The Earl Escapes Read online

  She paused before she added,

  “All you have to do is exactly what I tell you. I have it all planned and it will take me only a very few seconds, once everything is ready, to slip down a secondary staircase, which I have found out leads almost directly from my bedroom floor to this place.”

  There was a note of irritation in her voice, which made her brother say,

  “All right, have it your own way. We will do as you say, but for God’s sake, don’t make a mess of it! I need the money and quickly, otherwise I may find myself in prison.”

  “Leave it to me,” Lady Hester replied. “I know exactly what I am doing and apart from anything else, I shall much enjoy being the Countess of Dolphinston. I will certainly make this mouldy old place a damned sight more comfortable than it is at the moment!”

  She walked out of the Chapel as she spoke and Valencia drew in her breath in horror.

  For a moment she could hardly believe it that she had not only heard a lady swear, which was shocking enough in itself, but also, incredible though it might be, she had listened to a plot to drug the Earl and then marry him in his own Chapel.

  Although it was something that he himself did not wish for, he would have no idea that it was happening to him until it was too late.

  ‘I must save him,’ she decided.

  She was not at all certain how she could do so.

  She only knew that something, however difficult, had to be done.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Hue Dolphin had been completely amazed when he had learned, after his two cousins’ deaths, that he was the heir to the illustrious title and an extensive estate.

  He had been so long in India with his Regiment that he had almost forgotten what things were like in England and, after his father’s death, he was very much out of touch with anything that concerned his relations.

  Not that he had ever been particularly interested in those who lived at Dolphin Priory. He had never been in the house nor had he come in contact with his cousins, George and William.

  He had heard that one of them had been killed, but he had not learned of the death of his brother.

  He could hardly believe that he was hearing the truth when he was informed by his Commanding Officer that a telegram had been received from the War Office.

  It said that his cousin was dead and informed him of his new position in life.

  Hue Dolphin had been brought up austerely in the extreme North of England, where his father owned a small estate.

  He spent all his days, when he was at home for the holidays, riding over the uncultivated land.

  He enjoyed much more than anything else the well-bred horses that his father owned and he had little contact with any young people of his own age for the simple reason that there were few neighbours in that particular part of Northumberland.

  And his father had quarrelled with most of the few there were.

  By the time Hue reached the age of sixteen, his father’s character had changed considerably.

  This was because his wife, of whom he was very fond in his own way, had run away with a man fifteen years younger than himself.

  She could no longer bear the austerity that they lived in and the authoritarian behaviour of her husband.

  When Hue came back from school to find what had happened, his father had begun to indoctrinate him with the idea that all women were treacherous.

  They were, he asserted, selfish, concerned only with their own interests and so completely untrustworthy.

  At first Hue found it very hard to hear his mother being talked about in such a derogatory manner.

  Then gradually, as the years passed, he began to absorb the poisonous attitude of his father into his own thoughts and feelings.

  It was only when he went out to India that he had found women attractive.

  He soon discovered, however, in the Hill Stations, where the women stayed in the hot weather as their husbands were sweating it out in the plains, that everything his father had said about them was indeed true.

  He found soon enough that, because he was so handsome and charming, they were promiscuous.

  He would not have been human if he had not accepted the favours that they offered him. At the same time he despised them for being unfaithful to the men they had married.

  He had several fiery passionate affairs with women who professed themselves to be wildly in love with him.

  He himself hardly considered it to be a compliment.

  As he was continually moving about the country, it was not that difficult to terminate these passionate affaires de coeur. They actually made little or no imprint on his character.

  He was wholly concerned with his work in the Regiment and the fighting that continually seemed to be taking place in one part of the country and the part that he played in what was known by the British Raj as The Great Game.

  The secret information, the manner by which it was obtained, the disguises of which he was a past master and, above all, the danger excited him far more than any woman could.

  Once he had moved on from the vicinity where he had made love to a woman, he never thought of her again.

  He found himself despising the Subalterns who, unlike himself, were lovesick.

  Sometimes they threatened suicide because they could not marry the woman they loved. Or else they were forced to leave her because of Regimental orders.

  He thought that their feelings were so exaggerated, uncontrolled and certainly undignified.

  At times he found himself thinking of the Indians, who treated their women as playthings of pleasure. This, he thought, was a much more sensible attitude than that of their conquerors.

  “I love you, Hue!” one woman said after another.

  The repetition of it all began to bore him and then, inevitably, they would ask him plaintively,

  “Why do you not love me? When you leave me, I always feel frustrated and afraid I shall never see you again.”

  When he could not rebut this accusation because it was the truth, they would say next,

  “What are you looking for? What are you wanting in a woman that I cannot give you?”

  There was no answer to this.

