She ran across the room to him with an eagerness that made him smile.
“How do you feel?” she asked. “You did not find it too tiring getting dressed and coming downstairs?”
“I feel like my old self,” the Duke answered, “and from now on, I will have no more fussing about my health, which I assure you is a word I have grown to dislike!”
“It is to be expected from the people who love you,” Samala remarked.
The Duke glanced at her and it flashed through his mind that love to Samala meant something different from what it meant to the women in the past who had told him that they loved him. But it was not a subject he wanted to dwell on at this moment.
“Luncheon will be ready in a minute,” Samala said, “then we will decide what you would like to do this afternoon. I have thought, although you may not agree, that you would like to see your new orchids in the Orangery.”
“You are quite right,” the Duke said, “and I wonder why I did not think of it myself.”
“I have been looking at them every day and hoping they would blossom out into a fantastic display by the time you came to see them! But I am not going to say any more. They are to be a surprise.”
The Duke smiled.
“I never realised until you came here,” he said, “how many surprises there are in my house and I expect you have found a number in the gardens.”
“I have,” Samala agreed. “I could not believe there was a place on earth that was so beautiful and so exquisite. It is like what I think Heaven will be if I ever get there.”
The Duke smiled.
“When I first saw you, I thought you looked like an angel, so of course Heaven is your natural habitat.”
“Do you really think that?” Samala asked with interest. “Most people say despairingly that I look so young! They seem to forget that sooner or later I am bound to grow older.”
The Duke laughed.
“It is something that is unfortunately inevitable.”
There was silence. Then he asked,
“What is worrying you?”
“I was thinking,” Samala said, “that perhaps you are disappointed that I do not look older and more dignified. I always imagined that Duchesses were very tall and very distinguished and I think if ever I was to wear one of the big Buckhurst tiaras, I would look like a mushroom!”
The Duke laughed as if he could not help himself.
“That is undoubtedly true, so we had better stick to the smaller wreaths and bandeaux, of which I believe there are quite a number.”
Samala looked at him. Then she asked,
“You did not notice the one I was wearing at our wedding?”
The Duke thought it best to be honest.
“No. Were you wearing a wreath?”
Samala gave a little sigh.
“I did hope when I drove to the Church with Papa that you would think I looked pretty and as you expected your wife to be.”
There was a wistful note in her voice that made the Duke remark,
“I suppose you might say that I was nervous of being married – remember, it was for the first time or perhaps it is because I have had concussion that I can now remember very little about our wedding.”
“For me it was very – very – wonderful!”
Then, as if she felt he might think that she was complaining, she added quickly,
“I will keep my wedding gown and wear it when you are feeling better so that you can see how lovely it is. Perhaps I could wear it every year on our anniversary, unless I grow too fat.”
“I think that is unlikely.”
The Duke spoke drily and she was not certain if it was a compliment or not, but before she could say any more, luncheon was announced.
They ate in what was known as the small dining room, a very lovely oval room decorated by Robert Adam in his famous leaf green with alcoves in which there were marble figures of Gods.
“When you are sitting here,” Samala asked, “do you sometimes feel as if you are on Olympus and associating with the other Gods like yourself?”
The Duke’s eyes twinkled.
“You are not elevating me from a Crusader to the majesty of Apollo or Zeus?”
“Apollo, of course,” Samala replied. “Think how good he was with horses!”
The Duke laughed.
As they went into a spirited discussion on whether the Greek horses were as fine as those bred today in England, he thought when the meal ended that, whenever he was with Samala, she always appeared to have new ideas to talk about.
Undoubtedly he would have to use his brain to be able to keep up his end and to answer her questions.
He had already learnt that she not only loved horses and riding, but also had a most unusual knowledge of horse-breeding and of the hopes of all the great racehorse owners like himself.
“How can you know so much about Lord Derby’s horses?” he asked when they were discussing them at some length.
“It is, of course, due to Papa,” Samala answered. “I am afraid that, although he could not really afford it, he read a sporting paper every day as well as The Times.”
The Duke recalled that it was in The Times that she had read his speeches and she must also have studied the sporting papers from cover to cover to be as knowledgeable as she was on a subject that was especially his own.
“I have already learnt,” he said, “that while I have been sleeping you have visited my stables.”
“How could I help it?” she asked. “I have never seen such wonderful horses! I have spent a lot of time talking to Wild Rufus. I believe that he has promised me he will never be so rough with you again.”
“If you make him too tame, I shall be extremely annoyed,” the Duke replied.
“I don’t think he will ever be that,” Samala answered seriously, “but I could not – bear him to injure you – again.”
There was a little throb in her voice the Duke did not miss.
At the same time he decided to ignore it.
