Lady Delyth was defeated and she knew it.
The calm assured way in which the Duke spoke, his overwhelming presence and her knowledge that it would be impossible, even if she wished to, to fight an expensive and protracted Court case, swept her confidence away and she was left defenceless.
Woman-like, she tried another tactic.
“If you are talking in terms of the law, Your Grace, I must protest! You have not heard my side of the story and even the most common criminal is allowed to state his own case.”
“I should have thought it was rather late in the day for excuses,” the Duke countered sarcastically.
“But not to explain that I had no choice in what occurred before Richard entered my bedroom,” Lady Delyth said softly. “Sir Joceline was a strong man. He overpowered me and I was not strong enough to fight myself free.”
The Duke laughed and it was not a pleasant sound.
“A jury of idiots, Lady Delyth, might believe you,” he said mockingly, “but I am not impressed, nor would I believe such a tissue of lies if you had a hundred witnesses to support you.”
He walked towards the door and opened it.
“There is really no more to be said and I am sure your Ladyship’s conveyance is waiting outside.”
For a moment Lady Delyth hesitated.
Then as if she knew there was nothing she could do, she moved slowly towards the door.
As she reached the Duke, she looked up at him and said with eyes narrowed almost to slits,
“God help me, but one day I will get even with you!”
The Duke did not answer.
He merely bowed ironically and as Lady Delyth walked across the hall to where the butler was waiting to hand her into a carriage he closed the drawing room door.
*
“You have beaten me again!” Benedicta exclaimed. “Where did I go wrong?”
“You should have played your Knight,” Richard replied.
His voice was still weak and his face very pale, as he leaned back against the pillows.
During the last ten days he had regained a lot of his strength and there was no doubt that he was improving.
At first when the fever had left him, Benedicta had only visited him for a few minutes at a time. Then she had read him extracts from the sporting pages of the newspapers and when he could sit up, she found that the one game he was proficient at was chess.
“My father used to make me play with him in the holidays from school,” he said. “I hated it then, but now I find it rather enjoyable.”
“I have always loved it because it is such an ancient game,” Benedicta replied. “It fascinates me to think it was being played in India five thousand years ago, when in England our ancestors were walking about in woad, a very chilly fashion for the winter months!”
Richard tried to laugh, but it hurt his chest and it turned into a cough so that Hawkins had come hurrying in to shoo Benedicta from the room and make him lie flat.
“Don’t make me laugh,” Richard had exhorted Benedicta after that. “If I cough, Hawkins punishes me as if I was a child. I am sick to death of looking at the canopy of this bed!”
But Benedicta did make him laugh because of the things she said and because she was so unlike any girl he had ever met before.
Now he remarked,
“I was thinking over what you said about chess coming from India, but my father always told me the game came from Persia.”
“I believe it was imported there under the Sanskrit name Chaturanga, in the sixth century,” Benedicta replied, “but no one seems to know when it first came to England.”
She thought Richard seemed interested and continued,
“There is, however, an interesting story that when King Canute was playing with Earl Ulf, they quarrelled so violently that the Earl upset the board and was in consequence murdered in Church a few days later on the orders of the King.”
She was only trying to amuse Richard with the tale, but he went very pale and closed his eyes.
It suddenly struck her that the word ‘murder’ had upset him and she added quickly,
“You are tired, let me read to you from a book I found in the library. It is all about insects and you may or may not be interested to know that to enable them to run fast, one species has twenty-two pairs of legs.”
“Which undoubtedly was very useful for pickpockets,” Richard remarked, the laughter back in his eyes.
The Duke and Major Haverington had gone back to London and Benedicta thought, despite the beauty of Kingswood, she would have found it rather lonely if she had not had Richard to talk to.
Her father was still desperately ill.
They fed him nourishing soups, but he did not recognise anyone and Benedicta sometimes felt despairingly that he had already died and left her alone.
At the same time everything at Kingswood thrilled her.
When she was not in attendance on either of the two invalids, she would spend most of her time in the library, sometimes not even reading, but just touching the bound volumes with tender fingers, as if she caressed them.
Mrs. Newall had, by this time, supplied her with a quite varied wardrobe, new gowns made, she said, from the rolls and rolls of unwanted material stored in the attic.
Benedicta also had a very elegant riding habit that surprisingly had been cut out for one of the Duke’s relations and then abandoned before it was finished.
Some alterations made it fit Benedicta to perfection and when she rode either with the Duke or with a groom, she felt that she too was part of the magnificence of the house and the beauty of the gardens.
Every day these grew more lovely as the warm weather brought the trees and shrubs into bloom.
Pink and white blossoms on the peach and almond trees, hanging golden chains on the laburnums, purple lilac bushes and the first buds of the crimson rhododendrons, made Benedicta feel as if she was living in a fairyland.
