The Dare-Devil Duke Read online

This was something Mr. Ashton was not expecting and he gave a little laugh.

  “I might have thought that myself, Miss Watson, had not a number of Governesses and Tutors before him said the same thing.”

  “The little boy is not – insane – is he?” Kasia asked.

  Mr. Ashton shook his head.

  “No, indeed, he is certainly not that. It is just that he refuses to learn, and takes a violent dislike to all his Tutors.”

  “You say he has had a number of them, so I can understand that,” Kasia said. “Perhaps I will succeed where everybody else has failed.”

  “Are you really willing to undertake such a difficult task?” Mr. Ashton asked.

  There was a note of surprise in his voice.

  Kasia was sure he had assumed that when he told her the truth she would no longer be interested.

  “Shall I say,” Kasia said slowly, “that I would like to take a chance on it.”

  She realised that Mr. Ashton was looking at her speculatively and she said quickly,

  “I am very anxious to find work immediately, and it would suit me if I could go to the Castle tomorrow.”

  Mr. Ashton drew in his breath.

  “I think, Miss Watson, I would be correct in asking for references or credentials.”

  “Yes, of course,” Kasia agreed, “and I know that Lady Margaret Ross who lived in the Square, would have given me one, if she had not died a year ago.”

  She paused a moment and then went on,

  “There is also the Countess of Malford, to whom I am distantly related, but she unfortunately lives in Derbyshire, and that would take rather a long time.”

  Kasia had in fact, never met the Countess of Malford, her grandmother, although her mother had often talked about her.

  She thought however, she could forge references without Mr. Ashton suspecting anything.

  The last time her mother had spoken of the Countess she was then nearly eighty, and not in particularly good health.

  Mr. Ashton was obviously impressed, but at the same time still thinking he should have a reference.

  There was a somewhat uncomfortable pause. Then he asked,

  “There is no one else you know of, Miss Watson, who would vouch for you?”

  “There are plenty of people who would inform you that I am hard working and, I hope, intelligent,” Kasia replied, “but I am not sure that all of them are in ‘Debrett’s Peerage’!”

  Mr. Ashton laughed.

  “I will tell you what I will do, Miss Watson,” he said. “Having seen you and talked to you, I too will take a chance and send you to the Castle.”

  He smiled at Kasia and then continued,

  “His Grace’s Secretary there, Mr. Bennett, will be extremely grateful if I can supply someone immediately, and I know you will do your best to look after Master Simon until we can find someone a little older.”

  Kasia thought that would suit her very well.

  She was certain her father would be extremely agitated on finding she had left home.

  But he would eventually capitulate over her marriage to Lord Stefelton. Then she could return.

  “Can I leave tomorrow?” she asked.

  “Certainly, if you will tell me where the travelling carriage which will take you to the Castle can pick you up,” Mr. Ashton replied.

  Kasia gave him the address of a friend of hers who lived in Islington Square.

  It was a girl with whom she had been friends at School, and whom she had heard from only this morning.

  She had written her a letter saying that she hoped to see her while she was in London, but she was at the moment laid up having sprained her ankle.

  Mr. Ashton was noting down the address.

  “What time would suit you?” he asked. “I must tell you that it takes about three hours to reach the Castle.”

  Kasia thought quickly.

  She was certain her father would leave the house as he usually did at about nine o’clock.

  He nearly always had Board Meetings to attend in the City.

  “I can be ready by ten o’clock,” she said.

  “That means you will arrive at the Castle in time for luncheon,” Mr. Ashton said, “and I will send a groom first thing in the morning to tell Mr. Bennett to expect you.”

  “Thank you, thank you very much,” Kasia said, “and I promise you I will do my best. However, if I fail, I am sure you will understand.”

  “I have been frank with you,” Mr. Ashton said, “and although I shall be disappointed, Miss Watson, if you do fail, I shall just have to try again.”

  He spoke philosophically, and Kasia said,

  “I can only say that I will do everything I can.”

  She rose as she spoke and held out her hand.

  Mr. Ashton looked up at her in surprise.

  “Have you not forgotten something rather important, Miss Watson?”

  “What is that?” Kasia enquired.

  “We have not discussed your wages.”

  “Nor we have! I quite forgot!”

  “It is something that most people consider of more importance than anything else,” Mr. Ashton said. “Your wages will be paid weekly, or monthly, whichever you prefer and the Duke is a generous man.”

  “I think weekly would be more convenient,” Kasia replied. “If as you say, the Duke is generous, I will accept what he thinks is appropriate.”

  Mr. Ashton made a note of this before he rose to his feet.

  He walked to the door and opened it for Kasia.

  “I can only say, Miss Watson,” he said, “that you are unlike any Governess I have ever engaged before, and you have raised my hopes.”

  “Then I must try not to dash them!” Kasia replied.

  She was not surprised, because he was obviously intrigued by her unusual application, that he walked with her to the front door.

  She had however, no wish for him to see her go across into the garden.

