“So Lady Millicent is in love with somebody else?” the Duchess murmured.
“Yes, Your Grace. The lady’s maid to her Ladyship’s mother has been telling me ever since they came here how surprised they were to get the invitation, seeing as they thought Lady Millicent was to marry Mr. Stephen.”
“I am beginning to understand now why Lady Millicent did not seem to be enjoying herself.”
“Her Ladyship’s maid tells me she cried herself sick at the idea of coming here. Believe it or not, Your Grace, it’s not every young lady as wants to marry a Duke, even one as handsome as His Grace.”
“So it appears!” the Duchess replied.
She had no wish to talk any more and Eleanor left her, telling her to rest and not to worry.
“Worrying never helps anyone,” the elderly maid advised, “except that it hurries one into the grave and that’s a long way off for you, Your Grace, seeing how well you’ve been since we returns home.”
As she left the room there was, however, a very worried expression in the Duchess’s eyes.
She closed her eyes and prayed, as she prayed every day and every night, that her beloved son would find happiness.
She knew that he had never really been in love and how could she explain to him how wonderful it was and that if necessary it was worth waiting indefinitely for such rapture?
Suddenly she heard the Duke speaking to somebody outside the door, and she quickly bent to pick up a newspaper that was lying on a low table beside the chaise longue.
When her son came into the room she had the paper in her hand.
“Oh, Kerne!” she exclaimed before he could speak. “I am so glad you are here! Do read me this speech made by the Prime Minister yesterday. It is so badly printed that I cannot see it very clearly.”
“Where is Anita?” the Duke asked abruptly with what his mother thought was a harsh note in his voice.
“I expect she is packing.”
“Packing!”
The exclamation came from the Duke’s lips almost like a pistol shot.
“She came in a little while ago and informed me that she was leaving,” the Duchess said. “She wanted to go today, but I thought it was unlikely, as it is Sunday, that there would be a train so late in the afternoon. Perhaps you would arrange for Mr. Brigstock to take her to London tomorrow. She can hardly travel alone.”
Without replying, the Duke turned and left the room.
The Duchess did not seem surprised.
She only watched him go and, as the door closed behind him, there was a twinkle in her eyes and a faint smile on her lips.
The Duke went downstairs.
As he reached the hall, he snapped at the butler,
“Send a message to Miss Lavenham to say I would like to speak to her for a moment.”
“Very good, Your Grace.”
The Duke walked back to his study.
He was obviously impatient, for he walked up and down until, after what seemed a long time, the butler opened the door.
“I have learnt, Your Grace,” he said, “that Miss Lavenham’s not in the house.”
“Then where is she?” the Duke enquired.
“No one’s quite certain, Your Grace, but one of the housemaids thought, although she’s not sure, that she saw Miss Lavenham running across the park towards the Home Wood.”
The Duke did not reply and after a moment the butler remarked,
“I’m hoping, Your Grace, such information’s incorrect, because it looks as though we’re in for a thunderstorm.”
The Duke glanced out the window.
There was no doubt that the sky was overcast.
He walked towards the door and, as he passed the butler, he asked,
“Does Your Grace require a chaise?”
“I will go to the stables myself,” the Duke replied.
Five minutes later, riding Thunderer, he set off down the drive and, having crossed the bridge over the lake, turned towards the wood that covered a large acreage of ground to the West of the house.
It was a wood where, the Duke knew, the trees were thick, though it was just possible to move between them on a horse.
He guessed that Anita, being upset, would, as she invariably did, seek a wood where she could sit and think undisturbed.
He had not forgotten that it was a wood she was heading for the first time they had met, when she had been thinking of Lucifer and a wood she was running to for solace when she had been told that she was to marry the Reverend Joshua.
The Home Wood was close to the house, so he was certain that that was where she would hide herself when she learnt that it was not possible to leave immediately as she wished to do.
Thunderer was unusually restless and the Duke was wondering why, seeing that he had already ridden him that morning, when a distant clap of thunder told him the reason.
Despite his name, Thunderer disliked thunderstorms and, looking up at the sky, the Duke was sure that the butler had been right and there was undoubtedly going to be one and very shortly.
He left the Park for the wood, riding Thunderer through the trees along narrow twisting paths covered with moss.
The Duke knew the wood well and he thought it unlikely that Anita would push her way through the thick undergrowth but would keep to the paths.
As he rode on, he was aware that except for the distant rumble of thunder, there was that quiet and stillness that came before the storm and he hoped that he would find Anita before she was soaked.
There was, however, no sign of her and he rode on and on, thinking she must have run very quickly to have gone so far in so short a time.
He calculated that it must be nearly three quarters of an hour since he had raged at her, and by moving swiftly she could have covered a great deal of ground before he could catch up.
However, there was still no sign of Anita.
