“He is such a kind man,” Giovanna said, “and last night when I woke up I felt – safe because he was – there.”
“I told him to call me if you woke,” the Duke said, “but Ross, as you will find, is a law unto himself!”
She smiled and then she said,
“Now I am – better I have been thinking – where I can go to – hide.”
“And what did you decide?” the Duke enquired.
He saw that the fear was back in her eyes as she said helplessly,
“I-I don’t know – that is what is so – terrible. I don’t know – where I can go.”
“Suppose you tell me in the first place where you have come from?” the Duke suggested.
Hastily she took her hand from his and said in a terrified voice,
“I-I cannot do that – I cannot tell you anything! It’s – too dangerous.”
“Too dangerous for whom?” he asked. “For you or for me?”
“F-for – both of us – and for – somebody else.”
The Duke sighed.
“I wish you would trust me, Giovanna. You know I will do anything you want me to do except allow you to die.”
“P-perhaps you will – regret that you would not let me – do so.”
“I am quite certain that is impossible,” the Duke said. “What would be really helpful is if you would trust me with your secret and let me find a solution to your problem. I assure you I am very good at that sort of thing.”
“I am sure – you would be!” Giovanna replied. “But this – is something which you – must not become – involved in.”
“Why not?”
“Because you – are you.”
“That is an infuriating answer,” the Duke said. “Do you mean because I am the man I am or because I am the Duke of Invercaron?”
There was a little pause before Giovanna responded,
“Please – please don’t question me any further, all I – want to do is to find – somewhere where I am – s-safe and where no one can – find me.”
She paused and then she said hesitatingly,
“I-I am afraid that I shall have to ask you for a – little money – but only a – little.”
“Are you seriously contemplating living by yourself?” the Duke demanded. “Surely you realise that it would be impossible for anyone as young and attractive as you to live alone.”
As if she had not realised this before, Giovanna looked at him wildly then she said,
“Then – what am I to do?
“You could trust me!”
Her eyes met his and for a moment it seemed as if she could not move and was holding her breath.
Then she said,
“No – you must not do – any more than you have – done already. It would be a mistake and it was very – foolish of me not to run away when you – first stopped me.”
“I would not have let you go far,” the Duke said with a smile.
“I should have – jumped into the cascade before you – realised what was – happening.”
“That too might have been difficult and I might have felt empowered to jump in after you and rescue you.”
She gave a little cry of horror.
“If you had done – that, you would have – been drowned.”
“I know, but I should expect to play the hero, however unpleasant it might be.”
She looked away from him and said,
“It would have been very – foolish – but I think actually you are teasing me – I assure you that this is a very – serious situation from which you should – extricate yourself.”
“I agree it’s serious,” the Duke replied, “but you must realise that I am now so involved that I cannot extricate myself, as you say, and am forced by circumstances or perhaps fate to help you whether you like it or not.”
“I am very – very grateful – but I am trying to do what is – best for you.”
“Then suppose you stop worrying about me and think about yourself?” the Duke suggested.
She looked at him and once again he sensed that she was feeling helpless.
He smiled before he said,
“What I am going to suggest is that, as you are very weak and not in a position to make decisions of any sort, you must first rest and get strong before we sit down and plan what you should do in the future. I am sure in a day or so a solution will be found one way or another and it will be very much more pleasant for both of us than being swept out to sea by the waters of the cascade.”
Giovanna gave a deep sigh.
“You are so kind – I really don’t know – what to say to you.”
“Then rest,” the Duke asserted.
He knew as he spoke that, although she had looked very much brighter and stronger when he had entered the room, now her body was sagging a little and her eyelids were closing.
He therefore rose from the bed and, pressing her hand in both of his, said,
“All you have to do is sleep, eat as much as you possibly can and then we will have a Council of War.”
He felt her fingers tighten in his before she replied,
“That is exactly what it is – a war – even though you are not aware of – it. Please – please – be very careful.”
“I shall do that,” the Duke promised.
He smiled at her before he went from her room to find Mrs. Sutherland waiting for him outside.
“Try to make Miss Giovanna eat as much as she can, Mrs. Sutherland,” the Duke said.
“I be tryin’, Your Grace, and the poor lassie certainly needs feedin’ up as anyone can see.”
“No one can do that better than you,” the Duke smiled. “I remember how you used to spoil me with titbits when was a small boy.”
He recalled, as he walked away down the passage, that Mrs. Sutherland had spoilt him after he had gone to bed with chocolates and given him snacks whenever he found his way to the housekeeper’s room.
His mother had protested that he would grow fat if he ate so much, but he took plenty of exercise, shooting over the moors, fishing with his father and swimming in the sea that there was not an ounce of fat on him.
The same had applied when he was in India.
