72. The Impetuous Duchess Read online

  “I am afraid I must insist on knowing why you are running away,” the Duke said. “Otherwise, and make no mistake about this, Jabina, I shall take you back to The Grouse and Thistle.”

  She looked at him speculatively, her eyes wide in her small face.

  “I believe that you would do something just as beastly as that!” she said at length. “You are a Sassenach. I have always known one can never trust a Sassenach!”

  “But you have trusted me!” the Duke answered. “You are in my coach and therefore for the moment I am responsible for you. From what are you running away?”

  “From – being – married!” Jabina stammered in a low voice.

  “You are engaged?”

  “Papa had intended to announce the engagement next week.”

  “Did you tell your father that you don’t wish to be married?”

  “I told him – but he would not listen.”

  “Why not?”

  “He likes the man he has chosen for me.”

  “And you do not?”

  “I hate him!” Jabina said fiercely. “He is old, dull, staid and disagreeable!”

  “What do you think your father will do when he finds that you have disappeared?” the Duke asked.

  “He will come tearing after me with a thousand of the Clan brandishing their claymores!”

  “A thousand?” the Duke queried. “Surely that is somewhat an exaggeration?”

  “I may exaggerate,” Jabina retorted, “but I am certain that Papa will pursue me and he will be very angry!”

  “I am not surprised!” the Duke remarked. “But as far as I am concerned, I have no intention of being involved in your matrimonial troubles. We should reach the next Posting inn before nightfall and after that you must fend for yourself!”

  “I never asked you to take me any further!” Jabina said. “It’s near the border and once in England I can take a stagecoach to London.”

  “What do you intend to do in London?” the Duke enquired.

  “I am not going to stay there,” Jabina answered almost scornfully. “I am on my way to France. Now that the war with Bonaparte is over I can stay with my aunt, Mama’s sister. She married a Frenchman and lives near Nice.”

  “Have you informed your aunt of this decision?”

  “No. But she will be glad to see me. I know she will. She loved Mama, but she and Papa never got on together.”

  “Your mother is dead?”

  “She died six years ago. I know that she would never have allowed Papa to force me into marriage with a man I detest!”

  “I understand most girls have no choice when it comes to marriage,” the Duke said slowly. “I am sure, Jabina, that your father knows what is best for you.”

  “That is just the pompous sort of thing you would say,” Jabina said scathingly. “You are exactly like Lord Dornach!”

  “Lord Dornach?” the Duke enquired. “Is that the man you are to marry?”

  “Do you know him?” Jabina asked.

  “No,” the Duke answered, “but it sounds a very good marriage and that is what most young women require.”

  “It is not what I require,” Jabina said crossly.

  “Lord Dornach is well off?”

  “He is very rich, I believe,” Jabina answered, “but if he was hung from head to foot in diamonds, it would not make me like him any the more. I told you he is old and dull. I would not be surprised if he incarcerated me in one of the dungeons beneath his castle and beat me to death!”

  “The trouble with you,” the Duke remarked, “is that you have too fertile an imagination.”

  “That is exactly what Papa says.”

  “What more does your father say?”

  “He says I am impetuous, impulsive, unstable and in need of a strong guiding hand!” Jabina recited.

  Her voice held a note of contempt.

  “A very accurate description, I should imagine,” the Duke remarked dryly.

  Jabina tossed her head.

  “How would you like to be married off to someone who was chosen in order to train you to become different from what you are at present? Besides, when Lord Dornach proposed to me, he never even said he loved me!”

  “I imagine,” the Duke said in an amused voice, “that you hardly encouraged him to express himself ardently!”

  “I certainly did not!” Jabina flashed. “I said to him, ‘I would rather wed a codfish than you, my Lord!’”

  The Duke laughed – he could not help it.

  “I am afraid, Jabina,” he said after a moment, “that your idea of travelling to Nice by yourself is quite impossible. It is sad for you to have to marry a man you dislike, but perhaps, having given your father a fright by running away, you will find him more reasonable on your return.”

  “I am not going back!” Jabina cried. “I have already told you. I am not going back! Nothing could make me!”

  “Then that is your business,” the Duke replied. “At the next Posting inn our ways will part.”

  “You are just like Pontius Pilate,” Jabina said scornfully. “You are washing your hands of a problem simply because you don’t know what to do about it.”

  For a moment the Duke looked startled.

  He was not in the habit of hearing anyone speak to him in such a manner.

  “It is not my problem,” he said almost in self-defence.

  “Injustice, cruelty and brutality is everyone’s problem,” Jabina contradicted. “If you were a chivalrous sort of young man like the hero in a novel you would be prepared to fight for me, to help me escape from the forces of evil. You might even carry me away on your charger to the safety of your castle!”

  “It sounds very much like a Frances Burney or Mrs. Radcliffe!” the Duke remarked. “But unfortunately my castle, as you call it, is a very long distance away and, having once taken you there, I should find it difficult to explain your presence.”

  He smiled and added,

  “The Knights, who rescued distressed maidens in the past, never seemed to have any problem as to what to do with them!”

  “That is true,” Jabina agreed. “At the same time I am surprised that you should realise it!”

