A Marriage Made In Heaven Page 2

  “High flown words!” Edmund jeered. “We did not all start life with your advantages.”

  The Duke realised that there was no use talking to his cousin any further.

  He merely repeated that this was the last time he would bail him out and the next time he got into debt he would have to sell up or go to the debtors’ prison and he would do nothing to help him.

  Edmund had not even expressed any thanks for the very large sum of money he received to settle his outstanding debts. Instead, he had struck back in a way that the Duke thought none of them could have anticipated and it was undoubtedly very effective.

  He had suspected for some time that Edmund was trying to borrow money on the security that he was the heir presumptive to the Dukedom, although seeing that the Duke himself was still a young man, the money lenders would not be over-anxious to lend on what was no more than an outside chance.

  But there were always those who would gamble on the fact that he had declared he preferred to remain a bachelor and was never seen in public or at private parties with a girl who might be considered a suitable wife for a Duke.

  Now the dreaded moment had come and he knew, without his sisters putting it into words, that he would have to do something about it.

  Just for a moment he thought he would be damned if he would conform just to please them or to defeat Edmund.

  Then he pictured Lottie Linkley sitting in his mother’s place at the end of the table, wearing the Buckhurst jewels and sleeping in the bed that had been occupied by the Duchesses of Buckhurst for centuries and he knew that it was something he could not allow.

  Quite apart from anything else, the Duchess of Buckhurst was by tradition a Lady of the Bedchamber to the Queen.

  The silence in the room behind him had become oppressive and the Duke turned round.

  “Very well,” he said, and his voice was harsh. “You win! I will get married!”

  Elizabeth Hull gave a cry of delight, sprang to her feet and, running to her brother, threw her arms round him and kissed his cheek.

  “I knew, dearest, you would see sense!” she cried. “Although I am aware you have always hated the idea, I am sure you will find somebody beautiful to be your Duchess and you will be very happy with her.”

  The Duke took her arms from his neck and walked once again to the table to pour another glass of champagne.

  “I will not find her,” he said. “As this is your idea, I have no intention of having any part in it.”

  “What do you mean?” Margaret asked, puzzled. “I don’t understand.”

  The Duke filled his glass before he answered,

  “Let’s be practical, if nothing else. I cannot remember when I last met a young girl whom I imagine you would consider suitable as the future Duchess of Buckhurst and I have neither the time nor the inclination to go looking for one.”

  “Then how are you to be married?” Margaret enquired.

  ‘That is your business and yours alone,” the Duke answered. “You have all been nagging me to find a wife for the last five – or it is ten – years. Very well, find one!”

  “B-but how can we – ?” Margaret began, only to be interrupted by her sister.

  “Are you really saying,” Elizabeth asked, “that you intend us to choose the woman you will marry?”

  “Either that or Edmund can install Lottie Linkley at Buckhurst Park and here and doubtless enjoy racing my horses at Newmarket.”

  Elizabeth gave a cry of horror as she said,

  “No, no! Of course that must not happen! Of course, dearest, we will help you in your quest in every way we can.”

  “It is not a question simply of help,” the Duke said in a hard voice. “You have told me it is my duty to marry and I suppose in the circumstances there is nothing else I can do. But I will have no part in it! You will find my future Duchess and I will marry her to ensure the succession, but apart from that I intend to live my own life as I always have!”

  His sister gave a little cry of horror.

  “Oh, Buck, you cannot mean that!”

  “I do mean it! You know as well as I do that the very idea of marriage has always appalled me as an intolerable restriction and an unmitigated bore.”

  “It need not be – ” Elizabeth replied.

  The Duke laughed, but there was no humour in the sound.

  “My dear Elizabeth, look round you. How many of our friends do you think are really happy and how many wives with any pretentions to looks are faithful to their husbands?”

  As he spoke, he thought of all the married women who had fallen all too eagerly into his arms, apparently without one thought for the man to whom they were married or for the breaking of their marriage vows.

  One reason why the Duke was so firmly opposed to marriage was that he despised the men who were cuckolded by their wives and he felt that the humiliation of it was something he would never subject himself to.

  Every time he left another man’s house, having made love to his wife, he was aware that he had insulted and degraded a member of his own sex. Although he knew that most of his contemporaries would laugh at him for having such ideas, he had always been determined that he would never be in such a position himself.

  If he married and found that his wife was unfaithful to him, he thought he would throttle her and kill the man who had seduced her.

  “There is only one thing I insist on,” he said now, “and that is that the girl I marry is very young and, as far as can be ascertained, pure and untouched by any other man.”

  “But of course! That goes without saying!” his sister Margaret remarked.

  The Duke’s lips curved in a cynical smile.

  He was thinking of the number of women to whom he had made love who had told him how they had first been seduced either by their riding masters or their music teachers.

  Others had admitted quite frankly to a number of lovers with whom they had deceived their husbands long before he had come into their lives.

  Such confessions had given him a low opinion of women, even while they fascinated and at times infatuated him, but he put them only one step above the ‘Cyprians’ and ‘Bits of Muslin’ who sold their favours.

