The Unwanted Wedding Page 6

  *

  The Countess entered the drawing room, shut the door quietly behind her and moved swiftly towards the Duke who was still standing beside the fireplace.

  As she reached him, he looked at her to say,

  “This is a nice mess!”

  “It is nothing of the sort, darling,” she said. “The girl was just overcome by you and the whole situation and who shall blame her? Now she has agreed to do exactly what we want and the footman can take the notice of the engagement to the newspapers.”

  “What you mean,” the Duke said slowly, “is that you have bullied her into saying she will marry me.”

  “She is just frightened and bewildered at the idea of becoming a Duchess,” Aline replied, “Oh, my dearest man, if only I was in her shoes!”

  The Duke smiled and it swept away the frown between his eyes.

  “I am not certain,” he said in a very different voice, “that you would make a very good Duchess.”

  “The only thing that could matter,” Aline said passionately, “would be that I was your wife.”

  She lifted her face to his as she spoke and, as if he could not help himself, the Duke put his arms around her and kissed her lips.

  Then, fearing they might be disturbed, he released her to ask,

  “Are you quite certain that there is nothing else we can do? I did not expect your niece to refuse me.”

  “But you told her the reason why you were doing it.”

  “She asked me to tell her the truth and it seemed better for me to tell her than that she should hear it sooner or later from somebody else.”

  Aline shrugged her shoulders as she said,

  “I think that was rather foolish of you. After all, young girls are always excessively romantic with their heads in the clouds. It would have been far better if you had just let her think you were a Knight on a white charger.”

  “I could hardly expect the girl, having never seen me before, not to ask questions.”

  “If you had asked me to marry you,” Aline said, “I would have asked only one question and that would be ‘when?’”

  The way she spoke as she moved nearer to him, her eyes seeming to sparkle with the fire burning within her, made the Duke draw in his breath.

  There was something about Aline Langstone that aroused his desire, as few other women had been able to do.

  And yet at the back of his mind some cynical voice told him that it was a very physical emotion and one he would not find particularly desirable in his wife.

  What was more, if he was honest, he knew that the way Aline behaved and even the strength of her feelings for him were attributes he would find very reprehensible in a young girl.

  “I am not talking of you, Aline, but of your niece,” he said, “and I am upset by her attitude.”

  “Leave Honora to me,” Aline Langstone said. “All girls are the same and take up the contrary view to anything that is suggested to them.”

  She knew that the Duke was still worried and added,

  “As a matter of fact, when she was alone with me, she said that she thought you were extremely attractive and she would like to marry you if you really wanted her to.”

  “Are you sure she said that?” the Duke asked.

  Aline laughed.

  “Do you really believe there exists a woman who is not bowled over by you as soon as she sees you and would not give her right hand for the honour and privilege of being your wife?”

  She spoke very convincingly and then, as if to make sure that the Duke was certain that he was doing the right thing, she asked,

  “Darling, be sensible. I know this has been somewhat of a rush, but surely anything is better than having to look at Princess Sophie for the rest of your life?”

  The Duke gave a shudder and replied,

  “That, of course, is indisputable!”

  “I think you have forgotten,” Aline went on in a low voice, “how easy and wonderful it will be for us to be able to see so much more of each other than we can now.”

  The idea excited her and she continued,

  “We will go to the Dawlishes this weekend as we promised, then the following week I think we should all stay with you at Tyne Castle.”

  “I think actually,” the Duke said as if he was thinking it over, “it would be best to give up the Dawlishes. As soon as the engagement is announced tomorrow all my family will want to meet my future bride and to save ourselves a whole succession of boring luncheons and dinners, let’s get it over all at once by inviting them to The Castle this weekend.”

  Aline clapped her hands.

  “Of course, you are right! You are always right and it will be perfect for us to be at The Castle together!”

  She paused before she said,

  “Besides, now I think of it, the following weekend George and I ought to give a party at home and plan the wedding.”

  “The wedding?” the Duke asked suspiciously.

  “There is no point in having a long engagement,” Aline said, “and the sooner we have a respectable excuse for being together at The Castle regularly the sooner will George realise that there is no reasonable way that we can go on refusing your invitations.”

  “Actually,” the Duke said, “I was surprised that he agreed to such a precipitate engagement.”

  Aline smiled.

  “He did make a slight protest last night and he was very angry with me for having told you about Princess Sophie. But I told him that it was a marvellous opportunity for Honora to make a good marriage.”

  She laughed and added,

  “I also convinced him with great cleverness that I was to you what he had always found and accused me of being – a very cold woman!”

  Laughing softly she lifted her lips to the Duke to say in a low passionate voice that seemed to vibrate on the air between them,

  “Do you find me cold, Ulric?”

  His arms went round her before she had finished speaking and he kissed her until they were both burning with a fiery desire that made it impossible to think of anything else –

  *

  The following morning, as Honora was called, Emily put two newspapers down on the bed in front of her.

