The Prisoner of Love Read online

  The Duchess laughed.

  “I am not frightened, Edmund, and there is no reason for you to work yourself up about its being dangerous.”

  “It is not only dangerous, it is sheer lunacy!” the Duke retorted. “When I was in London two days ago, I was told the latest idiocy that is taking place in that monstrosity.”

  “What is that?” Sorilda asked eagerly.

  She longed to see the Crystal Palace for herself, but when she had suggested she might go to London for that sole purpose, her step-aunt had made it very clear that she was to remain in the country and had forbidden her categorically to stay at Nuneaton House in Park Lane.

  It was most unfair, Sorilda thought, when it seemed everybody else in the whole of Northampton would be journeying to London for the Exhibition.

  But it did not really surprise her, as she knew that her step-aunt’s feelings towards her were growing more vitriolic week by week, month by month.

  “Do tell me what is happening, Uncle Edmund,” she asked.

  She was so curious that she ignored the frown on the smooth white forehead between two exquisitely pale blue eyes, because the Duchess felt that she was pushing herself forward.

  As if he was rather glad to have the opportunity of disparaging the Exhibition further, the Duke said,

  “It had been found that the three large elm trees in the transept harbour so many sparrows that all the rich woods on display could be spoiled by them.”

  “Why on earth did they not think of that before they left the trees unfelled in the Palace?” Sorilda asked.

  “You may well ask the question,” the Duke replied. “The whole conception is a disgrace from start to finish and when you think that an average of two thousand workmen have been working on this disastrous project, it makes me despair of our country’s sanity!”

  “What have they done about the sparrows, Uncle Edmund?” Sorilda enquired, wanting to keep the Duke to the point.

  “The Queen suggested that Lord John Russell should be sent for,” the Duke answered, “and Lord John advised that soldiers from the Regiments of Foot Guards should be sent into the building to shoot the sparrows.”

  “Surely that would break the glass?”

  “That is what the Prince pointed out,” the Duke replied, annoyed that she had anticipated what he was about to say.

  “Then what did they do?”

  “Somebody, I do not know who,” the Duke answered, “suggested sending for the Duke of Wellington.”

  “And what did he suggest?”

  “I believe he remarked that he was not a bird-catcher, but on the Queen’s command, he presented himself at Buckingham Palace.”

  With difficulty Sorilda prevented herself from interrupting, as she knew by her uncle’s tone of voice that he was coming to the point of the story.

  The Duke paused a little, then after a glance at his wife to see if she was listening, he said,

  “Wellington, I understand, uttered four words, ‘try sparrow hawks, ma’am!’”

  Sorilda clapped her hands.

  “Oh, that was clever, very clever of him!”

  “And what happened?” the Duchess asked, because she felt it was expected of her.

  She was obviously not particularly interested because she never was unless the conversation involved her.

  The Duke gave a short laugh.

  “It was reported that the sparrows flew out of the Crystal Palace in a body and were never seen again!”

  Sorilda laughed and she thought, as her uncle laughed too, that he was in a better humour now that he had been able to tell her a story, which was something he always enjoyed.

  For a moment he had forgotten the Earl of Winsford.

  The Duchess rose to her feet.

  “I am sure that you have something better to do, Sorilda, than sit here at the breakfast table,” she said disagreeably. “Actually I have various tasks waiting for you in my boudoir. Come with me and I will give them to you.”

  Sorilda had not quite finished her coffee, but she knew better than to delay and obediently followed the Duchess from the room, noticing as she did so how perfectly her step-aunt’s crinoline swung from her small waist.

  She was feeling a violent resentment because the Duchess had refused to allow the whalebone frame that supported her own gown to be wider than two feet from side to side.

  It was extremely unfortunate that Iris had come into her step-niece’s life at a moment when Sorilda was in need of a number of new clothes, having grown out of her old ones.

