160 Love Finds the Duke at Last Read online

  “Can I come in, Devinia?”

  “Yes, of course, Your Grace,” she replied.

  “I felt that you should come now and meet your chaperone who, I may have already told you, is my great-aunt who has been ill for a long time.”

  Devinia did not speak and he went on,

  “She never leaves her bedroom and I was going to take you to meet her in the morning as she is usually asleep at this hour. But the nurse has told me that she is awake now and longing to meet you.”

  “Then I will come as soon as I am ready,” Devinia answered, “and can I bring my dog downstairs? I thought I would take him out into the garden before or after dinner.”

  The Duke ruminated for a moment and then said,

  “I think it would be a mistake to take him with you to see my great-aunt at the moment. But I know that Mrs. Shepherd will arrange for him to be taken downstairs and he will be there when we have seen her.”

  Devinia smiled at him.

  “I thought you would arrange everything perfectly,” she said. “I promise not to be a bore with my dog.”

  “Why should you be?” the Duke enquired.

  “My cousin Claud said I was a bore, a nuisance and a great many other things which I will not repeat,” Devinia said quietly, “just because I wanted Jo-Jo to be with me.”

  “As far as I am concerned, you can have your new dog with you day and night,” the Duke told her. “But I do think you should give him a name.”

  Devinia looked at him enquiringly and he went on,

  “I believe you have thought of a name already.”

  “I have, as it happens, but now that I have to say it aloud I think perhaps you will think it silly.”

  By this time they were walking down the passage together and there was no one to overhear them.

  Then the Duke asked her,

  “Well, go on, tell me the name.”

  “Because he is so charming and I think he will be amazingly handsome when he grows up, I want to call him ‘Prince’,” Devinia replied. “Or would you think that is a mistake.”

  She looked at him anxiously and the Duke laughed.

  “In other words your dog would be socially more significant than me and, of course, you are quite right. It will put me in my place and I will not feel as you think I am feeling, so uppish that girls like your cousin will do anything to join me at the altar.”

  Now the hardness was back in his voice.

  As they moved down the passage, Devinia put her hand on his arm.

  “Please don’t let what has happened spoil you,” she said. “Mama always said when things went wrong we were to pray that the sun would shine tomorrow and we would forget very quickly that we had been hurt or that people had been unkind.”

  “Your mother was so right,” he agreed. “You and I will make a vow here and now that we will not think of the past or keep referring to why we have had to come here.”

  He paused before he carried on,

  “We will just enjoy ourselves hour by hour and day by day until all that is wrong and unpleasant fades into the past and we forget about it.”

  Devinia clapped her hands and gave a jump of joy.

  “That is just what I wanted you to say!” she cried. “This house is beautiful and everything in it is so perfect, I could not bear you and I to spoil it by talking about the things that have made us unhappy.”

  She thought to herself as she spoke that she must not mourn Jo-Jo and once again the Duke had shown his kindness to her by producing another dog for her.

  By this time they had reached the end of the long passage and at a door just ahead of them a nurse appeared.

  “Good evening, Your Grace,” she said when she saw the Duke.

  “Good evening, Nurse,” he replied. “How is your patient today?”

  “I am glad to say her Ladyship has had a quiet day and has slept for most of it. It would be a mistake for you to stay long as I want her to be kept quiet. But she is very anxious, as you can imagine, to meet your fiancée.”

  She looked at Devinia as she spoke, who held out her hand.

  “It is very nice to meet you,” she said, “and if I can help you in any way while I am here, I will be very pleased to do so.”

  The nurse smiled at her.

  “That is very kind of you, ma’am, and I will take you at your word. I think sometimes it is good for my patient to talk to people she does not see every day.”

  The nurse did not wait for an answer but pushed open the door behind her.

  It was a very large and very lovely bedroom.

  There was a huge four-poster bed on which lay the Duke’s great-aunt.

  She had been a beauty when she was younger and she still was an attractive woman despite her grey hair and the lines under her eyes.

  The Duke moved forward and bent to kiss her.

  “Good evening, Aunt Helen,” he said. “I am so glad you are awake and I can introduce you to my fiancée. As I expect you have already been told, her name is Devinia.”

  Slowly the old lady held out her hand.

  Devinia took it in hers and bent to kiss it saying,

  “I am so glad you are well enough to meet me.”

  “As my eyes are so bad,” the old lady said, “I find it difficult to see you. But I am sure if Ivan has chosen you for his wife you are very beautiful.”

  Devinia laughed and then she responded,

  “I want him to think so and he has told me that you were acclaimed a great beauty when you were my age.”

  The Duke had not said so, but Devinia knew that it would please the old lady.

  “That is true. I remember men just like Ivan telling me that I was as beautiful as the spring. They all wanted to take me up to the moon.”

  She spoke slowly finding difficulty in remembering her words.

  Devinia thought that they were very touching and then she said,

  “I promise you I will try to make him happy. I am sure that is what you want me to say.”

