“I am too old,” the Duke insisted. “I have lived too a very different life from what you imagine or from anything you have ever known. You are young, fresh, innocent and pure. You have never come into contact with such things as have been an intrinsic part of my life for the last fifteen years. A man does not change overnight, however much he thinks he might do so. The time would come when I should frighten and disgust you, when you would turn away from me and wish I had left you in the sheltered peace of your Convent.”
The Duke was not looking at Amé, but he heard her draw near to him. He heard the soft rustle of her skirts and smelt the faint fragrance of the perfume she used and in a low voice, hardly above a whisper, she asked,
“What are you trying to say to me, Monseigneur?”
He turned to face her then.
“I am telling you that I love you,” he said, “that I love you with what is left of my heart and with what the Priests call ‘my soul’, but of whose existence until now I have always been in doubt. I love you, Amé, and at the same time I am telling you to refuse my love, I realise that it would do you no good and that I am indeed not worthy of you.”
“Monseigneur, Monseigneur!” Amé’s voice was light with joy, “for a clever man you can be very stupid. Do you not realise that there is only one person in the whole world for me, only one man I could ever love, only one Monseigneur whom I could trust until my life’s end?”
“Are you sure?” the Duke asked and his voice was still heavy with anxiety. “No, child, before I touch you, let me say something else. I have never loved anyone in my whole life as I love you now. If you come to me, if you honour me by becoming my wife, then I will never let you go. If later, when you are more conversant with the world, you meet a younger man who attracts you, a man who was perhaps designed by nature to be a more fitting mate for you than I, then you will still belong to me. I shall hold you, there will be no going back.”
“If you think that I should ever want to leave you,” Amé replied, “then, you must be blind. From the very beginning of our acquaintance my love was there and it is a love that will never change. It will only deepen from day to day and year to year. My love is for ever, Monseigneur!
“But there is something that I would say to you now, something that I would ask you to consider. You spoke just now of making me your wife. I know a little of what that means to you, for since I have lived in this house with you and Lady Isabella I have learned many things about you. You are very important, Monseigneur, in your own country you are a very great gentleman. I have loved you since the night you found me crouched under the rugs on the floor of your coach, I have wanted only to be with you, to love you, to adore you and serve you if possible. I have asked nothing else.
“I would not ask you to stoop to marry me, though at least I know now that I am well born and of a father and mother joined in wedlock but there is a great gulf between a woman who cannot acknowledge her forbears, who has no family, no wealth, no position and no home and the Duke of Melyncourt with his great estates, his power, his influence and his prestige. There is no need to marry me, Monseigneur. I shall be happy just to be with you. I will be your Ward, your page, your slave, whatever it may be. I am content for I love you with all my heart, with all my soul and with all my body.”
The Duke’s smile was very tender.
“And do you think it is a Ward, a page or a slave that I really want?” he asked. “My darling, I love you as a woman. And it is a woman I want as my wife.”
A lovely blush crept up Amé’s cheeks.
“This is the first time,” the Duke then carried on, “that I have ever asked anyone to marry me. I am not pretending that there have not been many women in my life, Amé, but you are so different, so very different, you are Holy, you are indeed sacred to me. I never thought it would be possible for me to say those words to any woman and yet they are true. You are Holy and because of it I feel I should kiss the ground you have trodden on and I am afraid to take you in my arms.”
Amé gave a little laugh of sheer delight.
“Don’t be afraid, Monseigneur,” she whispered and then his arms were around her and they were joined together in the first kiss that Amé had ever received.
For a moment the Duke’s lips were very gentle and very tender, but, as he felt the response within Amé, as he knew the flame within himself had ignited a flame within her so that she trembled within his hold, his mouth was more possessive and more demanding.
And then her whole body seemed to pulsate with the wonder and glory of love, so that they were both carried away by the very fire and strength of it.
“I love you,” the Duke murmured not once but again and again and then his hold on Amé tightened and it seemed for a moment as if their very bodies were invisible, joined together by a Divinity that had shaped them for this very moment, this fulfilment of all that love should mean.
“I love you,” the Duke said again later, but gently and now Amé’s head fell back against his shoulder and he looked down at her.
She was indeed transfigured by her love. Her cheeks were glowing, her eyes shining and her lips, parted in ecstasy, were quivering a little as if her happiness had left her breathless.
“I never knew that love could be ‒ like this,” the Duke said in a voice broken and hoarse with emotion and then slowly he dropped on one knee, raised the hem of Amé’s dress to his lips and kissed it.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
It was late in the afternoon when Amé opened the door of the library to find Hugo alone standing in front of the fireplace with a piece of paper in his hand.
“Where is Monseigneur?” she asked.
Hugo looked up at her with a strange expression on his face.
“Monseigneur?” he echoed. “Oh – Sebastian! I – oh! yes, he told me to tell you, if you asked, that he would be back here by five o’clock.”
His words were so disjointed and so unlike his usual calm, measured tones that Amé stared up at him in surprise.
“What is the matter, M’sieur Hugo,” she enquired.
