Count the Stars

by Barbara Cartland

  He thought that Valora was thinking the same.

  She did not speak, but he thought her eyes looked a little apprehensive as they drew nearer to the inn.

  Before they reached the front of it, a small boy beckoned them and then scampered ahead as they followed him round the back of the building.

  There was a stable, obviously in bad repair with holes in the roof, attached to the inn.

  As the Duke dismounted, the highwayman appeared at the back door to help Valora from the saddle. Then he drew nearer to the Duke to say in a low voice,

  “I have changed your story. There would be no reason for you as a brother and sister to be secretive about yourselves.”

  “Then what are we supposed to be?” the Duke asked.

  “I said you are eloping to Gretna Green and you are terrified that you might be followed by the lady’s parents who had forbidden the marriage.”

  The Duke smiled.

  “I see you have a fertile imagination.”

  “Without one I should not last long,” the highwayman replied. “But all the world loves a lover and they will hide you the best they can.”

  “Thank you,” the Duke answered.

  Valora’s eyes were sparkling as she said,

  “You are making this as exciting as one of the stories you used to tell me and then make me translate it into Latin.”

  “I miss those lessons and, most of all with the life I live now, I miss books and intelligent people to talk to.”

  He did not wait for an answer, but led Mercury by the bridle towards the tumbledown stable.

  The Duke followed, but Valora hesitated.

  An elderly woman, poorly dressed but nevertheless clean and tidy, appeared at the doorway of the inn to say,

  “Come in, dearie. Bill tells me you’ve come a long way and ’ave a long way to go. We’ll ’ave a comfortable bed for you and we’ll do our best to find you and your man somethin’ to fill your bellies.”

  “Thank you,” Valora said and went into the inn.

  It was small and dark with ceilings of heavy ship’s beams, but the bedrooms were clean and the landlady showed her proudly that the mattresses were filled with the best goose feathers.

  “You’ll sleep sound ’ere with naught to worry you,” she said.

  Valora hoped it was true.

  The Duke brought her bundle from the back of her saddle and she found that he was in a room even smaller than hers, but still with a comfortable bed.

  The Duke put the roll from his saddle on the floor and went downstairs.

  On leaving the stable he said to the highwayman,

  “I feel it would be inhospitable if I did not ask you to dine with us,”

  “I would like to,” he replied, “but I think it would be a mistake. There is always a chance that some busybody might recognise me and at the moment I am thinking only of Miss Valora’s safety.”

  “I understand what you are saying,” The Duke replied, “and I consider it very generous of you.”

  “What I intend to do,” the highwayman went on, “is to go back to Heverington Hall to find out if Lady Melford has arrived without the bride or whether she is putting off the evil hour of telling Sir Mortimer that she is missing.”

  “I hope it annoys him,” the Duke said grimly.

  “It will. Whatever happens, you must prevent her from becoming the wife of a man who is so despicable that no decent woman should even speak to him.”

  “I have heard some unpleasant stories about him.”

  “Unpleasant!” the highwayman ejaculated. “I would not soil my lips by describing the way he has behaved to local girls or the debaucheries of parties he has thrown at The Hall.”

  He paused before he added,

  “I am not exaggerating when I say I would have killed him rather than let him marry Miss Valora.”

  “I can only say I admire you for your feelings,” the Duke remarked.

  “She is a very exceptional girl,” the highwayman went on. “With her brains it’s a pity she was not born a man, but no one except that avaricious strumpet who became her stepmother would have thought of marrying her to someone like Sir Mortimer.”

  “She is a bad woman?” the Duke asked him.

  “Beautiful and rotten to the core. I knew when Lord Melford married her that there would be trouble, but shortly after he brought her from London to his home, I had to leave mine, so I was unable to see Miss Valora or help her.”

  “Yet you kept in touch with what was happening?”

  “There were plenty of people to tell me what was going on at Melford Manor because of my affection for, as well as my admiration of, the girl I taught for six years. I hoped she would find some really decent man to marry her.”

  “I understand after her mother died that she was not likely to come in contact with what you call decent men.”

  “That is true, a scandal is not forgotten easily in the country. And I suspect where London Society is concerned it is much the same.”

  “That is what Valora told me,” the Duke replied.

  “Where are you taking her now?”

  It was a question the Duke thought he should have expected and there was a suspicion in the highwayman’s eyes that he thought he should resent, but at the same time he respected it.

  “I am taking her to her grandfather who I understand lives in York.”

  The highwayman gave an exclamation of relief.

  “I thought I could trust you.”

  Again to the Duke’s surprise he did not resent the frankness behind the words.

  “I only hope I can take her there safely,” he remarked.

  “You must be careful of a man called Walter,” the highwayman said. “He is a nasty bit of work. Her Ladyship employs him in a dozen different ways and all of them unsavoury.”

  “Valora has already spoken of him.”

  “Giles, the man with him, is just as dangerous,” the highwayman added.

