White Lilac Page 2

  “I don’t know what you mean by ‘exactly the right age’, Mama,” the Duke said defensively.

  “I have always thought,” his mother explained a little dreamily, “that a man, especially one like you, Ervan, should be a good deal older than his wife.”

  Her eyes were reminiscent as she went on,

  “Your father was twelve years older than I was and look how happy we were! I remember the first time I saw him, thinking that he was so handsome that he might have been a God from Mount Olympus and felt the same about him until his dying day!”

  The way the Duchess spoke was very moving and the Duke replied,

  “Papa was very lucky to find you, Mama. But so far, I have never yet met a woman to whom I could for a moment, contemplate being married, so I remain a bachelor.”

  “I am very well aware of that!” the Duchess retorted sharply. “But, darling, you must be aware that you make a very attractive fourth Duke and everybody admires you, but you should not forget that there must be a fifth and sixth and a great number more after that.”

  The Duke laughed.

  “You sound, Mama, as though I already have one foot in the grave, but I can only say, as I have not yet reached my twenty-ninth birthday, that there is plenty of time.”

  The Duchess sighed.

  “That is always your answer and I suppose in ten, twenty, thirty years’ time you will be saying the same thing!”

  The Duke laughed again.

  “That is being very pessimistic, Mama, but perhaps I shall find the ideal wife on a peak of the Himalayas, sailing up the Amazon or standing on top of the Acropolis in Athens!”

  He nearly added,

  “Or at the bottom of a coal mine!”

  Then he thought that not only would his mother think it very unfunny but also he would have revealed to her the purpose of his journey North, which he was anxious to keep secret.

  The Duchess was an inveterate gossip and the Duke knew that everything he said to her, especially where it concerned marriage, would be repeated to all her special friends and would ripple out like a stone thrown into the middle of a still pond.

  “I cannot quite understand – ” the Duchess was saying.

  “What can you not understand, Mama?”

  “Why, with all your charm and in view of all the glamorous women you have met and who have pursued you relentlessly, you have never yet fallen in love.”

  “I would not go so far as to say that, Mama!” the Duke countered with a twist to his lips.

  “I am talking about proper love,” the Duchess said sharply, “not those affaires de coeur that I hear far too much about!”

  “You should not listen!” the Duke replied automatically.

  At the same time he was reflecting that anything he did was immediately related to his mother.

  He often thought that almost before he had begun what she called an ‘affaire de coeur’ she was aware of it and was kept informed of every move even, he told himself, every kiss, almost before it happened.

  He sat down beside the sofa where his mother was reclining and took her hand in his.

  “I love you, Mama,” he said, “and although I want to please you, I can only say that the reason why I am not married is entirely your fault!”

  “My fault?” she asked. “When I have begged you almost on my knees to find yourself a wife!”

  “I know, Mama, but when I compare the women I meet with you, I know that they will not only disappoint me but would undoubtedly bore me stiff within a few months.”

  Although the Duke was flattering his mother, which she greatly enjoyed, there was a great deal of truth in what he was saying.

  The Duchess had not only been one of the most beautiful members of Society when she married his father but she had also become a legend in her own lifetime.

  Royalty, Statesmen, politicians, everybody, important or unimportant, adored the Duchess of Marazion.

  She had a charm that made every man who met her, her slave and, although it seemed unbelievable women equally adored her.

  Looking back, the Duke thought that the reason was that it was impossible to be jealous or envious of a woman so warm-hearted who gave so much of herself to everybody she met.

  And she had so obviously been so happy with her husband that wherever they were they seemed to exude happiness and make it infectious.

  What the Duchess possessed, which was different from most other people, was the capacity to make whoever she was speaking to feel that they were not only the most important person present but also believe that they were interesting and intelligent.

  The dullest man blossomed into a wit when the Duchess talked to him, the plainest woman would sparkle and in her own way take on a beauty she had never had before.

  It was a quality that the Duke had never found in anybody else and he thought that his mother was truly unique and it would be impossible for him ever to find a woman who could compare with her.

  Inevitably after the first physical rapture his affaires de coeur quickly began to fade and become a bore.

  Now looking at him, the Duchess thought almost despairingly that she understood exactly what he was saying.

  Like his father before him, he was looking for perfection, something incomparable, in the same way that he so often set himself a challenge.

  “I knew that you were different from any other woman I had ever met,” the third Duke had said to the young daughter of an impoverished Baronet he had met out riding.

  His future bride had been riding with remarkable expertise a spirited horse provided by her host of the Hunt ball, which was far better bred than anything her father could afford.

  The excitement of it had brought a flush to her white skin and her eyes were sparkling.

  Although her habit was old and not particularly well cut, to the Duke, seeing her for the first time, she was the embodiment of everything that was beautiful, everything he had dreamt of.

  It had been genuinely love at first sight, and yet almost unbelievably the girl, who was literally Cinderella had hesitated before she had accepted him.

