The Duke & the Preachers Daughter Read online

  “I am better at Latin,” Benedicta answered. “Papa taught me – and also a little Greek.”

  The Duke’s eyes twinkled.

  “I think you will find both the Latin and the Greek books in the library are even heavier than the Bible. I am beginning to think, Miss Calvine, that there are important gaps in your education – they come under the heading of ‘frivolous entertainment’.”

  She looked at him for a moment in surprise, then she knew he was teasing her and replied,

  “You will find I am a very eager student of that subject and in a great many others.”

  She gave an exclamation and put out her hands.

  “There is a whole world of knowledge in this house and I have been telling myself all day how very grateful I am to be here.”

  She spoke spontaneously, then she added as if she rebuked herself for being selfish,

  “But I am really very very grateful because Papa has been brought to a place where he is – comfortable and can be – looked after.”

  “It is fortunate that you saw us,” the Duke remarked.

  “I was praying for help,” Benedicta said simply, “then there you were! Riding across the fields in the sunlight.”

  There was something very moving in the way she spoke and the Duke could not help thinking that the Major was right when he had referred to her as an answer to their prayers.

  Somewhere in the mists of the past a phrase came to his mind and he spoke it aloud,

  “I have always been told that ‘God moves in a mysterious way’.”

  He spoke half-mockingly, half-cynically, not really wanting to believe that what had happened was anything but a coincidence and not due to any supernatural cause.

  “But of course He does!” Benedicta replied, “and Papa would think it very foolish of me to have doubted for one moment that help would come when it was necessary.”

  The Duke knew that Major Haverington was thinking that, just as they had thought Benedicta was manna from Heaven, that is what they had been to her.

  When later she had left them and they were alone in the library, the Major said,

  “That is a very unusual young woman, Nolan. If you ask me, she would be far too intelligent for Richard.”

  “When he is well enough to talk to her,” the Duke said, “I will give her a hint that she must not frighten him by being too erudite!”

  “If Richard, like most of the other young Bucks, has even read a serious book since he left College, I shall be surprised.”

  “Perhaps you will be,” the Duke retorted enigmatically, wanting to defend his heir even while he thought the Major was doubtless right.

  During the night he told himself that while it seemed a preposterous idea to find a wife for Richard, the presence of someone of his own age would doubtless make his convalescence quicker than it would be otherwise.

  He wondered what Richard’s tastes were, apart of course, from Delyth Maulden.

  He personally had never spoken to him about anything except horses and other sporting interests.

  It was Richard’s mother who had told him that he was noble and idealistic and knew little of the Social world. Mothers, the Duke thought, were not unnaturally prejudiced in the favour of their offspring and he wondered now what Richard would think of Benedicta and if he would find her too clever to be attractive.

  He knew that cleverness in a woman was only tolerated when they were old and could preside over a Salon of political and literary lions such as Lady Holland had achieved in the teeth of the antagonism of her contemporaries.

  But a Salon was very much for grown-up men rather than boys and the Duke wondered if, in his aim to prevent Richard thinking of Delyth, he should have turned to play actresses and doxies.

  ‘Time will tell,’ he told himself.

  Nevertheless, he had gone on thinking of the problem and found in consequence it was hard to sleep.

  However, he decided when Benedicta appeared at luncheon time, that he had been needlessly anxious.

  As she came into the library where the Duke and Major Haverington were waiting for her, they saw at first glance that something sensational had taken place, in that she was wearing a new gown.

  It was very simple and had, the Duke saw with an experienced eye, been run up hastily by the maids in the house, from one of the rolls of muslin bought by the last Duchess.

  It was white, sprigged with tiny flowers of pale pink and green.

  Sprigged muslin had been the fashion at the beginning of the century and the Duke suspected that young women now were wearing something different, but it was certainly exceedingly becoming to Benedicta.

  Very simple with a high waistline it had small frills falling over her wrists and one round her neck, tied in the centre with a narrow velvet ribbon.

  She looked very young and very fresh, almost like a musk rose just coming into bloom or perhaps one of the celandines that made a carpet of white under the trees in the woods.

  There was an expression of shyness on her face, as if for the first time, she was conscious of her own appearance.

  Then, as she curtsied to the Duke, it was as if she forgot herself, as she said impulsively,

  “I have something exciting to tell Your Grace, and Hawkins told me that I could be the bearer of good tidings.”

  “What is it?” the Duke asked.

  “Mr. Wood regained consciousness about half-an-hour ago!”

  “That is indeed good news!” the Duke exclaimed.

  “Hawkins gave him something to drink and he went to sleep again, but I am sure now he is on the road to recovery.”

  “I am glad, I am really!” Major Haverington said. “I know you have been worried, Nolan.”

  “I have indeed,” the Duke answered. “It would have been a disaster if anything had happened to Richard.”

  The Major knew that he was thinking of the inheritance of the title and he smiled before he turned to Benedicta,

  “The Duke is very attached to his young cousin.”

