Pure and Untouched Read online

  Lady Marguerite paused and the Duke enquired,

  “And the other reason?”

  “Two years ago I received the sum of seventy thousand pounds. Since then there has been no more.” “There had been some previously?”

  “Yes, every two years after her arrival I received another five thousand pounds. Of course I have not spent it all, but with seventy thousand pounds Anoushka is a very wealthy young woman.”

  “So what do you intend to do with her?”

  “That is my problem, and I have been seriously considering whether to approach one of our relatives to ask her to introduce the girl to Society and let her see the world outside these Convent walls.”

  Lady Marguerite gave her brother an almost pleading glance as she added,

  “I have prayed and prayed for what was best to do and now you are here.”

  “It does seem indeed obvious that I am the answer to your problem and your prayers,” the Duke said. Lady Marguerite did not have to speak.

  “But you are thinking of my reputation,” the Duke went on, “and of course that I have recently announced my engagement to another woman. Let me make this clear – that no longer exists.”

  Lady Marguerite was still silent and the Duke continued,

  “As for my reputation, the family, as you well know, have been pleading with me for years to have an heir. That is what I now intend to do, but my wife must be, as I have already said, pure and untouched. I will not tolerate a woman who shall bear my name being anything else.”

  Again there was a note in the Duke’s voice that told his sister very clearly what had happened.

  “I cannot imagine Anoushka being married to somebody like you,” she said after a moment. “I hoped that perhaps she would find a man who would love her and she would love him, but I was well aware that one of the difficulties would be that she has no name.”

  The Duke gave a slight shrug of his shoulders.

  “Is that important?”

  “Socially it would certainly raise a difficult problem.”

  “Whoever she might be,” the Duke said, “there would be few people brave enough to question my wife’s antecedents if I did not wish to speak of them.”

  Lady Marguerite knew this was true and she said, “We also have to think of the family, Raven. Although I am absolutely convinced that Anoushka is an aristocrat in every sense of the word and that her blood is as blue as ours, we have to face the fact that she may be a love-child.”

  “So have been many who have adorned history, especially in France,” the Duke said.

  Lady Marguerite gave a little sigh.

  “I feel as if I am dealing with a problem that is too big for me. How could I have guessed, how could I have anticipated for a moment when I was praying about Anoushka’s future, that it could be linked with yours?”

  She looked at her brother pleadingly as she asked,

  “Am I doing the right thing, Raven? Or have you talked me into it? Perhaps I am wrong in even considering a life for her outside these walls. At the same time my experience here has taught me to know when an enclosed life is right for a young girl or whether she should live in a very different way and above all know the happiness of having a husband and – children.”

  There was just a little tremor as Lady Marguerite said the last word which told the Duke, if he had not known it already, that she was still faithful to the memory of the man she had been engaged to.

  Having known what had seemed a perfect and complete love she would never forget it.

  “I think, Marguerite,” the Duke said, “you have answered your own questions and, where this girl is concerned, you can trust to your instinct, which often gives far better guidance than the logic offered to us by our brains.”

  Lady Marguerite smiled.

  “Thank you, Raven. That is very complimentary and I like to think you are right. My instinct tells me that Anoushka belongs to a far broader world than I can offer her. At the same time you do realise that she knows nothing of the life you lead and which you take as a matter of course.”

  Suddenly Lady Marguerite rose from her chair to say,

  “Here we are talking as if something has been decided between us. I have been hypnotised by what you have asked and am no longer thinking straight. How can you possibly many a girl you have never seen and who has never seen you?”

  “Now you are listening to your mind and not your instinct,” the Duke countered. “You know, just as well as I do, that in many Eastern countries the bride and bridegroom seldom see each other before the actual wedding day and, even if we had met, I doubt if the girl in question or those concerned with her, which in this case is yourself, would turn down the chance of her becoming a Duchess.”

  “That is very cynical of you, Raven.”

  “But practical,” the Duke replied.

  “I still cannot think why, after you have walked in here with such a ridiculous proposition, we have sat down and talked it over as if it was a usual thing to happen.”

  “It may be unusual, but it is not ridiculous,” the Duke said, “and just as I have turned to you for help, so you are prepared to give me exactly what I have asked for.”

  “Wait! You are going too quickly. First you must meet Anoushka. Then you must decide how you can many a young woman without a name and without the family being absolutely horrified because they have not been consulted.”

  “Let me make this absolutely clear. As regards my marriage I will consult no one!” the Duke replied. “I am not concerned with the family – or anybody else. I intend to be married immediately. I have no wish to explain my reasons to you or to anybody else. Let me simply say that this is something I intend to do and nobody shall prevent me!”

  There was something so positive in the Duke’s voice and another note in it that made Lady Marguerite look at him apprehensively.

  For the first time in all the years she had known him she thought that her brother looked not only grim but cruel.

