Because it was the last thing she had expected him to say, she merely stared at him in astonishment before she replied,
“Are you suggesting that I should – ride back home – alone?”
“It would only be a question of finding you a horse somewhere near Plymouth,” the Duke said in an impersonal tone, “and in fact my Captain knows a lot about horses. I have trusted him on several occasions in the past to bid for me at sales in various parts of England, which I have been unable to attend for some reason.”
Aldora did not speak.
She was remembering what a shock it had been when the highwayman had appeared so unexpectedly from the wood.
She could still see the man’s face when he had been on the point of killing the Duke before she had shot him.
If she was riding home alone through unfamiliar country it would take her several days to reach Berkhampton House and she knew that she would find it extremely frightening.
As she did not speak, the Duke said after a moment,
“You must be aware that it would be impossible for me to send any of my crew with you because, however carefully I briefed them, they might inadvertently give away the fact that they were employed by me, which of course would mean our names would be associated, which is something you wish to avoid.”
“Y-yes – of course,” Aldora murmured.
“On the other hand,” the Duke went on, “I suppose we could find a ship of some sort at Plymouth or Falmouth that would carry you back to Southampton. I imagine fishing boats, if nothing else, make the trip regularly.”
He frowned as if, while he spoke, he was thinking it out for himself.
“At the same time the boats would be filled with some very rough men and I daresay not only would you find it uncongenial but they might also insult you in one way or another.”
Aldora felt herself tremble.
Again she was seeing the coarse horrible face of the highwayman.
After a moment, because she knew that the Duke was waiting, she said in a faltering tone,
“M-must we make – decisions now? I would – rather wait until you are – well.”
The Duke smiled.
“So would I,” he agreed. “I like having you here. I like talking to you, Aldora. At the same time I have to think of what is best for you and, just as you have saved me from the highwayman’s bullet, I have to save you from the wagging tongues and the scandalous gossip of the Social world, who have never been taught to mind their own business!”
Aldora gave a little laugh.
“That is true! When I hear Mama’s friends chatter, chatter, chatter about other people and – what they have said or done, I think what a terrible waste of time it all is!”
“Indeed it is,” the Duke agreed, “but I suppose all women want to ‘chatter’, as you call it, just as all men want a challenge. We want to fight a war, climb a mountain or dig up some treasure that has been hidden for a thousand years!”
Aldora was listening obviously interested and he went on,
“But you are different from other women. What you want is to discover the hidden teaching, the esoteric message written thousands of years ago and understood only by a privileged few.”
“Have you ever met any of those who did?” Aldora asked.
He knew that there was an eagerness in her voice that had not been there before.
“I have met one or two men who I am certain had such hidden knowledge, although they did not communicate it to me.”
“When did you meet them?”
“When I was in India.”
“You did not tell me you had been to India!”
“You did not ask me!” the Duke answered. “Of course I have been to India. I was aide-de-camp some years ago to the Governor of Madras. It was an experience I shall never forget and I would have liked to stay much longer, but my father died and I had to go home immediately.”
“And you have never been back?”
“There has not been an opportunity. Until now.”
There was silence and he saw that she was digesting what he had just said.
Then, in the same indifferent tone of voice he had used before, he said,
“To get back to you, I think we must discuss how you can return home without having too many awkward questions asked as to where you have been and what you have done.”
Aldora rose to her feet.
“You are not to worry yourself about me,” she said. “I want you to rest. You have the choice of shutting your eyes and trying to sleep or else I will read to you.”
“You are most regrettably like my Nanny, who always stopped me from doing anything I enjoyed because she thought that it would upset me,” the Duke complained.
“I can hardly believe that you would enjoy planning what I should do,” Aldora pointed out.
“As a matter of fact I would,” he answered. “You must have realised by now that the one thing that really interests me is bringing order where there is disorder or trying to attain perfection in something that belongs to me.”
“Like Caesar,” Aldora said with a smile.
“Exactly!” he agreed. “Like Caesar, my other horses and my estates.”
He paused before he added,
“I would have liked to show you my house in Buckinghamshire, where I would defy you to find anything wrong that I am not already in the process of putting right.”
“I would certainly try to find something,” Aldora said, “just because I think that you are too smugly pleased with yourself! Anyway, it has been too easy a task for you.”
“Can you suggest a more difficult one?”
As he spoke, his eyes met Aldora’s and he knew that they were both thinking of the task he had been offered with regard to India, which was so extensive and so impenetrable that it would confound and terrify most men with its sheer complexity.
For a moment he held her eyes captive and it was impossible for her to move.
Then she said crossly,
“Will you rest and stop thinking? Just to make sure you do so I will read you something so incredibly boring that you will find sleep will be a welcome relief from it!”
