by Sheila Walsh
‘Well, I have thought about that, too,’ she continued doggedly. ‘And … and I suspect that he knew it for a sham when he bought it, or at any rate very soon afterwards ‒’
‘And took no action?’
Without looking up, she knew that his lip curled.
‘No. Because I can quite see that it would be very difficult for him to … expose the fraud. He could not know how slight your connection with us was … and he risked incurring your displeasure … might perhaps lose your patronage?’
He uttered a sharp bark of laughter. ‘Egad! You’ve a devilish queer notion of business, child!’
Pandora flushed. ‘I believe I am right, none the less.’
He made an impatient gesture and took to prowling about the room, straightening the already immaculately regimented rows of books, and when he spoke at last, it was as though he held his temper on a tight leash.
‘Why have you come to me?’
Pandora opened her mouth to reply ‒ and closed it again.
Because turning to you has become as natural to me as breathing! She wanted to shout the words aloud. Because you are the pivot of my life, my friend and confidant, my strength ‒ and if you were not there, I should be a rootless plant doomed to wither away!
Would he smile or simply look uncomfortable if he could read her teeming thoughts? For she had only to remember last night, and the ease with which Lady Sarah had drawn him to her side in spite of a coolness between them of late, to know that she could never hope to figure in his affections in that way.
She said in a stifled voice, ‘I hoped that you would tell me what to do.’
‘Do?’
‘About setting matters right with Rundell and Bridge as soon as possible. The difficulty is, I have spent rather more than I had intended … almost half of the principal in fact. There was Courtney, you see, and the cottage, and then I did give a little to Sergeant Blakewell … oh, only a little,’ she added hastily as his head came up, ‘f-for the soldiers coming home. Mr Lewis was to invest the remainder for me, but ‒’ she was rushing to finish before her courage ran out ‘‒ I wondered … do you think it would be in order for me to send what there is to Mr Bridge with my deepest apologies and a promise to ‒’
‘No, I do not!’ Heron cut ruthlessly across her fine reasoning. ‘It’s past and done with. Forget it!’
‘But … that would be dishonest!’ Shock made Pandora appear unwittingly censorious. ‘I feel quite badly enough as it is, but at least until now I have acted in ignorance. If I keep what is left, knowing it to have been acquired by fraudulent means, I should be plagued by the most dreadful feelings of guilt.’
‘Oh, good God in heaven defend me from a pious conscience!’
Flicked on the raw by her implication that he was lacking in scruples, Heron flung the words at her with a suppressed savagery that made her blink. The intricate pattern on the circular carpet swirled before her eyes.
‘If that is how you feel, then I am s-sorry. It was wrong of me to trouble you.’ She choked on the words, turned away, stumbling towards the door.
‘Pandora!’
She shut her ears to the peremptory note in his voice and had almost reached the door when he strode across the room and seized her arm, swinging her round, holding her against all her struggles.
‘Let me go!’
‘Not until we have talked,’ he said inexorably. Then, with less force, ‘Oh, be still, you absurd girl!’ He felt a slackening in her resistance to him and concluded with something of his old mockery. ‘Perhaps ‒ if I apologize?’
Pandora looked up at him suspiciously but his face was a blur.
‘I am not pious!’ she gulped indignantly through her tears.
‘Of course you are not,’ he agreed gravely. ‘It was odiously ungracious in me to infer that you were. But I have apologized, you know ‒ and I really don’t know what more I can add. Perhaps we should blame this room. We came to cuffs here once before, if you remember.’
She gave a short hiccuping laugh. ‘Now you are being absurd, sir!’
He produced a fine cambric handkerchief and proceeded to dry her tear-streaked face with great care. A small sniff escaped her and he obligingly offered her the handkerchief and bade her make use of it, which she did to such good effect that she was presently staring at the crumpled remains in some embarrassment. He told her to keep it, though he hoped she would have no further cause to use it on his account.
