He took them from her.
As soon as he looked at what was in his hand, he exclaimed,
“These are copies!”
“Of course, dear Crispin! Would I be so foolish as to trust you with the originals when there is a fire burning in the room and you are so much stronger than I am?”
The Duke glanced again at the papers he held in his hand.
Then he threw them into the fire and watched as they turned to ashes.
“I can make you other copies if you want,” Isobel offered.
She was taunting him and he felt like striking her.
He had beaten her once when he was so wildly jealous that he could not control himself and he knew that she had enjoyed it, just as she was now enjoying torturing him.
With a superhuman effort he said in a conciliatory tone of voice,
“Shall we talk this over sensibly?”
“There is nothing sensible about my having to chaperone Albert’s daughter!” Isobel said in a hard voice. “You will marry her, Crispin, because there is nothing else you can do.”
The Duke wanted to rage at her, but he would not lower himself.
“Pass her on to somebody else,” he suggested, “who is more in need of money than I am!”
“If he is a Duke, I can see no particular difficulty,” Isobel replied.
The Duke did his best to think of a Duke who was in the same position as himself and failed. Northumberland, Newcastle, Roxburghe, Sutherland, Norfolk – all of them were rich and there was no reason for any of them to have to sell their titles.
For a moment he thought of telling Isobel to do her worst.
After all, the Duke of Wellington had told Harriette Wilson to ‘publish and be damned’.
She had tried to blackmail him by declaring that she would write about him in her memoirs.
Then he knew that he would not only have to fight a duel with the Ambassador but he would be sacrificing Yvonne.
It was something that no gentleman could possibly do to a woman who had trusted him with her reputation.
He was well aware that Yvonne was terrified of her husband and she was indeed telling the truth when she had said he might kill her if he ever had any reason to suspect her of being unfaithful.
No, he was caught and the door of the trap was closing.
Isobel’s long thin fingers had turned the key securely in the lock.
In a voice that did not sound like his own, he said with an effort,
“What do you want me to do?”
“I thought that you would see sense,” Isobel sneered, “and I will tell you exactly.”
She settled herself more comfortably on the sofa.
The Duke stood in front of the fire, feeling that his whole body was cold and he had turned to stone.
“Safina is arriving from Florence in three days’ time,” Isobel began. “I will meet her not in London, but at Dover, and I will bring her to Wyn, where you will be married in your private Chapel.”
The Duke clenched his hands so that the knuckles turned white, but he did not speak.
“You will then go off on your honeymoon, and no one will see Safina or even know that she exists,” she went on, “until Albert, having recovered from the shock, announces it in The Gazette.”
“What is he going to think?” the Duke asked.
“I shall tell him that you met Safina when you were in Florence and fell madly in love with her. However, afraid that she might be carried off by some other suitor, you married her while you still had the chance!”
“And you really believe that your husband will swallow all that nonsense?” the Duke asked.
”Albert leaves for Edinburgh tomorrow morning on a special mission for the Queen. He is going with a friend in his yacht, therefore will be out of touch with everything that is occurring here for nearly three weeks.”
The Countess gave a little sigh.
“It is what would have delighted you, Crispin, when we meant so much to each other.”
The Duke ignored the last remark and quizzed her,
“Do you really think that your husband will accept a marriage that took place without his permission and which therefore will be, I think, illegal?”
Isobel laughed.
“You will not get out of it that way, Crispin! What father would not be delighted that his daughter had married a Duke?”
“Suppose the girl objects, which she should do.”
“You can leave Safina to me.”
“Then I can only say that I am extremely sorry for the girl!” the Duke remarked sarcastically.
“You can, of course, dear Crispin, make it up to her in your own inimitable way!”
There was silence.
Then the Duke said,
“Don’t do this to me, Isobel. If you have any memory of the happiness we once shared, you will find another man, and I am sure there are many, who will take this girl off your hands.”
He realised as he spoke that he was pleading with the Countess.
Equally he was desperate.
He was losing everything. His freedom and his hope that one day he would have a happy marriage.
Also, he told himself savagely, his self-respect.
He knew as he finished speaking that it was a waste of time to make any sort of appeal to Isobel.
She had always been as hard as nails and it was only her exotic sensuality that had made her warm and clinging in bed. She could be cruel, indifferent and extremely vindictive.
