The Duke & the Preachers Daughter Read online

  The Duke glanced at Benedicta and saw that she was riding now with a grace and expertise that he might have expected was born in her. He noticed the lightness of her hands as she held the reins.

  ‘She is lovely!’ he thought. ‘In fact it would be easy for any man to fall in love with her!’

  Then an idea struck him which made him frown and he spurred his horse as if to race away from something that had startled him.

  At luncheon they were joined by an elderly friend of the Duke’s who had called unexpectedly to enquire about Richard.

  But they dined alone and it seemed to Benedicta as if the table with its glittering gold ornaments and the Duke sitting at the head of it in his evening clothes had an enchantment that was somehow different from anything she had experienced before.

  She did not know why, but she felt as if everything had accelerated into a new awareness.

  The loveliness of the house, the presence of the Duke, the words they spoke to each other, the laughter that broke up the seriousness and the erudite trend of their conversation, all seemed to strike her afresh.

  “I suspect that you are sharpening your brains on my books,” the Duke said, after they had argued over one particular subject and she had eventually proved to be right.

  “I hope so,” Benedicta replied. “There is plenty of room for improvement.”

  “I can see that my house parties in future will have to be composed of Oxford Dons, who are incredibly boring unless they are discoursing on their own particular hobby horse.”

  Benedicta laughed and then she said,

  “While you were away I thought that perhaps Papa and I being here was preventing you from entertaining your friends, as you would otherwise have done.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Even if they do not see Papa, it is rather depressing to know there is someone lying unconscious in the house,” Benedicta replied, “and I feel I ought to suggest that we should go away.”

  “Go away?” the Duke asked, “and where do you think you would go?”

  She made a little gesture of helplessness.

  “I don’t know – perhaps you could – lend us a cottage on the estate. Just a tiny one where I could look after Papa and not be a nuisance to you.”

  “Do you really think that is what you are?” the Duke asked. “And what about Richard?”

  “I think Richard will soon be well enough for you to invite some of his friends – his real friends – who will talk about things they enjoy together, as I am unable to do.”

  “Are you saying that you do not entertain Richard or that Richard does not entertain you?” the Duke asked sharply.

  “You sound angry, Your Grace. What I am trying to say is that you have been so kind, so overwhelmingly kind to me and Papa, but we don’t really fit into your life any more than I fit into Richard’s.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we live in different worlds. Richard wants the friends he sees in London to come and give him the latest gossip about the balls, the wagers in the Clubs, the singers at Vauxhall, and those – sort of things.”

  The Duke was silent and Benedicta went on,

  “Please – I don’t want you to think that I am not –completely happy here – or that it has not been the most perfect thing that could ever have happened to me – to be here at Kingswood, but I am only being honest in telling you that I cannot, now that he is getting well, supply Richard with exactly what he needs.”

  “I think what he needs is love,” the Duke said. “Are you prepared to give him that, Benedicta?”

  Her eyes were wide with sheer astonishment before she replied in a voice he could hardly recognise,

  “What – are you – saying to me?”

  “I am saying that it would make me very happy if you became Richard’s wife!”

  “Are – are you serious? I never thought of – such a thing – It never – occurred to me.”

  “I know that. But I think it would not only solve Richard’s problem but also yours, Benedicta. You need a home and a husband to look after you and Richard would have much to offer you.”

  Benedicta did not speak and the Duke, watching her face, knew that she was slowly assimilating what he had said.

  Then at last she replied,

  “Richard does not – love me.”

  “Not for the moment, I agree, but it should be within your power, as it is with any woman, to make him love you and make him happy. He would never have been anything but utterly miserable with someone as evil as Delyth Maulden.”

  There was silence for a moment.

  Then Benedicta said,

  “I think it will be a very long time before Richard falls in love again. He may not have given his heart to the right person or to someone of whom you approve – but love is never wasted – never lost.”

  “What do you mean?” the Duke enquired.

  “Love is not only something we give to another person,” Benedicta replied hesitatingly, “but it enlarges and enriches ourselves and, however much we suffer because of it, it adds to our spiritual development.”

  “You might be your father talking,” the Duke remarked scoffing, “and you are speaking of a very different sort of love from what Richard felt for a woman who is utterly unscrupulous and without any principles.”

  “Richard gave her the best that he was capable of giving,” Benedicta said firmly, “and that is what matters to him.”

  Again there was silence until Benedicta said,

  “I am sorry to disappoint you, and you know I would do – anything in my power to please you, but I could not marry Richard even if he wished to marry me – which he does not.”

  “Why could you not marry him?”

  “Because I do not – love him.”

  “You are obsessed with a lot of idiotic, romantic notions which are written about in books, but have nothing to do with real life,” the Duke retorted.

  “Perhaps not – in your life,” Benedicta replied, “but they have in – mine.”

