The Earl made a gesture with his hands.
“How could I have known, how could I have guessed,” he asked, “that both my uncle and his only son would be killed in such an unfortunate and tragic manner?”
There was a poignant silence.
“In the circumstances,” the Duke said at length, “I must apologise for misjudging you.”
“Please allow me to offer you some refreshment,” the Earl suggested “Have you come from London?”
“We are on our way to stay with Sir Francis Dashwood at High Wycombe,” the Duke replied.
“I have not seen him for some years,” the Earl answered conversationally, “but I hope now that I shall be able to renew the acquaintance.”
While he was speaking, Lady Louise had moved down the salon and seated herself on a sofa near the flower-filled fireplace.
She was looking round and the Earl was aware how angry and jealous she was that there was now no chance other being the Chatelaine of Rock Castle as she would have so wished to be.
He could understand that once she had realised he was not only a rich man but of importance in the Social world, she had been determined, as she had not been when they first met, to make him her husband.
The Earl was certain that she had worked assiduously on her father to make him take the course he had.
No man likes to force another into marriage with his daughter and he wondered how much of the truth Lady Louise had told the Duke about their encounter at Windsor Castle.
At the same time his plan had worked exactly as he had hoped it would.
That he had been married when he was of no social importance must completely undermine any objections the Duke could make, while Louise could, if she wished, allot him the role of frustrated lover who saw no chance of ever attaining his desires.
Then, as if she was still suspicious, Louise asked suddenly,
“If you were as poor as you say you were, how could you afford to marry anyone?”
The Earl had anticipated this question and had the answer ready.
“My wife comes from an Army family and so is used to managing on very little,” he said. “She has a small income of her own and a Manor House not far from here where we would have lived when I was not with the Regiment.”
It all sounded vary plausible and the Duke stated,
“Of course if your wife was a neighbour, you would have known her for many years.”
The Earl was not obliged to tell any more lies for the moment because, as if he had anticipated what might be required, the butler came into the room followed by a footman carrying a tray on which there were glasses and a silver wine cooler in which reposed an open bottle of champagne.
The Duke took a glass with obvious relish.
“I must, of course. drink your health, Rockbrook,” he said, “and I hope I may have the pleasure of meeting your wife.”
“I am sure she will be honoured to meet you, Your Grace,” the Earl replied, “but, as she is rather shy, I think perhaps we will wait for another occasion.”
The Duke was man of the world enough to understand that the Earl was telling him that there was no point in Lady Louise and the new Countess being forced into a meeting with each other.
“Yes, yes, you are quite right and we cannot stay long,” the Duke agreed.
He managed, however, to drink several more glasses of champagne and to have reached an effusively benign mood before the Earl escorted them to their carriage and stood waiting on the steps until they drove away.
As Louise held his hand when they said ‘goodbye’, there was a look in her eyes that might have made him apprehensive.
It told him all too clearly that her passion for him was not spent and that having failed to make trouble she would undoubtedly try to inveigle him back into her clutches in a very different way when they met again.
But, as the carriage disappeared down the drive, the Earl knew with a feeling of inexpressible relief that she no longer menaced him and the fear of what had seemed to haunt him for so long had vanished like mist in sunshine.
He was free!
Free of Louise and her fiery unnatural passion. Free of what had been almost a terror finding himself married to a woman he disliked and despised!
He was smiling as he walked into the hall.
“Ask her Ladyship to join me in the salon,” he said to the butler and then walked back into the flower-filled room to pour himself another glass of champagne.
Before he drank he raised his glass in a silent toast.
‘To my future happiness!’ he said beneath his breath and felt as if the room was filled with sunshine.
*
Walking through the shrubberies with Jason at her heels Purilla was driven by an inexpressible impulse to get away to somewhere where she could sit down and think.
When she had gone from the salon, she had heard before she closed the door the Duke say,
“I consider, Rockbrook, that you have treated my daughter extremely badly and so I require an explanation.”
The tone in the Duke’s voice as well as his words made her heart give a little throb of fear and she had stood still holding the door handle but not closing the door completely.
She heard the Earl’s reply and it had been the answer to what had puzzled her and compelled her to keep wondering why he had married her and why he had lied about the date that the Wedding had taken place on.
Now she understood and, although it seemed to her impossible that he should wish to escape from anybody so beautiful and elegant as Lady Louise, she knew now that their marriage had been his solution to the problem of saving himself.
He had not, in fact, loved her as she had tried to believe he had.
‘I was just the lesser of two evils,’ she thought as she walked on.
She did not see the purple and white lilac, the syringa whose fragrance now filled the air or the almond blossom as fragile and delicate as the flush on her young cheeks.
‘How could I have known – how could I have guessed that it was the only reason he wanted me?’ she asked herself.
