Little Tongues of Fire Read online

  As he was thinking of his own amusement too, he included Lady Irene Halford, whom he knew would be only too eager to accept his invitation.

  He had realised for some time that Lady Irene was stalking him, as he described it privately to himself, and he was as yet not certain whether or not he would succumb to her blandishments, which were becoming increasingly obvious.

  At the same time she was one of the most beautiful women in London.

  Her classical features and perfectly proportioned body had attracted his attention the first time he had seen her.

  Her husband, Lord Halford, was at least twenty years older than his wife. He was, therefore, more concerned with his duties at Court than with escorting her to all the balls and Receptions that they were invited to.

  The Duke was therefore well aware that if he accepted her attentions, in Lady Irene’s eyes he would be hurting no one and there would certainly be no scandal.

  He would not be the first lover she had taken, but she behaved in so circumspect a manner that even the gossips found it difficult to say anything unpleasant about her.

  As he expected, Lady Irene answered his invitation by return and the Duke also included a few of his own particular men friends, who always made a success of any party he gave.

  He thought he would invite some neighbours to dinner on the Saturday evening and then see how the party progressed before he planned what they would do on Sunday.

  The Duke discussed it all with John Simpson, as he always did.

  He arranged everything in the household, the servants, chefs and the bedroom plans, leaving the Duke to cope with his brother.

  “I suppose,” Lord Edgar said sourly at breakfast on Friday morning, “that you expect me to make myself pleasant to this title-seeking country bumpkin you have chosen as my future wife?”

  The Duke did not reply and Lord Edgar, pushing his plate away from him disdainfully as if he was not hungry, said,

  “The more I think of it, the more I am inclined to go abroad. I seem to remember that was the alternative.”

  “There is nothing to stop you,” the Duke answered, “but I think you would miss your horses, your friends, your Clubs and the fact that, being English, wherever you live you would always be a foreigner.”

  “I would find that an advantage!” Lord Edgar retorted truculently.

  “Then, of course, it is quite easy for you not to propose to Miss Wallace over the weekend and so let me know which foreign Bank I am to send your allowance to.”

  “Dammit all, Alveric,” Lord Edgar shouted. “I am your brother and, as it happens, I am also your heir apparent, as you have no son.”

  For a moment the Duke was still.

  Then he said, almost as if he was speaking to himself,

  “I had forgotten that.”

  “Well, it is true,” Lord Edgar said, “and if you want to know, I have already approached the usurers to see what they will advance me on the chance of my succeeding on your death.”

  “You have done what?” the Duke asked angrily.

  “You heard what I said,” Lord Edgar snapped, “but actually the old skinflints were not interested. They said you are too young for there to be any reason for your dying normally.”

  He accentuated the word ‘normally’ and the Duke remarked,

  “Perhaps you are thinking of some clever way of disposing of me without being brought to justice?”

  “I am not such a fool as to risk being hanged,” Lord Edgar retorted, “but if you did happen to break your neck out riding or drown in the lake, it would certainly solve my problems!”

  The idea of Lord Edgar taking his place was so unpleasant that the Duke returned to reading the newspaper that was propped up in front of him on a silver stand.

  “Supposing that this girl,” Edgar carried on in a low voice, “is as plain as a pikestaff and speaks to me as her father did to the raw recruits he had under his command?”

  He sounded so depressed that the Duke could not help smiling as he replied,

  “In which case you can always look for another heiress, but those as rich as Miss Wallace are few and far between.”

  “Perhaps the stories of her fortune are exaggerated,” Lord Edgar suggested. “What do we do then?”

  “I cannot think that the General, who is quite obviously a straightforward and honest man, would lie.”

  Lord Edgar rose from the table, pushing back his chair violently.

  “Well, I might as well enjoy my last hours of freedom,” he said. “I suppose it’s too late for me to slip up to London and see Connie before these title-seekers arrive?”

  The Duke thought it beneath his dignity to answer him.

  He continued reading the newspaper as his brother gave an exasperated sound that was half an oath and went out of the room slamming the door behind him.

  The Duke sighed and, sitting back in his chair, wondered for the thousandth time how he had managed to fail with Edgar.

  He had been such an attractive little boy and yet, looking back, the Duke knew that even when they were very small, Edgar had resented him because he was more important than himself as the elder son.

  From the moment he was grown up Edgar had done everything he could, not only to disparage his elder brother, but also to draw attention to himself.

  The Duke supposed that psychologically the reason that Edgar behaved in such an outrageous manner, and had done so ever since he had been at Eton, was because he wanted to inherit the Dukedom.

  As the Duke had gradually come to realise this, he had gone out of his way to do more for Edgar than anyone else would have done in similar circumstances.

  Even the family Solicitors and the Trustees of the estate had remonstrated with him and told him that he was giving his brother far too much money and in consequence denying others who were more worthy of his help.