  “And in your life as the daughter of a travelling Preacher, who is likely to be worthy of this idealistic spiritual love which to most people is only a lot of gibberish?”

  As he spoke, he saw her wince at his words. He knew that he had hurt her and felt glad that he had done so.

  He had to shake her out of such ridiculous ideas and make her understand that what he was offering her was something that most young women in the highest Social position would have jumped at with alacrity.

  Because her obstinacy annoyed him he said, his voice still sharp and commanding,

  “Try to think sensibly, not with that unpredictable organ women call their heart, but with your brain! You want money, you want security, you want a future in which you can produce children without wondering where their next meal will come from.”

  He watched her face as he went on,

  “Make up your mind to attract Richard and you will find it is quite an easy thing to do. You will be benefitting him as well as yourself and your future will be rosy.”

  There was silence but his voice seemed to vibrate round the room and echo back at them.

  Then, after a few seconds, the Duke asked,

  “Well? What is your answer? You must have the intelligence to realise I am talking sense.”

  Benedicta was staring sightlessly at the ornate gold vase in the centre of the table.

  The Duke had the uncomfortable feeling that she was looking inwards at herself, examining her heart and her soul and not as he had asked her to do, thinking clearly and logically with her brain.

  “Listen to me, Benedicta,” he said, “what I am really offering you is Kingswood. Surely that means something? Surely you would not refuse, as no other woman is likely to do, to live here and be – a Duchess?”

  Benedicta turned her face towards him.

  There was a look in her eyes he did not understand and her lips moved, but for a moment no sound came from them, until at last she stuttered
,

  “I am – sorry – desperately sorry – but I could not marry – anyone except the – man I love.”

  As she spoke, she rose from the table and without apology moved swiftly across the room and out through the door that led into the passage.

  The Duke poured himself a glass of brandy and sipped it reflectively.

  He told himself he had done the right thing, but he was not quite certain if he had done it in the right way.

  He had surprised and startled Benedicta, but because she was so innocent and so un-selfseeking that was what he might have expected.

  What he had not anticipated was that she would refuse him categorically.

  He was certain it was not because she had an aversion to Richard.

  He had heard the way she spoke to him and knew it would have been impossible for her to appear so sympathetic and understanding if she had not some affection for him. But that, the Duke was forced to admit, was very different from love.

  He thought he should have realised that Benedicta, unlike most women that he knew, had no Social ambition and was activated by much higher principles and ideals than he had taken into his calculations.

  Was it possible, he asked himself, that a girl without a penny to her name, with a father on the verge of death, could refuse even to entertain the idea of being a Duchess?

  He had never really contemplated for one instant that she would refuse the offer of such a dazzling future.

  Then a thought struck him.

  She had not said, “I could not marry unless I was in love,” but, “I could not marry anyone except the man I love.”

  The Duke knitted his brows together.

  Had he really heard her aright? If so, had he, in making his plans missed what should have been obvious, that Benedicta was already in love?

  And if so, with whom?

  The answer was not difficult to find.

  Bevil Haverington had warned him from the very beginning, that he himself, might be the recipient of her affections, but she had certainly not made that clear, either by word or by deed.

  Admittedly, she had looked pleased to see him when he returned home.

  There was a kind of radiance about her when they rode or dined together, but that was not enough, the Duke told himself, for him to presume that it was due to him as a man.

  The explanation could lie in the horse she rode, the environment in which they moved and ate, the joy of being in the finest house in England surrounded by treasures that would make any connoisseur gnash his teeth with envy.

  There had been nothing in their association, he told himself, to make him aware as other women had made him aware, that her heart beat any the faster because he was beside her.

  Always with the women he pursued or who pursued him, there had been a kind of magnetism of which they were both tinglingly aware.

  He admitted it was basically a physical desire, an electric spark which quickly aroused could be as quickly extinguished.

  Nevertheless, he had always been conscious of it, had always known that while the end was inevitable, there was much to be enjoyed before they parted.

  But with Benedicta, he had just talked and their minds had been stimulated.

  While he had enjoyed the intellectual challenge she gave him and at the same time appreciated her beauty, it had not entered his head that he should try to possess her because he had been so sure that she was exactly the one he required to settle Richard’s life.

  Now the Duke, usually so positive and determined, so completely confident of what he should do, felt strangely unsure.

  “Dammit all!” he shouted out loudly. “If she is in love with me, she has a strange way of showing it! Anyway the sooner she realises that what she wants is impossible, the better!”

  He drank his brandy and rose from the table in a bad temper.

  ‘Women, always women!’ he thought as he crossed the dining room. ‘They are tiresome, unreliable and certainly unpredictable!’

  He had never thought that Benedicta of all women would be like that.

  Then he told himself even more angrily, that it was what he might have expected because she was different, so very different from any of the others.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Duke passed a sleepless night.

