She paused, and because it was obviously expected that Anita should reply, she said,
“Yes, indeed, I am sure he is.”
“You will therefore appreciate,” Miss Lavenham continued, “what a very great honour it would be to become his companion and wife.”
It struck Anita with a sense of some surprise that if her great-aunt wanted to marry, it was certainly strange that she should take such a step when she was over seventy.
But when she considered it, she was sure the Reverend Joshua would find it very much to his advantage to have such a wealthy wife.
Also, there was no doubt that Great-Aunt Matilda was extremely fond of him.
Aloud she said,
“So you are to be married, Great-Aunt Matilda! How very exciting! Will I be able to be your bridesmaid?”
There was a moment’s stony silence when Anita realised she had said something wrong.
Then, enunciating every word so that there would be no mistake, Miss Lavenham said,
“The Vicar has asked for your hand in marriage, Anita!”
Despite the way she spoke, Anita felt she could not have heard her aright.
Then with a little cry, she exclaimed,
“N-no – but he cannot have! How – could he? He is much too old!”
“Age is of no consequence,” Miss Lavenham replied sharply, “and, as the Vicar has said himself, you will bring him the spring when he has existed for so long in the cold and snows of December.”
Because for a moment Anita was incapable of speech, Miss Lavenham continued,
“He was referring to the fact that his wife was ill for a number of years before she died. Personally, I always found her a tiresome woman, possessive and querulous, and she failed to give him children, although that might have been an act of God.”
“Child – ren!”
Anita whispered the words beneath her breath. Then bravely, because her heart was thumping in her breast, she said,
“I am sorry – Aunt Matilda – but I could not – marry any man who is – so much older than I am – and someone I did not – love.”
Miss Lavenham brushed her words aside as if they were no more important than the buzzing of a mosquito.
“Nonsense! Nonsense!” she said. “Of course you will marry the Reverend Joshua and think yourself extremely lucky to do so. You will not have a big wedding. That would be quite unnecessary. I will give a small reception here and I presume I shall have to supply your trousseau.”
Anita rose to her feet.
“No! – No! – I cannot – and I will not – marry the Reverend – gentleman!”
“You will do as you are told,” Miss Lavenham retorted. “I have no wish for him to be disappointed and the marriage has my full approval. I presume, as your father is dead and your mother is abroad, that I, as the eldest of the Lavenham family, am in the position of being your Guardian, and as your Guardian, Anita, I will have no opposition to my plans. When the Vicar calls tomorrow, you will accept him and I shall make arrangements for you to be married in a month’s time.”
The way Miss Lavenham spoke was so positive, so overpowering, that Anita felt as if the walls were closing in on her and there was no escape.
With a little cry like that of an animal caught in a trap, she hurried from the room and ran upstairs to her bedroom.
She had locked herself in, and when she heard her great-aunt come upstairs to lie down, she had put on her bonnet and slipped out of the house, feeling that only outside the town, in the country, could she breathe and think.
Then the Duke had providentially met her and promised he would rescue her, but how he could do so she had no idea.
She was just now thinking despairingly that she would have to run away tonight and somehow find her way home to Fenchurch when the butler opened the door to announce,
“The Duchess of Ollerton, ma’am!”
Miss Lavenham looked surprised, but Anita felt her heart leap.
The Duchess walked very slowly and obviously with some difficulty towards Miss Lavenham, who rose to her feet.
“What a surprise, Clarice! I was not expecting you.”
She helped the Duchess into a chair, who did not reply until she was comfortable.
Then she said,
“I feel very remiss in not calling before, Matilda, and, as I am leaving tomorrow, this is my last opportunity of paying my respects. Moreover, I want to ask you a great favour.”
“I had no idea you were leaving so soon,” Miss Lavenham interposed.
“It has been quite a long visit,” the Duchess replied. “I am sure the sulphur baths have done me good and I certainly feel better for having taken the waters.”
“I am very glad to hear that.”
Listening, Anita thought her great-aunt always behaved as if a compliment to Harrogate was also a compliment to herself.
She had risen from the desk at which she had been writing and now the Duchess smiled at her.
“You appear to be very industrious, my child.”
Anita curtsied.
“Yes, Your Grace. I am writing letters for an appeal which Great-Aunt Matilda is sending out on behalf of the missionaries in West Africa.”
“How kind you are,” the Duchess said to Miss Lavenham, “and of course you must let me contribute.”
“There is no need,” Miss Lavenham replied, but added quickly, “Although, of course, every penny counts.”
The Duchess opened her reticule, which hung from her wrist.
“Here are five sovereigns,” she said, “and I hope my contribution does all the good you expect it to.”
“The natives in West Africa have been sadly neglected,” Miss Lavenham said, taking the golden sovereigns which the Duchess held out to her. “The Reverend Joshua Hislip, whom you heard preach on Sunday, hopes we shall be able to send our own missionary from Harrogate to save their souls by converting them to Christianity.”
