and she felt herself quiver with the ecstasy that was half-pleasure and half-pain that he always evoked within her.

  She knew that he felt the same and the rapture they aroused in each other carried them into the cloudless sky that she had just seen from the window.

  This was love.

  This was living so that human beings became as Gods.

  “I love you!” Fiona cried within her heart.

  She knew that the Duke was saying the same to her without words and there was no need of them.

  They had passed through deep waters to find each other.

  It was love that had shown the way, a love overwhelming and irresistible that would help and sustain them through the years that lay ahead, so that they would never lose each other again.

  * * *

  OTHER BOOKS IN THIS SERIES

  The Barbara Cartland Eternal Collection is the unique opportunity to collect as ebooks all five hundred of the timeless beautiful romantic novels written by the world’s most celebrated and enduring romantic author.

  Named the Eternal Collection because Barbara’s inspiring stories of pure love, just the same as love itself, the books will be published on the internet at the rate of four titles per month until all five hundred are available.

  The Eternal Collection, classic pure romance available worldwide for all time .

  Elizabethan Lover

  The Little Pretender

  A Ghost in Monte Carlo

  A Duel of Hearts

  The Saint and the Sinner

  The Penniless Peer

  The Proud Princess

  The Dare-Devil Duke

  Diona and a Dalmatian

  A Shaft of Sunlight

  Lies for Love

  Love and Lucia

  Love and the Loathsome Leopard

  Beauty or Brains

  The Temptation of Torilla

  The Goddess and the Gaiety Girl

  Fragrant Flower

  Look Listen and Love

  The Duke and the Preacher’s Daughter

  A Kiss for the King

  The Mysterious Maid-servant

  Lucky Logan Finds Love

  The Wings of Ecstacy

  Mission to Monte Carlo

  Revenge of the Heart

  The Unbreakable Spell

  Never Laugh at Love

  Bride to a Brigand

  Lucifer and the Angel

  Journey to a Star

  Solita and the Spies

  The Chieftain Without a Heart

  No Escape from Love

  Dollars for the duke

  Pure and Untouched

  Secrets

  Fire in the Blood

  Love, Lies and Marriage

  The Ghost who Fell in Love

  Hungry for Love

  The Wild Cry of Love

  The Blue-eyed Witch

  The Punishment of a Vixen

  The Secret of the Glen

  Bride to the King

  For All Eternity

  King in Love

  A Marriage made in Heaven

  Who can deny Love?

  Riding to the Moon

  Wish for Love

  Dancing on a Rainbow

  Gypsy Magic

  Love in the Clouds

  Count the Stars

  White Lilac

  Too Precious to Lose

  The Devil Defeated

  An Angel Runs Away

  The Duchess Disappeared

  The Pretty Horse-breakers

  The Prisoner of Love

  THE LATE DAME BARBARA CARTLAND

  Barbara Cartland, who sadly died in May 2000 at the grand age of ninety eight, remains one of the world’s most famous romantic novelists. With worldwide sales of over one billion, her outstanding 723 books have been translated into thirty six different languages, to be enjoyed by readers of romance globally.

  Writing her first book ‘Jigsaw’ at the age of 21, Barbara became an immediate bestseller. Building upon this initial success, she wrote continuously throughout her life, producing bestsellers for an astonishing 76 years. In addition to Barbara Cartland’s legion of fans in the UK and across Europe, her books have always been immensely popular in the USA. In 1976 she achieved the unprecedented feat of having books at numbers 1 & 2 in the prestigious B. Dalton Bookseller bestsellers list.

  Although she is often referred to as the ‘Queen of Romance’, Barbara Cartland also wrote several historical biographies, six autobiographies and numerous theatrical plays as well as books on life, love, health and cookery. Becoming one of Britain’s most popular media personalities and dressed in her trademark pink, Barbara spoke on radio and television about social and political issues, as well as making many public appearances.

  In 1991 she became a Dame of the Order of the British Empire for her contribution to literature and her work for humanitarian and charitable causes.

  Known for her glamour, style, and vitality Barbara Cartland became a legend in her own lifetime. Best remembered for her wonderful romantic novels and loved by millions of readers worldwide, her book
s remain treasured for their heroic heroes, plucky heroines and traditional values. But above all, it was Barbara Cartland’s overriding belief in the positive power of love to help, heal and improve the quality of life for everyone that made her truly unique.

  The Duchess Disappeared

  Barbara Cartland

  Barbara Cartland Ebooks Ltd

  This edition © 2013

  Copyright Cartland Promotions August 1979

  eBook conversion by M-Y Books