Never Forget Love Page 5

  He would then have to face the laughter of his friends when he appeared with his arm in a sling, while the Duke, undoubtedly the villain of the piece, got off scot-free.

  “Why do you refuse me, Delphine?” the Duke asked when he realised to his surprise that she was adamant in saying ‘no’.

  “I have been brought up very strictly,” Delphine explained in a sweet girlish voice, “and my mother gave me ideals which I would not wish to lose.”

  “How would you lose your ideals by loving me?” the Duke asked. “After all, as a widow, you are beholden to no one and also I think you told me that your mother was dead.”

  “Yes, she is dead,” Delphine said in a pathetic tone that would have made any man wish to comfort her, “and I miss her so very much.”

  “What about your father?”

  This was just the question that Delphine was hoping for.

  The Duke was well aware of his own consequence and Delphine knew that he would never take as his wife a woman who was socially beneath him or whose blood did not match his.

  It was because he had inherited his title early that he had not been pressurised into an arranged marriage when he was a very young man.

  Now that he was thirty-four, Delphine guessed that he was beginning to admit that it was time he produced an heir and was looking for the right woman to share his life with.

  She knew that he would want to respect his wife and what he had given no woman in the past was his respect.

  ‘That is what I must have,’ she pondered.

  She then set out to entice, excite, beguile and, she fervently hoped, enslave him.

  At the same time she locked her bedroom door and resisted all his pleadings, which were very voluble, that they should find happiness in each other’s arms.

  “You make me very happy,” she told the Duke, “when we do things together and, quite frankly, Talbot, I love you.”

  “But not enough to make me happy,” the Duke responded reproachfully.

  It was with difficulty that Delphine refrained from saying that he only had to offer her a small gold Wedding ring and she would agree to anything he suggested.

  Instead she ran away from him, but not so fast that he could not catch up with her very easily.

  She had tried almost every enticement she had ever known, including cancelling at the last moment an agreement to drive with him, which had only made him angry.

  Then, when he mentioned her father, she decided that this was her opportunity to impress him once and for all with her suitability to be his Duchess.

  He had, of course, heard of the Stanleys since they featured in every history book.

  There had been no battle since Agincourt in which they had not played some part nor had there been a victory at sea at which a Stanley had not been honoured or acclaimed.

  There were many leading Statesmen in the Stanley Family Tree and it was only belatedly in her acquaintance with the Duke that Delphine realised that, if Lyn was a perfect example of Elizabethan architecture, so was Queen’s Rest. She had always in her heart of hearts despised her home because the house itself was not large enough to be impressive like the mansions and Castles that she had stayed in once she was married.

  There were no footmen to wait on her father and mother and no valuable horses in the stables to carry them wherever they wished to go.

  ‘How could I have endured another year of such misery?’ she used to ask herself once she had left home with Lord Bramwell and was determined never to return.

  Now as she extolled the past virtues and bravery of her family, she fancied that there was a faint expression of disbelief in the Duke’s eyes as if he knew that she was making them out to be of more consequence than they really were.

  She also felt perceptively that he would never propose marriage to any woman until he had seen her background and approved the stock that she came from.

  She was turning over in her mind how she could take the Duke to meet her father at Queen’s Rest when they both received delightful invitations from the Marquis of Swire, who Delphine remembered lived only a few miles away from her own home.

  It was infuriating for her to think that when she was a girl the Marquis and Marchioness had never included her or Harry in the invitations they sent out once a year to Mr. and Mrs. Stanley inviting them to a garden party.

  It was the one concession that the Marquis and his wife made to what they called ‘the locals’ and the only occasion when they entertained outsiders.

  ‘Now I am very much inside!’ Delphine told herself with satisfaction and she began to plan how she could take the Duke over to meet her father and make sure at the same time that he did not encounter Harry or Nerissa.

  She had long ago decided that they were of no consequence in her life and best forgotten.

  Harry might be tolerated because he was a man, but the idea of having a sister and one who was obviously going to be like her mother, who had been a great beauty, made Delphine shiver.

  She had told all her friends in London that she was an only child.

  “I was such a lonely little girl,” she said to the men who had wanted to talk about her childhood.

  “That is one thing you will never be again, my darling,” was the obvious reply.

  Her head would go back against their shoulders as they kissed her demandingly and passionately until she realised that it was very unlikely that she would ever be lonely again.

  After her husband’s death Delphine had taken several lovers and indeed one shortly before it.

  She was, however, very discreet and the majority of her women friends thought that she was too much occupied with herself to be very interested in men.

  Delphine subtly contributed to this idea and gave the impression, which she knew was talked about, that she was in fact cold and unresponsive to any man however attractive.

  In actual fact she was fiery, passionate and insatiable.

  She found it very difficult to refuse the Duke and it might have become impossible if she had not been having a secret and wild affair with Lord Locke.

