She paused, and then as she thought the Marquis looked cynical she went on,
“I then thought of calling him after another Celestial Dog, the Chinese T’ien-kon, who drives away evil spirits.”
As she spoke she thought that T’ien-kon might have driven away Uncle Hereward!
“I think you will find that my dogs have very English names,” the Marquis remarked, “for the simple reason that they are named by my head kennel man.”
“Have you any Dalmatians?” Diona asked eagerly.
“Two, who are getting rather old,” the Marquis replied. “But they are extremely well bred, and I shall be interested to see how they compare with Sirius.”
“I shall be very upset,” Diona replied, “if Sirius loses on points.”
“And I of course shall be piqued if he wins,” the Marquis answered.
She laughed with a spontaneous and natural little laugh that the Marquis thought was very different from the affected, contrived laughter of the women with whom he associated in London.
Then, as if she suddenly thought of it, Diona said,
“You must please forgive me if I am not adequately gowned to dine with Your Lordship in such a splendid house, but I came away in rather a hurry, and took from my wardrobe only a few things I could carry easily.”
There was a faint twist to the Marquis’s lips, as if, she thought, he questioned what she said before, but he remarked,
“And you thought that very pretty gown in which you arrived would be suitable for a kennel maid?”
Diona blushed, and he thought perhaps be had been unkind.
There was a little pause before she answered,
“It was only on my way – here that I thought of being a – kennel maid as a way of employment. Of course, if your Lordship does – engage me, I will somehow buy the appropriate – clothes. “
The Marquis did not have to reply because at that moment Dawson announced dinner.
Roderic immediately offered her his arm, saying,
“I think you look very pretty, but I doubt if my uncle’s dogs will be able to compliment you as eloquently as I can!”
Diona laughed and replied,
“If you become too eloquent, Sirius may be jealous. You will find he is very ferocious when he is defending me. “
“You are making me nervous,” Roderic said.
At the same time, he was thinking that when Diona laughed, she looked more entrancing than he could imagine any Frenchwoman could look, however eminent she might be as a Courtesan.
However, he was determined to be cautious and not to upset her in any way.
‘I am sure Uncle Lenox will be able to persuade her to do what I want,’ he told himself confidently.
They reached the dining room and Diona gave an exclamation of delight because it was so beautiful.
Painted in pale green, which was the hallmark of Robert Adam, it had alcoves in the walls, in which stood statues of Greek gods and goddesses.
At each end of the room were Ionic pillars supporting the painted ceiling, which depicted Venus with a host of small fat cherubs greeting Neptune emerging from the sea surrounded by mermaids.
The room was illuminated by huge white candles set on carved wooden stands which Diona was sure had come from Italy or Spain.
The candelabra on the table were of silver, and she noticed immediately that there was no white cloth on the table, which was a new fashion, which had been introduced by the Prince Regent.
Because she was so excited by everything she saw, as she seated herself on the right of the Marquis she exclaimed,
“Papa told me it was now fashionable to have a polished table without a cloth, but I had never seen one before. I am sure it shows off the silver far better, especially your beautiful George I candelabra.”
“I agree!” the Marquis said. “But I am surprised you should recognise the date.”
“Why?” Diona asked.
The Marquis knew the obvious retort would be rude.
Instead he said,
“When it comes to silver, most people find it difficult to distinguish between the three Georges.”
“But George 1st silver is so much more simple in design,” Diona said. “That is why I realise how appropriate it is with your Ionic columns.”
The Marquis was quite certain this conversation would leave any Frenchwoman whom Sir Mortimer could produce looking extremely foolish.
However, he was not concerned at the moment with Sir Mortimer or Roderic and their contest, but with unravelling a puzzle and making note of every clue that Diona gave him.
As if Roderic felt out of his depth and was determined to assert himself, he started to talk about horses and the races that had taken place at Royal Ascot.
Diona had not known it until now, but she was not surprised to learn that the Marquis had won the Gold Cup. It had been a spectacular finish, with his horse beating the favourite by a neck.
“I wish I had seen it!” she said. “I have always longed to go to Ascot, and I suppose now I shall never have the chance of doing so.”
This told the Marquis without her saying any more that it had been intended she should visit the races, but her hopes had been dashed.
Diona did not continue, but he realised he was becoming more and more intrigued and at the same time puzzled.
There was no doubt that she was a lady, and yet, he asked himself, what lady of that age would be allowed to wander about accompanied only by a dog?
Also, what well-bred young lady would have the courage to go out into the world to earn her own living without any money, or her relatives forbidding her to do so?
It was a mystery and one he was determined to solve.
The easiest way, he knew, was to let Diona give herself away out of her own mouth.
He was too astute and too used to cross-examining soldiers who had got into trouble in Portugal or France, and who invariably lied, to ask too many questions.
