Danger in the Desert Read online

  “Well that makes things very easy,” Malva replied. “I can have a false name and, if I discard my mourning, I can be just another of your much talked about and envied affaires-de-coeur.”

  “If they are talked about, it has not been my fault,” he asserted. “I am in fact very grateful that the Press have not published the names of any of the ladies in question.”

  “All the same I think that I should assume a false name,” Malva said. “It will make it easier in the future when you take your real wife aboard if she does not learn the name of anyone she might then encounter sooner or later.”

  “That is indeed true,” Royden agreed. “So do you really think my plan will work, Malva?”

  “I see no reason why it should not do so. As you say our fathers will do everything in their power to prevent us from having a divorce so that when they finally hear and, of course, you must do it tactfully, that the Marriage Service did not take place, then they will be so relieved that we will be allowed once again to go our own ways.”

  “That is exactly how I worked it out. I think you are just the right person, Malva, to carry it off so that no awkward questions will be asked and we go away before anyone realises what is happening.”

  “Of course we must,” Malva concurred.

  He looked at her.

  “You really mean that you will try it?”

  “Well, I cannot think of any other way to avoid our fathers pushing and shoving us about and then being angry because we have not agreed to what they want,” Malva replied.

  “Exactly.”

  “Now we must work it out very cleverly,” Malva continued, “as I am sure you will do. But we must make them realise it would be completely and utterly disastrous for them to tell anyone even their close friends that we are married. Perhaps it might be more sensible to say that we are having a trial journey together just to see if it was possible for us to wish to be married when the voyage was over.”

  Royden held up his hands.

  “You cannot be so silly as to think that that would work,” he said. “Both my father and yours would say that you had ruined your reputation because I had taken you abroad alone without a chaperone. They would say that I would have to marry you immediately to make amends for the damage I had already done.”

  “I did not think of that,” Malva confessed. “But I suppose that they would. And I have become so used to thinking of you as a relation that it never occurred to me that to be alone with you on your yacht would be as bad Socially as cutting off my head.”

  “That is, of course, the reason why we have to be very careful over this and not make it obvious that, as we are not really married, they could either insist that we are married immediately or you will feel degraded for the rest of your life.”

  Then Malva asked him,

  “Suppose when we do return and say that we want a divorce, when they find out that there is no need for one, they will insist then on us being married.”

  “It will be for your father to insist. But if we make it definite that we don’t wish to live with each other and that you will never reign at The Towers as my wife, I think they will find that the ground has crumbled from under them. When we finally admit that the marriage is not valid and we are free after all, they will be only too pleased to agree that we can live our own separate lives in London.”

  Malva thought that this was somewhat unlikely.

  Equally anything was better than being pushed and cajoled into marring a man she had no wish to marry and who had no wish to marry her.

  “It is all rather threatening,” she said, “but anything is better than you and me being tied up together and always quarrelling.”

  “I don’t believe we would do that for a moment,” Royden replied. “I have always been very fond of you and, since I have not seen you for so long, you have certainly blossomed into a beauty I did not expect. At the same time I have no wish to marry you, as you have no wish to marry me.”

  “Then we have no alternative but to try your way so as not to be pestered for the rest of our lives by our fathers. You never know you might easily find someone beautiful and charming who would fit into The Towers and make you a very happy man and give you at least three sons.”

  Royden laughed.

  “I think that is wishful thinking. But, if we tell each other Fairy stories, I now predict that you will find the perfect man who loves you from the moment he sets eyes on you and you will marry each other and be very very happy.”

  “That is exactly what I want,” Malva said. “Who knows we may both of us find what we are seeking while we are travelling under such pretence and I will dance at your wedding with the greatest delight.”

  “And I will give you a present you have always wanted, but which you had always found too expensive to buy,” Royden boasted.

  Then they were both laughing because it sounded so absurd.

  Then he said,

  “I think the sooner we set off on our secret journey, the better. At the same time we must make a date when we will break it to our fathers that we are married. Then I can have the yacht waiting for us near the House of Lords. We will then slip away before they realise what has happened.”

  “Do you really think they will keep silent?” Malva asked. “It would be terrible if they talked and we came back to find everyone smiling at us and a whole pile of presents waiting for us to write letters of thanks for!”

  Royden thought for a moment.

  “I think if we are both firm about how shocked the Queen would be at you degrading your mourning, so to speak, neither father would breathe a word to anyone.”

  Malva thought that this was certainly true of her own father.

  He would hate to upset the Queen, who was always sending for him and there was no doubt at all that Her Majesty would be very shocked if she thought that Malva was breaking all her strict rules of mourning.

