“You are too young and too lovely for such a life. Surely there is something else you could do. Like getting married?”
“To one of the clowns?” Canèda asked lightly.
“If marriage is not on your programme,” the Duc said, “I can only imagine that you have a rich protector.”
He spoke quite casually, but the colour flared into Canèda’s cheeks as she said sharply,
“How dare you suggest such a thing! And you are quite wrong.”
She was so positive that the Duc said,
“I must apologise if I have insulted you, but I cannot believe that a circus proprietor, unless he is a very exceptional one, would have provided you with the habit you are wearing now, which would undoubtedly cost at least double the salary that an ordinary circus performer could earn in six months.”
Canèda was so surprised that she forgot to be angry and she stared at him wide-eyed.
“How can you know something like that?”
The Duc’s lips twisted and there was no need for explanation.
Because she felt that she was fighting a losing battle, Canèda rose from the sofa to walk to the window and look out again at the view.
The sun was beginning to sink on the horizon and the sky above it was a blaze of colour.
She was so absorbed in its beauty that she started when the Duc spoke just behind her, because she was not aware that he had risen from his chair.
“Are you still considering whether or not to leave me?” he asked. “I shall almost certainly prevent you from doing so.”
“How would you do that?” Canèda enquired.
“I suppose I could always lock you in the dungeons, which are below the level of the moat and are very unpleasant,” the Duc replied, “but instead I will merely plead with you to keep me company as I want you to.”
There was a note now in his voice that Canèda had been waiting to hear and yet somehow it did not give her the elation that she had hoped for. Instead it seemed in some way to vibrate within her and evoke a response that she had not expected.
“I still – think I would be – wise to go.”
“Because I have shocked you?”
She raised her chin.
“I did not say that you have.”
“Nevertheless, I think it is what has happened,” the Duc said.
He drew nearer and stood beside her at the window where he could look at her profile against the grey stone.
She did not move but kept her eyes on the sunset and after what seemed a long time he said,
“You are very beautiful and, as dozens of men must have told you, your blue eyes fringed with dark lashes are enchantingly original.”
He spoke in the dry way that was habitual to him and he did not make it sound such a compliment as it would have been from any other man.
Because she was afraid that the conversation had grown too serious and too personal, Canèda said,
“My eyes are English, but my lashes and my hair are French. You can make a choice of which you prefer.”
“As a Frenchman, I am for the moment intrigued by the English,” the Duc replied, “so shall we speak that language for a change?”
The last sentence was spoken in English and Canèda gave a little cry as she exclaimed,
“But that is good!”
“I had an English mother, an English Nanny and at one time an English Governess,” the Duc explained.
“They certainly did a good job!”
It was true. The Duc had only the very faintest shadow of an accent, but because he was speaking English she felt, although it was ridiculous, that he was not quite so menacing as he had been when he spoke French.
She gave him a mischievous glance as she said,
“Now that you are speaking like an Englishman you must behave like one and we must start talking about horses instead of ourselves.”
“Quite frankly I only want to talk about you,” the Duc said. “You intrigue me and, shall I add, I am very curious.”
It was exactly what she had wanted him to be, Canèda thought, and she told herself that she had been very clever.
She turned her face once again to the window.
“I think it would be a mistake to be too prosaic about detail,” she said. “You admit that this is an enchanted place outside the ordinary mundane world of human beings. Very well, for the moment we are not human.”
“Then what are we?”
Canèda gave him an enchanting smile.
“You, of course, are the Man in the Moon and I am just a shooting star who has called in!”
“A very good description!” the Duc approved. “You indeed shine like a star and you certainly dress like one.”
His eyes flickered for a moment over her pink riding habit and Canèda was suddenly aware that, because she had intended to look theatrical, her bodice was very tight and revealed the curves of her breasts.
Her waist was also accentuated more than she would have considered proper in one of her ordinary habits.
She felt shy and wished that she had relied on her riding to attract his attention rather than on the theatrical effect of her clothes and those that she had dressed Ben in.
Because she was afraid of what the Duc was thinking, she said quickly,
“I am sure that Ben will be back by now with my luggage and if possible I would like a bath before dinner.”
“Of course,” the Duc replied. “I am sure that has been arranged and, as I have a great deal to talk to you about, shall we dine early?”
He took his watch from his waistcoat pocket and said,
“I will meet you here in an hour.”
“An hour will suit me perfectly,” Canèda replied, “and thank you, monsieur, for a very entertaining afternoon.”
She would have passed him to leave the room, but he reached out, took her hand in his and raised it to his lips.
“I must thank you,” he said, “for an experience I shall not forget.”
She felt his lips on her skin and it gave her a strange sensation.
Many men had kissed her hand, but somehow this was different and she did not wish to think why.
