He spoke in a manner, Aleta was perceptive enough to realise, as if he was rather thinking it out for himself than making an explanation to her.
It flashed through her mind that it was because they were so close that she knew what he was thinking and feeling just as he in the same way felt about her.
That was obviously true when he turned his head to say,
“What am I to do, Aleta? I have found you and now everything that was moving in one direction has stood still and I feel as if I have stepped out of time.”
Aleta drew in her breath.
“I feel – that too, but the world – your world and mine – has to go on.”
“Is that true?” he asked, “or are we just being conventional and perhaps afraid of the unknown?”
“I am so – afraid that we might do – something wrong.”
“Is it wrong to recognise you as something unique, something that belongs to me and is a part of my life, that I have found not merely after two years but after centuries of time?”
“I thought that – the first time we – met,” Aleta replied hesitatingly.
“We think alike, we feel alike, we are alike,” the Duke said. “That is why I can no more lose you than deliberately cut off my arm or my leg.”
Aleta clasped her hands together.
“We have to – think. We cannot – talk like this and not remember that whatever we do, it will – involve other people.”
She looked at him as she spoke and her eyes were held by his blue ones and the words died away on her lips.
She felt as if he looked deep down into her very soul and she had the strange feeling that she was doing the same with him and she thought that she could see her reflection in his eyes and that he could see himself in hers.
“What is the answer?” he asked after a long moment. “There is no one else in the world except you.”
Aleta drew in her breath.
“We must – try to be – sensible.”
“Why? Why?” he asked. “When one is carried up onto the highest peaks of the mountains and into the burning heat of the sun, one does not question how it happened, one just knows it has!”
His voice was very deep as he added,
“Oh, my dear, you are so beautiful, so exactly as I want you to be.”
“Please – don’t say such things,” Aleta begged. “It’s going to make it harder – much harder – when we cannot – see each other anymore.”
The Duke smiled.
“Do you really think that can happen now? I have already said that it would be impossible for me to lose you again and I mean it.”
He put his hand for a moment over his eyes and then he said,
“I know what you are trying to make me do when you talk about being sensible, but how can I be sensible when I have been swept off my feet by emotions I had no idea I was capable of feeling?”
“Perhaps it is because you have been – ill and everything is a little – unbalanced,” Aleta suggested in a very low voice.
“That is what outsiders might say,” the Duke replied, “but you and I know it’s not true and, if we are honest, Aleta, it is not something that has just happened. It started two years ago when I kissed you.”
He saw her quiver and her eyes flickered before his so that her eyelashes were dark against her pale cheeks.
“Do you think I could forget what I felt then?” he asked. “I will be honest and tell you that I have tried to do so. I told myself that I must put it out of my mind, but I remember everything and perhaps a dozen times a day I find myself thinking of the softness of your lips and the moment when I think we both touched the wings of ecstasy.”
There was a note of wonder in his voice that made Aleta look up at him again.
“I thought I – felt like that because I was so – young and inexperienced – but I did not expect you to.”
“Have many men kissed you since that night?” the Duke asked and now there was a very human and jealous note in his voice.
“There has been – no one,” Aleta said and saw the light come into his eyes.
She looked back at the house and said,
“I think we should go back. It will soon be teatime and the other guests may be wondering what has happened to you.”
“Let them wonder,” the Duke said. “They will not find us here.”
“But it’s dangerous to be together and Harry – ”
“Who is Harry?”
Again his voice was jealous so that she felt she must answer him truthfully.
“He is my brother.”
“Are the two of you hiding in the house?” he asked.
Then he exclaimed,
“I know who Harry is! He is the estate manager who Lucy-May is always talking about and who she goes riding with.”
“Yes – that’s right,” Aleta agreed.
She felt that it was wrong to lie to him and she longed to tell him the truth. She longed to tell him who she was and who Harry was and why she was hiding and why it was important that Mr. Wardolf should not know of her existence.
Then she knew that it would be betraying a secret that was not hers alone, but Harry’s.
“What’s worrying you?” the Duke asked. “Is it because I am asking you questions about yourself?”
He was too perceptive, she thought, where she was concerned for her to be able to deceive him for long and, because she was afraid and also uncertain about what had happened to them both, she said,
“Please – understand.”
“When will I see you again?”
She did not answer and after a moment he declared insistently,
“I have to see you, Aleta, and I intend to do so. If you hide yourself away I shall still find you. I can never lose you again, as you well know.”
“B-but – I cannot – we must not,” Aleta stammered.
“There is no such word where we are concerned,” the Duke said, “and make no mistake, I am somehow going to find a solution to our problems or perhaps they are only mine. Give me a little time to think and then we must talk over the conclusions I come to.”
