The Disgraceful Duke Read online

  She tried to think of her father, but somehow everything seemed to be swept away from her, but the Duke’s pleading voice and the strange feeling she always had when he was near to her.

  She looked up at him and was lost.

  There was something in his eyes that was irresistible, something too that seemed to unite them in a manner which Shimona could not explain, and yet was a wonder she had never known before.

  He came closer still and now very gently, as if he was afraid to frighten her, he put his arms around her and drew her to him.

  Vaguely, far away at the back of her mind, she thought that she ought to struggle, but it was impossible.

  There was a tightness, something inevitable about what was happening that might have been planned since the beginning of time.

  “You are so perfect!” the Duke murmured and then his lips touched hers.

  It was a kiss so gentle, so tender, that Shimona was not afraid and she was conscious of feeling secure and protected because the Duke’s arms were round her.

  Then, as his mouth took possession of her, she felt as if everything beautiful she had ever heard and seen was concentrated into a feeling that was an ecstasy of wonder and of joy.

  The room disappeared and there was no longer the warmth of the fire, the fragrance of the flowers or the light from the candles.

  There was only a sky brilliant with stars and they were alone beneath it, a man and a woman who had found each other across eternity.

  The Duke drew her closer still and now his lips became more insistent and more demanding. At the same time there was still a gentleness that precluded fear.

  How long the kiss lasted Shimona had no idea.

  She only knew, when finally he raised his head, that she felt dazed and bewildered as if she had fallen back to earth from the very heights of Heaven.

  For one moment she looked up into his eyes.

  Then, with an inarticulate little murmur, she turned and ran from the room leaving him standing, staring at the closed door long after she had left.

  *

  Shimona had to wait for a long time on the doorstep before, after repeated rat-tats on the knocker, Nanna came to open it.

  “My dearie!” she exclaimed when she saw who was standing there. “I’d no idea it’d be you, but you’re so early. It’s not yet six o’clock.”

  “I know,” Shimona answered.

  She walked into the house and the cabby who had brought her from Berkeley Square carried in her small trunk.

  She paid him and, when he had gone, Nanna asked,

  “What’s happened? Why are you here at this hour?”

  “It’s all right,” Shimona said soothingly. “I wanted to get away as soon as I could. I have the money, Nanna. We can leave for Italy as soon as Papa is able to travel.”

  Nanna did not answer and Shimona said quickly,

  “Why do you look like that? How is Papa?”

  “I don’t like the look of him,” Nanna replied. “The doctor came yesterday and he’s comin’ again this mornin’, but I won’t lie to you, dearie, he seems to be sinkin’.”

  “I will go to him.”

  Shimona pulled off her cape, flung it on a chair and ran up the stairs.

  Her father’s room was in darkness.

  She pulled open the curtains and let in the grey misty light of the early morning.

  Now she could see him lying against his pillows and she knew that what Nanna had said was true.

  There was something transparent about his face that had not been there before.

  He had always been too thin, but now his cheeks were hollow, there were dark lines beneath his eyes and there was altogether an insubstantial look about him.

  Shimona stood looking at him for a long time.

  Then, as he still seemed to be asleep, she made up the fire and went from the room.

  Nanna was carrying her trunk upstairs.

  “Has he been coughing very much?” Shimona asked.

  “Sometimes in his sleep,” Nanna answered, “and very badly when he is awake. The doctor’s kept him drowsy and he hasn’t realised you’ve not been here.”

  “We must try and persuade him to take some food,” Shimona proposed.

  It was, however, difficult and, although she tried to coax her father into eating a little breakfast, he would only drink a cup of coffee and shook his head to every other suggestion.

  “You must get strong and well, Papa.”

  “I am – tired,” he replied in a far-away voice. “Too tired to – think, too tired to – act.”

  As if the word ‘act’ impinged upon him he said in a different tone,

  “Act! Are they – expecting me at the – theatre?”

  “Not today, Papa,” Shimona answered. “Today is Sunday.”

  It was not true, but she thought it would prove as an excuse for him to rest and she gave a sigh of relief as his head went back against the pillows.

  “What am I – playing on – Monday?” he asked after a moment.

  “Hamlet,” Shimona replied. “You are playing Hamlet all next week and the theatre is sold out.”

  She felt sure that this was what he would want to hear.

  There was a faint smile on his lips as Beau Bardsley said,

  “That should mean – they will be able to – pay the staff.”

  “Yes, of course, Papa.”

  Nanna came in to tidy the room and, when she had done so, she said she would wash and shave the Master. She sent Shimona downstairs to prepare him an egg whipped up in milk.

  “Add a little brandy to the glass,” she said. “It’ll give him strength if he won’t eat anythin’.”

  When Shimona came upstairs again, her father was coughing.

  Perhaps it was because he had been moved while Nanna washed him, but whatever the reason he was coughing with a wrenching rasping sound that seemed to shake his whole body.

