“Then I hope I meet them!” Solita answered.
“I promise you,” the Duke said, “that when this is over, I am taking you back to England where my grandmother will chaperone you and you will be a great Social success.”
As he spoke, Solita suddenly realised it was something she did not want.
She did not want to be a Social success.
She did not wish to be with his grandmother, but with the Duke.
Even though she admired him, even though she knew in the last few days how different he was from anyone she could have imagined, she had not understood.
Now she knew why she was so afraid for him.
Every night when she went to bed she prayed with her mind, her heart and her soul that he would be safe.
That nothing terrible would happen to him, now or ever.
It had never crossed her mind, however, that what she felt was love.
Yet now she knew in a blinding flash that he was everything she wanted in a man.
It was not just his cleverness, it was not only his handsome looks.
It was something far deeper, something which made her vibrate to his thoughts, his feelings and to everything that was him.
‘Of course I love him!’ she told herself, ‘and the only extraordinary thing is that I did not realise it sooner!’
But it was not what she had expected love to be like. What she felt was he was not only a protection, but a guide, a star twinkling in the sky which she must follow.
‘I love him – I love him!’ she thought.
Then she was aware that the Duke’s eyes were on her face.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“Of you!” she answered truthfully.
“And what conclusions have you come to?”
“That you are – very clever.”
“Thank you!” the Duke said mockingly. “But I think you are being kind, seeing how extremely stupid I have been.”
“Not stupid,” Solita corrected. “Few men are big enough to admit that they have made a mistake.”
“It is one I am quite prepared to admit and I could kick myself for being such a fool!”
“There is no need to do that,” Solita said. “We all make mistakes, but it is something one should never do twice.”
“I will make certain of that!” the Duke added savagely.
Solita rose and walked to the window.
They were on the main deck and the State room looked out onto a now empty deck.
The stars were gleaming like diamonds overhead.
She wanted to go outside and look at them and not be restricted by being in the cabin.
Impulsively she looked at the Duke.
“Let’s go outside,” she pleaded.
“It is something I am longing to do,” he answered. “I find it stifling in here.”
They went out on deck, knowing that most of the passengers were in the large Saloon talking.
They would be gambling on the amount of nautical miles the ship had done during the day, while a number of the men, like Willy, were in the card room.
The deck was therefore empty and Solita went to the guard rail to gaze out at the sea.
The brilliance of the stars made the great arc of the sky above them fill the whole world.
She raised her head to look up at them unaware that the Duke had come a little nearer to her.
“It is so unbelievably beautiful!” she whispered in a soft voice.
“And so are you!” he replied.
For a moment she thought she could not have heard him correctly.
Than his arms went round her and he pulled her very gently against him.
For a moment he looked down at her and her eyes seemed to be caught in the starlight.
She was staring at him in surprise and the softness of her mouth trembled because he was touching her.
Then his lips came down on hers.
As he kissed her, Solita knew that this was what her whole body had been longing for.
When she had prayed for him, when she had known just now she loved him, she was giving him herself.
The Duke kissed her very gently at first.
Then, as if the sweetness and innocence of her lips excited him, his kiss became more demanding, more insistent.
To Solita it was as if the stars themselves had come down from the sky, not only to blind her eyes but were in her heart and in every breath she drew.
She could feel their radiance vibrating from the Duke’s mouth to hers.
She thought that if she died at this moment, she would know she had felt ecstasy and touched the perfection of God.
As the Duke raised his head, she made a little murmur and turned her face to hide it against his neck.
He held her very close and then with his lips against her forehead he said,
“How have you done this to me, Solita?!”
“D-done – what?” she asked.
“Made me feel different than I have ever felt in my whole life before. I did not know that love was like this!”
She looked up at him and said,
“That is what I have been thinking – but then I have never known – any love.”
“Nor have I,” the Duke said seriously, “and what I felt in the past has not been love, but I always knew if I could find it, love would be like you and the stars – ”
Solita made a sound – like a gasp of joy.
“That is why I thought just now when you kissed me, that the stars were on your lips and in my heart.”
“As you are in mine.”
Then, as if he felt he could express himself better by kissing her than words, he kissed her possessively, demandingly, until they were both breathless.
“I love you!” Solita whispered.
As the Duke’s arms tightened about her, he sighed,
“And I love you, my darling, but for the moment there is nothing I can do about it.”
Solita looked puzzled, and he carried on,
“When the Princess knows I am in India, I am a marked man and she will do everything in her power to destroy me.”
Solita gave a cry of horror.
“It is true and I would not insult your intelligence by pretending otherwise.”
“But – suppose they – kill you?” Solita whispered frantically.
