Diona and a Dalmatian Page 3

  There was no butter, but Diona cut off a piece of the crust, which she knew had not long left the oven, and when she ate the cheese with it, she thought how delicious it was.

  Ted had gone back into the Inn again and returned with two pewter mugs. One was filled with cider for Diona and the other contained ale for himself.

  Because they were both aware that it would be a mistake to draw attention to themselves, they ate quickly.

  Then Ted went back into the Inn to pay for what they had consumed while Diona walked back to the cart and climbed inside.

  Sirius jumped up beside her and they were waiting and ready when Ted returned.

  As they drove away Diona said,

  “You must let me know how much I owe you.”

  “Ye be me guest, Miss Diona,” Ted replied, “an’ if ye be runnin’ away, ye’ll need every penny for yerself an’ yer dog.”

  “I cannot let you pay for me!” Diona expostulated.

  “Ye can pay me when yer ship comes in,” Ted smiled, “an’ Oi ‘opes that won’t be very long!”

  “So do I,” Diona replied wistfully.

  As they drove on, she began to think how frightening it was to be going off into the blue with no idea where she would end up.

  Then she told herself that however frightening it might be, nothing could be worse than knowing that Heywood, who was her uncle’s farm manager and a man she had never liked, would shoot Sirius.

  She knew that without Sirius she would be more alone in the world than she was already.

  “Whatever the difficulties,” she told herself, “not only will Sirius and I be together, but I feel quite sure Papa will be looking after us,”

  If there was one thing her father hated, it was cruelty of any sort, and it had been agonising for him to be forced to have a horse put down because of old age or illness.

  Therefore, she knew that he would have been appalled at his brother’s cruelty in even thinking of destroying Sirius.

  “Papa will help me and look after me,” Diona assured herself.

  At the same time, she knew that the farther away they drove from the Hall, the more frightened she felt. For the first time since she had decided to run away she realised how inexperienced and ignorant she was of the world.

  She had, thanks to her mother’s insistence, been very well educated by not only a retired Governess who lived in the village near their home but also by a Vicar who was a classical scholar.

  He had instructed her in many subjects, and as he was an elderly man with no family of his own, he had been delighted to teach her.

  She had developed such affection for him that she often thought of him as the grandfather she had never known.

  She thought now that if the Vicar were alive she could have turned to him for help.

  Then she remembered that even if he had been willing for her to come and live with him, her uncle as her Guardian would have forbidden her to leave the Hall.

  ‘I would only make trouble for people like that,’ she thought.

  She knew that included her Governess, who was now very old, and a teacher who had been the village schoolmaster.

  He had a wife and several children and he had instructed Diona in arithmetic, algebra, and geometry.

  “I cannot think why I have to learn these boring subjects, Mama,” she had said once.

  “They will make your brain active, darling,” her mother had replied, “and what I want you to have is a good education, so that whatever happens to you in life, you will always feel sufficient in yourself “

  Diona at the time had not understood exactly what her mother meant.

  Because her mother’s father had been an extremely clever man who had held an important post in the Foreign Office, her mother had wanted her to be educated as if she had been a boy.

  It was only just before she died that Diona had understood the reason for this, when her mother had said,

  “I longed and prayed to give your father a son, darling, but you mean so much to him because although you are a woman he can talk to you. You understand each other in the same way as you would have been able to do had you been a boy.”

  She saw an expression almost of disappointment on Diona’s face and added quickly,

  “Papa is very proud of you because you are so lovely, but beauty is not enough for a man who has a brain. He wants somebody who can stimulate him with new ideas and amuse him too, as many wives fail to do.”

  Mrs. Grantley was almost talking to herself, but Diona kissed her and said,

  “I have always wanted Papa to be proud of me, and you know, Mama, how much I love talking to him. But I realise it is all because you were so clever in making me have so many lessons, some of which I found very difficult.”

  “One day they will all come in useful,” Mrs. Grantley said. “That is what my father used to say, everything comes in useful when you least expect it and nothing of any value is ever lost.”

  Diona realised instinctively that she was not talking of material things, and she said,

  “It is rather a lovely idea, like having a treasure chest inside one’s head, which at least nobody can steal from you!”

  Her mother laughed.

  “That is exactly what I mean, and you have many, many treasures, my darling, which one day you will find are of inestimable value – at least, I hope so.”

  Thinking now of that conversation, Diona told herself that if she was really to become a milk-maid or, as she hoped, a kennel maid, it would hardly be a great strain on her intelligence.

  “If I were older,” she reasoned, “I could perhaps become the curator in some magnificent library, but who has ever heard of a curator with a dog?”

  Because it seemed funny she gave a little laugh, and Ted said,

  “Oi loiks to ‘ear ye laughin’, Miss Diona. It be loik yer father. There was never anythin’ so wrong that ‘e couldn’t laugh about it.”