  She had, in fact, been planning a visit to London to buy what was necessary in the way of gowns and cloaks and with them new bonnets made fashionable by the Queen.

  Then had come the Duke’s surprise wedding and the clothes had therefore not been bought.

  After the new Duchess’s reign had begun, Sorilda had found it impossible to buy anything without it first receiving her step-aunt’s approval.

  “I have always chosen my own clothes,” she protested.

  “You must allow me to know what is best for you,” Iris had replied firmly.

  Sorilda had soon found that what Iris considered ‘best’ for her was in every way to her disadvantage.

  She soon became aware that the Duchess intended to do everything in her power to detract from her appearance.

  She flatly refused to allow Sorilda’s gowns to be made in anything but an unpleasant shade of fawn, which made her skin look sallow, or a drab grey which made her feel like a ghost.

  It was no use appealing to her uncle, for Sorilda knew he was completely under his new wife’s thumb and would agree to anything she suggested so long as she smiled at him and coaxed him in a manner that he found utterly irresistible.

  It was not only by choosing her clothes that the Duchess tried to alter Sorilda’s appearance.

  She was astonished, when one evening before she came down to dinner, her step-aunt’s lady’s maid, a gaunt and unpleasant woman whom Sorilda knew repeated to her Mistress everything that happened below stairs, came in to her bedroom.

  “Good evening, Harriet!” Sorilda exclaimed and waited to hear the reason for her appearance.

  “Her Grace has asked me to do your hair in a new style, miss.”

  “I am quite happy with the way it is now, thank you,” Sorilda replied.

  Harriet had not even bothered to answer her and Sorilda, knowing that it was not a request but an order, sat down at her dressing table.

  Harriet produced a china pot that Sorilda looked at questioningly.

  “Her Grace thinks your hair looks dry, miss,” Harriet explained.

  Opening the pot she started to smear Sorilda’s hair with what appeared to be dark pomade.

  It was soon quite obvious that the result took away the colour of her hair and left it dank and limp.

  It was then arranged by Harriet in a tight bun at the back of her head with small and unbecoming plaits falling beside her cheeks to be looped up round the ear.

  Sorilda said nothing, but she knew exactly what her step-aunt was about and was not at all certain what she could do about it.

  It was only as she considered the whole situation that she began to realise how completely she was being excluded from meeting anyone or going anywhere and she could see her whole life being spent in The Castle with no possible means of escape.

  When they entertained, Iris made excuses for Sorilda not to come down to dinner.

  “We are a man short and I cannot find anyone to make up the right numbers,” she would say in front of the Duke, “so I know, dear child, you will understand and have dinner alone just this once.”

  The same thing would happen at luncheon parties and, although Sorilda longed to protest and say it was not once but continually, she knew that whatever she said, her step-aunt would find an answer and the Duke would support her.

  She began to feel as if a trap was closing in on her and that she was being incarcerated in a prison in which she had a life sentence.

  Sometimes, when the Duchess had been particularly unpleasant, she would go to the window of her room and gaze out over the green Park with its great ancient oak trees extending to the far skyline and feel that she was behind bars.

  This, she told herself, was how Royal prisoners felt when they were taken to some isolated castle and knew that there was no escape except by death.

  ‘How can I bear it? How can I stay here forever when I am treated like this?’ she asked herself.

  But however hard she tried she could find no loophole and no password to carry her through the invisible barriers that stood between her and freedom.

  It was all the Duchess’s doing and Sorilda blamed herself because she had been foolish enough not to talk to her uncle about her future before he married.

  Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined, when he seemed to her so old and staid in his ways, that he would suddenly embark upon a new life with a young wife.

  It was very obvious to Sorilda why Iris had married him and, because she was perceptive or perhaps because she was a woman, she could see the efforts that Iris made to keep the Duke’s attention and hold him a willing slave to her beauty.

  Sometimes the mask that Iris wore slipped and Sorilda would know that she was bored and impatient with her elderly husband and that even the position of Duchess could not compensate for the loss of the admirers who had circled round her in the past.

