The Duke Comes Home Read online

  He was sure that this was what Ilina was able to do with Pegasus and he thought that she was undoubtedly relating to him with horror what he had said to her.

  And strange though it might seem, he was almost compelled to believe that Pegasus would understand.

  He ate dinner alone and found it annoying that he was not able to argue with Ilina as they had done last night while they duelled with each other in words.

  He understood now that the expression he had not been able to identify in her gold-flecked eyes had been one of hatred and he found it distinctly unusual for a woman to hate him.

  He had been so busy during the last few years that he had not had a great deal of time for women, but thinking back he knew that any whom he approached had fallen into his arms with an eagerness that was certainly flattering.

  Even so his love affairs, if that was what they were, had never lasted very long for in fact he found that his work was far more interesting than any woman.

  Although when he had the time they undoubtedly lit a fire within him, he thought cynically that it soon burnt itself out and work was a far more enduring excitement.

  When dinner was over, fortunately Mrs. Bird did not realise that he had hardly noticed what he ate and had little appreciation of the culinary skill expended on it, the Duke walked back to the study.

  He had hoped that Ilina might be waiting for him, but instead he found himself appreciating the vases of flowers and the fact, which was also her doing, that so many treasures had been accumulated in one place.

  There were not only portraits of the Dukes on the walls, but an arrangement of miniatures also of the Bury family, some of them very valuable, hung on either side of the fireplace.

  Several pink Sèvres vases on the mantelpiece were exquisite specimens that were irreplaceable.

  The gold inkpot on the desk had been fashioned by a great craftsman in the reign of Charles II and the clock on the mantelpiece whose hands were set with jewels had come from France and had once stood in the Palace of Versailles.

  So many lovely treasures that would never again see the light of day.

  Because he wanted to shout the words aloud and make Ilina face the reality of them, it was annoying that he had no one to talk to except himself.

  He threw himself almost petulantly down in one of the large leather-covered armchairs and stared with hostile eyes at the second Duke in his elaborate frame.

  “You are a hero!” he jeered at him aloud. “But no Bury will ever forget me!”

  He wanted to say it to the Burys who were alive rather than to those who were dead, so for a moment he played with the idea of giving a party at The Abbey before he closed it.

  He would assemble all the Burys here and having told them what he thought of them, he would enjoy their abuse or their tears, when they realised what he intended to do.

  Then he remembered that if he was to find the Burys he would need Ilina’s help.

  “Damn the girl!” he said aloud. “Why did she have to disappear just when I need her?”

  It was dark by now and he knew that she must have returned and gone to her own rooms to avoid meeting him.

  He thought of sending Singh or the housemaid, if she was about, to tell her that he wanted to speak to her.

  Then he decided that, if she refused to come as she was very likely to do, it might make him look foolish.

  Instead he could only sit alone, feeling that three of the Dukes who had preceded him were staring at him balefully and with the same dislike that he felt for them.

  Because he was so lost in his thoughts, it was after midnight when, feeling a little stiff and slightly cold, he rose and, blowing out the candles, walked slowly through the hall and up the stairs to his bedroom.

  The house was very quiet and he had told Singh not to wait up for him knowing that the man had been working all day to help the Birds.

  “Is there no one to help you, Singh?” he had asked when he went up to change out of his riding clothes and found him brushing the floor.

  “Nobody, Master,” Singh replied. “Housemaid too old, others busy.”

  He had assisted the Duke to change, saying as he did so,

  “Very fine house, Master! Very big like house of Viceroy, but needs plenty servants, many, many servants.”

  “I agree with you, Singh.”

  “Servants open rooms for big parties,” Singh said with relish.

  The Duke was about to say that it was something that would never happen when he thought that Singh might relay the information to the old couple downstairs and it would upset them.

  The food was excellently cooked and he had no wish to have Mrs. Bird crying hysterically and ruining her dishes, while old Bird would be asking him where they could go if they were turned out of the house.

  ‘They are not my problem,’ the Duke said to himself, ‘and I will not be side-tracked into worrying over people who anyway are too old to be working.’

  He thought, however, with a twist of his lips that Ilina would doubtless demand that he should provide them with pensions and he supposed the same would apply also to Jacobs, the gardener and God knows how many others besides.

  ‘The sooner I am away from this damned nightmare the better,’ he thought and was aware because he was scowling that Singh, who knew his every mood, was looking at him apprehensively.

  He felt now that the grandeur of his bedroom was somehow annoying and he undressed quickly and, blowing out the candles, settled himself to sleep.

  Then, just as if he was being haunted by the other Dukes, who had slept before him in the great four-poster bed, he found himself arguing with them and defending his actions against their accusations.

  ‘Nothing you can say will persuade me that it is not time the whole myth of the Burys’ infallibility came to an end!’ he told them.

  It was then that they seemed to put forward what he had to admit were intelligent arguments that he could find no answers to.

