A Steeplechase For Love Read online

  Once again his aunt threw up her hands.

  “You will not listen to us, Victor, but we are indeed frightened that sooner or later you will get caught by one of these amusing temptresses you spend your time with.”

  She paused for breath, then went on, “A scandal in the family would be appalling and as you well know, a divorce is just unthinkable, but a husband might fight for his rights and where will you be then?”

  “I will think of an answer when it happens – ” Then he strolled out of the room leaving his aunt almost in tears.

  “He is hopeless,” she said to another member of the family the next day. “I try to talk sense into his head, but he will not listen. If we are not careful I am quite certain he will either run away with one of those dreadful tigresses he is always with or remain a bachelor because he prefers his horses!”

  She was exaggerating and the family then laughed at her, but at the same time they had all tried to make the Duke aware of his duty and he would not listen to them.

  As he had so often told himself, he would never be pushed, shoved or coaxed into matrimony, just because he was Head of an old and distinguished family and indeed extremely rich.

  His father had thought it would be a great mistake for any young gentleman to have too much to spend and had therefore deliberately kept him short of money until he came into the title.

  There were so many adventures he now wanted to undertake that it took him several years to try all of them.

  He travelled as he had always longed to do, but had previously been prevented because his father thought it a waste of time.

  He journeyed to many different parts of the world that few people had ever visited.

  He came home to find that his house in London had been done up exactly the way he wanted it and the stables at his country house had trebled in size – so all he had to do now was to fill the empty stalls.

  He spent a great deal of money at Tattersall’s and because it amused him, he travelled all over the country to visit other people’s stables, especially when they had some interesting horseflesh to sell.

  *

  The Duke had been fully aware that Lady Basset was pursuing him from the moment they had first met.

  But as it was nothing particularly new and, as she was not outstandingly beautiful, he had therefore not paid any special attention to her.

  Then she had spoken to him about a steeplechase.

  Because her house was near London and he had just bought two outstanding thoroughbreds – Masterpiece and Samson – the Duke had agreed that he would compete in her steeplechase.

  She had told him it would be the most difficult of all courses and the best arranged steeplechase that had ever taken place.

  He rather doubted this, until he heard that Watson, a well-known authority on steeplechases had been engaged to organise it.

  He had then accepted Lady Basset’s invitation.

  She told him it would be taking place at her family home, Irvin Hall in Surrey.

  He had suggested one or two gentlemen she might invite, because they were rivals of his and owned stables that were spoken of as being exceptional.

  One of them in particular had a horse that the Duke would love to possess himself. He had been at Eton with its owner, who would, of course, ride it.

  “A steeplechase run by Watson is exactly what I want for my new horse,” his friend had said. “Thank you a thousand times, Victor, for getting me asked to it. Who is this Lady Basset by the way? I do not seem to have heard of her.”

  “Nor had I until recently, Tom,” the Duke replied, “but I believe that she has been living abroad and has an immense fortune left to her by her husband, who was killed shortly after their wedding.”

  “If he also left her fond of horses, one cannot ask for more,” Tom commented, “and I only hope her cellar is as good as her stables!”

  They had both laughed at this, but the Duke knew that he would enjoy the party even more if a number of his old friends were present at the same time.

  And above all he would enjoy beating them in the steeplechase!

  He reckoned that Lady Basset was arranging it all especially for him.

  It did not surprise him or particularly worry him, as he had been pursued by women ever since he had left Eton and he was also well aware that in the Social world a Duke was placed very firmly at the top of the tree.

  From that point one descended step by step in the marriage stakes until reaching a mere ‘Honourable’ at the bottom and after that there were only ‘gentlemen’ left to choose from.

  The older his family, the more valuable a catch he was considered to be.

  The Duke, whatever his family might say, had no intention of marrying just to produce an heir.

  Of course he wanted sons – sons who would ride as well as he did and who would enjoy the country more than the town and who would be as anxious as he had been to travel the world.

  Equally, he told himself, there was no hurry and the most disastrous action he could possibly take would be to marry someone who would soon bore him stiff, a woman he had no interests in common with.

  He was always interested in anything new, whether it was a recently invented piece of machinery or a hitherto undiscovered mountain.

  He found in consequence that the average woman’s conversation, except when they told him how handsome and attractive he was, was not worth listening to.

  “The trouble with you,” one of his friends had said to him once, “is that everything has been too easy for you, Victor. If you were up against great difficulties, as most of us are because we do not have enough money, you would look on love in an entirely different way.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” the Duke replied somewhat haughtily.

  “Because you have all you could possibly want,” his friend answered, “you have nothing to strive for, and that, I assure you, Victor, is very bad for you.”

  The Duke laughed.

