‘What the devil am I to do?’ the Duke asked himself.
He felt that whatever happened, whatever the penalties, he could not give Una up.
The mere fact of touching her had made his blood seem as if it was on fire and he knew that his desire for her was increasing every moment and every second they were together.
‘I want you!’ he wanted to cry aloud. ‘I want you unbearably!’
But he knew that, if he said anything so unrestrained, she would shrink away from him nervously and perhaps try wildly to escape, as she had tried to escape the young painter this afternoon.
The Duke suddenly had an awful feeling that the sands were running out and that time was going too quickly.
He knew that he wanted to woo Una very gently and to feel her respond to him as a flower will open its petals to the sunshine.
This was not a fiery, impulsive unrestrained urge in the mere physical sense. This, he told himself, was far more subtle and far more alluring.
The Duke had always looked on love as a romantic name for what was a physical union between two people who attracted each other chemically.
He had never indulged in the poetical fantasies of some of his contemporaries and, as he had grown older, he had been quite coldly analytical about what he felt for the women he made love to.
He found himself, however much they aroused him, critical of their faults, their flaws and their little habits, which even at the very onset of an affair he would find irritating.
It was extraordinary, but in the time that he had been with Una she had never shown him any side of her nature that he had not found delightful. He had never found anything she said stupid or out of place.
The grace of her body and the beauty of her face had, he thought, something spiritual about them that he had never found in any other woman.
But, because she held him at bay, not by anything she said or did but simply because of some aura of purity that encircled her, he knew as he controlled his desire to make passionate love to her that he could not lose her.
‘Damn Ireland!’ he said in his heart. ‘I have found something far more important to me personally.’
Because he was thinking so deeply, they drove in silence until Una gave a little exclamation of delight and raised her head from his shoulder.
He saw then that she was looking at the Seine, silver beneath the starlight, with its bridges spanning it like jewelled bangles.
Una moved from the shelter of his arms to sit upright so that she could see more.
The Duke watched her profile and knew that she attracted him to such an extent that he had precipitately and astonishingly fallen in love.
He could never remember in the whole of his long and varied career with women feeling as he did now.
Like a diver who had sought for years at the bottom of the sea for a perfect pearl, he felt an elation that made him step out of his ordinary self and gasp at the wonder of it.
“This is the real Paris,” Una murmured. “What we saw last night was only the imitation.”
It was typical of her, the Duke thought, to say exactly the right thing.
He drew her back against him and wrapped the rug over her, thinking that she had already given him a happiness that he had never known before.
They drove for a long time and it was as if there was no need for them to talk to each other, their hearts and their souls were speaking without words.
Only as they reached the Rue du Faubourg St. Honoré did Una move and the Duke took his arm from her.
In the lights shining over the entrance, he could see the expression in her eyes and thought it was that of a child who has been in Wonderland.
They stepped out, passed through the hall and entered the salon as if they both knew what the other was wanting.
The lights were low and shaded and the Duke thought the beautiful room seemed exactly the background that he would have chosen for Una.
The door closed behind them.
She stood for a moment looking at him and then he was not certain whether she moved or he did, but she was in his arms and her face was turned up to his.
“My darling, my lovely one!” the Duke breathed and his lips came down on hers.
He felt the softness and the innocence of her lips and he kissed her very gently, almost as if he were touching a flower.
He felt, as he had anticipated, that her body quivered against his and he knew that she was in fact the butterfly he had captured and that if he was not gentle he could destroy it.
His kiss became a little more insistent, but still he kept himself under control and he knew that there was something spiritual and perfect in their kiss, which was passionate and yet in a way sacred.
He raised his head and Una said, her voice a little breathless and unsteady,
“Th-that was – a perfect end to a most – perfect and – wonderful night!”
Her voice seemed almost to break on the last words.
Then, to the Duke’s astonishment, almost before he could realise what was happening, she had moved across the room and he was alone.
He stood for a moment throbbing with the ecstasy that she had aroused in him and with her voice singing in his ears.
Then he told himself that it was what he might have expected, but what she would not understand was that he wanted her to stay.
He wanted to make love to her and eventually make her his, completely and absolutely.
‘She is so young,’ he told himself. ‘I must be gentle. I must do nothing too quickly.’
He walked across the room and poured himself a drink and then pulled back one of the curtains to stand at the window looking out over the garden.
Beyond the trees there was the glow of lights from the Champs-Élysées blending with the glittering stars overhead.
‘I am in love!’ the Duke told himself. ‘In love as I never believed it possible to be.’
But he asked himself what he could do about it.
He knew now that he wanted Una not only as his mistress but with him forever. Then he laughed at the absurdity of such an idea.