  Lord Edgar had showed no gratitude but seemed determined to provoke not only the Duke but his whole family and it made the Duke more cynical than ever.

  When he was young, he had been very badly treated by the first woman he had fallen in love with.

  His father had been alive and in good health and there had seemed then little chance of Alveric inheriting the title for at least twenty years.

  While the young woman concerned had encouraged the Duke’s advances, she had not really considered him seriously.

  Because she was very beautiful and in many ways sophisticated, he had been head over heels in love with her. It had therefore been a cruel shock when he learned that she was laughing at him behind his back.

  She even read aloud to her intimate friends, who considered the Duke a joke, the letters that he wrote to her.

  Because he was extremely sensitive, the hurt she inflicted on him took a long time to heal.

  But, although he appeared to have recovered, the scars remained.

  What was more, when the fifth Duke died unexpectedly from appendicitis and Alveric inherited the Dukedom, the girl he had loved realised what a mistake she had made.

  Throwing over the man she had become engaged to, she tried to revive the love she had so cruelly turned away.

  It was perhaps this more than anything else that had made the Duke decide that all women were treacherous and that he had no wish to marry.

  But he would not have been human if he had not accepted the favours he was offered.

  Yet he was convinced that when women expressed their love for him, they were thinking of his coronet and not of him as a man.

  The lines of cynicism on his face deepened as he told himself that never again would he look at or be interested in a young unmarried woman.

  He was involved only with the sophisticated beauties who deceived their husbands cleverly enough to avoid any scandal. They hid their fiery desires in public, but privately most men found them irresistible.

  The Duke could pick and choose and every year he became more fastidious and it became a feather in a woman’s cap when it was whispered that the Duk
e was her lover.

  Even so the women he chose never knew from one meeting to the next if the Duke was, as she longed for, as infatuated with her as she was with him.

  The Duke thought as he now left the breakfast room that there was nothing more he could do for his brother.

  The sooner Lady Irene arrived and his thoughts could be elsewhere the better.

  It was John Simpson who understood more than anybody else what his Master was feeling and he reminded himself that what he wanted was the Duke’s happiness.

  It seemed extraordinary with all his great possessions and surrounded by those who served and admired him, that he could not be happy.

  And yet John Simpson was aware that in fact the Duke was a lonely man and there was a great deal missing in his life that could not be purchased with money.

  It was a feeling that he would not put into words.

  Looking over his guest list, he found himself hoping that, when Lord Edgar married Miss Wallace, he would improve the Duke’s way of life.

  Perhaps in that way the Duke would have one burden less on his shoulders.

  *

  Vina was feeling somewhat bewildered as she drove with her uncle and aunt towards Quarington.

  Even with the knowledge that apparently her aunt Marjory’s idea of Paradise was to be the guest of the Duke, she could not account for the fact that her uncle appeared to be somewhat uneasy.

  She had the feeling, although she had nothing to substantiate it, that where she was concerned he was slightly embarrassed.

  She thought of the magnificent Palaces she had visited in India with her father and could not imagine that Quarington would be any more awe-inspiring than they were.

  Or, she mused, that the Duke could be more terrifying than some of the elderly Indian Princes.

  Lady Wallace had been fussing about Vina’s clothes, her packing and her hair even before breakfast and had continued giving orders and counter-orders all through the day.

  When finally at four o’clock in the afternoon they set off towards Quarington, Vina was quite exhausted by her aunt’s excitement and she also had to listen to long and to her boring discussions as to what she should wear and what she should not wear.

  The gowns that they had bought in Bond Street were certainly very attractive.

  As money was of no consequence where Vina was concerned, her aunt had automatically ordered the most expensive.

  Fortunately Lady Wallace had very good taste and she did not make the mistake of dressing Vina too elaborately.

  At the same time she expected perfection and complained noisily if she thought that she was not getting it.

  She changed her mind no less than four times on what Vina should wear to arrive in with the result that the young maid who looked after her was nearly in tears before everything was finally packed.

  They set off in the large carriage, which, although slightly old-fashioned, was very comfortable.

  Vina sat with her back to the horses opposite her uncle and aunt.

  She had the feeling that they were looking at her in a strange way.

  It was almost as if they were appraising her and had something on their minds that they could not say.

  She could not imagine why she had this impression, but it persisted.

  As they drove down the drive towards the great house that had been so often described to Vina by her aunt that she felt she knew it already, Lady Wallace exclaimed,

  “We are here and what could be more exciting? Put your bonnet straight, Vina, and shake out your skirts as soon as you step from the carriage. I don’t want you to look creased.”

  “Yes, Aunt Marjory,” Vina agreed meekly.

  She was thinking, craning her neck forward to look at the house as they drove nearer to it, that Quarington was exceedingly impressive and exactly as she had expected it to look.

  There was something a little austere about its architectural symmetry that appealed to her, while the green trees spreading down to the lake where there were swans and ducks, were very attractive.