Then, as he was wondering if perhaps he had been mistaken and she had not come to the wood after all, he saw her.
She was in a small clearing made by the woodcutters and was seated on a recently felled tree, her head bent, her hands covering her face.
Because he had found her, the Duke instinctively checked Thunderer. Then an even nearer, louder clap of thunder made the horse start and rear up on his hind legs.
Anita looked up and when she saw the Duke she rose to her feet.
She was very pale, and her eyes, with a stricken look in them which the Duke had expected, seemed to fill her whole face.
He rode up to her.
“I came to find you, Anita,” he said, “and, as Thunderer hates the sound of his own name, I think we ought to get home as soon as possible.”
“Yes – of course,” Anita agreed.
The Duke reached down his hand.
She took it in both of hers and he pulled her up so that she was sitting at the front of his saddle.
She was so light that he felt as if she flew from the ground up onto the horse’s back.
Then, as he made to turn Thunderer, there was a streak of lightning across the sky and another clap of thunder that had the horse prancing about so that the Duke found it difficult to hold him.
“Shall I walk?” Anita asked, speaking softly.
“No,” the Duke replied. “There is a barn not far from here and I think we should shelter there until the worst of the storm is over.”
Another clap of thunder told him that it was in fact getting very much nearer and now the Duke forced Thunderer quickly down the path that led to the side of the wood.
With Anita in his arms it was not easy, but by a superb piece of horsemanship the Duke managed to guide the frightened animal between the trees and out into the field that was just ahead of them where they could see a hay barn.
Even as they saw it, there were the first heavy drops of rain, followed by lightning streaking its way across the sky.
Then, before Thunderer could protest, the Duke had ridden into the barn through a half-open door and a great clap of thu
nder sounded almost directly over their heads.
He and Anita jumped to the ground, both of them concerned only with Thunderer, who was protesting violently against the storm in the only way he knew.
It was difficult to hold him, but Anita was talking to him in the soft voice she had used in the stables.
“It’s all right,” she was saying. “It will not hurt you. It is only a horrible noise and you cannot see the lightning in here.”
It was as if the horse was mesmerised by what she was saying.
He was trembling and moving restlessly, but he was no longer rearing and the Duke patted his neck as he held his bridle while Anita went on talking.
Then there was a noise almost like an explosion that seemed to rock the barn, and a gust of wind made the barn door slam backwards and forwards.
Thunderer was still in sheer terror and Anita gave a gasp, then said in a quivering little voice,
“Oh, Thunderer – I am frightened – too.”
It seemed almost as if the horse understood, for he turned his head to nuzzle against her and as he did so the Duke, on the other side, realised, as if a thunderbolt had hit him, that he was in love!
He could hardly believe that the feeling which swept over him was real and yet he knew he wanted almost uncontrollably to put his arms round Anita and hold her close so that she need no longer be frightened.
He knew too, unmistakably, irrefutably, that he wanted to comfort her and protect her not only from the thunderstorm but from anything else that might frighten or perturb her for the rest of her life.
He was astonished by his own feelings and yet he knew that, if he was honest with himself, he should have been aware of them for some time.
It was only his obstinacy and his belief that his organisation was sacrosanct which, even after he had known Anita, had made him go ahead with his plans for choosing a wife.
Now, as he felt his whole body throbbing with the sudden awareness of emotions he had not known himself capable of feeling, he knew that he had loved her since the first moment she had turned her little flower-like face towards him and told him that she had been thinking of Lucifer.
He had found himself thinking of her all the time he was journeying to Harrogate and, when he saw her there, it had seemed inevitable that he should find her again.
Then, when he had rescued her first from the Parson and then from George Greshame, he had told himself that his motives were entirely disinterested and unselfish.
Now he acknowledged that he loved her and she filled his whole life in a way no woman had ever done before.
There was another clap of thunder, but now it was farther away, although the rain was teeming down in a torrential storm in the East and the noise on the roof made it almost impossible to hear anything else.
Anita was talking to Thunderer again and the Duke heard her say,
“It’s going away. Now we need no longer feel afraid – you and I, and anyway it was very – silly of us. We are safe – quite – quite safe and we will not even get wet.”
“That is true,” the Duke remarked.
Anita looked at him quickly, then away again and he knew she was shy and apprehensive that he was still angry.
They were still both holding on to Thunderer and the Duke said,
“It is lucky that I was so anxious to apologise, otherwise you would have been soaked to the skin!”
He saw Anita’s eyes flicker but she did not look at him, and he watched her face as he added very quietly,
“I am sorry, Anita. Are you going to forgive me?”
“It was – wrong of me –” she began.
“No, no!” the Duke said quickly. “You were right, absolutely right to tell me, and I will explain to you why I behaved as I did, but not at this moment.”
There was silence for a moment and then Anita said,
“I – think the rain is – stopping.”