  “That is true,” Diona said, “and as things are very, very wrong with me, Ted, I will just have to laugh and hope they get better.”

  “Oi hopes so too,” Ted replied.

  She thought he did not sound very optimistic and felt her spirits drop a little.

  Then the horse was climbing a steep incline in the road and when they reached the top she looked to the left and saw silhouetted against the sky a very large, impressive building.

  It looked so beautiful in the afternoon sun with a standard flying from the rooftop that she exclaimed involuntarily,

  “How lovely! Whose house is that?”

  “That be ‘is Lordship’s,” Ted replied, “and the ‘ome Farm be just th’ other side of th’ valley, which’s where we be a-goin’.”

  Diona was silent for a moment. Then she said almost as if somebody spoke to her,

  “I am going to the Big House. That is where I know I shall find help!”

  Chapter two

  The Marquis of Irchester had arrived home unexpectedly.

  Because his organising ability extended to everything he owned, the servants, although they had no warning, were all on duty at Irchester Park, and with superb expertise his Chef provided him with an excellent dinner only an hour after his arrival.

  He had not intended to go to the country so soon after the Season in London had begun to wane, but inadvertently the night before he had heard something of the Prince Regent’s plans for his party at Brighton and guessed he would be included.

  He had decided the year before that Brighton bored him.

  Even if he took a house of his own and did not stay at the Royal Pavilion, it still meant he had to spend long hours there listening to what he considered inferior music and talking to the same people with whom he had already spent most of his time during the last two months.

  Although he had a high regard for the Prince Regent and they had bonded over their love of paintings and antiques, which a great many of His Royal Highness’s entourage did not appreciate, the Marquis decided “enough was enough.”
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br />   The long-drawn-out dinners at Carlton House would only be echoed at Brighton, where the Prince’s Chef attempted to rival every other Chef in the vicinity with the richness of his food and the number of his entrees.

  Quite suddenly the Marquis felt satiated with it all, but there was another reason too for his precipitate departure.

  His love affairs since the war had given rise to a good deal of gossip, but because he was careful and discreet they never amounted to scandals.

  He was as punctilious about his affaires de coeur as he was about the smooth running of his houses and the perfection of his horses.

  But he was so distinguished, so rich, and so extremely good-looking that it was inevitable that he would find himself involved with beautiful women to the point where he knew that one step further and he would find himself in the sort of situation he was determined to avoid.

  After serving with great distinction in Wellington’s Army, he had also played a large part in the mopping-up operations, which culminated in his being in command of the Army of Occupation.

  When finally he returned home, like a great many other soldiers he thought he must make up for the years he had wasted when his chief preoccupation had been to keep alive.

  London was waiting to offer every possible amusement and pleasure, and after the privations of war, the food, the wine, and of course the women were very enticing.

  The Marquis opened Irchester House in Park Lane and began to give superlative parties that were rivalled only by those the Prince Regent gave at Carlton House.

  But as it happened he was most fastidious in the selection of his guests, and it became an honour to receive one of his engraved invitation cards.

  In fact, they were eagerly sought after by even the most spectacular beauties of the Beau Monde.

  Ambitious mothers with young daughters realised almost immediately that the Marquis was out of their reach and they would merely waste their time in chasing him.

  His predilection, perhaps because of his age, was for sophisticated and alluring married women, or for the extremely gay widows who had lost their husbands in the war.

  One of these, and perhaps the most outstanding, was Lady Sybille Malden.

  The daughter of a Duke, she had made an extremely bad marriage when, at the age of eighteen, she had become enamoured of Christopher Malden not only as a man but because he looked so alluring in his uniform.

  Without it she found him dull, and even before he was killed at the Battle of Waterloo their marriage was described colloquially as “on the rocks.”

  By this time Lady Sybille was twenty-three years old and very conscious of her attractions.

  The moment her year of mourning was over, she arrived in London like a shining star. Her success was immediate and she made the very most of it.

  All her lovers were men of importance and also extremely wealthy.

  But they were already married, and it was not until six months ago, when she met the Marquis of Irchester, that she began to get other ideas.

  Having been unhappy or rather bored in her first marriage, she was determined not to marry again until she had extracted the last ounce of pleasure from her present position.

  As a Duke’s daughter, however daringly she behaved it was unlikely that any of the great hostesses would bar their doors to her, and as an outstanding beauty there was no man who was not ready to lay his heart and most of his possessions at her feet.

  That she needed their wealth went without saying, for her father was not a rich man and had a number of sons depending on him, and Malden had, in respect of what Sybille desired, left her very little.

  But that did not prevent her from installing herself in a house just off Berkeley Square and patronising the most expensive dressmakers in Bond Street.

  When she drove through the Park in her carriage drawn by thoroughbred horses, she drew every eye.

  At the same time, Lady Sybille was aware when she reached her twenty-eighth birthday that she was at the height of her beauty.

