“Are you enjoying yourself?”
“I have never before driven behind such magnificent horses,” she answered, “nor have I ever travelled so fast.”
The Duke smiled.
It was what he wanted to hear.
Then he said,
“We have another fifteen miles to go, but I reckon we should arrive before one o’clock, which is the time I am expected.”
The place where he was to meet Captain Daltry was not very far from the Marquis of Buxworth’s house and had he stayed there last night as arranged, he had intended, before he left, to inspect the Marquis’s stables and have a quick look at his estate.
The Duke was always intensely interested in how other people were farming their land and whether they had as many innovations as he had introduced on his, especially in Gloucestershire.
But while his estates were acclaimed as models of their kind and an example to every landlord in England, he was still prepared to admit that there was more he could learn, if only from other people’s mistakes.
He wondered if he should ask Ilitta whether, since she came from this part of the country, she had met or heard of the Marquis.
He also played with the idea of telling her his real identity and then decided against it.
He was afraid that if he did she might become self-conscious, as so many people were in his presence and the ease with which she talked to him now would be swept away.
It was almost, he thought to himself, as if she actually was his sister rather than a young woman with an elegant man.
He knew it was because she was so innocent and unsophisticated that it apparently had never crossed her mind that she was in a position dozens of women would envy in that she was spending a day in his company.
They were free from the social restrictions, which in other circumstances would have made it impossible for them to talk to each other frankly or intimately.
He had made it very clear to Captain Daltry that he preferred to be known as ‘Sir Ervan Trecarron’ when he was inspecting the mine.
“I am glad you said that, Your Grace,” Captain Daltry replied. “It was something I was going to suggest to you myself.”
He paused as if he was feeling for words before he went on,
“You will understand that it would be the greatest mistake for anybody working in the mine or living in the neighbourhood to be aware that it is up for sale.”
“You think it might upset them?”
“Of course it would!” Captain Daltry ejaculated. “The ordinary working man would be afraid either that he might lose his job or that a new employer would make heavy demands on him which he would find it difficult to meet.”
“I see your point,” the Duke said briefly.
“What is more,” Captain Daltry went on, warming to his theme, “if the local reporters should have the idea that the mine is up for sale or that anybody as important as Your Grace is thinking of buying it, it would be splashed all over the local newspapers and would undoubtedly be repeated in The Morning Post and The Times!”
The Duke could only agree that this would be a grievous mistake and Captain Daltry continued,
“It is therefore vital that Your Grace should just appear to be an ordinary visitor to the neighbourhood, interested in local activities.”
“Of course,” the Duke murmured.
“The men I shall have with me,” Captain Daltry went on, “waiting to show you the mine will have no idea that you have any other name.”
“I am sure that is sensible,” the Duke agreed.
“In order to make the whole thing seem more natural,” Captain Daltry said, “I have arranged that we shall have luncheon at Mr. Newall’s house, even though he is away. It is a large mansion, situated only about two miles from the village where the mine is and he has already expressed his deep regret that he cannot be there in person to entertain you.”
It all sounded to the Duke as if the arrangements were exactly what he himself would prefer and he merely told Captain Daltry that he would arrive just before one o’clock on Wednesday.
He had then written off to the Marquis of Buxworth and Lord d’Arcy Armitage inviting himself to stay.
Because Lord d’Arcy Armitage’s house was in the South of the County, he knew that, if he left there early in the morning, he would be able to be with his mother by dinnertime.
He accordingly arranged to send two changes of horses to the road he would be travelling on.
Then, having decided that the arrangements measured up to his idea of perfect organisation, he had set off, still determined to keep the real reason for his journey a secret.
Because he was so famous and aroused gossip whatever he did or wherever he went, he knew that to have everybody chattering about the possibility of his buying a coal mine would be to have dozens of offers of other mines pouring in.
Worst of all, he would have coachbuilders pleading with him to purchase a private train.
Since a Royal Railway carriage had been made for the Queen, he was aware that already two of his contemporaries intended to travel, as they put it, ‘under their own steam’ as soon as there were railways connecting London with their homes in the North of England.
“I have always driven to stay with you,” he had said to the Earl of Derby who lived in Lancashire, “and I see no reason to change my ways.”
“You must move with the times, Ervan,” the Earl had replied, “and what is more, you must give us older fellows a lead.”
He had laughed before he added,
“If you can climb to the top of the Matterhorn, you can hardly object to being a pioneer in the new era of steam.”
The Duke had told himself obstinately that it was something he had no intention of ever doing.
He was therefore rather shaken when three years ago he learnt that, after the Queen had taken her first train ride from Windsor Castle to London, she had immediately planned many more.
“Trains! Trains,” he had exclaimed at the time. “It is just a flash in the pan. A few crashes and everybody will be back riding horses or travelling in a wheeled carriage!”