  He coughed and coughed and now there was more blood on his handkerchief than there had ever been before and Shimona looked at Nanna with frightened eyes.

  Finally Beau Bardsley lay back exhausted and Shimona was terrified by his pallor and by the difficulty he had in breathing.

  It was then she heard a knock at the door and guessed that it was Doctor Lesley.

  She sped down the stairs and when he saw her he exclaimed,

  “I am glad you are back, my child! If you had not been I had intended to send for you.”

  He saw the question in Shimona’s eyes before he drew her into the small sitting room.

  He did not speak and after a moment Shimona said,

  “I have the money. If Papa is well enough, I can take him abroad.”

  Doctor Lesley was still for a moment before he said very quietly,

  “I think, Shimona, you would rather know the truth. It will be impossible for your father to travel anywhere. In fact, my dear, there is nothing I can do to save him!”

  *

  Shimona used to wonder later how she would ever have managed without Doctor Lesley.

  When her father died, he had done everything and in fact it was difficult for her to realise what was happening, except that she had an intolerable sense of loss.

  She had somehow never imagined that he would die so quickly as her mother had. One moment they were there and the next there was just an empty void that nothing could fill.

  And yet his death had been beautiful, in a way he himself would have wished to die if he could have chosen it.

  It was in the afternoon of the day that Shimona returned home. She was sitting alone by her father’s bedside, striving to face the truth of what Doctor Lesley had told her and trying vainly to believe that a miracle might still save her father.

  The light from the fire cast a glow upon his face and he did not look so pale and insubstantial as he had done early in the morning.

  With his clear-cut features and square forehead, he looked like a Greek statue and Shimona wondered if any man could be more handsome or m
ore compelling than her father.

  But even while she thought about him, it was impossible not to remember the attraction of the Duke and the irresistible expression in his eyes that had held her spellbound.

  She had only to think of him to feel a quiver go through her and to know again that strange rapturous sensation that she had felt when he kissed her.

  She did not for a moment regret that she had let him hold her in his arms and that for the first time in her life a man’s mouth had possessed hers.

  ‘I will always have that to remember,’ she told herself, ‘even though I shall never see him again.’

  Even if her father died and she did not go abroad, their paths would never cross.

  The Duke lived in one world and she in another and she had done the only thing possible in running away so that after the wonder and perfection of his kiss they had not descended to the bathos of commonplace words.

  In letting him kiss her and hold her in his arms she had brought down the curtain on what she knew would always be the most wonderful experience in her life.

  Sitting by her father’s bedside, she now admitted to herself that what she felt for the Duke was love, the same love that had made her mother run away from Bath and from her rich and distinguished fiancé with an actor.

  But the love of Annabel Winslow, a Lady of Quality, for a distinguished young actor was different from the love of a daughter of an actor for a noble Duke.

  Even if he wished it, which Shimona was sure he did not, they could never marry. It would be the same mésalliance that Alister McCraig had made in marrying Kitty Varden.

  ‘I love him – but our love must never be spoilt or defamed,’ Shimona told herself.

  Even in her innocence she knew that what he felt for her was different from what he had felt for other women.

  It was not the licentious debauched devil of whom her father had spoken, who had offered her independence and promised at the same time that he would ask nothing in return.

  She had known by the sincerity in his voice that he meant what he had said.

  It might have been a difficult promise to keep. It might have proved quite impossible for them to be near each other and not succumb to the magnetism that drew them together.

  But at least the offer had been made, although she thought that no one, certainly not her father, would have believed it.

  ‘I believe the Duke,’ Shimona told herself and felt an irrepressible yearning to see him again and talk to him.

  Never had she thought that anything could be so fascinating as to see him sitting at the head of his table, distinguished and at his ease, driving beside her in his phaeton or at that last inevitable moment when he had put his arms round her and drawn her close against him.

  “I love him, I love him!” she whispered.

  Then she felt ashamed that she should be thinking of the Duke when her father was near to death.

  But love was something that no one could control.

  Her mother had said once,

  “When I first loved your father, I realised that nothing else was of consequence in the whole world – not my family, my friends or the men who courted me. Everything seemed to vanish except for one man.”

  Shimona had not really understood at the time, but now she knew exactly what her mother had meant – for that was what had now happened to her.

  It was what she had felt when the Duke kissed her and she was no longer in this world but in some enchanted place where they were alone, completely alone, save for the wonder of their love.

  He had told her that she was like a twinkling star and she thought when he kissed her that the stars fell from the Heavens to lie at their feet.

  ‘I love him! Oh, God, how much I love him!’ she told herself and knew that the future was dark and empty because it would not contain the Duke.

  A coal fell in the fire and Shimona rose to pick it up with the tongs and put it back.

  When she turned towards the bed, she saw that her father’s eyes were open.

  “Annabel!”

  She hardly heard the word, and yet it was spoken.

  She moved towards him.

  “It is Shimona, Papa.”

  She put her hands on his and bent forward towards him, but he did not seem to see her.

