Diona’s eyes widened.
“I will explain in a moment,” he said, “why it is necessary, but please do as I ask you.”
It was certainly a very strange request, but Diona could not think of any reason why she should refuse.
It also flashed through her mind that kennel maids were not likely to wear the same sort of clothes that she was wearing, and she knew now it had been a mistake to bring nothing serviceable with her.
However, she had brought a riding-skirt that she had put in at the last minute despite the fact that it made extra weight.
As she lifted her hands to undo the ribbons of her bonnet, which tied under her chin, the Marquis said,
“I understood you had some reason for bringing your dog in here. Do you wish me to buy him?”
“No – no – of course not, my Lord! I would not sell him for a million pounds. It is just that he is the reason why I am seeking – employment, and why I would like to work in the kennels, because he is – always with – me.”
The Marquis snapped his fingers, and to Diona’s surprise Sirius, who was usually somewhat suspicious of strangers, walked to his side.
“He is certainly a very fine specimen of a Dalmatian,” the Marquis observed, “and I can quite understand that you would not wish to part with him.”
“I have had him ever since he was a small puppy,” Diona replied. “He is everything in the world to me – and the – only thing I – love.”
She spoke so fervently that she saw the Marquis raise his eyebrows in surprise.
Then she took off her bonnet and pressed up her silver-gold hair, which had been flattened down, and Roderic gave a cry of delight.
“She is beautiful” he said. “Quite, quite perfect for what I want!”
Diona stared at him, thinking not only that he was a very strange young man but also that what he was saying was quite inexplicable.
At the same time, the Marquis, now that he could see Diona’s hair, was aware that Roderic had very good grounds for his enthusiasm.
He fancied himself as a connoisseur of women and he had to admit that she was lovely in an unusual way.
She was very young, and yet she was not a pink-and-white or a rosy-cheeked English beauty, which he thought would have been in his nephew’s mind when he was seeking for the milkmaid of his imagination, and which he was unlikely to find.
Diona’s face was pointed and was entirely dominated by her large eyes. Her hair was the silvery gold of the sky at dawn.
She had, he thought, the ageless beauty which one saw in the Greek statues of their goddesses and which he had always thought was a classical beauty now lost in the annals of time.
There was no doubt that with her straight little nose, her perfectly chiselled lips, and her long neck, Diona resembled the statues he had seen many years ago in Greece.
He had also inspected them more recently in the museums in Paris, where they somehow seemed out of place, as if they pined for their native land.
Then he was aware, as he had been since she had first come into the room, that while her strange eyes were the colour of a morning mist, there was an expression of fear in them that he had never expected to see in a pretty woman’s face.
He thought as she stood in front of him waiting for his verdict that she might be Phyne before her judges, whose advocate, when she was accused of impiety, had appealed to the sentiment of the jury by throwing open her dress and revealing the beauty of her breasts.
Then Roderic was crying out,
“ I have found her, and I am sure I can make Sir Mortimer look a fool and take the thousand guineas off him!”
“ I think you are going too fast, Roderic!” the Marquis said. “The first step must obviously be to persuade Diona, as she wishes to be called, to agree to help you in this momentous task.”
The cynical manner in which the Marquis spoke made Diona aware that he had contempt for what his nephew was talking about, and she said quickly, because she was afraid,
“Please, my Lord – all I want to do is to – work for you and with your – dogs.”
“I am considering that possibility, which is certainly an unusual one,” the Marquis replied, “but I think you should first listen to what my nephew has to say, and perhaps I should introduce him – Mr. Roderic Nairn – Miss Diona!”
Diona was aware that he was mocking her and it made her feel embarrassed, but she made a small curtsey and was aware as she did so that Roderic’s elaborate bow was also a mockery.
Sirius had returned to her side and she put her hand on his head as if it gave her courage, knowing that if she followed her inclinations she would leave and go elsewhere for help.
The difficulty was that she had no idea where to go, and, what was far more important, there was Sirius to consider.
Because she was touching him he looked up at her and licked her hand.
As he did so, Diona glanced at the Marquis and thought in some strange way that he understood what she was feeling and, even more extraordinary, was aware of what she was thinking.
In a completely different tone of voice he said,
“Suppose you sit down and let my nephew explain to you what at the moment must seem not only incomprehensible but rather insulting.”
“I am sorry if I appeared rude,” Roderic said quickly. “It is just that before you came into the room my uncle informed me that what I was trying to find was so impossible that only a miracle could help me.”
He smiled beguilingly as he finished,
“Then you appeared, and there was my miracle!”
Because she felt as if her legs would no longer support her, Diona sat down carefully on a chair that was near the one in which the Marquis was sitting.
It was a high-backed chair with a wicker seat.
She sat down gracefully and Sirius immediately flopped down on the floor beside her.
