“If you do and if I bore you, it will be because we are not really in love. But I have a feeling, my lovely one, that we are very much in love, as I think our hearts knew we were when we looked up at the stars.”
“I only realised that I was in love with – you when you saved me from being swept overboard.”
“I cannot bear to think that it might have happened!” the Duke exclaimed.
He bent forward to kiss both her eyes, then her cheeks and the softness of her neck.
“I love you, God how I love you! But, my darling one, you have been through a horrible experience and I must leave you to go to sleep.”
“I don’t – want you to – leave me.”
She was too innocent to know what she was saying and the Duke’s expression was very tender as he replied,
“It will not be long before that will never happen. We shall be together all day and all night, my precious, so that I can protect you and keep you safe in my loving arms.”
He kissed her again and then he told her,
“I will leave the communicating door open between our rooms just in case you are afraid. If you call out, I will hear you.”
“Will you just – look to see that the windows are closed?” Bettina asked him.
“There is a straight drop of over thirty feet outside these windows,” the Duke answered. “I assure you that Eustace cannot get in unless he has changed into a spider!”
He made Bettina laugh as he had intended.
He walked across the room and saw that all three windows were locked.
Then, as he came back towards the bed, he suggested,
“Tomorrow we will make plans to be married at once.”
Bettina gave a little cry.
“Can I – ask you something?”
“What is it?” he enquired.
“You will not be – angry?”
“I promise I will never be angry with you.”
“Then please – could we – possibly be married – very very quietly?” Bettina asked.
The Duke did not answer and after a moment she went on,
“I could not – bear to have your – friends there hating me because I am your wife – and also – ”
“Go on.”
“ – I don’t want – to think of you on my – Wedding Day as a – Duke. I just want you to be a – man. A man whom I love and who – God has given to me for my – husband.”
The Duke did not speak and afraid of what she had asked Bettina said rapidly,
“But – of course – if you want something – different I will understand and do anything – you want.”
The Duke took her hand and raised it to his lips.
“I did not answer at once, my adorable one, because I was thinking that I was the most fortunate man in the world to have found you. That is exactly how I would want my wife to think of me, as a man. And as a man, my darling, may I tell you that I love you with all my heart and soul.”
“Oh – Varien!”
Bettina reached up her arms to put them round his neck.
Then, as his lips held hers captive again, she knew that God had answered her prayers.
Chapter Seven
Bettina awoke and for a moment she wondered where she was.
Then she heard the sea beating against the portholes and felt the roll of the yacht.
Yesterday the storm had been tumultuous and the Duke had insisted that she stay in bed, but now she thought that it was not as rough as it had been.
Thoughts passed drowsily through her mind.
Then she felt that there was something resting across her body and thought it was her husband’s arm.
Without opening her eyes she put out her hand to touch it and encountered something soft and woolly which was also lumpy.
A voice beside her said,
“A happy Christmas, my darling!”
She felt a glorious rapture rise within her as she opened her eyes to see the Duke looking down into her face with his lips very near to hers.
“A happy Christmas. Oh, Varien! I meant to say it – first.”
“You were fast asleep,” he answered, “and looking very beautiful.”
Her hand was still exploring what lay on top of her and now she gave a little cry of excitement.
“A stocking! You have given me a stocking for Christmas.”
She sat up in bed as excited as a child.
“I have not had one since I was twelve and it was such a disappointment when Mama and Papa said I was too old for one.”
“I think you are still young enough to have one,” the Duke smiled.
With her fair hair falling over her shoulders, Bettina indeed looked very young and very lovely as she gazed at the stocking that lay on the bed.
She recognised it as the sort of woollen stocking that the Duke would wear out shooting and from the top of it protruded half a dozen red and gold crackers.
The Duke, resting on his elbow, watched her with a tenderness in his eyes that no one had ever seen before as she took the crackers from the stocking.
“We will pull these in a moment,” she suggested, “but first I want to see what is inside.”
As she spoke, she drew out what seemed only a pretty ornamental box until she found that when opened it played music.
“A music box is something I have always wanted,” she exclaimed, “and it looks very old.”
“It is,” the Duke replied. “It is French eighteenth century, but I just knew that it was a present you would like.”
“How did you know that?”
“I noticed all the things that particularly pleased you when we went round The Castle together.”
She gave him a smile of undiluted happiness and to herself she thought that there had never been anyone who had observed her so closely or who understood everything she felt.
“It’s enchanting,” she said, “but I thought our presents were to be under the Christmas tree in the Saloon.”
‘These are secret presents,” the Duke replied.
“How thrilling!” she cried. “Why did I not think of secret presents for you?”
“You gave me one last night,” the Duke said softly and she blushed.