As the Duke of Wolstanton, he belonged to an ancient family, second in importance only to the Royal Family.
How could he possibly take as his wife the daughter of an artist?
It would defame the family name. It would bring disgrace to the Stantons, who had played their part in the history of England and who, good or bad in their private lives, had always been dignified and proud in public.
“It’s impossible!” the Duke said aloud.
Yet he knew that with every breath he drew he wanted Una more.
He tried to tell himself that, once she was his in the physical sense of the word, everything would be all right.
They would have a happy time together and, when he left her, he would see that she had plenty of money for the rest of her life.
But he knew that that was not what he wanted.
He wanted something quite different, something that could never be assuaged by the mere physical contact of two bodies.
He was in love, and love was exactly what the poets had written about it, the artists painted and the musicians composed.
It seemed incredible that he had had to wait until he was nearly thirty-five to feel like this and then to fall in love overnight, when he was looking for just a week or two’s fun in the most frivolous City in the world.
“What am I to do? God in Heaven, what am I to do?” the Duke asked aloud.
He felt as if his own question echoed and re-echoed back at him, but there was no reply.
*
Two hours later the Duke walked upstairs to his bedroom.
When he entered it, he found his tired valet waiting up for him and, when he was undressed and the man had left him, he did not get into bed but stood at the window thinking.
The communicating door into Una’s room was only a few feet away from him and yet he knew that he would not open it.
In the past two h
ours, while he had been thinking about her, he had known one thing irrefutably.
He could not seduce her and leave her.
His love was too great for that. He wanted her, God knew he wanted her, and his whole being cried out for the softness and sweetness of her.
But, because he loved her, he would not spoil anything so perfect and so utterly and completely beautiful.
‘Tomorrow I will find a solution as to what I can do for her,’ he told himself, ‘but I must not touch her again. If I do, nothing will stop me from loving her and making her mine!’
Everything that was best in the Duke and that had been overlaid by years of indolence and pleasure-seeking, was swept away by a love that was greater than desire and finer and more glorious than any physical need.
Because he loved her he wanted to lay at Una’s feet everything that was perfect and beautiful to match what she personified in herself.
Nothing harsh, ugly or cruel should touch her and that included his own need for her.
But what he thought and what he felt were two different things.
In his mind his love was sanctified, but his body craved for her agonisingly.
It struck him suddenly that this was his Gethsemane, which comes to every man sooner or later in his life, a time of crisis that he must accept.
‘I thought love meant happiness,’ he said, ‘but this is agony, torture, crucifixion!’
It was then, as the words seemed to go out into the darkness of the night, that he heard the door behind him being pushed open.
Chapter Seven
Una had left the salon in an indescribable rapture.
As she reached the sanctuary of her bedroom, she thought that whatever happened in the future she would have something to remember, something so precious, so perfect, that she knew that she would never experience anything like it again, however long she lived.
She knew now that what she had felt for the Duke ever since she had first seen him was love.
Only because she was so ignorant of men and even of herself she had not realised that what she felt and what occurred when they looked into each other’s eyes was the love that she had always believed she would find at some time in her life.
It had come to her with a glory and a radiance that was Divine.
She had wanted to remain in the Duke’s arms, for him to go on kissing her, but because she was so unusually perceptive where he was concerned, she thought that it might make it difficult for him to leave her.
She realised that he must do his duty and accept the position of Viceroy of Ireland.
She was not so foolish as to think that it was possible for him to hold such an important post and, at the same time, for them to remain as they were now.
To be with him was like being in Heaven, but she knew that it was unconventional and wrong for her to stay alone and unchaperoned in his house.
It had not seemed wrong.
In fact she could not think of anything that had happened that could be misconstrued by anyone as being wrong since the Duke had taken her away from the Moulin Rouge.
The whole house, like him, seemed to be haloed with a beauty that made her think of her mother and the atmosphere there had been in their home outside Paris.
But she knew quite well what the parents of the girls with whom she had been at school would think if any of their daughters behaved in such a manner.
Although she asked herself helplessly what else she could have done, she knew that it was something that must not continue.
Now she was not thinking of herself but of the Duke.
As Viceroy of Ireland, he would represent the Queen and Her Majesty stood for everything that was respectable and conventional. That certainly did not include a young woman with no money and nowhere to go.
‘What shall I – do? Tell me – Mama, what – shall I do?’ Una asked.
But for once her prayer was not a desperate plea for help simply because the Duke’s kiss had made her pulsate as if to hidden music and she felt that the whole world shone with a celestial light.
She undressed slowly and then climbed into bed.
As she did so, she asked herself why she could not have stayed with him for just a little while longer, for then perhaps he would have kissed her again.