  Sorilda was not quite certain when she first began to suspect that her step-aunt was particularly interested in the Earl of Winsford.

  Perhaps it was because when people spoke of him she noticed an unusual flicker in those pale blue eyes and a sudden warmth in a voice that, when speaking to women, was usually coldly indifferent if not acidly unpleasant.

  What
ever it was, Sorilda found herself looking for signs that Iris became more human when the Earl’s name was mentioned.

  Now as she followed the Duchess down the passage Sorilda asked,

  “Are you going to write to the Earl and congratulate him on being made a Member of the Order of the Garter?”

  She was behind her step-aunt and yet, without seeing her face, she felt that she was receptive to the idea.

  There was a little pause before the Duchess replied,

  “I am sure that would be the correct thing to do. I wonder if he is at home or in London?”

  “He is here at Winsford House.”

  “How do you know?”

  The question was sharp.

  “The grooms were talking about him yesterday, saying he had brought down a new team of horses which he had purchased at Tattersalls.”

  As she spoke, Sorilda knew that the Duchess was, in fact, aware of the Earl’s whereabouts.

  She could not explain how she knew, it was just as if she was reading her step-aunt’s thoughts.

  “Then we must ask him to dinner,” the Duchess exclaimed. “A small party would be delightful! But I only hope that your uncle will not rant on about the Crystal Palace.”

  They walked up the stairs and the Duchess led the way into her boudoir, which adjoined the State room where she slept.

  The boudoir was fragrant with flowers that came from the hot houses in the walled garden and there was also the aroma of an exotic French perfume, which Iris left on the air wherever she went.

  “Now let me see – ” the Duchess was saying as she went to her secretaire that stood in one of the windows, “ – I doubt if his Lordship will stay long in the country, so I had better send my invitation by a groom. I will write it now and you can carry it to the stables and tell Huxley to have it taken to Winsford House immediately.”

  Sorilda waited, knowing that the reason she was being given the letter was to prevent her uncle becoming aware of the dinner party until it was too late for it to be cancelled.

  As the Duchess wrote, Sorilda looked around the boudoir, seeing that Iris had accumulated in the room of the best and most valuable pieces in The Castle.

  There were the miniatures of the Nuneaton family which went back to Tudor times, the diamond-studded snuff-boxes that had been given to the previous Duke by the Prince Regent and the onyx clock with jewelled hands and matching candlesticks.

  And innumerable other small objets d’art that had graced the drawing rooms and other parts of The Castle before being moved here.

  It was a fitting background to her beauty, Sorilda told herself honestly, yet she wondered, as she had done so often before, why anyone who had been blessed with such an exquisite face and a perfectly proportioned body should not have a heart and soul to match.

  She was not the only person in The Castle who suffered from Iris’s scheming for power or who was punished for being attractive.

  Maids who had no other fault than that they were comely had been dismissed without a reference and Sorilda knew that the same would have been her own fate if it was possible for her to be driven out in the same manner.

  The Duchess finished her letter, placed it in an envelope and sealed it.

  “Now hurry to the stables, Sorilda,” she said sharply, “and, when you have given Huxley the note, don’t waste time with the horses but come straight back.”

  Sorilda did not reply.

  She took the note and walked across the room.

  As she reached the door, she looked back and saw an expression in the Duchess’s eyes that made her shiver.

  ‘Why should she hate me so?’ she thought as she went down the stairs.

  She could see her reflection in one of the long gilt-framed mirrors and thought it was pitiable compared to the elegantly gowned, exquisitely beautiful Duchess.

  Her greased-down hair, her drab fawn gown which she wore over a sad imitation of a crinoline made her look like a charity child or some poor shopkeeper’s assistant.

  The only things that Iris could not alter were Sorilda’s eyes. Very large, so that they seemed to dominate her heart-shaped face, they gleamed green in the pale spring sunshine coming through the long windows of the hall.