  “I hope Your Grace will be able to persuade him in future, not to indulge in anything so nonsensical as duelling,” Benedicta said. “I thought it was illegal.”

  “It is, but when it is a question of honour, nobody pays any attention to rules and regulations.”

  “Then they should!” Benedicta said. “Life is so precious that no one should be so foolish as to waste it.”

  “I am afraid after there has been a long war,” the Duke said, “we are all inclined to think that life is easily expendable.”

  “I cannot bear to think of so many young men being killed or wounded,” Benedicta said in a low voice. “When we were coming South, Papa and I found so many bereaved wives and mothers. Their unhappiness haunted me and there was so little we could do to comfort them.”

  She spoke softly and there was something so compassionate in her voice that the Duke thought it was exactly how a woman should feel about war.

  Yet, he told himself, men would go on fighting.

  When luncheon was over he said to Benedicta,

  “There is a picture I want to show you in one of the salons.”

  He glanced at the Major as he spoke, who understood he was not wanted and walked off alone towards the library.

  The Duke took Benedicta into a large and very comfortably furnished salon which normally was used only when there was a large party.

  On one of the walls there hung a picture of the Holy Family escaping into Egypt by Cranach.

  “I thought you would like this,” the Duke said.

  Benedicta looked at it and he saw a light come into her eyes.

  It was a very beautiful and famous picture of the Flight into Egypt with the Holy Child surrounded by small winged angels.

  The colour, the expressions on their faces and the radiance of the picture seemed to give it a light that many other pictures lacked.

  “It is lovely, completely lovely!” Benedicta murmured, as if she spoke to herself, “and I shall always
be glad that I have seen it.”

  “I thought it would please you.”

  “‘Please’ is a very inadequate word,” she protested. “I am thrilled, ecstatic, enraptured! I feel as if it inspires me.”

  She made a little gesture with her hands.

  “What a pity that everybody cannot see it. I feel it could mean so much more than a thousand sermons.”

  The Duke did not speak and after a moment she said,

  “I know you are thinking that while this means so much to me, other people might not feel the same.”

  “How do you know that is what I was thinking?” the Duke asked.

  “I can almost hear your thoughts,” she answered, “and of course, you are right. I sometimes think that Papa forgets that however eloquent he may be, there are always a great number of people who do not understand – whose ears do not hear what he says.”

  “We cannot live other people’s lives for them,” the Duke remarked.

  “No, that is true,” Benedicta agreed.

  “But we can try to help them,” he continued, “and that is what I want to talk to you about, Benedicta.”

  It was the first time he had used her Christian name, but she did not seem to notice – and after a moment when he knew she was listening to him, he continued,

  “Now that Richard is conscious, I want you to help him.”

  Benedicta looked at him in surprise.

  “How?”

  The Duke chose his words with care.

  “He has been through a rather difficult time,” he said. “To be frank with you, he has been enamoured of somebody, who is totally unworthy of him – a woman whom your father, I am quite certain, would denounce as being wicked.”

  “So that was why he fought a duel,” Benedicta murmured.

  “Yes,” the Duke replied, “and now, as we believe he will live, we have to heal not only his body but his mind.”

  “And his heart?” Benedicta questioned.

  “I think perhaps that is the most damaged of the three,” the Duke agreed.

  “How can – I help him?” Benedicta enquired.

  There was a faint smile on the Duke’s lips as he replied,

  “I don’t think many women would ask that question, especially if you have ever looked in your mirror.”

  She looked at him in such a startled manner that he knew the idea of using her attractions had never crossed her mind.

  The colour rose faintly in her cheeks as she stammered,

  “I do not – think I – understand.”

  “Let me put it very plainly,” the Duke said. “I want you to amuse Richard, to entertain him and to do everything in your power to make him forget the woman with whom quite misguidedly, he thought himself in love.”

  Again Benedicta looked at him in a startled fashion. Then she turned her face away to stare up at the picture by Cranach.

  “Men are like children,” the Duke said quietly. “They run after something that attracts them, just because it is bright and sparkling, only to find when they have captured it, that it is garish and tawdry and not worth the effort.”

  “That is – your opinion of what has – happened,” Benedicta said, “but will Mr. Wood think the – same?”

  The Duke was surprised that she should ask such an intelligent and perceptive question and he knew that it went straight to the crux of the whole future he was planning for Richard.

  Aloud he said,

  “That will be up to you.”

  Benedicta hesitated a moment, then she said,

  “I cannot believe that anyone – in love – really in love, could – change so quickly or – forget.”

  “Unless Richard is very much more stupid than I believe him to be,” the Duke replied harshly, “he will realise that his love was just a mirage and the object of it too despicable and unworthy for him to risk anything, let alone his life and health on her behalf.”

  “Are you – sure of this?” Benedicta asked.

  “Quite sure!” the Duke said positively.

  “He must have – loved her very – very much,” Benedicta said.

  The Duke’s lips tightened.

