The Love Trap Read online

  He did not say any more and after a moment Olive said tentatively,

  “Very well, I shall expect you then.”

  “In the meantime say nothing to your husband,” the Duke insisted.

  “To please you, I will agree,” Olive conceded. “At the same time, I have no intention of changing my mind. Let me make that quite clear, Hugo, just in case you think that we can continue to go on as we are.”

  It struck him that he had no intention of continuing to go on with her anyway and at the moment he felt more like strangling her with his bare hands than caressing her.

  But the Duke had a firm self-control, which he had acquired over the years by training himself to obey his mind rather than his emotions. As he looked at Olive lying before him in the soft bed, she had no idea of the fury surging through him.

  “Very well then,” he said, forcing a smile to his lips, “I will call on you on Wednesday and make sure we are alone.”

  “But, of course, darling,” Olive replied. “Would I want us to be anything else? And you know, my precious, how perfect it will be when we can be together for ever and there will be no more partings.”

  She held out both her arms in a gesture of surrender as she spoke and the Duke took first one of her hands, then the other, and kissed the backs of them.

  “Goodbye, Olive,” he said. “Sleep well and once again, thank you for all the happiness we have had together.”

  “Our happiness is only just beginning,” Olive said softly. “A happiness, my wonderful lover, that will be ours for Eternity!”

  She pulled the Duke towards her as she spoke, but he released her hand and, moving lithely away from the bed, walked towards the door.

  “Until Wednesday,” he said quietly as he reached it. “And until we have had time to talk together, everything is secret?”

  She knew it was a question and she replied,

  “I promise it will be so until Wednesday. After that I shall be with you.”

  She was not certain if he heard the last two words because he had passed through the doorway and closed the door quietly behind him.

  As he went down the stairs, he wondered how he could ever have been such a fool as to trust Olive when she had said it would be safe to come and make love to her in her house when her husband was away.

  Even if he denied the charge, which would be difficult, that she would make against him, it would be substantiated by the servants who had served them at dinner and the night-footman who was now waiting in the hall to let him out.

  ‘How can I have been such an idiot?’ the Duke asked as he stepped through the front door, which the footman held open for him and went down the steps to where his travelling cabriolet was waiting.

  He had arrived in his brougham drawn by two horses, but, because he was going to the country, he had ordered the cabriolet to call for him now.

  Drawn by four horses, it awaited him and he knew that he would reach his house in Hertfordshire easily within an hour and a half. Then he could go to bed and think over what was awaiting him on Wednesday.

  His footman, wearing the Wynchester livery, covered his knees with a rug as he sat back on the comfortable seat.

  Then the door was closed, the man sprang up on the box beside the coachman and they set off.

  The whole horror of what had occurred swept again over the Duke and he felt like a wild animal in a trap from which there was no possible way of escape.

  How could he have known, how could he have guessed for one second that, unlike all the other women with whom he had had passionate affaires de coeur, she would dramatise her feelings for him until she demanded marriage.

  He knew, if he was honest, it was not only because she thought she loved him – a great many women had given him their hearts – it was also because her position as his wife would be very different from that which she already held.

  Even though, as she had obviously worked out, she might never be accepted in English Society, there was no doubt there were a great many places in the world that would welcome the Duke of Wynchester and accept his wife publicly, whatever they might say about her in private.

  ‘I will not marry her, I will not!’ the Duke fumed to himself.

  Yet he knew it was almost impossible for him to refuse to do so.

  If, as Olive expected, Lord Brandon challenged him to a duel, her name would be bandied about by every gossip from one end of London to the other.

  In the circumstances it was an unwritten law that there was nothing a gentleman could do but offer his protection to the woman who had been thus defamed.

  As he would also be named publicly in the divorce proceedings, which would have to go through Parliament, he would have no chance of evading the Marriage Service that would follow immediately after them.

  The Duke felt as if his head was throbbing and his lips were dry. A thousand unknown pressures were menacing him, but there was nothing he could do about them.

  Because he felt restricted and hemmed in, he flung aside the rug the footman had covered his knees with and, lifting his feet, he put them firmly on the small cushioned seat opposite him.

  As he did so, he felt the cushion give a little and knew that the box under it had not been properly fastened.

  This annoyed him, because when he travelled for any distance his valuables were invariably hidden there, and he imagined that the last time the box was emptied it had not been left as secure as it should have been.

  But it afforded only a small irritation and he immediately returned to the problem of Olive.

  Too late he knew now that there had always been something about her that he found unattractive.

  Because she had beguiled and bemused him with her passion and her insatiable demand for his lovemaking, he had not really thought about it clearly and yet he knew it had been there.