  “It’s in the Court Column, miss,” she said, “and it reads ever so exciting. I knew you’d want to see it, so I brings up the newspapers before ’is Lordship goes down to breakfast.”

  There was no need for Honora to ask what she was talking about. For the previous night when she had dined alone with her uncle and aunt they had both talked of nothing but her engagement.

  “I think you should have let me see the announcement before you sent it to The Gazette and the other newspapers,” the Earl was saying disagreeably as she entered the drawing room before dinner.

  “I am sorry, dearest, but I did not think you would be interested,” Aline replied, “and I really wrote it out quite correctly.”

  “I hope so.”

  Then, as the Earl saw Honora advancing towards them, he smiled and held out his hands, saying,

  “How are you, my dear? I am delighted to see you after such a long absence.”

  Because of the warmth in his voice and the definite resemblance she could see in him to her father, Honora ran towards him.

  “It’s lovely to see you, Uncle George!” she exclaimed and kissed his cheek.

  “Well, well!” the Earl said looking at her. “You have certainly grown into a pretty young lady! Your father, if he was alive, would be very proud of you!”

  “I hope so, Uncle George, because as you know, Papa always disliked plain women.”

  Her uncle laughed.

  “That is certainly true and I have always thought that my brother and I managed to marry the two most beautiful and charming women in the world!”

  It flashed through Honora’s mind that while that was true where her mother was concerned, her aunt might be beautiful, but she was certainly not charming.

  In fact, she knew, if she was truthful, that she greatly dis
liked her.

  “I hope, George,” the Countess interrupted, “that pretty speech means that you will be very generous over Honora’s trousseau.”

  Honora knew as her aunt spoke that she was pointing out to her once again how grateful she had to be to her uncle for providing for her as her father had lamentably failed to do.

  “I-I will try not to be too – extravagant, Uncle George,” she said.

  “Of course you must be dressed as befits your future position as the Duchess of Tynemouth,” her uncle replied.

  There was something in the way he spoke the name that told Honora, although she had no reason for thinking it, that her uncle did not like the Duke.

  Then she told herself that she must be mistaken because obviously the Duke was a close friend of both her uncle and her aunt.

  “Now you are not to make Honora feel shy,” Aline interrupted as if she was afraid of what she might say, “and frighten her when she realises how much there is to be done before we can stay at The Castle next weekend.”

  “Is that what we are doing?” the Earl asked.

  “It may seem a bore to you, darling,” the Countess answered, “but obviously the Duke’s relations, and there are far too many of them, will want to meet his future bride and, as he said himself, it would be better to get it over and done with all at once.”

  “There is certainly something in that,” the Earl agreed, “and I hope you are not going to let me in for a whole lot of dinner parties. You know I dislike them, and what is more, I have to be at The Palace most of next week.”

  “I will save you from as much as I can,” his wife said caressingly, “but I am sure Honora will want your support and you will be so much better than I would be at advising her about what she should and should not do.”

  Aline was thinking as she spoke that the more responsibility she could make her husband assume the more time she would have to be alone with the Duke.

  With a smile that seemed almost natural, she said now to her niece,

  “I feel sure, Honora, you will want to feel that you can depend on your uncle and turn to him with all your problems.”

  “I don’t – want to be a – nuisance.”

  “You will not be that, my dear,” the Earl assured her genially, “and I know too how much you must miss your father. I miss him too. Everything always seemed so much more amusing when he was around.”

  “He was always – laughing,” Honora said in a low voice. “I think it is his laughter I miss more than – anything else.”

  The butler announced dinner and, when they were seated in the large rather pompous dining room, the Countess went out of her way to indicate to the Earl how much Honora needed his help.

  She also kept asserting how important it was, being so young and inexperienced, that she should not make any mistakes.

  “You know as well as I do, George,” she said, “how all those spiteful women who have tried to marry Ulric off to their unattractive daughters will be waiting to find fault with poor little Honora.”

  “I am quite certain that they will find that a difficult thing to do,” the Earl said with unexpected gallantry.

  “Only if you look after her and teach her so that she does not make faux pas by saying the wrong thing,” the Countess said.

  She paused before she added,

  “It will give me great pleasure to see their faces when I dress Honora with the good taste that most of them lack and in gowns that a great many of them cannot afford to buy.”

  Her aunt spoke so spitefully that Honora wondered what the ladies to whom she was referring had done to upset her. She was not aware, of course, that she hated them because they had pursued the Duke.

  It struck the Countess even as she was speaking that it would be agonising to make Honora look even lovelier than she did at the moment in gowns that only the most expensive and renowned dressmakers in Bond Street could provide.

  At the same time she was aware that if she tried to make her look dowdy, which in any case would be difficult, her enemies would be sharp enough to suspect that she had a reason for it.

  Although she and the Duke had been as circumspect as possible, she was not so foolish as to think that the feelings they had for each other had passed unnoticed amongst their so-called friends who watched everything they did with hawk-like eyes.