“Matter?” he repeated and then as Amé waited, he said quickly, “Nothing – no, nothing is the matter.”
Ame closed the door behind her and came across the room. She was wearing a dress of white gauze with a soft fichu draped round her shoulders and caught at the breast with a bunch of flowers. She looked very young and very unsophisticated and yet there was something in the ardent happiness in her face that spoke of maturity and a depth of emotion which had nothing to do with her age.
“Lady Isabella made me go and lie down,” Amé said softly as she reached Hugo’s side. “I did not want to go. I could not bear to sleep even for a few hours lest I should miss something exciting, such as being with the Monseigneur, but I did what I was told and now, I think, I have missed other things as well for something has upset you, M’sieur Hugo. You cannot disguise it from me.”
“It is nothing of import,” Hugo muttered staring down at the piece of paper he held in his hand.
“What is that?” Amé enquired curiously and then, looking over his shoulder, she exclaimed, “Why, it is a lottery ticket!”
“Yes, it is a lottery ticket,” Hugo replied.
“Did you buy it?” Amé enquired.
Hugo nodded.
“The Controller-General, Monsieur Calonne, suggested at a dinner party last week that we should all take tickets in his new lottery. I was reluctant to waste my money, but because it seemed churlish to refuse I bought the ticket and – and, Amé – I have won!”
“Won!” Amé exclaimed. “Oh, how wonderful and how exciting. How much?”
“I can hardly believe it is true, but three hundred thousand Livres. In English money that is nearly twelve thousand pounds.”
“But how thrilling! Now you are rich!”
“Yes, I am rich,” Hugo said dully. Then, as if he could suppress his feelings no longer, he cried, “And what good will it do me? What do I want money for? It was enough that I
should be tortured and tormented by seeing Isabella every day and feeling my heart beat faster when she appeared knowing that the skies were dark when she left me. But my suit was hopeless. I had no money, I could no more ask someone to share the small income that was mine than I could aspire to the Throne of France.
“Now as you say I am rich, comparatively rich that is, for I shall have enough to live in comfort, to keep a wife, if I could find a woman who was not over-extravagant in her ways or who loved me enough to live in the way we could afford. And yet, what good does it do me? You, Amé, who have bid me hope and you who have bid me never despair, look out of the window and tell me what you see.”
Ame had stood very still while Hugo had ranted at her and now obediently she turned her head and looked through the window of the library on to the paved garden with its goldfish pool, marble statues and formal beds filled with a profusion of flowers.
For a moment she could see no one and then there was a flutter of lace and the gleam of pink brocade.
Isabella was seated at the far end of the garden in the rose-covered arbour and beside her, bending forward eagerly, one arm outstretched along the seat, the other very near to the white hands she clasped demurely in her lap, was the Vicomte de Tremor.
Amé recognised him as the young man who had danced attendance on Isabella with particular ardour and eloquence these past weeks. He was at her side at every party and he managed to get himself invited to nearly all the dinner parties where they had been distinguished guests.
The Duke had teased Isabella about her admirer and, although she had laughed and pouted, she had not denied that she was encouraging the Vicomte and so Amé had guessed on several occasions that Hugo was being tortured by the jealousy that he could not always disguise behind his almost iron self-control. It escaped him in the expression on his face and the bitter note of sarcasm in his voice, or occasionally, when he thought that no one was watching him, in an undisguised misery that made Amé long to comfort him and to break the promise that he had extracted from her that she would not speak to Isabella about his love.
Amé was certain that Isabella had not the slightest idea that Hugo was in love with her. She always spoke of him with affection and indeed admiration. His cleverness was something that appealed to her, but Amé was sure that she had never really considered Hugo as anything but a charming companion, someone who was an intimate part of their circle, whose friendship she enjoyed and whose devotion she took as a matter of course.
Isabella had never imagined that Hugo might be her suitor and a man consumed by an overpowering love. And Hugo had kept his secret well. He was too much a gentleman and too honourable altogether to make love to someone to whom he could offer nothing save the wage he earned as the Duke’s secretary.
Now Amé saw in a flash that things were different. It was not a great fortune if one compared it with the wealth of their friends. She had learned from the conversation of Isabella about the life lived by the Beau Monde both in London and in Paris and she knew a little of what it cost to entertain and to be a person of importance in the Social world.
But Isabella had some money of her own and it should not be difficult, Amé decided for them to live on their joint income, provided they were prepared to make a few sacrifices for each other. And yet how hopeless it all seemed! She could hear Isabella’s laugh across the garden. She could hear beside her Hugo breathe deeply as a man might breathe who has run a long way and brought himself to the point of exhaustion.
“I shall throw the ticket away,” he said suddenly. “What good is it to me? I have no need of the money. I am content to work for Sebastian. I must be content to do that. I have to forget that I have anything but a brain, a brain that should control the spirit and discipline the body. A brain that knows that love is only a sentimentality and an emotion that has no substance in fact.”
He crumpled the note in his hand.
“Am I a fool and a weakling to waste the hours in dreaming, to aspire to the moon and to lift my eyes to the stars?”