  Lord Locke was everything that Delphine admired and enjoyed in a man and, if she was capable of giving her heart to anyone, it would have been to him.

  Unfortunately he was not well off, had no important ancestral home in the background and nothing to recommend him except that he fell passionately and uncontrollably in love with Delphine.

  Often she would play with the idea that the world was well lost for love in the shape of Anthony Locke.

  Then she knew she would never be satisfied unless she carried a strawberry-leaf coronet on her head, could sit with the Duchesses at the Opening of Parliament and entertain at Lyn and at all the Duke’s other magnificent houses.

  “Why could I not have been a Duke?” Anthony Locke would ask despairingly.

  To make him happy Delphine would say,

  “I love you just as you are.” And then there had been no need for any other words.

  Now, as the horses passed through the gates at the end of the long drive which had been broken ever since Delphine could recall, she slipped her hand confidingly into the Duke’s and said,

  “It was sweet of you to be so kind to Papa and I know he is thrilled at the idea of seeing Lyn.”

  “I think he is the only living author who writes really ably about the Elizabethan period,” the Duke stressed reflectively.

  “Papa is very clever,” Delphine admitted with a little sigh. “I only wish I took after him.”

  “You don’t need a brain as well as beauty,” the Duke answered.

  But he did not, as Delphine expected, put his arms around her and she therefore moved a little closer to him to lay her head against his shoulder.

  “I am glad you have seen my home.”

  “It was all extremely interesting,” he remarked, “especially the ceiling in the kitchen.”

  Delphine drew in her breath.

  Then when she would have changed the subject the Duke
asked,

  “Why did you not tell me that you had a brother and a sister? I always believed you to be an only child.”

  “They were so much younger than I was that they played very little part in my life.”

  It was the best that Delphine could do and she was well aware that there was a sharpness about the Duke’s voice as he asked,

  “It seems very strange to me that you should not have mentioned them. How old is your sister?”

  “She is very young,” Delphine replied, “about seventeen, I think, and I am afraid that she will feel very out of place at one of your sophisticated house parties.”

  “I am sure you will be able to look after her.”

  Delphine, who had been intending to coax him into agreeing it was a mistake to include Nerissa in the party, knew that, whatever objections she made, they would all be overruled because he had made up his mind.

  She had already had experience of the Duke’s iron will and had thought it equal to her own. Yet, while she had every intention of getting her own way and marrying him, she suspected that it was the last thing he was contemplating.

  She, however, made one last effort.

  “Perhaps it would be better,” she said, “if you had Papa to stay at another time when you don’t have the distraction of the Horse Show.”

  In the darkness of the carriage she did not realise that the Duke’s eyes were twinkling as he replied,

  “I cannot believe that you could be so hard-hearted as to deprive your brother of what he could not conceal is the most exciting invitation he has ever received.”

  “No, of course not.”

  Then the Duke asked,

  “I imagine you are contributing to his education at Oxford University. It is quite obvious that your father is not well off.”

  Delphine drew in her breath sharply before she said quickly,

  “Papa makes some money from the sale of his books and, of course, as we have land there are the rents from the farmers who lease it from us.”

  Because she was afraid of what the Duke would answer to this, she put up her hand to touch the side of his face and said,

  “Now we have talked enough about me. Let’s talk about you, dearest Talbot. There is no subject more entrancing.”

  She managed with what she thought was considerable expertise to keep the subject going until they reached the Marquis’s house, where there was a large party waiting to reproach them for having been away for so long.

  “You missed an excellent dinner,” someone said and the Duke replied,

  “I doubt if it was as good as the one I enjoyed last night and now we are back it is up to you to entertain us.”

  To Delphine’s anger, instead of inviting her onto the dance floor where a small orchestra was playing for those of the Marquis’s guests who preferred to dance, the Duke sat down at a card table.

  She knew that it would then be impossible to talk with him intimately again before they retired to bed.

  For the first time her strong resolution not to become his mistress wavered a little and she played with the idea of going to his side and asking quietly so that nobody else could hear to come and say ‘goodnight’ to her.

  Then she thought that it would be a very silly thing to do, but, as she went up to bed, she had the uncomfortable feeling that since the visit to Queen’s Rest something had gone wrong, although she was not certain what it was.

  ‘I am tired and I am just imagining things,’ she told herself as she climbed into bed.

  But she found it hard to sleep and kept seeing Nerissa’s young face in front of her eyes.

  Then she told herself that the Duke never had been and was never likely to be interested in young girls.

  *

  Harry came down to breakfast the next morning to find that his father had already left the table and, as Nerissa placed a boiled egg in front of him, he asked her,

  “Did we dream it last night that we have been asked to stay at Lyn?”

  Nerissa laughed.

  “I wondered the same when I awoke. No, it is true, but I should not count on it if I was you.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Harry asked.

  “I have a feeling that Delphine will somehow manage to countermand our invitation and you realise that she has no wish for us to know any of her friends – least of all the Duke.”

