“But – she thought – ” Nerissa began.
“I know what she thought,” the Duke said, “and what several other women have thought before her. but I was determined, Nerissa, never to marry anyone unless I could be certain I would find happiness.”
He paused for a moment before he added,
“I am not certain whether I really believed in the curse or not, but I knew, what you would call perceptively, that none of the women who I have loved were who I wanted as my wife.”
Nerissa did not speak and after a moment he went on,
“The difficulty is telling you what I did feel. I have become cynical and disillusioned because, whenever I met someone I imagined was different, I found out all too quickly that she was not what I was seeking nor the image I had enshrined in my heart.”
“But Delphine was – sure that you were – going to ask – her to marry you.”
“What I was asking of her was – something very – different.”
“She told me that too – but she was convinced you would – change your mind.”
There was a faint twist to the Duke’s lips as he declared,
“Your sister is very beautiful, but I realise now that her beauty is but a pale reflection of yours.”
Nerissa remembered that Harry had said the same and she replied to him quickly,
“But – you must not – think like that – and, although I – love you, I could not be happy with you if I thought I had – hurt Delphine.”
There was a short silence before the Duke said in an incredulous tone,
“Are you really saying, Nerissa, that you intend to refuse me?”
“How can I do anything else?” Nerissa asked unhappily. “I love you – you know I love you – but, if I do marry you – Delphine will curse us as you have been cursed before – and perhaps her curse would work – and we would – lose each other – and then I would – want to – die!”
“You cannot, you must not say such things,” the Duke said, pulling Nerissa against him. “Do you really believe that having once found you I could ever lose you?”
He looked down into her eyes as if to convince himself that she was speaking sincerely.
Then he said,
“You are mine! You are what I prayed I would find but feared did not exist. Then suddenly, when I walked into your father’s kitchen, of all improbable places, I saw someone so perfect and so completely spiritually beautiful that for a moment I could not believe my own eyes.”
“Did you – really feel like that?” Nerissa muttered.
“All that and a great deal more. Yet, because I am human, I tried to pretend to myself that I was merely bemused by the excellent dinner you cooked for me and the very good wine I drank.”
He was smiling as he added,
“At the same time, my precious darling, I was very determined to see you again, which is why I invited your father to Lyn.”
“Delphine did not want me ‒ to come.”
“I was well aware of that, but, if your sister has a will of iron, so have I, and however determinedly you might have tried to refuse me, I would have brought you here on some pretext or other.”
He searched her face before he asked,
“Do you know how precious you are? Ever since you have been here my love for you has been increasing hour by hour and minute by minute.”
“But you have ignored me today – you have not – talked to me,” Nerissa pointed out.
“I did not dare to do so until I had sorted things out in my mind. Besides I am not so stupid as not to know that, had your sister realised what I was feeling, she might have upset you.”
Nerissa gave a little cry.
“She must – never know.”
“She will have to know one day for I intend that you will be my wife, Nerissa. In fact I cannot live without you.”
“You will – have to!” Nerissa cried. “I love you! I love you desperately – but I can never – never marry you. How could I face – Delphine when she is – absolutely determined – and absolutely sure that you will ask her to marry you?”
The Duke put his fingers under Nerissa’s chin to tilt her small face up to his.
“Look at me, my precious. Look into my eyes and tell me in your heart and soul that you really believe that, feeling as we do, we can go on without each other.”
Nerissa looked at him.
Then the tears came into her eyes, blinding him from her sight.
“I know – what you are – saying,” she wept brokenly, “and I feel – the same. I love you until there is nothing else but – you in the whole world. But I know that we cannot take our – happiness at Delphine’s – expense. I know too that if we did so – I would always be afraid.”
The Duke looked at her for a long moment.
Then he said,
“Because we are so close to each other I understand what you are feeling, my darling. So I am going to say something and I want you to listen to me very carefully.”
“You know I will – listen to anything you – tell me,” Nerissa replied in a broken little voice.
“Then I swear before God that you will be my wife, that you will belong to me and that we will find perfect happiness together. That is a vow that I will not break!”
Because Nerissa knew that there was nothing she could say, she gave a little sob and hid her face against his neck.
He held her very close and she sensed his lips on her hair.
For a long time they just stood there and there was something in the closeness of him that made Nerissa feel as if she was in a stronghold of safety and love where nothing could hurt or harm her and she would never be alone again.
It was an illusion, of course it was an illusion, yet for the moment she was his and he hers.
The way that he had spoken when he made his vow seemed to echo on the atmosphere around them.
Then the Duke took his arms from her and very gently lifted the wreath from her head.
He put it into the secret drawer and pushed it back into place.
Then he said,
“I must go back, my darling, to the ballroom. I want you to go to sleep and not worry about anything. I love you and you have to trust me.”
