The Sign of Love Read online

  She looked up to see the Duke standing in front of her and thought involuntarily that his yachting coat with its brass buttons and a peaked cap became him as did everything else he wore.

  He sat down beside her and she made room for him on the seat, which had really been intended for only one person.

  She had taken off her oilskin cap, although she still wore the coat and her head was bare and the wind was whipping small tendrils of her pale hair round her cheeks.

  She made no attempt to tidy them and the Duke thought that she was quite unconscious that she looked just like a sea nymph.

  “Why are you hiding here?” he asked.

  “I wanted to look – at the sea,” Bettina answered. “It is so majestic.”

  “You are obviously a good sailor.”

  “I am very lucky,” Bettina smiled,

  “At the same time you must be careful when you are moving about the deck and the yacht is rolling like this,” the Duke admonished her. “Otherwise you might well be swept overboard.”

  “Oh! Not before I have seen the Opening of the Suez Canal!” Bettina exclaimed.

  He laughed.

  “Surely it would matter whenever it happened?”

  “I am – trying to let the – future take care of itself,” Bettina said without choosing her words very carefully.

  “Trying?” the Duke questioned.

  “There is nothing else I can do.”

  There was a hint of dismay in her voice, which he did not miss.

  Then he asked her,

  “Are you enjoying yourself?”

  “More than I have ever enjoyed anything in my whole life! Your yacht is wonderful and there is so much to see,” Your Grace, “so much to absorb and so much to think about.”

  “And what do you think about?”

  She was surprised that he was interested.

  “I was thinking this morning,” she responded after a moment, realising that he was waiting for an answer, “of the rainbow Ferdinand de Lesseps saw, which convinced him that it had appeared on the luckiest day of his life.”

  “I don’t remember that story,” the Duke queried. “Do tell me about it.”

  “It was when he returned to Egypt twenty years after the beginning of his dream of a Suez Canal,” Bettina began. “His friend Prince Said had by this time become the Viceroy and welcomed him as his guest.”

  The Duke nodded his head as if he remembered what had happened and Bettina went on,

  “It was on November 15th 1854 that Monsieur de Lesseps made up his mind to approach the Viceroy on the matter of a Suez Canal. They were camping outside Alexandria and at five o’clock in the morning he rose and stood outside his tent.”

  The Duke was listening attentively and she continued,

  “The first light of the sun was beginning to outline the horizon, yet the day promised to be overcast. Then suddenly something significant happened.”

  “What was it?” the Duke asked.

  “There appeared in the West a brilliant rainbow running from the East to the West,” Bettina answered.

  She smiled as she went on,

  “The rainbow was exactly what Monsieur de Lesseps needed to convince himself that it would be the luckiest day of his life. He dressed and at five o’clock mounted his Arab pony and galloped through the camp to the Viceroy’s tent.”

  Bettina’s eyes were shining and she spoke as if she saw it all happening herself.

  “In front of the Royal tent a large barrier had been erected. Ferdinand de Lesseps, always an exceptional horseman, jumped over it. The Viceroy saw him and so did his Generals and they cheered and applauded.”

  “The Arabs always appreciate good horsemanship,” the Duke remarked.

  “I think he knew that and, as he dismounted and went into the Viceroy’s tent, his heart was full of confidence.”

  “An interesting story, Bettina. And do you believe in signs and omens?”

  “Yes, of course!”

  She looked at the Duke and thought that his expression seemed cynical.

  “There have been so many in history,” she explained. “The Star of Bethlehem being one.”

  The Duke smiled and any cynicism went from his eyes.

  “I was thinking the other day,” Bettina went on, “that most of what you call ‘signs and omens’ consist of some kind of light, a star, a burning bush, a rainbow and the light that came from people themselves and which afterwards was immortalised in the Christian ideal of a halo.”

  There was silence between them for a moment and then the Duke suggested very quietly,

  “Perhaps that light is what we are all looking for.”

  Then he rose to his feet and, without saying anything more, left her.

  Only when he had gone did Bettina feel that it was a very strange conversation to have had with a man and especially her host.

  She wondered if she had bored him. Then somehow she sensed that he was not bored, but had behaved to her differently from the way he treated other women in the party.

  Bettina was astute enough to know that if he had been alone with Lady Daisy or Lady Tatham or perhaps any of his other female guests, they would have flattered him and flirted with him, flashing their eyes at him and behaving in a manner that she could only describe to herself as being ‘deliberately alluring’.

  ‘I don’t know how to do any of those things,’ she told herself, ‘and I only said what I thought. I wonder if it was wrong.’

  She felt uncertain and unsure and yet she knew that it was impossible for her to be anything except what she actually was.

  She pondered if the day would ever come when she would be polished and sophisticated like Lady Daisy or deliberately provocative like Lady Tatham.

  Then she told herself that her mother had never been like that. She had been sweet, gentle, charming and, when they could afford it, a perfect hostess.

  Bettina was certain that she would never have gone out of her way deliberately to entice a man in the manner that these other women did.

  ‘Mama would not have liked them,’ she told herself positively and knew that after all she had done the right thing.