  “Of course, it is. Keep him close to you and don’t let him run away. Today I hear too often of women losing their husbands and you must never do that.”

  “No, of course not,” Devinia agreed.

  The old lady closed her eyes and the nurse said in a quiet voice,

  “I think she is tired and you should leave her now.”

  It seemed strange to Devinia but almost as she said the last words, the old lady had closed her eyes and almost fallen asleep and was now breathing quite gently.

  The Duke took Devinia by the hand and drew her towards the door and as he reached it he said very quietly,

  “Thank you, Nurse. Let me know when I can come again.”

  “Of course, Your Grace,” the nurse replied and they left the room.

  Devinia felt that it was one of the really strangest conversations that she had ever had.

  But she thought that it was typically part of The Castle and something she would always remember.

  They walked down the stairs without speaking and only when they reached the dining room did the Duke say,

  “You were splendid. Most people are embarrassed by my great-aunt as she only has a few minutes when she is aware of what is happening around her and then nearly always falls asleep if she is listening to someone.”

  “I think she is wonderful,” Devinia replied quietly. “And exactly who one would expect to find in a Castle like this.”

  The Duke laughed.

  “You are making it all into a Fairytale again and are not believing it is real.”

  “I am so afraid it is not real and I will soon wake up,” Devinia admitted.

  He laughed again.

  “I will not allow you to do that. Not until you have ridden some of my best horses which they tell me are badly in need of more exercise.”

  Devinia’s eyes lit up.

  “Can we ride tomorrow morning?” she asked.

  The Duke nodded.

  “As early as you like and I usually t
ry to reach the stables at eight o’clock.”

  “Then I will do the same,” Devinia replied. “Your very kind housekeeper told me that she has found a riding habit which will fit me like a glove.”

  “Could anyone ask for more?” the Duke asked.

  “You are very kind,” Devinia murmured. “I keep thinking I will wake up and find this is all a dream and I am lying in the horrid little room they gave me when I was staying with my cousin Claud. “It overlooked the yard and there were plenty of rooms which looked over the river but they were too good for someone like me.”

  The Duke frowned.

  It always annoyed him when he heard about people being badly treated or what, in his opinion, was being ‘set down’ in case they thought they were good enough to have the best. They were therefore given the worst so that they should not get ‘uppish’ in any way.

  It was what he had encountered in his life because, when he was the heir to a Dukedom, the boys at school teased him in case he should feel swanky.

  There were certain friends of his father and mother who, because they were jealous, went out of their way to take him down a peg or two.

  They talked of all sorts of things while they were having dinner in the gracious but imperious dining room. In particular places overseas that the Duke had visited and Devinia had read about in her books.

  “I long to go to China,” she said, “and I would love to see the Pyramids of Egypt. But I have had to imagine them by reading about them in books. I just hope that one day I will be lucky enough to see them in reality.”

  It was with difficulty as she spoke so wistfully, that the Duke did not say that he would take her to both places.

  But he told himself he should not raise her hopes just in case their pretend engagement came to an end and there was no chance of her going abroad.

  The nearest she would get to the Pyramids or to China would be to read about them in books.

  “What I would like,” Devinia was saying, “while I am here, which might not be for very long, is for you to tell me about the places you have visited and what they meant to you. I have always wanted to discuss what I have read in books with someone who has actually been there. But I saw very little of my father because he was a soldier and, when he was at home, my mother wanted to spend every minute she could with him.”

  “So you were left outside,” the Duke remarked, “and it is something I have often been myself so I know exactly how you felt.”

  Devinia did not reply and he went on,

  “I had never been abroad and it was not until I had taken my father’s place that I was able to travel as I had always wanted to do.”

  “Oh, please do tell me about your travels,” Devinia pleaded. “I want to know exactly what you felt when you first visited Greece and, if when you did so, did you feel that the Gods were still there?”

  There was silence and just for a minute she thought that the Duke was going to change the subject or perhaps to disillusion her about Greece.

  Instead he said,

  “I had, of course, read about the gods on Olympus and the Shining Cliffs of Delphi. Like you. I wondered if it was just invented by the writers and perhaps the Gods themselves had never really existed.”

  Devinia drew in her breath.

  “But you were sure they had,” she said almost in a whisper.

  “I felt a very strange feeling when I first reached Greece,” the Duke admitted, “which increased as I moved round from place to place. It was almost as if the Gods themselves were directing me and telling me that they were real. Although many centuries have passed by, they are still there if we look for them.”

  Devinia gave a deep sigh and clasped her hands in her lap.

  “You felt it! You were sure of it!” she said. “It is what I feel myself, so please, please do tell me more about Greece because it has always meant so much to me. There has been no one who ever wanted to discuss it with me.”

  It was almost, the Duke thought later, as if she had hypnotised him into talking in a way that he never done before to anyone.

  He told her of his feelings from the very moment he stepped ashore until he finally left Greece.