  The Duke was a constant source of pleasure to them because his many love affairs gave them a great deal to chatter about.

  What they did not know, they invented, while Aline was aware they hated her from the first moment she swept into the Social world to take it by storm.

  She came from a family whose origins were impeccable, but which like many others had grown poorer with each generation.

  Because Aline was outstandingly beautiful, her parents had hoped that she would make a good marriage.

  They had therefore made tremendous sacrifices so that they could take her to London for the Season and she could make her curtsey to King William IV and Queen Adelaide.

  There was no doubt that the moment she appeared in the ballroom at Buckingham Palace, positively outshining the other debutantes and drawing the eyes of every man in the room, she had been a sensation.

  The invitations had poured into the house that her parents had managed to rent cheaply for three months and from which she had been married, as if to a fanfare of trumpets.

  It had been, Aline had thought later, astounding good luck that the Earl of Langstone had been on duty as Lord Steward on the night of her presentation and was actually standing behind the King when she made her curtsey.

  William IV was famous for the remarks he made in what he thought was a sotto voce aside, but which were usually very audible.

  As Aline swept gracefully down in front of him, he had said in what was meant to be beneath his breath,

  “A pretty girl – very pretty!”

  The Earl had replied somewhat pompously,

  “Your Majesty’s taste is always impeccable.”

  Aline had heard what they both said and, as she rose, had given a flashing smile that had illuminated her face and had captured the heart of the Earl of Langstone.

  He was acquainted with her father and there was great excitement when an invitation arrived the following day asking them all to dinner at Langstone House in Grosvenor Square.

  Aline knew, as her mother accepted, that this was the chance she had been waiting for.

  In three weeks the Earl had proposed and she had accepted him. From that moment her future was golden in a way that she had never dared to hope it might be.

  Aline had actually been shrewd, calculating and supremely confident of her own attractions from the time she was fifteen.

  She had discovered then that men of every age were attracted to her and, when she smiled at her father’s contemporaries there was a ‘swimmy’ look in their eyes as they would humbly suggest that they should kiss her in a ‘fatherly fashion’.

  She soon learnt that the word ‘fatherly’ meant something quite different from the way her own father interpreted it.

  But it gave her confidence in herself and she was the most sophisticated and confident debutante who ever wore the three Prince of Wales’s feathers on her shining head.

  The Earl was besotted with her and everything she did from making him the most envied man at Court to the father of two sons made him more and more proud.

  He was at the same time extremely jealous.

  But, as Aline showed in their intimate moments together none of the fiery passion he had known with his mistresses before marriage, he decided that as was only proper and to be expected of a lady, she had a cold temperament.

  He had thought before the Duke appeared that one or two of his wife’s admirers were becoming too intimate and he had even considered challenging one of them to a duel.

  But Aline had only laughed at him.

  “How can you imagine, dearest,” she had asked, “that I would look at anybody except you and really Lord Trevor
is a bore because he will not leave me alone!”

  She put her arms round her husband’s neck and she went on,

  “At the same time he makes me feel sure that I can still attract you and you will not leave me for one of those very alluring ‘lovebirds’ on whom you used to spend so much of your money before you knew me.”

  “How do you know about them?” the Earl asked sharply.

  Aline laughed.

  “You may be quite certain there are plenty of spiteful women to tell me exactly how you used to behave! So, dearest, I am always afraid that I shall bore you and once again you will make surreptitious visits to Chelsea or St. John’s Wood, as you did in the past.”

  For a moment the Earl had looked guilty.

  Then he said,

  “I have never even seen another woman’s face since I married you.”

  “That is what I want to believe,” Aline answered, “but sometimes because you are so attractive and, of course so rich, I am afraid of losing you.”

  The Earl was so delighted by what she was saying to him that he forgot the conversation had started by his rebuking his wife for her behaviour with Lord Trevor.

  Aline could always handle him, as she was well aware, and it had been easy before the Duke had come into her life.

  Then it became more difficult to conceal her indifference to the Earl’s kisses and her anger when he kept repeating that she was seeing ‘too much of Tynemouth’.

  She wanted the Duke as she had never wanted another man.

  Now, she thought, the Earl would no longer have grounds for suspicion when the Duke was always in the same house parties as they were or to resent that invariably she was seated next to him at dinner and found it difficult to talk to anybody else when he was in the room.

  She thought too with satisfaction that however pretty – as she had to admit – Honora might be, she was obviously too young and too innocent to hold any interest for the Duke.

  No one knew better than Aline did that it was the witty cut and thrust of a conversation where every other word was an innuendo that made Ulric laugh.

  She was also quite certain that no other woman could evoke the same fiery response or give him the same satisfaction that she could.

  ‘He is mine,’ she told herself and aloud said, “I will take Honora shopping all tomorrow and then in the evening I will arrange a dinner party. You must help me, George dear, by telling me which of your relations we should ask!”