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  Yursa knew that, while her father loved her, she took second place to her brothers.

  It was this more than anything else that made her after her mother’s death six years ago turn more and more to her fantasy world.

  It was peopled with Gods and Goddesses, heroes and heroines who were more real to Yursa than the people she came in contact with every day.

  At night she went to sleep telling herself stories of the men who had fought for their Faith and perhaps died for it.

  And of the women who through prayer and the help of the Divine worked miracles.

  Because her great-grandmother had been before her marriage a member of the Montvéal family, Yursa had always been proud of her French blood.

  She had also, because her mother had been brought up a Catholic, been baptised into the Catholic faith, although her brothers were, like their father, Protestants.

  It was an arrangement that had been adopted very successfully by a number of English Noblemen who had married French wives.

  It made Yursa’s life rather different from those of her English friends.

  She not only worshipped in a different Church from the rest of her family but she had been sent to be educated to a Convent in Normandy, part of which was a school for the children of aristocrats.

  The nuns, who were secluded and dedicated entirely to their faith, lived in another part of the Convent.

  Although this appeared to make no difference to the happiness and love that existed between her father and mother, Yursa always felt that there was a barrier between herself and the rest of her family.

  In some ways she felt as if she was an outsider.

  It was nothing she could put into words and yet the feeling was there.

  It therefore meant that she relied more and more on what she thought of as her own private world, which was always in her thoughts whatever she was doing.

  Now, aware of what she had overheard at the door, she wondered if her father would express to her his anxiety about the visit that she was to make with her grandmother.

  Or perhaps he would just leave it unsaid.

  She knew that there was a conflict going on inside him and he was battling with himself, knowing that it was his duty to prepare her in some way for what she might encounter when she reached France.

  “Your grandmother,” he said after a moment, “is very much looking forward to showing you The Château that has meant so much to her all her life.”

  “She has often talked about it, Papa.”

  “It is certainly very magnificent,” the Earl went on. “But you will find the Montvéals a somewhat strange family.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I mean,” the Earl replied, “that they treat the Duc, who is still a comparatively young man, almost as if he was some omnipotent creature they must bow down to and obey, whatever he demands of them.”

  The Earl gave a short laugh before he went on,

  “Our English Dukes are certainly well aware of their own consequence, but they do not seem to have the authority or to inspire the same feeling of awe that you will find at Montvéal.”

  Yursa did not reply and after a moment her father went on,

  “Don’t let them intimidate you, my dear. After all, as my father always used to say, ‘if you prick a King, he still bleeds like any other man’.”

  Yursa laughed.

  “I will try not to be awestruck, Papa. In any case, if he is as pompous as you say, I doubt if Duc César will even notice me.”

  “Just remember that, if he does, he is just an ordinary man,” the Earl said, “and in England, while we have our heroes, we don’t lie down and let them walk all over us!”

  He spoke sharply and Yursa asked innocently,

  “Is that what Duc César does?”

  “I have not seen him for years,” her father answered, “but from all I hear, he has become very stuck-up and needs taking down a peg or two, not that that is something you should attempt.”

  “No, of course not, Papa!”

  “The trouble with all Frenchmen,” the Earl went on as if he was speaking to himself, “is that they think too much of themselves, not having been educated at a Public School, the same way as we are.”

  “Does that make a difference, Papa?”

  “It certainly does. Your brothers will tell you that, if they are cocky, they soon have it kicked out of them. And a good job too!”

  The Earl paused for a moment.

  Then he said,

  “You are very young, Yursa, and I want you to realise that there is no hurry for you to get married.”

  “No, of course not, Papa.”

  “I like having you here with me and, when we go to London, you will make a great many new friends of your own age. Of course you can invite them back here when the Season is over.”

  “Thank you, Papa.”

  “What is more, they will be English and, when you do get married, I would like you to marry an Englishman. A decent chap, who will love and respect you and you will be as happy with as I was with your mother.”

  It was a long speech for the Earl to make. Yursa sensed that he was trying to find words to express his deeper feelings with and it was not easy for him.

  She got up from the chair in which she was sitting and putting her arms around her father’s neck as he stood with his back to the fireplace, she said,

  “I love you, Papa, and I have no wish to do anything that would not please you.”

  The Earl put his arm around her.

  “You are a good girl, Yursa. I don’t pretend to understand you at times, but I am very glad that I have a daughter!”

  “And I am very glad I have you as a father, Papa.”

  Yursa kissed his cheek.

  Then, as if he was embarrassed at having been over-emotional, the Earl began talking of their plans for the next morning and which horses they would be riding.

  Only when she went up to bed did Yursa lie thinking of what she had overheard, feeling it odd that her grandmother should think it possible that she could change the Duc’s intention.