  “From the way she dresses,” Royden said, “I expect that she will mourn Prince Albert until she dies. It will undoubtedly be the longest mourning that has ever taken place on earth!”

  Malva laughed because it sounded so funny.

  Then she said,

  “I think that we are taking a desperate leap into the dark. Equally I cannot see any alternative except to hear your father and mine either begging or ordering us to obey them.”

  “That is just what I think myself,” Royden replied. “You know as well as I do that my father can be most obstinate when he sets his mind on anything and is then determined that it shall be done his way.”

  “Papa is just the same. I love him dearly, but, as he always knows best for other people, he thinks that this is best for me. I cannot think of any other way in which we will manage to escape being tied to each other for the rest of our lives.”

  “You must not think it rude,” he said, “when I say that this is the one situation I wish to avoid. I had no idea when this inspiration came to me like a flash of lightning that you would be sensible enough to accept it.”

  “I think it is very clever of you to come up with a solution,” Malva said. “I lay awake last night and I could not think of any way without hurting and upsetting Papa and practically being turned out of the back door that I could escape from marrying you.”

  “I felt just the same,” Royden confessed. “In fact I thought that my life of freedom had come to an end and I was to be imprisoned for the rest of my life!”

  Malva laughed.

  “We have to play our parts very cleverly. It is going to be difficult, but not half as difficult as it would be to pretend we were happy when we were not happy at all.”

  “I think you are absolutely splendid in accepting my idea, Malva. I take my hat off to you. The only thing we both have to do is to act our parts so well that neither of our fathers, who are both very intelligent men, realise that the whole scenario is a farce.”

  “Of course you are right there,” Malva answered. “I promise you I will act my part with an unquenchable e
nthusiasm because at the end of it I will be free.”

  “That is exactly what I want too. I can assure you that I will be single for many, many years and you will doubtless be grey before I finally marry and produce the heir they make so much fuss about.”

  He spoke with so much conviction in his voice that Malva could only laugh.

  “You have forgotten,” she said, “it is not you who produces an heir but the lady who will be your wife.”

  “I can only hope,” Royden replied, “that you will still dance and even sing at my wedding.”

  “I expect by the time it takes place I will be too old to do so. But I will certainly give you a present.”

  “For that, of course, I will be very grateful.”

  They were both laughing as they left the Pavilion and walked back to their horses.

  As they reached them, Royden said,

  “I will make all the details absolutely clear and arrange for the yacht to be ready and waiting for us when we reach London.”

  “Is anyone staying at The Towers this weekend?” Malva asked.

  “No one I have heard of.”

  “Then I suggest you ask my father and me to have dinner with you on Sunday night, but, of course, with no other guests present. It is then, after dinner you produce the Special Licence you spoke about and we tell them that, to avoid being talked about and, of course, upsetting the Queen, we are leaving for London and will be setting out from the Thames as soon as the deed is done.”

  “That is an excellent idea,” Royden said. “Thank you for thinking of it.”

  As an afterthought he added,

  “By the way pick up your clothes when we leave The Towers and, as we will be on the sea and in a part of the world where we are unknown, for Heaven’s sake don’t bring anything with you that’s black! I am sick to death of the colour and it is only by a miracle that it is being of use to us now.”

  “We hope it will be. So cross your fingers that we are not boasting too soon, Royden.”

  “I want to wave my hat and shout from the roof tops that we have solved the most difficult problem any two people have ever faced with,” he chuckled.

  As he spoke, he helped Malva onto her horse.

  “I can only pray we will not be found out,” Malva answered, “and will return in one piece at the beginning of August when my mourning will be over.”

  “We will certainly be in mourning if we fail and they find out that we were lying! What a blessing it is that the horses cannot talk.”

  “They are the only ones to know our secret,” Malva smiled.

  She paused for a moment to add,

  “I am quite certain that we are being clever enough to win the battle even before it has even begun.”

  She moved forward as she spoke.

  And, as she rode away, Royden lifted his hat.

  He patted his horse before he mounted and said, “That is a very clever woman, Solomon, and you can take it from me that they are few and far between.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  As she reached her home, Malva started to pack her pretty coloured clothes that had been put away when she was plunged into black.

  She also found some dresses of her mother’s which had been packed away neatly in the wardrobe, but had not gone out of date.

  They were the dresses she had worn at the Hunt Balls in the winter and the Garden Parties in the summer.

  As they were all the same size, Malva thought that they might well be useful to her on the voyage.

  Anyway if no one else enjoyed the pretty colours, Royden would certainly do so.

  She felt that they were doing something extremely dashing and unexpected.

  At the same time she was still really terrified that she might have to marry someone she did not love.

  In a small way she had seen how disastrous these arranged marriages could be.