  “Why? In what particular way?”

  “As you are growing older you are getting a little blasé,” was the response. “And you don’t have to fight for anything. Everything you desire, including women, falls into your arms like an overripe peach!”

  The Duke had thrown a cushion at him and then they had wrestled together in a way that was in itself both amusing and boyish.

  That the Duke had eventually won naturally went without saying and he demanded an apology.

  “Alright,” his friend gave in, “you win, Victor! I apologise! But one day, you mark my words, you will find yourself in a situation you cannot buy your way out of.”

  “I will let you know when it happens,” the Duke promised him.

  Having overcome his friend as he was determined to do, they drank a glass of champagne to commemorate his victory.

  *

  He was now walking back from the stables towards The Hall.

  As he did so he wondered what had happened to the very beautiful girl he had seen the first day he arrived – there had been no sign of her since then.

  She had certainly been incredibly lovely, or had he dreamt it?

  Was it possible that this girl, who was so obviously a lady, yet was pretending to be lady’s maid to his hostess, could be so extraordinarily exceptional that he had thought about her continually since their chance meeting?

  ‘I must have imagined it,’ he told himself. ‘There is no likelihood of my seeing her again.’

  He felt he could hardly ask his valet if she ate in the housekeeper’s room.

  Although he knew that his bedroom communicated with Lady Basset’s, there had been no sign of the girl in the passage outside.

  His valet had informed him with glee that he had managed to obtain a key for the communicating door and the Duke had accepted this without comment.

  He had learned from considerable experience that it was a major mistake to have a communicating door in any bedroom where he stayed.

  He reckoned that he was not mist
aken when he had thought it ominous that Lady Basset was in the room next to his.

  She was not as young or as sexually attractive as most of the women who pursued him in London.

  He was fastidious, despite all his family said about the ladies with whom he had enjoyed affaires-de-coeur.

  It was not only that he was afraid that the husband of the lady in question might protest, it was that he himself was looking for perfection.

  He supposed all men like himself dreamt of finding an ideal woman – she would be beautiful, intelligent and would arouse in him sensations he had never yet felt.

  Strangely enough he had wanted to be truly in love ever since he had read the great Classics.

  He had adored his mother who had died when he was quite young and she held a place in his heart that no one else had ever filled. She had been so lovely, gentle, kind and understanding and he had felt when she died that somehow a part of him had gone with her.

  His father had been broken-hearted and her death had made him somewhat resentful of those who were still alive while the woman he loved was no longer with him.

  He had been harsh with his boys simply because he could not express in his own words that he understood they were feeling her loss as much as he was.

  For the Duke, his darling mother, although he did not realise it, represented the love he was seeking.

  Sometimes he felt he would never find love.

  His father had often told him how he had first met his mother in a strange and unusual way – she was still in the schoolroom and from that moment he had never found any other woman so beautiful or so attractive.

  When he married, he had been ten years older than his bride and yet he had known she had as much to teach him about life as he had to teach her about love.

  They had been so blissfully happy – so happy that it had seemed so cruel, almost a crime, that she should have died of cancer just before her thirty-sixth birthday.

  She had given him three children and he knew he had had a happiness that few men were privileged to enjoy in this world.

  The whole County had mourned when the Duchess was taken to the churchyard and the flowers that seemed to cover the ground near her grave ranged from small bunches of wild flowers from village children to huge wreaths from the Royal Family.

  “She was an angel from Heaven,” one woman had sighed tearfully at the funeral to her eldest son.

  The Duke had often thought that it was the truth and there would never be anyone like her, but he felt it was something he could not say to his family.

  But he knew deep in his heart of hearts that until he found someone as wonderful and as lovely as his mother he would never marry.

  Yet he was man enough to enjoy the company of women if they were attractive and it was only sad that they were merely ‘ships that passed in the night’.

  Sooner rather than later he drifted away from them and slipped out of their hands and try as they might they were unable to entice him back.

  Walking back from the stables the Duke passed the wrong turning to The Hall he had taken on the day of his arrival.

  Instinctively he glanced down the path, wondering if he would again see the beautiful girl who had directed him to the front door.

  ‘Helsa’, he thought to himself.

  No woman he had ever known had had that name and it certainly suited her.

  He felt disappointed that, having seen her for that brief moment, he had never set eyes on her again.

  Yet why should he?

  After all, she was with the servants, whilst he was very much in the front of the house.

  At the same time there was a definite mystery about her which he found intriguing and longed to solve.

  Just why had she begged him so fervently not to mention he had seen her?

  Why had she given him her right name and then corrected it quickly?

  There had been a touch of fear in her voice and he had known by the look in her eyes that she was frightened.

  Of whom or of what?