  The Duke had been fascinated by many women, and at times had been extremely fond of them.

  He had, however, always known that his feelings were not those of the real love that when he was a young man he had sought, telling himself that he had no intention of marrying any woman unless he truly loved her.

  Perhaps it was the Russian blood in his veins that made him demand more than just the affection and respect that in English circles was accepted as love.

  He demanded something that was far more intense, far more spiritual.

  His grandmother, a Romanov Princess, had explained to him what love meant in her country.

  “A Russian loves with his soul,” she said. “It is something he is very conscious of and he is not ashamed to speak of it as an Englishman is. He can, of course, love passionately with his body, but when he meets a woman he really loves, then he gives her his soul. That, my dear Hugo, is the love we all seek and which we believe comes from God.”

  The Duke had been very young when his grandmother had talked to him like that and yet he had never forgotten it.

  After she was dead, he had often wished that he had asked her if she thought he would ever find a woman to whom he could give his soul, and who would, of course, love him in return.

  But what he was offered was always something very different and while they laid their hearts at his feet, he knew without asking questions that the heads of the women who said they loved him were screwed on very tightly.

  Never in any circumstances would they do anything to damage or sully their position in Society.

  That was the test, he told himself, of a love that was basically emotional, that it could be kept secret and undisclosed, while his grandmother had been talking of a love that was very different, a love for which the world would be well lost and never regretted.

  He knew, however, that this was not what Olive was offering him.

  If he had not been the Duke of Wynchester and very wealthy, she would never for one moment have entertained the idea of accepting the scandal a divorce would cause or throw away her position in England for a man who could not offer her at least as fine if not a better position
elsewhere.

  He told himself now that he might have guessed that she was shrewd, cunning and calculating.

  When he looked back, he could remember little things she had said that might, if he had been more astute, have warned him of the truth.

  Instead he had been lulled into believing that their affair was just like all the others he had participated in – the enjoyment of two people who desired each other physically, and who, when it was over, could be friends without any recriminations.

  He had been wrong, completely wrong, but what could he do about it now?

  For a moment all the self-control he had acquired during his thirty-three years of life seemed to crack.

  He wanted to scream aloud at his own frustration and, as he had thought already, to strangle Olive before she could tell her husband, as she intended to do, what had been happening between them.

  That, the Duke knew, would start the ball rolling and engulf him eventually in a hell of despondency.

  How could he bear to give up England and all it meant to him? How could he turn his back on his horses, his houses and most of all his friends?

  No woman could compensate for such a sacrifice even if he was willing to make it.

  Whatever Olive might say about the pleasures they would find in other countries, which he agreed were considerable, he would still yearn for the land he belonged to and for the respect and affection of his relatives, and there were a great number of them, who looked up to him as Head of the Family.

  “God, help me out of this mess!” he murmured aloud and it was a prayer that came from the very depths of his being.

  Even as he spoke the words, he felt something strange happening beneath his feet and for a moment he could not think what it could be.

  Then he realised that the soft cushion was rising and the top of the box beneath it was opening.

  Considerably startled, the Duke put his feet down on the floor and bent forward to look more closely at what was happening.

  While they had been driving away from London, the clouds that had obscured the moon and the stars earlier in the evening had moved away and now the moonlight shone in through the windows.

  To his astonishment, the Duke could see a hand appear between the cushion on which his feet had rested and the box beneath it.

  For a moment he thought he must be imagining it, until the lid of the box opened completely and he could see indistinctly, but nevertheless surely, a face.

  He sat upright.

  “What the devil are you doing here?” he asked.

  A small very frightened voice replied,

  “I am – sorry – very sorry – but I am being suffocated – !”

  For an instant the Duke was silent in astonishment.

  Then he said,

  “You did not answer my question. What are you doing here?”

  “I heard you – say,” the voice answered, “when you arrived at Lord Brandon’s house, that you were going to the country later – and that is where I – want to go.”

  The Duke remembered saying to his footman who had opened the door,

  “Make sure the travelling cabriolet is here at two o’clock. I am going straight to The Castle, so make certain the horses are fresh.”

  “Yes, Your Grace,” the man had replied.

  The Duke was aware meanwhile that the face was still peering at him through the open lid of the box in front of him and he said sharply,

  “You had better come out and then I shall be able to put my feet back comfortably where they were before.”

  “Yes – of course.”

  Something very small seemed to crawl out of the box onto the floor of the carriage and, as the moonlight illuminated it, the Duke was aware, to his astonishment, that it was a girl.

  He had not unnaturally thought that it must be a boy who was hiding. He remembered when he was young he had often wished to run away from his Tutors and he had assumed that something of the same sort was now happening.

