Lucifer and the Angel Read online

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Exactly what I say. Papa was much older than you and, although it was an arranged marriage it turned out, as far as he was concerned, to be a perfect one. But did you fall in love as wholeheartedly as he did?”

  Again there was silence, and the Duchess looked away from her son.

  “Love, when one finds it,” she said after a moment, “is so wonderful, so perfect, that one would never regret it.”

  “I think you have answered my question,” the Duke said. “But it is not really an answer to my problem. You see, Mama, I have never known the kind of love which Papa felt for you and which you have obviously found in your life, if not with him.”

  The astonishment in the Duchess’s eyes was very obvious and, without her having to ask the question, the Duke said,

  “I know, I know! There have been women in my life ever since I was at Eton, and it seems a strange thing to say, but always sooner or later, generally sooner, they have been disappointing.”

  “Kerne, dearest, I am so sorry!”

  “There is no need to be,” the Duke said. “They have given me a great deal of pleasure and amusement, but I have often asked myself, Mama, when I remember what Papa felt about you, if I am missing something.”

  “Oh, dearest, I thought you had everything!” the Duchess cried.

  “That is what I have wanted to believe,” the Duke answered, “but when I am being honest, as I am now with you, I know it is not quite true. Then I tell myself I am asking too much.”

  The Duchess looked at him with great tenderness in her eyes.

  She had always known he had a desire for perfection above that of any other man she had ever known. In everything he did, everything he possessed, the Duke had to excel.

  His houses had to be better than anybody else’s, his servants more efficient, his horses had to win all the Classic races, his shoots had to achieve the highest bag of the season.

  The women he squired were undoubtedly the outstanding beauties of the moment and, now it was understandable, she thought, that there could be one thing which he might find was not perfect.

  Just as she was about to say something, the Duke gave a little laugh as if he mocked himself.

  “I am becoming maudlin, Mama. You know as well as I do that I am reaching for the moon and no one as yet has touched it.”

  “Perhaps one day – ” the Duchess said softly.

  “No, no, don’t let us delude ourselves,” the Duke answered. “Let us be practical and go back to the moment when I asked your help. I want a wife, Mama, and I am asking – no, indeed, I am commanding you to find me one who will answer all my requirements, but let me make one thing clear.”

  “What is that?” the Duchess asked.

  The Duke paused for a moment as if he was choosing his words.

  “I don’t want a woman who is over-demonstrative. Her character must match her appearance. She must be conventional, dignified, and emotionally controlled. That is what I will expect from my wife and the Duchess of Ollerton.”

  “But, Kerne – ”

  “No buts, Mama. As we have already agreed, marriage and love are two different things and I have no wish to try to combine them in a way which I know would undoubtedly prove a failure.”

  Chapter Two

  As she walked towards the Pump Room, Anita looked round her with delight.

  She had not expected Harrogate to be so pretty, and she had in fact been extremely apprehensive as she and Deborah had journeyed North in the train which carried them to a terminus in West Park.

  The letters that Sarah had written so diligently had all received prompt replies.

  The Countess of Charmouth wrote that she would be delighted to entertain her niece for the rest of the Season and would send a carriage to collect her, complete with an elderly maid to chaperone her on the journey.

  What was even more practical, she sent Sarah some money to buy a new gown and bonnet in which to travel and she wrote.

  “Everything else, my dear niece, can wait until you arrive, and I am quite certain from what you have told me in your letter that you will require a whole new wardrobe with which to appear in Society. I am looking forward to seeing you and I so often think of your dear father and the happy times we had when we were children.”

  “Nothing could be kinder than that!” Sarah exclaimed in triumph.

  “No, indeed,” Daphne agreed, “and my Godmother’s letter is very pleasant too, although she apparently expects me to find my own way to London and from there she says a Courier will escort me to her house in Surrey.”

  “That means,” Sarah replied, “that Deborah will have first to take you to London, then travel with Anita to Harrogate.”

  The letter written by Great-Aunt Matilda was not only very much less effusive than those which Sarah and Daphne had received, but enclosed with it was only the fare for two Second Class tickets to Harrogate.

  “Second Class, indeed!” Deborah snorted indignantly when she was told how they had to journey. “And her as rich as one of them Indian nabobs they’re always talking about in the papers!”

  “How do you know that?” Anita enquired.

  “I remember your father telling your mother about his Aunt Matilda, and saying she was a miser, while any money she did spend was to ensure herself a good place in Heaven, if she ever reached it!”

  Anita laughed. She was used to Deborah’s sharp remarks and her familiarity.

  She had nursed them all as children and was now getting old, but she still managed in an amazing way to keep the house clean and to bully them into doing all the things their mother would have expected them to do.

  “It will be an exciting adventure to go by train to Harrogate,” Anita said, as if she was anxious to appease the elderly woman.

  “You should be travelling First Class, Miss Anita, and I’ve a good mind to tell Miss Lavenham so when I sees her.”