When the Duke returned from London, he was told that she was in the garden and, as she ran towards him, against a background of colour, he thought her hair seemed part of the sunshine.
“You are back! You are back!” she exclaimed as a child might have done. “I am so glad!”
“You have missed me!” the Duke asked her.
“The house has seemed very quiet without you and yet sometimes in the library, I felt you were still here.”
She spoke without thinking, then as she saw the Duke look surprised, a faint colour rose in her cheeks.
“I hope you do not think it – presumptuous of me to have – spent so much time in the – library?”
The Duke had thought she was embarrassed for a different reason and he answered her,
“I have told you that my books are only waiting for you to take an interest in them and I hope in my absence you have, in every way, availed yourself of Kingswood’s hospitality.”
“I have ridden every morning,” she admitted breathlessly, “and I hope you will think that my riding has improved. It is such a long time since I have had a chance of riding a proper horse.”
“What did you have instead?” he asked in an amused voice.
“A very old pony which could not move above a snail’s pace and sometimes when Papa was using him I had to make do with a donkey!”
The Duke laughed.
“I can understand that my stable is more to your liking.”
“Everything here is so wonderful I sometimes feel I am dreaming.”
“And Richard?” the Duke enquired.
“He is better – very much better,” Benedicta answered.
He thought there was a light in her eyes that he had not noticed before.
When he went to his cousin’s room and heard Benedicta talking to him softly and intimately, as she might to a close friend and saw Richard smile at almost everything she said, he told himself that his plan was working admirably.
Major Haverington had not returned to Kingswood with him.
In actual fact th
e Duke had had a great deal to do in London and his pile of invitations increased day by day, but he had felt it imperative to return to Kingswood.
He was convinced that the reason was that he was still extremely worried about Richard.
Yet he admitted when, that evening, he dined alone with Benedicta, he found her more interesting than the ladies who had been waiting eagerly for his return to London.
“Tell me what you have been reading?” he asked.
Almost instantly they were thick in a conversation in which they disagreed with and contradicted each other, but found that fundamentally they thought the same about the essentials of living and life.
As dinner finished, the Duke remembered what he had said to Bevil Haverington about warning Benedicta not to put Richard off by being too intellectual.
“Do you talk to my cousin like this?” he enquired.
Benedicta shook her head.
“Why not?”
“I do not think he would understand.”
“Because he is ill?”
“Because he is very – young.”
“So are you,” the Duke pointed out.
“That is different.”
“Why?”
“Because I have been so much with Papa and he is very clever and has an original way of looking at everything and everybody with whom he comes into contact.”
“So you are merely echoing the thoughts he has put in your mind?”
Benedicta thought for a moment.
“I hope not,” she said. “I believe Papa’s genius is that he brings to the surface of people’s minds what they were not even aware of within themselves.”
She looked at the Duke as she spoke and added,
“I think that is what all great leaders have done – they have not stuffed those who listen to them with new knowledge, but made them put into words or actions, what was already in their minds, their hearts and their souls.”
“I had not thought of that before,” the Duke remarked reflectively.
“I find that when I am with Papa,” Benedicta went on, “he starts a train of thought, then I develop it myself and it goes on growing until it becomes very important to me and part of my beliefs and convictions.”
“We were talking about Richard,” the Duke said.
“If I was speaking about him to Papa,” Benedicta replied, “I would say and he would understand, that Richard is a very young soul and he has a great deal to learn in this life and the lives that will come after.”
“You are speaking now of reincarnation?”
“How else can we believe in justice?”
“And I suppose you think you are paying in this life for the sins you committed in the past?”
Benedicta flashed him a smile.
“On the contrary,” she countered. “At this moment I am being rewarded for all the good things I did.”
The Duke laughed, but it was only later that night, when he was in bed, that he thought of what Benedicta had said about Richard and wondered if the way she looked after him and the compassion with which she spoke, was maternal rather than that of a woman with a man.
He gave a lot of thought as to what his next step should be.
He had no intention of allowing Richard to go back to London without being certain he would not be caught once again in the trap that Delyth Maulden would set for him.
Bevil Haverington and a great number of his other friends had told him that Lady Delyth was finding it hard to replace both Sir Joceline and Richard in her life.
The story of the duel, because it had caused the death of Sir Joceline, had shocked even the most hardened rogues and dissolute lovers.
They, not unnaturally, guessed the reason why it had taken place and, as the Duke’s cousin, Richard had a Social position, it made them question Delyth Maulden’s version of what had occurred.
For the first time in her triumphant progress as an acclaimed beauty, she was looked at askance by her admirers and a number of the gentlemen who had fawned at her feet were a little more wary than they had been previously.
“Financially she is in a bad way too,” Bevil Haverington told the Duke. “I believe Gadsby was very generous to her and she is missing him on that account, if not on any other.”