  If he had really made up his mind to marry Zelée de Salône, it was unlikely in view of what her father had said about him that anyone could make him change it.

  She had heard all sorts of things about César de Montvéal ever since she had been a small girl.

  The fact that he was a Duc and a relative of her great-grandmother and that her mother had always been a close friend of the family made him seem like the Prince in a Fairytale.

  His exploits and possessions were certainly different from anybody else’s.

  She had heard her mother talk of César until she felt that she had met him, seen him and listened to him.

  Now, for the first time, all these things would become true.

  She knew how excited she would have been at the mere idea of going to The Château with her grandmother, if she had not overheard her conversation with her father.

  But she now knew there was a very different reason for the visit, other than just to see The Château.

  How was it possible that her grandmother could think for one instant that the Duc César would be interested in her or that he would wish to marry a young inexperienced girl from England?

  At thirty-three he was a man of the world, who apparently from all she had overheard had enjoyed many love affairs.

  Now he was contemplating marrying a woman his relatives disapproved of.

  Yursa was convinced that their opinion would not weigh in the slightest with the Duc unless he was very different from what she had been led to believe.

  That he always expected to have his own way and that he organised his life entirely to his own satisfaction had been impressed upon her since she had first heard of him.

  She was quite certain now that if he wished to marry Zelée de Salône he would do so regardless of anything anybody else might say about it.

  She was well aware, and it had certainly been drilled into he
r, that aristocrats, both in France and England, married within their own class.

  To make a mésalliance was to suffer endless indignity and unpleasantness, which was to be avoided at all costs.

  She was aware that her father and mother’s marriage had been arranged.

  Yet by a lucky chance they had in fact fallen deeply in love with each other even before they were engaged.

  Their love had intensified year by year until, when her mother died, her father had been broken-hearted.

  Because he was a reserved man the Earl had, as far as the outside world was concerned, concealed his misery and despair.

  It was only because, ever since she was a child, Yursa had been very intuitive that she had known how much her father suffered and how utterly miserable he was because his wife was no longer with him.

  Because he was English he could not express his feelings even to her.

  Yursa could only communicate her sympathy and understanding by being more extrovert in showing her feelings than she did naturally.

  Now she knew what her father was feeling about her without his having to put it into words.

  She was sure, although he did not say so, that he was shocked at the idea of her marrying the Duc, even though it would be a brilliant marriage from a social point of view.

  She was sure that he was thinking that the Duc would continue to create scandals, to pursue married women, and have affaires de coeur.

  These were inevitably the talk not only of France but also of England.

  They were all matters that her father considered unpleasant and deeply deprecated, especially where they concerned a member of his own family.

  She wanted to reassure him and to tell him that she had no intention of marrying the Duc, even if he asked her, which was most unlikely.

  She knew, however, that if she did so she would have to reveal the fact that she had overheard the conversation her father had had with her grandmother.

  He would think it wrong and in a way ‘unsporting’ of her to have eavesdropped.

  ‘Poor Papa!’ Yursa said to herself in the darkness of her room. ‘He is really worried about me, but perhaps when we go to London, I shall find some charming and delightful Englishman who he will approve of.’

  It was wishful thinking.

  At the same time she could not help being thrilled that she was to meet the redoubtable Duc César for the first time.

  She would then find out if he was as fascinating as her grandmother thought he was.

  Also if he was as fast and improper as the shocked and lowered voices of her other relatives who knew him indicated him to be.

  Yursa was, of course, very innocent.

  At the Convent the conversation had covered every subject except that of men.

  That was a forbidden subject and, although occasionally the other girls had giggled together over what they had overheard during the school holidays, Yursa had not been interested.

  She was entranced by music, which seemed to be a part of her dreams.

  She had loved the literature that she had been allowed to read and had found the history lessons fascinating, because through them she learnt more about France than any other country in the world.

  It was inevitable that she should be moved by the piety of the nuns, the mystic atmosphere she had found in the Chapel and the sincerity of the Priests who came to teach them about the Sacraments.

  It was all part of the idealistic world she lived in and which absorbed her thoughts and her feelings to the exclusion of all else.

  It was too in the beauty she found everywhere around her.

  She was sure that, just as she loved the flowers, the garden, the old oak trees in the Park and the streams running through the meadows, so she would love Burgundy.

  She was also sure that she would love the huge Château standing sentinel over the valley and looking towards the far distant Jura mountains.

  ‘Whatever the Duc is like,’ she told herself confidently, ‘I shall be thrilled with his environment and the Kingdom he reigns over.’

  Then she laughed at herself in the darkness for, just like all the other people who talked about him, she was thinking of him as a King and an Emperor.

