Diona and a Dalmatian

by Barbara Cartland

  They would have been able to go to London as her mother had wanted, and she could have been a debutante in the real meaning of the word.

  But now it was too late, and she thought that the money, while it would save her from being dependent on anybody, was otherwise not important.

  Then she remembered something that really mattered and must be done at once!

  Because she was in a hurry to see the Marquis, she did not change her gown, she only washed the dust from her face and hands, with the help of what seemed to be a very experienced housemaid, who arranged her hair.

  Then she ran down the stairs to be shown into the drawing room by the butler waiting in the hall.

  The Marquis was already there, standing with his back to the fireplace, and as she ran eagerly towards him she realised with a sense of acute disappointment that he was not alone.

  Instead there was an attractive, smartly dressed, middle-aged woman sitting on the sofa and looking at him admiringly.

  “Here you are, Diona,” the Marquis said as she reached him. “I want you to feel very grateful to Mrs. Lamborn, a cousin of mine, who at a moment’s notice has very kindly come here to act as your Chaperone.”

  Diona curtseyed and Mrs. Lamborn put out her hand, saying,

  “ I am delighted to meet you, Miss Grantley. My cousin has been telling me that you have just had the most marvellous news that any young girl could have, and I must offer you my congratulations.”

  “I always believed heiresses were two a penny,” the Marquis said in a disagreeable tone, as if he was determined to quench the enthusiasm in Mrs. Lamborn’s voice.

  She laughed.

  “That is a popular belief. At the same time, a great number of them are excessively plain, and they need money to make them more attractive, which is certainly not the case where Miss Grantley is concerned.”

  “Thank you,” Diona said, feeling that all this was very unimportant.

  Then she said to the Marquis in an urgent tone,

  “Please – can I ask you to do something very – urgent for me?”

  “What is that?” the Marquis asked.

  “If I really have so much money, though at the moment it seems as if it is an illusion, can I send some immediately to the people who were pensioned off when Papa died? Uncle Hereward was so mean with them that I feel they hardly have enough to eat, and the same applies to the caretakers of my old home.”

  “I am sure Swaythling will do anything you ask him to do,” the Marquis replied.

  “Then may I go and ask him now?”

  “Of course, if that is what you wish.”

  “Where will I find him?”

  As if he were being condescending to a rather demanding child, the Marquis walked across the room and Diona followed him.

  As he reached the door he turned to say to Mrs. Lamborn,

  “Please excuse us, Noreen.”

  “Yes, of course,” she replied.

  The Marquis then led the way across the Hall and down another passage, where he opened the door of what was obviously a secretarial office.

  Mr. Swaythling, who was sitting at his desk, rose as they appeared, and the Marquis said,

  “Miss Grantley has a number of commissions for you to see to on her behalf. As it will take a little time to obtain the money that she has just inherited, I am of course prepared to be her banker.”

  Diona looked at him in consternation.

  “I am sorry to be a nuisance,” she said, “but I have worried so much about these people who served my Papa and Mama so well and who trusted us.”

  She thought the Marquis’s eyes softened as he looked at her before he said,

  “In which case it would be a mistake to let them suffer any longer.”

  “I knew you would understand.”

  “Then tell Mr. Swaythling exactly what you want.”

  He would have walked from the office if she had not put her hand on his arm.

  “Later I want to talk to you alone,” she said.

  “Of course,” he replied, “but I think first you should get to know Mrs. Lamborn. You will find her very helpful.”

  Diona thought the way he spoke was different from the way he had spoken to her in the past.

  Then as he walked away and she looked after him, feeling somehow lost and lonely in a manner she could not understand, she heard Mr. Swaythling say,

  “Come and sit down, Miss Grantley, and tell me exactly what you want me to do.”

  *

  It was the following night when she went to bed that Diona told herself despairingly that she had lost the Marquis in a way she could not explain.

  Everything had moved so quickly that she felt breathless, and from the moment her uncle had surprised them at Irchester Park, she knew everything had changed.

  After they had arrived in London, the four of them bad dined together, but Mrs. Lamborn talked of people of whom she had never heard, but who were of course relatives of her and the Marquis.

  Roderic was sulking because the Marquis had told him that Diona could not appear in his contest, as he had wanted.

  He whispered to her, so that Mrs. Lamborn could not hear, that he had been told not to say a word about it in front of her chaperone, but he felt that he had been let down very badly and that his uncle had been extremely unsporting.

  “He might have let me have another look round the country in case there was a milkmaid as pretty as you,” he said in a low voice. “At least I could have tried to find one.”

  “Are you quite sure the Marquis cannot help you?” Diona enquired.

  “He said to leave it to him,” Roderic said. “But how can I do that, and tamely lose face in front of all my friends if I do not produce anybody?”

  Diona smiled.

  “If he said to leave it to him, then that is what you should do,” she said. “I am sure he will think of something clever to outwit that horrible man.”

  “I doubt it,” Roderic replied.