‘Tomorrow he will leave me to go back to London,’ she thought.
She hid her face in the pillow because it was an agony to think of parting from him.
“I love him! I love him!” she cried over and over again.
She thought that she would lie awake and listen for him to come up the stairs and go to his bedroom next door to hers.
She was aware that there was a communicating door between them, but it had meant nothing to her, except that he was near and because of it she felt safe.
She knew that even to hear his footsteps would make her feel as if his arms were round her again and she need no longer be afraid.
She left one candle burning by her bed so that she would not fall asleep and then went back in her mind over everything that had happened during the evening.
Their dinner at the Grand Vefour, the things they had said to each other, the drive in the open carriage, the lights in the Place de la Concorde and the shimmering silver of the Seine.
It had all been an enchantment that was like a Fairy story, but she knew that this one would not have a happy ending.
Yet it had been a happiness beyond words and beyond the wildest heights of her imagination to feel his lips on hers, the strength of his arms and the closeness of him.
‘I will pray for him all my life,’ she vowed, ‘pray that he will help other people as he has – helped me and that the Irish will benefit by his brilliant mind and his generous heart.’
Thinking of the Duke, she drifted away into a dream in which her head was on his shoulder, as it had been when they drove close together in the carriage.
She was suddenly conscious that she was no longer dreaming, but was awake and the door of her bedroom had opened.
She heard it hazily, not wishing to lose her dream and the feeling that she was close to the Duke.
Then she heard a thick voice ask,
“Are you – a-shleep, pretty lady?”
Una started and opened her eyes.
Standing inside the open door was Lord Stanton and, even before she looked at him, she knew by the way he slurred his words that he was drunk.
She had seen her father drunk on several occasions in the past, which had shocked and frightened her. But it was very much more terrifying to find Lord Stanton in her room and see the smile on his lips.
“Came to shay goodnight,” he said “and kiss one of the prettiesht little ladies I ever set eyes on!”
Una sat up in bed.
“Go away!” she said. “You have – no right to – come into my room!”
She meant to sound firm and angry, but instead her voice trembled and she could speak hardly above a whisper.
“Looked all over Parish,” Lord Stanton said, swaying as he spoke, “and never found anyone’s pretty ash – you!”
He spluttered over the last words and then added,
“You can make up for my dishappointment and kish me goodnight.”
“N-no – !” Una exclaimed.
He was lurching towards her, his hands outstretched.
“No – no – !” she cried again.
She realised that he was not listening and was almost at her side.
Then she remembered that on the other side of the room was the door that would lead her to the Duke.
At that moment it was like a lifebuoy to a drowning man and with a stifled little scream, as she felt the touch of Lord Stanton’s hot hands, she scrambled across the bed and onto the floor on the other side.
Then without looking back, she rushed towards the communicating door and pulled it open.
It was heavy, far heavier than she had anticipated, but she used all her strength to open it, and as she managed it, she heard Lord
Stanton call out but even as she was free of him.
Because she was so frightened, she rushed through the door.
Only when she did so did she find that she was not in the Duke’s bedroom, as she had expected to be, but in a very small space, which in a previous age might have been used as a powder closet.
There was an uncurtained window and in the dim light coming through it she saw another door straight ahead.
She hurled herself against it. It opened inwards and she fell rather than walked into the room beyond.
The Duke turned round in astonishment as the door opened and Una, breathless with fear, flung herself against him.
For the moment she could not speak and could hardly breathe and, as his arms went round her, she clung to him convulsively.
“What has happened? What has upset you?” the Duke asked.
He could feel her trembling through the thin lawn of her nightgown and he thought, as his arms tightened, that it was Fate that she should have come to him when he had been so determined not to go to her.
“What has happened?” he asked again and now, still breathless, her voice coming jerkily from between her lips, Una answered,
“Th-that – man – your cousin – he – he frightened me!”
“Frightened you? How could he do that?” the Duke asked sharply.
“He said he wanted – to – k-kiss me,” Una whispered.
She hid her face against the Duke again, knowing that because she was with him she was safe and that Lord Stanton could not touch her.
“This is something I will not have happen in my house!” the Duke exclaimed angrily.
He made a movement as if he would go towards the door Una had left open, but she clung to him, crying,
“No, no! Don’t – leave me! And there must not – be a row!”
“Why not?” the Duke asked harshly. “It is intolerable that any man should behave in such a manner.”
Even as he spoke he knew that it was his own fault. He had made it clear to Bertie Stanton that Una was nothing of importance in his life and, as she was staying alone in the house, what was he likely to think, except that she was a loose woman without any moral principles?
Una was right. It would be a mistake to make a scene.
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