“If you do that, I shall throw my pillows at you,” the Duke said, “and throwing them will be extremely bad for my arm!”
“Very well,” Aldora conceded, “I will read you something soothing.”
“You will find a book that I think will interest you on the bottom shelf of the bookcase in the corner.”
Because for some reason she did not like to question that she could not meet his eyes, she moved quickly to where she knew the bookcase had been built into the wall with the other furniture.
There were a number of books on racing and three others that she knew were the ones he wanted her to find.
One was on Buddhism, one was entitled India Today and Yesterday and the third was called, The Secrets of Ancient India.
Almost despite herself, Aldora’s hand went out to draw the third one from the bookcase.
Even, as she walked back to the bed, she was aware that the Duke was lying low on his pillows, his eyes closed.
At the same time there was a faint smile on his lips that made her suspect that he felt he had scored over her when she had least expected it.
CHAPTER SIX
Aldora was drifting into a dreamland that seemed to merge with her thoughts.
She had, before she went to bed, been thinking of how happy she had been during the day.
It had been exciting to be able to talk to the Duke without interference or without anybody thinking it strange that he should waste his time with anybody of so little importance.
She was well aware that the sophisticated beauties he amused himself with would have laughed scornfully at the way they argued with each other on a dozen different topics as he lay in a deckchair in the sunshine covered by a warm rug.
To Aldora it seemed very hot, but she was sensible enough to be aware that, as he had lost so much blood, he w
ould still be feeling cold on even the warmest day.
It was the first time that the Duke had dressed and left his cabin and, as Hobson brought him a glass of champagne as soon as he was settled on deck, he said as he raised his glass,
“I certainly have something to celebrate!”
“That you are on your feet again?” Aldora asked, not quite certain what was in his mind.
“No, that I am alive,” he replied, “thanks, of course, to you.”
She gave a little shudder.
“I don’t want to – think about – it!”
“Of course not!” the Duke agreed. “But it will be something to put in your memoirs when you are old and by that time you will doubtless have had a dozen other adventures to add to this one.”
“I hope so,” Aldora replied.
Then she changed the subject because she had the idea that if she went to India with him their adventures could really be worth writing about, while any she had at home would be banal.
Now, as she recalled what they had said to each other during the day, she thought it strange that never once had there been a single word about India.
She had the feeling that the Duke had dismissed it from his mind and would no longer think about it, just as he would not think about a race that he had lost.
‘How could I possibly marry him when I dislike him so much?’ she asked herself.
Then she suddenly knew that now she did not dislike him at all.
Her hatred had vanished from the moment he needed her ministrations to bring down his fever and she had watched over him at night.
She had risen whenever he had seemed restless to bring him a cool drink and on several occasions when he was murmuring incoherently and twisting from side to side she had massaged his forehead.
Then she found that she could almost hypnotise him into going into a deep sleep.
Many years ago when she was quite small one of her Governesses who suffered from extremely bad headaches had taught her how to soothe them away and she was glad to be able to exercise that skill again.
Now, as she was dreaming that she was in India and talking to a Fakir who strangely enough looked rather like the Duke, she heard a bell ring.
Instantly she was awake, knowing it was the bell that Hobson had put beside the Duke’s bed when he insisted that in future nobody was to watch over him at night.
“I am perfectly well,” he said defiantly, “and although I am very grateful to you, Aldora, and to Hobson, I am now able to look after myself.”
Aldora thought what he said to be untrue, but knew that it would be a mistake to argue with him.
Hobson, however, had other ideas.
“I’m goin’ to put a bell by Your Grace’s bedside,” he said, “and if you feels in the night you want somethin’, her Ladyship’ll hear if you rings it.”
“I have no wish to disturb her Ladyship,” the Duke pointed out.
“All she’s got to do is knock on my door and I’ll come to you,” Hobson persisted.
“You are fussing over me again,” the Duke said accusingly.
“And not without reason!” Hobson retorted. “If Your Grace does too much too soon, you’ll not be able to hold in them spirited horses. Then where’ll you be?”
Because it was the sort of argument that Aldora felt she had heard from her Nanny, her Governesses and at times her mother ever since she could remember, she laughed.
“It’s no use,” she said to the Duke. “Hobson will insist on having his own way! So if you do want anything, ring the bell and one of us will come to you.”
The Duke had not said anything more, but now, when she had been quite certain that he would make every effort not to call them, she heard the bell.
Quickly she sat up and lit the candle by her bedside.
Climbing out of bed she put on a diaphanous white muslin wrap which was all she had been able to bring with her besides a nightgown and two very thin, light summer gowns.
She had not envisaged for one moment that she would not be in France within twenty-four hours and be able to buy everything she required there.