He would have thrown the crumpled ticket into the fireplace, but Amé put out her hand and laid it on his.
“Stop!” she ordered him quietly.
Hugo looked down at her with something like hostility in his eyes.
“Why?” he asked. “What palliative are you going to offer me now for a sick heart and for a humbled and broken spirit?”
Amé’s eyes were still on his.
“I am going to suggest,” she said to him very softly, “that you show a little courage. I have not met many Englishmen in my life, only you and Monseigneur, but my father was an Englishman and I do know a great deal about the English character. So I am offering you no palliative for a sick heart but a cure, when I tell you that your help lies in what has always been a characteristic of the English race – bravery! You need now only the courage to follow your own instinct. There is nothing to stop you telling Lady Isabella that you love her and that you want her to be your wife. Why should you be afraid? A fight that has never begun can be neither a victory nor a defeat. Lady Isabella cannot say ‘no’ to your offer of marriage until you have given her the opportunity to consider it. She might say ‘yes’. What is it that makes you so afraid?
“Why should you be so irritatingly humble? You are a man, you have fifty times more brains than those who pay her fulsome compliments and who whisper nonsense in her ear.”
“Brains! What have they to do with it?” Hugo demanded angrily. “Look at that nit-witted Frenchman over there! I don’t suppose he has ever used his brains for anything but the writing of love sonnets to his mistress’s eyebrows or deciding which horse to back at the Races and yet Isabella is listening to him. Look at her, she is smiling. She is looking at him from under her eyelashes and he is amusing her. Yes, he is making her laugh!”
“Yes, she is listening to him,” Amé said, “but she cannot listen to you if you don’t talk to her. She cannot know what fires burn within you if you are always so correct, so cold and so grave when you speak together.”
“So cold!” Hugo laughed harshly. “My God, if she only knew. If she only knew what I felt about her! Of the nights when I lie awake whispering her name, locking myself in my room lest I should rush to hers and pour out the love within me, which seems at such times too uncontrollable for safety.”
“And yet, although there is such a tempest within you,” Amé said, “you are still afraid. Why do you not go out to her now, rid her of the Frenchman and tell her how much you love her?”
. “You are tempting me,” Hugo answered hoarsely. “Leave me alone. Can you not see that I am suffering the tortures of the damned and neither you nor anyone else can do anything about it?”
It was then that Amé, with a slight smile on her face, moved a little away from him.
“So you are a coward!” she accused him. “I did not believe it possible in an Englishman and especially in someone for whom Monseigneur has so much admiration. I am disappointed and disillusioned. You are afraid! Afraid of a nit-witted Vicomte and, of course, of Lady Isabella herself.”
It was as if the taunt and the mockery in her voice at last goaded Hugo into action.
He wheeled on Amé furiously,
“I will show you if I am afraid,” he shouted and, thrusting the lottery ticket he still held in his hand deep into his pocket, he strode across the room and, crashing open the library window, stepped into the garden.
Walking quickly and purposefully, he moved along the flagged path until he came to the arbour.
Amé watching him, her hands clasped together in excitement and her heart beating a little faster, saw him bow to Isabella, then say something to the Vicomte.
What it was she could not hear, but obviously it was insulting enough for the Vicomte to rise from the seat, to draw himself up to his full height and reply in a manner that was defiant if not rude.
There was an exchange of words, Amé could hear their voices rising with the Vicomte de Tremor’s rather shrill a
nd Hugo’s deep and thunderous.
Then everything began to happen very quickly.
The Vicomte slapped Hugo across the face with his gloves, while Isabella jumped to her feet with a little scream and then, almost before Amé could realise what was happening, Hugo had picked up the Vicomte and thrown him bodily into the goldfish pool. There was a splash and the water cascaded in the air, iridescent in the sunshine.
The Vicomte’s silk-stockinged legs waved for a moment in a ludicrous position and then he disappeared beneath the broad green leaves of the water-lilies that floated on the pool.
Amé, watching closely for his reappearance with water dripping from his clothes and his hair, the paint and powder on his face streaked and dirtied, had her attention distracted by something that made her clap her hands together in sheer delight.
Hugo had swept Isabella into his arms masterfully and passionately.
Now it was not difficult to hear what he was saying for he was shouting loud enough for all the world to hear him.
“If you want to be made love to,” he roared, “let it be by a man and not by a nincompoop!”
He kissed her then, not once but at least dozen times, hard brutal kisses that must have bruised her mouth and which left her limp and gasping in his arms.
“I love you,” he said, looking down at her flushed face and astonished eyes. “I love you and you have tempted me, captivated me and made me miserable long enough. Now you shall suffer for your caprice and for your beauty, which drives a man mad.”
He stopped for a moment and then his arms tightened round her so that she could scarcely breathe.
“I love, you,” he said fiercely, “and damn it, if you will never speak to me again, this moment is worth it!”
He bent his head towards her and, as Amé watched, Isabella moved for the first time. Her arms, the soft laces of her gown falling back from the rounded loveliness of them, crept up towards Hugo’s neck and drew his head down to meet her lips.
Love Me Forever Page 24