If he was not fighting over arduous mountainous country, he was playing polo, pig-sticking or teaching the Sepoys to play football.
As he returned to the sitting room, he found himself now for the first time since he had left his Regiment thinking, with the same sort of excitement that had been his in India, about Giovanna and her problem.
He was intrigued and interested just as he had been when given a new assignment in The Great Game.
Then every nerve in his body had been alert to what he had to do. And the danger he might incur.
‘Who is she? And why is she so terrified?’ he kept asking himself.
Strangely enough, the rest of the day passed more quickly than he had expected it would.
And yet at the end of it, however much he thought about the problem, he found it difficult to know how he could help Giovanna and, more importantly, how he could first persuade her to confide in him.
chapter three
The Duke stood looking out of the window, feeling that his self-imprisonment could not go on like this and he would have to do something about it.
He had the previous evening gone out onto the roof of The Castle so that he could enjoy the fresh air and he had stayed there for quite a long time.
He was trying to decide how soon he should announce that his bout of malaria was over and knew that this meant he would have to return, if only to pay a courtesy call, to Dalbeth House.
He had seen Giovanna soon after having his breakfast and had thought that there was a very obvious change in her that made it easier for him.
“When can I get up?”
He realised as she spoke that she was not speaking in the same hesitating frightened manner that she had before and for the time being at any rate the terror had gone from her eyes.
“You will have to do what Mrs. Sutherland says and, of course, Ross,” the Duke replied with a smile.
“They are mollycoddling me,” she said, “but, while I enjoy it, I want to get up and, if it is possible, see something of your Castle.”
“That might be more difficult.”
There was a wary expression on her face as she asked,
“Some of your people must – know that I am – staying here.”
“They are people I can trust,” the Duke said consolingly, “and Ross has made it very clear that no one is to talk or give any information to outsiders.”
He knew that she shivered beneath the white woollen shawl she wore over her shoulders, making her look very young.
At the same time he thought that she looked pathetic and once again every nerve in his body was straining to find a solution to the problem of what to do about her.
“Now I am going to read the newspapers and open my letters,” he said. “Then, if Mrs. Sutherland agrees, perhaps we could have luncheon together in my sitting room.”
The light that came into Giovanna’s eyes was very touching.
“That would be wonderful,” she exclaimed, “and I really do feel better! In fact I have had so much to eat that, if I am not able to stand on my feet, it will be because I am blown out – like a balloon!”
The Duke laughed.
“I think you are a long way from being that, but I agree you look better. Nevertheless you have to go on eating and eating until you are back to what you were originally before I met you.”
Again there was a strange expression on her face and he wished that he could read her thoughts and know what she was seeing as she looked back into the past.
Then he had smiled at her and gone to his sitting room where, as he expected, there was a large pile of letters on his desk.
He sat down to open them and, when he had read the first three, a scowl crossed his face, which made him look rather frightening.
What he read from his neighbours and his own Clan told him quite clearly that, although he had not been present, his engagement to Jane Dalbeth had been announced at the family gathering that had taken place after he had left.
It seemed incredible, really unbelievable, that the Dowager Countess should not have waited for him to propose formally to her stepdaughter but had just told everybody that the engagement was a fait accompli.
‘This is intolerable!’ the Duke muttered to himself as he opened yet another letter of congratulations and good wishes.
Because he felt he in some way had been outmanoeuvred and made to look a fool, he rose from his desk, leaving the rest of the letters untouched, and walked to the window.
It was a mild day and the light over the moors was enchanting.
From the roof of The Castle it was possible just to see a glimpse of the North Sea.
But from the first floor windows there were only the moors rising on either side of the Strath with the river winding like a silver thread through the centre.
The peace and beauty of it was something he had known all his life.
He stood waiting as if the scene would dispel the anger he felt, which he knew came from the feeling that he was being manipulated without being able to express his own thoughts and personality, in addition to the anxiety that he could not erase from his mind about Giovanna.
It seemed ridiculous that a girl he had never seen until two days before should occupy so much of his time and his thoughts.
He should in fact have been worrying about himself and the future of the Clan.
Yet because he had always loathed cruelty in every form and, because something stronger than himself, something that he knew had made him interfere in the first place, he found it impossible not to think about her and to recognise that for the moment, at any rate, she was of first priority.
He stood at the window for a long time looking out until suddenly the door was opened behind him and Ross came in, saying urgently,
“There’s a carriage comin’ down the drive, Your Grace!”
The Duke started.
He had, in fact, anticipated that if ‘Mohammed would not go to the mountain, the mountain might come to Mohammed’ The mountain in this case, of course, being the Dowager Countess of Dalbeth.
He was a past master at disguise, having in his exploits in India played so many different parts that it came as second nature to him.