Holding her bonnet in her lap, she raised her eyes to Roderic Nairn, wondering what he was about to tell her.
Everything since she had come into the room had been bewildering and very different from what she had expected.
She had anticipated that the Marquis might cross-examine her and knew he would think it strange that she would give him only her Christian name.
But she hated lying, and somehow, although she felt it was foolish of her, she had no wish to assume a name to which she was not entitled.
And yet it was essential that nobody should ever learn who she was, for fear of her uncle getting to know where she was hiding.
Roderic seated himself on the arm of a chair and began,
“I expect you know, Miss Diona, that men in London enjoy having wagers amongst themselves, especially if they are members of a Club called White’s.”
“Yes, I know,” Diona replied, “because my – ”
She was just about to say that her father had been a member of White’s.
He had made her and her mother laugh when he told them about the strange bets that were made amongst the members and how they were all recorded in a ‘Betting Book’.
She realised that the Marquis was listening to what was being said and quickly bit back the words that came to her lips, knowing that she had to be very careful not to reveal her identity.
“I and some friends of mine had a bet with another member of the Club,” Roderic continued, “that we would find an English girl, preferably a milkmaid, who was more beautiful and more intelligent than a foreigner, who he was convinced would be far superior in every possible way.”
Diona looked puzzled.
“Surely,” she said, “it would be a very unequal contest unless everybody in it came from exactly the same class. After all, most milkmaids are not well educated!”
The Marquis’s lips twisted and there was a twinkle in his eyes as he wondered how his nephew would answer that.
He was well aware that Roderic had chosen his words with care so as not to reveal that the contestants were to be ostensibly what he had described to
his uncle as ‘bits o’ muslin’, who would inevitably be more quick-witted than any country girl was likely to be.
That Diona should have put her finger unerringly on the weak side of what he had just said amused him, and he realised his nephew was struggling to find a reasonable answer.
Finally Roderic said,
“She does not have to be a milkmaid. That was just a figure of speech. But the girl that Sir Mortimer will produce is, he assures us, not only beautiful and quick-witted but could also pass as a Lady.”
Diona considered this for a moment.
Then she said,
“I do not think any milkmaid I have ever known would find that possible!”
“But,” Roderic argued, “that is just where you are so different, and you said you are willing to be a milkmaid, although I am sure Uncle Lenox will be delighted to have you in his kennels.”
He paused to say impressively,
“But first you must win this contest for me, which takes place in a week’s time.”
“What would I – have to – do?” Diona asked.
There was a little tremor in her voice because she was frightened.
She had a feeling – and once again her instinct was at work – that she was being pushed into something of which her mother would certainly not have approved and which her father would certainly have forbidden.
He had told her about the Bucks and Beaux who surrounded the Prince Regent and spent a great deal of their time gambling and drinking in the Clubs of St. James’s.
She knew that whenever he could afford to go to London he visited White’s to see his old friends, and sometimes he would make her laugh about the new members who had joined since he had last been there.
He described the Dandies scornfully, saying they were nothing but ‘clothes horses’, and he thought even Beau Brummell was excessive in the fuss he made about clothes.
“How any man can want to spend two or three hours a day dressing, God only knows!” he had said once. “It is a waste of precious time and, more important than that, a waste of life.”
“I have always heard, Papa, that Mr. Brummell was very intelligent.” Diona had said years later, after Beau Brummell had left England in disgrace.
“He was a wit,” her father had conceded, “and he had the brains to make himself an arbiter of fashion and a person of social importance. At the same time, he did not have the self-control to prevent himself from gambling away every penny he possessed. What could be more stupid than that?”
“I agree with you,” Diona’s mother had said. “At the same time, darling, I think these Clubs often prove a temptation to young men. It makes them want to show off, and inevitably they drink too much to give themselves courage to spend what they cannot afford.”
Her father had smiled.
“That is a very good way of putting it, but men must be men, and learn to stand on their own feet.”
“I am afraid that often means standing on other people’s,” her mother had said quietly.
Remembering that now, together with other things her father had said about White’s, Diona felt nervous.
“All you have to do,” Roderic was saying, “is to come to London and let me take you, not to the Club, for women are not allowed in there, but to somebody’s house where you will meet all the other contestants, and of course the foreigner, who will not be half as pretty as you are.”
“How will the judges – assess the – brains of those who are – competing against her?” Diona asked.
Again Roderic was having to think hard, and the Marquis’s amusement increased.
It was quite a reasonable question after what she had been told, and he thought that perhaps this was something Sir Mortimer himself had not thought out.
“I suppose,” Roderic said airily after a pause, “that there will be conversation, perhaps over dinner, and we might even dance afterwards. The judges will be able to see how each girl carries herself and behaves as she eats and dances.”
Diona drew in her breath.
It was bad enough to think of being a contestant in a competition of which she was sure her mother would not have approved.
