It was the best thing that could happen and yet, when the Duke went back to the drawing room, he was aware that the blood was throbbing in his temples because he had touched her and his heart was behaving in a most unpredictable manner.
‘How is it possible,’ he asked himself, ‘that at my age and with all my long experience I should feel like a boy with his first love?’
It seemed incredible, and yet he knew that the Indians believed that the real love that came from Krishna was Divine and, of those who sought it, most were disappointed.
The Duke knew that he had now found the love that was his by The Wheel of Rebirth although it had never struck him that somebody like Giovanna was waiting for him if he could only find her.
A streak of fear shot through him at the thought that, if he had reached the cascade even a few seconds later than he had, he would have been too late and would never have known that she existed.
But he had not been too late.
He had found her and now, like one of the heroes of mythology, he had to rescue her not from demons or dragons but from a gang of unscrupulous avaricious criminals who were prepared to kill for money.
There was so much he wanted to know about them that only Giovanna could tell him, but he must wait until she was prepared to talk.
It was not until sometime after they had left Paris and were speeding South that she came into the drawing room looking so lovely after her night’s rest that the Duke gave an exclamation of joy at seeing her.
“I am ashamed of having slept for so long,” she said as he put out his hand to help her into a comfortable armchair by the window.
“It was the most sensible thing you could do,” he said.
“When Ross brought me my breakfast at ten o’clock, I could hardly believe that I had slept right through the night.”
“You did not feel afraid?” the Duke asked.
“I knew that – you were near me and that – you were – protecting me.”
The way she spoke was very touching and he said,
“Shall I tell you how lovely you look or do you feel that it’s too early in the day to talk of anything so exciting?”
She laughed.
“I want to think I look lovely for you, but I am very conscious of how my bones are sticking out and of the lines on my face.”
“Don’t worry about that,” the Duke said. “In a few days, especially in the sunshine, you will look as you did before you came to Scotland.”
“I hope – so,” Giovanna sighed.
Ross interrupted by bringing them a pot of steaming coffee with some fresh cream that he had taken on board at Paris.
There was also a jug of milk for Giovanna and when she saw it she exclaimed,
“Please – may I have some coffee with it? Mrs. Sutherland made me drink so much milk that I am afraid I shall turn into a cow!”
The Duke laughed.
“I think that is unlikely, but you will find it will taste nicer if you mix it with coffee. We will do that until we return home.”
She gave him a quick glance, which he knew meant that she was praying fervently that she would be allowed to return home with him.
He therefore said quietly when Ross had left them alone,
“Drink your coffee, then I want you to help me make plans. But it will be difficult unless I know exactly what has been happening and why you went to Naples in the first place.”
Giovanna gave a deep sigh and then she slipped her hand into his in a confiding childlike manner that the Duke found very touching.
He kissed her fingers one by one until she said,
“If you do that – I will find it – difficult to think of – anything but you.”
“Just as I can only think that you are the most perfect adorable woman I have ever met in my life,” the Duke said in a deep voice.
“Is that – true?”
He looked at her for a long moment before he replied,
“Before we start talking about what has happened to you, my darling, before we even mention the future, I want to tell you one thing.”
He felt her fingers tremble as if she was afraid and he said,
“Look at me!”
She turned her head and he thought that her gold-flecked eyes, even with a very worried expression in them, were the most beautiful things he had ever seen.
“What I am going to say,” he went on in a deep voice, “is that if you were not who you are, if you were someone quite different without a single penny to your name, I would still go down on my knees and beg you to be my wife.”
As he spoke, he knew that it was something she had not expected him to say.
Then suddenly her face was radiant and her fingers tightened on his.
She did not speak, but her lips parted as if she found it hard to breathe.
“Do you believe me?” the Duke asked. “For I swear by Almighty God that it is the truth.”
“I do believe you,” Giovanna answered, “but it is my – horrible money that has been the cause of – everything that has – happened to me! I only wish that my Godmother had left it to – somebody else!”
It was a cry that came from her heart and the Duke said quietly,
“I knew that you would feel like that! At the same time, my precious, you know what it will mean to your people as well as mine, who are so desperately in need of help.”
“Will you promise to look after them – first?” she asked.
The Duke smiled.
“That is what I would have expected you to say and I was only afraid that the Countess of Dalbeth would be more concerned with new gowns than leaking roofs and perhaps would find London more exciting than a crumbling Castle!”
“How can you imagine I could ever – ?” Giovanna began.
Then she realised that the Duke was only teasing her.
“I used to worry about the Clansmen when I was in Naples,” she said, “and I knew without being told that Stepmama was spending all Papa’s money on herself and leaving nothing for the crofters and those in the Glen who were always desperately poor.”