‘It seems we have both come down from the boughs, at any rate, and before we become embroiled once more in matters of high finance, there is something I must set right.’
He turned away from her abruptly and walked to his desk.
‘I daresay that I, too, should apologize,’ she acknowledged a little shyly. ‘You know how my tongue runs away with me, and I had not fully considered that … being born into first circles, you will never have suffered the mortification of being without funds, and therefore cannot … oh, Gemini!’
The Duke had just opened a drawer and was lifting on to the desk top a slightly shabby, but indisputably familiar jewel case. As she drew nearer, staring first at it and then at Heron in disbelief, he indicated that she should open it. The necklace lay on its velvet bed, winking up at her as though defying her to denounce it as a sham.
‘You have had it all this time? But how … why?’
‘My own knowledge of stones is also fairly prodigious,’ he said dryly.
‘So you knew ‒ immediately?’ Pandora was sufficiently impressed to forget, momentarily, the wider implications. ‘Well, I do think that was very clever of you, for it seemed to me that you only glanced at it for a moment. I suppose Mr Bridge knew that you knew ‒ and assumed from what you said that you wished him to proceed as though the necklace was what it purported to be?’
‘Something like that,’ the Duke agreed.
Pandora’s brow puckered. ‘But ‒’
‘Why the quixotic gesture?’ he finished for her.
She nodded.
‘Can one explain such things rationally? Suffice it to say that I came upon you both at a propitious moment ‒ your brother afire with the eager expectation of acquiring a handsome set of regimentals, and you, my dear child, like a mother hen with your feathers all set on end by that bumptious young assistant, determined that he should not be disappointed.’ His mouth quirked at the memory. ‘How could I possibly stand aside and see you vanquished?’
Her grey eyes widened to their fullest extent. ‘Then your astonishing generosity really was prompted by the whim of the moment?’
‘Does it seem astonishing to you?’ He shrugged. ‘Well, perhaps you are right. But then, I had not expected that you would ever need to know.’
His revelation rendered Pandora almost speechless; that anyone could be so well-breeched as to make such a gesture possible was quite outside her comprehension; that the Duke was ‒ and had exercised his beneficence on her behalf, completely overwhelmed her. It also meant, and the thought struck her with a jolt, that it was to him she was now indebted. She said as much haltingly and was swiftly disabused.
‘You owe me nothing, since I purchased the necklace knowing it to be worthless.’
‘But I can’t take so much from you! It wouldn’t be right!’
‘Humbug!’ he said.
She stood before him wearing her most stubborn face and looking about sixteen in her muslin dress with its tiny sprigs of roses scattered across a pale grey background. She had obviously braided her hair in haste for in places it was already escaping its pins.
The solution was simple, of course ‒ if she did not laugh in his face! It was, he freely admitted, a laughable proposition. He had never been quite clear how she saw him ‒ as something between a father figure and a confirmed roué mayhap!
She would certainly never look at him as she had looked at her golden-haired young artilleryman, but then she had nothing to hope for from that quarter. Whether she knew it or not, the gallant captain was not for he
r, and it would be a pity were she to dwindle into spinsterhood waiting to minister to her brothers, who would, he suspected, be dedicated first and foremost to their own respective passions. Worse, she might marry some insignificant little Cit who would stifle her impulsive, independent spirit and have little idea of how to cope with William.
‘I think,’ he said almost casually, ‘that you had better marry me. I can then look after you and William properly.’
Yet again Pandora was deprived of speech. The singing in her blood made her feel slightly dizzy, and robbed her of breath. Wild colour flooded her cheeks and faded again.
‘The idea does not appeal to you?’ His voice sounded harsh. ‘There is someone else, perhaps?’
She struggled to take herself in hand. ‘No … that would be absurd. Who could there possibly be?’
‘I have no idea,’ he said casually. ‘Your Captain Greville, perhaps?’