  As this conversation took place at one end of the drawing room while the Marquis was talking to Mrs. Lamborn at the other, Diona thought it was a mistake for them to appear secretive in case she became curious.

  Deliberately she rejoined the Marquis and his cousin, but they did not seem particularly eager for her company. In fact, she now felt tired after all that had happened and suggested retiring to bed.

  She first took Sirius out into the garden and thought that small though it was, it was like everything to do with the Marquis, beautifully arranged and perfect, with an abundance of flowers in bloom and several tall trees that seemed somehow strange in London.

  Then she went to bed to feel unhappy and once again lonely.

  *

  The next day Mrs. Lamborn took Diona shopping from first thing in the morning until late in the evening. They ate a quick luncheon alone as the Marquis was out, and although he was in for dinner, this time Roderic was not present.

  Once again he seemed very much more interested in what his cousin had to say, and Diona found herself sitting silent and feeling that she might just as well be at the Hall listening to her uncle droning on over something that had annoyed him.

  But she knew that was not true.

  She could at least look at the Marquis, hear him, and be acutely conscious that he was there, and even if he did not respond, she was vibrating towards him and wanting him to notice her.

  She felt when they said goodnight that he was even more formal than he had been the night before, and when she went up to her bedroom she wanted to run away and hide.

  Her common sense told her that what he was going to do was to launch her into Society and, with Mrs. Lamborn’s help, find her a husband.

  That was what every debutante looked for, and she was intelligent enough to realise that this must be the plan behind the Marquis’s campaign to find a chaperone.

  He had arranged to have her beautifully dressed and, as she had gathered from Mrs. Lamborn’s remarks, to start the ball rolling to
ensure that she was asked to every party that was to take place before the Autumn.

  A lot of these would not be in London because the Season was strictly over, but there were still a number of people who remained on at least until the middle of July.

  Then, if they were aware of her and of her future, as Mrs. Lamborn had not hesitated to point out, she would be invited to parties in the country which would be given for girls of her own age.

  There were, Diona learnt, a great number of hosts and hostesses who had houses near to London.

  “Of course,” Mrs. Lamborn had said blandly, “Cousin Lenox knows them all.”

  She named them, starting with Syon House, which belonged to the Duke and Duchess of Northumberland, and Osterley, the Earl and Countess of Jersey’s house at Chiswick, but as the list went on and on Diona ceased to listen.

  “All I want,” she told herself, “is to be able to talk to the Marquis as I was able to do when we were alone at the Park.”

  Because it hurt her to think of how happy she had been then, when they had ridden together and discussed such entrancing subjects at luncheon and dinner, she tossed and turned in her bed, finding it too hot to sleep.

  Then she was aware of a strange sound coming from the garden beneath her window.

  Because she was curious, she got out of bed and pulling back the curtains looked through an open casement into the garden.

  The moonlight was not yet strong but there were stars overhead, yet the trees cast dark shadows and it was difficult to see anything but the outline of the flowerbeds.

  Then she heard the sound again and it was like that of an animal in pain.

  Because she was looking out the window, Sirius was standing on his hind-legs beside her, peering out and growling as he always did if something upset him.

  “I wonder what it is, Sirius,” Diona said.

  He growled again, and she could still hear the little cry and was sure it was a small animal like a cat which might have been caught in a trap.

  Without thinking, she behaved as she would have done in the country.

  She pulled on her shawl, which was all she had to wear over her nightgown, and opening her door walked down the corridor with Sirius until they came to a side staircase that she had found earlier in the evening when she had taken him out.

  It led to a door between the drawing room and Mr. Swaythling’s office, which opened onto the garden.

  The key was in the lock and there was a bolt, which she pulled back.

  Then as Sirius ran ahead of her, searching for the source of the sound they had both heard from her bedroom, she stopped.

  As she did so, she gave a scream of terror which was muffled before it left her throat.

  Something thick and heavy was thrown over her head, and before she could struggle, she was lifted off her feet.

  Then Diona realised in horror that she was being carried by two men across the garden.

  Chapter Six

  The Marquis came in late, and although he was tired he lay for some time, finding it difficult to sleep.

  There was a great deal on his mind that turned over and over before finally he slept.

  He awoke with a start and realised that what had awakened him was a very unusual noise.

  An animal was scratching at his door, whining as he did so. Then there was a sharp bark, and he was aware that it was a dog.

  For a moment he thought he must be in the country and it was one of his own dogs, then as he was fully awake he knew it was Sirius.

  He lit a candle, then got out of bed and opened the door. Sirius, who was still scratching on it, seemed almost to fall into the room.

  Then he gave a sharp bark, and running away from the Marquis down the passage he stopped and looked back, then returned to do the same thing again.

  The Marquis would have been very obtuse if he had not understood that something was wrong and that Sirius was asking him to follow him.

  He went back for his robe, which his valet had put on a chair by the side of his bed, and struggled into it. Then he picked up the candle he had just lit and followed Sirius, expecting the dog to take him to Diona’s bedroom, which was only a little way down the passage. He wondered what could have happened to her and if she was ill.

