“The maid thought it strange, Your Grace, but I tells her I were sure ’twas something her Ladyship had arranged with Your Grace last night.”
The Duke’s lips tightened.
What his valet had just said had stunned him and he was finding it hard to believe what he was told.
At the same time he was wondering frantically what he could do about it.
“Go and find the lady’s maid,” he ordered, “and ask her if her Ladyship left a message for me or perhaps a note.”
The way he spoke made his valet, after one startled glance, quickly leave the room.
The Duke stared into the mirror not seeing his own face but Ilitta’s.
‘How can you do this to me?’ he cried out in his heart.
He knew at that moment that he loved her so overwhelmingly, so completely, that he would never rest until he had found her again and even if she intended to hide from him, wherever she had gone, he would discover her.
He was sensible enough to know that it was going to be very difficult and it was important that Lord d’Arcy Armitage should not know that anything was amiss.
He seemed to wait a long time before his valet came hurrying back into the room.
“The maid apologises most profusely, Your Grace,” he said, “but it wasn’t until I asks her if her Ladyship had left any kind of message that she discovered there was a note on the dressing table.”
Without answering, the Duke almost snatched it from him and walked to the window to open an envelope with Lord d’Arcy Armitage’s crest on it.
Ilitta’s writing was somehow as he had expected it to be, the letters beautifully formed, the written words having a grace and beauty that was somehow like her.
Feeling as if everything danced in front of his eyes, he read,
“I have taken your advice and I am going home. You are right – I could not look after myself in London without anybody to protect me. I did not know such strange things could happen in the world outside.
I can only thank you for being so kind, and for all the nice words you said about my pictures.
I shall go on painting, even though there will be nobody to appreciate them. Perhaps one day when I have finished a picture I think will please you, I will ask you to accept it from somebody who will always be grateful for having known you.
Ilitta.”
On either side of her signature there was a small drawing.
It was easy to recognised Lord d’Arcy Armitage as an ageing horse who had been very spirited in his prime.
On the other side was the writhing body of a cobra and the face was so exactly like the Comtesse’s that the Duke gave a little chuckle as he looked at it.
He read the letter once and then again.
Then he knew that, while desperately afraid that he had lost Ilitta, the letter gave him a ray of hope he had not expected.
He was too experienced with women not to realise that when she had drawn the Comtesse as a cobra, making the snake’s body sinuous and seductive, she had been jealous!
Only a very feminine reaction could have made her draw the face so perceptively, showing all the Comtesse’s beauty and sophistication and at the same time revealing her as greedily possessive and dangerous.
It told the Duke what he had longed to know, that when Ilitta had written her note to him and drawn the Comtesse at the foot of it, she had been thinking of him not as a protective stag but as a man.
The Duke slipped the letter back into the envelope and put it in his inside pocket.
Then his brain, which had never failed him in any emergency, began almost like a machine to go over all that had happened, analyse it and draw conclusions to help him eventually find Ilitta.
He stood for such a long time at the window that his valet watching him anxiously wondered what was going on and what his Master was contemplating.
Then, as if the Duke had made up his mind, he said abruptly,
“I am going down to breakfast. Get everything packed and tell Hanson to bring the phaeton to the front door in half-an-hour.”
“Very good, Your Grace! And the brake?”
“The brake is also to be ready to leave and follow behind.”
“Very good, Your Grace!”
The Duke walked down the stairs to the breakfast room.
As he expected, Lord d’Arcy Armitage was there, but there was no sign of the Comtesse.
“Good morning!” Lord d’Arcy Armitage said heartily. “I hear your pretty sister has already left us and borrowed one of my horses!”
“I must apologise for any inconvenience,” the Duke replied.
“I gather she is staying somewhere in the neighbourhood,” Lord d’Arcy Armitage went on, “and has promised that the horse will be returned later today.”
This was exactly what the Duke wanted to hear, but he did not wish to appear too eager.
Instead he walked to the sideboard where there was a long array of silver dishes.
As was usual in such country houses, the guests helped themselves to breakfast and there were no servants in attendance.
As he returned to the table he remarked casually,
“Is there anybody near here called Calvert? I hear he might have some horses for sale?”
Lord Armitage obviously concentrated on the question before he repeated,
“Calvert? Calvert? I certainly seem to know the name – ”
Then he shook his head.
“No, I cannot think of anybody called Calvert connected with horses and I think I know everybody in the County who owns anything on four legs worth looking at.”
“I may have been mistaken,” the Duke said. “Perhaps it is the name of some obscure Squire or yeoman farmer?”
“Nobody on my land, I think,” Lord d’Arcy Armitage replied, “although, as I have five thousand acres, it’s not possible to remember everybody.”
“You have as much as that!” the Duke remarked.