  “Could anything be grander or more beautiful?” Lady Wallace enthused.

  They were escorted up the steps, on which had been laid a red carpet, by footmen in the Quarington livery, whose crested buttons glinted in the afternoon sun.

  As Vina followed her aunt and uncle towards the front door, she thought that they might be the Viceroy and the Vicereine of India. And the idea made her smile.

  Equally it made her long once again to be back in that country as she had been so happy there.

  A grey-haired butler, looking like an Archbishop, escorted them across the marble floor of the huge hall where ancient flags flew above a curved marble mantelpiece.

  They recorded the battles that the Duke’s ancestors had fought in and distinguished themselves and Vina knew that her father would have been interested in them.

  She was thinking as they entered the drawing room of the many battles that he had been engaged in and how he had survived death dozens of times, finally to die from a mere skirmish with the tribesmen on the North-West Frontier.

  ‘If only I could have talked to him for one moment before he died,’ Vina thought.

  She recalled the agony of how she felt when she had learned that he was dead and forgot for a moment where she was.

  It was therefore with a start that she heard her uncle say,

  “Your Grace, may I present my niece, Vina.”

  She realised then that standing in front of her was a tall, exceedingly handsome man whom she knew was the Duke of Quarington.

  He held out his hand and said in a deep voice,

  “Welcome to Quarington, Miss Wallace!”

  She dropped him a small curtsey and, as she looked up, the Duke saw the pain in her eyes, which surprised him.

  Then they were being introduced to several other guests, but Lord Edgar was not amongst them.

  They sat down and talked, Lady Wallace having plenty to say to one of the other ladies present, while the Duke talked to the General about horses.

  “I see in the newspapers,” the General remarked, “that you had a good win at Newmarket two days ago.”

  “It pleased me because it was a new horse,” the Duke answered, “one I purchased only six months ago. And it was doubtful if he would win that particular race.”

  “Well, you were successful, as you usually are,” the General remarked.

  “Do you ride, Miss Wallace?” the Duke asked, bringing Vina into the conversation.

  “Yes, Your Grace, and I enjoy it very much,” Vina replied.

  “Then you may like to try out one of my horses tomorrow morning,” the Duke suggested.

  “I would love that,” Vina enthused.

  She was thinking, as she spoke, of the thin skittish little horses that she had ridden in India.

  Very fast, they had been hard to hold and she had found her uncle’s horses rather tame and slow by comparison.

  It made her say to the Duke,

  “It would be exciting to ride one of your horses, but please, Your Grace, give me one that is not over-trained.”

  The Duke raised his eyebrows.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  Vina realised at once that she had spoken without thinking and, not wishing to be rude to her uncle, she said,

  “I am used to horses that are not especially kept for young ladies who are not sure of their equestrian prowess.”

  The Duke laughed.

  “I know exactly what you mean and I promise you shall have something fast and spirited for you.”

  Vina smiled and he thought that she was not only very attractive but lovely as well.

  She was not in the least what he had expected. He had fancied that the General’s niece would be a heavy countrified girl with fair hair and blue eyes.

  Vina’s hair was almost dark and there were strange and surprising lights in it.

  On the other hand her eyes had a touch of green in them, which was in striking c
ontrast to the whiteness of her skin.

  At the same time her face was young. Yet there was a quality about it that he could not remember having seen before in any girl.

  He realised it was perhaps that ageless look that could be found in Greek statues.

  Then, as he thought about it, he remembered the drawings that he had seen when he was in India and then he remembered that it was where Vina’s father had died and so he asked,

  “Were you in India with your father?”

  “I was born there and I lived in India until Papa was – killed and then I had to come – to England.”

  There was a note in her voice, and also a look in her eyes, that told him how much her father had meant to her.

  The Duke knew in some strange way that she had been thinking of India when they had first been introduced.

  When the ladies rose to go upstairs to rest and change before dinner, the Duke became aware of the graceful way that Vina moved and it reminded him of the way Indian women walked whilst carrying a burden on their heads.

  He found himself watching her as she moved towards the door, following her aunt, who was still talking animatedly to one of his relations.

  Then, as they disappeared, the Duke remembered that the General was left behind and he sat down beside him.

  “I am sorry that my brother is not here to greet you, General. He went out riding soon after luncheon and must have ridden further than he intended.”

  The other men were talking on the other side of the fireplace and the Duke lowered his voice as he asked,

  “Is your niece, Miss Wallace, looking forward to meeting my brother?”

  The General realised that they could not be overheard and responded in a conspiratorial tone,

  “My wife thought it wiser not to tell her that there was an ulterior motive in our staying this weekend.”

  The Duke raised his eyebrows.

  “You mean that she does not know what you have planned?”

  “She has not the slightest idea!”

  The Duke was surprised and also a little concerned. Because Edgar had reiterated many times that Vina Wallace was after his title, the Duke had almost begun to believe that it was a fair exchange.