Instead, he led Diona on by arguing when she made some particular statement, inviting her to explain herself, and sometimes getting a very revealing answer.
“It would be foolish to ask you if you are fond of riding,” he said, “but do you consider yourself a good rider?”
“Papa said I was very good, and as he was outstanding, it is not conceited for me to say ‘yes’ to that question.”
“Did your father do any racing?”
He was aware that Diona hesitated in case the answer she gave should be indiscreet.
Then, as if she knew he had not heard of her father, she replied,
“He often rode in local point-to-points and steeplechases, but that was all.”
“That makes me think,” the Marquis said ruminatively, “that I should have a steeplechase here very soon. I gave orders for the racecourse to be repaired, but I have not yet used it, and it would be easy to erect jumps quite as difficult as they have in the Grand National.”
“That is a wonderful idea, Uncle Lenox” Roderic exclaimed. “And if I could ride any of your horses, I would stand a chance of winning!”
The Marquis laughed.
“If you rode them under your own colours, that might be considered unsporting.”
“Alternatively,” Roderic said, looking at him somewhat slyly, “I could invest in a few good jumpers of my own!”
“Judging from the present state of your Bank balance,” the Marquis retorted drily, “I think that would be a serious mistake.”
“Then I should be forced, unless I can borrow from your stables, just to be a spectator,” Roderic said complacently.
Because she realised he had got his own way, Diona smiled at him from across the table, and he said,
“If you are going to ride in this contest, I advise you to go down on your knees before Uncle Lenox and beg him to mount you. His horses are far better than anybody else’s.”
“That is what I have already surmised,” Diona said, “and I hope perhaps I shall be allowed to look after them if th
ey need me.”
The Marquis sat back in his armchair.
“Are you seriously contemplating being a woman groom as well as a kennel maid?” he asked.
“I cannot see why not!” she answered a little defiantly. “Horses react in a gentler way to a woman’s hand, and sometimes we have the magic which only the gypsies know, which will turn a wild horse into a quiet and obedient one.”
The Marquis was interested.
“I have heard how the gypsies can make their horses do anything they ask of them,” he said. “Do you really know what their formula or incantation is?”
Diona looked away from him and he knew she was wondering whether she should answer his question truthfully or feign ignorance.
When he wished to do so the Marquis could force people, by means of what he sometimes thought was a magic of his own, to obey him.
He therefore concentrated his thoughts on Diona until she turned her head as if she could not resist the power he was pouring out to her.
“I know a – little about their – secret ways of making their horses and dogs – follow them and do what they – wish them to do,” she conceded.
“They trusted you with their secrets?” the Marquis enquired.
Diona’s eyes, looking into his, flickered.
Then she said,
“They trusted Papa, who befriended them – and when they had a particularly fine, horse to sell they always – offered it to him – first.’
“They did not trick him?”
“No, of course not. The gypsies would never trick a friend, and they looked on us as friends.”
“Why?”
The way he spoke the monosyllable was very compelling, and Diona replied,
“They camped on our land and came back year after year. Nobody would ever believe it, but they never touched anything that was ours.”
She looked at the Marquis to see if he believed her, and went on,
“We never lost a chicken or an egg, and when they left, everything was tidy, and the only thing to show they had been there were the ashes of their fires.”
Diona was looking back into the past, remembering that everybody who had come in contact with her father and mother had loved them.
She thought now that the happiness that radiated from them inevitably made other people feel happy.
It was so very different from the miseries she had suffered with her uncle at the Hall and the darkness and gloom that had enveloped her from the moment she had entered through the door, unwanted and certainly unappreciated.
Her eyes were far more expressive than she knew, and the Marquis watched her, feeling that every moment he was getting nearer to finding out her secret.
Suddenly looking back into the past, her eyes met his and for a moment it seemed as if they were both of them held spellbound by a strange vibration.
It had nothing to do with where they were or who they were, but it seemed part of the eternity from which they had come.
Then Roderic broke the spell, which was somehow as delicate as a cobweb, by saying,
“Let us go on talking about the steeplechase. What will the prizes be, Uncle Lenox, and whom will you invite to take part in it?”
“A number of my friends,” the Marquis said, “and of course anybody locally who has good enough horses.”
His answer told Diona, almost as if he had broken the dream in which she was living, that one person who most certainly would not take part would be herself.
People with good horses would certainly include some who had known her father and mother and would recognise her as being their daughter.
There would also be those who had come to the Hall since she had been there, friends of her uncle’s who had, she knew, looked at her with a flicker of admiration in their eyes.
Although she had had no chance of talking to them alone, and her uncle had invariably snubbed her if she tried to join in the conversation, they would remember her.
One thing she must never do if she was to remain in hiding was to allow any of the Marquis’s friends or neighbours to catch sight of her.
