What could she say to him?
How could she tell him the real reason why she had carried the two pistols in her muff and been so certain that they would be attacked?
She had, however, little time to think of anything but the wounded man. The movement of the carriage was causing him pain and she knew by the way he bit his lip that the bullet in his shoulder was agonising.
There was, however, very little that she could do except try to stop the bleeding. The Duke, realising what was happening, took a flask from the pocket at the side of the landau and, unscrewing the top, gave it into her hands.
“Let him drink as much as he wishes,” he said. “It will help him bear the pain.”
Verena held the flask to the footman’s lips and he drank gratefully. It certainly made his suffering more tolerable and, after several gulps of brandy, he closed his eyes as if he felt sleepy.
It just seemed a long way to Selchester House. Verena’s knees were both aching and her right hand, which held the pad in its place, was stiff before finally they drew up outside the front door.
The Duke stepped out and arranged for several of his footmen to lift the injured man carefully from the carriage and carry him indoors.
“Send for a surgeon, Matthews,” he said to the butler. “I will take Miss Winchcombe home and then see what can be done for him.”
He stepped back into the landau. This time he and Verena sat side by side on the back seat. She leant back with a sigh, moving her right arm to release the tension which was almost like a cramp.
The Duke did not speak and they drove quite a distance in silence.
Verena was trying to collect her thoughts and to realise all that had happened. Had she really saved the Duke and killed a man in doing so?
She thought that she should feel horrified and guilty at having taken a life. Instead she just felt that it was all a dream and that somehow her brain was not functioning clearly.
All she knew was that the Duke was safe.
‘For how long?’ a voice asked her silently.
And she knew as her breast contracted in fear that the “Evil Genius” would hate the Duke more viciously than before because by a miracle he had escaped the deadly trap that had been set for him.
Verena trembled at the thought.
And then suddenly the Duke reached out and took her left hand in his, holding it closely.
“There are many questions that I want to ask you,” he said in a deep voice, “but they must wait until tomorrow because I think you are tired.”
“I am a – little,” Verena admitted.
“Then I will not plague you tonight,” the Duke said. “I will only say thank you again, Verena, for saving my life.”
As he spoke, he raised her fingers to his mouth and kissed them one by one.
Then, as he felt them quiver in his hold, he turned her hand over and kissed the palm, letting his lips linger on the softness of her skin.
“Thank you very much, ‘Elf’,” he said very quietly.
And she knew in that moment that she loved him!
CHAPTER TEN
Verena, who had lain awake for half the night wondering what she should say to the Duke when he arrived to drive her to the country, saw with relief that, instead of the high perch phaeton that she had expected, he was driving his curricle.
Hus meant that Fowler was sitting up behind. She wondered, as she saw the Duke from the window, whether he was intentionally avoiding a private conversation with her or whether, which was far more likely after the events of the night before, his good sense had persuaded him that they should be protected by a groom.
Verena’s speculation, however, was all forgotten when she saw the team of chestnuts that was pulling the curricle.
She had not seen them before and she had not imagined that anyone could find four such perfectly matched horses. It would be, she thought, the happiest day of her life if she could ever persuade the Duke to allow her to drive them.
Having assured Lady Bingley that the landau, which had gone first to fetch Lady Edith Sheraton, was on its way and that the baggage coach in which the valets, the lady’s maids and the luggage would travel, was only a few minutes behind, the Duke escorted Verena downstairs.
Being with him made her feel shy as she remembered the manner in which he had kissed her fingers the night before.
But any embarrassment was forgotten once they were out of London on the Dover Road and the Duke could let his team move in a way that made Verena turn to him with a radiant face.
“They are wonderful!” she cried. “I never believed I could travel as fast as this!”
“I will push them a little more when we are clear of the traffic,” the Duke promised with a smile.
His eyes met Verena’s for a moment and there was a look in them that made her turn her head away quickly, conscious that her heart was beating unaccountably fast.
Verena had already learnt from Lady Bingley that Selchester Castle was about two hours’ drive from London. Situated in a wild and lovely part of Kent and lying a mile off the swift well-surfaced Dover Road, it was a focal point of Social entertainment.
“The King was a frequent guest at Selchester Castle when he was Prince Regent and I have often heard of the magnificent parties the Duke gave for his Royal Highness,” Lady Bingley related.
“Who is hostess for the Duke as he has no wife?” Verena enquired.
“I imagine his sister or his grandmother. But I assure you, my dear, that, when anyone is as important and attractive as the Duke, there is no lack of lovely ladies only too willing to play hostess at his parties.”
Lady Bingley laughed.
“Indeed a good number of them would be only too glad to oblige His Grace in such a position permanently!”
“I would suppose so,” Verena answered and found the thought very depressing.
She had admitted to herself in the darkness of her bedroom that she loved the Duke overwhelmingly.
“I love him,” she whispered to herself. “I love him – I love him!”
She must have loved him, she thought, from the moment she had met him, only she had not been aware of it. She had only known that he was the most interesting man she had ever met.