  A God everybody must bow down to!

  That was something that she had long ago determined that she would not do, however difficult it might be to refuse.

  Chapter Two

  The Duc de Montvéal stirred and yawned.

  Then as he moved the sheets a soft seductive voice beside him asked,

  “You are not leaving me, mon cher?”

  “I think it’s time I went back to my own room,” the Duc replied.

  “But, why? There is plenty of time.”

  The Duc yawned again and it passed through his mind that he always found it boring when women wished to detain him after their lovemaking was over.

  He was in fact tired and not only because he had been riding all day.

  The hours he had spent with Zelée had been fiery, tempestuous and, although he did not like to admit it, extremely exhausting.

  Then, as she put her head on his shoulder, he heard her say,

  “I want to talk to you, César.”

  “I should have thought that this was hardly the time for conversation,” he replied with a slightly sarcastic note in his voice.

  “It is easier than when we are consumed with the fires of love.”

  The Duc wondered vaguely if he should put her to one side and rise as he wished to do or whether he would be wiser to listen to what she had to say.

  He could not be sure what it could be, but he knew Zelée’s methods all too well.

  He was certain that she was going to demand of him something very expensive which he would find it hard to refuse when he was not thinking as clearly as he did usually.

  He felt her draw even closer to him and he asked with a touch of irritation in his voice,

  “Well, what is it?”

  “I have been thinking, my most beloved and perfect lover, that we should be married!”

  For a moment the Duc was lost for words.

  He had never at any time contemplated marrying Zelée and it had never entered his mind that it was something she might want.

  She had made no secret of the fact that there had been many lovers in her life since the death of her husband and more than likely before it as well.

  The Duc had taken her as his mistress as he had taken a great number of other women without thought of there being any permanency about it.

  Zelée, admittedly, was slightly different from the demi-mondaines he enjoyed himself with in Paris.

  She came from a respectable French family.

  She had been married to a man who was not noble, but was certainly respected in the part of France where they lived, not far from The Château.

  Her behaviour, however, had made the more strait-laced Dowagers ostracise her.

  The Duc looked on her as having the same standing as the actresses who amused him and the courtesans of Paris, who had become notorious all over Europe.

  He knew that she was waiting for an answer and after a moment he replied lightly,

  “My dear Zelée, I should make an abominable husband if I married and actually it’s a position I have so far managed to avoid.”

  “I have heard that before,” Zelée replied, “but, mon brave, we would be very happy together and I will keep you amused where with any other woman you would be bored within a few months.”

  This, the Duc had to admit, was true.

  He had always thought that, whoever he married, it was a situation that would pall once the honeymoon was over.

  But that also included Zelée!

  Although he found her amusing and more passionate than any woman he had ever encountered before, it was not something he would think admirable in the woman he married.

  If he thought that he had answered Zelée’s question effectively, he was mistaken.

  “You must be aware, m
y dearest,” she said in a coaxing tone that he sometimes found irresistible, “that my father and my other relatives are perturbed that I should be staying here for so long and they expect you to protect my reputation.”

  The Duc almost laughed aloud.

  He knew only too well that Zelée’s reputation in the neighbourhood was a disgrace to her family.

  She had also, admittedly through her association with him, become notorious in Paris.

  That she was beautiful went without saying, but she had a strange rather savage beauty that was different from that of most other women.

  The darkness of her hair, the way her eyes slanted a little upwards at the corners and the twisting smile that was undeniably provocative made artists beg on their knees to be allowed to paint her.

  Journalists wrote about her on every possible occasion, their adjectives overflowing in their efforts to describe her adequately.

  She was in fact, the Duc thought, almost indescribable.

  There was something primitive and peculiarly French about her that was in a way slightly inhuman.

  Her sharp wit and her very twisted sense of humour amused him.

  Yet he could understand all too well why every member of his family disliked her and resented her being so often a guest at The Château.

  It would have made it outrageous to have her stay there alone.

  There were always house parties therefore where married women, whether they liked it or not, played chaperone to the Duc and the woman they could not dismiss by saying she came from the gutter.

  A number of them knew Zelée’s father and uncles, who were all well off and owned properties in Burgundy or on the borders of it.

  “We will be very happy,” Zelée was whispering, “and, of course, I will provide you with the son you must have to inherit.”

  It was then that the Duc had a feeling of revulsion.

  He was not shocked by anything he had done, why should he be?

  Equally it was impossible to think of Zelée as the mother of his son, indeed of anybody’s children.

  With a stiff movement that was characteristic of him he set her on one side and rose from the bed saying as he did so,

  “You are talking nonsense! As you well know, I am determined to marry no one, but to enjoy my freedom.”