“Hold Thunderer and I will go and look.”
The Duke walked across the barn to stand at the door.
The ground was wet from the rain, but the storm was dying away.
He could still hear the thunder, but now it was only a rumble in the distance and, as he stood there thinking that there was a throbbing in his temples and a very strange feeling in his heart, the sun broke through the clouds and the storm was over.
The Duke drew in his breath, feeling it was a sign that meant something to him personally.
Then he turned and walked back to Anita.
The great stallion was eating the hay that was lying loose on the ground, and Anita in her white gown and without a bonnet looked more than ever, the Duke thought, like a small angel.
He resisted an impulse to put his arms round her and tell her how much he loved her.
He knew that she was still upset about the way he had behaved, but his love told him that he must think of her and not of himself and that this was neither the time nor the place to discuss it.
“We can go home now,” he said with a smile that most women found irresistible.
“It has – stopped raining?”
There was a little quiver in her voice which told him that she really wanted to ask something different.
“It has stopped raining,” he said, “the sun is coming out and it tells me you have forgiven me.”
She did not answer and he picked her up in his arms and put her on the saddle.
Only many years of imposing a strict control over himself prevented the Duke from holding her close against his heart and kissing her.
Instead he arranged her skirt and, as she picked up the reins, he mounted the horse behind her.
Now that the noise he disliked was over, Thunderer was behaving with a quiet dignity which usually was characteristic of him.
As Anita had nothing to say, the Duke was content to feel her close against his chest.
He could smell the scent she used in her hair, which reminded him of violets and he thought that everything about her was like spring and he knew that that was what she had brought him.
Just as last night he had recalled all the feelings of chivalry that had been his when he was young, so now he knew that Anita had revived everything that was fine and noble in his character and he swore to himself that he would never lose her again.
Only when the house was in sight, glittering in the sunshine, did the Duke feel Anita press herself a little closer to him as if she was afraid of going back.
“Tomorrow,” he said quietly, “the party will leave and you and I and Mama will be alone as we have been before.”
“I – intended to – leave.”
“But you will not do so because you know I want you to stay,” the Duke replied. “Please, Anita!”
He could not see her face because she had her back to him, but he had a feeling that the worry had gone from her eyes.
“I-I will stay.”
Her voice was very low, but there was an unmistakable lilt in the words and the Duke let his lips touch her hair, although she was unaware of it.
“You are mine,” he said in his heart, “and I will never lose you, my precious little angel!”
Chapter Seven
The house party started leaving early the following morning, but the Clydeshires and the Downhams were to depart at two o’clock for the station where the Duke’s private train was waiting to take them to London.
During dinner the previous evening it was obvious to Anita, and she thought it must be to the Duke too, that there was an expression of disappointment on the Earl’s face and a querulous note in the Countess’s voice, as if they could not understand what had happened.
But Lady Millicent looked happy and was more animated than she had been at any time since she had arrived at Ollerton.
In fact she appeared so attractive that Anita wondered if after all the Duke, despite his anger, would not regret having cancelled the drive with her and having made no effort during the evening to seek her out.
The Duchess, with consider
able tact, as if she realised the conversation might be uncomfortable, had arranged for a display of magic lantern slides.
Anita had found it entrancing and it was her laughter that had made the others laugh too, and the evening had therefore been an unqualified success except for the two disappointed pairs of parents.
When they had gone up to bed, Lady Millicent had flung her arms round Anita and cried,
“You saved me! You saved me! How can I ever thank you?”
“There is no need,” Anita said with a smile.
“The Duke obviously does not mind losing me,” Lady Millicent remarked. “What did he say when you told him I was in love with Stephen?”
She did not notice that Anita evaded having to answer the question, nor did she know that, when she went back to her own room, Anita told herself it was something she never wished to think about again.
The horror of the Duke’s anger still lay at the back of her mind and the agony she had felt as she ran away into the wood was now something she wanted only to forget.
The Duke had said he was sorry when he had rescued her from the storm and had taken her back to the house on Thunderer’s back, which had been an unexpectedly exciting way to travel.
But Anita still could not understand why he had been so angry.
‘It is because I am merely an outsider and have really no right here in the first place,’ she told herself humbly. ‘I forced myself upon him and the Duchess and, of course, it was impertinent of me to interfere in his private life.’
At the same time she felt as if her heart was singing because he had been glad that the house party was to leave and, as he had said, they could be alone as they had been before, just the three of them.
‘But how long will he stay?’ Anita asked herself.
She found herself saying a little prayer that he would not be in a hurry to go back to London.
*
“Goodbye, Ollerton! Thank you for a very pleasant visit,” the Earl said, with commendable effort.
“It has been a pleasure to have you here,” the Duke replied and to the Downhams he said much the same thing.
Lady Millicent kissed Anita.
Lucifer and the Angel Page 12