  In fact, he often told himself that the latter were more honest than those who practiced deception with an agility that seemed to have been born in them.

  “Are you really saying,” Elizabeth asked, as if she wanted to have it clear in her mind, “that Margaret and I, with of course Arthur’s help, must find you a suitable wife who is not only well enough bred to marry into the family but is also a young and innocent girl?”

  “The answer to that, putting it concisely, is ‘yes’!” the Duke replied. “I don’t want to be worried with her, I have no intention of courting her and I suggest that as it is now the 2nd of May, you arrange the wedding to take place on the 2nd of June. That will leave me plenty of time to take my horses to Ascot and win, as I intend to do, the Gold Cup this year.”

  There was a silence of sheer astonishment. Then the Marquis enquired,

  “Surely that is hurrying things unnecessarily?”

  “Not if we want to prevent Edmund from borrowing even more money on his chances of fathering the future Duke and Lottie from making it very clear that she is now a member and a very important one, of our family.”

  He looked at the Marquis as he spoke and he, as a man, was well aware of the way in which Lottie would behave now that she was Edmund’s wife.

  She had always been one of the most flamboyant women in London and was to be found, when she was not performing in some sleazy theatre or a private party, at every noisy dance hall, surrounded by the most dissolute and debauched members of the aristocracy.

  That she had managed to become married to anybody was a feather in her cap and, as the wife of the heir presumptive to the Duke of Buckhurst, she would use her position to make herself even more notorious than she was already.

  “You are right,” the Marquis said. “If you have to marry, the soo
ner the better! I am sure that Elizabeth and Margaret can find you somebody suitable with the greatest of ease.”

  “Very well,” the Duke replied. “Arrange everything for the 2nd of June, and I suggest that you put the announcement in The Gazette as quickly as possible. That should at least keep Lottie quiet for the moment.”

  “I am sure you are right, dearest,” Elizabeth said, “but it is not the way I would have wished you to be married.”

  She gave almost a little sob. Then she said,

  “You are so handsome and so talented and what is more, despite all the things that are said about you, which as you well know is your own fault, you are still a great gentleman and I am very very proud of you.”

  “So am I!” Margaret added quickly, determined not to be left out.

  “Let’s hope my wife can be proud of me too,” the Duke said and now there was not only a note of cynicism in his voice but also something bitter. “I daresay that once we are married we can come to some equable arrangement that need not concern you at the moment.”

  Elizabeth walked to stand beside him.

  “I have prayed, Buck,” she said in a low voice, “that you would find somebody to love and who would love you. Perhaps, if we are lucky, Margaret and I will find exactly the wife that every man dreams of.”

  The Duke laughed.

  “You are a romantic, Elizabeth, and that is the sort of thing that happens only in Fairy stories! I assure you that I am very happy with my life as it is and, although a wife will undoubtedly prove somewhat of an encumbrance, I will of course treat her with respect and will perform what public duties are necessary. But as far as I am concerned, she will not encroach on my private life.”

  There was a hard note in his voice that his sister did not miss and she said with a sob,

  “You were such an adorable little boy and we loved you so much. What has happened that you have become so cynical and mock everything that is beautiful and, as you say, romantic?”

  “I have grown older and wiser,” the Duke replied, “but don’t worry about me, Elizabeth. I am very happy as I am, only infuriated that Edmund has forced me into taking a step I have avoided for a very long time.”

  “I am sure when you do take it,” Elizabeth tried to soothe him, “it will not be as bad as you think.”

  “I hope not, but I am definitely expecting the worst.” “What is that?” asked Margaret, who always had to have everything explained to her in words of one syllable.

  “Boredom!” her brother answered. “The boredom of sitting looking at the same face day after day, year after year, and hearing the same banal, asinine remarks that I heard yesterday and the day before that!”

  He paused and added as if he was working it out for himself,

  “The only pleasure I will get out of such a situation is having a son whom I can teach to shoot and ride and who will one day take my place as Head of the Family.”

  “But suppose you have daughters?” Margaret asked ingenuously.

  “Then I shall undoubtedly drown them!” the Duke answered and waited for the scream of protest that came from both his sisters’ lips.

  *

  Only when the family had left him and he was alone did he ask himself almost despairingly what he had let himself in for.

  After all the years of hating the idea of marriage, of considering it the end of privacy and freedom, it appalled him that he had been caught in such a fashion by a cousin he loathed the very sight of and despised.

  ‘Damn him! He has had his revenge!’ the Duke told himself and he knew that, if Edmund was aware of what he was feeling now, it would give him the utmost satisfaction.

  Then, as if he could not bear to think of the future and what lay ahead of him, he called for a phaeton.

  As he drove away in the direction of St. John’s Wood, where he had recently installed in a house he owned an alluring and very attractive little French dancer, he thought that the only way he could forget for a time was in the passion of her kisses and the fire she would undoubtedly ignite in him.

  But, as he approached the house on which he had spent a considerable amount of money and even more on the horses and jewels she had extracted from him, he found himself saying beneath his breath,

  “Damn all women!”