  They were talking outside the inn door and the Duke said,

  “As you are leaving, I suggest you have a drink with me first.”

  “I would rather not, but thank you all the same. I never drink when I am working.”

  He smiled over the last word and, because in a way it was so outrageous, the Duke smiled.

  Then the highwayman turned towards the stables.

  “I will see you in the morning,” he said. “Tell Miss Valora from me there is no need to be afraid. Nothing will happen tonight at any rate.”

  He did not wait for a reply and the Duke went into the inn and up to his bedroom.

  As he washed in the basin with the soap that Jenkins had packed for him, he thought he was certainly involved in a very strange adventure, which undoubtedly would evoke the approval of Freddie if no one else.

  How could he have imagined for one moment he would rescue a girl from a horrible man like Heverington and encounter a highwayman who was a teacher of Latin?

  ‘No one would believe a word of it,’ he thought to himself and felt he strained even his own credulity in believing the events of the day.

  Having tied a clean cravat round his neck, he knocked on the door next to his.

  “Who is it?” Valora asked a little apprehensively.

  “I am hungry,” the Duke replied.

  “So am I,” she answered and opened the door.

  The Duke was surprised. She had taken off her riding habit and was wearing a very pretty gown of white silk.

  Because he was extremely experienced where women’s dress was concerned, he realised it was made of material that had not creased despite the fact it had been rolled up all day and was also very simple.

  It made her look very young and very fresh and, as she sensed his surprise, she smiled.

  “I am afraid it is my whole wardrobe. If we take long in reaching York, you will be extremely tired of seeing me in it.”

  “You make me feel that I should be taking you to a party,” the Duke said.

  “I
am quite content with the programme you have already devised,” Valora answered.

  She walked ahead of him down the stairs and the publican, a large, fat, rather loquacious man they had not met before, showed them into a small room which was obviously not often in use.

  The one table it contained had been covered with a white cloth and dinner appeared as soon as they were seated.

  It was a simple meal and consisted of a soup that seemed delicious to Valora because she was so hungry, followed by cold meats that the Duke guessed were kept for casual visitors, like highwaymen or more exclusively for the publican himself.

  The ham and the home-made brawn were quite palatable, especially when eaten with the pickles, that the landlady assured them she had made only this week, which gave them a piquant taste.

  There was cheese and a large plate of strawberries that had hastily been picked from the garden, to which they could add some thick cream, which they were told had been standing ready for the butter churning that was to take place tomorrow.

  There was freshly baked bread to eat with the meal and once again the Duke preferred cider to the local beer or some rather dubious French wine.

  “I have enjoyed every mouthful,” Valora exclaimed, as she finished the last strawberry.

  The Duke thought of the huge meals that were served both in Berkeley Square or at The Castle for which he had often found he had no appetite.

  There was no doubt that, despite the exercise he took so arduously boxing in Gentleman Jackson’s Academy in Bond Street or fencing with Signor Balotti in his school at Hampstead, his body responded more naturally to a hard day’s ride that had started at dawn and ended at sunset.

  As they were both concentrating on their food, they did not talk very much during the meal, but when the publican removed the dishes the Duke sat back on his chair and stretched out his legs in front of him.

  “I think my bed upstairs will certainly be preferable to the hard ground under the trees which you suggested earlier today,” he teased.

  “We have been very lucky that Mr. Travers could bring us here and I think it was clever of him to say that we were a runaway couple,” Valora answered.

  “I thought perhaps you would repudiate such an idea, as you so disapprove of marriage.”

  “I did not say I disapprove of it,” Valora corrected. “I only said it was not something I wanted for myself.”

  “Which is, of course, a ridiculous contention. You only make it because you are too young to know your own mind.”

  If he intended to provoke her, he could not have done so more skilfully.

  Valora’s eyes flashed at him as she exclaimed,

  “I do know my own mind! And I know that I have no wish to be a slave to any man!”

  “Is that what you think it would be?”

  “Of course it would. Women are treated like chattels and, when a man finds his wife boring, he can leave her in the country while he goes to London to enjoy himself. No one considers it reprehensible.”

  The Duke knew that she would be thinking of her mother and he replied,

  “I think a lot of women are not subservient and by perhaps devious means get the upper hand.”

  “Only if they use their feminine wiles and allurements in an underhand and unsporting manner.”

  The Duke raised his eyebrows, but his eyes were twinkling as he asked,

  “What is unsporting in being alluring to a man?”

  “It is wrong to make him do things he would not do otherwise, simply because a woman tempts him,” Valora snapped.

  The Duke put back his head and laughed.

  “But that is exactly what women have done since the beginning of time! What about Eve? What about all those alluring women, whom I am sure you have read about in history? They all got their own way because they were beautiful and men admired their faces, not their brains.”

  “You are trying to tell me I should not be intelligent,” Valora replied. “Quite simply, if I was ugly, I would not be in the position I am in now.”

