White Lilac

by Barbara Cartland

  “Accent, is that what you calls it? Though I s’pose all Cornish people speaks alike.”

  “That’s true,” she said, “as do we in Worcestershire.”

  “That be so,” the old man agreed.

  “Do you miss Cornwall?” Ilitta asked.

  “Aye, but I had to come away,” the old man said. “There be plenty of copper in the mine there, as I tells His Grace, but he shut it, sayin’ he did not like to think of any human being spendin’ his life in the dark.”

  “Was it a Duke you were working for?” Ilitta asked.

  “Aye, indeed, the Duke of Marazion. A fine gentleman, and very understandin’ he was and could not bear to see a man or beast sufferin’ if he could help it.”

  The old man paused and gave a little cough before he went on,

  “That were why he closed down the mine though I tells him he was shuttin’ away a fortune.”

  He gave a laugh before he added,

  “But I s’pose Dukes be so rich they don’t need money like ordinary folk.”

  Because of the way he said it Ilitta laughed too and then she remarked,

  “Well, I rather sympathise with your Duke in saying that human beings should not always be in the dark. But now I must go back the way I came before it gets too dark for me to find the way.”

  Ilitta rose to her feet and the old man said,

  “You be a pretty girl and I like talkin’ to you. Come and see me again.”

  “I might do that in an hour or so,” Ilitta replied. “Would you mind?”

  “I’d say welcome to you. Then I can tell you more about the old days.”

  Then, a little apprehensively, he added,

  “You’ll not say to them people downstairs I be here?”

  “No, I promise you,” Ilitta said, “and if by chance they find you, please don’t say you have seen me.”

  “I’ll not breathe that I’ve seen a sign nor sight of you,” the old man said, then laughed and brought on another fit of coughing.

  “You keep warm,” Ilitta said. “I promise you I will come back later.”

  She took one of his hands in hers and felt how thin and frail it was.

  “It has been very nice meeting you,” she said softly.

  “Thank you, dear. Thank you,” the old man replied.

  She slipped away, opened the door and closed it very quietly and crept back up the stairs.

  She prayed as she reached the top floor, but since now it was growing darker she was certain that even if Albert was looking she would seem in the distance nothing but a shadow.

  Quickly she climbed back into the roof and hurried over the joists.

  It was much darker than it had been before, but she did not falter and when finally she looked down through the open trapdoor that led to the bedroom she saw the Duke looking up at her.

  She could see by the expression on his face that he had been anxious during her absence.

  But now she had returned, he put up his arms and laying her hands on his shoulders he skilfully but gently lifted her down.

  Then for a moment he held her close against him and she felt that it was like coming home to safety and that the strength of him made her feel secure.

  When she looked up into his face, she thought that there was a strange expression in his eyes, but because she was so excited at what she had to tell him she said in a whisper,

  “It’s all right! I have found a way we can escape and I have so much to tell you!”

  Then, with what she thought was almost an abrupt movement, the Duke took his arms from around her and said,

  “That is what I am waiting to hear.”

  Chapter Five

  Sitting beside the Duke on the hard mattress, Ilitta told him excitedly what she had discovered and how she was certain that the old man could tell them how to sneak out of the house without being seen.

  She knew that he was delighted at her news.

  At the same time he was very careful to keep his voice low, as she realised, to make it sound as if they were depressed and worried about the situation they found themselves in.

  As she finished, she asked,

  “Shall we go now? At once?”

  The Duke shook his head.

  “I think that would be a mistake. Since it is now nearly dark, it would be exceedingly difficult not only to make our way along the attic without a light but also to find our way through the rest of the house.”

  Ilitta realised that he was being sensible, but she gave a sigh before she murmured,

  “I am so anxious to escape.”

  “So am I,” the Duke replied. “Equally we have to plan every move we make and not make a mistake.”

  She knew that he was thinking of how ruthless Captain Daltry might be if he thought that his prisoners were trying to escape and would not hesitate to put into action his threat to shoot the Duke in the leg.

  “What I am going to suggest,” the Duke said, “is that we rest until dawn, when it will be just light enough to see our way out.”

  She smiled at him and realised as she did so that since she had returned the room had grown very much darker.

  It was not only dusk outside but she thought that she could see the glimmer of the first evening star.

  “I have another suggestion to make,” the Duke said quietly.

  “What is that?”

  “When I am travelling in a very cold climate, I and the men with me are all sensible enough at night to lie close to our horses. That is often essential, unless one wants to wake up in the morning and find oneself turned into an icicle!”

  Ilitta prevented herself from laughing, but she gave a little chuckle.

  “Although it may seem slightly unconventional,” the Duke went on, “I propose, since we have no horses with us, we lie close together, otherwise I am afraid that you will find yourself very stiff in the morning.”

  Ilitta did not hesitate.

  “Of course, I see that would be the sensible thing to do,” she said, “and which of the rooms in our magnificent suite do you suggest we use?”