He had the uncomfortable feeling that Samala’s love for him was growing day by day and he was afraid that once he was back to living normally again, she would find it hard to adjust herself to not being with him all the time.
‘I don’t want to hurt her,’ he thought. ‘At the same time I have my own life to live and that is something she will have to accept.’
When luncheon was over, as they walked slowly down the passages to the Orangery, he could feel vibrating from Samala her excitement at what she was going to show him and he felt that it was rather touching.
He had never known a woman he was with to be excited about anything but his own desires for her and yet, because she wanted to give him pleasure, Samala was, he knew, as thrilled by the orchids that were waiting for his approval as if he was giving her a diamond necklace.
It struck him that it would be interesting to see her reaction to any present he did give her and he thought he had in fact been very remiss in not remembering that he should have given her one at least on their wedding day.
Samala opened the doors of the Orangery, which had been built early in the last century and was a fine example of early Georgian architecture.
The sun was shining through the long windows and lighting the flowers that filled the long narrow building with a profusion of colour and looked very lovely against the background of green palms and other exotic shrubs the Duke had been experimenting with recently.
There was a small stone fountain playing in the centre of the Orangery and, as they reached it, Samala slipped her hand into his and he saw on one side of the fountain a breathtaking display of the white and pink orchids he had brought back from Darjeeling.
They were so small and exquisite as their star-like petals opened to the sun that it inevitably flashed through the Duke’s mind that they were exactly like Samala.
It was almost as if when he had found them and brought them back to England he was thinking of her.
His fingers had tightened
on hers and he could feel her excitement and her joy at what he was seeing. He knew also that her blue eyes were watching his face anxiously to be certain of his reaction.
He did not speak and she asked at length in a low voice,
“You are – pleased?”
“Delighted!” he answered. “And I think as they have no name they should be called after you.”
Samala gave a little gasp. Then she asked,
“Do you mean that – do you really mean it? It is the loveliest present you could give me! Thank you – thank you!”
The Duke turned to look at her and, as her face was tipped up to his, he had the feeling that because she was happy and pleased by what he had said, she wanted to throw her arms round him and kiss him.
It struck him that this was an appropriate moment when he should kiss his wife for the first time, but, even as he thought of it, there was an interruption and he was aware that Higson was approaching them.
“What is it, Higson?” the Duke asked.
“The Baroness von Schluter has called to see Your Grace,” Higson said a little breathlessly. “Her Ladyship says she is in the neighbourhood and is anxious to have a word with Your Grace before she returns to London.”
The Duke thought with a twist of his lips that the Baroness’s excuse was very obvious.
He was well aware that she had come because, although by this time she must have learnt of his accident, he had not communicated with her as she would have expected.
He was suddenly aware that Samala’s fingers had stiffened in his and he realised that she was waiting for the reply he would give Higson.
He knew that she was tense, not because she was afraid or jealous of the Baroness, of whom he was sure she knew nothing, but because she felt that the caller had encroached on the time they were to spend together and to which she had been looking forward eagerly because it was the first time he had come downstairs.
It flashed through his mind that if he was to see the Baroness, Samala would feel lonely and shut out like a child, who having been promised a visit to the Pantomime, was disappointed at the last moment.
Even as he thought of it, he suddenly realised and it seemed incredible, that he himself had no wish to see the Baroness at this moment.
It was almost as if she was, in some way that he could not put into words, alien to the house, to the orchids, to the sunshine and of course to Samala.
For the moment he could not believe what he was feeling was true and yet he knew positively that the woman who had held him with the fiery passion of desire was not acceptable and he definitely did not wish to see her.
Higson was waiting and so was Samala and, although so many thoughts had passed through his mind, it was only a question of seconds before he said,
“Convey my apologies to the Baroness, Higson, and say that it is with regret that I am still under the doctor’s orders not to receive any visitors for the next few days.”
As he spoke, he knew that the smile was back on Samala’s lips and the sunshine had returned to her eyes.
He felt, too, her fingers move and it was almost as if she gave a little skip of happiness because he would stay with her.
“Very good, Your Grace,” Higson intoned respectfully and walked back the way he had come.
“And now I want to show you some other orchids,” Samala said, “which are very lovely, but not, I shall always think, as beautiful as my – own.”
She took the Duke round the fountain as she spoke and they looked at the other orchids. Then Samala said firmly that he had done enough walking and must go back to the sitting room.
He did not argue with her, for in fact he felt, to his surprise, as if his legs were somewhat unsteady and, when he reached his comfortable armchair in the window, he sat down in it thankfully.
Almost as if she knew what he was feeling, Samala asked no questions, but merely went to the grog-tray in the corner and brought him back a glass of champagne from the inevitable bottle that was open in the wine cooler.