‘Oh no!’ She could feel herself turning scarlet, for had she not for so long cherished such a dream? Her laugh was self-conscious. ‘Gracious! Hugo could never be persuaded to see me in that way. His taste runs to ladies of more voluptuous charms, as indeed ‒’ She had almost blurted out ‘as indeed I thought yours did’, but stopped herself just in time. ‘I am just Hugo’s little sister,’ she finished rather lamely and did not notice the curious look he gave her.
‘Well then?’ he pressed her to answer.
‘I … you cannot be serious!’
‘Why not?’ His eyes were very close, intense, awaiting an answer.
‘Oh … for any number of reasons.’
‘Name some,’ he demanded.
Pandora sought frantically. ‘You have frequently insisted that you had no wish to marry.’
‘I’ve changed my mind.’
‘Well, then, there are others more fitted for … I’m not … you can’t seriously want me for your duchess!’
‘You think not?’ A faint smile lit his eyes. ‘I could do a lot worse, believe me.’
Pandora wanted to say ‘You don’t love me’, but her courage failed her.
‘Try thinking of some of the advantages,’ he suggested dryly. ‘I can offer you a choice of several houses ‒ all excellently appointed ‒ in which to live, as many dresses and the like as the most extravagant young lady could wish for, the very best of educations for William ‒ you would even be able to help your beloved soldiers more positively ‒’
‘Stop, oh, please stop, my lord Duke!’ She pulled away, angry that just for a moment she had allowed herself to be seduced by beguiling vistas. ‘How could you think I might be tempted by mercenary considerations?’
He pulled her back, laughing. ‘Silly! I was merely bamming, as you and William are wont to say.’
‘That’s another reason, don’t you see? Duchesses don’t say things like bamming.’
‘Mine will.’ After a moment’s deliberation he removed the pins from her hair and watched it spill around her face, straight and shining. He threaded his fingers into its silkiness, cupping the narrow sensitive face in his hands. ‘She will be impetuous, entirely lacking in pretension and delightfully unconventional ‒ and everyone will envy me!’
Pandora held her breath, unsure how to respond to this unexpected tenderness which set every fibre in her trembling with new and inexplicable sensations.
‘You really are serious!’
‘Of course.’
His lips touched hers briefly ‒ too briefly, then he released her. She felt deprived, cheated ‒ and that in turn made her angry.
‘You haven’t said why you wish to marry me, my lord Duke,’ she accused him. ‘And I haven’t yet agreed.’
Her truculence lent the situation a diverting piquancy, made the more amusing in Heron’s eyes by her complete unconcern that mere contentiousness might lose her the most vainly sought prize on the marriage mart.
‘No more you have,’ he said agreeably. ‘Do you mean to reject me, then?’
‘I … fear that I should, because the advantages all seem to be on my side and I don’t really see what you will gain from such a marriage.’ She sighed in a troubled way. ‘But I don’t think I have the strength of mind to say no.’
She was so preoccupied that she didn’t notice the slight tightening of his mouth. He continued to regard her for a moment in silence, then turned away to ring the bell.
‘So we are agreed,’ he said. ‘My secretary can begin making the arrangements.’
From that moment Pandora’s life began to assume an air of unreality. She wasn’t sure what she had expected, but in the event very little changed. The Duke continued to treat her very much as he had always done, though in those first days she had the feeling that she had somehow annoyed him. But when she asked, he told her not to be a goose.
It came as a relief to learn that their betrothal was not to be announced. The prospect of being obliged to face the grande dames of society, of becoming the cynosure of all eyes, had filled her with apprehension.
‘If you are agreeable,’ said the Duke, ‘I feel you should remove to Chedwell as planned, I would, however, prefer that you go straight to Clearwater, not to the cottage.’ He saw the disappointment in her face. ‘Yes, I know, but it would be pointless to move in, only to be obliged to move out again in a matter of days. We will let Mrs Briggs have the cottage.’