Because his feelings had not changed it suddenly seemed ridiculous to be contemplating investing money in a coal mine.
Without really meaning to, he said aloud,
“I have a good mind to turn round and go home!”
Ilitta turned her face to look at him in astonishment.
“Why should you say that?” she asked.
“I have a feeling I am wasting my time and I don’t really want a coal mine!”
“Then you certainly must not buy one,” she said. “Personally I hate the idea of them, even while I realise that coal has become a necessity and a commodity that people cannot do without.”
The Duke looked at her in surprise.
“You mean you have thought about coal before now?”
“Of course!” she replied. “Is that such a surprise? I read the report on the horrors that took place in the past. Now the newspapers report that new safety devices have saved the lives of a great many miners and the Davy lamp has made all the difference to the men working below ground.”
The Duke looked at her in astonishment.
“How do you know about such matters?” he demanded.
She laughed.
“I suppose you think I only read the fashion pages of magazines and The Court Circular in the daily newspapers!”
He thought a little ruefully that that was all the women he spent so much time with ever read and even when he made a powerful speech in the House of Lords and it was headlines in the newspapers they were completely unaware of it.
“Tell me why you are interested,” he said thinking this was another unusual aspect of her he had not expected.
“Politics are about people,” she said, “and people interest me even though I do think they look like animals!”
“I don’t think that our Statesmen would be particularly flattered!” the Duke remarked dryly.
“Of
course I may be mistaken, because I have not seen many of them in the flesh,” Ilitta said, “but at the same time from what I read in the Parliamentary Reports of their speeches they appear to me either like a lot of silly sheep or else turkeycocks, puffed up with their own self-importance!”
The Duke laughed before he commented,
“That is certainly very scathing!”
She glanced at him a little nervously as if she thought that he was shocked by the way she had spoken.
But she saw that he was smiling and his eyes were twinkling and she therefore said,
“When I reach London, I will send you drawings of all the leading politicians and you will be able to see whether I am right or wrong.”
The Duke had the uncomfortable feeling that in quite a number of cases she would be right, but he replied,
“I hope that when our time together ends you will have given up this nonsensical idea of going to London alone.”
She did not reply and her eyes were on the road in front of her.
He knew without her saying so that he had not dissuaded her from her determination to go to London with or without his help.
A number of arguments came into his mind and then he thought it would be a mistake to bandy words at the moment and better to concentrate on what lay ahead.
To change the subject he said,
“I think we ought to have some sort of arrangement by which you can tell me what you think of the gentlemen we are about to meet without their being aware of it.”
“I have already thought of that,” Ilitta said, “and if as you say that we are meeting them for luncheon, I shall have plenty of time while they are eating to look at them, sense their vibrations and know whether they are false or true, straight or crooked.”
“Supposing you are wrong?” the Duke asked.
“That is a chance you will have to take,” Ilitta replied. “After all, when you engaged me, you were betting on an outsider!”
The Duke laughed and he was beginning to think that there was no subject that Ilitta was not interested in.
He asked her,
“I presume from that remark that you follow the racing reports.”
“Of course I do,” Ilitta replied. “Horses mean as much to me as I am sure they do to you and I like to know which horses have won the major races, and why.”
The Duke turned again to look at her before he asked,
“Are you telling me that you have theories as to why certain horses win certain races?”
“Naturally!” Ilitta replied. “Although I am not often fortunate enough to see racing, except in the part of the world where I live, I follow everything that happens.”
She paused to say in a more serious tone,
“It is not only breeding or form that makes a winner, but something a little extra or different in a horse’s training or in itself, that makes him win against other horses which seem his equal in every way.”
Again the Duke was surprised, knowing this was something he had often thought himself.
It was what had made him convinced where his own horses were concerned that it was that little extra something that made them beat other equally fine specimens of horseflesh.
Because it was a subject he found absorbing, they talked of nothing else all the last miles of the journey and only ceased when Hanson interrupted them to say,
“We’re just enterin’ the village, sir, and it’d be best when we gets there if we asks somebody where the house is.”
A few moments later they had turned into a long drive with a lodge on each side of the entrance gates, which seemed to be in need of repair.
“I will let you know,” Ilitta said, “some way or another what I think of these men and please don’t agree too quickly to what they suggest.”
“Of course not!” the Duke answered. “This is only a preliminary visit and I shall certainly send people of my own choice to inspect the mine and will read their report very carefully before I even consider buying it.”
“I thought you would say that and, of course, it’s very sensible of you!”
The Duke smiled a little mockingly, thinking it unusual that such a young girl should commend him for being sensible.
As the house they were seeking came in front of them, the Duke saw that it was a tall, square, rather ugly Georgian mansion built of grey stone.