“I would have more if I could get it,” his host replied. “Between ourselves I rather dislike knowing that Buxworth beats me with seven thousand but at least together we top the poll.”
He laughed before he added,
“The others don’t even get a look in and they resent it!”
“If you are quite certain there is nobody with the name of Calvert on your estate,” the Duke persisted, “then what about Buxworth’s?”
“Of course I cannot speak for him,” Lord d’Arcy Armitage replied.
Then he gave an exclamation.
“As I said, the name did ring a bell! Now I come to think of it, Buxworth’s wife was a Calvert. She died a little over a year ago and I believe that he was broken-hearted at her loss.”
“You are sure the name was Calvert?” the Duke asked.
“Yes, I am certain of it! She was a most attractive woman and very charming. I am not surprised that Buxworth misses her, but it has made him more obstinate and self-opinionated than ever!”
“He sounds rather overbearing.”
“Oh, he is all right in his own way,” Lord d’Arcy Armitage answered, “but he must be a difficult man to live with. Never listens to anybody’s ideas except his own.”
“Has he any children?”
“A son in the Army. Nice boy and an excellent rider. He has been overseas for the last three years or so.”
There was a pause and the Duke asked tentatively,
“No other children?”
“Let me see,” the Marquis replied. “I think there is a young daughter. Yes, I remember now I saw her in the distance at her mother’s funeral.”
The Duke was silent, but he was no longer hungry and he drank his coffee quickly.
“If you will forgive me,” he said, “I must be on my way.”
“Of course, Duke!” Lord d’Arcy Armitage agreed, “And it has been a very great pleasure having you here.”
“I hope to entertain you before long in Gloucestershire,” the Duke replied, “and, as I have been filled with admiratio
n for your horses, I hope that you will appreciate mine.”
“There is no doubt about that,” Lord d’Arcy Armitage smiled. “All the same I shall try to beat you in some of the steeplechases this autumn and will definitely be waiting to challenge you on the flat!”
“I shall look forward to it!” the Duke answered.
In a great hurry to be off, he tipped all the servants handsomely, before almost running down the steps to climb into his phaeton, which was waiting for him.
Hanson jumped up beside him, Lord d’Arcy Armitage waved goodbye and they set off down the drive, the brake containing the Duke’s luggage, his valet and two other grooms following.
They had passed through the gates at the end of the drive before Hanson asked,
“Where are we going, Your Grace?”
There was a smile on the Duke’s lips, even though the expression in his eyes was still a little anxious, as he answered,
“To call on the Marquis of Buxworth!”
Chapter Seven
The Duke found his way to the Marquis of Buxworth’s house, although he realised that, as Lord d’Arcy Armitage had said, it took very much longer to drive there than if he had been able to travel cross-country on horseback.
As he drove down a long drive bordered by elm trees, he saw the house in front of him, a large, somewhat pretentious mansion that he would not have wished to own.
He did, however, appreciate the number of horses he saw in the fields beyond the Park. Even at a distance they looked well bred and of the type any owner would be proud of.
He, however, was not thinking about the Marquis, but almost praying, although he would have been embarrassed to admit it, that he would find Ilitta.
All the way he was driving along the narrow twisting lanes, he was fitting together like a puzzle, separate fragments of information that she had given him while not intending to and completing, he thought, what seemed to be a reasonable solution to his problem.
‘I must find her, I must!’ he resolved.
He knew that, because for the moment he had lost her, his love had increased until it seemed to burn within him like a furnace.
In all his numerous love affairs he had never felt for any woman what he was feeling now for Ilitta.
It was as if his whole body was crying out for her and she drew him as if she was a magnet.
He admitted to himself that in the past he had always thought of love as something set aside from his other activities.
Although he enjoyed the company of women, he was always perfectly content to go travelling on his own.
Otherwise he spent his time at Racecourses and in Clubs with men and had not missed feminine companionship except for the eternal reason that every Adam needs his Eve.
Now he knew that what he wanted of Ilitta was that she should be with him not merely that he could make love to her, but to enable him to talk to her since everything she said stimulated his mind.
Although it seemed almost exaggerated to think so, she complemented him as a complete person.
For the first time in his life he understood, as he had never done before, exactly what his father and mother had found in the closeness of each other.
While he had believed it was something that happened only once in a million years, he knew now that he too had been fortunate enough to find a woman whom he could enshrine in his heart and worship forever.
As he drew his horse to a standstill and handed the reins to Hanson, there was an anxious expression in his grey eyes as he stepped out of his phaeton and walked up a short flight of stone steps to the front door.
It was opened before he reached it and a footman in the Marquis’s livery looked at him in surprise.
The Duke felt as if he held his breath and crossed his fingers before he said,
“I wish to speak to Lady Ilitta!”
As he said her name, he felt that he was like a gambler throwing all he possessed on the turn of a card.