  And if she was, why had she not rung the bell for the maid?

  As he reached Diona’s door, Sirius made no attempt to enter, although the Marquis saw that the door was open.

  He went in and saw that the bed had been slept in and one curtain was drawn back with the window open.

  The Marquis thought it very strange until he returned to the doorway and once again Sirius was running on ahead of him, then stopping and looking back.

  The Marquis realised that something was very wrong, and because almost perceptibly he had a vague suspicion of what it could be, he ran back to his own bedroom and began to dress.

  As if Sirius understood what he was doing, he came to the doorway, whining to show his impatience, but waiting.

  The Marquis pulled on the tight-fitting champagne coloured pantaloons he wore in the daytime, slipped his feet into the first pair of Hessians he could find in the bottom of his cupboard, and snatched a white shirt from his chest of drawers.

  He was exceedingly quick because having been a soldier he was used to dressing in an emergency, such as on the news that the enemy was approaching.

  As he thought that Sirius’s whine grew more insistent, it spurred him on.

  As he tied his cravat round his neck in just a knot and shrugged himself into a cut-away coat, he was breaking even his own record for speed.

  When he walked towards the door and Sirius immediately began to run down the passage, the Marquis stopped.

  He opened a drawer of the cupboard beside his bed and took out a pistol. It was a new model that he always carried when he was driving.

  Footpads and highwaymen were still reported to be holding up passengers on many of the side roads and it was always wise to be armed.

  He slipped the pistol into his pocket, then as if Sirius’s continual whine had alerted him to an even greater urgency than he was aware of already, he hurried after the dog.

  To his surprise, Sirius did not go down the front staircase but a side one at the end of the corridor, which the Marquis seldom used.

  Only when he had reached the bottom of it and saw the garden-door open did he begin to be alarmed as to what had happened to Diona.

  For a moment he just stood as she had on the step.

  Then Sirius raced across the grass into the shadows of the trees, and the Marquis understood that must be where Diona had either gone, or been forced to go.

  She would have been taken, he thought, through the gate at the end of the garden which led into the Mews.

  There was just enough light for him to see that the door in the wall was not open, because if it had been he was sure that Sirius would have followed her.

  But although the door was closed, the lock had been broken, and now he understood what had happened.

  As he walked out into the mews with Sirius, he wondered where on earth she had been taken.

  It was obvious that she had been kidnapped and there was no doubt as to who was responsible.

  Now the Marquis thought he had been very obtuse in thinking that a man like Sir Hereward would sit back tamely without taking any counter action when his plans had been upset.

  He had been surprised that he had not had any communication from his solicitors, and now he knew that if he had been more alert and more suspicious, he should have realised it was a danger signal.

  Standing in the empty mews, the only sounds he could hear came from the stables, where the horses were moving about, and he wondered frantically what he could do.

  Then almost as if Diona herself were helping him he remembered that Sir Hereward had a London house.

  It was just by chance that he should know of it, but he could recall way back in his memory soon after the war ended a very lovely lady saying,<
br />
  “I shall expect you for dinner tomorrow evening. You will have no difficulty in finding my house in Park Street. It is very small, squeezed in between two large imposing ones, one of which belongs to the Earl of Warnshaw, and the other to Sir Hereward Grantley.”

  She had laughed and said,

  “Although I am squeezed between them, there is no need to be jealous. They are both old and very unattractive!”

  Her house, he remembered, was on the other side of the mews that ran the length of Park Lane, and the Marquis set off in that direction with Sirius beside him.

  As he went he remembered something else. The lady in question had, because she was careful of her reputation, after his first two visits given him the key to the door of the garden which lay behind her house.

  Unlike his own garden, it was shared by at least ten other houses, but every time he had used it, which admittedly had been at night, he had never seen anybody else there.

  He thought now as he was moving very quickly, almost at a run, that it would be a mistake to ring the bell or knock on the door of Sir Hereward’s house.

  The servants would have been told to ignore him, and it would be impossible for him alone to break in to find out if Diona was inside.

  Instead he passed through Park Street, seeking another mews off which he remembered the garden door opened.

  He found it without any difficulty, but it was locked.

  He was afraid that if he tried to break the lock, as Sir Hereward had obviously done in his garden, it might make a noise, and he had no wish to attract attention to himself.

  He put his hand on Sirius’s head, patting him and saying in a voice of authority,

  “Sirius, Sirius! Sit!”

  The dog obeyed him, and the Marquis without much difficulty climbed up the six-foot wall and dropped down on the other side.

  He then opened the garden door from the inside and let Sirius in.

  The dog seemed to understand what was required of him, as the Marquis, keeping wherever possible in the shade of trees and bushes, crossed the garden towards the houses on the other side.

  It was not difficult to pick out Sir Hereward’s house, and now as he looked at it he knew his instinct had brought him to the right place.