There was silence. And next Anoushka said,
“Then, supposing I listened to compliments from another man and found him interesting, would you pretend not to notice?”
“Certainly not!” the Duke replied sharply. “That is something that must not happen and as my wife you must always behave decently and with propriety, which means that there would be no other men in your life except me.”
Once again he was thinking of Cleodel as he spoke and he was sure that, if he had married her, she would have continued her love affair with Jimmy.
The whole idea disgusted him and without his meaning to his voice had sharpened and he answered Anoushka almost ferociously.
Then, as he finished speaking, he thought he might have frightened her and he should try to somehow soothe her feelings if she was upset, but before he could speak, she said in a quiet voice,
“That does not seem fair!”
“Fair?” the Duke queried.
“For a man to be entitled to do something, but not a woman. Surely, if it is right for the husband, it must be right for his wife and vice versa.”
The Duke realised she was arguing for the sake of it and not because she felt personally involved.
At the same time, he thought, seeing what he had suffered with Cleodel, he should make things clear from the very beginning.
He took a sip of his brandy before he declared,
“There is something I want to tell you, Anoushka.” “What is that?”
“When I came to the Convent, I was seeking a wife who would be different from all the other women I have ever known.”
“In what way?”
“I asked my sister to find me a girl, who, because she had been brought up as a novice, would be pure and untouched. It was then that she suggested you.”
There was a long silence. Then Anoushka said,
“I think – what you are saying is – that the women and girls you have met outside the Convent in the world in which you – live were neither of those things.”
This, the Duke thought, was rather sweeping and he prevaricated by answering:
“It is difficult to be sure and, although one must always believe that they have been brought up to keep themselves chaste until they marry, there is always the chance they have been tempted into an indiscretion.”
“You mean they might have met men about whom their parents knew nothing and who would – kiss them?”
The Duke understood how this fitted in with the conversation he had had with Anoushka earlier and he responded,
“That is what I meant, for girls, even in the most aristocratic families, have, for instance, riding-masters and meet other men employed by their fathers. There are also men who are unscrupulous and find very young girls attractive.”
Once again his voice hardened, as he thought that was what Jimmy had felt about Cleodel.
“You said you did not want to tell me what had happened in the past,” Anoushka answered in a low voice, “but I think you have been hurt – wounded – and it is something you – have to forget if you are to be – happy again.”
The Duke could find no words in which to answer her. He only knew that she had an extraordinary power of perception where he was concerned and it would be impossible for him to refute anything she had said.
Instead he changed the subject, talking about the Palais Royal in which the Grand Vefour was situated, describing what it had been like when it was the private house of the Duc d’Orleans, and how overnight he became a very rich man when he turned it into a place of amusement with casinos and restaurants.
Anoushka listened wide-eyed. Then she enquired,
“Did the men in those days come here with their wives?”
“Certainly not!” the Duke replied. “Ladies never go to such places, and when we leave Paris for England, Anoushka, you will not be able to dine in a restaurant.”
“Why not?”
“Because it is something which a woman in your position, what we call a ‘lady’, cannot do.”
“But there are restaurants in which you may dine?” “Yes,” the Duke admitted.
“With a woman who would be your mistress.” “Speaking generally and not personally,” he said, “the answer is yes.”
“It seems to me that the women I am not supposed to talk about have a far more amusing time than I will.”
“That has been said before,” the Duke replied, “but it depends what you call amusement. You, Anoushka, being a Duchess, have a great social position. You will entertain all the most interesting and powerful people in the land. They will come to stay with us in the country and dine with us in London.”
He saw she was listening intently and went on,
“People will look up to you and admire you, especially on my estate where at Ravenstock alone I employ over two thousand people. They will expect you to be interested in them and look after them.”
“How should I do that?”
“My mother would call at their cottages. She also wished to be told when anybody was ill. She gave a party for them at Christmas and I think I am not exaggerating when I say that everybody loved her.”
“And you think they will love me?”
“I am sure of it.”
“And do they love you?”
“I hope so. I think perhaps they respect and admire me and know that I will always be just and generous in anything I do which concerns them.”
The Duke smiled as he continued,
“The women I do not wish you to talk about cannot have any of that, nor can they have children who can bear my name and my eldest son will inherit my title.”
There was just a touch of satisfaction in the Duke’s voice.
For the first time he began to think because he was describing it to Anoushka that he would really enjoy having a son – or sons. He would teach them how to shoot, how to ride and to enjoy his horses and estates as he enjoyed them himself.
“If we had a child,” Anoushka was now asking in a very small voice, “we would never have to part with it?” “Never!” the Duke said positively.
He knew she was thinking that she had been parted from her parents and now he was concentrating on the mystery of exactly why she had been brought to the Convent and abandoned there.
