“I can only ask Your Highness, for Cyrilla’s sake, not to repeat it,” the Marquis begged, “and of course for – mine.”
“It is the sort of story I would enjoy telling, but if you ask me to keep silent, I will.”
“I am asking you to help me, Sire. Cyrilla is the only woman I have ever wanted to marry. If the Duke refuses his permission, what can I do?”
The Prince thought for a moment.
“To be honest, there is very little, Virgo. You know as well as I do that if you abduct his daughter when she is under age, you can, if he chooses to be unpleasant about it, be transported. Everyone knows your reputation with a pistol and it is unlikely that at his age he will challenge you to a duel”
“That is what I thought,” the Marquis muttered.
“Do you think Lady Cyrilla will be able to change her father’s mind?”
“I doubt it. I did not have the time to explain to her why I behaved as I did.”
“You seem to have got yourself into a hell of a mess,” the Prince remarked. “But there must be something you can do. God knows, she is beautiful enough to turn any man’s head, even yours!”
“She has!” the Marquis agreed briefly.
They drove on and only when Lord Searle’s house was in sight did the Marquis say, as if he was making up his mind,
“I have something to suggest to you, Sire. I hope you will understand.”
“What is it?” the Prince asked.
“I do not intend to return to London tomorrow after we have seen Searle’s horses.”
The Prince turned to look at him in surprise.
“Then what will you do?”
“Stay near The Castle,” the Marquis replied. “I have to see Cyrilla somehow and I may be able to bribe a servant to take her a note or perhaps find a chance to speak to her when she is riding. All I know is that having found her, I do not intend to lose her again.”
He drew in his breath and added,
“Whether she wants me or not, whatever the obstacles in our way, somehow I will see her. So, whatever happens, I will be there.”
*
“I don’t know what to do about Lady Cyrilla, and that’s a fact, Your Grace!” Hannah said in her downright manner.
“I have noticed that she is eating very little,” the Duke answered.
“Little!” Hannah snorted. “Does Your Grace realise that I have to take in her gowns an inch or so round the waist practically every other day! And it’s not right that she should be crying every night until her pillow’s wet even in the morning.”
The Duke walked across the library floor and back again before he remarked,
“You can hardly expect me, Hannah, to countenance the Marquis of Fane, considering his behaviour towards Lady Cyrilla when he was unaware that she was my daughter.”
“He was very kind, Your Grace, about the funeral and, if any gentleman was in love, it was him. But love’s one thing, as Your Grace knows, and marriage another!”
“He is not a fit and proper person to marry any young girl, least of all Lady Cyrilla,” the Duke said firmly.
“Well, if she goes on like this, Your Grace, she’ll not be marrying anyone!” Hannah said. “I only hope as Your Grace knows what you’re doing.”
She bobbed the Duke a quick curtsey and, without waiting for him to say any more, went from the library, wondering as she walked upstairs whether she should have said more or perhaps less.
But something had to be done, although Hannah found it difficult to decide what it should be.
She went into the sitting room next to Cyrilla’s bedroom and found her, as she had expected, sitting at the window, staring out at the sunshine outside.
When Hannah came into the room, she quickly picked up the book that lay on her lap, but the maid knew it was only pretence and she had not turned over a single page since Hannah had left her to go downstairs.
“Your father’s alone in the library. Why don’t you join him?”
“I will do so if you think he wants me,” Cyrilla replied.
She rose, putting down her unread book as she did so.
It was her very submissiveness these days that made Hannah worry about her more than she would have done otherwise.
It was as if Cyrilla had no spirit, no feelings to express, because she was only partially alive. Almost like a puppet, she moved to the strings of those who pulled her, without using her own will and having no interest in anything she did.
“It’s that dratted man!” Hannah murmured under her breath as Cyrilla left the room.
*
The ‘dratted man,’ as Hannah called him, was at that moment riding along the dusty road that bordered the Duke’s Park.
Where the stone wall was low, he could look over it and through the trees to where The castle loomed large and impressive in the sunshine.
It seemed at times to have an invulnerability that the Marquis found awe-inspiring.
It was as if it challenged him and he was half-afraid that he could not win against such an insurmountable object.
No one in London would have believed that the Marquis of Fane, with his comfortable houses and great possessions, would be living as he was now, in the discomfort of a small village inn two miles from Holm Castle.
He had not been so foolish as to accommodate himself at the local inn, which stood on the green just outside The Castle gates.
Yet there was quite a lot of speculation about him amongst the old men who sat outside The Crown and Anchor with their mugs of ale when he rode past them very early in the mornings and at several other times during the day.
What they did not know, because the Marquis was extremely careful, was that, hidden in the copses that were to be found all over the Park, he would watch Cyrilla riding with her father.
Although he could see her, he knew he dare not approach her. But it was better than being alone with only his thoughts of her.
The inn where he stayed was small and clean but extremely primitive.
