“Yes, Pegasus,” Ilina smiled. “Although you may not believe it, when I am riding him, as I do every morning, I do not miss anybody or anything else.”
“Then you must be very different from most young women of your age.”
“Have you known many?” Ilina asked him.
She remembered that David had said that most of his friends found girls dull and preferred to date and flirt with married women.
The Duke twisted his lips as he replied,
“Every year more and more young English women come to India in search of husbands. They are known as the ‘Fishing Fleet’ and I assure you I make quite certain that I am not involved with them.”
“Why not?” Ilina asked. “Do they frighten you?”
The Duke laughed.
“No, but I have no wish to be married. He travels fastest who travels alone and I am very content to be a bachelor.”
Ilina was silent for a moment and then she said,
“One day there will have to be a seventh Duke of Tetbury.”
“Once again you are pointing out to me my duty. Miss Ashley. It is a word I dislike so I think I should tell you that I have no intention of marrying. As far as I am concerned, there will be no seventh Duke, or if there is, he will not be my son!”
Ilina gave a little cry of horror.
“But you cannot say that. I have not had time to tell you that after you there is no relative to inherit the title and it would in fact die out.”
“Would that be such a catastrophe?”
“Of course it would. How can you possibly allow a family to die that has contributed so much to the history of this country?”
“However eloquent you may be, Miss Ashley,” the Duke replied, “I cannot see that the last Duke contributed very much and his father merely incurred a mountain of debts, which is hardly something to evoke congratulations.”
“He owned some very fine horses that won a number of the Classic races. He also collected the sporting pictures that hang in the Picture Gallery and which are unique.”
“And, I understand, did not pay for a number of them!”
Because she knew that the Duke was jeering at her, Ilina felt her hatred of him rising with her anger and there seemed to be a little spark of fire in her eyes as she said,
“It is very easy to defame people who are dead. At the same time Your Grace has not yet told me in what way you have contributed to the country where you have been living. It is something I am anxious to hear.”
There was a note in her voice that the Duke could not misunderstand and after a moment he said,
“As dinner is finished, Miss Ashley, and you are such a stickler for what is traditional, I think it would be correct for you to leave me to my port.”
As she was well aware that he was striking back at her, Ilina felt the colour come into her cheeks and she rose from her chair and started to walk towards the door.
The Duke reached it first and opened it with a flourish.
She did not let him see how humiliated she felt, but lifted her chin as she stopped for a moment to say,
“Will you require me anymore this evening, Your Grace, or my I retire?”
“If that is what you would prefer, Miss Ashley, I understand,” the Duke answered. “Undoubtedly it has been a long day for you and we are to ride before breakfast, which is the time I prefer. Shall we say seven o’clock?”
“I will be ready, Your Grace.”
Ilina curtseyed and he bowed she thought mockingly as she swept through the door.
‘I hate him!’ she said to herself as she ran up the grand staircase and along the passage that led to her rooms in the West wing.
Only when she had closed the door behind her did she go to stand in front of David’s picture and say to him,
‘Now what do you think of the new Duke? I have failed – utterly and completely failed to reach him!’
She stared up at her brother’s face and added,
‘Oh, David, how could you have been killed when you should have been here? Somehow we would have managed to keep the house going and the estate, because we love it.’
She felt the tears come into her eyes as she went on,
‘Papa was right about Cousin Roland and Sheridan must be like him in every way, spoilt, selfish and detestable! I hate him. I hate him and nothing I can say to him will make any difference.’
Because she not only hated the Duke but felt that she herself had failed the family in not convincing him how much his inheritance mattered, the tears ran down her cheeks.
When she finally climbed into bed, she cried herself to sleep.
*
Nevertheless, although there were lines under her eyes that had not been there the day before, when Ilina went to the stables, she felt the inevitable lift of her heart at the thought that she would see Pegasus.
However black everything else might be, she loved him and he loved her.
He heard her coming and was at the door of his stall as she entered it and put her arms round his neck.
“Oh, darling,” she whispered, “whatever happens, I will never lose you. Even if we have to leave here and beg in the streets, we will still be together.”
She laid her cheek against the horse’s neck and her eyes were closed with the intensity of her feelings so that she started when a voice came from behind her,
“You are very demonstrative to your horse, Miss Ashley, and I hope Pegasus appreciates the sacrifices you are prepared to make for him, as the Burys have apparently omitted to do for you.”
Slowly Ilina took her arms from Pegasus’s neck.
As he nuzzled his nose against her as if asking for more of her attention, she turned her head to see the Duke at the open door of the stall looking, she thought, more cynical than usual.
“Your Grace is early,” she remarked, in what she hoped was a calm cold voice, but which actually sounded breathless and shy.
“It is a habit that comes from having lived in the East for so long,” the Duke replied. “And now I am waiting for you to show me the animal that you are hoping will unseat and throw me.”
