The Devilish Deception

by Barbara Cartland

  “W-what do you – want me to – do?”

  “As you know, I have been in consultation with the Chief of Police,” the Duke said, “and he tells me that he knows all about Kane Horn, who is in fact a criminal accountable for a number of murders. They have been trying to capture him for a long time. Not long ago they thought that they had him trapped, but he slipped away at the last moment and that is when he must have gone to Scotland.”

  “And – my stepmother – ?” Giovanna questioned.

  “She is almost as bad as he is,” the Duke replied. “But to convict them the Police must have incontrovertible proof of their wickedness and that is where you have to help.”

  Giovanna drew in her breath and after a moment said in a little voice that trembled,

  “What are you – asking me to – do?”

  “They have arrived in Naples and are on their way here at this moment,” the Duke said calmly. “When they get here, I want you to meet them.”

  Giovanna looked at him wide-eyed.

  “A-alone?”

  “You will only appear to be alone,” the Duke explained. “You will, in point of fact, be protected not only by me but also by a number of the most highly trained Police Officers in the whole of Italy.”

  He felt her fingers tighten on his and he said quickly,

  “Kane Horn will not see them and he will not know that they are there until they have heard him threaten you. Then they will take over.”

  “But – suppose he – k-kills me?”

  “Before he can pull the trigger he will die!” the Duke answered firmly.

  He saw the fear in Giovanna’s eyes and added,

  “I know it is a lot to ask of you, my darling, but you have been so brave and so courageous up to now and I know you will understand that there is no other way in which these people can be disposed of for ever and punished for the crimes they have already committed.”

  “I-I understand.”

  The Duke held her closer still and kissed her.

  Then he raised his head to say,

  “I know that you would not fail me and remember, however frightened you may be, we will be victorious!”

  He did not wait for her reply, but drew her to her feet, saying,

  “I think I hear the sound of wheels and I am therefore going to leave you. But I promise I am very near, my sweet, and I swear before God that no one shall harm a hair of your lovely head!”

  He kissed her again and, as there was the sound of voices outside the front door, he moved swiftly behind a screen that was across one corner of the room.

  Giovanna appeared to be alone, but there were armed Policemen concealed behind the curtains and other pieces of furniture in the room.

  One of the Chief’s men had left the house five minutes before, dressed in the Duke’s clothes and top hat and driving an open carriage that belonged to Lady Sinclair.

  The Duke knew that he would pass Kane Horn and his assassins on the coast road leading back into Naples and it was most unlikely they would suspect that the man who appeared to be the Duke could be anybody else.

  Everything had been planned down to the very last detail, but it was impossible for the Duke, hiding behind a very ornate Chinese screen, not to be afraid for Giovanna.

  At the same time he felt great admiration for the way that she had accepted what he had asked of her without argument and without complaint.

  He knew that it was her Scottish blood that made her stand waiting with her chin up, her eyes on the door that led into the marble hall.

  There was the sound of footsteps, then the door opened and Kane Horn stood there.

  There was an expression of satisfaction on his face when he saw Giovanna apparently alone and waiting for him. Arrogantly he walked into the room followed by two men who, she thought, were those who had been with him at The Castle.

  Then to her surprise she saw that there was yet another man, much older, with a grey beard and wearing a cassock.

  Kane Horn walked slowly towards Giovanna and only when he was a few feet away from her did he speak and say,

  “I imagine, as the Duke has left you here alone, you were not expecting to see me so soon. It was clever of you to get away, but you cannot escape again. As you see, I am here!”

  “What do you want?’ Giovanna asked.

  Although her voice was low, there was not a tremor in it.

  “That is something I am going to explain to you,” Kane Horn replied.

  At that moment there was the sound from the hall of a woman’s voice loud and shrill.

  There was no mistaking the surprise on Horn’s face as a second later the door was flung open and the Dowager Countess burst into the room.

  She was as overdressed as usual in a frilled and flowered gown and a sable stole round her shoulders.

  With an air both of fury and of defiance she swept across the room to face Kane Horn.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked angrily. “I told you to wait for me at the hotel!”

  “I know you did,” the Dowager Countess retorted, “but I wanted to be in at the kill and why shouldn’t I be?”

  “Because you should have obeyed my orders!” he answered. “There will, in fact, be no kill!”

  The Dowager Countess looked at him in astonishment.

  “What do you mean?” she enquired. “You told me that you were going to kill the girl and you know as well as I do that she has to die!”

  Kane Horn did not reply and she went on, her voice rising,

  “After all we have been through, why are you taking so long about it? Only when she is dead can we be certain that there will be no more trouble and her fortune will be in our hands!”

  She spoke so menacingly that, hidden behind the screen, the Duke was afraid that Giovanna might lose her nerve and run away.

  Instead she stood looking steadily at the woman who had married her father and who hated her with a hatred that was not only murderous but also fanatical.