Because he felt it was better not to ask her questions, he said,
“Our children will be with us when they are small, but the boys will have to go away to school. They will of course always come home for the holidays and we can visit them when they are at Eton and see that they are always well looked after and have everything they want.”
He paused before he went on,
“I am thinking that what you said is right, Anoushka. It is funny, perhaps wrong, for a man to have so many houses in which to live by himself when they should be filled with children who laugh as you laugh, play and find life exciting.”
“If you can give me children,” Anoushka said, “why can you not give children to the ladies whose names I am not allowed to mention?”
The Duke thought this was one of the questions he had anticipated would arise sooner or later, but once again he evaded it.
“I think we should leave now,” he said. “Would you like to go somewhere else or would you prefer to drive home with the carriage open? I think we should go to bed soon as we are leaving early tomorrow morning.”
“Yes, of course,” Anoushka agreed.
They drove back under the stars and, as she looked up at them as she had done the previous night, the Duke had the strange feeling that she had for the moment forgotten his very existence.
He knew that any other woman would have been nestling against him, holding his hand under the rug and waiting for him to whisper words of love in a low passionate voice.
But Anoushka sat upright and her head was tilted back as they drove on in silence until they reached the Champs Élysées.
Then, as if she suddenly remembered him, she turned to look at the Duke and said,
; “Are you really going to bed now or do you intend to look for your friends perhaps in the places you will not take me?” The Duke was startled not so much by what she said, but because once again she was reading his thoughts.
He had, in fact, been deliberating whether he should drop into Maxim’s knowing that, because it was the most fashionable restaurant in Paris, he would doubtless know half the men in the whole room.
The women, who would be the smartest, most fashionable Demi-Mondaines in the whole Capital, would welcome him eagerly.
Then, because he felt that if he went to Maxim’s, his presence there when he was on his honeymoon would reflect on Anoushka and also because surprisingly he really had no wish for the superficial gaiety of Maxim’s, he replied quite truthfully,
“No, Anoushka, I am coming to bed, and like you, I shall think of all the interesting things there will be to do when we reach the South. I am sure you have a thousand questions to ask me for which I shall have to find the answers.”
“You do not mind answering them?” Anoushka asked anxiously.
“I promise you it is something I shall enjoy, although I am quite nervous of displaying my ignorance!”
Anoushka laughed.
“That you will never do and you will have to teach me very quickly, so that I shall not make mistakes like the one I made today.”
“I told you to forget it,” the Duke said firmly.
“I am trying to,” Anoushka replied, “but I know, even if you have forgiven me, that the lady to whom I spoke will hate me and that is wrong because I am your wife.”
“And as your husband I can tell you quite truthfully that it does not worry me and is really of no importance.” They stepped out of the carriage and because it was after midnight the Duke did not go into the salon to have another drink, but walked up the stairs beside Anoushka.
Their bedrooms were side by side with a communicating door which had not been opened.
They stopped outside the first door which was Anoushka’s.
“Thank you very much for such a delicious dinner and for talking to me,” she said.
“It is I who should be thanking you, Anoushka. I have found our conversation very interesting and certainly original.”
“You mean it would have been different if you had been with anybody else?”
“Very different,” the Duke smiled, “and that is what makes knowing you so unusual and I think I might almost use the word ‘intriguing’.”
“So you have not been – bored.”
“Of course not! And I can say this quite honestly – there has not been a moment since we have been together when I have felt in the least bored or had the slightest wish to be anywhere else except with you.”
Her smile was dazzling. Then she gave a little laugh,
“Now you are talking like a Frenchman. I thought you told me that the English never pay compliments.”
“I am the exception.”
“Of course,” she replied. “And – please – because I like hearing them will you pay me lots and lots of compliments and forget you are English?”
“Only if they are truthful,” he said. “I shall know if they are,” she replied. “But actually any compliment is better than none.”
The Duke laughed and taking her hand in his raised it to his lips.
“Let me tell you one more,” he said. “I like the quickness of your brain and I enjoy your laughter.”
He kissed her hand, his lips warm on the softness of her skin.
As he did so, he wondered if he should kiss her lips. Then he thought it was far too soon and Anoushka had said she had no wish to be touched.
He raised his head and still holding her hand he sighed,
“Good night, Anoushka. Sleep well. There are new excitements tomorrow which I shall look forward to.”
“It will be very – very thrilling for me too.”
She spoke eagerly but lightly and took her hand from the Duke’s.
Then she smiled at him as she opened the door of her bedroom.
He waited until the last frill of her bustle disappeared before he walked towards his own room.
He had the feeling that he was losing or missing something that he should not let escape him.