  There was an expression in his eyes she had never seen before and it made her say quickly,

  “Whatever has hurt you, Raven, don’t let it spoil you. You have done many things of which it is impossible not to disapprove; but you have always been kind and generous and because you have been happy you have given happiness to other people.”

  She put out her hand and laid it on her brother’s arm.

  “I know you are suffering,” she said gently, “but those who are innocent of any crime towards you must not suffer too.”

  “I really don’t know what you are talking about,” the Duke said defensively.

  “I think you do,” Lady Marguerite answered, “and remember, hatred is a boomerang that always eventually hurts oneself.”

  “I am not admitting I hate anybody,” the Duke said. “I am only avenging an insult in a way that will be extremely effective.”

  “You will make somebody unhappy?”

  “I sincerely hope so.”

  “That is very unlike you and, perhaps because you have been so lucky in your life, the moment has come when you have to pay, as everybody else does, for what they have received.”

  “You have forgotten your Bible,” the Duke said mockingly. “‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ That is justice!”

  “If you read only a few more verses you will find that we should forgive our enemies.”

  “Perhaps I will do that, but only after they have been punished.”

  Lady Marguerite sighed.

  “I have a feeling, Raven, that you are making yourself both judge and executioner – and that is a mistake.”

  “How can you be sure of that?” her brother asked. “And now I wish to see Anoushka.”

  He knew as he spoke that Lady Marguerite was regretting what she had told him, regretting almost the prayers she had expended in asking for a solution to her problem.

  The Duke put out his hand to lay it on his sister’s.

  “Do stop worrying, Marguerite. As you h
ave said, I have done many reprehensible things in my life and I have gained a reputation which has undoubtedly shocked many members of the family. But I have never, as far as I can remember, done anything at all unsportsmanlike or behaved dishonourably to a woman who trusted me.”

  There was a note of sincerity in the Duke’s voice that made his sister look at him searchingly. Then she smiled.

  “I know that is true, Raven, so I will trust you. But of course, whether you wish to marry Anoushka, whether she is the right person for you, is something you must decide for yourself.” “Exactly!” the Duke agreed.

  His sister rose again to her feet.

  “I will go now and find her. If she is not what you expect or what you want, then you will have to look elsewhere.”

  The Duke did not reply and only when his sister had left the room did he pour himself out another glass of wine and walk to the window.

  He did not see the sunshine outside and the nuns looking like flowers against the well-kept yew hedges.

  Instead he saw Cleodel’s face in the moonlight as she smiled at Jimmy and then drew him from the balcony into her bedroom.

  The Duke’s fingers tightened on the stem of his glass until there was a faint sound and he realised that he had cracked it.

  It was then, as he prevented the wine from falling on the floor, that he wished he could encircle Cleodel’s white throat with his fingers and throttle her.

  For the first time in his life he felt like murdering somebody and he knew that what he wanted was undoubtedly an eye for an eye and compensation for the murder of his ideals.

  That was what Cleodel had killed, the ideals that with her youth and beauty she has resuscitated within him after he had lost them in his philandering and raffish life.

  Because she had stood for everything he ideally desired in a woman, he had set her in a shrine in his heart that had always been empty.

  Now she had despoiled and defiled it and he hated her with a violence that surpassed every emotion he had ever felt before.

  Yesterday, in the train carrying him towards Paris, he had imagined the satisfaction he would have felt if he had followed his first impulse and climbed up on to the balcony to enter Cleodel’s bedroom.

  He would have struck Jimmy and frightened Cleodel until they had pleaded with him on their knees for mercy.

  Then he realised that would have been a very primitive form of revenge which perhaps would have lowered him to their level.

  What he was planning now was far more subtle, far more intelligent, and far more hurtful. Already he was quite certain that Cleodel would be wondering frantically what had happened and why he had not communicated with her.

  Then this morning her father would have opened the pages of The Times or The Morning Post and seen the announcement that the marriage had been postponed.

  His consternation would be farcical, the Duke thought, if he could only watch it.

  He imagined the questions, the suppositions, the explanations the Earl and Cleodel would try to find. Then a letter would be sent to Ravenstock House and the Earl would follow it and demand to see him, and to be given an explanation.

  The Duke was very certain that Mr. Matthews would carry out his instructions to the letter.

  Then there would be nothing the Sedgewicks could do but wait and try to find an answer to all the questions they wanted to ask while the wedding presents continued to pour in.

  The Duke gave a sharp laugh, and it was not a pleasant sound.

  Yes, the revenge as he had planned it was far cleverer than anything that could be gained by physical violence and, when he took the next step in his plan, then there would really be consternation and speculation which would sweep through Mayfair like a tornado.

  Cleodel, who would be at the centre of it, would eventually guess the reason for her fiancé’s disappearance.

  The smile on the Duke’s lips deepened.