  She therefore shook hands with him and walked away quickly down the street.

  She had the feeling that a little uncertainly he was still watching her.

  She therefore deliberately walked round the Square to her father’s house.

  The trees in the garden would prevent him from seeing her after she had turned the first corner.

  To make absolutely certain of being unseen she slipped down to the basement.

  She waited there outside the kitchen-door for some minutes.

  Then she walked back up again and knocked for the footman to open the front door.

  Once in the hall she asked,

  “Is the Master in his Study?”

  “No, Miss Kasia,” the footman replied. “He’s gone out.”

  That was what Kasia had hoped and she went upstairs to her bedroom.

  She and her father were dining tonight with a hostess who was giving a Ball for her debutante daughter.

  Kasia was determined not to be ready until they were actually expected at the dinner-party.

  She thought her father could hardly start fighting with her in the carriage when they had only a short distance to go.

  “I will have breakfast in bed tomorrow, Molly,” she said to her lady’s maid, “but I would like it at eight o’clock.”

  “Isn’t that too early for you, Miss?” the lady’s maid enquired. “You’ll be tired after dancin’ all night.”

  “I do not intend to be late tonight,” Kasia answered, “and as my father is accompanying me, he is certain to want to come home early.”

  This was true.

  Sir Roland enjoyed seeing the success his daughter was at the parties and Balls to which she was invited.

  But he continually looked at his watch, and seeing him as she danced past always made Kasia feel guilty.

  Tonight, she thought, she might have made the most of the Ball.

  It would be the last one she would go to for some time.

  But she knew she had a lot to do in the morning, if the Duke’s carriage was to call for her
at ten o’clock at her friend’s house in Islington.

  When she went downstairs her father was waiting for her.

  Although she did not realise it, she was looking very beautiful in one of her new debutante gowns.

  She was sure that, not having seen her since she walked out of his Study, he assumed he had won the battle.

  He would have told himself that she had seen sense.

  He would have assumed she was leaving it to him to arrange her future life as he had arranged everything else for her up until now.

  “Do you like my new gown, Papa?” Kasia asked as she walked into the room.

  “You look lovely, my dearest,” he replied, “and so very like your mother.”

  There was a note of pain in his voice which made Kasia feel sorry for him.

  Just for a moment she thought it was wrong of her to cause him anxiety.

  But she was determined to save herself from what she knew would be abject misery in being married to a man she disliked.

  It was something she kept thinking about, although she tried not to, all through the evening.

  Fortunately Lord Stefelton was not at the party.

  Kasia kept comparing him to the young men who asked her to dance.

  They were all very much younger than he was, which was at least in his early forties.

  He was, she thought, almost as ambitious as her Father had been at the same age.

  She knew he would be delighted at the prospect of being involved in the business in which Roland Ross had been such a success.

  Kasia could appreciate that he was clever.

  At the same time she had found him unattractive as a man.

  He had, she told herself, cold eyes.

  Every instinct in her body shrank from the idea of him touching her.

  As she danced she kept asking herself how her father, who had been so wildly in love with her mother, could force her into a loveless marriage.

  Especially with a man who she suspected was not particularly in love with her.

  She was, moreover, well aware that her father was still a very handsome man.

  He was also enormously rich and the Ladies present were all fawning over him and flattering him.

  Almost despite himself he was enjoying it.

  Kasia thought he must be blind, deaf and dumb to think she would accept a man for whom she had no feeling at all.

  Yet, she was sensitive enough to realise what his enormous fortune meant to her father.

  The foundation of it he had built up pound by pound as it were.

  Then on inheriting the shipping business, which he had already helped to make prosperous, he had multiplied and multiplied it until his fortune was like a mountain of gold that he must preserve at all costs.

  “That, of course, means sacrificing me!” Kasia thought desperately, and she was no longer sorry for him.

  When they drove home together at one o’clock in the morning, she deliberately talked of the party.

  “You were a huge success, Papa!” she said. “I saw all those beautiful women making eyes at you!”

  “If they did, I did not notice them,” her Father said hastily. “You know, Kasia, no one could ever compare with your mother.”

  “All the same, I think Mama would want you to enjoy yourself,” Kasia said. “She always thought you worked too hard, and now you cannot possibly want to be richer than you are already!”

  “I want to be rich for you and your children,” Sir Roland answered.

  Kasia thought, if she had the children he envisaged, they would also be Lord Stefelton’s and she shuddered.

  “You are going too fast, Papa,” she said, “and I have not had my Ball yet.”

  “It is going to be the best Ball of the Season!” Sir Roland said in a confident voice. “And everyone will talk about it afterwards.”

  There was a little pause and he said,

  “All I want you to do, my dearest, is to let me announce your engagement to Stefelton. After that, the fortune-hunters will keep away.”

  “I am too tired to talk about it tonight, Papa,” Kasia said rather sleepily.

