Count the Stars

by Barbara Cartland

  She looked so lovely in her simple white dress as she sat listening to him with her elbows on the table with her face cupped in her small hands.

  Her attitude was that of a child at her lessons.

  The Duke was suddenly palpitatingly aware that she was very much a woman.

  He had a sudden impulse to touch her bare arms and her neck, to see if her skin was as soft as it looked. Then he shied away from the idea of admitting that he wanted to kiss her.

  Yet he knew because she was so innocent, so un-awakened, that her lips would be very soft and sweet and he had an almost overwhelming desire to be the first man to kiss her and feel her mouth beneath his.

  He could imagine nothing more thrilling than to awaken a response in her.

  But he knew that it was something he must not do.

  It would be, he told himself, extremely wrong and certainly dishonourable, to approach her when he had promised to protect her and take her safely to York.

  What was more, he was quite certain that, if he revealed such feelings in any way, she would run away from him as she had run away from Sir Mortimer,

  As he felt emotions, which were for a moment uncontrollable, rising within him, he rose abruptly from the table to walk to the casement window to look out onto the untidy garden.

  “It is getting late, Valora,” he said almost harshly. “I think it’s time you went to bed.”

  “But I want to go on talking to you,” she replied. “I never thought I should find a man who knew so much about the subjects that interest me and not be concerned merely with horses and cards.”

  “You accuse me of being cynical,” the Duke answered, “but I think that is what you are being. I am sure most men have a great many other interests than the two subjects which you condemn so wholeheartedly.”

  “I don’t condemn them,” Valora retorted. “I only say that to talk of nothing else is rather like eating suet pudding day in, day out, when one is longing for something more appetising.”

  “Then, as I want you to go to bed, I will now talk about horses until they bore you.”

  “I would not be bored if you tell me about Samson. He is the most magnificent stallion I have ever seen.”

  “I am quite prepared to congratulate you on acquiring an animal as fine as Mercury,” the Duke said, “and I realise he means a great deal to you.”

  “I have had him since he was a foal and I love him more than anything else in the world,” Valora answered.

  The way she spoke and the sudden light in her eyes made the Duke feel again an uncontrollable desire to kiss her. He knew too that he wanted her to say that she loved him more than anything else in the world.

  Then he told himself that it had been a mistake to drink so much of the claret that had been served at dinner and even worse to order a brandy to follow it.

  “If you are not going to bed, Valora, I am,” he said, as he walked towards the door.

  When he reached it, he heard voices outside and for a moment he forgot everything except the fear that they might be discovered.

  He had half opened the door as he spoke and now he closed it, leaving only a crack through which he could see two women and two men leaving the dining hall and ascending the stairs.

  He watched them and decided that they were ordinary middle-class travellers, doubtless journeying from one town to another, perhaps on business or to visit friends.

  He watched them until they reached the top of the stairs and then heard them walk along the passage to the two rooms situated on the same floor as Valora and himself, facing the front of the inn.

  When they were out of sight, he turned back to see Valora still sitting at the table and watching him apprehensively.

  “Is it all right?” she asked in a whisper.

  “Quite all right,” the Duke replied. “But we must not get careless, Valora. I think now it was a mistake to stay here and we must set off early in the morning.”

  She did not reply, but rose from her chair as he continued,

  “We have one more night, I reckon, before we reach York and you will be safe.”

  “Then – what will – you do?”

  Valora came nearer to him as she spoke and now she looked up at him.

  As her eyes met his, the Duke felt once again an overwhelming desire to take her in his arms.

  It was so insistent, so imperative, that he could feel a throbbing in his temples and a frantic beating of his heart that was more intense, more insistent, than he had ever known in his life before.

  Only an iron control, which he had learned in the Army, prevented him from putting his arms around Valora and pulling her roughly against him.

  He wanted her – he wanted her in a way that made him feel that nothing else in the world was of any consequence. The danger they were in, the need to reach York and safety, were all swept away by a floodtide, which he felt must overwhelm him.

  As he was aware that she was still looking at him enquiringly, he said harshly,

  “For God’s sake go to bed, unless you want to be dragged back to marry Heverington!”

  He felt as he spoke as if he had struck something small and defenceless.

  He saw the fear come back into her eyes, before she pulled open the door and he heard her footsteps running swiftly up the uncarpeted stairs towards her bedroom.

  *

  If the Duke slept badly, so did Valora.

  All she could think about was the harsh note in his voice and the darkness in his eyes when he had told her to go to bed. She could not understand why he was angry or what she could have done to upset him.

  She had looked forward so much to their dinner alone together and, while she was changing, she had told herself that there were a hundred questions she wanted to ask him.

  She had never before known how exciting it was to talk to a man who was near her own age and who conversed with her as if she was his intellectual equal.