But to dine and dance with a number of strange men at a party which included milkmaids, and to be unchaperoned in a strange house where she did not even know the hostess, was something her mother would never have allowed.
“I – I could not – do that,” she said quickly.
“Why not?” Roderic asked in surprise.
Then, as if he suddenly thought of something he should have said earlier, he added,
“I forgot to say that of course I will pay you a fee for doing this.”
He hesitated before he went on,
“I will give you twenty pounds and a gown which will be so fantastically smart that it will knock them all sideways.”
Diona stiffened and sat very straight and upright in her chair.
“No!” she exclaimed. “I certainly could not allow a gentleman to give me a gown! I also have no – wish to take part in this – competition!”
It passed through her mind that if she went to London, and if there were a number of members of White’s at this peculiar party of which Mr. Nairn was speaking, there might conceivably be one of her father’s friends amongst them.
It was unlikely because most of those who had visited them in the country, and occasionally stayed the night for a steeplechase or a point-to-point, had been men of her father’s age.
Nevertheless, one never knew, and she could imagine nothing that would shock them more than to find her father’s daughter pretending to be a milkmaid.
Almost before she had finished speaking, Roderic gave a cry of horror.
“You cannot say that!” he said. “You have to help me!”
As if the straight manner in which she was holding herself and the expression on her face told him better than words what she was feeling, he appealed to the Marquis.
“Help me, Uncle Lenox,” he begged, “help me to convince Miss Diona that she is not only the miracle I have prayed for but is more perfect for the part than I ever imagined anybody could be!”
“I think,” the Marquis said slowly, “you would find that not only Diona but any other respectable milkmaid who has spent all her life in the country would be apprehensive and somewhat shocked by what you have suggested.”
“Shocked?” Roderic queried.
Then, as if it had suddenly sunk into him that his uncle had accentuated the word “respectable,” he understood what was being said to him.
He moved from the arm of the chair, on which he had been sitting and bent forward to say pleadingly,
“Please, Miss Diona, I desperately need your help, and it would be too cruel of you to refuse me without thinking it over very carefully.”
Diona did not reply and after a moment he added,
“You say you have to earn money and this is a very easy way to do so. I will make it fifty pounds if you will agree to what I have suggested.”
“It is – too much!” Diona protested. “And – I cannot go to – London.”
It is not as frightening as you think it would be,” Roderic said, “and I promise to look after you.”
He was not aware that when Diona said she could not go to London, the Marquis looked at her sharply and thought that what she was meaning was different from the way his nephew interpreted it.
If there was one thing the Marquis really enjoyed, it was a puzzle he had to solve or a mystery for which he could not find an explanation.
As soon as he had returned to England he had found that what intrigued him most was to discover where the weakest places were on his Estates.
He spent a lot of time in tracking down where money was being wasted or stolen, and where people were deliberately not doing what was required of them for reasons that did not appear obvious on the surface.
Now he found himself suddenly alert and extremely interested in Diona.
It was not so much on accou
nt of her beauty, but because she was obviously not of a class to become a milkmaid and must be hiding some secret.
Because he thought Roderic’s pleadings might make things more difficult than they were already, he said,
“I have a suggestion to make, and I want you both to listen to me.”
Diona turned her face towards him and Roderic did the same somewhat reluctantly.
“I imagine, although I may be mistaken,” the Marquis began, “that Diona has come quite a long distance and must be tired. She has already told me that she has nowhere to go if she leaves here, so I suggest that she accept my hospitality for tonight, and she can then after dinner, or perhaps tomorrow, consider your proposition again.”
Diona’s lips parted, as if she was about to say that what Mr. Nairn had asked her to do was impossible, but the Marquis went on before she could speak,
“I would also like to discuss with my Head Kennel man whether he thinks it possible for him to find employment for a woman, but I think I am right in saying that I already employ four men to look after my dogs.”
He knew as he spoke that he had said exactly the right thing, for Diona gave a little murmur of excitement, and her eyes, which had been dark and frightened, had a sudden light in them.
“Will your Lordship – really do – that?” she asked in a breathless little voice.
“I will do so if you will agree to stay the night.”
“With Sirius?” Diona asked quickly.
“Naturally he is included in my invitation.”
“Then – thank you – thank you very much – I accept – most gratefully, my Lord!”
As she spoke she rose to her feet, as if the interview was at an end.
As she did so, the Marquis said,
“I presume you have some luggage with you?”
He spoke cynically, as if he suspected it was unlikely.
Diona flushed as she replied,
“As I was travelling very light, my Lord, I brought the few – things I was able to carry in a bundle. I – I put them in some bushes – on the other side of the bridge.”
She thought as she spoke that it sounded a very strange and rather childish thing to do.
The Marquis, however, appeared unperturbed.
Then he said,
Diona and a Dalmatian Page 6