  “Annabel!” he sighed again. “Oh, Annabel – my darling!”

  There was a sudden vibration in his voice, the same tone that vibrated through an audience and made them feel that everything he said touched their hearts.

  Shimona felt the tears start in her eyes.

  Then still with that strange note thrilling through his voice, Beau Bardsley said,

  “Annabel! It has been so long! My beloved, how I have missed you!”

  It seemed to Shimona that for a moment there was a radiance in his face that seemed to transform him and a light in his eyes that was indescribable.

  Then his eyes closed, but there was a smile on his lips and Shimona knew that he was dead.

  *

  It was Doctor Lesley who decided that for Shimona’s sake the funeral should take place very quietly before it was announced to the public that Beau Bardsley was dead.

  He arranged everything and the only mourners who followed the coffin to the graveside were herself and Nanna.

  It was a wet blustery day and Nanna sobbed as the coffin was lowered into the grave and the earth was thrown upon it, but Shimona was dry-eyed.

  She knew that her father and mother were together again.

  His body was enclosed in the plain oak coffin that Doctor Lesley had ordered, but his spirit was happy with the radiance that had been in his face and the joy that had vibrated in his voice.

  ‘I am the one who has been left behind,’ Shimona told herself forlornly.

  She had driven back from the funeral in a hired carriage with Nanna still wiping the uncontrollable tears away from her eyes.

  It was impossible for them to talk that day and Nanna shut herself in the kitchen, as she always did when she wished to be alone.

  Shimona went to her mother’s sitting room to look at the portrait of her father over the mantelpiece.

  She found it hard to realise that never again would she hear him come back to the house in the evening to tell her what had happened at the theatre or lie in the bed upstairs learning his lines ready for his next performance.

  She knew that she had to plan what she and Nanna would do in the future.

  Thanks to the Duke’s concern for his nephew, they had enough money for it not to be an urgent matter. At the same time she knew that it would not last for ever.

  It was impossible for Shimona not to keep thinking of the Duke, remembering everything he said to her, going over and over again the moments when they had been together.

  Sometimes she wondered whether she would have been happier if she had never gone to Ravenstone House. If she had not tried to earn the money that was to save her father’s life, she would have saved herself from having a broken heart.

  That was what she had.

  She had always laughed at the phrase when she had heard it spoken in one of the plays.

  Now she knew it could be a reality – for the pain in her own heart seemed to grow worse day by day and she was never free of it.

  However much she tried to tell herself sternly that it was a thing of the past and something to be forgotten, she longed for the Duke with an intensity that at times frightened her.

  And almost insidiously the temptation came to her to do as he wished, to accept his terms, to tell him that after all she would agree to anything he suggested as long as she could sometimes see him.

  Then she told herself that that was only the first step to destruction.

  She was not so foolish or so ignorant as not to be aware that the reason why her father did not wish her to be associated with the theatre was the loose morals that seemed inevitably involved in theatrical life.

  It had been impossible for Shimona not to understand when it was sa
id that the leading lady was under the protection of some Nobleman, who had financed the production, or that the producer had pushed his current mistress into an important part simply because he found her attractive.

  Even though her father was careful about what he said in front of her, the gossip of the theatre was part of his life.

  Shimona was astute enough to piece disjointed sentences together and know the truth, even when her father and mother attempted to hide it from her.

  It did not really shock her. She only thought that it was unpleasant or, as Doctor Lesley had said, ‘unsavoury’, and she knew that as far as she was concerned such a life would be entirely and absolutely wrong and contrary to everything she believed in.

  ‘The love that Papa and Mama had for each other,’ she thought, ‘was a very beautiful holy thing.’

  She was sure, although she had never come in contact with it, that illicit love was the opposite.

  And yet it was hard to believe that her love for the Duke and his feelings for her were anything but right and good.

  There had been something unmistakably spiritual in the feelings he had evoked in her.

  She had felt when he took her up towards the stars that they were both a part of the Divine, and her love was in fact as holy as her prayers and the feelings of reverence she had in Church.

  ‘How can that be wrong?’ she asked herself.

  But she knew the answer. There was nothing wrong in what she had done so far, but she must go no further.

  “What will become of us?” she asked Nanna two days after her father’s funeral.

  “I’ve been thinkin’ about that,” Nanna replied. “We’ve got to face the facts, Miss Shimona. We can’t live here forever!”

  “Papa owned the house.”

  “Yes, I know,” Nanna agreed, “but there’s rates to be paid, repairs to be done and we have to eat.”

  Shimona looked at her wide-eyed as she went on,

  “I’ve been thinkin’ that, if I went out to work, we could perhaps keep goin’ for at least a year or so.”

  “Do you really think I would sit here and let you work for me?” Shimona asked. “That is absurd, Nanna. If anyone works it should be me. I am young and strong.”

  “And as innocent as a newborn babe!” Nanna finished scornfully. “What do you think you could do?”