“It will be – difficult for me at the – moment.”
At the same time she knew that it was useless to protest. She wanted to see him as much as he wanted to see her and it would be impossible for them to stay away from each other.
“I will meet you here after dinner,” the Duke said. “Everyone will be dancing and they will not notice if I am there or not.”
It flashed through Aleta’s mind that Lucy-May might miss him, but once again it seemed of little account beside the fact that he wanted to see her and she so wanted to see him.
“Perhaps you – should not,” she said. “The doctor said you must rest.”
“I presume you have been talking to Mrs. Abbott,” the Duke replied, “but I know that nothing would make me feel tired if there was a chance of seeing you.”
“Perhaps it would be – wise to leave it until – tomorrow.”
“Do you think I could sleep tonight knowing that you were somewhere in the house, unless I have talked to you again?”
The way he spoke made her feel shy and he saw the colour rise again in her cheeks.
“My perfect little Goddess!” he said. “You draw me to you by invisible bonds that are irresistible, an unbreakable part of the magic we find together. I shall be here at nine o’clock and I shall wait until you join me.”
It struck Aleta that it might be difficult to get away from Harry and she said quickly,
“Supposing I cannot come? You must not wait too long.”
“I shall wait if necessary all night.”
He saw the light in her eyes and added,
“Don’t play with me, Aleta. I don’t think I could bear it! Once before when I met you I was at a crossroads in my life and you sent me in the right direction. But now I have reached an even more important point, although when I look at you I know that there is really no decision to make and the future is
already planned for me.”
Aleta did not answer, but he knew that she understood.
“I will go back first,” she said, “and perhaps you should follow in about five minutes – just in case anyone saw us – together.”
“Give me your hand,” the Duke said unexpectedly.
Without thinking she put her hand in his and, as she touched him, she felt a quiver go through her that was almost like a streak of lightning.
She knew that he felt the same for his fingers tightened on hers and, although he did not move, she felt as if he drew nearer to her.
“Can either of us fight this?” he asked in a low voice.
At the note in his voice it was as if little flames were moving through her and she felt her lips part and her breath come a little more quickly as her eyes were held by his.
“I love you!” the Duke said in his deep voice. “I love you and there is no one else in the whole world but you.”
It was impossible for Aleta to speak and then he looked down at her hand crushed by the strength of his fingers and lifted it to his lips.
She felt his mouth against her skin and it made her tremble while little flames seemed to run through her, burning their way into her breasts and into her throat until they reached her lips.
“I love you!” the Duke said again, “and nothing else in the world has any substance except that.”
He released her hand and Aleta rose to her feet.
She could not speak, she felt as if her voice had been burnt away by the fire within her.
Then almost without her conscious volition, her feet carried her away from him down the steps beside the cascade until finally, without looking back, she had disappeared among the green leaves of the shrubs.
The Duke watched her until she was out of sight.
Then, as if the intensity of his feelings made him want to blot out his sight so that he could concentrate on his thoughts, he put both his hands over his eyes.
*
Aleta reached the nursery and went into her bedroom to sit down on her bed and wonder whether, in fact, she had been dreaming, whether everything that had happened had been part of her imagination.
How could it be possible after two years that the man who had always been in her thoughts should be back in her life to love her as she loved him?
She knew now that what she had felt ever since he kissed her was love. No other man had ever seemed to make any impact on her so that their faces were a blur and their words hardly penetrated into her mind.
She thought that what had happened in London was just because she was young and shy.
But when she had returned to Kings Wayte, even her father’s illness and death and Harry’s horror at the dilapidation of the house somehow had a strange feeling of fantasy about them. It was as if they were taking place apart from her personally and she was just watching it all occur like watching a play on a stage.
What alone was real was what she remembered in her heart and what she had recaptured and recreated every night when she was alone in the darkness of her bed.
That magical unforgettable kiss in the darkness, the song of the nightingales in the trees, the moonlight shining through the leaves had always been with her like a talisman that protected her from the trials and tribulations of the daily round, the common task.
That had been reality while everything else was of no particular importance because it was not real.
‘I love him!’ Aleta thought now. ‘I love him not just with my mind, but with my heart and soul and even if I never see him again after this moment I belong to him as I have belonged to him already for two years.’
Then she told herself, as she had tried to tell him, that they must be sensible.
Had they any future together? And if so, how could he possibly extricate himself from his position as the future son-in-law of Mr. Wardolf, engaged to marry Lucy-May for her millions?
Aleta knew now without question that he needed money desperately, as she and Harry had needed Mr. Wardolf’s rent to save Kings Wayte.