  The Duke did not reply. He simply raised his eyebrows and after a moment she said impulsively,

  “I am sorry if that sounded rude, but you are reading a very musty old book. I was watching you when you were not speaking to me and certainly it did not look very exciting.”

  “It is a treatise on Medieval manuscripts.”

  “There!” Jabina exclaimed. “You see what I mean! It certainly would not lead me to think that you would know about Knights Errant or maidens in distress.”

  “Perhaps my education has been neglected on that particular point,” the Duke said. “All the same, Jabina, I have to think of how I can persuade you to return to your father.”

  “You need not waste your words or your breath. I will not turn back. I am going to my aunt.”

  “Have you money for the journey?” the Duke asked.

  She smiled at him and he noticed that she had a dimple on the left side of her mouth.

  “I am not as nit-witted as you think,” she replied. “I have fifteen pounds in my purse, which I took out of the housekeeping money when the housekeeper was not looking and I have brought all my mother’s jewellery with me. I have it pinned inside my gown so I cannot show it to you. But I know it’s very valuable and when I get to London I will sell it and then I shall have more than enough money to journey to Nice.”

  “But you cannot travel all the way alone,” the Duke expostulated.

  “Why not?” Jabina asked.

  “You are too young for one thing.”

  She waited, a little smile on her lips.

  “Go on – ” she prompted.

  While he hesitated searching for the right words, she added,

  “ – and too pretty for another. You might as well say it. I know I am pretty. Everyone has told me so for years.”

  “A
re you not being somewhat conceited?” the Duke asked.

  “Not in the slightest!” Jabina replied. “My mother was very lovely and I am like her. She was half French and lived in Paris before she married my father.”

  “You don’t look French to me,” the Duke said.

  “That is because, like everyone who is ignorant, you expect all French women to be dark,” Jabina answered. “My mother had red hair like mine and surely you know that Josephine, the wife of Napoleon Bonaparte, is red-haired?”

  Jabina tossed her head again, it was a habit of hers.

  “I expected I shall be a great success in Paris!”

  The Duke sought for words.

  He wondered how he could possibly explain to this impulsive young creature why she could not travel to Paris alone and the sort of success she might have would certainly not be in accordance with the manner in which she had been brought up.

  Then he told himself it was none of his business.

  He must not and there was no possible obligation or excuse for his doing so, get himself involved in what might prove a very unsavoury scandal.

  He did not know Lord Dornach, but he was obviously a Nobleman. The fact that his fiancée had run away would itself cause a great deal of gossip without the added information that she had been assisted in her flight by the Duke of Warminster.

  The Duke began to see a number of dangers ahead which he could not possibly become embroiled in.

  He settled himself a little more firmly in the corner of his seat in the carriage.

  “You are quite right, Jabina,” he said aloud, “in saying that this is your business and I have no right to interfere. When we arrive at the next Posting inn we will go our separate ways. And I think it would be best if we had no knowledge of each other’s true identity.”

  “I already know who you are,” Jabina replied. “You are the Duke of Warminster. I heard your coachman telling the innkeeper, so when you arrived, I must say, I thought it was a joke or a trick.”

  “A joke or a trick?” the Duke questioned.

  “Well, Dukes do not usually drive about with only two coachmen on the box, no footmen and no outriders.”

  “My second carriage is behind,” the Duke pointed out before he could prevent himself.

  He had had no intention of explaining his behaviour to this impertinent chit.

  “Well that accounts for it. Even so, I think it’s a shabby way to travel. Can you not afford better?”

  “Of course I can afford better,” the Duke replied almost hotly, “but I do not wish to be ostentatious. I think outriders, except on special occasions, are quite unnecessary.”

  “If I was a Duke,” Jabina said, “I would always have outriders and my own horses would travel ahead of me so that I would certainly not have to rely on those to be found at a Posting inn.”

  “My horses do travel ahead of me in the South,” the Duke answered, “but in actual fact I came North in my yacht and it seemed quite unnecessary to send my own horses such a long distance when they were only conveying my servants.”

  “You came in a yacht! How fascinating! Where is it?”

  “In the harbour at Berwick,” the Duke answered, “and I intend to sail home down the coast and up the Thames to London.”

  “Now that I call very original!” Jabina approved. “You are not as stuffy as I thought you were.”

  “Stuffy!” the Duke exclaimed.

  “Well, you are a rather dull sort of Duke,” she said frankly. “You are not fashionably dressed for one thing. Your cravat is too low, the points of your collar are not above your chin and your hair is not cut correctly.”

  The Duke, who had always rather prided himself on his sober attire, felt quite unnecessarily piqued.

  “There is no point,” he said coldly, “in indulging in personal criticism, but perhaps later, Jabina, you will be thankful that I am staid, stuffy and dull. Otherwise you might at this moment be finding yourself in a great deal of trouble.”

  “What sort of trouble?” Jabina asked with quickened interest.

  The Duke glanced at her intending to answer scathingly. Then he realised that the look in her eyes was very innocent.