  Actually he did not want women in his life at all except when they aroused physically an undeniable fire in him.

  Once he was satiated, his mind was immediately on his work again.

  Although they did not realise it, to him theirs was a spurious existence. They did not take second place in his life, but actually no place at all.

  When it was learnt that Hue Dolphin, for whom every man he served with had a real affection, had come into a title and was now an extremely rich young man, the congratulations he received from all over India were undoubtedly sincere.

  “Nobody deserves it more, old man!” his brother Officers had said to him.

  His Colonel, when he said ‘goodbye’ to him, told him,

  “We shall miss you more than I like to say, but I know there are many things you will be asked to do in your new position that will demand all your intelligence, your determination and, above all, your courage.”

  Hue Dolphin had been rather surprised by what he had said to him.

  At the same time, as he travelled on homewards, he thought it unlikely that he would find anything at home that was as intriguing and as dangerous as all that had monopolised his concentration for the last five years.

  As the Suez Canal was now open, the voyage from India had taken him only seventeen days.

  But that had been long enough for Lady Hester Stansfield.

  She had come aboard at Bombay, where she had been staying at Government House and her reputation for being one of the most beautiful women in England had preceded her.

  There was inevitably a great deal of excitement among those who had boarded the P. & O. Liner at Calcutta.

  The Earl had heard them talking about Lady Hester, but he had not taken any particular interest.

  He was, in fact, studying the history of t
he Dolphin family in a book that had been sent to him somewhat belatedly by one of his relatives.

  He had found it waiting for him at the Viceroy’s House.

  The letter that accompanied it said,

  “I thought you would like to read this, if you have not already done so, and it comes to you with affectionate greetings from your cousin,

  Amy.”

  He had not the slightest idea who his cousin Amy might be and it was kind of her to have sent him a history of the family.

  Then he thought somewhat sarcastically that none of his Dolphin relatives had taken any interest in him until now. He had known that they were a large family and that the fifth Earl was the head of it.

  His father, however, had always despised his cousin, saying he had no use for anyone who was so stuck-up and thought too much of his own consequence.

  It was only when Hue started to read their history that he realised how much the Dolphins had contributed to the history of England.

  They had served their Sovereign brilliantly, whether as Statesmen or soldiers.

  In fact by the time he had finished the book, of which he had read every word, he wished that he had made it his business when he was in England to visit Dolphin Priory.

  It had been made over to the family on the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the time of King Henry VIII.

  If he had gone there, he would have made the acquaintance of the late Earl.

  He had, however, no time for retrospection after Lady Hester swept into his life like a whirlwind.

  She had already decided well before she boarded the Liner at Bombay that the most important gentleman on the passenger list was the new Earl of Dolphinston.

  She told him that she knew his family and was ready to help him in any way possible.

  She then proceeded to make it very obvious that, title or no title, she found him most attractive as a man.

  She would, he was fully aware, be disappointed if he did not reciprocate her advances.

  The Earl would have been completely inhuman if he had not been flattered by her attention and also indeed captivated by her charms.

  She was very beautiful and different in every way from any of the women he had met and made love to in India.

  To begin with, Lady Hester was extremely sophisticated.

  She moved in the Society in London that had already defied all the pomposity and parochialism of Queen Victoria. It therefore concentrated on enjoying itself to the exclusion of everything else.

  Her attractiveness was not only confined to the beauty of her face.

  Determined that every man should fall at her feet, Lady Hester had learnt the sciences of love in the same way that the Courtesans of Paris had learnt to use them to their full advantage.

  She aroused the Earl in a manner that he would not have believed possible.

  Although he felt cynically that she behaved much more like a scarlet woman than a lady, he found himself unable to ignore the fires that she ignited in him.

  In fact she had a sensuous, seductive and exotic fascination about her. It led to the Earl’s spending most of his days and his nights on the voyage in Lady Hester’s cabin.

  He knew as she wound herself round him physically and mentally that he had for the moment no wish to be free of her.

  When they arrived in London, Lady Hester took over.

  The moment she saw Dolphin House in Park Lane she made very compelling excuses for having nowhere to lay her head and became the Earl’s guest.

  She arranged for her to be chaperoned by her younger brother, the Honourable Edward Ward.

  He moved in with an eagerness that would have made the Earl suspicious if he had been aware of it.

  Lady Hester convinced him that they were doing him a considerable kindness in introducing him to the finest of London Society.

  Besides helping in running his house, she entertained when he was so much in demand not only with the Secretary of State for India but also the Prince of Wales.

  It was natural that the Earl found it a compliment that the heir to the Throne should wish to talk to him in detail about India and appeared to have a liking for his company.

  He was also sent for by the Queen, who professed a great love of the latest addition to her Empire.