  As he tossed from side to side and lay unable to sleep, he decided that their faces were haunting him and he got out of bed.

  He pulled back the curtains and found that the moonlight was flooding over the Park and the lake making the whole place seem enchanted and the Duke knew that until now he had not realised how lovely it was.

  Because he felt that this was something else that he would never be able to forget he decided that he would go outside and ride.

  Only by taking some sort of exercise could he free himself from the voices of his ancestors and the fear that if he was not careful he would be fighting a losing battle.

  It took him only a few minutes to dress and then he walked down the stairs and let himself out through the front door.

  *

  There was no need for the candles, which had guttered out in the sconces, since the moonlight came through the high glass windows with the Bury Coat of Arms emblazoned on them in stained glass and cast weird patterns on the floor.

  It also illuminated the tattered flags that the Burys had won in battle and which hung on either side of the huge marble fireplace.

  The Duke closed the front floor behind him and walked slowly across the front of the house until he reached the stone arch that led into the stables.

  The moonlight made everything as bright as if the sun was shining and he could not help appreciating the architecture of the stable buildings.

  These had been erected at the same time as the first Duke had enlarged The Abbey and added the Palladian columns, the steps and the two wings that made it so impressive.

  The moonlight also shone into the stables and he had no need for any other light to see the stalls where there were only two horses, Pegasus and Rufus.

  Pegasus was first and he glanced into his stall to see that the horse was lying down.

  But to his surprise Pegasus put back his ears and lifted his top lip almost as if he was snarling.

  Then he realised that beyond Pegasus, lying on a mound of hay at the far end of the stall, w
as Ilina.

  She was asleep and her horse was guarding her.

  She looked very lovely, very young and very vulnerable.

  The Duke could see the tearstains on her cheeks and one hand was flung out palm upwards towards Pegasus almost as if she was asking for the horse’s protection.

  The Duke stood looking at her for a long time thinking that, because she had disputed and fought with him, she had seemed in his mind to be as doughty and aggressive as an Amazon.

  Yet now she appeared little more than a child with her fair hair curling round her forehead, her eyelashes wet and even in her sleep, which he felt was one of exhaustion, he saw that her lips trembled.

  Then, as if he was determined to do what he intended to do, he went into the next stall.

  He led Rufus out as quietly as possible and picking up the saddle from where it was hanging, took him outside to saddle him in the stable yard.

  As he rode away, he had the feeling that he was escaping from something that was encroaching on him.

  The Duke rode for a long way, following first the safe path through the Park and then galloping Rufus over the flat land until the horse was sweating and he felt as if some of the cobwebs had been swept away from his mind.

  Only when he realised that he was quite a long way from home did he turn Rufus round and he told himself that the sooner he settled everything to his satisfaction and left England the better.

  ‘If I stay here, I shall become sentimental and doubtless involved in a way that I have no wish to be,’ he said to himself.

  He had come back to England with a firm intention in his mind and nobody, certainly not a Bury in the shape of Ilina, was going to alter it.

  “England is not for me!” he said aloud.

  Rufus twitched his ears at the sound of his voice, but otherwise the Duke thought that it was a challenge that made no impact.

  The moonlight made The Abbey, when he saw it in the distance, look like a Fairy Palace, magical and magnificent, and he found himself wondering what his standard would look like if it was flying from the roof.

  He remembered his father telling him the reigning Duke’s standard always flew there when he was in residence.

  “Ridiculous frippery!” he exclaimed and rode on.

  He restrained Rufus from going too quickly now that he knew that his stable was in sight and he would soon be back in it again.

  There was no hurry the Duke reflected and there was no need to wake Ilina and have to make some explanation as to why he was out riding in the middle of the night.

  Also he did not wish to ask her why she was sleeping in her horse’s stall.

  He knew that the answer was that there was no one else to whom she could turn to for comfort and no one else to whom she could cry, because the house she loved and which apparently meant so much to her was to become a ruined monument to the last Duke.

  ‘I shall never marry,’ the Duke told himself, ‘in case I have a son, who might wish to inherit all this rubbish!’

  Even as he said the words he saw the Van Dycks, the miniatures, the snuffboxes, the pink Sèvres and the books. Thousands and thousands of books and he knew that many of them contained eulogies of heroic Burys.

  “They are dead,” the Duke cried out. “There is nothing they can do except stay in their graves while I go on living and that will be the end! There will be no seventh Duke of Tetbury and as the years pass the Burys that are left will forget The Abbey and the estate that has become a wasteland for birds and vermin.”

  He drew nearer to the house and now he found himself hoping that Ilina had awakened and gone to bed.

  He had no wish to see her now and no wish to talk to her and, if she cried, he told himself, it would merely irritate him as he disliked scenes of any sort.

  Then, as he was riding alongside the lake, he saw her come walking through the gateway from the stables.