  He heard the door open behind him and turned round.

  Because he had been looking out into the sunlight, for the moment it was difficult for him to see at all clearly, but he heard his sister’s voice say,

  “Here is Anoushka!”

  Chapter 3

  Lady Marguerite moved towards her brother and as she reached him with the girl beside her she said,

  “Anoushka, let me present my brother, the Duke of Ravenstock.”

  Anoushka curtsied. With the sun on her face, the Duke could now see her clearly and she was not the least what he had expected.

  Because he had been so bemused by Cleodel, he had supposed that any very young girl he decided to marry would look in some way a replica of her – a young face, fair hair and blue eyes that had seemed to him completely innocent.

  But Anoushka was completely different.

  She was slender, taller than average, and her face framed by the transparent veil of a novice was so unexpected that he could not remember ever having seen a woman who looked in the least like her.

  She was lovely in a very different way and, although he knew she was young, she did not look it.

  Instead she had a kind of ageless beauty that he thought might be found on a Greek statue or perhaps engraved on the tombs in Egypt.

  Her face was dominated by her large eyes which seemed somehow mysterious and not what he would have imagined those of a young girl to be.

  As he went on looking at her, he realised that her nose was straight and classical and her lips might have been chiselled by a sculptor in Ancient Rome.

  But what he had not expected, and what was so astonishing, was that she seemed to vibrate as a personality in a way that he had only known before when he had met people of great distinction in their own particular fields.

  He had been aware that a force and power radiated out from them in a manner that was impossible to put into words and yet was indisputably there.

  At his first glance at Anoushka, he could understand his sister finding her a problem and feeling that she should not and could not be confined within the walls of a Convent.

  The Duke had the strange and fanciful idea that she was like an exotic bird imprisoned in a cage that was too small for her.

  Then he told himself he was being foolish. All he had asked for was for a girl who was pure and untouched and this was what he was being offered.

  Because he felt he must speak, he said to Anoushka,

  “I understand from my sister that you have lived here for ten years?”

  “That is true, Monseigneur.”

  . He noticed she gave him the title reserved for the Princes of the Church and he knew it was a compliment, although whether it was paid to himself or simply to his sister’s brother he was not sure.

  “And you have been happy here?”

  “Very happy, Monseigneur.”

  “Perhaps you found it strange after the life you led previously.”

  Anoushka did not reply and he realised that she was not hesitating or choosing her words, but was deliberately remaining silent.

  The Duke looked at his sister and Lady Marguerite said,

  “Anoushka told me when she first came here that she had been instructed never to speak of where she came from and she has obeyed those instructions to the letter.”

  The Duke wanted to ask why she should be so mysterious and he thought that was the right word to describe her anyway. She was mysterious, an enigma that was intriguing, although it might prove to be extremely irritating.

  After a moment he asked,

  “I wonder, Marguerite, if it would be possible for me to talk to Anoushka alone? I think you would want to explain to her why I am here, but it is something I would prefer to do myself.”

  His request was obviously unexpected and Lady Marguerite looked at him appealingly before she responded in a low voice,

  “Do you think that is wise so soon?”

  “I see no point in waiting and I have not the time to do so.”

  His sister’s eyes searched his face.

  He knew t
hat she was worried, almost distressed. At the same time because he was Head of the Family and despite everything she respected him, she was finding it hard to refuse.

  “You can trust me”, the Duke said with a smile, “not to do anything to upset Anoushka – or you.” Lady Marguerite drew in her breath. Then she said, “It is, as you well know, very unconventional, but I will leave you for ten minutes.” She then walked towards the door, but, before the Duke could move, Anoushka opened it and dropped a curtsy as her Mother Superior walked through it.

  Then she shut the door quietly and turned round to look at the Duke.

  Her eyes which he now realised were so dark as to be almost purple were on his face.

  He had the feeling she was not looking at him as a handsome man and this surprised him because she could not have seen many of them and certainly none like himself.

  It was as if she was looking far deeper than the surface, almost as if she searched for his soul.

  Then the Duke suggested,

  “Shall we sit down?”

  She walked towards him with a grace that reminded him of Eastern women whom he had seen balancing water-vessels on their heads and moving like Queens.

  He indicated the sofa with his hand and when Anoushka sat on the edge of it, her back very straight and with her eyes looking directly at him, he took an armchair facing her.

  He noticed that she had the same stillness and serenity that he had always admired in his sister and after a moment he said,

  “My sister has told me your strange story and that she had also decided that now you are eighteen you should leave the Convent and see something of the world outside.”

  “I would like that.”

  “You do not wish to take your vows and become a nun?”

  “It is something I have considered, but it is difficult to make a judgement until I have seen the outside world of which by living here I know very little.” “That is understandable,” the Duke said, “and because my sister has been worrying and praying over what would be best for you, I have what I think is an answer to her prayers and your problem.”