  He knew that Benedicta was thinking of what had happened as something romantic and an expression of true love. He could hardly explain to her that it was something very different, sordid and unpleasant, the betrayal by a faithless lustful woman of everything that was decent and sacred.

  He did not speak and after a moment Benedicta turned from her contemplation of the picture.

  “I will try to – help him,” she said, “because you have been so kind and because I owe you a – debt of gratitude that can never be – repaid. But if I fail – you will not be – angry with me?”

  It was not what the Duke had expected her to say and he smiled as he replied,

  “I promise you that nothing that happens in the future will be your fault, and I shall be only too grateful that you attempted to help Richard.”

  “Then I will do my best.”

  They walked towards the door, then she asked the question which was, the Duke thought, the inevitable feminine one,

  “Was she very – beautiful?”

  “Very!” he answered, “but I am sure you will find her counterpart in the Bible in Jezebel!”

  “She was eaten by dogs!”

  That, the Duke told himself savagely, was exactly what he hoped would happen to Delyth, although it was unlikely.

  Aloud he said,

  “I dare say we shall find some other unpleasant punishments await those who are wicked. It is a long time since I have read my Bible carefully.”

  “Papa’s punishments for sinners used to haunt me when I was a child,” Benedicta replied. “Mama always comforted me by saying that she never for a moment believed they were half so cruel as they sound.”

  “Well, one thing of which we can be quite certain,” the Duke said bitterly, “is that Richard has been punished.”

  They had reached the hall and he knew that Benedicta intended to go upstairs to her father.

  “Shall we go and see our invalids together?” he asked.

  “Please let’s do that,” she answered.

  They climbed the carved staircase side-by-side and walked along the passage that led to Richard’s room in the South wing.

  The sunshine was coming through three windows that overlooked the garden and the heir to Kingswood lay in a big four-poster bed draped with embroidered curtains.

  He was covered with a bedspread that had been embroidered centuries earlier by loving hands.

  As they entered the room, the young footman whom the Duke knew must be Jackson, rose to his feet.

  He did not speak and the Duke and Benedicta walked towards the bed.

  Richard was lying on his back with his eyes closed and the Duke thought that, although his face was very pale, there was a sharpness about his features that was not usually there.

  He looked handsome in a manner which should appeal to any young girl.

  The collar of his nightshirt was very white against his chin and his hair swept back from his forehead had a romantic look reminiscent of Lord Byron, who had started a poetical cult amongst the younger Bucks.

  They stood for some moments in silence, then Benedicta put out her hand and laid it on Richard’s forehead.

  “He has no fever,” she said in a low voice. “That is good. But he might have one later when he regains consciousness.”

  Her hand was very light, but it awoke the sleeping young man and his eyes opened slowly.

  Watching, the Duke thought he had a little difficulty in focusing them, then he saw Benedicta and there was a faint expression of surprise in his eyes.

  “Where – am – I? What – has – happened?” he asked.

  The words were hardly audible and slurred and yet it was possible to understand them.

  “You are quite safe,” Benedicta told him softly. “Go back to sleep.”

  He looked at her for a few seconds, then obedie
ntly closed his eyes.

  Without speaking, Benedicta walked out of the room and the Duke followed her.

  “I know Hawkins was afraid that your cousin might die,” she said, “but he will live, although it may be a long time before he is well enough to do everything he did before.”

  “That he is alive is all that matters.”

  She looked as if she would like to argue with the Duke, but she said nothing and after a moment he added,

  “Of course I want him to be fully recovered, to be able to ride and do all the things he was doing before he was brought to this deplorable state.”

  “He will be all right,” Benedicta repeated confidently.

  “How do you know?”

  She did not speak for a moment and he thought she would not reply, then she said,

  “I suppose it is because I have been with so many – sick people, but I – do know.”

  She thought the Duke seemed interested and she went on,

  “There was a woman two days ago, who asked Papa to pray for her. She was not very old. She did not think she was dying – and yet I knew.”

  “What did you know?”

  “That she only had a little time to – live. It was as if I could feel her – slipping away, losing her – hold on the earth.”

  The Duke looked at Benedicta in perplexity.

  “I do not understand.”

  “Nor do I,” she answered, “but I am convinced in my mind that what I feel is right, and that is why I am quite sure that Mr. Wood will get well.”

  They had reached the top of the staircase and the Duke asked,

  “And what do you feel about your father?”

  He saw a look of fear come into her grey eyes before she replied,

  “It is more – difficult to think – impartially when it concerns – somebody you – love.”

  “Let me come and see your father,” the Duke suggested.

  “I would like you to do that,” Benedicta responded.

  They climbed up to the next floor.

  Benedicta opened the door of a room that the Duke knew was considered one of the secondary bedrooms in the house.

  It was comfortable and well appointed, but could not compare with those occupied by Richard and by the more important guests who came to Kingswood.

  There was no one in attendance in the room and it was in fact unnecessary.