  “Oh, please, Deborah, don’t do anything of the sort!” Anita begged. “She might be so angry that she will send me back right away and then I should have to stay here alone and Sarah would be extremely annoyed.”

  “Miss Sarah’s all right, God bless her. She’s picked herself the juiciest plum in the pudding and let’s hope something comes of it.”

  Deborah spoke in the voice of one who would be surprised if it did, but Anita knew she was afraid that their desperate adventure would come to nothing and that when the winter arrived they would all be back in the Manor House, skimping and saving and having no one to talk to but themselves.

  Not that Anita would mind.

  She could always escape into her daydreams, especially now that she had a very special one to dream about and that was Lucifer.

  The more she thought about him sitting astride the black stallion, the more she was beginning to be convinced that he was entirely a figment of her imagination.

  How could any real man look so exactly like the fallen Archangel that the most skilful artist in the world could not have drawn him more accurately?

  ‘I dreamt him! I know I dreamt him!’ Anita said to herself.

  Then she remembered the dry sarcastic note in his voice as he said,

  “Beware of Lucifer, wherever you may find him!”

  If he was really Lucifer, Anita thought, he would not be warning her against himself.

  She had spent many hours wondering what wickedness the devil actually did when he was behaving as was expected of him.

  There must be other vices besides pride and insolence, but she had no idea what they could be. The books she had read in her father’s library, while they certainly improved her mind and added to her knowledge, were not very explicit as to what constituted ‘sin’.

  Although the Reverend Adolphus spoke of it frequently, he never added any informative details that Anita often thought might have been interesting. The gentleman had, however, given her many new ideas to think about and many more dreams to dream.

  It was true th
at the girls were very limited with regard to relatives. Their grandfather, the Earl of Lambourn and Beckive, had three sons, but they had all died without producing an heir for the Earldom.

  The present and ninth Earl was therefore a very distant cousin, who lived in South Africa and had sold the family estates.

  Anita had often wished that he would invite them to visit him, but even if he did so, she knew they could not afford the expensive fare.

  But now she was travelling, if only to Harrogate, and all the way in the train, having been fortunate enough to obtain a corner seat, she stared out at the countryside, trying to decide which County she was in.

  She thought that they should really be divided by fences in brilliant colours which would make it easy to distinguish between them!

  There was flat land, meadow land, forests, valleys, and dales before finally the train steamed into Harrogate and they were there.

  “This is thrilling, Deborah!” she exclaimed when they took an open Hackney carriage to carry them through the town to Great-Aunt Matilda’s house.

  “Don’t go expecting too much, Miss Anita,” Deborah replied. “You’ll only be disappointed and you’ve got to remember that Miss Lavenham is very old and I don’t suppose she’s much idea of what young people like.”

  She snorted and added,

  “I’d have thought Miss Sarah could have found you a better place to go.”

  Anita had heard all this before, but she said gently,

  “I am afraid we have very few relations left alive and as I am the youngest it is only right that I should wait my turn.”

  To her surprise Deborah gave her one of her rare smiles.

  “You never knows what mightn’t turn up, Miss Anita, even in a place like Harrogate, where you’ll find most people have one foot in the grave!”

  Anita laughed.

  Then, as the carriage began to slow down, she said in a low voice,

  “I wish you was staying with me, Deborah. It would be fun if we could be together.”

  “I’d like that too,” Deborah replied, “but I’m afraid Miss Lavenham will be thinking that I’m one more mouth to feed.”

  That, Anita found later, was exactly what she did think.

  She had already formed a picture of what Great-Aunt Matilda would look like and she had not been far away from the truth.

  Miss Lavenham was old and yet able to sit stiffly upright in her chair, despite the rheumatism which prevented her from walking.

  She wore on her grey hair a white muslin cap which was exactly like the pictures of the one worn by Queen Victoria.

  She did in fact look very like Her Majesty, except that her face was thinner and more lined and had, Anita thought apprehensively, an undoubtedly grim appearance.

  “So you are my youngest niece!” she said in a deep, gruff voice when Anita was announced. “You are very small and not in the least like your father!”

  She made it sound a very regrettable failing, but Anita smiled at her bravely and made the speech she had already rehearsed.

  “How do you do, Great-Aunt Matilda, and thank you very much for having me to stay with you. It is very kind.”

  “Your sister left me very little choice,” Miss Lavenham remarked accusingly, “but now that you are here, I daresay you can make yourself useful.”

  “I hope so,” Anita answered, “but in what way?”

  “You will soon learn. What about this servant you have brought with you? She can stay tonight, but she will leave tomorrow on the morning train.”

  Anita hesitated a moment and then she said,

  “It would be kind if she could stay just a little longer. It was a tiring journey and Deborah is not as young as she was.”

  “She can rest in the train,” Miss Lavenham replied in a voice that told Anita that the subject was closed.

  So Deborah went back and Anita quickly found that there were a lot of things for her to do.

  Miss Lavenham was indeed given to good works, as her father had said, and there were dresses to be made which were straight plain shifts called ‘Mother Hubbards’. They were sent out to the missionaries in Africa to clothe those who were ignorant enough to walk around almost naked.