  At luncheon she was the only woman present despite the fact that the storm was not so violent as it had been during the night or in the morning.

  “The wind is abating,” the Duke announced, “and the Captain anticipates that we are through the worst and will soon be in calm waters.”

  “I shall not believe that until we reach Gibraltar,” Lord Milthorpe said, “and I don’t mind telling you, Varien, I am always afraid at sea of falling down and breaking a leg.”

  “If that happens, I have someone aboard who could set it for you,” the Duke replied and there was a roar of laughter.

  “You are always prepared for every contingency, Varien,” Sir Charles remarked.

  “I try to be,” the Duke answered, “but to save George’s leg I suggest that you confine yourselves to the card tables. I just cannot believe that anyone, with the exception of Miss Charlwood, wants to brave the elements.”

  “Miss Charlwood?” someone enquired curiously.

  Bettina flushed as everyone turned to look at her.

  “I – like being on – deck,” she stammered glancing at her father as if for his approval.

  Sir Charles smiled.

  “That is all right, as long as your sea legs are sounder than George’s.”

  “Nothing will induce me to leave the Saloon,” Lord Milthorpe stressed positively.

  Immediately after luncheon the gentlemen returned to the card room and Bettina hoped that her father would not lose any money.

  She was just about to go to her cabin to fetch her coat when outside the Saloon the Duke asked her,

  “Would it amuse you, Miss Charlwood, to come on the bridge?”

  “I would love to!” Bettina exclaimed. “Will you really take me?”

  “My Captain would be honoured to make your acquaintance,” the Duke replied. “But put on a
thick coat. It’s quite cold outside.”

  “I know,” Bettina answered, “and I will not keep you waiting.”

  She ran to her cabin to put on, not the heavy coat she had worn in the morning, but a cape that had also belonged to her mother and which sported a hood trimmed with fur.

  Her mother had always looked lovely with the fur framing her face and Bettina hoped that the Duke would think that she too looked attractive.

  She was as quick as she could be, knowing that men hate to be kept waiting, but when she joined him outside the door that led onto the deck he was no longer alone.

  Lord Eustace was with him and she felt her heart sink.

  Somehow, she thought, if there was another quarrel it would spoil the day that had been enchanted so far and so different from the tension and squabbles of the night before.

  But to her relief the Duke and his half-brother were not quarrelling. Instead they stood in silence almost side by side and Bettina had the strange feeling that they were both waiting for her.

  “I was looking for you. Miss Charlwood,” Lord Eustace started before the Duke could speak, “because I thought you would like to hear what I have written this morning.”

  Bettina looked at the Duke, but his face seemed quite expressionless and, as he said nothing, she replied after a moment,

  “Of course I would like to hear it very much, but a little later? His Grace has promised to take me on the bridge and it is something I am longing to do.”

  “Perhaps you would like to join us, Eustace?” the Duke suggested.

  “No, thank you,” Lord Eustace replied in a disagreeable voice. “I will wait for Miss Charlwood in the writing room.”

  It was where he had read to her before and Bettina nodded,

  “I will join you as soon as I am free.”

  As he turned away, she looked up eagerly at the Duke,

  “I am ready and, as the sea is not so rough, I shall not need an oilskin.”

  “I was wondering where you had obtained one from,” the Duke remarked.

  “Actually it belongs to you,” she said, “or rather to the yacht.”

  “I thought perhaps I recognised it.”

  “That I was able to obtain it was, of course, yet another instance of your inexhaustible hospitality, Your Grace,” she said demurely, her eyes twinkling.

  “I see you are going to try and catch me out, but I always have the excuse that this is a ‘Maiden Voyage’ and therefore I am quite prepared at the end of it to draw up a long list of requirements that will be supplied for another time.”

  As they walked onto the deck, Bettina could not help wondering if there would ever be another time as far as she was concerned.

  She had the feeling that, if, as her father wished, she married Lord Eustace, she would in the future see very little of the Duke.

  She was sure that Lord Eustace had asked her to listen to him reading one of his pamphlets simply because he wished to prevent her from being with his brother.

  Every moment the two men were together it was obvious that they had nothing in common and Bettina suspected that Lord Eustace would now be sulking because she had preferred to go on the bridge rather than let him read to her.

  ‘He does not own me yet,’ she told herself.

  Then she felt her heart sink at the very thought of listening for the rest of her life to a tirade against extravagance and luxury and having to concentrate almost exclusively on those who lived in what seemed by contrast a slough of despond.

  ‘It is wrong of me to feel like this,’ Bettina told herself. ‘I must be compassionate and sympathetic.’

  Then, because they were climbing up onto the bridge, she swept Lord Eustace and his troubles to the back of her mind.

  Everything the Duke was going to show her was fascinating, new and something that she had never seen before.

  Sensing her excitement, the Duke looked down at her and smiled as if she was a child he was taking to a pantomime.

  ‘He is wonderful,’ she thought to herself. ‘As wonderful a man – as his possessions are!’

  Chapter Four

  Bettina awoke very early with a feeling that something wonderful was going to happen.