Instead she moved quickly away from him and he only just had time to open the door for her.
As she hurried along the passage to go to her bedroom, she had the feeling that she was escaping from something that was frightening yet exciting and at the same time menacing.
She opened the door of her bedroom and found that the maid was unpacking the things she had listed for Ben to bring back from the inn.
He could have taken one of the Duc’s chaises, but because Canèda was very anxious that no one at the Château should know where she was staying, she had insisted that Ben go on horseback.
“Can you manage everything I will want?” she had asked.
“Yes, I can, my Lady,” Ben replied.
“Remember, it is very important that the servants should not know where I am staying.”
“You can trust me, my Lady.”
Canèda had put the list into his hand.
“Remind my maid that the gown I require is the pink one that I told her to pack apart from the others.”
“I’ll remind her, my Lady.”
“If you see Madame de Goucourt, and I hope you will not,” Canèda went on, “tell her I shall be back tomorrow and that everything is all right.”
“Leave it to me, my Lady.”
Canèda was just about to send him away when she had a sudden thought.
She went close to him and spoke in a very low voice just in case they should be overheard.
She knew, as he nodded agreement to everything she said, that he would not fail her. Then, as he hurried away, she had gone back to where the Duc was waiting for her with a smile on her lips.
This had been after luncheon and Ben had had plenty of time to reach the inn and return.
She wished that she could speak to him and find out if everything was all right and Madame de Goucourt
was not upset at the thought of her staying away.
Then Canèda told herself that there was no reason to worry.
The maid in the bedroom was shaking out the gown that had been packed in such a way that it could be carried on the back of a saddle.
It was pink, but Canèda saw that it was not the gown she had asked for.
When she had left England, she had deliberately not taken with her the experienced older lady’s maid who had been looking after her since Harry had inherited the title and they could afford the best servants.
She was a woman Canèda both liked and trusted, but, because she had always been in the ‘best houses’ she was not the type of maid that Canèda wanted on this particular journey.
She had therefore insisted on taking with her one of the young housemaids, an honest hard-working girl who was obviously not over-blessed with brains.
Canèda knew that she would do as she was told and not ask too many questions and that was what she required.
She had said her own lady’s maid could have a holiday and fortunately she had also discovered that she hated the sea and was seasick at the sight of a wave.
She had therefore packed everything that Canèda needed, giving the younger maid innumerable instructions that she only half-understood, as she was too excited at the prospect of going abroad to worry about anything else.
‘It is typical of her stupidity,’ Canèda thought, ‘that while she has sent me a pink gown, it is not the flamboyant one I chose for this occasion.’
She had bought the pink gown at the same time as she had bought the pink riding habit to attract the Duc with and make him believe that she was a performer in a circus.
Instead what had arrived with Ben was a very expensive, very lovely gown from one of the most exclusive Bond Street dressmakers who prided herself on giving her clients Paris chic.
Looking at it as the French maid hung it up in the wardrobe, Canèda wondered what the Duc would think of it and had the uncomfortable feeling that it would make him more suspicious than he was already that she was not what she appeared to be.
Then she told herself that what he thought was immaterial.
She was certain that he was already becoming enamoured of her and, when she had made sure of it, she could disappear as she wished to do, leaving him, she hoped, unhappy and frustrated.
It had seemed such a clever idea when she had planned it all in England and during the voyage and yet now, even when it was working exactly as she had intended, she felt anxious.
In her imagination the Duc had been only a cardboard man without reality and not made of flesh and blood.
He had been just a boy in the story that had started when her mother had run away from his father and married the man she had given her heart to. As a result of which his father, the old Duc, had sworn to take revenge and had tried to make life intolerable for his rival.
It was the sort of tale, Canèda often thought, that should have been written by a novelist.
And what could have been a better ending than that her father and mother had been so happy?
It was she who had refused to allow the tale to end there.
She had always wanted to avenge herself on the Duc, who had hurt her father and on her grandparents who had been so heartless towards her mother.
The opportunity had come with the arrival of her grandmother’s letter and now a new story was unfolding itself and she was actually here in the ‘Ogre’s Castle’.
It remained only for her to carry out the rest of her plan and the first chapter in her pursuit of revenge would have ended.
Then on to the next.
As she bathed in water scented with a fragrance distilled from camellias, Canèda continued, to her surprise, to feel apprehensive.
Why she should do so she had no idea and she told herself that she was not really afraid of being alone in the Château with the Duc.
He might seem raffish but he was a gentleman and she could not believe that he would not respect her wishes or that she could not, as she had told herself at the beginning, look after herself.
She had always known that it was only cads and bounders who forced themselves on women who did not want them.