  To her father she had always been a child and to her teachers, like Mr. Travers, she had been very much a pupil whose opinion, unless it was supported by facts, they did not find very interesting.

  They wanted to lecture and not to listen.

  All the other men she had met, young and old, had only paid her compliments and, as she had told the Duke, had tried to touch her.

  She did not know quite why they revolted her, although now she thought of what the Duke had said before he had grown angry, that what she had wanted was ideal love.

  It had never struck her for some reason that she could not quite understand, that marriage could be like that – a love that was beautiful and as mystic as the magic she sensed in the woods and the tales she told herself that were much more vivid than those she could read in books.

  She had sought knowledge since her mother told her that she needed it. But she thought now that it should be knowledge of people as well as of intellectual subjects.

  She suddenly felt that her whole attitude to life was ignorant and rather foolish.

  She had been so positive that, because she loathed Sir Mortimer, she would never marry and submit to being treated as casually as her father had treated her mother when she was ill, when he had gone off adventuring on his own.

  Because she was a child and intensely loyal to those she loved, she worried terribly that her mother had been unhappy, even though she pretended to take it with a philosophical spirit.

  “Men will be men, Valora,” she would say, “as you will find out for yourself when you are older.”

  “Why does Papa not take you to London with him?” Valora would enquire.

  “Because I am just not well enough to everything he wants to do,” her mother would reply miserably. “Men want women who are well enough to dance, to ride and – to laugh with them.”

  There had been a pause before her mother had said the last words and Valora felt now with renewed perception that what she had really been going to say was ‘to ride, to laugh and to love them’.

  Thinking of her fa
ther with his abounding good health and high spirits, she thought perhaps it had been frustrating for him to have a wife, who had not given him the son he had wanted so desperately and who was always a semi-invalid.

  He obviously wanted her mother to accompany him to the races, to appear at the Hunt balls, and, of course, to take part in all the sporting activities which occupied his days.

  But looking back, Valora thought that what he had minded more than anything else was when he had to dine alone.

  “Damn it all, Elizabeth,” she had heard him say once to her mother, “surely you can come down and dine with me! If there is one thing that bores me to extinction, it is eating alone.”

  “I wish I could, darling,” her mother had replied, “but I feel so weak and you know that I am unable to eat food that does not agree with me.”

  “Then I will have to find someone else, won’t I!” her father had answered in what she had thought was a disagreeable tone.

  He slammed the bedroom door before he went downstairs to the dining room and the next day he left for London.

  All through her childhood Valora resented him and thought him unkind, but now she felt that perhaps he had been looking for the other half of himself, although certainly there was nothing idealistic about her stepmother.

  Yet in a way Valora supposed that she had given her father something he wanted.

  She remembered how he looked at her and how, if she entered a room unexpectedly, she would find him kissing his new wife in a way that made her feel somehow embarrassed.

  He had also bought her stepmother everything she had wanted, although she had never stopped asking for more.

  That explained why there had been no money when he died.

  ‘Was Papa really in love with her?’ Valora asked in the darkness of the inn bedroom.

  Because it seemed important for her to know the answer, she wanted to climb out of bed and go into the room next door and ask kind Mr. Standon to explain to her what she was trying to understand.

  ‘He knows so much about everything,’ she murmured to herself.

  Then she felt herself wince again because of the harsh way he had spoken to her.

  ‘I suppose I bore him,’ she thought, ‘because I am so ignorant and foolish about things like marriage and love.’

  It was almost like a physical pain to think that she did not please him.

  Then it suddenly struck her, because he was so handsome, so strong and so clever that there must have been many women who found him irresistibly attractive.

  She wondered why he was not married and why he was making this journey alone.

  ‘It is lucky for me,’ Valora told herself.

  Then she was sure that he was beginning to find her a bore and, as she had feared in the first place, an encumbrance.

  ‘What can I do to please him?’ she asked herself.

  She remembered they had only one more night together and she felt as if time was slipping through her fingers and she could not hold on to it.

  ‘Once we have reached York I shall never see him again,’ she realised.

  Quite unexpectedly, but, of course, because she was so tired, the tears began to run down her face.

  Chapter Five

  The Duke had taken himself to task during the night for being disagreeable.

  Then he felt ashamed when the valet came into the room with his boots somewhat indifferently cleaned, but with three cravats, washed and with no more than the proper amount of starching, exactly as Jenkins might have produced them.

  Because he thought it was the least he could do to show his appreciation, the Duke tied his cravat in a more complicated and fashionable style than he had done hitherto on the journey.

  Then he went downstairs to breakfast to apologise to Valora and determined to make her day a happy one.

  He also told himself that once he reached York his feelings for her might alter and she would no longer attract him so violently as she had done last night.

  He thought the reason was partly that he had never before been alone with a woman for so long unless he was making love to her.