‘Are we … is it then to be so soon?’ Pandora wished her heart would not leap at the prospect. She had schooled herself, or so she had thought, to accept the limitations of their relationship. If she had harboured any lingering hopes, his absorption with practicalities must have served to quell them. So many decisions and all of them taken for her.
There was no virtue, he said, in delay. ‘We can be married quietly at Chedwell, thus avoiding the considerable ordeal of a London wedding at the height of the season.’ When she did not at once agree, he looked at her with a frown. ‘You don’t hanker after a grand society wedding?’
She was quick to reassure him and thought that she detected a glimmer of relief. Well, she was hardly the stuff that society brides were made of, after all. Small wonder if he did not wish to show her off. It was a pity about the cottage, but she could see the sense in his argument. She had been less happy about keeping the news from Lady Margerson.
‘It does seem the shabbiest of tricks after all her plans for me,’ she sighed, whilst acknowledging her ladyship’s chronic inability to keep a secret.
‘It won’t be for long.’ The Duke was firm. ‘I promise she’ll be at your wedding. I propose to invite her to Clearwater some days before on the pretext of seeing you settled.’ As an afterthought he said, ‘Is there anyone else you wish to invite?’
She assured him that there was not. ‘Certainly not Octavia!’
He smiled at her vehemence. ‘No young ladies to attend you? I confess I have never seen you with anyone special.’
‘The only ones I know are the daughters of Lady Margerson’s friends, but their conversation is all of balls, and what they are to wear and the latest young man upon whom their fancy has lighted.’ She threw him a guilty grin. ‘I find them dreadfully tedious sometimes. Perhaps I am more used to men. I like you and Mr Chessington and Sir Harry very much better.’
The Duke looked quizzical. ‘Poor little Pandora! When you are a married lady, I shall seek to introduce you to some rather more stimulating female company.’
Pandora wasn’t at all sure she wanted stimulating female company, but she kept the thought to herself.
Chapter Thirteen
The wedding of the Duke of Heron to Miss Pandora Carlyon was celebrated on a perfect day in late June in the parish church of Chedwell with no fanfares, the only crowd being an enthusiastic group of well-wishers from the Duke’s estate. Although Pandora had been there for less than three weeks, she had already made a favourable impression upon the local people, especially the estate workers and their families who were fast growing used to seeing her riding among them and whose names she unfailingly remembered, so
that they soon came to overlook the fact that she was not quite what they had expected.
The bride’s half-dress of cream silk edged with lace and fastened with pearl rosettes (bought dagger-cheap at a little shop in the Pantheon Bazaar before she left town) was worn over an underdress of peach-bloom satin. To compliment it she had spent rather more than she had intended upon a stylish bonnet of cream chip-straw, shallow brimmed and very high in the crown, trimmed with peach-bloom ribbons, which moved a jubilant William to remark in considerable awe:
‘I say, ’dora ‒ you look as fine as fivepence! I’d no idea you could look so pretty!’
The dress had inadvertently caused Pandora’s only outright clash with her betrothed, who, upon learning that his bride was contemplating making her own wedding gown, had been more than a little incensed. It was, he said forcefully, absurd and quite unnecessary, when she might go to Madame Fanchon, or whoever she wished, and order as many clothes as she pleased. ‘It is very well to be unconventional, but duchesses, my dear child, most assuredly do not make their own dresses!’
But Pandora, who had acquiesced so willingly to all the plans made on her behalf, had proved immovable on this point. When she was a duchess, she told him stubbornly, she would strive to please him in all things, ‘but I do so want to make this particular dress! And I promise that I will not disgrace you.’
Short of ordering her to obey him (a course which he wisely eschewed) there was little more he could do, though for all of an hour afterwards he wore his most inflexible look which made her wonder if the victory had been worthwhile.
But when the day dawned and Heron arrived at the church, at his most elegant in a morning coat of dove-grey superfine so that even Mr Chessington could not outshine him, he could find no fault with Pandora’s appearance ‒ quite otherwise, in fact. He had never seen her look so well, if a little pale.