  She was extolled by every artist of importance, and they pleaded almost on bended knees to be allowed to portray her on canvass, comparing her to Aphrodite, Botticelli’s Simonetta, and Fragonard’s exquisite women.

  But she was acutely conscious that it was only a question of a few more years before she would be watching for wrinkles at the sides of her eyes and the first grey hair to appear on her golden head.

  It was then, when she saw the Marquis of Irchester that she knew what she wanted.

  Lady Sybille had been abroad for the last two years, which was why they had not met sooner.

  The Prince of an obscure Balkan country had appeared in London and swept her off her feet.

  However, she felt that it would be a mistake to flaunt their liaison in front of her English admirers, who were always prepared to disparage foreigners.

  She allowed him to take her to Paris, which, recovering from the war had become one of the gayest cities in Europe.

  The success Lady Sybille had experienced there had gone to her head like wine.

  But eventually, as her fiery infatuation for the Prince began to fade, she thought it was time to return home.

  Her return had been celebrated in a very gratifying manner on her first night in London, when she had attended a Ball at Devonshire House and met the Marquis.

  She had, of course, heard of him, but somehow they had never met because she had been preoccupied with other men and he with other women.

  Then, having watched him for a short time across the drawing room in which the guests had congregated before they moved into the ballroom, she had asked the Duke to introduce her.

  Over the next two months the Marquis had become aware – for it was a familiar sensation – that he was being chased, though it would not have been obvious to anybody less astute than he was.

  He was not deceived by the remarkable coincidences where at party after party he found Lady Sybille beside him.

  Then, when he was riding in the Park or calling to see the Prince Regent, having received an urgent invitation to do so, Lady Sybille would also be there.

  At first he had told himself that he was not particularly interested.

  She was beautiful, there was no denying that, but he was very fastidious concerning the bestowal of his favours, and at the moment he was actually engaged in pursuing the very alluring wife of a Hungarian Diplomat.

  “Pursuing” was the right word, because the Marquis liked to think of himself as the hunter, not the hunted.

  Unfortunately, things seldom worked out that way, since the majority of women with whom he came in contact pursued him relentlessly.

  Their intentions were so obvious that he often found himself wondering why within serene and lovely foreheads there was not one original thought.

  Finally, and it was perhaps the open envy of his friends that decided him, he succumbed to Lady Sybille’s blandishments.

  At first he was not disappointed.

  Although she managed to look like a goddess who had just stepped down from Olympus, there was a very earthy fire on her lips and a tiger passion, which could arouse a man’s desire to a fever pitch.

  Then slowly, insidiously, the idea occurred to the Marquis that Lady Sybille wanted more from him than a transitory love affair.

  Cynically he had anticipated that, delightful though their association might be, it would not last much longer than any of the others that had amused him since the end of the war.

  It was not what Sybille said, she was too clever for that. But the Marquis had an intuition, which had served him well when he was commanding troops, and it gave him an insight into what a woman was thinking.

  Incredibly, because it had never crossed his mind, he was suddenly aware that Lady Sybille intended marriage.

  The Marquis knew of course that he would have to marry sometime, and his relatives, when they were brave enough to broach the subject, had made it quite clear that it was his duty to produce an heir.
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br />   In fact, several sons were required in order to ensure both the continuance of the title, which was an ancient one, and the preservation of the property.

  But he had told himself when he came back from the war that he had no intention of what was called “settling down.”

  His long years as a soldier had made him feel a great deal older than he was, and he wanted to recapture his lost youth and the feeling of being his own master, which was impossible for any officer who served under Wellington.

  “I will marry eventually,” he told himself, “but I will not be pushed into it!”

  The Marquis had found there was a great deal to do on his Estates, since his father had died three years before he was able to leave the army.

  In his old age his father had neglected a great many things and, what was more important, had chosen the wrong people to be in control.

  The Marquis enjoyed every moment of attempting to achieve the perfection he expected.

  Only when everything was exactly to his satisfaction did he find that amusement could become a fulltime occupation.

  But entertainment was what he was seeking, not the shackles of matrimony, and what he was quite certain would be the inevitable boredom of being tied to one woman who, however beautiful she looked at the end of his table, would probably have a very small brain.

  He had actually said to one of his closest friends when they were sitting drinking in White’s Club,

  “How is it that the majority of women with whom we spend a great deal of our time are so appallingly badly educated that it is impossible to talk to them except on one subject?”

  His friend, who had been in the same Regiment, laughed.

  “You know as well as I do, Lenox, that an Englishman spends all the money he can afford on the education of his sons, while his daughters are dragged up in a school room by a half-witted Governess who is completely incompetent to teach them all that they should know.”

  “I suppose that is true,” the Marquis answered reflectively.

  He was remembering that while he had been sent to Eton and Oxford, his sisters had stayed at home in the company of mousey little women whose faces he found impossible to remember.