The Lioness and the Lily Page 6

  “I have brought you something very special,” she said.

  “What is it?” the Earl asked.

  “The first lilies-of-the-valley. There are just six of them, but they do smell delicious. Tomorrow there may be more.”

  She brought the vase to his bedside and held it towards him so that he could smell the delicate white flowers which she had arranged amongst their dark green leaves.

  “Thank you,” the Earl said. “I think if I had to choose a flower to represent you it would be a lily or perhaps a lily-of-the-valley.”

  He thought that she might blush or look a little shy, but instead she said,

  “So you think flowers look like people! I have always thought that. Elizabeth is like the small pink musk roses. We have a bush of them at the back of the house. Nanny, although she gets angry when I say so, is a snapdragon, rather austere and frightening until you realise that the bees never leave her alone because she has so much honey.”

  She laughed as she spoke.

  Then she sat down on a chair and asked,

  “Now what flower do you think you are, my Lord?”

  “I am not interested in myself,” the Earl asserted. “I want to talk to you, Purilla.”

  “You sound very serious.”

  “I am,” he replied. “Come here and give me your hand.”

  Obedient as a child might have been Purilla then pulled her chair a little nearer to the bed and without any embarrassment held out her hand.

  The Earl took it in both of his.

  Then he said quietly,

  “We have not known each other very long, Purilla, but I would be very honoured if you would be my wife and I will do my best to make you happy.”

  As he finished the short speech, which he had prepared while he was resting after luncheon, he realised that Purilla was staring at him wide-eyed with an expression of sheer astonishment on her face.

  After a moment she asked,

  “Is this a – joke?”

  “No, of course not,” the Earl said. “I am serious, Purilla. I want you to be my wife.”

  “Why?”

  He had not expected this question and now it was his turn to look surprised.

  Then he smiled.

  “It would make me very happy,” he said, “and I have already promised that I will try to make you happy too as I feel you will be.”

  “Nanny thought that when you left here ‒ we would never see you again.”

  “I am not particularly concerned with what Nanny thinks or does not think,” the Earl replied. “I am asking you to marry me, Purilla, and I am very sure that you would find it an exciting thing to do.”

  She did not answer and he went on,

  “Rock Castle is a very beautiful house full of treasures, which I am sure will delight you and, although, of course, there is room for Mercury and Pegasus in my stables, I think you will enjoy riding my horses which are all as fine as Rufus.”

  As he spoke, he felt it was extraordinary that she had not accepted him with alacrity and now it was almost as if he was having to tempt her with other attractions besides himself.

  Always in the past when he had owned nothing he had thought that when the time came for him to get married the woman of his choice would accept him eagerly.

  And yet now this child, this inexperienced girl living in a small house in an obscure and isolated village, was not grasping at him as he had somehow expected she would.

  What was more, when he was holding her hand, it did not seem to tremble or quiver, but lay quietly and confidently in his grasp although he could see a puzzled look in her eyes.

  “What is worrying you?” he asked her with a faint smile on his lips that most women found irresistible.

  “I am trying to understand why you would want me to be your wife,” Purilla said. “I know you are very important and that you are often with the Queen and the Prince Consort. I am sure I should be out of place in Buckingham Palace and then you would be ashamed of me.”

  “You will, of course, feel strange at first,” the Earl answered, “but I will look after you and tell you what you have to do. I promise you that when you get to know the Queen you will find that she is not in the least frightening and is very happy with her husband, the Prince Consort, as we shall be.”

  As he spoke, he remembered the expression of adoration he had seen in the Queen’s eyes when she had looked at Prince Albert and the way, when anyone spoke about him, she told them gushingly how wonderful he was.

  Talking to the Earl, who did not often have intimate conversations with her, the Queen had said,

  “His Royal Highness is so wonderful, despite the fact that his position is a very difficult one, that I know everyone will do all they can to make it easier for him.”

  The Earl had merely murmured, ‘of course, ma’am’, but he had thought once again, as he had thought before, that the Prince Consort was in a very invidious position.

  A man should be Master in his own Castle, which His Royal Highness could never be.

  He was quite certain that this would not occur where he was concerned.

  He looked at Purilla almost impatiently and thinking that by this time she should have accepted him.

  “What we will do,” he said as his fingers tightened on hers, “is to get married perhaps the day after tomorrow. Then I can take you and Nanny back with me to Rock Castle as I am quite certain that I cannot look after myself without you.”

  There was a little pause.

  Then Purilla stammered,

  “The – day after ­– tomorrow?”

  “What is the point of waiting?” the Earl asked. “I do not want to leave you and, as I have said, I need you to look after me until I am well.”

  “Could we do that? But, of course, you will have to be very careful of yourself,” Purilla said in a different tone of voice.

  “It may be rather disappointing that we cannot go on a proper honeymoon,” the Earl said, “but I can show you my possessions. Then once the doctor allows it, we can, if you wish, go somewhere abroad or to one of my other houses in England.”