  He was also inclined to attribute the intensity of his feelings to the fact that he was in better health and more full of energy than he had been for a long time.

  The publican brought him his breakfast almost as soon as he was sitting at the table. To the Duke’s surprise Valora did not appear.

  He was not worried that she had disappeared or was ill, because he had heard her moving about in her room while he was dressing and talking to someone else, who he imagined was a chambermaid.

  He did, however, glance at his watch two or three times before, as he was finishing his coffee, she came into the parlour.

  He was just about to ask her what had kept her, when she came to his side to say,

  “Would you please give me some money?”

  The Duke raised his eyebrows, but he did not speak and she added quickly,

  “I don’t want to take more than you can – afford to give me and I am sure Grandpapa will – pay you back when we – reach him.”

  “Why do you want money at this moment,” the Duke asked.

  He thought Valora would reply that it was for the chambermaid who had been helping her. To his surprise she hesitated and looked down in what he thought was an embarrassed manner.

  “I hope that we have no secrets from each other, at any rate none that concern our journey,” he said quietly.

  “It is for the – maid who helped me with your cravats,” Valora replied. “She is very worried about herself.”

  The way Valora spoke made the Duke sure that he knew the answer to his question, but he waited and, after a moment, she said with the colour rising in her cheeks,

  “She is having a – baby and she will not be – employed here any longer. She does not know where she will go.”

  “Then I presume she is not married!” the Duke remarked cynically.

  Valora lifted her eyes to his.

  “How did you guess?”

  The Duke desisted from saying it was not only the oldest story in the world, but one which chambermaids, beggars and women of all sorts and conditions used to extract money from the soft-hearted.

  “How much do you want?” he asked.

  “I feel it is wrong of me to ask you to pay when it is I who wish to be charitable,” Valora replied. “But could you possibly spare – two or three guineas?”

  The Duke put his hand in his pocket and drew out three golden guineas, which he held out in the palm of his hand.

  Valora took them from him saying,

  “Thank you, it is very kind and I promise the money will be returned to you.”

  She reached the door when the Duke said,

  “I think we should hurry. We are leaving later than we usually do.”

  “I will only be a minute or so,” Valora replied.

  He heard her running up the stairs and she joined him a few minutes later and without speaking sat down at the breakfast table and began to eat quickly.

  “I will see to the horses,” the Duke suggested and went out to the stables.

  Despite the fact that Valora had left her coffee because it was too hot to drink, by the time they left the inn the servants were already cleaning the doorstep, the ostlers were rubbing down the horses and the Duke hoped apprehensively that none of the guests would be awake to see them depart.

  He, however, said nothing to Valora, and they rode swiftly across the fields and unenclosed land, all the time heading North.

  It was a lovely day with a heat haze over the lower part of the valley. The sun, when it rose, promised that later it would be very hot.

  The horses were fresh and the Duke pushed Samson a little, feeling it imperative that they should make up for lost time, although he told himself it was unnecessary.

  At the same time he had learned in the war to trust his sixth sense, which in some strange way had always alerted him when there was anything unexpectedly dangerous to
be encountered.

  He did, however, wonder now if his presentiment was anything more than a new awareness of Valora’s attractions and that he must get her to safety.

  He was sure that they had already travelled the greater part of the way, but, because he was not on the Great North Road where there were milestones, he had no precise idea how far they were from York.

  He might, of course, have asked at the inn, but he told himself there was no point in letting the publican know where they were going, just in case by some unfortunate chance, Walter, if he was still in pursuit of them, should ask questions at the inn.

  ‘It cannot be so very far,’ he calculated and kept the horses galloping at full speed for longer than he usually did.

  At noon he decided they should have luncheon, which once again he had taken the precaution to order and carry with them.

  This time, because the inn was of a better quality than those they had stayed in previously, he had asked for a variety of cold meats the night before he went to bed and also fruit which had been offered them at dinner.

  He had even found on the wine list a wine, which if chilled, he thought would be drinkable and, when he saw a small stream winding through some lush meadowland, he decided that it would make a natural wine-cooler.

  He therefore stopped Samson under a large weeping willow and, as he dismounted, Valora exclaimed in delight,

  “This is a lovely place for us to eat. I was hoping you would want to stop here.”

  “At least no one can approach us unawares,” the Duke commented.

  As he spoke, he looked at the meadowland bright with cuckoo flowers, marigolds and buttercups stretching for a long distance on each side of the stream.

  Valora laughed.

  “There might be Red Indians creeping towards us through the grass!”

  “And there might be crocodiles in the stream,” the Duke replied, “but I rather doubt it.”

  He then took the wine from his saddlebag and bent over the bank to put it securely in the water.

  When he turned round, Valora had brought the food from his saddle and opened the packet in which it was contained.

  She then took off her hat and the jacket of her habit.