  “I have made some investigations while you were gone,” he replied, “and I found that there is one tattered bolster which will do for our heads and, believe it or not, another blanket!”

  “That is certainly an unexpected luxury,” Ilitta teased.

  The Duke rose from the bed and as he did so picked up her cape, which was still lying behind him on the mattress.

  She saw that he had already removed the blankets and found that he had placed them on the bed next door.

  By now it was difficult to see, but she was aware that he was taking off his coat and she knew that he had already removed his boots before her return.

  He lay down on the bed, then put out his arm and she knew that he expected her to place her head against his shoulder.

  She felt as she did so that the closeness of him was not only warm and comforting but also gave her a feeling of security.

  As soon as they were lying together, the Duke first wrapped one of the three blankets over their feet, then arranged the other two to cover them both with finally Ilitta’s lined cape on top.

  As he lay back, Ilitta was aware of how wise he had been.

  Now that the excitement she had felt at coming back to him was over, she realised that it had grown very cold for the attic was not only extremely chilly but also damp.

  Then, as she moved instinctively a little nearer to the Duke, she could feel his heart beating and thought it was quite extraordinary to be in the arms of a man she had met only yesterday.

  Yet she felt as if she had known him all her life and that he was somebody she could trust implicitly.

  She was not even quite certain what she meant by the word ‘trust’.

  She just knew she could rely on him and that because he was there she was not really afraid.

  In fact the terror she had felt when she entered his bedroom to escape from the man breaking into hers had almost been forgotten.


  “Go to sleep,” she heard the Duke say, “I will wake you when it is time for us to make our escape.”

  “We must on no account oversleep.”

  “I will not do that,” he answered. “I have grown used, on my travels, to waking at whatever time is necessary.”

  “I would like you to tell me about your travels.”

  “I think you would find them quite interesting,” the Duke replied, “but now I want you to rest.”

  It made Ilitta happy to know that he was thinking of her.

  She knew he would protect her and once again she was thinking of him as a Royal standing on top of the moors with his horns silhouetted against the sky.

  ‘I am very lucky to have found him,’ she told herself and, without realising it, snuggled a little closer.

  The Duke, however, was awake, watching through the window the stars coming out in the sky one by one

  He was puzzled with himself over the strange sensations he had felt when he saw Ilitta looking down at him through the trapdoor in the ceiling.

  He had been worrying because she had been so long and hoping that she had not had an accident or perhaps been caught by one of their jailers.

  Then he told himself that if that had happened she would have shouted for him, as she would have, had she got into difficulties in the attic.

  To keep himself occupied, he had searched in all the drawers of the chests in both their rooms and found, as he had told her, the bolster and the extra blanket.

  He was well aware how cold their attic bedrooms would become during the night and, thinking how the servants in big houses were often badly provided for, he was determined that should not happen in any of his.

  He wished that there was some way he could light a fire.

  It would be easy to break up the chairs and even the drawers in the chests, but it was only wishful thinking and once again he was back to wondering why Ilitta was taking so long.

  Only when he was growing really worried did he look up and see her smiling down at him.

  Her fair hair, falling forward, framed her face and he knew by the sparkle of her eyes that she was bringing him good news.

  He put up his arms eagerly.

  Then, as he lifted her down, finding it easy because she was so light, he held her for a moment against his chest and found that the blood was throbbing in his temples!

  Suddenly he had an almost irrepressible desire to kiss her.

  She looked so lovely as she stared up at him, her eyes wide and shining, her lips parted in her eagerness to tell him what she had found, that it was only by a superhuman effort of self-control that the Duke did not hold her lips captive with his.

  Then he knew not only would it frighten her, but that it would also be very wrong of him to destroy her trust in him.

  Instead he forced himself to sit down on the bed beside her without touching her and concentrate on what she was saying.

  But he knew that with every breath he drew he wanted her in a strange way that was quite different from the burning desire he had felt for many other women.

  Then inevitably there had been a joint need for each other that had made two fires flare up, leaping higher and higher until they became one.

  But with Ilitta it was completely different.

  Now, as he held her in his arms, he was aware by her soft breathing and the stillness of her body that she was drifting into sleep.

  As he felt his heart beating with an irrepressible desire, at the same time he knew he wanted to protect her and keep her from anything that might harm or frighten her.

  He was conscious of the same sweet scent coming from her hair that he noticed when he went to her room at the inn and had tried to put a name to it but failed.

  Then, as more stars filled the sky, he thought that what his mother had prayed for had come true and he had found the perfect woman who had always eluded him.

  Not, as he suggested laughingly, on the top of the Himalayas, nor at the source of some unexplored river or outside the Acropolis in Athens.

  He had found her in a servants’ attic, cold, cheerless and damp, where they were both the prisoners of an unscrupulous man who was demanding a ridiculously large sum of money in ransom.