  But in their depths Sorilda knew there was a darkness and despair because she was afraid.

  ‘One day,’ she told her reflection as she passed the mirror, ‘I shall sink into such insignificance that I shall just cease to exist.’

  The thought was like a pain inside her and, although she tried not to think about it, it persisted.

  When she reached the stables, she gave the note to Huxley, the Head Groom.

  “Her Grace asks that you take this immediately to Winsford House,” Sorilda said.

  “The ’orses won’t be keen, Miss Sorilda, they doesn’t like the competition they finds there,” the groom joked.

  This, Sorilda knew, was a somewhat familiar way of speaking. At the same time the servants at The Castle still treated her as if she was the child she had been when she first arrived and they had tried to comfort her in her sad loss.

  “I wish I could see the Earl’s new horses,” she said.

  “Next time you goes ridin’, miss,” Huxley answered, “take a look o’er the boundary at the Burnt Oak.”

  “You mean he rides on the Long Gallop?”

  “Most days when his Lordship’s in the country.”

  “Then if I get a chance I shall certainly look at him,” Sorilda smiled. “He is a fine rider.”

  “Best I’ve ever seen!” Huxley agreed. “We’re all a-backin’ ’im to win the Gold Cup, not that the odds’ll be worth ’aving.”

  “Be careful there is not an outsider to slip past the post at the last moment,” Sorilda teased.

  She knew that Huxley was an inveterate gambler. In fact she had often discussed with him his different bets and had been delighted when he backed a winner.

  “Now don’t you go a-frightenin’ me, Miss Sorilda!” Huxley protested. “’Tis a pity you won’t be attendin’ Royal Ascot this year, as we’d expected.”

  Sorilda remembered that they had talked about it the previous year and she told Huxley that she was sure, as she would be eighteen, that her uncle would let her attend the Ascot Races.

  It was something she had always longed to do, but now with the advent of the new Duchess, she knew that she was as likely to be in the Royal Enclosure at Ascot as she was to be at the North Pole.

  As if he saw by the expression on her face that he had depressed her, Huxley said,

  “I want you to try out Kingfisher now, ’is fetlock’s ’ealed. He needs gentle ’andlin’. I daren’t trust the lads on ’im till ’e’s back to ’is former self.”

  It was Huxley’s way of being tactful, Sorilda knew, for she had always ridden Kingfisher before he had twisted a fetlock on one of the jumps.

  “I will be ready at six o’clock tomorrow morning,” she said.

  “I’ll be waitin’ for you, Miss Sorilda,” Huxley replied. “It’ll do you good to ’ave a bit of exercise.”

  He was well aware why she had not been able to ride for several days.

  The Duchess had forbidden her to ride when she might be running errands or doing some unpleasant task that was assigned to her more as a punishment than for any other reason.

  At six o’clock in the morning she could slip out and reach the stables without anyone being aware of it.

  Her only fear was that Harriet might see her and would undoubtedly make trouble by reporting it to her Mistress.

  Sorilda remembered now that she had been told not to linger at the stables.

  “Six o’clock, Huxley ’ she smiled, “and thank you very much.”

  She was thanking him for far more than his promise to have Kingfisher ready for her and, as she walked away without looking back, the old groom was watching her, a worried expression in his eyes.

  *

  Sorilda went back to The Castle and, as she reached the hall, she heard her step-aunt calling to her from the top of the stairs.

  “Come here!”

  The Duchess’s command was peremptory and Sorilda ran up the stairs quickly.

  Taking her by the arm in a grip that hurt, the Duchess said,

  “Did you tell Huxley to wait for an answer?”

  “N-no,” Sorilda replied, “you did not tell me to.”

  “Of course I meant him to do so, you little fool!” the Duchess cried. “Run quickly and tell him to bring back an answer and then tell the footman to bring it to you, not to me. Do you understand?”