So without saying anything, he quickly pulled off his coat, walked into his bedroom and put on the dark robe that Ross had left lying over the bed.
By the time he had it on Ross had arranged an armchair in the darkest corner of the sitting room and pulled a screen behind it.
As the Duke sat down, he covered his legs with a rug and quickly collected from a cupboard two medicine bottles and a glass, which he set down on a table beside him.
Then Ross looked at his Master quizzically before he said,
“You’re lookin’ awful healthy, Your Grace.”
He went from the room and came back a few seconds later carrying a small wooden box not unlike an artist’s paint box.
He placed it on the Duke’s knees and held in front of him a magnifying mirror so he could see his face.
The Duke opened the box and applied a cream to his cheeks and chin, which left them very much paler than they had been before.
Then with the tip of a skilful finger he added dark lines under his eyes, which made him look as if he had passed a sleepless night.
“That’s better!” Ross approved.
He hid the box and the mirror in the cupboard, put a newspaper in the Duke’s hand and went outside to wait at the top of the stairs.
Knowing that there was nothing Ross enjoyed more than a drama where they were acting a part, the Duke was well aware that his valet would first treat the visitors to a long rather boring account of how ill he had been.
He would then instruct them not to overtire the Duke by staying too long and most of all not to upset him in any way.
He was not mistaken, for a few minutes later he could hear Ross’s voice speaking earnestly and confidentially before the door opened and he announced,
“The Dowager Countess of Dalbeth, Your Grace, and Mr. Kane Horn! And the young Countess is waitin’ downstairs in case you’re well enough to see her later.”
The Duke looked up from the newspaper he was pretending to read, wondering as he did so who Mr. Kane Horn could possibly be.
The Dowager Countess walked gracefully across the room towards him and he saw that once again, despite her widow’s weeds, that she was overdressed and overpainted.
He felt that if any of his Clan could have seen her, they would certainly have had something to say about it.
“My dear Duke,” the Countess was saying in a cooing voice, “how can I tell you how distressed and upset we have all been by your sudden illness?”
She took his hand in both of hers and went on,
“We have been praying for your quick recovery and your servant tells us you are indeed better.”
“I can only apologise and say how ashamed I am for succumbing in such a ridiculous way,” the Duke said weakly.
“I understand,” the Countess replied. “Malaria attacks most people who have lived in India for any time.”
“I am better now,” the Duke insisted with an obvious attempt to be brave.
“You must take care of yourself,” the Countess said, “because you are very very precious to us. Now, let me introduce a cousin of mine, Mr. Kane Horn, who arrived to stay with us only after you had left.”
“It’s kind of you to come to see me,” the Duke murmured, holding out his hand.
As the man standing beside the Countess took it, he thought that he seemed strangely foreign and not at all the sort of person he would expect to meet in the North of Scotland.
“It’s a real pleasure to meet you, Duke,” Mr. Horn said.
There was no doubt that he had an American accent and the Duke asked curiously, a
s his visitor seated himself on one side of his chair and the Countess on the other,
“You are American?”
“I was born in that country,” Mr. Horn replied, “but I’ve wandered about Europe for so long that I’ve become what you might call cosmopolitan.”
“He has indeed!” the Countess exclaimed. “Kane has been everywhere and seen everything. He has been very kind to me since my sad bereavement.”
She forced a note of unhappiness into her voice, but there was something in the expression in her eyes, as she looked at the man opposite her, that made the Duke suspect that he held a very special place in her life.
Once again he was not guessing but listening to what his perception told him and he knew somehow that this new development was connected with the problem that was worrying him about Giovanna.
He could not explain how he was sure of it and yet it was there.
He looked again at Mr. Kane Horn and decided that he did not like him.
The man did not, in point of fact, look American.
His dark hair and dark eyes made him seem more Italian than anything else, except that he was so tall and broad-shouldered.
Then, giving him the opening that he was waiting for, the Countess said,
“You were very much missed at the family party I had arranged in your honour.”
“I can only tell you again how humiliated I am at being an absentee guest,” the Duke replied. “But I understand that you managed very well without me.”
The innuendo in his words was obvious and the Countess said quickly,
“Because everyone had come from long distances to meet you and, of course, dear Jane, you will understand that they expected to hear that you were engaged and there seemed to be no point in not assuring them that your Wedding would take place as soon as possible.”
The Duke stiffened and in a carefully controlled voice he countered,
“I am somewhat surprised that you should not have allowed me to talk the matter over with my future wife!”
The Dowager reached forward to put her hand on his arm.
“Jane is willing to agree with anything you suggest,” she said, “and she is hoping that before we leave you will have a little talk with her, so that from now on everything will be plain sailing between you.”
The Devilish Deception Page 5