“How could your father have married anybody so utterly unworthy?” the Duke asked.
“She married him!” Giovanna replied.
The Duke remembered how Sir Iain McCaron had said much the same thing and then he asked,
“Now, tell me what happened.”
“Papa went to Edinburgh to stay with some friends for a Regimental dinner that was being given at Edinburgh Castle. I was glad he was going because he had been so unhappy after – Mama died and sometimes I-I thought that without her he had – lost the – will to live.”
There was a little sob in Giovanna’s voice and the Duke knew how unhappy she had been at the time.
“He was away for longer than I had expected,” she continued, “and when he returned – she was with him!”
“They were married?”
“They told me that they had been married very quietly, although – Papa could remember nothing about it.”
The Duke stared at Giovanna in astonishment.
“Did he really say that?”
“I was sure later that my stepmother had drugged him by putting something in his wine which made him do exactly what she wanted – of which afterwards he had no recollection.”
The way she spoke made the Duke ask,
“What made you certain that was what she had done?”
“Because it was what she did after they – returned whenever she wanted something – special from him.”
“Tell me exactly what happened then,” the Duke begged.
“From the moment they came home Papa started to drink a great deal more than he had ever done before. It was not just an occasional whisky, which he had always enjoyed, but bottles of claret and port and champagne, which she preferred.”
“Did you speak to him about it?” the Duke asked.
“Of course I did,” Giovanna answered. “I said, ‘please, Papa, don’t drink so much. You kn
ow it would upset Mama if she was here and it makes me embarrassed and unhappy when you are not really yourself’.”
“What did your father reply to that?”
“The first time I spoke to him he said, ‘you are quite right, my dearest, and I know that I am making a fool of myself. I promise to be more sensible from now on’.”
“And was he?”
“He tried – I know he tried!” Giovanna said earnestly, “but my stepmother was furious with me.”
“What did she say?”
“She told me to mind my own business and that she would look after my father and she knew what was best for him.”
“So he went on drinking.”
“He tried not to do so in front of me, but I realise that, whenever my stepmother wanted him to give her some money, she would take him a glass of claret or port and say, ‘I have brought you a drink, dearest Keith, and I want you to drink a toast with me because we are so happy together.’”
Giovanna paused and the Duke asked,
“What happened then?”
“I realised after this had happened two or three times that my stepmother must be putting something very potent into his glass, because immediately Papa had drunk it he became almost insensible or what appeared to be very very drunk.”
The Duke’s lips tightened before he asked.
“Did you accuse your stepmother of doing anything like that?”
“I accused her of many things,” Giovanna replied, “but most of all of spending money that we could not afford. After Mama died, I would help Papa with the accounts and I knew that, before he married my stepmother, we had economised very strictly in order to help the Clansmen, many of whom are on the verge of starvation.”
She drew in her breath as if she was remembering how upsetting it had been and went on.
“When the winter had been hard, they had nothing to eat – it was pitiful,” she continued. “Always in the past when this happened Papa and Mama used to help them over the bad times.”
“Of course,” the Duke murmured, knowing that it was what every decent Chieftain did.
“But when they came as they always had to the house for help,” Giovanna went on, “my stepmother sent them away, telling them that my father was too ill to be worried with their complaints.”
She gave a deep sigh.
“I knew how wrong and wicked that was when Papa was their Chieftain and, if he had been himself, he would never have let them be treated in such a callous manner.”
“What did you do?”
“I gave, when I could, any money that was available and spoke to one of the elders of the Clan who provided the small children with milk, which had always been Papa’s responsibility.”
Giovanna looked away from the Duke as if she was embarrassed as she said,
“What was so degrading was that my stepmother was buying new curtains, new carpets and expensive ornaments for the house and decorating it in a most extravagant manner while our people were – hungry.”
As if she could not help it, her voice broke and the tears ran down her cheeks.
The Duke put his arm around her shoulders.
“If this is upsetting you too much, my precious,” he said, “we will talk about it another time.”
He wiped away her tears and then Giovanna said,
“No – I want to go on – I want you to know. It is so – wonderful to be able to talk to you – when I thought that nobody would – ever again understand and I should – die with the secrets inside me.”
“Your secrets now are mine, as mine are yours,” the Duke said, “but you must tell me your story another time.”
“No – now!” Giovanna replied almost fiercely.
He kissed her forehead and then sat back again in his own chair, still holding her hand.
As he did so, an idea came to him and he said,
“As you are so regrettably thin, I believe that there is room for us together and, if you are going to go on with your story, I want to hold you closer than I can at the moment.”
He had been right.
When he had seated himself beside her, there was still room, if he held her close to him.