Later, when he had been struck down and she had sat beside his bed trying to keep him amused and striving to make him forget the pain of his wound, she had known an irrepressible happiness.
As she was so unsophisticated she had not recognised it as love only sometimes when his eyes had met hers and she had felt an unaccountable breathlessness and a sudden constriction in her throat
“I love him!” she said aloud and wondered why the word seemed so very different from anything that she had ever said before.
‘How could I have been so foolish,’ she asked herself, ‘as to think for one moment that what I felt for Giles was love?’
She knew that she had only been beguiled by his flattery and, now that her eyes were opened to his perfidy, she could see all too clearly how the Captain’s mind had worked when he had learnt that her grandfather intended to leave her everything he possessed.
Looking back on it, she could remember the change in him from the moment the General had told him to leave the house and never return.
Just how idiotic and how childish it had been of her to credit for one moment that he was sincere in the things he had said and in the way that he had persuaded her so rapidly that he desired her for his wife.
“Fool! Fool!” she whispered and felt not only anger at herself but a humiliating shame that she had been so easily deceived.
She had been gratified by Giles’s attention, flattered by it and swept off her feet by an experienced and scheming man into promising to be his wife.
‘How can I marry him?’ she asked herself for the thousandth time.
The thought of his hands touching her and his lips on hers, made her feel sick with disgust.
‘I could not bear it! – I could not let him – Oh, God, help
me!’ she prayed desperately.
And later she cried aloud,
“What can I do? What can I do?”
She had found no answer to the question when the dawn came.
*
Now, driving with the Duke, she felt secure and unharassed.
It was a feeling that she told herself had no basis in reality and yet just to sit beside him, to realise how big and strong he was and to watch the brilliant way that he tooled his horses, was to enjoy a false Paradise, if only for the length of time it took to travel from London to Selchester.
They talked very little on the way.
The Duke was occupied with his horses, Verena with her thoughts, and there was always the consciousness that Fowler sat behind and could hear what they said.
They had turned through the great stone-flanked gates of The Castle and were travelling down the long drive with its avenue of old lime trees, when the Duke turned his head to say,
“Welcome, Verena, to my home.”
“I have wanted so much to see it,” she answered and felt her heart turn over in her breast because his voice was so kind.
Then suddenly the lime trees ended and they saw The Castle. There was a river right in front of it and a great arched bridge, which carried the drive over the silver water.
The Castle, enormous and tremendously impressive, held a majesty and at the same time a beauty that to Verena was indescribable. Behind it, protecting it from the winds that blew from the North and East, was a forest of pine trees. They encircled the grey stone of which The Castle was built as if it was a jewel that they held protectively in their keeping.
And The Castle was itself well worth protecting! The great Norman Tower was enriched by the addition of many succeeding generations.
There were Elizabethan and Restoration wings and a Queen Anne annex and the Duke’s grandfather had in the middle of the last century employed the two Adam brothers to add a facade that architecturally was supreme.
Now Verena gasped,
“It is magnificent! Just the sort of house you should have.”
“Thank you,” the Duke answered.
They crossed the river and then drove with a flourish into the gravel sweep to pull up at the steps that led to the impressive entrance.
Footmen came hurrying from the house wearing the Duke’s livery, their crested silver buttons glinting as they moved.
The Duke drew his gold watch from his waistcoat pocket.
“An hour and fifty-four minutes, Fowler,” he remarked. “Not our best, but still a good run!”
“Yes, indeed, Your Grace. The chestnuts proved their worth today.”
“I am pleased with them,” the Duke said in a tone of satisfaction.
He stepped from the curricle and held out his hands to Verena. Just for a moment she looked down at him and, because there was something magnetic in the firm grasp of his hands under hers and in the expression in his eyes, she could not speak.
But there was no need for words.
The Duke helped her to the ground and she walked very slowly up the steps, conscious of the sunshine, of the birds singing in the trees and of the wonderful vista from The Castle over the parkland and beyond it to the lands undulating towards the horizon, which she knew hid the sea.
The Major Domo bowed them through an enormous marble hall into a salon with large windows overlooking the Rose Garden.
For one moment Verena was afraid that she would be alone with the Duke and she wondered how she could answer his inevitable questions. As they entered the room she saw that a silver tray holding sandwiches and other refreshments had been placed on a side table.
“Would you care for a glass of wine or perhaps a cup of chocolate?” the Duke asked. “Unless you prefer, Verena, for my housekeeper to show you upstairs so that you can have a chance to tidy yourself?”
“I would prefer to tidy myself,” Verena replied quickly.
She thought as he spoke that the wind might have ruffled her hair beneath her bonnet and she would look sadly disarranged.
An elderly housekeeper in rustling black with an apron and a long chatelaine of keys on her waist appeared as if by magic.
Verena was then escorted to a room that seemed to her beautiful but overwhelmingly impressive and which held a huge four-poster bed.