The Marquis did not seem to notice the hardness of his bed or the difficulties of obtaining enough warm water to wash or that the food he ate was, in his servants’ opinion, hardly fit to serve to the pigs.
It was, in fact, his servants who suffered the most, as they were acutely conscious of every discomfort and loathed staying in a small village with no entertainments or attractions when they might have been at Fane House.
The Marquis, however, was completely oblivious to everything but his need to see Cyrilla.
He thought that in her new riding habit with its gauze veil floating behind her high-crowned hat, she looked so lovely and at the same time so insubstantial that it was understandable that her father kept them apart
And yet, he told himself, somehow, in some way which he could not yet imagine, he had to make the Duke relent, had to force him to agree to their marriage.
So far, after a week of thought, he had come up with no solution to the puzzle and no ideas for the future.
He hoped every morning, while he waited for Cyrilla to appear in the park, that she would be alone and the Duke would not be with her.
He dared not approach her when her father was there, for he knew it would be worse than useless and anything he might say would be ineffective and overruled by the Duke’s authority.
The one chance he had of persuading her to agree that they must do something about their love would be if she was riding only with a groom or perhaps, which was improbable, alone.
But the days went by and always the Duke rode beside her. In the afternoons they would go driving and the Marquis would watch them, following unobserved at a discreet distance between the trees.
He thought that Cyrilla, in a fashionable bonnet with the ribbons tied under her chin, looked so lovely that, even though he could not see her clearly, his lips ached to kiss her and he knew that he would give up his hope of Heaven to hold her once again in his arms.
Chapter Seven
“I spoke to you, C
yrilla!”
“I-I am – sorry – Papa.”
Cyrilla spoke as if her mind had come back from a far distance and the Duke, well aware of whom she had been thinking, felt his lips tighten before he managed to say in a pleasant manner,
“I was suggesting to you that this afternoon we should drive the new pair of bays that I bought for Edmund on his return.”
“A new pair, Papa?”
“Yes. They were sold locally and, as I realised that they were outstanding, although still not completely trained, I acquired them at a reasonable price.”
“I am sure Edmund will be thrilled!”
“Go and put on your bonnet and I will tell Burton to have the phaeton brought round immediately.”
Cyrilla rose obediently and gave her father a small smile before she walked towards the door.
He watched her leave the room, realising, as she did so, how thin she had grown and that Hannah was right in saying that she appeared to be wasting away.
He asked himself what he could do about it and could find no answer to the question.
The Duke’s phaeton was very different from those owned by the Marquis and the Prince of Wales. They were high-perch phaetons, which were difficult to drive but which could travel at an amazingly fast rate and they were, because they were so high, inclined to be dangerous.
However, painted in the Holm colours, his phaeton, drawn by two perfectly matched bays, was very presentable and the Duke picked up the reins as he said to the grooms,
“We are only going a short distance, so shall not want you with us.”
The grooms touched the brims of their hats and the Duke drove off.
He was an excellent driver, as Cyrilla remembered from the past, and she knew how much he would enjoy training the new horses for Edmund.
Because she was aware that it would please him, she said,
“I am counting the days until I shall see Edmund again and now I know I shall be able to keep up with him when we are riding together!”
“I remember you used to complain because you were left behind on your pony,” the Duke remarked.
“It was very humiliating that Edmund’s mount was always bigger and faster than mine.”
“Now that you are in practice again, you ride very well.”
“I think both Edmund and I have taken after you, Papa,” Cyrilla said and realised that her father was pleased at the compliment.
They proceeded through the Park and then turned right round a wood.
“Where are we going?” Cyrilla asked.
“I am not only trying out the horses,” the Duke said, “but I want to call and see Jackson about some new buildings.”
He paused to ask,
“Do you remember Jackson? He is the farmer who lives down at Dingle Bottom. Being lower than the rest of the countryside, it’s a difficult place to farm.”
“Of course I remember,” Cyrilla replied.
They drove on and now the road began to descend sharply towards Dingle Bottom, where the land was often waterlogged in the winter and inclined to be swampy all the year round.
It was, however, an extremely pretty drive, with low hedges on either side of the road and a view of the Duke’s estate beyond, undulating away into the distance.
The Duke was pulling at the reins to make the horses proceed a little more slowly when suddenly over the hedge to the left of them jumped a stag.
It ran right in front of the bays, startling them in a manner that made one of them rear up and the other shy, catching a rein, as it did so, under the centre shaft.
For a moment the phaeton rocked, then the two horses were galloping in a headlong manner out of control down the steep incline towards Dingle Bottom.
The Duke, pulling at the reins with all his strength, realised he was having little effect on their wild flight and he knew that the road turned sharply at the bottom of the hill where it passed over a stone bridge.
Desperately he thought that, unless he could free the rein caught under the shaft and check the other horse’s mad dash, that was where they would crash.