“I do – trust you,” Nerissa cried. “But promise me you will not do – anything that is – wrong.”
“Because everything about you is right. I would never do anything that you would feel was wrong or did not measure up to your ideals.”
“How can you say anything so – wonderful?” Nerissa asked.
“I say it because it is true, because I love you and because, although you may not believe it for the moment, our life together is going to be very different from anything either of us has ever expected.”
“I-I must not – think about it,” Nerissa said in a whisper.
“You must think about it and not of the obstacles that at the moment stand in our way but which I intend to disperse, although I do not wish to discuss it now.”
He looked at her for a long moment before he drew her once again into his arms and held her close against him.
“All I want you to remember, all I have to say, is that I love you,” he said very quietly. “You are mine, Nerissa, and neither God nor man will ever make me give you up.”
Then he was kissing her again wildly and the rapture and wonder of it carried them once again towards the stars.
Chapter Seven
After Nerissa had gone to bed, the Duke went back to the party in the ballroom.
He then proceeded to manage with great tact to persuade the neighbours, who had been invited, to leave fairly early, although they were not aware that he was doing so.
When there was only the house party left, he told the band to play God Save the King, which meant that the party really was over.
“It’s too early, Talbot,” Delphine protested.
“I have many more excitements planned for you tomorrow and, as there is still another evening before you l
eave me, I would not wish you to be overtired.”
She accepted this with a shrug of her shoulders and a pout of her lips and, linking her arm through his, said beguilingly,
“All I want is to be with you, but we have not seen very much of each other these past few days.”
“It is always difficult when there are so many people in the house,” the Duke replied and disengaging himself from Delphine went to say ‘goodnight’ to his aunt.
When everybody had gone upstairs, he walked outside to stand in the moonlight looking up at the stars and thinking of Nerissa.
He knew that he was the most fortunate man in the world in having found what every man seeks, a woman who loved him for himself and who he knew when he kissed her had given him her heart and soul.
When he went back to the house, the night foreman had extinguished most of the candles and leaving just enough light for the Duke to see his way up the stairs towards his own room.
He walked along the corridor that led to the Master Suite and as he did so was aware that at the other end of it there was a man approaching.
Because the Duke was thinking deeply about Nerissa, he had no wish to have a banal conversation with anybody.
He therefore slipped into the shadows of one of the doorways wondering who his roving guest could be and where he was going.
A moment later he realised that there was no reason for him to hide as the man, wearing a long robe that touched the floor, very quietly opened the door of one of the bedrooms and disappeared inside.
For a moment the Duke found it incredible and thought that he must be mistaken, but as he continued towards his own bedroom, he saw lying on the floor outside the door that had just been opened, a pink rose.
He bent down to pick it up and, as he walked on with it in his hand, he was smiling.
*
Nerissa felt that the day had been long-drawn-out and everything had somehow been flat.
She knew that it was because the party was coming to an end and several of the guests had already departed.
Although the Duke had arranged a race for the gentlemen in the morning and a driving contest in the afternoon, for her there was something in the atmosphere that was lacking.
She knew the answer was that it was impossible for her to take part naturally in anything that was happening.
One moment she felt wildly elated, as she had when she went to bed the previous night, because the Duke loved her and she loved him.
Then inevitably there came a reaction and she touched the depths of despair feeling that, whatever he might say or do, it was impossible for her to marry him.
‘I have saved him from one curse,’ she told herself over and over again. ‘How could I make him be subject to another?’
Because she had always been slightly frightened of Delphine, she felt that any curse she put upon the Duke would somehow prove effective.
Anyway she well knew that she herself would be vividly conscious of it and that would undoubtedly spoil their happiness.
‘I love him! I love him!’ she repeated despairingly ‘but the words I said as a ‘forget-me-not’ will come true and he will forget me.’
It seemed to Nerissa that there were only two people in the party who were supremely happy and one of them was her father.
He was enjoying every moment of his inspection of Lyn only complaining that it had to be done in such a hurry.
As the house had taken forty years to build, he could hardly be expected to appreciate it all in the same number of hours.
If he was enthralled, Harry, with a promise of a horse from the Duke, was so exuberant that it was he alone who kept everyone laughing at luncheon and again at dinner.
It was a smaller party in the evening and the majority of the men were close friends of the Duke who had, Nerissa thought, a really sincere wish for his future happiness.
Yet Delphine, for some reason that Nerissa did not understand, was piqued with him and, having at first tried pouting at him and complaining in a low voice, was by the end of the meal doing her best to make him jealous by flirting quite outrageously with Lord Locke.
Lord Locke was only too willing to oblige, but, because Nerissa was sure he really loved her sister, she thought it was cruel of Delphine to use him so obviously as a weapon against another man.
After dinner the Duke had arranged for some local performers to entertain them with mouth organs, concertinas and bells on which they were very skilful.