  “You are too grand, too important,” she had said when he proposed to her in a shabby untidy room of the Manor House where she lived with her father with only two very old servants to look after them.

  “What does that matter when I love you?” the Duke had asked, “And I know you love me!”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I can see it in your eyes,” he had said simply, “and I can feel your vibrations responding to mine as they did the first moment I spoke to you when we were out hunting.”

  “Without an introduction!” she had added with a smile.

  “How could it possibly matter whether we were introduced or not?” the Duke had replied. “When I recognised you the moment I looked at you?”

  She knew what he was saying because she had felt the same.

  He had been in her dreams, she thought, ever since she was a child. Then suddenly he was there, looking magnificent on the finest horse she had ever seen, smiling at her in a way that made her heart turn a dozen somersaults.

  Although it was a dull day, her eyes seemed to be blinded by the sunshine.

  Thinking back into her memories the Duchess’s fingers unconsciously tightened on her son’s.

  Then, as she looked at him, knowing how much he resembled his father and at the same time herself, she said just as if she had been speaking her memories aloud,

  “That is what I want for you!”

  “And what I want too,” the Duke replied, “but, Mama, it has not yet happened to me and perhaps it never will!”

  The Duchess had sighed.

  “In which case I can only go on praying.”

  “Of course!”

  There was a little silence.

  Then in a different tone the Duchess asked,

  “What are you doing about that red-haired creature who everybody tells me is Medusa in a modern dress?”

  The Duke
threw back his head and laughed.

  “If anybody in the Beau Monde could hear you, Mama, they would be horrified! The Princess is noted as being the most beautiful woman in Vienna!”

  “She is noted for a lot of other things as well!” was the tart reply. “Let me remind you, Ervan, Austrian husbands are very touchy about their honour.”

  “That is what I have heard too,” the Duke answered, “so you will be relieved to hear, Mama, that the Princess is leaving England tomorrow in order to meet her husband in Paris.”

  “And not a day too soon!” the Duchess commented.

  “She is very alluring,” her son replied, “and I will not hear a word against her.”

  There was a faint smile on his lips as he was thinking that it had been one of the most fiery and, in its own way, most exciting affairs he had ever taken part in.

  The Princess had enticed him deliberately and with a determination he could only admire.

  She was sophistication personified, a woman whose desires could outrun a man’s and was, the Duke found, never satisfied.

  He would not have been the hero so many people admired if he had not been wholly masculine and very much a man in other aspects besides his athletic achievements.

  Because he seldom thought about himself in that way, he had no idea how many women sighed after him and dreamt of him as they slept beside their dull complacent husbands who lacked the fire they sensed in the Duke and which to him was as natural as the air he breathed.

  Of course beautiful women aroused him and he was ready to accept the favours of those who made it very clear that they thought he was the most handsome and exciting man they had ever met.

  But this had nothing to do with the ideal which lay hidden in his heart, an ideal engraved on his mind from the moment he became aware that his father and mother loved each other to distraction.

  Because of this he had been encompassed since his birth by a love that coloured his thoughts, his feelings and, if he thought about it, his very soul.

  Because his parents, while they seemed to him so Godlike, were also very human and he could remember their laughter, which was also part of his childhood’s happiness.

  He could laugh now with his mother and assure her that yet another affaire de coeur was over, burnt out as quickly as it had been kindled.

  “Then why, if you are not interested in his daughter, are you going to visit the Marquis of Buxworth?” the Duchess demanded.

  “He has some horses I want to see and so has d’Arcy Armitage,” the Duke had replied.

  “Horses!” the Duchess exclaimed scornfully. “Do men ever think about anything else?”

  “Occasionally, Mama, which is what you have just been complaining about!”

  The Duchess was forced to laugh before she said,

  “Then all I can say, dearest, is that I am glad to hear the last of the Princess! I am just wondering who will take her place.”

  “I am wondering the same thing!” her son replied provocatively and his mother slapped his hand.

  Sitting comfortably now in front of the fire, the Duke wondered what he would feel if he was returning home after his visit to tell a wife his impressions of a coal mine and to ask her opinion as to whether he should or should not buy it.

  Then, he told himself, it was not the sort of question any of the women he had ever known would be remotely interested.

  Any conversation he had with them was invariably concerned with nothing but himself and the lady to whom he was speaking. Anything outside that particular golden island on which they found themselves was of so little consequence that it was impossible to pursue it.

  “What do women really think about?” the Duke had once asked one of his closest friends, who replied,

  “Where you are concerned, Ervan – only love!”

  That, the Duke admitted, was perfectly all right for an evening, a night or perhaps some very special day when, although it was unusual, he and a woman were alone together.

  But if he had to talk of love at breakfast, luncheon, dinner and tea and all through the night as well he knew it would be too much – much, much too much!