  He found himself tossing and turning and was not only beset with thoughts of Benedicta and Richard but by another more disturbing question which lay behind the whole problem.

  Accordingly he rose in an extremely bad mood and had a black look on his face that Hawkins knew of old, meant that he was fighting a battle within himself.

  After having breakfast alone, the Duke changed his mind about his plans for the day.

  He sent away the horse that was waiting outside for his usual ride in the Park with Benedicta and instead ordered his phaeton and went back upstairs to change his clothes.

  He made no explanation to Hawkins, as the valet helped him out of his highly polished riding boots and into his skin-tight yellow pantaloons which fastened under the insteps in the fashion set by the Prince Regent.

  His superfine grey riding coat, which had set a new fashion among the Corinthians, fitted him like a glove. Finally, when his spotless white muslin cravat was tied to his liking, the Duke walked downstairs, a picture of fashion that was however belied by the darkness in his eyes and the hard set of his lips.

  The butler handed him his high hat which he set at a somewhat raffish angle on his head and he stepped outside to where his phaeton was waiting.

  In everything he did, the Duke was a perfectionist and the phaeton, which he had designed himself with its black body and yellow wheels, was not only smarter than any other vehicle of its kind to be seen in the London streets, but was also considerably faster.

  Drawn by four perfectly matched horses it was impossible to imagine that any man could look more impressive or more elegant as the Duke drove away from the front of the house and over the stone bridge that spanned the lake.

  *

  Benedicta who had been told she was to ride alone, accompanied only by a groom, watched him from the other end of the Park pass along the drive.

  She wondered where he was going and thought wistfully that she would have liked to be driving with him.

  Then she remembered that the Duke was doubtless incensed with her and she wished she had not left him as abruptly as she had done last night.

  She could have stayed even if it meant arguing and continuing to refuse to do what he wished, however difficult it might have been.

  How, she asked herself almost passionately, could she agree to marry Richard, whatever the Social advantages it might entail?

  She was well aware that few women in her position would have refused to entertain such an offer.

  Even her mother, who had hoped that she would marry into the Social life that she had known as a girl, would never have aspired to the pinnacle of her becoming a Duchess.

  But that was not important, Benedicta told herself.

  What mattered was love – the love that had made her mother insist on marrying an unimportant Parson in defiance of her father’s wishes.

  It had been impossible for Benedicta, being so close to her father, so closely connected with many of the problems that were confided to him wherever he went, to be unaware that many men and women were desperately unhappy in their married lives.

  It did not matter, she had often thought, whether they were rich or poor – when a man and woman were united by the bonds of matrimony, love or the lack of it could make their lives a Heaven or a hell.

  She wondered how she could make the Duke understand this, but she knew that in the Social world in which he moved, love was not important beside the advantages a marriage could bring either to the man or to the woman.

  Her mother had told her when she was a girl that her father, Squire Marlow, had tried to insist that she married their neighbour, a nobleman whose estate marched with his.

  “It would have been a brilliant
marriage,” Mrs. Calvine said quietly, “and Lord Swinstead loved me in his own way, even though he was much older than I was.”

  She smiled before she added,

  “But I had already given my heart to your father and, as far as I was concerned, there was no other man but him in the whole world.”

  “That is the sort of marriage I want,” Benedicta told herself.

  She knew even as she thought of it, that what she actually longed for was impossible – a dream that had no chance of ever coming true.

  *

  The Duke drove extremely fast but with an expertise which ensured that he never took risks either with his horses or with himself.

  It was a golden day with the sun growing warmer and giving the countryside a fresh loveliness that had been proclaimed by poets since the beginning of time.

  The Duke saw nothing but the road ahead.

  The darkness was still in his eyes when, after a journey of over ten miles, he turned through an elaborate gateway leading to an elm-bordered drive that ended in an impressive red-brick house.

  He drew up at the front door with a flourish and as liveried servants hurried down the steps, he asked,

  “Is Mrs. Sherwood at home?”

  “I will enquire, Your Grace,” the butler replied, recognising the Duke from previous visits.

  The Duke, however, did not wait to hear if his hostess would receive him. Being quite certain what the answer would be, he stepped down from the phaeton, handing the reins to his groom.

  He walked up the steps and into the hall and even as an attentive footman took his hat and gloves, the butler came hurrying from a salon.

  “This way, Your Grace,” he said and threw open the door.

  At the end of a long attractive room with windows opening onto the garden a woman rose from the chair in which she was sitting with such haste that the book she had been reading tumbled from her lap onto the floor.

  “Nolan!” she exclaimed before the butler could announce the Duke. “I cannot believe you are really here! What a wonderful, incredible surprise!”

  As the butler shut the door of the room, she ran towards the Duke, holding out both her hands, her dark eyes sparkling with excitement.