  It was Wednesday, November 17th and it was impossible to believe that in London there would doubtless be a fog or the first snow of winter while everything outside her porthole was bathed in dazzling golden sunlight.

  Every day that they had steamed down the Mediterranean nearer and nearer to Suez and she had felt more thrilled and more exhilarated with the anticipation of what lay ahead of her.

  She had really paid little attention to what the other members of the Duke’s party were doing.

  All she wished to do was to gaze at the Mediterranean, which was like the blue of the Madonna’s robe and to see sometimes a distant coastline and in the last few days to have her first glimpse of Africa.

  It was all so enchanting that her face shone with excitement and the gentlemen in the party watched her with a tenderness in their eyes that they would have given to an excited child.

  Bettina had found it increasingly difficult to listen to Lord Eustace’s moaning about the slums, his harrowing tales of the neglect of old people and the lack of education amongst the children.

  She chided herself because half the time he was talking and reading to her she found it impossible to concentrate on what he was saying.

  ‘I ought to be affected by these problems too,’ she conjectured.

  Yet something irrepressibly joyful made her want to sing and dance, to hold out her arms to the gulls swirling round the masts or the porpoises she sometimes glimpsed turning over in the waves.

  She had not had a chance of speaking to the Duke alone, Lady Daisy saw to that the night before last.

  Then, after the ladies had retired to bed and the gentlemen lingered on at the card tables, Bettina had slipped out on deck.

  She had been afraid that Lord Eustace might see her and follow her, so she kept in the shadows of the superstructure until she reached the bow.

  She leant on the rail looking at the phosphorus on the water, which gave it a magical appearance, and at the stars so brilliant overhead that they made the Heavens seem like a huge arc of mysterious light.

  She stood there for a long time for it was quite warm feeling deeply moved by the beauty of the scene and thinking that in some secret way it had a message for her personally.

  Then a voice she recognised said beside her,

  “I somehow felt that you would be unable to resist this.”

  She did not turn her head, but was vividly conscious that the Duke had joined her and was also leaning over the rail his shoulder close to hers.

  “It’s so wonderful!” she enthused in a soft voice.

  “What does it mean to you?” he asked.

  She did not answer and after a moment he added,

  “Most people say that such a sight makes them feel insignificant and lonely.”

  There was a touch of cynicism in his voice, but Bettina was not to know that it was a conventional phrase by which women invariably asked for the comfort of his arms and the touch of his lips to disperse their loneliness.

  “I don’t feel like that,” Bettina replied.

  “No?”

  “What it makes me feel,” she said slowly, “is the wonder and privilege of being alive.”

  She felt that he would not understand and so went on to explain,

  “Scientists think that perhaps in every one of the stars there is another world and when I look up I think how glorious it is that I am here and I too am alive.”

  She threw back her head as she spoke and her features were silhouetted against the darkness as the starlight turned her hair to silver.

  The Duke did not move, he only watched her.

  “And such a vast conclave of people does not make you feel insignificant?” he asked.

  Bettina shook her head.

  “It makes me think instead of the man who aske
d Buddha how many times he would be reborn. Do you remember that tale?”

  “Tell me,” the Duke urged.

  “The Lord Buddha,” Bettina began, “was sitting under a huge banyan tree and, as I expect you know, a banyan tree has more leaves than any other tree. A man approached him and asked, ‘tell me, my Lord, how many lives shall I have before I gain eternal wisdom?’

  Buddha thought for a moment and then he gave his answer,

  ‘As many lives as there are leaves on this banyan tree!’

  ‘So few?’ the man exclaimed in a voice of incredible joy. ‘How very wonderful!’”

  The Duke laughed softly.

  “So you expect to have a great many more lives, Bettina?”

  “I think one can only learn in a body. That is why it is such a privilege to have one,” Bettina answered. “It is what the Buddhists believe and it seems a logical explanation of how we as humans can advance spiritually towards the real truth.”

  “I hope we can,” the Duke said, “if that is what we ultimately find.”

  He moved away as he spoke and she did not watch him go. Her face was still turned towards the multitude of stars in the Heavens.

  Now this morning all she wanted was sunshine.

  She had been half-afraid that the festivities ahead might be spoilt by bad weather, but, as she jumped out of bed and ran to the porthole, she saw that it was a clear sparkling day under an intensely blue sky.

  Last night they had edged into Port Said where for a week other vessels had been accumulating for the great occasion.

  Egypt’s newest Harbour, it lay on the Mediterranean side of the Isthmus of Suez and Bettina saw that it was crowded with ships.

  There were nearly eighty of them riding at anchor with colourful pennants streaming from every mast and the flags from almost all the sea-faring nations of the world fluttering in the light sea breeze.

  She dressed quickly and hurried on deck determined not to miss a moment of the spectacle, which she knew would thrill everyone, even Lord Eustace however determined he might be not to be impressed.

  She was soon joined by other members of the party and a few moments before eight o’clock a sleek black yacht, which flew the colours of France and which Bettina knew was L’Aigle, sailed into sight.