All the men who had approached her, even though they were madly in love, had obeyed her when she had refused to let them kiss her and, although they had pleaded with her on many occasions not to leave them, they had not tried to prevent her from doing so.
The Duc would be the same, Canèda thought as she dried herself with a soft towel.
It struck her that perhaps, because she was pretending to not be a lady but a circus performer, his attitude might be different.
Then she reassured herself by thinking that she was a woman and as such was able to command the respect of any man, however lowly he might suppose her to be.
At the same time she found herself thinking that she ought not to have agreed to stay the night.
‘Harry would be horrified!’ she ruminated.
And she did not pretend that her father and mother would not have been shocked.
Then she put up her chin.
‘The end justifies the means,’ she told herself firmly.
She was quoting an old Jesuit adage and the end she was aiming for was that the Duc should be humiliated in wanting a woman who eluded him and who vanished from his life after he had expressed a desire for her to stay.
‘Perhaps he will – ask me to become his – mistress,’ Canèda thought.
She could not help remembering that he had made it clear that he was not always alone and she told herself that she had been very foolish.
Of course there would be women in his life and it was distinctly annoying that one of them had been English.
Canèda wondered what she had been like, fair and blue-eyed, she supposed, as a Frenchman would expect an Englishwoman to be, just as she had expected him to have dark eyes instead of grey ones.
She tried to reassure herself that if, as he had said, he was half-English, he would have an Englishman’s code of honour where she was concerned.
He would therefore behave in the same way as Lord Warrington or the other men who had asked her to marry them.
They had begged her and had even threatened to destroy themselves if she would not say ‘yes’.
But they had never tried to molest her, kiss her against her will or even touch her if she did not want them to.
‘The Duc will be the same,’ Canèda mused, as she instructed the maid who was waiting on her as how to arrange her hair.
When she was dressed, she stared into the mirror and with a little frown realised that she looked very different from what she had intended.
The gown she had asked for and her stupid maid had not sent was a bright shade of pink embroidered with sequins and diamanté and over-elaborate even though the fashion at the moment was for heavily decorated evening gowns.
As she was small, Canèda had thought them too overpowering and had therefore chosen gowns that really had a French chic about them because they relied on line rather than decoration.
The one she was wearing now was of soft, almond blossom pink and it was almost plain compared to the gowns worn by other debutantes.
Yet because it revealed Canèda’s perfect figure and tiny waist, with the front swept back into a bustle at the back, it made her look like a young Goddess stepping out of the rising sun to bring life and beauty to a dark world.
Canèda had also bought before she left London some false theatrical jewellery that she intended to wear instead of her real jewels.
In her hurry she had said,
“Just pack the necklace, bracelets and stars that go with the pink gown,” and thought that her maid would understand.
Instead she had packed Canèda’s real jewellery and, although she thought that the Duc might look at them questioningly, she wanted to wear them because she knew that they complemented the elegance of her gown.
There were three stars to arrange in h
er hair, besides a small necklace of real pearls that Harry had given her and a narrow bracelet of diamonds and pearls, which they had found in the Langstone collection amongst other jewels that had belonged to the late Countess.
Some of them were magnificent and obviously were family heirlooms.
Harry had put those in the safe saying that Canèda was too young for them, but of the rest he had said carelessly,
“Wear them until I want them for my wife and until you have a husband who will give you better ones.”
Canèda had thanked him and, because she liked jewellery but had never had any, she had worn the smaller brooches, necklaces, and bracelets and had enjoyed doing so.
Now, as she looked at her reflection, she thought that she looked much more like a debutante than a circus performer and certainly and unmistakably she looked like a lady.
Then she told herself that there was nothing she could do about it except put a little extra lip salve on her lips.
When she had done so, her mouth seemed in contrast to the rest of her appearance to create a jarring note, so she wiped the salve away and turned from the mirror.
She thanked the maid, then went from the bedroom and walked with a lilt in her step down the passage towards the room in the tower.
However reprehensible, however wrong what she was doing might be, it was still an adventure!
An adventure to be in this magnificent Château high above the world and to dine alone with the most enigmatic and certainly the most interesting man she had ever met.
A servant opened the door and she entered to find that the candles had been lit, although there was still a faint light from the setting sun coming through the uncurtained windows.
The room held an atmosphere of mystery, but it was impossible for the moment to think of anything but the Duc.
If he had seemed impressive in his plain well-cut riding clothes, he looked very different in evening dress. In fact there was a magnificence about him and Canèda thought that if she had seen him anywhere in England, he would still have been outstanding and it would have been impossible not to notice him.
She stood still for a moment just inside the door, looking at him as he stood with his back to the fireplace in which a fire had been lit.
Their eyes met and it was impossible to look away.
Love in the Moon Page 8