She made a little sound of contentment and put her head on his shoulder and the Duke said,
“Now I think it will be easier and a great deal more pleasant because I can feel you against my heart.”
“I – like being – close to you,” Giovanna murmured.
She looked up at him and the Duke wanted to kiss her, but he thought that it would interrupt what it was imperative he should know and he therefore urged,
“Go on with what you were telling me.”
“It was then – after I had fought with her about the Clansmen and told her that we could not afford the money she was spending, that my stepmother showed me how much she – hated me.”
She gave a little shiver before she said,
“I could feel her hatred pouring out from her almost as if it was something – alive – and very evil.”
“Which it was!” the Duke murmured, thinking of what had happened afterwards.
“Everything I did, everything I said, was wrong,” Giovanna went on, “and finally I suggested to Papa that I should go away.”
“Did he understand?”
“He said, ‘your stepmother has been suggesting for some time that you should go to a boarding school’.”
“Were you surprised?”
“No – I was only afraid that she would – choose the school.”
“So you went to stay with your grandmother.”
“I had received a letter from her asking how I was and, when I showed it to Papa, he said, ‘why do you not go and stay in Naples? I think you would be happier there’.”
“Were you surprised at the idea?” the Duke asked.
“At first. It had never struck me that I might leave Scotland. Then I looked at Papa and realised just how much he had deteriorated.”
She sighed and went on,
“We were talking early in the morning before Stepmother was awake. He had had too much to drink the night before and I knew that if she was aware I was with him and we were happy together, she would bring him one of her poisonous glasses of wine. Then he would become so drunk – that I would not be able to talk to him.”
Giovanna was silent for a moment before she said very touchingly,
“I felt as if – Mama was beside me – telling me what to say and – I asked Papa if I should write to my grandmother and suggest that I visit her.”
“And he agreed?”
“He urged me not only to write, but to go at once! I think – at that moment he was aware not only of how much I was suffering – but that he was suffering himself from the woman who was destroying him – but about whom he could – do nothing!”
There was so much unhappiness in Giovanna’s voice that the Duke held her even closer to him and put his lips against the softness of her cheek.
“It must have been very hard for you, my darling.”
“P-perhaps I was – wrong and should have – stayed,” Giovanna said, “but because it was all so – horrible and so unlike the happiness we had known with Mama – I wanted almost frantically to get away.”
“I can understand that. After all you were only fifteen.”
“I was old enough to realise how terrible it all was, but not old enough to save – Papa.”
The Duke was aware that as a young and inexperienced girl there was nothing she could have done against a woman as dangerous and determined as her stepmother.
“So you left for Naples?” he asked.
“Colonel Dalbeth, who was Papa’s cousin, sent his daughter who was a very sensible woman of over thirty-five to escort me there. We did not travel grandly like you, but Second Class and it was all rather fun and an adventure.”
“Your grandmother was pleased to see you?”
“Delighted, but I thought that it was somehow wrong to leave Papa – and I meant to go back
soon.”
“Do you suppose he would have let you?”
“I wrote to Papa every week and he answered once or twice – then when I wrote and asked if he wanted me to come home, my stepmother replied.”
“I can guess what she said!” the Duke remarked.
“She made it very clear that neither she nor my father wished to see me. I was to stay where I was and not have any stupid ideas about returning to Scotland.”
“Then what happened?”
“Grandmama had already arranged for me to have some lessons from various teachers, but, when she knew that I was staying for good, she thought it would be best if I became a boarder at the Convent School, as I would have girls there of my own age to talk to and also have better teachers than those I was having at that moment.”
“So you went to live at the Convent,” the Duke said. “It must have seemed strange in a way.”
“It was very different from what – I had imagined a Convent would be,” Giovanna answered. “On one side were the dedicated Sisters who prayed all the time or attended to the very poor in Naples.”
“You were not allowed to be with them?” the Duke asked.
“No,” Giovanna replied. “On the other side was the school, which was attended by thirty pupils, all of whom came from the best families in Italy or France. We had highly experienced teachers in all subjects and they were not always nuns.”
She smiled.
“Although we had to attend a lot of Services and had hours of religious teaching every week, we were also extremely well taught on all the other subjects.”
Giovanna paused before she looked up at the Duke and said,
“I am so very glad now that I – learnt so much because otherwise – you would find me very ignorant – and perhaps be – bored with me.”
“I could never be bored with you!” the Duke asserted.
“But I am afraid that my learning is all from books, whereas you have travelled about the world, fought in India and been very very brave.”
The Duke laughed.
“You have been listening to Mrs. Sutherland and Ross and, when you know me well, you may find me very different from their picture of me.”
“I know you well – enough to know that – you are very – wonderful!” Giovanna said in a soft shy voice.
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