She said nothing, but the Marquis was perceptively aware that a shutter had fallen down between them and she had retired into some secret cavern where he could not reach her.
But it only made him more determined than ever to discover what all this was about.
He played with the idea that she had run away from a prospective bridegroom.
Then, with his knowledge of women, he felt he was prepared to swear that she was so innocent and untouched that no man had so much as kissed her and she was completely unawakened.
He was aware that while she had looked at him at first with fear, and then, he thought, with a certain respect and even admiration, she was making absolutely no effort to attract him as a man.
He was quite certain it was because she did not know how to do so.
It was the same with Roderic.
He was eager to talk to her and he would, the Marquis thought, with the slightest encouragement have flirted with her.
But the way in which Diona spoke to them both told him that she was completely unselfconscious and unawakened to the idea that there was anything strange in dining alone with two attractive men.
It was obvious that she was so young and ignorant of the world that she was behaving as a child would have done in the circumstances.
Her appreciation of the room and the silver was echoed by her appreciation of the food.
“I have never eaten anything so delicious!” she said as dinner ended. “But there is one thing I cannot understand.”
“What is that?” the Marquis enquired.
“If you have Chefs here and in London, which I am sure you do, to produce meals like this every day, how is it possible that you are so slim?”
She had not meant to sound as if she was paying him a compliment but rather simply curious, and the Marquis said,
“I take a great deal of exercise.”
“I suppose that is the answer,” Diona said.
“Papa always complained if we had too many dishes with cream because that made him put on weight and he liked to ride light.”
“I, too, have no wish to be too heavy for my horses,” the Marquis answered. “And I assure you, army rations, which I endured for a number of years, are not so enjoyable that I got into the habit of over-eating.”
“I admit to having been very greedy this evening,” Diona said. “I have eaten far more than I should have done, and have enjoyed every mouthful!”
She laughed, as if she had found the food irresistible, and Roderic laughed with her.
They all went together to the drawing room, as the Marquis said that neither he nor Roderic wished to be left alone with their port. Diona went to the French window that was open onto the garden outside, and stood there.
Her head was silhouetted against the stars and her slim body in her white gown was outlined against the shadows in the garden.
The Marquis watched her and thought she might easily be a celestial being who had come down, as the gods and goddesses of the Greeks and Romans were always prone to do, to entice and bemuse mere mortals.
The difficulty from Roderic’s point of view, he knew, was that the help he needed was not what Diona would wish to give him.
He had, too, the strange feeling that she might vanish as inexplicably as she had appeared, without giving them any warning of her intention.
Roderic had joined Sirius, who was exploring the garden below them, and the Marquis moved to stand beside Diona at the window.
Her head was thrown back as she looked up at the stars, and he asked a little mockingly,
“Are you beseeching Orion, and I see his constellation is above your head, not to demand his dog back?”
He was speaking lightly and was surprised at the depth of emotion in Diona’s voice as she replied,
“No one – no one shall – take Sirius from me! He is mine, and no one shall – hurt him!”
The strength of her feelings seemed to vibrate from her, and after a moment the Marquis said quietly,
“You sound as if somebody has threatened to do so?”
Diona looked away to where she could see Sirius, white against the dark shrubs, nosing amongst the bushes.
“I – I do not want to – talk about it.”
There was a little silence. Then she cried,
“May I please ask you a favour?”
“Of course,” the Marquis replied.
“Will you promise not to mention to anybody outside this house that I am here, or that I have a Dalmatian with me?”
“You think that if I did so, it might be dangerous for Sirius?”
“Yes – very – very dangerous! Will you – promise me?”
“You realise I am curious as to why you should ask me such a thing?”
“I am sorry if I sound secretive – but it is of no importance to you – and very – very important to me that I should – remain anonymous.”
“I will naturally respect your wishes,” the Marquis said, “but if I do what you ask, will you promise me something in return?”
She raised her eyes to his and he saw that she was frightened.
Because he could read her thoughts, he knew she feared he was going to say that she had to do what Roderic wanted.
Instead he said,
“If you are frightened and you think that I can help you in any way, will you come to me for assistance?”
“Do you mean – that?”
“I mean it,” the Marquis said, “and I will also help you if it is humanly possible to do so.”
He heard the little sigh of relief that seemed to come from the depths of her body before she replied,
“Thank you – thank you! I knew I was right to come to you the – moment I saw your – house.”
“What do you mean by that?”
For a moment he thought she was not going to answer his question. Then she said, looking up again at the stars,
“What Papa always called my ‘intuition’ told me that I should find help from you, and I was not – mistaken.”
The Marquis knew, although she had put it so simply, that it was what he felt himself in times of danger, and when he was in a position where his brain alone seemed unable to help him.
It was then that he used his instinct or something more powerful. There were no words to express it, yet it had never failed him.
Diona and a Dalmatian Page 8