As Miss Lavenham spoke the Reverend Joshua’s name, the Duchess was aware that Anita was looking at her with a desperate plea in her blue eyes.
“I actually came to ask you, Matilda,” the Duchess said, “as a very great favour, if you would lend me your niece.”
“Lend you my niece!” Miss Lavenham exclaimed with an incredulous note in her voice.
“I am travelling home tomorrow in my son’s private train – a new acquisition of which he is very proud,” the Duchess explained. “But it is still a long journey, even if it will be in comparative comfort – and, my eyes not being what they were, I would so much appreciate having somebody to read to me.”
Anita drew in her breath and she thought for one moment from the expression on her great-aunt’s face that she was intending to refuse.
Then Miss Lavenham said with obvious reluctance,
“It would be difficult for me not to lend you Anita in the circumstances. At the same time I would wish you to send her back here as soon as you have no urgent need of her.”
“But of course!” the Duchess replied. “I realise how much she means to you, Matilda, and it is exceedingly kind of you to let me have her, as my son is unavoidably prevented from taking me home himself.”
“At what time do you wish Anita to be with you?” Miss Lavenham asked.
“I think it would be most convenient if she came with me now,” the Duchess replied. “I am sure that while you and I have a cup of tea together, Matilda, and talk over old times, she will be able to get her things packed and my carriage is waiting outside.”
There was a distinct pause before Miss Lavenham agreed to this suggestion, and Anita thought frantically that she was considering sending for the Reverend Joshua to talk to her before she left.
“If that is what you want, I suppose I must agree,” Miss Lavenham said abruptly.
Then, as if she was determined that someone should suffer for her plans being changed, she said,
“What are you waiting for, Anita? Surely you have the sense to realise that you should have
asked Bates to bring up the tea! And hurry with your packing! You cannot wish to keep Her Grace waiting.”
“No – no, of course not!” Anita replied.
She hurried from the room, feeling as if she had wings on her heels.
The Duke had saved her.
He had really saved her!
She knew that once she had escaped from Harrogate she would never return.
*
Driving away with the Duchess half an hour later, Anita found it difficult to express her gratitude in words.
“I cannot – begin to tell Your Grace how – wonderful it is of you to take me away from – Great-Aunt Matilda.”
“I understood from my son that there was a very special reason why you should wish to leave.”
“You have seen the Reverend Joshua,” Anita replied. “How could I marry an – old man like that?”
“I think, at your age, you would naturally think any man over forty is old,” the Duchess agreed.
“There is something horrible about him too,” Anita said. “I don’t think he is in the least worried about the natives of West Africa!”
She checked herself and looked at the Duchess apprehensively.
“I am sorry if that – sounds – un-Christian.”
The Duchess gave a little laugh.
“I think perhaps you are prejudiced against him,” she said. “And I am sure it would be easy to find you a far younger and more pleasant husband.”
Anita drew in her breath.
“Please, ma’am, I do not – want a – husband!” she cried in an intense little voice.
She knew the Duchess was surprised and she explained,
“Sarah and Daphne wish to be married, but I would rather remain as I am. At least until I find – somebody I really – love and who – loves me.”
“I have always heard that your father and mother were very happy together,” the Duchess said, “and I expect that with them as an example, that is what you are looking for in your life.”
Anita looked at the Duchess in a manner she found very touching.
“At last I have found someone who understands!” she cried. “Everyone I talk to, even Sarah and His Grace, seems to think that the only thing that matters is that I should be married. I want very much more in life than just a – wedding ring.”
The Duchess looked amused.
She did not know, as Anita’s sisters did, that she had a funny way of saying things.
“And what else is it you want?” she enquired.
“Love first, of course,” Anita answered seriously, “and then someone to talk intelligently to, who would understand what I was trying to say without thinking I was imagining things which did not even exist.”
“I think I understand,” the Duchess said. “And you will find that when you do fall in love, it is easy to talk with someone who loves you, not only with words but with your heart.”
Anita gave a little cry of joy.
“You really do understand what I am saying, just as Mama does. Oh, I am so glad that I met you! It was the luckiest thing that ever happened when I fell over your bath chair and upset the water on your rug.”
“Although I hope I can be all the things you think I am,” the Duchess said, “you have to thank my son. It was he who told me I needed a reader and suggested that I should ask your great-aunt to lend you to me.
“You make me sound rather as if I were a library book!” Anita said with a smile. “But please, will you thank the Duke when you see him and tell him how very very grateful I am?”
“You can thank him yourself, when he comes to Ollerton.”
There was a little silence.
Then Anita said incredulously,
“Are you saying, Your Grace, that you are taking me to Ollerton with you? That I can – stay there?”
“That was my idea,” the Duchess replied, “unless of course you wish to do something else.”
“It would be a marvellous, glorious thing to do!” Anita cried. “It is only that I thought that, when you had – rescued me and taken me South, you would – want me to go – home.”
“And who is there at home?” the Duchess enquired.