“I hope she starves!” the Duke thundered vindictively.
“She will not do that, but I have a feeling she will still try to marry Richard if only to spite you.”
“Well, that is certainly something that must be circumvented.”
Major Haverington, noticing the manner in which he squared his chin and tightened his lips, knew that his friend would not take any chances where Delyth Maulden was concerned.
At the same time it was difficult for the Duke to know how to approach either Richard or Benedicta.
He wished he was in a position to order them to marry each other as he could have done in the last century.
But he knew that however gentle and unsophisticated Benedicta might appear, she would not do anything that was against her inner instincts and perhaps her conscience.
They were looking at his pictures after dinner and he was showing her a very lovely picture of Venus painted by Bouché.
She was not in the least embarrassed that the Venus was completely nude and he thought that in itself was a strange attitude in so young a girl, when she was looking at a painting and discussing it with a man.
“There are few women who are as attractive as that,” the Duke said aloud.
“And if there were, where are the artists to paint them?” Benedicta asked.
“Romney is now dead, but he certainly created some very beautiful portraits of Emma Hamilton when she was young.”
“I would love to see them,” Benedicta said, “but perhaps I may never have the opportunity.”
“Why not?” the Duke enquired.
She did not answer and he knew she was thinking it was unlikely she would ever be able to go to London and there was also a question mark over her future that so far they had not discussed.
“You must ask Richard when he is well enough,” the Duke said, “to show you the pictures in Kingswood House, which I know you would like.”
“I don’t think that Richard is very interested in art.”
“Then you must make him appreciate what is here,” the Duke replied. “It will all be his one day.”
“His?”
Benedicta looked surprised.
“Richard is my heir. When I am dead he will inherit the title, the house and the estates.”
“I was not aware of that.”
“That is why it is extremely important whom Richard marries,” the Duke went on.
“Of course, I understand.”
She was quiet and the Duke knew she was puzzling over something.
“What is worrying you?” he enquired.
“I was just thinking,” Benedicta replied, “that if you married and had a son, then Richard would no longer be your heir.”
“That is true, but I have vowed never to marry and Richard, I am quite certain, will make an admirable Duke.”
“I wonder – ” Benedicta said almost beneath her breath, but the Duke heard her.
“What do you wonder?” he enquired sharply.
“I do not think Richard wants to be a Duke.”
“Why should you say that? What has he told you?”
“When he is well enough, he wants to go to India.”
The Duke was astonished.
“India! Why India?”
“He has told me that he has friends who are in the East India Company and he would like to live there for some years.”
“It is an extraordinary idea and something I have never thought of in connection with Richard. But there is no reason at all why he should not do so, and later, when I am dead, become the Duke of Kingswood.”
Benedicta did not answer.
When the Duke thought it over afterwards, he decided it was a very sensible plan on Richard’s part. He obviously di
d not wish to return to the London life that had proved so disastrous for him.
At the first opportunity he was determined to discuss with his cousin what Benedicta had told him.
*
The following morning he visited Richard early, found he had passed a good night and had eaten some breakfast.
“You are getting better,” he said cheerfully.
“Not as quickly as I would like,” Richard replied gloomily. “It is damned dull, Cousin Nolan, having to be in bed all day.”
“I am not going to say it is your own fault – ”
“But you are thinking it,” Richard said accusingly, “and with good reason. I made a fool of myself, but it will not happen again.”
“Benedicta tells me you would like to go to India.”
“When I am on my feet, I do not want to go back to London and have everybody laughing at me.”
This was a different attitude from the one that Benedicta had intimated and the Duke commented,
“I think a trip to India would be most interesting, unless, as an alternative, you would like to marry and settle down. The Dower House is empty and it would be pleasant to have you on the estate.”
“Marry?” Richard questioned.
“Why not?” the Duke asked. “There are plenty of very attractive young women of the right age – like Benedicta for instance.”
He saw as he spoke that the idea was one that had never entered Richard’s head.
Wisely he decided to say no more, but let the idea sink in.
So before his cousin could speak, he drew his watch from his waistcoat pocket and exclaimed,
“My horse will be waiting! I will see you later in the morning.”
He went from the room and, when he reached the hall, he found Benedicta was waiting for him in her blue riding habit with a gauze veil floating from her high-crowned hat.
“I was just saying good morning to Richard,” he said to excuse himself for being a few minutes late.
“He passed a good night,” Benedicta added, “and Papa also slept peacefully.”
“Then we can enjoy ourselves with a clear conscience without worrying over our patients.”
She smiled at him and a few minutes later they were riding side by side across the park, the spotted deer scattering at their approach and the birds rising from the branches of the trees overhead.
The Duke & the Preachers Daughter Page 8