  “If you had done what I told you to do,” Kane Horn countered, “you would have learnt later without this quite unnecessary scene that I have changed my mind.”

  “Changed your mind?” the Dowager Countess screamed. “What do you mean – changed your mind? You came here to kill her and here she is alone except for the old woman. I passed the Duke on the road, as I suspect you did too. Kill her and let’s get away before anyone finds the body!”

  The Dowager Countess’s voice was vehement and rang out with a passion that told the Duke as he listened that she had lost all self-control and was on the verge of madness.

  As if Kane Horn thought the same thing, he said furiously,

  “Will you be quiet! What I’ve decided and I’m not having you or anybody else interfering in my plans, is that I’ll not kill this girl whom you were unable to destroy with your much-vaunted poison. Instead I intend to marry her!”

  For a moment the Dowager Countess was so startled that her mouth fell open in astonishment and she stared at Kane Horn as if she could not have heard him aright.

  As she was unable to speak, he went on,

  “I shall marry her and I’ve brought a Priest here with me in order to perform the Ceremony. After that there will be no need to dispose of a body. Her fortune will be in my hands for all time!”

  For the first time there was a warm note in his voice, as if the idea gave him a great deal of satisfaction, but the Dowager Countess gave a shriek that seemed to echo round the room.

  “You double-crossing rat!” she screamed. “You promised to marry me! Do you think after all you have said that I would let you marry anyone else?”

  As she spoke, with a swiftness that could only have come from long practice, she drew a revolver from the satin handbag that she carried over one arm and shot Kane Horn through the heart.

  The explosion was deafening and almost simultaneously one of the men standing behind Horn fired a gun directly at her and the bullet entered her neck just below her chin.


  The same moment, almost before either she or Kane Horn could fall to the ground, the Duke had lifted Giovanna up in his arms and carried her from the room.

  He had a glimpse as he went of the Police swarming from their various hiding places and he knew that it was all over.

  It seemed very unlikely that either the Dowager Countess or Kane Horn would live even for a few minutes.

  He carried Giovanna out through an open window onto the veranda.

  There was a seat looking over the garden filled with flowers and cypress trees and he put her down on the cushions, still holding her very tightly against him.

  She hid her face, but he realised that she was not crying, only shocked to the point where it was difficult to feel anything.

  He kissed her forehead and smoothed the softness of her hair with his hand as he said,

  “It’s finally all over, my precious, you are free and all we have to decide now is how quickly you will marry me.”

  She did not reply, but only moved a little closer to him as if she wanted to be sure that he was there and knew it was the only way that she could be safe.

  “You were very brave and very very wonderful,” he went on, “and I am extremely proud of you!”

  She lifted her face to his and for a long moment he looked down at her, knowing that they had fought a desperate battle against the evil that had encroached on them both and had won.

  Then slowly, as if now there was no hurry and they had all their lives in front of them, he bent his head and his lips found hers.

  Only when he had kissed her with a long, gentle, possessive kiss did Giovanna say in a strange, incoherent little voice,

  “Is – is it – really over and I can – be your w-wife?”

  “As quickly as it is possible!” the Duke replied. “After that, my darling, you will be mine and nothing like this shall ever happen to you again.”

  Then, as if he was anxious that he might have lost her, he was kissing her demandingly, passionately and fiercely, as if only love could sweep away the terror that she had been through.

  *

  Quite a long time later, when they were sure that the Police would have left the villa with the dead bodies, they went to find Lady Sinclair.

  “You are – all right, Grandmama?” Giovanna asked as they entered her room to find her sitting serenely in the same chair where they had left her.

  “Perfectly all right, my dearest,” Lady Sinclair said, smiling, “and the Chief of Police has told me how splendid you were and how grateful he is to you. He actually said that Naples will now be a happier and cleaner place without those fiends!”

  Giovanna did not answer, she only looked at the Duke and he put his arm around her as he said,

  “Now I have another problem for you, Lady Sinclair, which is how quickly we can be married. You will understand that Giovanna does not wish to be alone either by day or night nor do I wish that either.”

  “Of course,” Lady Sinclair agreed, “and because the British Consul is a very old friend of mine, I know that he will make the way easy for you. And I have a suggestion regarding your honeymoon.”

  “Our – honeymoon!” Giovanna murmured almost beneath her breath.

  “What is it?” the Duke asked.

  “I have a great friend, the Count Roberto Caruso, who has a villa about half a mile from here. It is very beautiful with a most exquisite garden. He is away at the moment, but he asked me to look after the villa in his absence and I know nothing would give him greater pleasure than that you should stay there for your honeymoon. If there is anything else you want, you have only to ask me.”

  “It sounds too – too – wonderful!” Giovanna cried.

  Then, as if this combined with her relief after all she had been through had finally proved too much for her, the tears ran down her face as the Duke took her in his arms.

  *

  Giovanna awoke and realised that someone, and she knew who it was, had pulled back the curtains from the huge window that covered one wall of their bedroom.