  There were people in the village who never stopped quarrelling and there had been a case where the doctor had knocked down his wife. She had injured herself when she fell and everyone had talked about it and said how they were always arguing and he was at times brutal towards her.

  She did not, however, think that Royden would be anything like that doctor.

  But she knew only too well from the gossip, which had been continuous ever since he had grown up that he had pursued beautiful women with whom he was reported to have had an affaire-de-coeur, but they did not last long.

  Almost before Malva had heard about one beauty, her place was taken by another who was reputedly even lovelier.

  ‘If I had a husband who would behave like that,’ she thought, ‘I would be utterly and completely miserable.’

  She thought too that Royden, if she was forced to marry him, would look down on her because her father was not of the same rank as he was.

  It would always give her a feeling of inferiority.

  At the same time Royden’s intriguing plan seemed rather ingenious, but she hated having to lie.

  She could remember only too well her old Nanny saying to her,

  “Tell the truth and shame the Devil.”

  While her mother had said,

  “Never lie, darling, it is very degrading. Also it is very wrong.”

  Malva had therefore always tried to tell the truth even though at times she was tempted to evade it.

  Yet the one excuse for Royden’s method of saving them from being tied to each other was that they were not hurting anyone except themselves.

  Certainly, according to him, it was preventing his father from threatening to die.

  She did not honestly think that the Earl was as ill as he pretended to be, but he was a man who always had his own way and expected everyone to obey him instantly.

  So it was really sensational for him to be opposed by his son and to have to listen to endless arguments as to why he did not wish to marry and produce the expected heir.

  ‘I know that the Earl is terrified that the family will come to an end,’ Malva thought, ‘all the same there is still plenty of time for Royden to marry and eventually he will find someone he loves who is not already married.’

  She realised that she was trying to put not only a viable explanation but a coloured blanket, so to speak, over the part they were prepared to act.

  But she thought it was something that they could both do with a clear conscience, simply because to walk deliberately into a black pit of unhappiness was wrong and incredibly foolish.

  When she had packed three trunks of her clothes, she hid them in a room that was not often used and locked the door.

  She did not want the servants to be curious as to what she was doing, as she knew only too well that in the village nothing went unnoticed and everything was talked about at great length.

  Her father was very busy at the moment as he was building a new farm on the edge of the estate where it joined with the Earl’s.

  He intended to breed a new type of sheep that had been very successful in other parts of the country and the project certainly took his mind off his daughter and the troubles being caused by the Earl.

  Thus it was quite a surprise when Lord Waverstone received a note from his Lordship asking if he and Malva would have luncheon with them the following day.

  ‘It’s rather funny he asked us to luncheon,’ Malva thought. ‘I should imagine that dinner would be far more convenient, when Papa has finished inspecting the farms and the estate and I would be able to ride for much longer than I could do if I have to change my clothes in order to go to The Towers.’

  There was, however, no point in her complaining about this aloud because the messenger from The Towers was waiting for an answer.

  “Say we will be with him as he asks at a quarter-to-one,” her father suggested. “I wonder if there will be a party.”

  This question was quickly answered when half-an-hour later Malva received a letter from Royden.

  It was very short and read,

  “Join me on horseback at nine o’clock tomorrow
morning.

  You can guess where we are supposed to go.”

  Malva read the letter several times.

  She wondered what he meant by the last line.

  Eventually she came to the conclusion that it was something to do with their supposed marriage.

  She was still pondering if she was wrong in taking part in the subterfuge even if it was intended to save herself and Royden from what they both knew would be a life of unhappiness.

  But she did not think that she should be riding if they were pretending to get married.

  However she was soon to be disillusioned.

  Because she thought that they might be lunching at The Towers before she had sufficient time to change, she put on her best and most attractive riding habit which she thought was too good to be used in the country.

  She took a little more care than usual in arranging her hair so that she looked not only smart but extremely pretty when she rode to where Royden was waiting for her.

  It was on the edge of the same wood that bordered their two Estates.

  Royden was looking very smart and he raised his top hat as she joined him.

  “What is happening and why are we meeting here?” she asked him.

  “Because we are supposed to be married by now,” he replied. “I am glad you are looking so pretty and as you see I am dressed as fashionably as I dared to be for such an important evening.”

  Because of the way he spoke, Malva laughed.

  Then he said,

  “It’s no laughing matter. We have to carry this out with brilliance and intelligence. Otherwise we might be defeated and find ourselves bound together forever by a golden ring.”

  “We certainly want to avoid that,” Malva replied. “But you have not told me where we are going.”

  “We are actually going to ride to the far end of the estate and stay there until it is time to return for luncheon where our fathers will be waiting.”

  He paused for a moment before he added,