“That is what they will try to do, and that is why, my precious, I have to protect you.”
“All I want is to be with you.”
“As I want to be with you,” the Duke replied. “At the same time, I think now, if I am sensible, when we reach Calcutta, you should remain in the ship.”
“No – of course not,” Solita said quickly. “Do you think I would leave – you? Do you think I would – trust even Willy to look – after you?”
She thought he was going to oppose her and she added,
“I have – saved you – twice, and as I believe that – everything goes in – threes and after the – third time you will be – a free man!”
The Duke did not answer, he merely moved his lips over her cheek.
She knew he was thinking that because the Princess was a woman she would consider she had been scorned and would be determined to have her revenge.
Solita moved even nearer to the Duke than she was already.
“We must not be – afraid,” she whispered, “With God – and perhaps a little help from Papa, I have – saved you and why should we be – afraid now?”
The Duke took a deep breath.
“You are right, my darling one,” he said, “and I have been blessed as few other men have and most of all by finding you. We must put our trust in our Karma, as the Indians do, and believe that the Gods are on our side and will not fail us.”
“I think,” Solita said very softly, “that the Gods have given you courage to fight for what you believe is right, and they will not only protect us but fight with us.”
“Only you could say something like that.”
Then the
Duke was kissing her again, kissing her now passionately, fiercely, as if he defied the world to separate them.
Solita felt that her love for him carried her up to the stars.
The light from them was dazzling.
It was a light that would illuminate the darkness and drive away the evil that lurked in it.
Chapter Seven
By the time they reached Calcutta, Solita was more and more in love.
She was also day by day becoming more and more frightened.
She lay awake at night thinking that the Princess would never forgive the Duke if she knew he had gone to India instead of France.
And, if she had the least suspicion that he was in love with somebody else, she would do everything to avenge herself.
‘What can I do?’ Solita asked over and over again in the darkness of her cabin.
Even her prayers seemed to receive no answer.
Finally, because she felt the Duke was not taking the situation as seriously as he should, she asked Higgins to bring her up one of her trunks.
In it she had packed when she left Italy all the little souvenirs she had left of her mother’s.
Among them there was a small revolver which her mother had carried in India when her father was away. Because she was so often in the North where life were more dangerous than in the South, her father had insisted on her mother learning to shoot.
He had then given her the smallest and lightest revolver available.
He insisted that, if she was alone in the house with only the native servants, she was to carry it with her both by day and by night.
Solita found it wrapped in a carved Indian box which also contained a number of letters from her father to her mother.
There were also little objects she treasured, like the programme of the ball at which they had first met and the poems he had written to her before they were married.
There were a number of bullets to go with the revolver.
She hid it away in her luggage and said nothing about it to the Duke.
She had no idea that he was even more worried than she was.
He too would lie awake at night wondering how he could extract himself from the appalling situation he was in.
He knew even better than Solita that the Russian Secret Service had long memories.
If the Princess or Prince Ivan reported that he was working with the Earl of Kimberley or they were suspicious of his activities, he would die.
It could be from a knife thrust by an unknown assailant, poison inserted into his food or an unaccountable accident that would prove fatal.
‘What could I do?’ he asked the Gods.
Like Solita, he found no answer.
It was some consolation to have Willy with him, who had accompanied him in so many tight spots before.
Once Willy realised that the Duke and Solita were in love, he was extremely tactful.
He would make every excuse to leave them alone. He liked playing deck quoits with some of the passengers and spent almost every evening at the bridge tables.
It was then the Duke would hold Solita in his arms.
As he did so, he would wonder despairingly how long they would be together.
The Russian spy must be somewhere at Viceregal Lodge.
The Duke knew the one thing he must not do in any circumstances was to let the man or woman be aware of what he felt for Solita.
The Russians had their own way of communicating with each other, wherever they might be in any part of the world and there was every chance that the Princess would be advised of his feelings.
Then, as he put it himself, ‘all hell would break loose’.
When the ship stopped at Bombay, a few passengers disembarked and it then sailed on to Calcutta.
As they steamed into the harbour, the Duke reminded Solita and Willy that he was travelling as ‘Lord Durham’.
“Only the Viceroy will be aware of my correct identity,” he said, “but no one else.”
“You will be very careful,” Solita insisted. “You know I will be – praying that your – mission will be – successful.”
“Our mission!” the Duke corrected, “and I am relying on your instinct, my darling, as much as my own.”
They looked into each other’s eyes.
Willy was aware that they had forgotten for the moment that he even existed.
When they went ashore, Solita was wearing one of her prettiest gowns and a very attractive broad-brimmed hat trimmed with flowers.