  Then, as she saw the sun rising like a disc of gold, she felt her husband’s arms go round her as he pulled her close against him.

  “This is the dawn of a new life, my precious little wife,” he sighed. “I thought we should watch it together and know that from this moment everything is changed.”

  “I am so – happy!” Giovanna whispered. “I think perhaps I am – dreaming.”

  “We are going to dream together,” he said quietly, “not in the darkness anymore, but in the sunshine!”

  She knew exactly what he was saying to her and she turned so that she could be a little nearer to him and lifted her lips to his.

  The British Consul, who was very sympathetic, had arranged for them to be married with almost unlawful speed and they had driven from the British Church attached to the Consulate back to the Count’s villa where the servants had decorated all the rooms with white flowers.

  The Duke had been half-afraid that, after the long journey and everything that she had been through, Giovanna might collapse.

  Instead she seemed to radiate with a new vitality and he was aware that it was because she loved him so much that nothing else was of any significance.

  He did not speak of it, but he half-believed that she had already forgotten the horror of seeing Kane Horn and her stepmother die in front of her eyes.

  He had known that it was a perfect solution to their problems, for now there need be no trial, which would have involved unpleasant publicity and, when they returned to Scotland, the Dowager Countess’s daughter would presumably disappear and her attempt to pose as Giovanna would soon be forgotten.

  The Duke had already written to Sir Iain McCaron explaining briefly what had occurred and asking him to inform the Dalbeth relations and to try to keep what had happened as secret as possible and especially out of the newspapers.

  Fortunately, as his own Castle and Dalbeth House were both so far away in the North, it was unlikely that the story would percolate to the South.

  He could only pray that from now on they could live a quiet normal life without any more dramatics.

  Later in the evening she had asked him,

  “Are you going to go on calling me Giovanna?”

  Because he could read her thoughts, the Duke knew that she would always connect ‘Jane’ with the girl who had impersonated her.

  “To me,” he replied, “Giovanna is the loveliest name in the world and I shall never change it.”

  She gave a deep sigh and murmured,

  “That is what I wanted you to say.”

  Last night after their Wedding, when he had been able to tell Giovanna of his love, the ecstasy and rapture he had evoked in her made the Duke feel that he had reached a special Heaven that he had never known existed.

  He had been very gentle and very controlled in making love to Giovanna, because he had known that she still had a long way to go before she was really well again and also he was afraid of shocking her.

  As he suspected, she was very innocent, but because she loved him, the ecstasy they had known when he first kissed her was multiplied and intensified until the Duke thought that they had both reached the glory of the Divine.

  It was different from anything he had ever known in his whole life, while to Giovanna it was a revelation.

  “I love you – I love you!” she whispered. “Why did nobody – tell me that – love was as wonderful as this?”

  “I have made you happy, my darling?”

  “I am so happy that I think I must have – died! No one could be alive and – feel as I do!”

  The Duke laughed and it was a very tender sound.

  “You are alive, my adorable one, I am holding you close against me and you are my wife.”

  “It is true – it is – really true,” she whispered as if she must convince herself.

  “It may take years to convince you,” the Duke replied, “but every day I shall love you more and kiss more of your soft beauti
ful body.”

  He knew she blushed as she said,

  “I am – ugly because I am so – thin.”

  “You are beautiful,” the Duke said positively, “and I am looking at you not only with my eyes but with my spirit and my soul.”

  He laughed softly.

  “You know exactly what I am trying to say because we are both Scots and both fey. It is what we feel that matters and what I feel about you can only be written by the light of the stars and the burning rays of the sun.”

  “How can you say such – wonderful things to me?” Giovanna cried in a broken little voice.

  There were really no words to do justice to his feelings, so the Duke only kissed her until the flames of love burnt like the sun through both of them.

  When Giovanna had fallen asleep he had lain awake for a long time thanking God that he had found anyone so perfect and dedicating himself now and for all time to making her happy.

  He had known it was absolutely true that if she had not had a penny to her name he would have married her because they belonged to each other not only physically but also spiritually and mentally.

  But to know that he was the happiest man in the world, and also able now to do so much for the Clansmen who looked up to them both for protection and guidance was a joy which made him sure that their future together was going to be very wonderful.

  Now, looking at Giovanna’s eyes as she stared at the sunrise, he knew that she was not only the most exciting woman he had ever known in his life but also the most beautiful.

  It was not only her features or even the loveliness of her eyes, it was her sensitivity, her compassion and above all her courage that made her different from anybody else he had ever known.

  He knew too that since, as he had said last night, they were both fey with an instinct for what was right and wrong, combined with his powers of prescience, which had not only saved him in the past but would enrich his life and Giovanna’s in the future, they were unique.

  ‘We have so much,’ he told himself.

  As if she knew what he was thinking, Giovanna turned towards him with a little smile and asked,

  “Are you feeling grateful that we are here – together and that you saved me from dying at the cascade?”