  Because it meant so much to him he knew that the feelings that the Gods and Goddesses had evoked within him would remain with him all through his life.

  The Duke talked to Devinia in such detail as he had never talked before to anyone.

  When they eventually left the dining room and the candles were burning low, they were both feeling as if they had visited the stars.

  “Now you must go to bed,” the Duke urged. “We both have to be up early and we have done a great deal today and I hope have left a great deal behind us as well.”

  “I hope so too and thank you, thank you,” Devinia replied. “I will go to bed and dream I am in Greece and I can only tell you that it is almost as wonderful to me as it must have been to you.”

  She did not wait to say anything more but ran up the stairs.

  She only stopped at the last step to look down and to wave her hand because he was still standing in the hall.

  ‘She is most certainly very unlike any other woman I have ever met,’ the Duke mused to himself, as he walked towards the study.

  In her bedroom Devinia wanted to dance with joy that she had had such a fascinating evening.

  She knew it was something that she would always remember while the evenings that she had spent with her cousins Claude and Penelope she wanted to forget.

  ‘I can only hope,’ she thought before she said her prayers, ‘that the Duke will not be free from Penelope too quickly and therefore I will have to stay and protect him.’

  She undressed and knelt for her prayers before she climbed into bed.

  She thanked God profusely for looking after her and for bringing her here to The Castle.

  It was only by a stroke of luck and by Penelope’s appalling behaviour in telling those people secretly of their engagement that had prevented the Duke from proposing to her that he might so easily have done.

  Perhaps it had been God or perhaps his mother who had saved him from a girl who was only interested in his title and would doubtless have then made him exceedingly unhappy if they had married.

  Penelope would never have understood if she had listened to what he was telling her tonight about Greece.

  She had said once that she did not believe in all that nonsense, as she called it, about Heaven and people caring for one after they were dead.

  “When you are dead, you are dead!” Penelope had said. “So I intend to stay alive and be myself and no one else until I am very very old.”

  She had always resented the fact that her father had insisted that they all went to Church on Sundays.

  “Who wants to sing those silly hymns?” Penelope had questioned. “If I pray I pray not to God to make me beautiful but to Papa to give me enough money to make myself as outstanding and as lovely as everyone expects me to be.”

  She had seen that Devinia was listening to her and she continued,

  “You mark my words! If you want things you have to fight to get them for yourself. There is no angel in Heaven to pop down to earth to give it all to you.”

  Devinia had not argued with her because she knew that it would only make Penelope angry.

  She would never agree to anything that she had not thought of herself.

  ‘If nothing else,’ she now reflected, ‘I have saved the Duke, just as he saved me, from being unhappy for the rest of his life.’

  She looked a little wistful as she said aloud,

  “If only I could have saved Jo-Jo too, it would be the most wonderful thing that had ever happened!”

  Then she told herself that now she had Prince and only a man as kind as the Duke would have found another dog for her so quickly and one that was so adorable.

  “Thank You, thank You God!” she said again as she climbed into bed.

  She was quite certain that her mother, who was in Heaven with Hi
m, was smiling down at her.

  Because it had been a long and tiring day as well as an exciting one, Devinia fell asleep at once.

  *

  She woke when the housemaid came to call her, as she had asked her to do, at seven o’clock.

  She pulled back the curtains and, as the sun came streaming into the room, Devinia jumped out of her bed and ran into the bathroom.

  She had been careful to ask that her riding habit should be laid out for her the night before.

  It was only half past seven when she was dressed and now ready to go to the stables and the maid who had helped her into her riding clothes said,

  “They fits you like a glove, miss. If you asks me, you’ll look ever so smart on His Grace’s fine horses.”

  “Thank you,” Devinia smiled. “I only hope I will not fall off! I have not been able to ride for nearly a year.”

  She had asked her step-uncle, almost as soon as she had arrived, if it was possible for her to ride. And he had told her quite firmly ‘no’!

  “I hire horses for myself,” he had told her. “But Penelope does not ride. I therefore see no reason for you to need that amount of exercise when you will doubtless be dancing almost every night.”

  Devinia did not argue with him, but she had missed riding more than she could possibly say.

  When there were horses in the stables, she would pat them and talk to them and long to be in the saddle above them.

  Now that she was to ride again, she only hoped that the Duke would think her a good rider, as her father and mother had always thought her to be.

  She had just reached the stables when the Duke appeared and he was surprised that she was there so early.

  “I believe you are here to try to take my best horse before I am on him myself” he teased her.

  “I have been looking at your horses and I think they are all wonderful,” Devinia replied. “Please give me one which is almost as fast as yours, as I want to race just as fast as the horses can carry us.”

  The Duke laughed.

  “You must be careful not to fall off,” he warned. “Most women I know are content in trotting slowly down Rotten Row so that the men there will admire them.”

  “The birds and the bees can do that here,” Devinia suggested, “and I am sure they are very critical!”

  The Duke smiled.