She carried a sunshade to protect her from a sun, which even though it was early morning, it seemed to burn down on them like an open furnace.
Just before they docked, the Captain, on the Duke’s instructions, had sent a message to inform the Viceroy of his arrival.
There was an open carriage bearing the insignia of the Viceroy waiting for them and the servants were wearing the Viceregal uniforms with red turbans. There were also four soldiers on horseback to escort them to the Viceregal Lodge.
Solita had already heard about the splendour of it and that it was the finest Governor’s Palace in the world – a symbol of the great British power.
She was, however, not prepared for the overwhelming beauty of its Ionic pillars, the enormous flight of steps and the magnificence she was to see later in the great rooms.
The Palace had been built on a site ideally situated to the climate as it caught the breeze at all four corners.
As they drove up with a flourish to the portico, Solita was thinking only of the Duke.
She loved him and was very frightened of what would occur during the next day or so.
The Duke, however, appeared very much at his ease.
As they walked through the high-ceilinged and exquisitely decorated corridors, there was nothing in his bearing to show that he was even apprehensive.
The Viceroy, Lord Ripon, was waiting for them.
Solita’s first impression was that he was a short man with a large beard, decidedly plain with a bulbous nose and a rather donnish expression in his eyes.
Then, when he welcomed her, her instinct told her that he was a clever man beneath his air of simplicity.
He did not say much to the Duke because not only was Solita there but there was also an aide-de-camp.
It was only when the Duke was alone in his bedroom that one of the senior officials on the Viceroy’s staff came to ask him what he wished to do.
“I am very interested to see the workings of the submarine cable,” he answered, “and Lord Kimberley has asked me to report personally as to whether the messages from the India Office are received quickly and without interference.”
There was no need to say more.
The expression on the official’s face told the Duke that he understood what he meant.
He merely bowed and said,
“Would it be convenient for you, my Lord, to visit the room in which the messages are received after luncheon?”
“Thank you,” the Duke replied, “and I would also like to take with me my ward and Captain Denham.”
“That will be arranged, my Lord,” the official said politely and left the room.
Alone again the Duke walked to the window to look out onto the busy compound.
There were numerous people moving about on it, rickshaws travelling from one building to another. A number of Indians and Europeans who were walking slowly were apparently nothing more than sightseers.
It seemed to the Duke extraordinary that, while everything looked peaceful and quiet, the Russians were like evil reptiles, ready to destroy the serenity of it.
He however went down to luncheon smiling, and as if he was concerned only with enjoying himself.
Like several other Viceroys, Lord Ripon had a very rich wife who had increased his own wealth, which was considerable.
He therefore lived as a grandee even though politically he was very much a radical.
His appointment had made history, as he was the first Roman Catholic to become a Hig
h Officer of State since the seventeenth century.
There were a number of guests at luncheon in the large dining room looking onto the beautiful gardens filled with flowers.
The punkahs were working and the room, with its long open windows was cool despite the blazing sun outside. There were footmen behind every chair, and their white and red uniforms were a supplement to the brilliant colours of the guests’ clothes.
Solita felt the whole setting was very picturesque.
But while they talked, laughed and ate she felt as if there was a heavy store within her breast.
Every time she looked at the Duke she found herself praying that this would not be the last time they would enjoy the company of other people.
‘How can we – live like – this?’ she asked herself.
As she met the Duke’s eyes, she knew that despite his relaxed attitude, he was thinking as she was.
Last night, when they had been alone in their State room on board ship he had held her close in his arms.
“I love you, my precious one,” he had said, “and I cannot imagine my life without you.”
She looked at him questioningly and it flashed through her mind that perhaps he was going to send her away from him.
Then he said violently,
“I want you as my wife, I want you close to me by day and by night, but God knows, it is a risk I dare not take!”
“I am not afraid,” Solita said, “and if I could be your wife – even for a short while – it would be the most – perfect and wonderful thing that could – happen to me.”
“And do you think I could bear it, knowing that because you were my wife, the Russians would be as determined to kill you as they are to kill me?” the Duke asked.
“Which they – must not do!” Solita cried. “It is wrong – wicked, and – unfair that you should die in – such a way!”
She would have said a great deal more, but the Duke had kissed her.
Then it was impossible to think of anything but the rapture his kisses gave her.
Once again the light of the stars was radiating from them both and everything that was evil was forgotten.
When luncheon was finished the guests began to take their leave of the Viceroy.
The official who had visited the Duke in the morning then came to his side.
“If you will come with me, Your Grace, I will take you to the Cipher Office.”
Solita and the Spies Page 12