  *

  Several hours later, as the Duke returned home, he was thinking of a very attractive woman who had only recently engaged his interest.

  The wife of a Diplomat, she had not long been in London and there was no doubt that, when she and the Duke had first met, a spark had flared between them which told him all too clearly what the end of the encounter would be.

  When he thought of her now, he wondered if he was making a mistake in embarking on another affaire de coeur just before his marriage would be announced.

  He did not deceive himself into thinking that his new interest would escape the notice of the gossips and of those who followed every move he made, like hawks hovering ceaselessly over his head.

  She had invited him to a dinner party, which the Duke was quite certain would consist of only two people, the dinner being served in her private sitting room, which would be redolent with flowers, the perfume of which would be as heady as the wine which he would undoubtedly be served.

  They would duel with each other with words across the table and there would be a double entendre in almost everything they said.

  Then, when dinner was over, there would be the flowers, the cushion covered sofa and the door ajar into a candle-lit bedroom.

  It was all so familiar and so much a regular part of his life that he thought it was as normal as coming down to breakfast in his own house or riding across the Park on one of his own horses.

  Then, as if the question presented itself for the first time, he asked himself,

  ‘What else is there?’ and he did not know the answer.

  As he was dressing, putting on the long slim drainpipe trousers, which had been introduced by the King when he was Prince Regent and the long-tailed, cut-away coat and a cravat frilled and starched, the points high above his chin-line, the Duke was thinking about himself.

  When he had finished dressing, he suddenly made one of the quick decisions, which only those who knew him well were aware he could do.

  “Send Mr. Dalton to me,” he said to his valet.

  “Yes, Your Grace.”

  The valet hurried away and the Duke stood looking at himself in the mirror, thinking as he did so that the lines on his face were more pronounced than they had been last year and the year before that.

  ‘I am getting old,’ he told himself. ‘Perhaps the family is right and it is time I settled down.’

  Then he thought of the gauche, ignorant, rather stupid girl he would have to marry, but who would undoubtedly be exactly the right choice because her blood matched his and her father had a title the equal of his own.

  She would be his wife and would expect him to perform his duty as a husband. Then she would produce the sons who were so essential to the inheritance.

  Yet, she would still be sitting eternally in his house and in his life, doubtless with even less to say to him than when they were first married.

  “I cannot bear it! I cannot do it!” the Duke shouted out and saw his lips in the mirror mouth the words.

  Then, as he looked, he saw not his own face but Lottie’s – her inviting red lips, heavily mascaraed eyes – heard the words of the bawdy songs she sang and realised that he had no alternative.

  He owed it to the family and to himself to behave honourably and decently, however hard it might be.

  As he thought of it, he knew he was right in thinking that if he was going to marry in haste and prevent Lottie from making capital out of marrying Edmund, he must not start another scandal at this particular moment.

  The door opened and Mr. Dalton came in.

  He had been secretary and comptroller to the Duke for many years and the fact that all his houses and estates ran on greased wheels was due to
Dalton’s highly skilled management and knowledge of everything that went on.

  The Duke turned from the mirror.

  “Send a message, Dalton, to the Baroness von Schluter,” he said, “that I unfortunately must cancel my engagement with her this evening, owing to the fact that His Majesty requires my presence at Buckingham Palace.”

  “Very good, Your Grace,” Mr. Dalton replied in an impassive tone.

  “Tomorrow, send her a large basket of flowers in the usual way.”

  “Very good, Your Grace.”

  “I am leaving for Newmarket in the morning,” the Duke added, “and, as I shall be staying for longer than I usually do, I think it would be best if you came with me.”

  “Of course, Your Grace.”

  The Duke sighed.

  “Now, Dalton, where shall I go tonight? I cannot bear to stay here thinking about myself.”

  “Of course not, Your Grace.”

  “I am asking you where I can find amusement and forgetfulness of what lies ahead.”

  The Duke spoke with a violence that made his comptroller look at him speculatively, but he never asked unnecessary questions.

  “I suggest Your Grace go first to White’s,” he said, “where you will undoubtedly find a number of Your Grace’s friends. I am sure they will have many suggestions as to where the most amusing evening can be found.”

  “You are right, Dalton. That is exactly what I will do, but if I do go on elsewhere, it is problematical whether at the moment I will find anything entertaining.”

  Mr. Dalton still said nothing and, as if the Duke knew only too well of what he was thinking, he said sharply,

  “I am to be married, Dalton! Does that surprise you? It happens to be the truth.”

  “I rather suspected that might happen, Your Grace, after we learnt of Mr. Edmund’s marriage.”

  The Duke stared at his comptroller for a moment. Then he laughed.

  “Really, Dalton! Is there nothing you don’t know? I was anticipating that for once I might be a jump ahead of you.”

  “Mr. Edmund’s marriage was announced this morning in The Gazette,” Mr. Dalton said quietly. “I had intended to show the announcement to Your Grace when you returned, but I felt quite sure that was why Your Grace’s family had called and were waiting for you.”