  She really did not understand, he thought, in what danger she might have been had she climbed into the carriage of some of the bucks or dandies who frequented the Clubs of St. James’s. There were a number who undoubtedly would have thought that a young unattached girl was easy prey.

  The Duke did not speak and after a moment Jabina said,

  “Tell me.”

  “Your whole behaviour is preposterous!” the Duke told her in a stern voice. “And let me assure you once again, Jabina, that you cannot travel to London alone or cross France unaccompanied. It’s an impossible scheme. And what is more, I don’t intend to allow you to attempt anything so reprehensible or so dangerous.”

  “How are you going to stop me?” Jabina asked defiantly.

  “I am going to hand you over to the Sheriff in the first town we come to,” the Duke replied. “I shall place you in his charge and he will return you to your father.”

  She gave a little cry.

  “No! You cannot do that! How could you be so cruel? So treacherous?”

  “I am being neither. I am being sensible and, as a matter of fact, I am thinking of your own interests.”

  “I don’t believe you!” she countered rudely. “You are only worrying in case you are involved.”

  “You are being very childish!” the Duke said, “but I assure you that it is for your own good.”

  “I hate things that are for my own good! Like sago pudding, bread and butter and hot milk!”

  She spoke petulantly and then asked,

  “Why could you not have been a gay exciting young man who would have positively wanted to help me?”

  “I am sorry, Jabina,” the Duke said firmly. “I am, as it happens, very sympathetic, although you don’t think so. But I do know a little bit more about the world than you do and I assure you that I should be criminally negligent if I allowed you to set off on this mad journey alone.”

  There was silence.

  “Do you – really mean that you will – hand me over to the – Sheriff?” Jabina asked at last in a small voice.

  “I mean it!” the Duke answered firmly, “and I promise you, Jabina, that one day you will thank me.”

  “He will take me back to Papa and I will have to marry Lord Dornach and I shall hate you for the rest of my life! Do you hear? I shall hate you! Hate you!”

  “I am sorry about that,” the Duke answered, “but there is nothing else I can do.”

  “I shall make a wax image and stick pins in you,” Jabina asserted, “and I hope it makes you suffer all the fires of hell!”

  The Duke did not answer and they drove for a little while without speaking.

  At length Jabina said pleadingly,

  “Please don’t go to the Sheriff. If you leave me at the inn, I will find someone else to – assist me. I am always lucky and people are – kind to me.”

  The Duke thought that there was a probability of people being far too kind and not in a way she would expect!

  Aloud he declared almost apologetically,

  “I am sorry, Jabina. It has to be the Sheriff. If I left you alone and unprotected it would lie heavy on my conscience.”

  “You are a beast!” Jabina exclaimed dismally. “I had no idea that anyone could be so horrible or so cruel. If I throw myself over a cliff rather than marry Lord Dornach, it will be all your fault and that is something that will be on your conscience for the rest of your life!”

  The Duke did not answer and again they drove along in silence.

  Now the wind had abated a little, but it was snowing hard. Soft snowflakes flopped against the windows and collecting there made it almost impossible to see out.

  The road too seemed to have become rougher and the coach rocked precariously from side to side, but the horses still plodded on.

  The Duke b
ent forward and rubbed at the window in an attempt to peer out to see where they were.

  It was nearly dark now and he wondered apprehensively whether when darkness fell they would be able to find the inn.

  As if she read his thoughts, Jabina said,

  “Perhaps we shall be marooned in the snow and freeze to death and when we are found they will wonder who the strange girl is beside you.”

  She laughed and went on,

  “Think what a scandal that would be! ‘The pompous Duke of Warminster found dead in the arms of a nameless Scottish beauty!’”

  “As I told you once before,” the Duke said, “you are far too conceited.”

  “Perhaps you don’t admire red hair?”

  “Not particularly!”

  “I know exactly what sort of woman you like,” Jabina taunted. “A quiet mousy little creature who says, ‘yes, Your Grace’ and ‘no, Your Grace’! She agrees with everything you say and never puts a foot out of place.”

  “At least she would not create a situation like this,” the Duke retorted.

  “No, of course she would not,” Jabina said sharply. “But think how deadly dull she would be to live with. It would be just like reading one of your musty old books over and over again.”

  She laughed lightly.

  “There would be no surprises and it really would not matter if you go on to the next chapter or stay on the one you have just read, because there would never be anything new.”

  The Duke, with his eyes turned to the window, sighed.

  “I assure you, Jabina, I have no desire for the adventures on which you seem to thrive,” he said. “All I am hoping is that we reach the Posting inn in safety.”

  “Worrying about it will not help,” Jabina answered. “What you should get is a coachman on whom you can rely – or drive the horses yourself!”

  “Higman has been with me for fifteen years – ” the Duke began.

  Suddenly he laughed.

  “Really, Jabina, I believe you are trying to provoke me. I have never met such an irritating young woman in the whole of my life!”

  “You are lucky!” Jabina said. “If your dull musty sweetheart was with you now, she would doubtless be in tears and clinging to you like a piece of frightened ivy!”

  The Duke was about to reply when the coach gave a sudden lurch and the wheels seemed to stick either in snow or mud.