  To his surprise Purilla rose to her feet taking her hand from his.

  She walked across the room to stand at the window looking out through the diamond panes as she had been doing the first time he had seen her as he came round to consciousness.

  Now he watched her feeling puzzled and a little bewildered by her behaviour.

  He had been so sure that she was in love with him as much as anyone of her age was capable of being in love.

  Besides having no money and apparently very few relations what woman would not wish to be the Countess of Rockbrook?

  Purilla had her face turned away from him and the sun made a halo of gold around her head.

  Because he thought that it was up to him to take the initiative, the Earl then said,

  “Come here, Purilla. I want you.”

  “I am – thinking.”

  “About me or yourself?”

  “Both.”

  “Well, let me do the thinking. I want you to be my wife and I cannot believe that you are going to refuse me.”

  Slowly Purilla turned round.

  She walked back from the window.

  Then, as if totally unexpectedly, her doubts seemed to be swept away, she gave him a smile that illuminated her face as she moved swiftly back towards him.

  “I think I would – like to – marry you,” she said, “but you are quite certain you – want me?”

  “Quite certain,” the Earl said firmly. “In fact, Purilla, this is the first time I have ever in my whole life asked anyone to be my wife.”

  “If you had, I suppose that you would have been married and you would not be asking me!” she said with unanswerable logic.

  “I am asking you and you have not yet given me a proper answer.”

  He reached out as he spoke and took her hand once again in his.

  “It may seem rather a jump in the dark,” he said gently, “b
ut I shall be there to catch you.”

  Purilla drew in her breath.

  She seemed about to say something rather serious. Then there was laughter in her voice as she replied,

  “You will just have to wait until your collarbone is mended. At the moment it would be very painful for you to catch even a ball of thistledown.”

  The way she spoke made the Earl laugh.

  At the same time it was not really the way that he had expected his proposal of marriage to be greeted.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Purilla ran down the stairs from the Earl’s bedroom and out through the side door towards the stables.

  As she neared the stall, there was first of all a whinnying from Mercury and then the sharp barks and whining of a dog followed by scratching on wood.

  She then opened the door of the empty stall and a small spaniel rushed out like a thunderbolt to throw himself on her yelping with delight at her appearance and jumping up and down in an ecstasy of joy.

  She bent down to pat him and Tom came from behind her to say,

  “You’d think Jason ’ad never seen you for a month instead of an hour ago since you brought ’e back!”

  “He hates being shut up in the stables,” Purilla replied unnecessarily, “but Nanny would not let him disturb our patient.”

  She did not wait for old Tom’s reply, but walked from the stable followed by Jason and out across the paddock towards the wood.

  She walked quickly and only when she was in the shadow of the trees did she go more slowly until she reached a fallen trunk and sat down on it, while Jason sat at her feet expectantly almost as if he anticipated that she would talk to him.

  He was not disappointed!

  “What am I to do, Jason?” Purilla asked. “He has asked me to marry him, but I have a strange feeling, which I cannot explain even to myself, that he does not really – love me.”

  Because she had been alone so much, Purilla had grown into the habit of talking to Jason as if he was a human being who could understand what she was saying.

  As if he did understand, he looked at her knowingly with his bright eyes and wagging his tail as he did so.

  “I am sure that what I feel for him is love,” Purilla went on, as if she was reasoning it out for herself. “He is so handsome, so magnificent and so exactly what I have always thought a man should be.”

  She drew in her breath as she continued,

  “I want to talk to him, I want to be with him and, when he smiles at me, I feel as if my heart was doing – funny things in my – breast.”

  She paused to ask in an intense little voice,

  “But I want love, Jason, the love I have always – dreamed about.”

  Jason made a strange noise in his throat as if he was trying to answer her.

  Suddenly Purilla knelt down beside him on the dry leaves with the green shoots of spring just beginning to show through them and put her arms around him.

  “I am – frightened, Jason,” she said. “Frightened that I shall not make him happy – but more frightened of – losing him.”

  Jason licked her face because it was the only consolation that he could give her.

  Then, as she set him free, he scampered away to look for the rabbits which he was certain were hiding from him under every pile of leaves and in every sandy hole beneath the trees.

  Purilla sat where he had left her staring across the wood, not seeing the carpet of bluebells in the distance or the last rays of the setting sun turning the trunks of the trees to rusty gold.

  Instead she saw the Earl’s handsome face and heard the note in his voice when he proposed,

  “I want you to be my wife.”

  It was something she had never expected him to say and she thought that the words should have made her feel as if she was riding on a rainbow towards the stars.

  But somehow inexplicably, in a way that she could not explain to herself, there was something missing.

  ‘He is so much older and so much more experienced than any man I have met before,’ she reasoned, ‘and very different from Edward Charlton.’

  And yet she knew that Edward looked at her sister-in-law, Elizabeth, with an expression in his eyes that told her without words how much he loved her.