  “That is true enough,” Harry agreed at once, “but, if she prevents me from going to the Horse Show, I shall strangle her!”

  “Well, don’t be too sure of it and then you will not be disappointed,” Nerissa advised as she disappeared into the kitchen.

  She came back with his coffee and said before he could speak,

  “In any event it is impossible for me to go. You must realise that.”

  “Why?” Harry asked in amazement.

  “Because I have nothing to wear and even if I was to spend some of the precious money Delphine gave us for last night’s performance, it would be impossible for me to find anything in this part of the world that would not make me look like a peasant at one of the Duke’s smart parties.”

  Harry looked at her in consternation.

  “Are you really saying you are going to cry off?”

  “I shall have to.”

  “But surely you can buy something suitable with what Delphine gave you.”

  Nerissa smiled.

  “There are much more important things I want to buy than clothes.”

  “What could they be?” Harry asked mockingly.

  “Well, first, you are not the only person in the world who likes to ride something with four legs,” Nerissa replied, “and ever since Papa’s horse grew too old to carry anybody but him, I have had to walk on my own two feet.”

  Harry put down his cup to stare at her.

  “Oh, Nerissa, I am sorry. I did not realise how damned selfish I was being.”

  “I am not complaining,” Nerissa said swiftly, “and some of the farmers have been very kind in the hunting season in lending me their horses if they did not require them themselves. I could have had quite a considerable stable at my disposal until I had to close and bolt the door!”

  “What do you mean?” Harry asked.

  Nerissa sat down on the chair opposite him.

  “You remember Jake Bridgeman?”

  “Yes, of course. He runs the Posting house in the main road.”

  “Well, he called to see Papa one day and, after he had met me, he offered me the use of his horses whenever I wished.”

  There was no need for Nerissa to say anything more for Harry exclaimed angrily,

  “Damn his impertinence! Are you telling me that he made himself unpleasant?”

  “Not unpleasant – much too pleasant and so I had to tell him I had given up riding.”

  “That is not the sort of thing that should happen to you,” Harry said. “If you find him being tiresome again, I will knock his head off!”

  “I managed quite cleverly. Whenever I saw him come riding or driving up to the front door, I bolted it and paid no attention however loudly he knocked. You can imagine in his study that Papa never heard him and, as there are no servants except for old Mrs. Cosnet in the morning, he just had to go away.”

  Harry laughed at the way Nerissa spoke.

  Then he said,

  “It is something that should not happen, but, of course, if you want a horse, dearest, then I will find one for you.”

  “I don’t intend to pay anything like as much as you would,” Nerissa said. “I just want a young animal who will carry me over the fields so that I can get the exercise I sometimes long for.”

  “Of course you do,” he agreed sympathetically, “and I promise you shall ride my horse when I am home and we will take it in turns. I apologise for being so stupid as not to realise before what a rotten life you lead.”

  Nerissa gave a little cry.

  “That is the wrong thing to say. It is not rotten. I am very happy here with Papa and now I can afford to hi
re Mrs. Cosnet three, perhaps four days per week instead of two and Papa will not only have much better food to eat than we have been able to afford in the past but occasionally a glass of claret at dinner too. You know how much he enjoys it and we have not had any for ages until last night.”

  “I was thinking after I had gone to bed that Delphine ought to do something for you. After all you are almost nineteen and, if Mama was alive, I cannot help feeling that she would have somehow contrived, because she was so clever, to have seen that you went to some balls or received invitations when you would meet young people of your own age.”

  Nerissa laughed.

  “You sound just like an elderly Dowager planning my marriage – because that is what it amounts to, does it not, Harry? That you think I ought to get married?”

  “I think that you ought to have the chance,” Harry replied, “and what choice is there for you here in this dead and alive place?”

  Nerissa walked round the table and put her arms around him.

  “I love you, Harry,” she sighed, “and you are not to worry about me. Just help me buy a horse that is not too expensive and I shall be the happiest girl in the world.”

  “I will,” Harry promised, “but I still insist that you come with Papa and me to Lyn.”

  Nerissa was still wondering what she could do with her meagre wardrobe or how she could alter some of her mother’s clothes, which were sadly out of date and far too old for her when a groom wearing the Marquis of Swire’s livery arrived with a note.

  As she took it from him, Nerissa knew that it was from Delphine and was certain that it would tell her that the invitation to Lyn had been cancelled.

  Instead she read,

  “I suppose we have to make the best of the mess that Papa made of everything last night, but, as the Duke is so determined that you and Harry should come with Papa to Lyn, I had better send you some clothes to wear.

  I am returning to London first thing in the morning and will send you a trunk containing some gowns that I had put to one side to dispose of to a charity or throw away.

  I am sure you will be able to alter those that need it and at least they will look better than that old rag you were wearing last night.

  Tell Harry he must behave himself and make sure he is not indiscreet in front of the Duke, otherwise he will be sorry!