He knew that if he was mistaken and Ilitta was not here, he had no idea where he could go next to look for her.
There was a slight hesitation before the footman said, as if he was slightly taken aback by the request,
“Her Ladyship’s in the music room, sir, I’ll fetch her.”
“No, don’t do that,” the Duke said quickly. “Take me to her.”
As he spoke, his heart was singing and he knew that his instinct had been sound, his calculations correct and he had found her!
The footman went ahead of him down a somewhat dark passage in which the Duke appreciated the fine furniture and one or two pictures he would have liked to own himself.
After walking for some way, the footman paused at a large mahogany door and, turning to look at the Duke, asked,
“What name shall I say sir?”
“I will announce myself,” the Duke replied.
The footman raised his eyebrows, but he was too young and inexperienced to argue and stepped to one side as the Duke opened the door and went into the room.
It flashed through his mind that he had not realised that amongst Ilitta’s other talents she was a lover of music.
Then at a glance he saw the reason why she was here, which did not concern the closed piano standing on a small dais.
In front of the windows, which had a North light, with her back to him, she was seated at an easel on which there was a large canvas.
The Duke quietly closed the door behind him and realised that she was concentrating so intently on what she was doing that she had not heard him come into the room.
There was a thick carpet on the floor and he walked over it softly until he was near enough to see that what Ilitta was painting was a portrait of him.
She was not caricaturing him as a stag or any other animal, but he could see an undoubted likeness to his eyes, his square forehead and his straight nose.
He stood looking at her thinking that her golden hair piled high on top of her head was very attractive.
Then, as she hesitated over some colour on her palette, the intensity of his gaze or perhaps the vibration of his love, made her turn her head.
For a moment she just stared at him incredulously.
Then she jumped to her feet saying,
“Why are you – here? What has happened? How did you – find me?”
The questions seemed to tumble over themselves as she stared at the Duke as if he was an apparition from another world.
He walked a little closer to her before he replied,
“I have come to ask you to help me, Ilitta.”
“To – help you?” she questioned. “What has happened – what has – gone wrong?”
“Something very serious!”
She put the palette down on a chair before she asked,
“You – you don’t mean – you are not in – danger?”
There was a little tremor in her voice, which the Duke did not miss and he replied quietly,
“I am in a position where I must have your help, yours only, and I cannot manage without it.”
“I cannot think what can have – happened!” Ilitta said in a frightened voice. “Is Captain Daltry – threatening you? You don’t – think he might – hurt you – as he intended?”
Now her eyes were very wide and the Duke saw the fear in them.
He also thought that she was trembling.
“It is not Captain Daltry who has upset me.”
“Then – who? And how did you – find me?”
“I will answer all your questions in a moment,” the Duke replied, “but first I want your assurance, your solemn word of honour, Ilitta, that you will help me.”
She glanced at the door, almost as if she was afraid her father or somebody else might come in, before she replied a little hesitatingly,
“It – might be – difficult – and you should not be – here.”
“Nevertheless I am here!” the Duke replied. “So promise me, please promise me, Ilitta, for I cannot save myself without you.”
/>
“I – don’t– understand, but you know I will do – anything you – ask of me.”
There was an intensity in the way she spoke that the Duke wanted to hear.
“You swear to that?” he said in a deep voice.
He held out his hand as he spoke and without hesitating Ilitta placed hers in his.
As his fingers closed over hers, he felt them quiver and knew it was because he was touching her.
“You swear you will not let me down?”
“I – swear it!”
Her eyes as she spoke were looking questioningly into his and he knew that she would not refuse what he asked.
“Thank you,” he said softly.
Then, as he released her hand, he said in an altogether different voice,
“Now tell me how you could dare run away in such a ridiculous fashion? How could you do anything so abominable after all we have been through together?”
She looked away from him and the colour rose in her face.
“I-I had to go!”
“Why?”
“Y-you told me to – go home.”
“But you did not tell me where your home was.”
She was still looking away from him and her features with her small nose were silhouetted against the sunshine outside.
The Duke thought it was impossible that anyone could be so beautiful.
He felt his love for her surge within him with the force and power of a tidal wave, but he held himself strictly under control and merely asked very quietly,
“Did you want to leave me, Ilitta?”
“No – but I had to – unless I went to London and I was too afraid to do so – alone.”
“I told you I would take you there.”
“I-I could not have allowed you to – do that.”
“Why not? What made you change your mind? You were quite ready to let me do so before we stayed with Lord d’Arcy Armitage.”
She did not answer, but he sensed that she was debating whether or not to tell him the truth and after a moment he said,
“I think I am right in saying that you changed your mind when you learnt my real name.”
“You should have – told me who you – were when we – first met!”
“Why? And you used a name that was not your own, but your mother’s.”
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