  There were tracts to be addressed and delivered to hundreds of people who lived in Harrogate or in the vicinity, either by Anita or one of the servants in order to save the postage.

  There were also collections that were made for all sorts of strange charities that Anita had never heard of before.

  She soon learnt that the only people who came to the house regularly were those connected with the religious organisations that Great-Aunt Matilda patronised.

  Her own personal Minister, the Reverend Joshua Hislip, was a frequent visitor because, as Anita soon surmised, he never left empty handed.

  Fortunately, Anita learnt the very day after her arrival that Great-Aunt Matilda’s health compelled her to drink the waters.

  This meant that early every morning they went to the Cheltenham Pump Room.

  Miss Lavenham was pushed there in a bath chair by an elderly footman, and Anita walked beside her, her eyes delighted with everything she saw, especially the people who were journeying in the same direction.

  Some were very smart and made her conscious of how out of date her own clothes were.

  Sarah had looked lovely setting off for London in a new travelling gown with a large crinoline and a cloak that swung out over it.

  Daphne had a new bonnet, but there had been nothing left to spend on Anita. She had, however, bought some yards of blue ribbon to trim the bonnet she had worn for two years.

  Although she had not realised it, her blue gown, made by Deborah, with its gleaming white muslin collar and cuffs made her look very young, very innocent and more than usually like a small angel.

  She was wearing it now and her blue eyes were alight with interest as she followed Great-Aunt Matilda’s bath chair in through the gate.

  The Cheltenham Pump Room was the largest public building in Harrogate and had a most impressive Doric columned portico which reminded Anita of Roman architecture.

  Inside was a large salon where the invalids congregated to gossip, a pump room and a library to which fortunately Miss Lavenham subscribed.

  Having lived in Harrogate all her long life, she knew practically everybody in the town and looked on it as if it were her own personal property and estate.

  Anita found that Great-Aunt Matilda regarded newcomers with a jaundiced eye and was on the defensive in case any of them, through ignorance, encroached on the privileges which she thought were her right.

  Like all old people, she disliked change and wanted everything that happened today to be exactly the same as it was yesterday, the day before that and back through the years.

  She therefore expected her bath chair to come to rest regularly at the same point inside the Pump Room.

  Almost every morning there was a battle because some unwary person who had just arrived in Harrogate had encroached on the actual spot that Miss Lavenham considered to be hers and hers alone.

  Anita found that Great-Aunt Matilda had a very scathing tongue, and she felt herself blushing at the rude things the old lady would say, even though the newcomers would quickly make their apologies and withdraw from the sacred unmarked patch on which they had unwittingly trespassed.

  When Anita had been there two or three days, she realised that the men who pushed the bath chairs that were for hire often deliberately took up their position on Miss Lavenham’s piece of floor, just for the fun of it.

  When they had been forced to retreat she would see them laughing and winking at one another, and she wondered how it could matter so much to Great-Aunt Matilda that she was prepared to make what her father would have called ‘an exhibition of herself”.

  However, Anita was clever enough to realise that her great-aunt was an eccentric and as such the town in its own way was rather proud of her.

  As soon as her bath chair, which was a very com
fortable one with a thickly padded seat, was in the correct position, Anita would be sent to the well.

  There she obtained a glass of mineral water, which had special properties in it, especially iron, and which had brought invalids to Harrogate since 1571 when the waters were first discovered.

  Anita had already found a book which described the chalybeate Tewit Well, whose waters ‘did excel the tart fountains beyond the seas as being more quick and lively and fuller of mineral salts.’

  She thought personally that the waters tasted rather nasty and felt fortunate that, being so well, she did not need it.

  This morning, looking round at the many invalids crowded into the Pump Room, she decided to say a little prayer that they might all recover after they had drunk from the well.

  The idea made her imagine what a commotion there would be if suddenly all those who were sipping from the glasses their attendants had brought them were suddenly to jump up from their bath chairs and cry out in amazement that they were cured.

  Then she told herself that in that case they would undoubtedly sing a hymn of joy and gratitude, and she could almost hear the Hallelujahs that would rise in a paean of triumph towards the high ceiling of the Pump Room.

  She was thinking how exciting this would be, when a glass of mineral water intended for Miss Lavenham was held out to her by the attendant at the well.

  She took it in both hands and, still thinking that it might constitute a miraculous cure, she turned round rather swiftly.

  As she did so, she stumbled over the foot of the bath chair that was just behind her and with a little cry half-fell across it, spilling the contents of the glass she held in her hand.

  She picked herself up and looked in consternation at the lady in the bath chair.

  “I am sorry – I am very – very – sorry,” she apologised. “It was clumsy of me. I do hope I have not hurt you, ma’am?”

  “No, I am all right,” a sweet voice replied, “and perhaps we were too near to the well.”

  “I do hope the water has not spoilt your rug,” Anita said, looking down to where there was undoubtedly a wet patch on the pretty paisley rug that covered the lady’s legs.