  She encouraged him to talk about what was happening in India to which he had devoted the last five years of his life.

  He found Her Majesty very well-informed, especially as to the menace of the Russians on the North-West Frontier.

  She was aware of the difficulties raised by Indian customs such as suttee and other unpleasant practices, which the British were doing their best to stamp out.

  “You are such a great success, dearest,” Lady Hester cooed at him when he returned from Windsor Castle to visit the Queen, “and I have arranged for you to meet some highly important Statesmen at a dinner party you are giving tomorrow evening.”

  The party also included a number of Lady Hester’s special friends who were as alluring and seductive as she was herself.

  They made the Earl feel as if he had stepped into a strange world of which he knew nothing.

  At the same time, at the back of his mind, he was well aware that the Prince of Wales was indulging in illicit love affairs. This was, to his surprise, known to the whole Nation.

  Lady Hester’s friends were all married to complacent husbands either with interests in other parts of the country or so deeply involved with some other lovely lady.

  When he thought about it, he realised that his father had been right.

  Women were not only promiscuous and untrustworthy, but in so many other ways despicable.

  It made him even more determined than he had been before that he would never marry. It was indeed something that he had decided a long time ago.

  His first love affair was in Simla with a very attractive woman whose husband was with his Regiment in the South of India.

  She had fallen very much in love with him and, as they lay side by side in one of the small bungalows by the Viceroy’s House, which was extremely convenient for lovers, she had said,

  “I cannot lose you! How can I go back to Robert feeling as I do about you?”

  She had moved a little closer to him and then said in a whisper,

  “Let’s run away together. I do recognise that it would mean your leaving the Regiment, but you would never regret it for I would make you very very happy.”

  For a moment Hue Dolphin could hardly believe what he was hearing.

  It had never struck him for one single moment that any woman would want to endure the social ostracism and the vulgarity of the Divorce Court for him.

  Then he was aware that the last thing he wanted was to retire and spend the rest of his life with this clinging creature who he had just made love to.

  He had found her attractive and for only a few minutes the sensations she had aroused in him had been very gratifying.

  But now he had no really particular feelings for her except that of physical satisfaction and a strong desire to go to sleep.

  It had, however, required all his tact and a great many insincere compliments to make her realise how cruel it would be to leave her husband.

  When he went back to his own bedroom, he told himself that in the future he would be much more careful. He must certainly avoid women whose temperaments made them mentally unstable.

  He therefore made sure that those with whom he was subsequently involved were what his fellow Officers called ‘up to scratch’.

  They had no ideas beyond the passing pleasure of the moment.

  Once or twice there were tearful scenes when he had parted from some lovely woman whom he had made very happy and whom he had enjoyed physically.

  They had, however, never touched his heart, supposing that he had one!

  On his return to England he found that Lady Hester was genuinely useful.

  It had very certainly simplified matters when she had not only introduced him to what she called the
‘right people’, but warned him against those who were wrong.

  They were, as she put it, only out to make use of him because he was a new ‘Social Lion’ whom every hostess wanted to capture.

  “You have to learn to be discriminating, darling,” Lady Hester had said when they were alone. “The Social world is full of snares for those who don’t know it well.”

  “I am fortunate to have you to guide me,” the Earl smiled.

  “I want you to think that and you know all I want is to make you happy and the success you undoubtedly are.”

  The Earl found it all very enjoyable.

  But he was also uncomfortably aware that, while he was giving a considerable amount of his time to the needs of the Empire, he had not yet considered the people he employed nor visited Dolphin Priory, the house that had featured prominently in the history of the family.

  Several of his relatives had approached him while he was in London.

  While they insisted on entertaining him, he had to admit that they did not fit in with Lady Hester’s friends.

  Because he was very perceptive, he was also aware, and it amused him, that they seemed to be shocked by Lady Hester.

  His women relatives considered her fast, but he put it down to jealousy.

  Lady Hester herself reckoned that a number of the more stuffy and traditional hostesses resented her position in the Prince of Wales’s circle of close friends.

  “They are known,” she told him, “as ‘the Marlborough House Set’.”

  So the Earl was prepared to agree that they were more amusing and certainly more decorative than the people he had met at parties that he had been invited to by his relations.

  In fact he found that the majority of his women cousins were plain and rather dowdy and the men, in most cases, were very much older than himself.

  They seemed determined to lay down the law about everything and everybody without even listening to his opinion in the matter.

  It was, therefore, a relief after a long day at the Foreign Office to find himself laughing. The many witty innuendoes made the conversation of Lady Hester and her friends sparkle like jewels.

  As party succeeded party in the huge dining room in Park Lane, he found that it was impossible to leave London and there were just so many engagements already filling up his diary.