Higson had explained to her that, extravagant though it might seem, when the Duke was in residence there was always champagne in any room he used.
“Not that His Grace often drinks more than a glass a day,” he had said, “unlike some gentlemen who come here. But it’s part of the hospitality that is traditional at Buckhurst Park, Your Grace, and in any other houses His Grace owns.”
“I think it’s a lovely idea,” Samala said, “and rather like the monks in the Monasteries who feed any wayfarers who come to their door and regard them as being their guests.”
“I expect it all goes back to some old religion,” Higson agreed. “That’s the sort of thing, Your Grace, that makes England what it is, but we won’t bother about that.”
“We will not indeed,” Samala agreed.
She thought it was another attribute that she might have expected from her Crusader that he should be generous with his hospitality in the same way as he would be willing to help anyone who appealed to him.
The Duke took the champagne and sipped it, then found himself thinking how strange it was that he did not want to see the Baroness at all and how angry she must have been at being turned away from the door.
‘She will get over it,’ he surmised.
Then he realised that it did not matter to him particularly whether she got over it or not and he knew astoundingly that the curtain had fallen on another of his love-dramas.
When he did return to London, he would definitely not renew his association with the Baroness von Schluter.
The Duke was used to his affaires de coeur coming to an end almost in some cases before anybody realised that they had begun.
When he had left the Baroness, he had been so annoyed at having to do so that he had been quite certain that almost immediately after his wedding he would return to her.
The fire she had engendered in him and her expertise in what he himself had always thought of as ‘the Science of Passion’ was so great that at times the Duke had felt that, instead of being the dominant partner in their liaison, he was the pupil.
And yet now – and he could hardly believe it was the truth – the thought of her did not at all make him want to see her again, while the manner in which they had disported themselves seemed in retrospect to be really quite wild and positively embarrassing.
The Duke was very conscious of his own consequence, but that had never intruded upon him before in his intimate moments of making love.
Yet now as he looked at Samala’s very young, angelic little face as she sat in the window turning the pages of a book, he thought she must never know of the way women like the Baroness behaved.
What is more, it would be the greatest mistake for her ever to come in contact with her or with any of his other past loves.
He had a feeling that she would not only be shocked by them but also hurt and dismayed that he, the hero to whom she attributed such gallant deeds, should be associated with them.
‘I must certainly protect her from that sort of thing,’ the Duke decided.
Then he thought that was a strange matter for him to determine and even stranger that he should feel that he wanted to protect a woman not only from other women but from a too intimate knowledge of his past.
He supposed it was because she was so child-like that there was something deeply disturbing in thinking of her being besmirched and spoilt by what he supposed, if he was honest, was both sordid and certainly immoral.
Then he remembered that there was nothing childlike about Samala’s brain and because sometimes he had been aware that intuitively she could read his thoughts, he told himself that he would have to be careful, very very careful, that he did not despoil her in any way.
He knew that to do so would be like tearing to pieces and stamping into the ground his star-like orchids and once again he was thinking of the sunshine on her hair and the translucence of her skin.
She might have dropped straight out of Heaven or from some twinkling star ont
o the window-seat in front of him.
It suddenly struck him that to kiss her, to touch her and to teach her about love would be very different from anything he had ever done before.
Now that he thought about it, he could not remember that he had ever made love to a woman who was completely innocent and – as he had demanded of his wife – untouched.
It was quite unnecessary for him to ask Samala if any man had ever kissed her.
He knew that the purity he had felt vibrating from her and which he had seen in her face when he found her praying beside his bed, came not only from what she thought and what she knew but from her very soul.
It was something the Duke had not thought about since he was at school and had been obliged to attend Chapel twice a day.
Then he had dismissed it as a somewhat dubious idea about a part of a person that could not be proved to exist.
But now he thought that Samala’s soul was a very real part of herself and it was another thing he must protect. It was all part of his duty because she belonged to him.
Then, as if inevitably his thoughts communicated themselves to Samala, she raised her eyes and, when they met the Duke’s, it was somehow impossible for either of them to look away.
*
By the time they had finished tea together, on which the chef had made a tremendous effort with cakes of every description, including some that were iced and decorated with cherries and crystallised violets, the Duke was feeling tired.
He had enjoyed not only the tea but also watching Samala exclaiming over the cakes and the tiny sandwiches, which she had eaten with the appetite of a child at a party.
“Mama used to explain to me that people who lived in big houses ate like this, but it was something we could not afford to do at home.”
“What did you have to eat?” the Duke asked.
“Only bread and butter to begin with,” Samala replied, “then there was a choice of honey, which came from our own bees, or jam that we made in the summer and which was sometimes rather bitter because we could not afford enough sugar.”
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