Ordinarily Nerissa would have enjoyed it all enormously because it was something quite new.
But now she kept thinking that the minutes were ticking by. Tomorrow they would leave and she had no idea if the Duke had any plans for them to meet again.
She wondered to herself if in fact he had accepted all that she had said to him the night before and had decided that there was no point in their continuing to argue about it.
At last, although actually it was still quite early, Marcus Stanley announced that he was going to bed and the Duke suggested that they should all do the same.
Just for a moment, when Nerissa touched his hand to say ‘goodnight’ to him, she felt the vibrations of his love surge towards her, but, as she was afraid that Delphine might notice, she dared not look at him.
She only lowered her head and walked slowly up the stairs behind her father.
Again the Duke was left alone without any guests, but this time he did not go outside as he had done the previous evening.
Instead he walked to the Duchess’s Suite and entering the small dressing room he went to the chest and tried to open the secret drawer as Nerissa had done.
He was not as skilful as she had been and it took him a long time before he found the place that he sought in the corner and the exact pressure he should put on it.
Then the drawer opened and he saw the wreath inside it.
It was some time later that he walked back the way he had come and now having stopped in his own room for a moment he went on down the wide corridor to where the previous night he had seen a pink rose lying on the floor.
Now there was no pink rose and without knocking he opened the door and went inside.
There were only two candles lit in the very beautiful bedroom, but they afforded enough light for the Duke to see Delphine wearing only a diaphanous negligée clasped in the arms of Lord Locke.
He was kissing her passionately and it was a second or two before they were aware that they were not alone.
There then ensued a violent exchange of words when the Duke accused Lord Locke of behaving improperly and Lord Locke informed the Duke that he considered himself insulted.
The two men raged at each other while Delphine tried most ineffectively to stop them behaving in such an inflammatory manner.
Then suddenly Lord Locke bellowed in a voice that seemed to ring out around the room,
“I demand satisfaction, Lynchester! I will allow no man to speak to me as you have done.”
“I am only too willing to meet you,” the Duke replied. “It is indeed time you were taught a lesson in behaviour.”
“Then when and where?” Lord Locke asked through clenched teeth.
“I have no intentions of waiting until dawn,” the Duke replied. “We will fight now in the riding school and you may find a lead bullet in your arm that will cool your ardour for the next few weeks.”
“That remains to be seen,” Lord Locke replied, “but I accept your suggestion.”
“I will meet you there in an hour’s time,” the Duke snapped, “and, as we don’t want more people than is really necessary to be aware of what we are doing, I propose we conduct ourselves with one second each. I choose Charles Seeham, Wilterham can be the referee and Lionel Hampton was a doctor before he became an explorer.”
“I commend your efficiency!” Lord Locke spat at him sarcastically.
Delphine, however, gave a cry of horror,
“No, no! You cannot do this! You cannot fight over me. Think of the scandal it would
cause when it was known that I was involved! I will not allow you to duel!”
“It is something you cannot prevent,” the Duke said, “and because I think, Delphine, you were instrumental in inviting such a situation, I suggest you come and watch.”
“I have every intention of doing so. I think you are behaving abominably both of you! But you must both swear that, whatever the outcome, neither of you will talk about it.”
“I think we both know how to behave where you are concerned,” the Duke said. “At any rate I do!”
“As you are insulting me again,” Lord Locke insisted angrily, “I shall make doubly sure, Lynchester, that it is your arm that is in a sling and I hope for months rather than weeks!”
The Duke only made an ironical bow and walked from the bedroom saying as he did so,
“In an hour – I will make all the necessary arrangements now.”
As he left, Delphine flung herself against Lord Locke.
“You must not do it. You cannot fight him, Anthony,” she cried. “You know what a good shot he is!”
“No better than I am,” Lord Locke replied. “How dare he insult me in such a manner? Or, if it comes to that, walk into your bedroom without knocking!”
“I beg you to cry off – ” Delphine began.
But Lord Locke was disentangling himself from her clinging arm and like the Duke he walked from the bedroom in a purposeful manner, which told her better than words that he had no intention of giving in to her pleading.
Hastily she dressed and, putting a fur wrap over her gown, she went down the stairs and left the house by a side door for the riding school.
It was a building that had already been much admired by Marcus Stanley. It had been built first at the same time as the house and, after it was burnt down, had been reconstructed and eventually redecorated and considerably improved by the famous architect, Inigo Jones. It still preserved characteristics of all these periods.
When Delphine entered the school, it was to find the two contestants already there with their seconds, who were Lord John Fellowes and Sir Charles Seeham and Lord Wilterham, who was to be the referee.
They were standing in the centre of the school, but when the Duke saw Delphine, he walked towards her and, taking her by the hand, helped her up a small staircase that led her to the spectators’ balcony.
Never Forget Love Page 12