“I am hoping nothing of the sort!” Ilina retorted.
Jacobs came into the stable at that moment saying as he did so,
“Good mornin’, m – miss. You’re earlier than usual. I were just about to put a saddle on Rufus.”
“His Grace is waiting to ride him, Jacobs.”
Turning to the Duke she said,
“This is Jacobs. He has been here for thirty-five years and was hoping that Your Grace would fill the empty stalls as they were in the past.”
She thought that such a statement might embarrass him, but, as he glanced at her, she was aware that he knew what she was attempting to do and was merely amused.
He shook hands with Jacobs and spoke to him pleasantly without being in the least condescending and she realised to her surprise that Jacobs liked him.
Jacobs had a way with horses that Ilina often thought was different from that of anybody else. She knew too that, just as he could judge a good horse as soon as he saw it, he was also a judge of men.
As he hurried to put the saddle on Rufus, he was talking to the Duke as one lover of horseflesh to another and it was a language that only they could understand.
When finally they rode out of the stables, Ilina was aware that she need not have doubted the Duke’s ability as a rider.
He seemed to be part of the horse just as her father had been and she knew that it was an ability, whether he liked it or not, that he had inherited from his ancestors, who had all been great horsemen.
Because Pegasus was fresh and Rufus was trying to play up his new rider, they galloped across the Park, Ilina leading along a path that was free from rabbit holes and fallen branches of trees.
When finally they were out on flat land that led to the Home Farm and which should by now have been ploughed and sown, she knew without the Duke saying anything that he realised it was neglected.
/> Because she was quite certain that the Hendersons, who lived at the Home Farm, would never remember that she was supposed to be ‘Miss Ashley’, Ilina insisted on the Duke visiting them alone while she rode Pegasus round the fields until he could rejoin her.
Without anything being said she was quite aware that he must have seen the condition of the farmhouse, the barns with their roofs blown off and the empty cow stalls which, like everything else, were in urgent need of repair.
They rode in silence to the next farm, which had once been let for quite a good rent, but was now empty and desolate.
The Duke looked at it without comment and they rode on again until, feeling that he must have seen enough, Ilina suggested that they should return for breakfast.
As they reached the stables, where Jacobs was waiting for them, the Duke said,
“Thank you, Miss Ashley. You have certainly not exaggerated the poor condition of the estate I have inherited and the fact that nothing has been cultivated on what was considered in the past to be good land.”
His voice was scathing as he finished,
“I can only imagine that this neglect should be ascribed to the Duke’s long illness or should the blame be on those who were supposed to be looking after the estate?”
Ilina thought that he was accusing Mr. Wicker of incompetence and replied quickly,
“There is no one to blame except the Duke who was a helpless cripple when he died. His Solicitors always urged caution and economy, but he would not listen to them – until it was too late!”
“It’s not surprising,” the Duke said. “At the same time he had the impertinence to accuse my father of a great many crimes he did not commit.”
Since there was nothing Ilina could say to this, she simply dismounted and hurried away from the stables, leaving him with Jacobs.
When she went to the breakfast room, she found that Singh and Bird together had been arranging everything just as it had been when she was a child.
There were three silver dishes with lighted candles underneath them to keep them hot and there was a new cottage loaf of freshly baked bread, as well as a big silver rack filled with golden slices of toast.
Because it was so different from anything that she had seen for years, Ilina, despite what the Duke had said to her, felt her heart leaping.
She even smiled at him as he came into the room and pretended not to notice what she thought was a stormy expression on his face.
She had already helped herself from one of the dishes and she thought that he must be hungry as he sat down at the table with a well-filled plate.
They ate for a little while in silence.
Then as Ilina asked him if he would like some more coffee and filled his cup he said,
“I suppose I had better see the rest of the horrors this morning.”
“It is for you to decide, Your Grace.”
“Very well, let’s get it over.”
As soon as they were on their horses again, Ilina took him to the village. She showed him the row of cottages where the pensioners lived and there was no need to itemise what needed doing.
The alms-houses, as she had already told him, were closed, with panes of glass in every window broken.
Ilina then went to one of the furthest farms where the dwelling house had once been a delightful red stone Manor.
The windows were boarded up, the garden was a wilderness, the building behind it was roofless and the land a mass of weeds.
“The last tenant,” she said, “wanted to buy the house and five hundred acres at a knock-down price. When he found it impossible to do so, he went elsewhere. No one else has been interested in ‘renting’ it as nothing could be repaired.”
The Duke was silent and rode on.
There were two more farms for him to inspect, one had a couple nearly as old as the Hendersons with one idiot son to help them. The other was empty.
As they arrived back at The Abbey and left the horses in the stables, the Duke said,
“I want to talk to you, but I imagine you would like first to change. So perhaps you would come to my study in an hour’s time.”