She felt as if he had swept her along on the wave of his determination. It had been impossible to withstand it even while her instinct had told her that, however reasonable he made it appear, it was not the right way to be married.
“But how can I help loving him?” she asked aloud.
Jason looked up at her wondering at the pain in her voice.
“He is so handsome, so magnificent,” she went on, “and I love him more every time I see him – but that does not excuse his means of eluding the lovely Lady Louise.”
She knew now that she had always half-suspected that there was some secret explanation apart from his injuries for the Earl being in such desperate haste for them to be married.
It was only because she loved him so desperately that she had allowed herself to pretend that it was because he wanted her and that she could not be at Rock Castle unmarried, even with Nanny, but without a chaperone.
Of course, if he had really wanted one, he could have found a chaperone amongst his many relatives or alternatively, as she was so unimportant, surely it would not have mattered at all whether she was chaperoned or not.
Instead he had thought up this strange, and what now seemed fantastic, means of saving himself from being pressured into marriage with the Duke’s daughter, although just why he should not want to marry her, Purilla could not understand.
However, she realised the Earl’s explanation that a penniless soldier was not likely to commend himself to the Duke was extremely clever.
Purilla was well aware that in an expensive Regiment like the Grenadier Guards, every Officer had to have private means since it was impossible for him to exist on his Army pay.
She suspected, because her father had often discussed with her the expenses of the different Regiments, that the Earl must have a small income which had been just sufficient for his needs if he was very economical and it would be impossible i
n the circumstances for him to marry a wife who had no money of her own.
‘If he had loved Lady Louise, as she obviously loves him,’ Purilla reasoned, ‘they would have managed somehow and perhaps he would even have left the Regiment.’
When she saw Lady Louise come into the salon, Purilla had thought that she was so beautiful, and so alluring, that her first feeling had been one of jealousy. She thought that beside such a vision she would appear very ordinary and unattractive.
Now, although it seemed so incredible, the Earl had preferred to be married to her than to Lady Louise and she supposed that in a way it was a compliment.
But it was not enough.
She wanted love, the love that she had been trying to pretend to herself he had for her, the love that she knew in her heart was essential to a marriage if it was to be complete and happy.
‘How can I bear it? How can I live with him knowing that he never wanted me as a – person, but only as a – raft or a lifebuoy, to save him from a – worse Fate?’
She reached the end of the shrubbery and started to climb through the trees of a small wood that lay beyond it.
Now Jason ran ahead searching for rabbits amongst the undergrowth as Purilla walked blindly, not seeing her surroundings but only the Earl’s handsome face.
She felt that he had been much kinder and in a way more affectionate these last few days and she thought it was because he was feeling better in health and also because when they talked together they seemed to have so many things in common.
But she was becoming afraid that now even their companionship would no longer be of any interest to him.
‘You expected the Duke to challenge your behaviour,’ she told the Earl in her mind, ‘and that is why you pretended to be married before you had inherited.’
She had always been aware if she had been honest that there was a shadow between them or perhaps it was a gulf. Now, as the Duke would have believed the Earl, he was free.
Free, except that he was married to someone he did not love.
Purilla cried out at the misery of it and because she felt that only by walking could she try to sort things out in her own mind so she walked on.
She and Jason came from the shelter of the trees onto some rough unfarmed grassland. There were clumps of low bushes and there was an incline that was almost a small hill in front of them.
Jason ran ahead, then almost at his feet a small rabbit dashed from the shelter of a bush and rushed wildly away its white tail bobbing behind it.
Jason gave a bark of excitement and, seeing what had happened, Purilla opened her lips to call him back.
Even as she did so, she saw him disappear into the hill ahead of her and wondered vaguely where he had gone.
It took her a little time to walk over the rough ground until, as she neared the point where Jason had disappeared, she saw what looked like the opening of a cave.
There were large lumps of what she recognised as white chalk lying at the entrance and she suddenly realised that it was one of the good number of chalk mines that were to be found in many parts of Buckinghamshire.
She had heard so often of the chalk caves of West Wycombe, which had been used by the wicked Sir Francis Dashwood in the eighth century for the most immoral and disreputable orgies.
There were also several other caves near Little Stanton in which a certain amount of mining had been done by farmers and she thought that this one had obviously not been worked for a long time.
As she reached the darkness of the entrance, she could now hear Jason barking inside and she guessed that he had either got the rabbit cornered or else it had disappeared down a hole and he could no longer reach it.
“Jason!” she called out. “Jason!”
The dog did not respond and, as he was usually very obedient, she suspected the way his bark echoed and re-echoed in the cave made it impossible for him to hear anything but his own noise.
She moved in a little further.
“Jason,” she called again, but he still went on barking.