The tune from the music box tinkled to a close and she set it down on the bed and once more put her hand inside the stocking.
She drew out a miniature monkey on a stick. It was a child’s toy and she remembered owning one once when she was very small.
“Where could you have found this?” she asked.
“Actually a street vendor was selling them outside my Club,” the Duke chuckled.
“I adore it,” Bettina saidm pulling the string that made the monkey climb up and down the pole.
Again she put it down and explored the stocking again.
This time she drew out an apple, an orange, a little box of the most expensive comfits and another box that was Georgian and had been designed for ladies who wore small black patches on their faces beneath their powdered wigs.
“It’s so pretty,” Bettina cried. “I shall keep it always on my dressing table.”
The next box was velvet and obviously came from a jeweller.
The Duke put his hand over hers as she would have opened it and asked her,
“Guess what is inside.”
“I cannot imagine what – it can be.”
“Then look and see if it is what you want.”
Bettina opened the box.
Inside was a gold bracelet with letters in coloured jewels falling from it.
She read them aloud.
“I LOVE BETTINA.”
She gave a little cry of delight.
“How could you have thought of anything so original?”
“It is to wear on the yacht when the Alveston diamonds are too grand.”
“I shall wear it every day – please, darling Varien, put it on for me.”
He kissed her wrist and then fastened the bracelet and she held up her arm so that the light coming through the port
holes made it glitter.
Now she thought that the stocking was empty, but there was something else inside and, when she drew out a little black leather jewel case, she looked at it curiously as if it reminded her of something she had seen before.
Then, when she opened it, she gave an exclamation of sheer happiness, for inside was the small diamond star that her mother had left her and which her father had sold.
“How could you have found it? How could you have given me anything that I wanted so much? Oh, clever, clever Varien, I am so happy – to have it.”
“Your father told me that he had to sell it to buy you gowns to wear on our trip to Egypt. I went to the shop and fortunately they had not disposed of it.”
Bettina looked at it with a suspicion of tears in her eyes as it reminded her so vividly of her mother.
Then she threw herself down on the pillows beside the Duke and raised her face to his.
“Thank you – thank you for my wonderful presents, but you have given me – so much. I ought not to – take more.”
“They are signs of my love,” he answered, “and I have every intention of giving you so many more things, my beautiful glorious wife.”
It seemed to Bettina that ever since their marriage only by giving could he express what he felt for her.
*
When they had been married very quietly with only Sir Charles present in the Chapel at The Castle, she had prayed fervently as they knelt side by side in front of the altar.
She had begged God to help her break through all the barriers that the Duke had erected around his heart and that he would love her as she loved him.
She had thought that it would be impossible to love him more than she did already, but her love had increased and multiplied every day, every moment and every hour that they were together.
It was as if she had walked into a glorious dream, so dazzling as to seem unreal and yet at the same time vividly alive with a spiritual intensity that she had never known.
She had only to look at the Duke to feel that every nerve in her body vibrated to him like a musical instrument.
When he touched her, thrills ran through her and he aroused sensations such as she could never have imagined.
When she came down the staircase of The Castle wearing the exquisite lace veil that had been in the Alveston family for generations and a tiara on her head, she knew that the Fairytale that her father had spoken about was coming true.
The Duke had said that she was the Princess who he had been looking for all his life and she believed him.
But she knew that the aloofness he had cultivated or which had been forced upon him for so many years could not be swept away by a magic wand.
It could only crumble slowly beneath the wonder of their love and it was for her and her alone to find the heart that he had hidden so successfully from everybody else.
A few days earlier she had been afraid.
But now when the Duke’s kisses had told her how much he wanted her, she knew that his need was not only physical but was also spiritual and sacred.
She honestly faced the task that lay ahead of her.
Yet, when he put the ring on her finger and when she heard his deep voice repeating the vows of the Marriage Service, she felt that they were in truth becoming one person.
‘Our love comes from God,’ she thought, ‘and will endure however many difficulties there may be ahead.’
It was the Duke who had arranged when their Wedding should take place and decided how they should spend their honeymoon with a speed that left not only Bettina but also Sir Charles breathless.
“You cannot really mean to go abroad so quickly,” he had protested in astonishment.
“Bettina wants to see the other end of the Suez Canal,” the Duke replied, “and to reach the Red Sea.”
His eyes were twinkling as he spoke and he asked Bettina,
“Is that not true?”
“Can we really go back again?” she enquired remembering how she had thought that she might never return when they had come home after the party at Ismailia.
“We are going to have a very long honeymoon,” the Duke stated, “and when we return we shall be an old married couple and no one will be the slightest bit interested in us.”
She thought she knew why he was running away, but she thought it the most wonderful plan she had ever heard.