If she had questioned the Duke’s motives in marrying when he was unconscious, she knew now the answers without his having to spell them out to her.
The only thing that surprised her was that she had suspected him of having an unworthy ulterior motive and most of all that she had not recognised him immediately even though she had never seen him when they had been together in the Temple.
She told herself that, while her mind was stupid enough to think of him as a stranger, her heart had told her the truth.
That was why she had thought of him so often, why his face had seemed always before her whatever she was doing and why, when he had come into the nursery, she had known at the first word he had spoken, who he was.
“I love him!” Aleta said again.
And just as the Duke had said, everything else seemed completely unimportant.
*
Lucy-May had gone from the dining room with an expression on her face that made her look uncannily like her father.
She had been wondering all through the meal how soon she could get away, for she had found that the succession of elaborate courses irritated her to the point where she wanted to scream.
She had awoken that morning after a restless night, having made up her mind that she would see Harry however much he tried to avoid her.
For the last three days since they had sheltered in the barn he had evaded all her efforts to meet him and Lucy-May was becoming desperate.
She had not really believed that he intended it literally when he had told her that they would not meet again.
She thought not only would he weaken, but somehow she would prevent him from carrying out what he intended.
Men said one thing but meant another, Lucy-May had found in the past.
She could not really think that anyone who loved her, as she was sure Harry did, would be strong enough to avoid her for more, at the very most, than twenty-four hours.
But try as she would she could not meet him.
She went to the stables very early in the morning on the first day only to learn that he was not there, but had left, the groom told her, earlier still for some far off part of the estate to which they could not or would not direct her.
The second day when she had not found him, she sent a footman to say that she had to speak to him, only to be told that Mr. Dunstan regretted that he could not obey the command as on receiving it, he was on the point of leaving.
Needless to say the footman had no idea where he had gone.
At first Lucy-May had merely stamped her foot and been determined that he should not behave in such a manner. Then she began to feel afraid.
Supposing she never saw Harry again? Supposing he walked out of her life as unexpectedly as he had come into it?
It was then that Lucy-May recognised that she was really in love.
It was no longer a question of wanting Harry because he was an attractive man, in fact, she was consumed by a need for him that was so fundamental, so primitive, that she felt without him she might just as well die since life had nothing to offer her and she was alone.
It had been impossible for Lucy-May, being brought up as she was, not to realise that men found her fortune irresistibly attractive even though she was pretty enough for them to want her for herself.
She began to realise that she had found a man who was really uninterested in her fortune and was sacrificing her to some absurd principle that she found hard to comprehend.
‘If that’s being an English gentleman,’ she tried to tell herself, ‘then I prefer an American who gets what he wants without rules and regulations.’
But she knew that was not true. She respected Harry for his feelings and in a way she could understand them.
That was the way he intended to behave and she knew now that he was stronger than she was and woman-like she adored him for it.
‘I have to see him! I have to!’ she told herself over and over again.
‘If he’s gone, I’ll search the whole country to find him,’ she told herself and then was appalled at the magnitude of such a task.
She reached the stage when she even contemplated asking her father to send for him, then being there when he obeyed the order, but somehow she knew that that would make Harry very angry because he would consider that she had cheated.
“I hate his beastly principles!” she cried out.
Equally she knew that he was right and to use such a trick would be as unethical as pulling one’s horse in a race or bumping and boring, all of which were unsportsmanlike and something the English did not do.
This morning Lucy-May had a glimmer of hope.
She had received a letter from one of her friends saying that she was arriving on Friday and it suddenly struck her that with her preoccupation with Harry she had no idea what day of the week it was.
“What’s today?” she asked Rose who was tidying her clothes.
“It be Friday, miss. Another week gone, as my mother used to say when I was young!”
“Surely Saturday is the end of the week?” Lucy-May had remarked.
“Not to us, miss,” Rose replied. “Friday’s wage day and, when the men gets paid, that’s what counts in the family.”
“Wage day!” Lucy-May repeated in a strange voice. “Are you sayin’ that the people who work on this estate are paid on Fridays?”
“Oh, yes, miss. Not those of us as work in the house of course, we gets our wages by the month, but the gardeners, the foresters and them in the stables, they gets paid on Fridays.”
“And who pays them?”
“Mr. Dunstan, miss.”
“Where does he pay them?”
“In the Estate Office, miss, as it’s always been done.”
“At what time?”
“I’m not quite certain, miss. I think some of them as lives the other side of the estate comes in early in the afternoon.”
Lucy-May had learned what she wanted to hear. Harry would be in the Estate Office and that’s where she would be able to see him.
It seemed to her as if the hours during the morning passed at the rate of snails.
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