He noted that the garden surrounding it was neglected and like the lodges the windows of the house needed painting and, as he saw when they reached it, so did the front door.
Almost as soon as he drew up his horses beside a flight of stone steps, Captain Daltry came hurrying down them, smiling at the Duke with delight at seeing him and holding out his hand in welcome.
“You are exactly on time, Sir Ervan,” he said, “in fact far sooner than I expected.”
Then, as he reached the phaeton, he looked questioningly at Ilitta sitting beside the Duke.
Hanson had already jumped down from the back and, as the Duke stepped to the ground. he took the reins from him.
Then, without hurrying, the Duke shook Captain Daltry by the hand and walked round to the other side of the phaeton to help Ilitta.
As he lifted her down, he thought that she was as light as thistledown and nobody would suspect that she was a day over fifteen.
As they walked together round the vehicle to the steps, he knew from the way she was moving beside him that she was enjoying the situation.
He thought it certainly made it more amusing for him to know that he had a private investigator of his own and that Captain Daltry was quite unaware of it.
“I have brought my sister with me, Daltry,” he said.
“Let me introduce you, Captain Daltry – Miss Ilitta Trecarron!”
“I am delighted to meet you,” Captain Daltry exclaimed.
But, as he shook her hand, Ilitta was sure that was untrue and he was, in fact, annoyed that the Duke was not alone.
“I have arranged,” he said as they walked up the steps, “what I hope you will find an adequate meal, but with our host away enjoying himself in London and most of the servants on holiday, it has not been as easy as I expected.”
“My sister and I are quite used to roughing it,” the Duke replied.
“I expect first you would both like a wash,” Captain Daltry said. “I will take Miss Trecarron upstairs and she must, as I was not expecting her, excuse the rooms not being open or as well dusted as they should be.”
He pointed out to the Duke that there was a cloakroom off the hall, then walked ahead of Ilitta up a quite impressive staircase.
Although the walls were hung with many portraits, she noticed that they were obviously by second-rate artists and were of dull and rather ugly people.
She supposed that they must be the ancestors of the owners of the house.
Captain Daltry hurried to open the door of a room leading off the landing on the first floor.
The curtains were drawn and the wooden shutters were closed and he said, as he crossed the room,
“Don’t move until I have let in some light. I am afraid that there will only be cold water on the washing stand, but I will try to order some hot for you, although it may take some time.”
It did not sound as though he was particularly eager to do so and Ilitta said quickly,
“No, of course not! I can manage quite well with cold and I have no wish to cause you any bother.”
Captain Daltry, having opened the wooden shutters to let in the light, replied,
“It’s no bother and I am sure it is more pleasant for your brother to have you with him than if he was alone.”
She had the feeling as he spoke that he was somehow deliberately making the best of a bad job.
She tried, because she wished to be fair, not to judge him too quickly, but to give herself time.
“I will be looking out for you when you come downstairs,” Captain Daltry said, “but we are using a sitting room that opens from the centre of the hall and you
cannot miss it.”
“Thank you,” Ilitta replied.
He closed the door and she heard him running down the corridor and wondered why he was in such a hurry.
Then she went to the washing stand to find that there was cold water in a china ewer as he said, but there was a layer of dust on top of it and she knew that it had not been renewed for some time.
There was also dust on the floor and on the dressing table and she thought that it was quite obvious that there was no Lady in the house to supervise the servants.
She supposed in consequence that in their Master’s absence they had grown very slack.
She took off her bonnet, tidied her hair, retied the blue ribbons on either side of her head and thought that she looked a nice simple schoolgirl.
But she was certain that Captain Daltry, intent on impressing his guest, would pay little if any attention to her.
This proved to be the truth and, as they sat at a large table in the dining room, Ilitta, listening to the four men talking, thought the whole arrangement was rather strange.
First of all there was no trained servant to wait on them, but a man who from his appearance she suspected to be a groom in charge of Captain Daltry’s horses.
He changed the plates awkwardly and made a great deal of noise stacking them on a side table.
Captain Daltry himself poured out the wine and his other guests passed the dishes that were arranged on a sideboard.
His friends were first to appear to Ilitta with animal heads almost as soon as she was introduced to them.
The one who Captain Daltry informed the Duke was his Solicitor was a small beady-eyed, middle-aged man with pointed features.
The other was large, clumsy and obviously badly educated.
They, however, did full justice to the food, piling it on their plates and eating with a greedy zest that seemed to suggest that they did not often enjoy such a lavish repast.
Captain Daltry had certainly made an effort, the Duke thought.
There was a whole salmon which he guessed came from the Wye, there was a loin of pork and a leg of lamb and a brawn which had obviously been purchased from an inn or a shop that specialised in the garnishing and presentation of such a dish.
Nothing, both the Duke and Ilitta knew, was home-cooked, although Captain Daltry had said,
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