  The Duke thought, as he drew Ilitta a little closer to him, that he would give half his fortune to save her from suffering or from being frightened.

  At the same time everything that was adventurous and courageous in him fought against having to give in tamely to what he admitted to himself was a very clever piece of roguery.

  The Duke could commend Daltry for at least being original in thinking of selling a mine in the absence of its owner and even commandeering his house to make the whole deal seem more plausible.

  He knew from what Ilitta had discovered that Newall himself had no part in this game.

  But it had been sharp of Daltry to create a situation in which, if he had been complacent, he would have accepted the reports, paid for the mine and found that he had lost ten thousand pounds without anything to show for it.

  The Duke was quite certain that Daltry had gambled on the assumption that he would not like to be made to look a fool and would therefore not have sued him for obtaining money by false pretences.

  It would be very easy to prove Daltry guilty.

  Equally, if he had been so foolish as to trust the crook, to expose it would have damaged his reputation for always being a winner, both on the Racecourse and in the athletics he participated in.

  ‘It will teach me a lesson,’ the Duke told himself. ‘At the same time, although Daltry will not be aware of it, fate in the shape of a fog has brought me something so valuable, so precious, that it is worth a million times more than any coal mine in the whole country!’

  He thought how thrilled his mother would be when he told her about Ilitta.

  Then with a faint smile he remembered that he knew nothing whatever about her, who her parents were, where she came from and whether from his family’s point of view she would be considered worthy of being his wife.

  But he told himself that if she came from the gutter it would not matter, if she was the daughter of a coalminer, he would still want to marry her.

  However, he knew for certain that every movement she made and every word she said proclaimed her to be of gentle birth and undoubtedly his equal, however undistinguished her family tree might be to his.

  He kissed her hair and felt it soft and silky against his lips.

  ‘I love you, my darling,’ he said in his heart. ‘And when we are free, I will tell you so.”

  It seemed very strange to him that this was the first time he had held a woman in his arms who was not acutely conscious of him as a man, while indeed he was very much aware that she was a woman.

  But by now Ilitta was sleeping deeply and contentedly as a child might have done.

  The Duke thought that it was one of the most fascinating experiences he had ever known to find somebody so completely unselfconscious, innocent and unspoilt in a world that was full of women who used their femininity as a weapon to ensnare and entice every man they met.

  ‘I love you, my precious!’ he repeated in his head.

  Then he wanted the night to pass quickly so that he could talk to her and see the little dimple on the side of her mouth when she smiled at him.

  *

  Ilitta felt herself coming back through wave upon wave of sleep as the Duke moved very slowly and gently.

  It took her a second to realise where she was and what had happened.

  By now the Duke had left her and she opened her eyes to see in the first faint light of the dawn that he was standing beside the bed.

  She did not speak because she remembered immediately how essential it was that they should move silently.

  Quickly she threw off the blankets and walked on tiptoe in her stockinged feet into the next room.

  The Duke followed her and she bent down only to pick up her slippers, which were lying on the floor.

>   She held them in her hands and the Duke, having followed her with his coat and her cape over his arm laid them down on the bed.

  Then, putting his hands round her knees as he had done yesterday, he lifted her up into the opening over their heads.

  When she was inside the attic, Ilitta paused for a moment to make quite certain she was moving the easiest and quickest way to the end of the building, knowing that the Duke would be following her.

  Then she was aware that he was handing something up to her and bending down took it from him to find that it was his boots.

  She put them carefully on one the joists and then stood aside to leave him plenty of room to lift himself lithely up by his hands until he was crouching down beside her.

  She smiled at him, but they did not speak.

  Then Ilitta set off slightly encumbered because she was carrying her slippers.

  She realised that while the Duke had put on his smart grey whipcord driving jacket, he still had to carry his boots and her cape, although they did not appear to incommode him.

  Once again there was a long way to crawl over the slats beneath the roof and, because there was still very little light, she had to watch every movement so as not to slip.

  Then at last she reached the end of the house and knew that this was where there was always the chance of their being seen as they descended the ladder and moved across the passage in which the Baboon was supposed to be watching for them.

  She was sure that the Duke had been wise in waiting until this hour by which time sleep would have overcome the wrestler and he was doubtless snoring peacefully, not contemplating for a moment that they could get away.

  At any rate there was no sign that he had heard them as they hurried down the next flight of stairs.

  Without knocking, Ilitta opened the door into the room where she had talked to the old man.

  She was not surprised to see the fire burning in the grate and instead of being in bed he was still in the armchair, wrapped in his shawl with a rug over his legs which were resting on the seat of another chair.

  There was a candle beside him although it had burnt low and as soon as she came into the room he opened his eyes.

  “Ah! It be you again!” he remarked quietly.

  “Yes, I have come back,” Ilitta said, “and I have brought with me a friend who is escaping, as I am, from those men who have no right to be in your Master’s house.”