“This be one of the State rooms, miss,” the housekeeper explained. His Grace asked particularly that you should be given it because it is known as the Queen’s Room and every Queen who has ever visited The Castle has always slept here.”
“Have there been many of them?” Verena enquired.
“I think Queen Anne was the last, but there were many before her.”
It took Verena some time to look at all the treasures in the room, to stare at the view from the window, to wash and, when she had taken off her bonnet, to allow a skilful housemaid to rearrange her hair.
When finally she came downstairs over half an hour later, it was to see footmen hurrying to the front door and she realised that the Duke’s travelling carriage, also drawn by four superb horses, was arriving with Lady Bingley and Lady Edith Sheraton.
They were not alone, as Verena had anticipated, for Lady Edith’s son, Captain Sheraton, was with them.
“Delighted to meet you, Miss Winchcombe,” Harry Sheraton stated when they were introduced. “Been hearing astounding dramatics about you from Theron.”
There was a twinkle in his eye and Verena took an instantaneous liking to the young man, who had such an amusing way of shortening his sentences so that at times she had to laugh at the way he phrased them.
“I regret to say that the other two guests I have invited, our cousins, Verena,” the Duke said, “cannot be here until later this evening. Captain Winchcombe-Smythe is, as I understand, on Guard today and Jasper has offered to bring him down in his own curricle.”
Verena gave a start at the words.
Had the Duke any idea, she wondered, that his cousin’s curricle was very different from anyone else’s? Had there been something deliberate in the way he had informed her that Jasper Royd would be bringing it to Selchester Castle?
Then she knew that she was being imaginative. As far as the Duke was concerned, he was merely being kind to her in inviting her cousin, with whom he could not possibly have any taste in common save that for the last two months Giles had been serving in his Regiment.
And Jasper Royd? Why was he coming to Selchester Castle? Why had he accepted an invitation from the Duke when apparently they had not met for a long time?
There could only be one reason, Verena thought, that, having failed in his first attempt to destroy his cousin, he would try again! Yet how?
There was one thing that was very obvious in everything that had occurred to date and that was that the “Evil Genius” had an uncanny sense of self-preservation.
He was not involved ostensibly in any of the Bullion robberies. Had the Duke been shot by the so-called highwaymen on Hampstead Heath there was no one except Hickson who could then connect Jasper Royd with the cowardly attack of four men on a traveller they expected to be unarmed!
Only Hickson was in the position of being able to incriminate the “Evil Genius’. And Verena could not help guessing that Hickson himself sometimes wondered how long he would survive once Jasper Royd had no further use for him.
It was all very frightening. At the same time to Verena, here in The Castle, laughing at the things that Harry Sheraton was saying, seeing the Duke standing in front of the fireplace with a smile on his lips, his broad shoulders and great height seeming to dominate the salon for all its size, it seemed as if the “Evil Genius” and his machinations were but a figment of the imagination!
The afternoon passed most pleasantly.
The house party visited the stables where Verena went into ecstasies over the Duke’s horseflesh. They saw the goldfish ponds that ornamented the formal gardens and fountains that played into sculptured stone basins.
They were next shown the covered t
ennis court where the Duke and Harry challenged each other at the game that Henry VIII had played so often at Hampton Court and at which each successive Duke of Selchester had been an expert.
And, of course. the Duke took them to the long Picture Gallery with its magnificent portraits of every succeeding owner of The Castle and their families and pictures from Holland, France and Italy that had been collected over the centuries, besides those by many English Old Masters.
“It is even more marvellous than I had expected,” Lady Bingley said as she and Verena went up the stairs together to change for dinner.
“You like being here?” Verena asked her.
“Who would not enjoy such a place?” Lady Bingley replied. “Ever since you came to stay with me, dearest child, you seemed to have waved a magic wand over my whole existence!”
She pressed Verena’s arm and continued,
“I had grown low and depressed, I was feeling so lonely and in the dismals until you appeared. Now I am meeting new people, people I have always longed to know, and renewing acquaintanceship with old friends, which recalls my youth and makes me feel young again.”
“Lady Edith is charming,” Verena remarked.
“And so is her son,” Lady Bingley said with a glance at Verena. “He is a very eligible young bachelor!”
It was strange, Verena thought, that her Godmother had never once suggested that there might be any likelihood of the Duke being interested in her. It was somehow a dispiriting thought that Lady Bingley could not contemplate His Grace having even a passing attachment for anyone so insignificant and unimportant as herself.
‘Yet I love him!’ Verena pondered as she stood looking out of the window of her bedroom over the parklands.
She loved him not because of his possessions or because he was a Duke, that indeed was a disadvantage in her eyes, she loved him because he was a man. Because he had been a soldier and because her grandfather would have approved of him.
But most of all she loved him because her heart leapt when she saw him and to be beside him made her feel as if something drew her towards him so that it was with some difficulty that she refrained from putting out her hand and touching him just to confirm that he was there!
The Odious Duke Page 20