The way he spoke made Ilina glance at him apprehensively, but she merely replied,
“You sound very like a schoolteacher who is going to find fault with me, but I will not keep Your Grace waiting.”
She walked into the hall and up the stairs without looking back.
When she looked at the worn riding habit that she had taken off, she felt it made the Duke as contemptuous of her as he was of the dilapidation of the house, the farms and the land.
She wondered, as he had spoken in such a solemn way, what he had to say to her.
It was not until she was dressed in the same green gown that she had worn the day before that she glanced up at her brother’s picture and asked herself whether the Duke was going to agree with her suggestion of selling some of the pictures surreptitiously.
She might hate him, but she had the feeling, although she could not account for it, that despite all her father had said he would not do anything he knew to be dishonourable.
‘If only David was here,’ she thought, ‘he would agree that it would be better to sacrifice some pictures than The Abbey and, if it is a choice between the two, The Abbey must come first.’
She hurried downstairs to find the Duke who was, as she had expected, already seated at the desk in the study.
He was making notes on a piece of paper in front of him. He looked up as she entered the room and, as she walked towards him, watched her with what she thought was an enigmatic expression on his face.
Then, as she reached the desk, he said,
“Now, Cousin Ilina suppose we stop playing games and get down to business?”
Ilina stood very still and the colour rose in her cheeks.
For a moment she thought that she would contradict what he had said and declare that she was in fact who she pretended to be.
Then she told herself that she would not stoop to lying any further and she must accept that he was more perceptive than she had imagined him to be.
“H-how do you know who – I am?”
“I am not completely half-witted,” the Duke replied, “and, as the servants have stumbled and stuttered over your name every time they speak to you, it was not difficult to suspect that there was something wrong. Actually there is a picture of you in the Duchess’s Drawing Room too.”
Ilina smiled.
“That is a picture of Mama when she married.”
“You are very like her,” the Duke commented dryly.
“I am sorry that I tried to deceive you,” Ilina said, “but I thought it would perhaps be embarrassing that you should find me here and feel that I was an encumbrance on top of everything else.”
“Is that what you are?”
“I-I am afraid so. You see, I have no money and really nowhere else to – go.”
“And of course, you have not found the Nizam’s jewels.”
Ilina raised her eyebrows.
“You know that is what Papa left me in his will?”
“The Solicitors sent me a copy of the will when they wrote to tell me that your father had died.”
“Since the jewels have been hidden since 1805 and are unlikely ever to be found, you can will understand the – predicament that I find – myself in.”
“That is something I find worrying.”
“Please don’t worry on my account,” Ilina said. “It is The Abbey and the estate that should concern you, as it concerns me.”
Because she felt almost weak from learning that he had unmasked her so easily that she must have played her part very badly, she sat down on the chair in front of the desk.
Then her eyes were very wide and questioningly she asked,
“What are you – going to do? Not about – me but about – everything else?”
“That is what I want to talk to you about. I have tried, and I think honestly, to do as you asked me and look at everything witho
ut prejudice.”
“And you have – come to some conclusion?”
The Duke nodded and it seemed to Ilina as if she held her breath.
Then she asked in a voice that was hardly audible,
“What have you – decided to do?”
“I have decided first,” the Duke replied, “to return to where I belong and to the life I have become accustomed to.”
Ilina stiffened.
Then she gave a little cry and it was almost like that of an animal caught in a trap.
“I cannot believe it! What about The Abbey, the estate and your – position here?”
“I am not interested in my position here,” the Duke replied, “and in the future I shall not use my title.”
Ilina was incapable of speech and he went on,
“Nor do I think that what you have shown me is worth the fortune that must be spent to restore and preserve it.”
He finished speaking and Ilina, who had turned very pale, was aware that her hands were trembling as she asked,
“How can you do this? How can you – abdicate from everything that is – yours and to which, whether you like it or not – you belong?”
“I am nothing of the sort!” the Duke objected. “My father was never part of the family because they would not have him. He was made a scapegoat and treated as a ‘black sheep’.”
“That was a – long time ago.”
“Not for me. I was brought up with my father’s bitterness and resentment and with a burning sense of injustice at the way he was treated.”
He laughed and it was not a very pleasant sound.
“I made up my mind when I was quite a small boy that one day I would avenge my father, whom I loved and admired, and now my opportunity has come. In fact if I did as I intended when I came here, I would burn the house down with my own hands!”
Ilina gave an exclamation of sheer horror as the Duke went on,
“Instead I will close it, box up the windows and leave it to rot. Our ancestors, Ilina, can feel in the future as isolated as my father felt and as I have felt too all my life until now.”
“P-please – ” Ilina began to say, but he interrupted her to go on,
“They can stare down from their frames at nobody and at nothing! They will remain here in an empty house that will be their tomb more effectively than the stones that cover their graves. That is my revenge for the way they treated my father and it will give me great pleasure to think of it.”
The Duke Comes Home Page 7