  The questions kept coming into his mind.

  Although he told himself he was being ridiculous, he found it quite impossible not to keep remembering how beautiful she was.

  He wondered why she was hiding, if that was the right word for it, in The Hall.

  It was certainly an impressive place – he had visited the picture gallery and he could understand that if indeed Lady Basset owned it, she must be understandably proud of such a unique collection.

  There were pictures there which every collector of art in the country would be proud to possess and yet the Duke noticed that whenever he attempted to talk to Lady Basset about them, she kept changing the subject.

  And she did not seem as knowledgeable about her gallery as she should be.

  He had also realised that the French furniture in one of the reception rooms was exceptional and he expected it had been brought to England at the time of the Revolution.

  Yet when he spoke about it to Lady Basset she did not seem to be at all interested – in fact she then turned the conversation round to what he possessed.

  He had to admit that his own collections were not quite as outstanding as those he had seen in this house. Lady Basset had told him she had been abroad and that was why a number of pictures needed cleaning and she had also said that there were parts of the house that really required restoring back to their original beauty.

  “Surely there was someone here looking after the house while you were away?” the Duke had asked her.

  Once again she wanted to talk about his house not hers.

  “You must invite me to your house in London,” she cooed. “I hear everything in it is fantastic, and, of course, most of all I would like to visit your house in the country.”

  “I think after what I have seen here you might be disappointed.”

  Lady Basset smiled.

  “What I would like more than anything else would be to learn about what the Dukes of Mervinston have made theirs over many centuries. I am sure you have not only a wonderful library but a fantastic collection of china.”

  “I regret to say I don’t think it is as good as your china in the drawing room. Do tell me how your ancestors acquired such a magnificent collection of Sèvres and also Chamberlain Worcester of which my father was so fond.”

  He remembered now that Lady Basset had avoided the questions by telling him about a collection she had seen in London. It had not seemed to him to be of any merit and yet she preferred to talk of that rather than what was on display just a few doors from where they were sitting.

  The Duke wondered if she had any reason for being so elusive about her possessions and then he told himself it was probably just ignorance.

  Though being hers she had not taken the interest in them that he would have done if they had belonged to him.

  ‘At any rate,’ he mused, ‘I am not concerned with what Lady Basset thinks or does not think.’

  *

  What did concern him was the steeplechase.

  He now had to wait another whole day before the promised race could take place.

  Meanwhile he had been told that there was to be an early luncheon so they could start taking their horses over the jumps in the paddock as soon as it was finished.

  As he reached the hall, the Duke was taken aback to see that Lady Basset was now moving towards him with her hands outstretched.

  “I am terribly sorry, Your Grace,” she purred, “that the steeplechase has had to be postponed. But we dare not take risks with someone like yourself.”

  She pressed his arm as she continued,

  “But I can promise that you will find the jumps this afternoon challenging. Then this evening we have a local orchestra coming from the nearest town. So we can dance after dinner, which I am sure you will find amusing.”

  “You think of everything,” the Duke observed.

  There was little else he could say as Lady Basset slipped her arm through his.

  “All I
want to do,” she said, “is to make your visit here happy and I feel sure I will find an easy way to do it.”

  She looked up into his eyes as she spoke.

  He knew exactly what she was implying.

  Equally at the back of his mind he wondered if it was really worthwhile staying until Monday.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Helsa was determined to see the horses jumping.

  But she thought it would be a mistake, especially as people from the village might be there, for her to go to the paddock.

  She therefore walked to the West wing of The Hall where one of her many ancestors, who was apparently very eccentric in his ways, had added a Palladian tower.

  From it he could look over the estate and see what everyone was doing. She had not been up the tower for years and the steps were very dusty, but when she reached the pinnacle it was exactly as it had always been.

  There were windows all round it so that one could see for miles in every direction.

  As a child she had discovered the skylight and she had been brave enough to climb through it onto the very top of the tower.

  The skylight was still there and underneath it was a heavy wooden bed in which her ancestor had slept when he particularly wanted to know what was going on at night.

  He had been ‘a peeping Tom’ in a big way and this was a continual joke in the family, Helsa recalled.

  There was no need for her at the moment to climb up from the bed through the skylight onto the top of the roof as she could see the paddock very clearly from one of the windows and indeed every individual jump.

  Gazing out she could see that the Duke was riding Masterpiece and she thought he looked more distinguished than anyone else in the paddock.

  Lady Basset obviously thought the same as she was following him around and trying to attract his attention and even from this distance Helsa could see that he was much more interested in the jumps.

  The others were mounting their horses and Watson was now giving orders for the jumping competition.

  When it began, Helsa realised that each man had to go round the course three times and was timed by Watson.