  Long before he had said anything to Elizabeth about marriage, Purilla had known perceptively that they were in love with each other but too shy to express it.

  She thought that just as Nanny was ‘fey’, she had been fey where they were concerned.

  She could feel their love beating in the vibrations that emanated from them, hear it in the way they spoke of even the most commonplace things and see it in their eyes as they looked at each other.

  That was love, irrepressible, irrefutable and impossible to hide or ignore.

  Purilla knew that while the Earl looked at her in a kindly manner and the feeling of his hand on hers was comforting and secure, there was something else that she knew, if she was really honest, was essential to her happiness and to his.

  But already she had said that she would marry him because he had told her that he wanted her.

  ‘I can look after him – I can help him,’ she told herself.

  And yet deep down inside her something was saying that it was not enough and that she wanted more, very much more, from the man she gave her heart to.

  *

  Nanny changed the Earl’s bandages and gave him a clean sling for his injured left arm.

  He did not talk while she was doing so for the simple reason that he was just waiting to feel the inevitable pain that came whenever he moved.

  To his surprise there was not only no pain but very little discomfort and he knew that the bone, which had not been badly broken but only cracked, was knitting and he would very soon be on his feet again.

  He was aware that he was exceptionally strong, even among his contemporaries, and because he ate sparingly of the right sort of food and drank comparatively little, it was to be expected that his bones would knit faster and heal quicker than a less athletic man’s would do.

  Nanny finished her task and collected the used bandages to carry them away from the bed.

  As she did so, he looked at her face and thought that she looked a little grimmer and perhaps more disapproving than usual.

  “What is the matter, Nanny?” he asked.

  “What have you been sayin’, my Lord, to upset Miss Purilla?” she enquired.

  “Is she upset?”

  “She’s gone out on one of her walks,” Nanny replied, “as she always does when things aren’t right or she’s got somethin’ to think about. And why should she do that when she’s just come back from the wood, I’d like to know?”

  The Earl smiled at the aggressive note in Nanny’s voice before he replied,

  “I think perhaps Miss Purilla has gone to think over the suggestion that I have just made to her.”

  “Suggestion, my Lord?”

  Nanny’s tone was sharp.

  “I have asked her to marry me,” the Earl said quietly, “the day after tomorrow.”

  For a moment Nanny stared at him.

  Then, as he saw what he knew was an expression of relief in her eyes, she said,

  “You intends Miss Purilla should be your wife, my Lord?”

  “I do indeed, Nanny, and I hope to make her very happy.”

  “It’s what I’d wished, my Lord,” Nanny said, “but why must the marriage take place in such an unseemly hurry?”

  “I thought that you, of all people, would understand that I just cannot stay here with Miss Purilla unchaperoned and, as I will want her with me at Rock Castle, that again would involve difficulties in finding a chaperone unless we were married.”

  Nanny was silent for a moment as if she saw the logic of this reasoning.

  Then she said,

  “It’ll cause talk, my Lord.”

  “On the estate perhaps,” the Earl replied, “but does that matter?”

  Nanny considered this and he thought as she
did not speak that she was grappling with a desire to be more conventional and at the same time with the gratification of seeing her charge becoming a Countess.

  Nanny then capitulated.

  “I suppose your Lordship knows what you’re doin’,” she said, “and, if Miss Purilla’s happy, that’s all that matters.”

  “That is what I thought,” the Earl said quietly.

  When Nanny left the room, he lay back against his pillows thinking that everything was going according to plan and Purilla had saved him from the danger that had been just as imminent as that moment in Africa when he had waited for the spring of the lioness.

  Even now he knew that he would not be entirely safe until the ring was on Purilla’s finger and it would be impossible for Lady Louise to have any further hold over him.

  ‘I will give her everything in the world she wants,’ he told himself.

  He planned that tomorrow when Mr. Anstruther came to visit him he would get him to write to London for the smartest and most expensive dressmakers in Bond Street to send down their latest creations and to order a great many more gowns to constitute her trousseau.

  It might be slightly delayed, but she should have one fit for a Princess, which in its own way would express his gratitude.

  Mr. Anstruther had already written on the Earl’s instruction a letter to the Duchess of Torrington which he had composed with care.

  Mr. Anstruther had in fact made several drafts before it was entirely to the Earl’s satisfaction. It had finally read,

  “Rock House.

  Her Grace the Duchess of Torrington.

  Your Grace,

  I am instructed to inform Your Grace that it is with deep regret that the Earl of Rockbrook cannot accept Your Grace’s kind invitation to Torrington Castle.

  His Lordship has unfortunately been injured in a fall while out riding and, while his injuries are not of a serious nature, he is for the moment in the care of doctors who will not permit him to travel.

  His Lordship has asked me to convey to Your Grace his apologies and regrets for not having answered Your Grace’s invitation sooner.

  I am,