The cave had been worked so that it was about four foot wide and over six foot high. The ground was thick with powdered chalk and she thought that her shoes would be in a mess which would annoy Nanny.
But there was nothing she could do but try to persuade Jason to leave the rabbit and come out.
“Jason!” she called again and this time he ceased barking and she knew that he must have heard her.
“Jason! Jason!”
She moved still further on down the passage and now she thought that she heard him coming towards her.
Even as he did so, there was a sudden rumble followed by a crash, then several further crashes, one after another and she was suddenly in darkness.
It was not difficult to know what had happened.
The entrance to the cave had fallen in and as Jason reached her side she bent down to put her arms around him knowing that they were trapped.
*
The Earl poured himself another glass of champagne, but he did not drink it.
Instead, carrying it in his hand, he walked towards the window to look out into the garden.
The sunshine was turning the lake to gold and he thought that the shrubs and fruit trees had never looked more beautiful.
He knew that it was because they were his that he felt a warmth seeping through his body and bringing him not only the joy of possession but a sense of peace that he had not known for a long time.
He had a sudden feeling that he wanted to share this new emotion with Purilla and, even as he thought about her, he heard someone come into the room and turned with a smile on his lips.
But it was only the butler.
“Her Ladyship’s not upstairs, my Lord,” he said. “Nanny says she thinks she’s gone out for a walk.”
The Earl frowned.
“Are you sure?” he asked. “Did anyone see her Ladyship go?”
“I don’t think so, my Lord, but I’ll find out.”
The Earl put down his glass and walked back to the fireplace to stand on the hearthrug thinking.
Purilla had been looking forward to seeing the house with him, but he was sure that if she had gone for a walk it was because she was perturbed and, as he knew she had done in the past, had gone away to think.
That meant that she had been upset by the Duke and Lady Louise, especially Lady Louise.
He was aware that anyone who was in love with him would obviously be jealous of another woman.
Then he realised it was quite possible that Purilla had heard the Duke’s peremptory command for an explanation.
‘Dammit!’ the Earl said to himself. ‘Why should they come here upsetting things?’
He knew as he spoke that this was what he had anticipated would happen sooner or later and perhaps it was best to get it over with.
It seemed to him that he waited for a very long time before the butler returned.
“I am unable to find her Ladyship,” he said, “and, although none of the household staff saw her leave, one of the gardeners saw her walking across the shrubbery with her dog.”
‘Thank you,” the Earl said. “I expect she will not be long.”
He was speaking to himself rather than to the servant and when he was alone he walked once again to the window but now he did not see the sun on the lake or the flowers and shrubs.
Instead he was worrying about Purilla and had an uncomfortable feeling that she was unhappy and perhaps suffering because she loved him.
‘I should have told her the truth when I showed her the notice I inserted in the newspaper,’ he told himself.
It would have been far better if he had given her his explanation than for her to be upset and misled by the Duke’s attitude.
But it was too late now to undo what had already been done. All he could hope was that she would not be too long and he could set things right the moment she returned.
*
Jason was trembling and Purilla was holding him in her arms as s
he waited for more crashes of falling chalk, but there was only a silence in which because she was frightened, she thought that she could hear her own heart beating.
“It is no use just waiting for help, Jason,” she said. “We have to try to find our way out of here.”
At first she had felt she was in jet-black darkness, but now there was a faint light on the ground and, as she went towards it, she realised that one huge boulder had fallen so as to leave an opening that a little light and fresh air could percolate through.
The same applied to other places in the fall of chalk but she estimated that there was now a large number of boulders firmly embedded one with the other between herself and the entrance.
She knew that, if she tried to move any of them, more might collapse on her head.
She stood for a long time staring at it helplessly while Jason, as if he realised the predicament they were in, whimpered beside her.
“What shall we do, Jason? What shall we do?” Purilla asked him.
She sat down on the ground and put her arms around him again feeling somehow his warmth and the fact that he licked her face lovingly was some comfort.
It was frightening to realise that no one knew where she was.
Because she had been so upset she had walked out of the house without even putting on her bonnet.
Fortunately her silk gown was lined and the sleeves reached nearly to her wrists, but she knew that it was much colder in the cave than outside and soon she would be very cold indeed especially when the sun went down.
She felt with a sudden panic that no one would think of looking for her here and that perhaps she and Jason would die of cold and hunger and the Earl would never know what had happened.
That she would never see him again made her feel frantic and she wanted to scream for help.
But she knew even as she opened her mouth that it would be hopeless.
She had seen no one since the moment she had left the garden and she was aware that the rough ground that she had walked over was not farmed nor were there likely to be any labourers working on this part of the estate.
“We must do something, Jason,” she said desperately.
He snuggled a little closer to her as if the fear in her voice affected him.
The Lioness and the Lily Page 11