After that Anita had to tell her the whole story about her mother going to Switzerland and Sarah staying with her Aunt Elizabeth and Daphne with her Godmother.
“So there was no one left for you,” the Duchess said at the end of her story, “but Matilda Lavenham!”
“I think she meant to be kind to me,” Anita replied, “but because she admires the Reverend Joshua so much, she could never begin to understand why I don’t feel the same. In fact, when she first told me he was coming to call tomorrow, I thought that he was intending to marry her.”
She said this just as they reached Prospect Gardens and the Duchess was laughing as the horses came to a standstill and the footman opened the door.
*
“The Duke of Ollerton, my Lady!” the butler announced.
Lady Blankley, who was posed beside a huge vase of tiger lilies, turned with affected grace towards the man standing in the doorway.
There was no mistaking her delight as she saw the Duke, looking extremely elegant, put his top hat and stick on a chair just inside the door before he advanced towards her, a faint smile lighting his eyes.
“You are back!” she exclaimed. “I have been counting the hours, I really have! I have been so miserable without you!”
Her voice was musical in a somewhat contrived manner, but, as the Duke had often thought, everything about Lady Blankley was a polished perfection like an article fashioned by a master craftsman.
The Duke took the hand she held out to him, kissed it and turned it over to kiss her shell-pink palm.
Then, as he straightened himself, he said,
“You are even more beautiful than I remember!”
“Thank you, Kerne!”
Her eyes glittered like the emeralds she wore round her neck and he thought that her dark hair with the blue lights in it was very alluring.
“As I have been away for so long,” the Duke said, “we have a great deal to say to each other. Shall we sit down?”
Lady Blankley moved a little closer to him.
“Why should we waste time with words?” she asked. “George is playing polo at Hurlingham and will not be back for at least another two hours.”
As she spoke, her arms went round the Duke’s neck, pulling his head down to hers and her lips, fiercely demanding, were on his –
*
A long time later the Duke was tidying his hair in the mirror over the mantelpiece when a soft voice from the sofa asked,
“When shall I see you again?”
“I am going to Ollerton first thing tomorrow morning,” the Duke replied. “I have a party arriving on Friday.”
“A party?” Lady Blankley echoed. “And you have not invited me?”
The Duke shook his head.
“It is not your sort of party, Elaine, and my mother is acting as hostess.”
“That would not prevent us from being together, if I were one of your guests.”
The Duke told himself that he had made a mistake in mentioning the fact that he was having a party and he knew that the last person he wanted at this particular party, at which he was to choose his future wife, would be Elaine.
She was beautiful, there was no denying that. At the same time he always left her feeling that she wanted more from him than he was willing to give.
He told himself now that, although their fiery love-making was in some ways very satisfactory, he invariably had after it a feeling of disappointment which was unaccountable.
‘What more do I want?’ he had asked himself. ‘What am I looking for?’
He had thought when he first pursued Elaine Blankley, or rather she pursued him, that she was everything that any man could possibly desire.
She was beautiful, witty and she had the polished perfection that the Duke had always sought. She was acknowledged even by her ri
vals as being the best-dressed woman in London and it was always said that, when the Prince of Wales was in an irritable mood, she could charm him out of it quicker than anybody else.
The Duke had found that when he made love to Elaine Blankley there was a raging primitive fire beneath the controlled, civilised face which she showed to the world and it inflamed him, giving them both a passionate excitement he had never known before.
And yet now the Duke told himself that there was something missing.
What it was he had no idea. He only knew that for some reason to which he could not put a name, he was glad that he was going to Ollerton tomorrow and would not be seeing Elaine again for at least ten days.
He turned from the contemplation of his reflection in the mirror to look at her.
She had a feline grace that he appreciated and he knew that the manner in which she was lying on the sofa was deliberately provocative.
“You have made me very happy, Kerne,” she said in a soft voice.
“That is what I intended to say to you, Elaine.”
She held out her hand and, as he took it, her fingers tightened on his.
“Come again very, very soon,” she said. “You know how much I miss you.”
“As I shall miss you,” he replied, because it was expected of him, but, as he spoke, he knew it was not true.
He walked to the door, picked up his hat and stick and, without saying any more, left the room. But as he went down the broad stairs towards the hall where a number of footmen in the Blankley livery were on duty, he asked himself whether he would ever visit this house again.
*
The next morning, driving his horses because the journey to Ollerton was too short to warrant using his private train and also because he preferred to be in the open air, the Duke of Ollerton was thinking not of Lady Blankley but of his house party.
He had received a letter from his mother, telling him, not surprisingly, that all the people she had asked to stay had accepted her invitation.
The young girls who were coming were Lady Millicent Clyde, daughter of the Earl and Countess of Clydeshire, the Honourable Alice Down, daughter of Lord and Lady Downham, and Lady Rosemary, whom he had already met, daughter of the Marquis and Marchioness of Doncaster. The Duchess wrote,
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