Now when she thought about it, she realised that it had been very improvident to ride away with so little and be prepared to spend the money she possessed on clothes, when she would doubtless have needed it to keep herself alive.
She was so confident that once she was in France she would be able to find a congenial place in which to lodge and some paid employment that she had not really considered the details of living on her own.
Now that she had time to think it over she was ashamed of being so foolish, just as she was ashamed of supposing that she would not be in danger simply because she carried a pistol.
She was not in the least self-conscious as buttoning her wrap down the front, she picked up the candle and hurried off to the Duke’s cabin.
He was sitting up against his pillows and, as she stood in the doorway the candle in her hand, she looked at him and realised that he must be in pain.
She entered and, closing the door behind her, asked,
“What is the matter?”
“My arm hurts and I have a headache.”
She went to his side and set down the candle.
“I was afraid you were doing too much on your first day,” she said softly.
“Well, please either give me something to kill the pain,” he said, “or massage my forehead as you did when I was running a fever.”
Aldora looked surprised.
“I thought you were unconscious.”
“I could hear your voice and feel you touching me,” the Duke said, “and it was certainly very efficacious.”
“Well, we will see if it will work now,” Aldora replied, “but I think you should be flatter than you are at the moment.”
Gently she took the pillow from behind him and when he was lower she sat down on the bed and leaning forward put her fingers flat on his forehead.
“Shut your eyes,” she said quietly, “and think of pleasant things, of the sun setting in a blaze of glory and of the evening stars coming out one by one. The sky is growing darker and yet at the same time more luminous.”
Her voice was soft, low and almost hypnotic.
As she spoke, she moved her fingers very gently over his forehead, soothing away the frown between his eyes that came from the pain he was suffering.
“Now you are going to sleep,” she said in a voice that was hardly above a whisper. “You are dreaming that you are riding over the fields on Caesar and you are happy, very very happy, as you have everything you want in the world – ”
Her voice died away and, as she looked at the Duke in the candlelight, she could see that he was breathing rhythmically and his whole body was relaxed.
Very carefully in case she disturbed him she slipped off the bed.
Then, as she took up the candle, she looked back at him and said almost beneath her breath,
“God bless you and the angels watch over you.”
It was something that her mother used to say to her when she was a child.
Once again she was thinking of the Duke as a small boy, who had cried out to her because he was hurt and she had been able to help him.
She left the cabin.
Only after she had closed the door behind her did the Duke open his eyes and lie for a long time staring into the darkness.
*
In the morning when Aldora was dressed, she went to the Saloon for breakfast and when she had finished she went out on deck.
They were now sailing Eastwards along the coast. She could recognise certain coves and bays they were passing and knew that tomorrow they would be back in Chichester Harbour.
That meant she would have to go home.
At least, she thought, the Duke had not persisted with his idea that he should put her ashore in Devonshire or Cornwall.
He had not spoken about it again and she had been afraid to ask any questions in case she did not like the answers.
The whole voyage had had a dream-like quality about it, but now she was going back to reality and her mother would undoubtedly be very angry with her for running away.
At the same time she would be glad that she had returned and perhaps nobody else would realise what she had intended.
‘Mama has only to say I was staying with friends,’ she thought.
Then she felt her spirits drop and she felt depressed at the thought of the scene that she would have to face when she reached Berkhampton House.
She was startled out of her reverie by the sound of someone coming out on the deck behind her and turning her head she saw with surprise that it was the Duke.
Hobson was with him and, while the Duke should have walked to the deckchair that was waiting invitingly under an awning, he came to stand beside Aldora at the railing.
“How are you?” she asked him.
“I had an excellent night.”
“Your arm is not hurting you?”
“Hardly at all.”
“That is splendid, but you must not do too much today.”
“I have listened to all that from Hobson,” the Duke said, “and I don’t think that I could bear anymore!”
Aldora laughed.
“Now you are escaping from our clutches, but we are trying to hold onto you, just in case we have you back on our hands again.”
“Would that be such a terrible thing to happen?”
“Of course it would!” Aldora said. “Think of all the things you should be doing, the horses you should be riding, the speeches that you should be making!”
“Now you are frightening me!” the Duke exclaimed. “So I will definitely continue to rest for as long as possible!”
He walked away from her to sit in the deckchair, lifting up his feet and even letting Hobson put a light rug over him.
While he was doing so, Aldora thought that she would change the book she had been reading and find another she could read to him when he was too tired to talk.
She knew that there was nothing she enjoyed more than arguing with him and discussing subjects like strange countries, native customs, and world politics in the way she had discussed them with her father.
Every hour she was able to be with the Duke she found more fascinating than the last.
The Storms Of Love Page 11