  “Yes, yes, of course,” Sir Roland agreed. “I am going to the City in the morning, but we will have luncheon together, unless of course you have a previous engagement.”

  “I have really forgotten,” Kasia said, “but I expect I shall be awake by then.”

  She kissed her father goodnight in the hall and hurried up the stairs.

  She knew he would go first to his study, to see if there were any messages for him on his desk.

  As Kasia got into bed, she told herself that the evening had passed off better than she had anticipated.

  She could only pray that nothing would go wrong tomorrow.

  “I know that Papa is completely and utterly determined that I shall marry Lord Stefelton,” she told herself, “and I am completely and utterly determined that I will not! We shall just have to see who wins.”

  *

  Kasia was called, as she had ordered, at eight o’clock.

  As soon as she had eaten her breakfast, she got out of bed and started taking from the wardrobe the most simple of her gowns.

  She hoped they were not too unsuitable in her position as a Governess.

  She knew however, that the average Governess could not have afforded even one of them.

  But she thought, if she was asked, she would simply say that she had been given them by a wealthy friend.

  At the same time, she was aware that the Duke of Dreghorne was not married.

  If there was no woman at the Castle, she would not be bothered by tiresome questions, or awkward suspicions.

  She remembered hearing about the Duke from some of the girls at the luncheons she had attended.

  Her father had managed to get her invited by the mothers of other debutantes to luncheons and tea-parties at which only the young were present. Kasia actually found them rather boring.

  She listened to what they talked about and found to her surprise it consisted of a great deal of gossip. They discussed their mothers, and the well known Beauties of the Beau Monde.

  They quoted their brothers and their Fathers in citing who was more beautiful than anyone else. They also talked in low whispers about all the notorious affaires de coeur in the Beau Monde.

  At one of these parties Kasia had heard that the Duke of Dreghorne was one of the heroes of the war.

  They also said he was closely involved with Lady Julie Barlow.

  She was one of the outstanding Beauties whom no man could resist.

  Kasia thought she would have liked to see her.

  But at the three Balls she had attended up to date, there had been no sign of Lady Julie.

  Nor for that matter of the Duke of Dreghorne.

  She wondered if there was any chance of their coming to the Castle.

  In which case, doubtless as a Governess, she would be able to peep at them over the banisters.

  She must also catch a glimpse of them in the garden from one of the upper windows.

  She laughed to herself at the idea.

  At the same time, she knew she must be very careful to ‘keep her place’.

  Which was, as far as a Governess was concerned, ‘between Heaven and hell’ or more bluntly, ‘between the Gentry and the servants’.

  She remembered her mother saying once,

  “I always feel sorry for Governesses. They really have a very lonely time.”

  “Why should you think that, Mama?” Kasia had asked.

  “Although they are Ladies, they are not accepted in the drawing room, and they have no wish to be too friendly even with the upper servants,” Lady Margaret had said slowly. “I often wonder if with only the chatter of small children to listen to, they do not find it extremely boring.”

  After that, Kasia had been aware that her mother was always specially kind to her Governesses. Sometimes, when it was possible, she included them in the parties she was giving.

  �
�That is my position now,” she told herself, “and I must be very careful not to step out of it.”

  She watched the clock.

  When she realised that her father would have left the house she rang for her lady’s maid.

  “I am going to stay with a friend of mine in the country,” she said. “Pack all these things quickly, as I have to be at her house at half-past-nine.”

  “Well, you’ll ’ave to ’urry, Miss Kasia,” the maid said.

  She quickly placed the gowns into a trunk, while Kasia picked out the simplest bonnets she had.

  She thought several of them would look more appropriate if she removed the flowers and feathers.

  She decided she would do that when she reached the Castle.

  It was about twenty minutes past nine when the hackney-carriage she had ordered drew up outside the front door.

  “I did not know you were going away, Miss Kasia,” the butler said as she reached the hall.

  “It is only for a night or so,” Kasia replied. “I am staying with a girl I met last night for a party they are giving in the country.”

  “I expect the Master has the address?” the butler questioned.

  Kasia pretended she had not heard him.

  She hurried down the steps and into the carriage.

  She gave the footman the address in Islington.

  She thought as she did so that her father would find it hard to trace her from there.

  As they drove away she glanced across the Square in the direction of the Duke’s house.

  ‘This is an adventure,’ she thought. ‘At the same time, I am sure it will make Papa very, very angry!’

  CHAPTER THREE

  When she left home she had taken with her a present for her friend.

  It was a bottle of expensive French scent she had bought for herself.

  She also told the maid at the last minute to collect a large arrangement of Malmaison carnations from a vase in the drawing room.

  They were wrapped so that she could present them at the same time.

  Her mother had always taught her that, when she was visiting or staying with anyone, she should always take them a small present.

  “It is an Eastern habit,” Lady Margaret had said, “which I have always thought was attractive.”

  ‘Elizabeth will be pleased to see me,’ Kasia thought as she got into the carriage.

  Her presents were lying on the opposite seat.