  Because of what she said she thought of Sir Mortimer, the Duke noticed that she gave a little shiver.

  “Having eluded him,” he said, “you now have to use the brains on which you set so much store to be free of him forever.”

  “It’s not going to be easy,” Valora replied, “and, although I hate to admit it, I could not have escaped without the help of a man.”

  “Sometimes we have our uses – ”

  “But, of course, you have. All I am saying is that I don’t want to marry you.”

  The Duke thought a little wryly that this was not only plain speaking, but also something he had never heard from a woman before.

  He could not remember a time since he had been at Eton when there had not been some woman one way or another scheming to be his wife or to obtain such a distinction for her daughter.

  As he thought about it, a whole stream of faces seemed to pass in front of his eyes.

  Fair women, dark women, redheads, they all appeared in retrospect to have attractive features and yet the similarity amongst them was unmistakable.

  It was there to be read in their eyes – blue, brown, grey, green and hazel – the expression was always the same.

  ‘Greed,’ the Duke thought bitterly.

  Greed – primarily because he was a Duke, although he conceded a large number of women desired him as a lover. They were usually those who were not in the position to become the Duchess of Brockenhurst. At the same time, he had the uncomfortable feeling that they would not have been so keen to risk their reputations with him if he had not been so rich, so important and the mere fact he was enamoured with them was a feather in their social cap.

  The expression on his face must have been somewhat revealing, as Valora said quickly,

  “I am sorry – was it – rude of me to say that?”

  “It was at least honest,” the Duke replied.

  “That is something I always want to be, but at the same time because you have been so kind to me, I do not wish you to think I don’t appreciate you as a man.”

  “What do you mean by that?” the Duke asked.

  She put her head a little on one side as if she was analysing him.

  “You are handsome,” she said, “which I am sure you know without my saying so. You look very strong and you are obviously used to acting quickly.”

  “I am prepared to agree to all that.”

  “But I think also,” Valora went on, “that you have hidden within you issues that you would rather not face or remember.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s difficult to put into words,” she answered, “yet I have the feeling that you live on the top of life, superficially is probably the right word, while underneath there are many possibilities that are part of you and yet you pretend they are not there.”

  The Duke did not speak for a moment and then he said,

  “You are still not making it very clear.”

  Valora gave a little sigh.

  “I like to think I am good at reading character, but you are rather complex. What I think I am trying to say is that at one time you had beliefs, ambitions and perhaps ideals, but as the years passed you have put them aside, forgotten them or deliberately suppressed them.”

  The Duke was astonished. He knew exactly what Valora was trying to say, although he tried to deny it to himself.

  When he had been at Oxford and then in the war, he and his special friends, especially Freddie, had been filled with idealistic ambitions of how they would change the world.

  They had thought that the war would sweep away most of the injustices and prejudices that had seemed wrong and restrictive to people who believed in freedom.

  England had been fighting for that against the French and he and his friends had told themselves that, when peace came, England would move into a new era of prosperity for everyone, not only for the highest in the land but also for the lowest.

  Yet now he knew that, aft
er leaving the Army, apart from a few speeches in the House of Lords, he had been caught up, almost without realising it, in the social whirlpool concerned primarily with amusement and the sporting one, which aimed only at beating other competitors to the winning post.

  Because he was perturbed, not only by what Valora had said to him, but also by his own thoughts, he pushed his chair back from the table.

  “I am sure I can find a great many arguments to refute your analysis of me, but let’s keep them for tomorrow. As we have to leave at dawn, the sooner we are in bed the better.”

  As if she felt she had upset him, Valora arose quietly to her feet.

  “You are right,” she said, “and thank you very much for all you have done for me. I do not know how I can – ever repay you – which is something I very much – want to do.”

  “Suppose we talk about it when we reach York,” the Duke suggested.

  He smiled as he spoke and he saw the look of worry that had been in Valora’s eyes in case she had annoyed him vanish. He was also aware of her dimples as she smiled in response.

  “Goodnight, Mr. Standon,” she said. “I shall say a prayer for you tonight.”

  “I am sure it will be very efficacious,” the Duke replied, “and may I point out that as my fiancée you should address me by my Christian name.”

  He lowered his voice as he spoke and, as if she fancied they might be overheard, Valora glanced towards the door.

  “I am sorry, I will not be careless again,” she said in a voice that only he could hear.

  Then she curtseyed and went from the room.

  He heard her footsteps going upstairs.

  The Duke went to the stables to see if Samson and Mercury were all right. It was something he had never thought of doing before, as his horses had always been looked after by highly paid and experienced grooms.

  Now he found Samson had kicked over the bucket of water beside his manger and, as there was no one about, he had to refill it himself.

  There was hay for the horses to eat, but he thought that tomorrow he must buy them some oats to sustain them on what was going to be a long and exhausting ride.

  The same applied to Valora and, as he was walking back to the inn, he thought of how well she had behaved all day and how she had never mentioned that she was stiff or even tired.