  However, crouching down on the rug that he had thrown off his knees was undoubtedly a girl. He could see her eyes were very large, almost unnaturally so, in a small pointed face and she had fair hair, so fair that it seemed almost silver in the moonlight.

  She was wearing a plain gown in some darkish colour that made her seem very slight and unsubstantial.

  She knelt on the floor, looking up at the Duke and after a moment he said,

  “I think you would be more comfortable sitting beside me.”

  He moved a little as he spoke and she rose and sat down beside him. As she did so, he realised that she was taller than he had first thought her to be.

  In fact it was surprising that she had managed to conceal herself in the box opposite.

  He picked up the rug from the floor and put it over her knees as he said,

  “Now, suppose you tell me what all this is about? I imagine you are running away?”

  There was a little pause and then she said,

  “What I want is to – reach the country – but if you wish to stop here and now – I can leave you and you – need not – think about me – anymore.”

  There was a hesitating note in the frightened way in which she spoke and, as the Duke turned to look at her, he found it difficult, while she was sitting beside him, to see her as clearly as when she had been on the floor between the two windows.

  “What do you think you would do if I do put you out anywhere on this strange road?” he asked. “Where are you going?”

  This time there was quite a long pause before she replied,

  “That is – my business!”

  “I think, as you have taken the liberty of making free of my carriage, it is also mine,” the Duke said. “You must be aware that no woman should walk about alone in the middle of the night.”

  “This is – different!”

  He hardly heard the words and yet he knew that she had said them.

  “Why?”

  There was no answer and after a moment he decided he should get her to start from the beginning.

  “What is your name?”

  “Janeta!”

  “You have another name?”

  “That is not – important.”

  “I find it quite important,” the Duke said. “Suppose you tell me who you are?”

  “No one of any interest – just a servant in – the house from which – you have just come.”

  As she spoke, her words tumbled over one another and the Duke knew that what she had said was untrue.

  He turned round to face her and said,

  “Your voice is educated and does not sound to me in the least like that of a servant, so tell me the truth. Who are you?”

  She looked away from him and he could see her profile against one of the windows.

  He had the feeling that her features were classical, but he could not be sure.

  “I am waiting for an answer, Janeta,” he said after a moment, “and I intend to have one.”

  “Please – there is no point in your – knowing,” she said. “It will only – complicate – things.”

  “Why should it do that?”

  “Because it will! Please – please stop your carriage and let me go – away as I want to do – just as I had intended to do when you – arrive at your – Castle.”

  “And you think no one would see you?”

  “No one noticed me – climb into your – carriage. I am very – small.”

  “I don’t think that you are as young as I at first imagined you to be,” he said, “so I feel responsible for you. Now, as we must start somewhere, I want to know your name.”

  “Why should it – matter to you?”

  “For one reason, I am curious,” the Duke replied. “Can you not imagine that if our positions were reversed and you found me hidden somewhere, you would wish to know who I was and why I was there?”

  “For you it – would be – different.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you are a man – and b
ecause – life is not – difficult where – you are concerned.”

  The Duke thought grimly that it was very difficult at this particular moment, but there was no point in saying so and he merely replied,

  “If you are having difficulties, I am sure I could solve them. It is something I am rather good at doing where other people are concerned.”

  That, he thought, was certainly true. He had helped a great number of people in his life in one way or another.

  But now he had a problem that for the moment seemed insoluble.

  He broke the silence between them by saying,

  “Now, let us go back to the beginning. You heard me tell my footman that I was leaving for the country this evening and you decided to accompany me. That means that you were in front of the house we have just left and you were therefore living there.”

  “Not – anymore. You have taken me – away and I shall – never go – back!”

  “Why not?”

  “I cannot – tell you and anyway, you would not – understand.”

  “How do you know until you try me?” the Duke asked. “I have always considered myself a very understanding person. I would like to know why you are running away.”

  “Because I can stand it no longer – because I am being – forced to do something that is so unspeakable – so horrible – so ghastly – that I would rather – ”

  The young voice stopped suddenly and the Duke said quietly,

  “You would rather die! Is that what you were going to say?”

  The girl did not reply and after a moment he said,

  “Are you telling me that you are going to the country to kill yourself? I just don’t believe it!”

  “You are not to ask – questions,” she said quickly. “Just stop the – carriage and let me – get out.”

  “That is something I have no intention of doing,” the Duke answered, “unless you would like me to take you back to London, if that is what you wish.”

  “She gave a cry of horror.

  “No, no – of course not – nothing will make me go back – nothing – nothing!”

  “Very well then, we will go on as long as you tell me why you are leaving.”

  She turned towards him and he knew, although he could not see her, that her eyes were pleading.