  He had the frustrating feeling that whatever conversation he started with a woman always came back, sooner rather than later, to the question of their feelings for each other.

  “In which case, what is the point of being married?” he asked quite reasonably. “If for an intellectual and stimulating conversation I have to go to the Club as I do now, or invite my male friends to a bachelor dinner?”

  There was no answer to this and he told himself to stop being introspective and to enjoy life, which as far as he was concerned was indeed very enjoyable.

  The publican came into the parlour to inform him that dinner was ready and two buxom young women wearing mob caps followed him.

  They both looked spotlessly clean, the Duke noted, and had doubtless taken extra trouble with themselves as they were waiting on him.

  The first course was soup, which the Duke knew must have been made by Hanson after his own particular recipe and because he was hungry he finished every drop in the tureen.

  The next course was leg of lamb, a little over-cooked but edible.

  After it, came stuffed pigeon turned on a spit with pepper and salt thrown onto it until it was cooked exactly to his liking.

  The Duke did full justice to all these dishes, but only took a very little of the trifle which was heavily laced with sherry and two or three mouthfuls of the cheese which brought an end to the meal.

  He accepted a glass of brandy which, having been kept for some years, was rather better than the claret.

  Congratulating the publican, he moved from the table, which was then cleared by the maids, to sit once more in front of the fire.

  He had not been there long before he began to feel sleepy and he thought that if the fog had cleared by the morning he would want to leave very early.

  Therefore the best thing he could do was to go upstairs to bed.

  While eating his dinner, he had made enquiries as to whether by chance there had been any sign of his brake and his other servants.

  The publican shook his head.

  “Three other travellers ’ave asked for accommodation owin’ to the fog, sir, and it’s reel glad we are to see ’em!”

  He gave a deep belly laugh before he added,

  “They all says round ’ere it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good, but fog’s better for business than wind any day of the week!”

  He went from the room laughing loudly at his own joke and the Duke hoped that, if the fog cleared, his servants would catch up with him tomorrow morning.

  Anyway there was no need to worry about them. When they arrived at the Marquis of Buxworth’s house they would be told he was not there and would go on to Lord d’Arcy Armitage’s.

  As he walked up the stairs, he heard two men talking in the public dining room and had a glimpse of a woman who had her back to him.

  She was still eating and he thought it was likely that because the publican had been so busy with the Duke’s dinner the other guests had been forced to wait for theirs.

  It was only a passing thought and, as he went into his bedroom, he was thinking once again of his rendezvous with Captain Daltry and wondering if he and his associates had also been inconvenienced by the fog.

  Hanson had left everything ready for him.

  His silk nightshirt was warming on a chair in front of the fire and beside it was the long velvet robe his valet always packed for him when he was travelling.

  If his bedroom was cold, which it often was in country houses, he found that he appreciated the extra warmth of it.

  He undressed, threw his evening clothes onto a chair and put on his nightshirt and the velvet robe to sit down in front of the fire.

  There was he thought, something very cosy about a fire, which could transform the most ordinary unattractive bedroom into something warm and welcoming.

  He remembered that, becaus
e his mother had known how much he liked it, he was always allowed a fire when he was a child and also when he was a boy.

  He had often been bitterly cold at school in the winter and he would come home for the holidays to find a fire in his bedroom, which was a joy he had never forgotten.

  He supposed the cold and the experience of suffering every possible discomfort together with the other boys at school had made him tough enough to do all the things in which he had excelled as he grew older.

  “Soft living makes a man soft!” a soldier had said to him once.

  Although he disliked discomfort for discomfort’s sake, the Duke had to agree that there was something in what he said.

  He had the idea that the advent of trains would add to the softness of the British people.

  Men would travel in them and therefore not be exercising their muscles by riding or enduring the inclemency of the elements.

  ‘Whatever happens,’ the Duke thought, ‘we must not grow soft as a nation!’

  He wondered if that should be a reason for him not to develop the digging of more coal but to concentrate as he was at present on the breeding of fine horses.

  Then he told himself that nobody could stop progress. It was something that had been going on since the beginning of time when primitive man had first discovered the wheel.

  ‘Barrows, carts, carriages and now trains! What will come after that?’ the Duke asked himself.

  He remembered that there was ballooning at Vauxhall Gardens and thought perhaps the next step would be something to do with the sky.

  Then he told himself that he was being imaginative and the best thing he could do was to climb into bed and go to sleep.

  He rose to his feet and as he did so there was a knock on the door that was so soft he could hardly hear it and when he did not reply but waited for it to come again the door opened.

  It was not the door onto the passage by which he had entered the room but another door he had noticed on one side of the bed and which he knew led into the empty bedroom he had reserved next to his own.

  In old inns such as this most of the bedrooms communicated with each other and another reason why the Duke always liked the rooms on either side of him to be empty was that the doors were usually badly fitted.