  As she was a long distance away, he had the feeling that she was looking at the moonlight on the house, as he was able to do, and thinking how beautiful it was.

  Then she stood very still and he wondered what she was thinking until unexpectedly she ran to the front of the steps that led up to the front door.

  Then she stopped again and he saw that she was looking to the left of them.

  Almost as if his eyes followed hers, he too looked left and saw that she was staring at a light in the study window.

  It was little more than a golden glow and yet it was there and he remembered distinctly that he had blown out the candles before he went to bed.

  ‘I must be mistaken,’ he thought.

  Then he saw that a casement was open and there was something strange beneath it.

  The study was not at ground level, but as was usual in a Palladian house, level with the top of the flight of steps that led up to the front door and there appeared to be a rope hanging from the window to the ground.

  Even as he stared at it, the Duke saw Ilina run swiftly up the steps to the front door, open it and disappear inside.

  It was then, for the first time since he had seen her, that he sensed danger and spurred Rufus into a gallop.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Pegasus moved.

  And Ilina woke and for a moment could not think where she was.

  The horse nuzzled at her. She patted his nose and, sitting up on the straw, realised that she had cried until she was exhausted.

  Now she smoothed back her hair from her forehead and pulled some pieces of straw from it.

  She felt calmer but at the same time had a sense of despair, which she knew would increase every moment until the terrible deed that the Duke contemplated was completed.

  As the horror of it swept over her, she asked aloud,

  “How – could he? How could he do – anything so – wicked?”

  Then she realised that it was no good going back over it all again and the best thing she could do would be to go to bed and hope that in the morning by a miracle he might have changed his mind.

  There was, however, not even a glimmer of hope in her heart because she had known since she first saw him that he had a vital determination and a sense of purpose in which he differed from most people she had met.

  She was certain that, if he was determined to destroy everything that belonged to the Burys, then he would do it.

  Even to think of it now she was awake, made her feel her own helplessness, that she was beating her head against a rock and the only thing that would be hurt would be herself.

  “How do I make him see, Pegasus?” she asked, “that his desire for revenge is utterly unimportant in comparison with the achievements, the happiness and the inspiration that the family has given people – in the past?”

  Then, as Pegasus could not answer her, she rose to her feet knowing that she could go on talking all night and it would get her nowhere.

  She patted the horse, laid her cheek for a moment against his neck and then walked from the stall closing the door behind her.

  As she came out into the stable yard in the moonlight, the glory of it seemed such a contrast to her own feelings of darkness and despair that she thought for a moment that it must be an omen sent by God to tell her that after all there was hope.

  But, although instinctively her spirits rose for a moment, her brain told her that she had to face the truth however unpalatable it might be.

  Slowly she walked across the cobbles of the yard through the stone arch and when in front of her she saw the Park, the lake and then the house, it made a picture that she knew however long she lived she would never forget.

  It was so mystical and so ethereal that she thought that in all the years that she had lived at The Abbey, she had never seen it so beautiful.

  Then she had eyes only for the house, thinking that on the Duke’s orders the windows would soon be covered with boards, the great front door barred and it would be, as he had said, nothing but a tomb.

  The treasures inside would rot and decay.

  And probably b
y the time he died and someone could do anything about it, it would be too late.

  Yet at the moment it was so lovely that it was part of her dreams and she walked very slowly towards the steps thinking that, if she never woke up, this was how she would like to die.

  As her eyes moved along the house, she saw that there was a light in the study window and thought that the Duke must still be there where she had left him.

  Was it possible that he was sitting there thinking that he had made a wrong decision or was he making plans for the workmen to come in and carry out his revenge?

  She had never thought that anything like this might happen. Yet she had sometimes imagined that the Duke might never return to England.

  When he did, she saw that he was obviously hard-up and there would be nothing he could do to save The Abbey unless he consented to her suggestion, which might be illegal, but was not unreasonable.

  That he should seek such a savage revenge for the way that his father had been treated seemed so unbelievable that even now after she had heard him say it, and cried as if her heart would break, she still wanted to believe that she had been mistaken.

  Even if he had no money he could do something for the estate, sell the timber for one thing.

  Also once it was known that he was back and prepared to take his place as Head of the Family, perhaps some of the relatives would help.

  At least they might restore the Dower House or some of the cottages.

  As she thought of it, she gave a little cry.

  ‘Was it possible? Could the Duke be meaning to leave England and return to the East without providing for the pensioners?’

  She remembered that Mr. Wicker and his partners had been paying them until he returned and that meant another debt, which somehow would have to be met.

  ‘If he will not sell the pictures,’ Ilina reasoned, ‘there will be no money to keep the old people from dying of starvation.’

  There were also the Birds and Jacobs and Williams to be considered and she thought frantically that the fifty pounds that Mr. Wicker had put on one side for her would not keep them all for more than two or three months.

  After that there was nothing but the workhouse, which she had always known decent people shrank from in horror and would rather die than be sent there.