“I commend your idea as good common sense,” Sir Charles said quietly.
“I thought you would understand, Charles,” the Duke replied, his eyes meeting those of his future father-in-law.
Both men were thinking of Bettina.
She would not be in England to hear all the spiteful things that the Duke’s past loves would undoubtedly say when they heard that he was to be married.
She would become used to the idea of being a Duchess and the inevitable responsibilities of her position while they cruised in the sunshine and explored new parts of the world.
“All you have to do,” the Duke said to Bettina, “is to pack up your luggage again.”
Then he added to Sir Charles,
“I don’t like to think of you having a lonely Christmas and so, Charles, I suggest you stay at The Castle and invite some of your friends to keep you company. There will be horses for you to ride and my cellars are at your disposal.”
“Do you really mean it, Varien?” Sir Charles asked.
Bettina slipped her hand in his.
“You must accept, Papa, and then we shall not feel guilty at going away and leaving you at Christmastime. When I was a little girl, it was always a very special time for us all.”
Sir Charles had therefore accepted the invitation with undisguised pleasure and, when the day after their Wedding Bettina and the Duke drove away through the snow, she had said,
“You have been so kind to Papa. I cannot think of anything that would give him more pleasure than to act as host in – The Castle.”
“He will keep the horses well exercised,” the Duke added and she knew that in a way he felt embarrassed by his own generosity.
When they were alone the day before they were married, Bettina had asked hesitantly,
“What – happened – to Lord Eustace?”
“You need not think of him for some years at any rate.”
“What do you mean?”
“I have sent him to look after some land we own in West Africa. He will find a great many reforms are needed there and there are doubtless a number of injustices that Eustace will enjoy making a scene about.”
“He – agreed – to go?”
“He did not have much choice,” the Duke replied.
His voice was grim and Bettina said accusingly,
“You forced him to – obey you.”
“Yes, I will not have you frightened or worried because he is in England.”
Bettina would have claimed that she was no longer so afraid, but before she could speak the Duke kissed her.
Because of the rapture that flooded over her it was impossible to think of Lord Eustace or of anything but the Duke and how much she loved him.
She had felt before they married that there were so many things for her to learn about him that she was apprehensive.
Yet, when they were once again on board The Jupiter, he did not seem so awe-inspiring as he had against the background of The Castle.
The yacht too seemed redolent with happiness now that there were no squabbling women aboard to spoil the atmosphere or Lord Eustace glowering at her with dark eyes.
Every moment she was with the Duke and close in his arms Bettina felt as if they were on a magic vessel sailing to secret destinations of utter bliss where no one could disturb their happiness.
She knew because she loved him that now, as she had prayed they would, the barriers that he had erected within himself were crumbling and beginning to disappear.
There was no longer the dry note in his voice, the hard look in his eyes or the cynical twist to his lips.
Instead his eyes as well as his words spoke to her of love and she often surmised a tender expression on his face that made her heart turn over.
She did not know that to the Duke she personified the flower that he had identified her with.
He was experienced enough to know that in her youth and her innocence there were many things he must teach her, but very gently so as not to frighten or shock her.
Bettina had no idea how strictly he controlled himself so that he wooed her in a way that he had never wooed a woman before.
He realised, because he was so gentle and understanding and, because he evoked in her an ecstasy that made their love-making part of the Divine that she was like a flower opening its petals towards the sun.
Every day he awakened her a little more until last night he had ignited in her the flame that he had longed for and which complemented the raging fire within himself.
It had been so perfect that he too had been thrilled and aroused in a way that he had never known in all his numerous love affairs.
He had known as he fell asleep that he had found the magic touchstone of love that all men seek and so few find.
“I do love you! Oh, Varien, I love you!” Bettina said now.
He kissed her eyes and then her mouth as he drew her closer to him.
Her body was very soft against the athletic hardness of his.
“I can scarcely believe it is Christmas Day,” she sighed, “and yet we are here alone instead of having a huge – and rather terrifying party in The Castle.”
“That was something I never had any intention of doing,” the Duke answered.
He knew that she was thinking of Lady Daisy who had invited herself.
“It’s so exciting having Christmas just with you,” Bettina breathed.
“There will be many more Christmases when you will want to have a party,” the Duke smiled.
“It depends – who we invite.”
“We will choose our guests together, as we will do everything else and, in case you are disappointed, I am quite certain you will find that the chef will provide us with a plum pudding and lots of other traditional delights that are usually very indigestible.”
‘Including, I hope, a bunch of mistletoe?”
“I can kiss you without that,” the Duke answered.
He found her lips as he spoke and she felt a little quiver go through her.
The Sign of Love Page 15