Then he told himself he was just being fanciful.
At the same time, as his valet helped him undress, he was thinking of Anoushka.
Chapter 6
As the yacht steamed into the Black Sea, the Duke was watching Anoushka’s face, feeling sure that she was showing a significantly different kind of excitement in her eyes.
Intent on finding clues of her past, he had found one of curious significance the moment they arrived at Nice.
They had stepped out of the special carriage attached to the train to find that as usual the courier, who had gone ahead of them, had arranged for the Duke’s own carriage drawn by his own horses to be waiting outside the station.
The morning sunshine made it imperative to have the carriage open, but there was a fringed linen canopy to protect them from the sun.
As they drove away, Anoushka had glimpses of the blue sea. Then after they had passed through the town and started to climb the hills above Nice to where the private villas were situated, the Duke heard her suddenly give a gasp.
“Cypress trees!” she exclaimed in a rapt voice.
The words were spoken under her breath and yet he heard them and saw the expression of surprise in her eyes. Silhouetted against the sky were a number of cypress trees pointing like fingers towards the heavens and he knew as they drove on that her eyes were on them rather than on the Alps in the far distance.
The Duke had by now learnt not to ask searching questions which embarrassed Anoushka, because she felt she could not reply to them.
Instead he merely watched her and found himself intrigued and interested in what he began to think was a way he had not experienced before.
When he was alone, he found himself wondering why cypress trees should hold such significance for her.
They were very familiar in France and Italy. Then suddenly a thought came to him which he felt was very illuminating.
He remembered that when he had visited Russia he had read a great deal about the history of the country and its Czars.
Now at the back of his memory he recalled that one book had told him that the tall, lofty, romantic cypress trees had first been planted by the Empress Catherine on her journey with Potemkin to her Southern possessions.
From these trees were grafted all the many cypress groves and avenues that had come over the years to be typical of the Crimean landscape.
More especially was Odessa connected with the cypress trees.
The Duke had felt as elated as if he had won a hard race or defeated an opponent in the boxing ring.
‘We will go to Odessa!’ he decided, but he was too wise to say so to Anoushka. He would let it be a surprise.
After they had spent only two days in his villa, the Duke was so impatient to put his theory to the test that early the next day they sailed for Villefranche as their first port of call.
It was a brilliant morning which soon became very hot, but they found the sea breeze pleasantly refreshing.
Anoushka was as delighted with the yacht as she had been thrilled, almost like a child with a new doll’s house, by the Duke’s private coach on the train.
From little things she said, the Duke knew that she had been in a ship before, but obviously not a private one.
There was no hurry and they sailed slowly down the coast of Italy, occasionally stopping in some small port to go ashore and look at the local sights.
The Duke had no wish at the moment to take Anoushka to Rome or Naples and he thought that even Pompeii could wait for another time.
It was only when they reached the Greek islands that he recognised this as a desire to be alone with Anoushka and not share her with the crowds and sightseers.
Then he admitted to himself that he was falling in love.
At first he could not believe it possible. He had been so sure after leaving England, with his hatred of Cleodel distorting his whole outlook, that never again would he care for a woman or let one in any way encroach on his heart.
And yet, as he watched Anoushka, as he listened to her questions and strove to answer them, he knew that he found everything about her entrancing.
It was not only her beauty which attracted him but something else very different.
He thought now that he should have become aware of the change in his feelings when the day before they left Nice the courier he had sent to London arrived to report what had occurred after the announcement of his marriage had appeared in the newspapers.
The man had described the astonishment amongst his friends, the scenes the Earl of Sedgewick had made at Ravenstock House and the difficulties that Mr. Matthews was having with him and a great number of other callers.
Although the Duke could visualise it all vividly, he found surprisingly that it did not give him any elation or the satisfaction he had expected.
Quite suddenly it did not seem to matter very much what had been said or done and England was far away.
Even then, he would not face them for this reason and, it was only when the yacht was steaming towards Constantinople, that he admitted that he loved Anoushka in a way he had never loved before, though he was puzzlingly uncertain as to what he could do about it.
In all his considerable experience he had never been with a woman for so long who had not fallen in love with him.
Because he himself was genuinely in love, he could not blind himself to the truth or pretend that Anoushka’s feelings were anything but those of a pupil for a much-admired teacher.
She listened intently to everything he said with her huge eyes on his face and with a serenity which he admired and which he had never found except in his sister Marguerite.
When they discussed deep academic subjects, Anoushka showed remarkable powers of concentration and, when they argued together, the Duke felt he must polish up his brain to keep his end up, let alone defeat her.
On other subjects she was so adorably childlike that he felt at times it would be a mistake to awaken her to a very different point of view.
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