But there was little time to think. He did wonder frantically whether he should tell Cyrilla to jump, then knew that to do so might prove even more disastrous than the crash would be.
It was only a question of seconds now. The bridge was ahead of them and there was nothing he could do. Exercising all his strength, he still was having no noticeable effect on the bays.
Then suddenly, from out of nowhere it seemed to the Duke, a man appeared on the road below them and, dismounting from his own horse, ran into the middle of the road to wait.
For a moment the Duke thought he must be mad.
Then, as they reached him, with his arms outstretched, he seized the bridles of both horses, holding them with an iron-like grip that forced them to check their speed and the Duke realised that they had been saved.
He tightened his pull on the reins even more than he had done before, straining every nerve in his body, as he knew the man at the horses’ heads was doing.
Slowly, within a few feet of the narrow bridge, the phaeton was brought almost to a standstill.
It was then that the offside bay reared up and his front hoof struck the side of the head of the man who was holding him.
He did not relinquish his grip, but his feet slipped and, as the horses went forward a few more paces, they dragged him with them.
The Duke heard Cyrilla scream and a moment later she had sprung onto the road as the horses passed over the body of the man who had brought them to a standstill and who now lay beneath the phaeton.
The Duke could not leave his still-frightened animals, but he knew without turning his head that Cyrilla was kneeling on the ground beside the Marquis’s prostrate body.
She was kissing his face frantically as the tears ran down hers.
*
“You’ll need a great number of new suits, my Lord.”
“I am aware of that,” the Marquis replied, staring at himself in the mirror.
It seemed incredible that he should have lost so much weight and, although his champagne-coloured pantaloons, being of the knitted material favoured by the Prince of Wales, were as tight as fashion decreed, his coat was undoubtedly unfashionably loose at the shoulders.
“Most gentlemen, my Lord,” his valet was saying, “put on weight when they’ve been laid up as your Lordship’s been, but then we don’t expect you to be like anyone else!”
There was a pride in the valet’s voice that the Marquis would have found amusing if he had been listening.
Instead he was wondering if, now that the doctor had allowed him to get back on his feet, the Duke would order him to leave The Castle.
He had not seen his host, an obviously reluctant one, since he had been carried back to The Castle.
First the local doctor and then Sir William Knifton, who had been fetched from London, had found that the Marquis had two ribs fractured and was bruised in a manner that was not only extremely painful but made him look, he said disgustedly, like a ‘piebald pony’.
But for a week he was in no condition to be critical about himself.
The first bay had struck him on the side of his head and he had been trampled by the other horse when he fell beneath the phaeton.
When he had first returned to consciousness, he could remember very little of what had happened. Then gradually he recalled how, from his hiding place in the woods, he had watched Cyrilla driving with her father.
He had ridden along in the shelter of the trees, thinking how beautiful she looked and wondering, as he had done a thousand times before, how he could ever see her alone.
Vaguely he had noticed that the horses, a well-matched pair, were hard to handle and it was only when they began to descend the sharp incline that he was aware that there might be any trouble.
He thought in fact that the Duke was going rather fast when he saw the stag jump in front of the horses and instinctively he spurred his own mount forward.
It all happened in what in retrospect seemed a split second. He knew immediately what he must do if he was to save Cyrilla and was well aware of the danger of it.
But he knew too that nothing mattered except that she should not be involved in a crash that was inevitable unless the horses could be brought under control.
“I understand,” Sir William Knifton had said with a smile during his third visit to Holm Castle to see his distinguished patient, “that you have been playing the hero! You have a great deal of decorations to show for it!”
“I can assure you they are damned painful,” the Marquis replied.
“You are fortunate that things are not worse,” Sir William said. “You might have broken an arm or a leg, or both.”
“How soon can I get up?” the Marquis asked.
It had taken a great deal of persuasion on Sir William’s part to make him realise that his ribs must heal.
However, because he knew how strong the Marquis was and how athletic, he told his valet, who was as good a nurse as any he could provide, that the Marquis’s recovery would be a good deal quicker than might have been expected from any ordinary man who had been knocked about in such a manner.
“Keep him quiet for as long as you can,” Sir William said to the valet before he left. “And, because he hates to feel weak and consequently helpless, see that he has as much massage on his legs as he can stand, but don’t dare touch his chest.”
“I understand, sir,” Davis said.
He was a strong, wiry little man who had been with the Marquis for many years and was in his own way devoted to him.
In fact it was Davis who made the Marquis obey Sir William’s orders, although he swore frequently that he would not be bullied.
Now at last he was on his feet and feeling a great deal better than he had expected.
“I am going downstairs,” he said aloud. “I am going to get some air, whatever you may say. I am sick to death of this room and everything in it!”
That was not entirely true, the Marquis knew as he said it.
By his bed and on the table near the window were two objects to which his eyes turned not once but practically every moment of the day.
Who Can Deny Love Page 14