Now she laughed and answered,
“I remember all that and a great deal more and I also remember how you raged at me and how you left me. Then, judging from your letters, Yvonne has managed to console you for any discomfort you might have been suffering!”
It was clear from the way she spoke that she was jealous that he had been comforted in the arms of Yvonne.
He had found in her what he had found in Isobel, a lovely sensuous woman.
She could light a fire that while they were making love would consume them both.
It would be wildly and exhilaratingly thrilling.
But the fires of passion could also burn themselves out and Isobel knew that that was what had happened to him where she was concerned.
Because she was a woman, she was jealous, she wanted to torture him, to make him suffer and make him subservient to her.
He realised that there was nothing more he could say.
Some pride that was very much a part of his character made him accept the inevitable without belittling himself any farther.
“Very well, Isobel,” he said at last, “I will accept this intolerable situation on one condition. That you give me back the letters you stole from Yvonne.”
He paused a moment and then went on,
“I don’t trust you, and I swear I will not put the ring on your stepdaughter’s finger until the letters are safely in my hands.”
It took the Countess a moment to find a solution to his demand.
Finally she said,
“Very well, Crispin. I will bring them with me to Wyn and give them to you in the Chapel once the Marriage Ceremony has started.”
“I shall, of course, examine them to make sure that they are genuine,” the Duke warned her.
“And if they are not, what then?”
“You can take the girl away with you.”
“You will receive your letters,” Isobel then promised him.
She rose to her feet and once again the Duke reached out towards the bell-pull, but she was in his way.
“We have made a bargain together,” she said softly, “and I think that you should seal it with a kiss, just for old time’s sake.”
“I would rather kiss a serpent of Satan!” the Duke retorted. “I hate you, Isobel, for what you did to me when I loved you and now I despise you as well as I despise myself for ever becoming involved with you!”
He realised as he spoke that this outburst was not what she had expected.
He knew
full well how conceited she was and with reason. There had never been a man she had not been able to twist round her little finger and manipulate in any way she wished.
He saw the surprise in her eyes.
He thought that behind the façade of a sophisticated woman there were still the remnants of the young girl who wanted to conquer the Social world and had succeeded.
In a slightly calmer voice he said,
“You have forced me into doing against my will something you wish me to do. Be content and I can only beg you to leave me alone in the future.”
As he spoke, he deliberately reached behind her and rang the bell.
As he did so, he became vividly conscious of the exotic perfume she always used. How well he remembered its seductive scent, which clung to him long after he had left her.
As the door opened and the butler appeared, he said,
“Goodbye, Countess. It was very kind of you to call on me and, of course, I shall be waiting to hear further details of the matter we have been discussing.”
Isobel put out her hand and he raised it perfunctorily to his lips.
Then, as she moved across the room to where the butler was waiting, he walked to the window.
He could not bear to look at her any longer.
He heard the door close.
Then his self-control broke. He no longer had to force himself to behave with propriety.
He was cursing beneath his breath, damning Isobel into the Hell that he knew was waiting for him.
A Hell in which he would be imprisoned for the rest of his life.
Chapter Two
“I shall miss you, Reverend Mother, and thank you so very much for all the kindness you have shown to me since I have been here.”
Safina spoke with an unmistakable note of sincerity in her voice.
The Mother Superior smiled.
“It has been a pleasure having you, Safina,” she said, “and I hope, when you go out into the world, you will remember all that we have taught you.”
“I shall remember all of it,” Safina declared, “and to be honest, Reverend Mother, I wish so much that I did not have to leave you.”
The Mother Superior put her hand on Safina’s shoulder.
”You are now grown up and you have a position in life to fulfil. Do not forget that there are people who will try to follow your example and those you will inspire. You must not fail them.”
“I will try not to,” Safina promised.
“God go with you, my child,” the Mother Superior smiled.
Safina curtseyed, kissed the Mother Superior’s hand and walked towards the door.
As she left, the Mother Superior gazed after her with a look of affection and also of anxiety.
She had not liked the letter that she had received from Safina’s stepmother, the Countess of Sedgewick.
It contained instructions about the journey that Safina was to take to England and it seemed to the Mother Superior that it was hard and unfeeling.
She had the idea that, when she returned home, Safina would miss her own mother even more than she had done when she first came to the Convent School.
Then, she had been desperately unhappy.
It was only because the nuns had been understanding and her fellow pupils nice well-born girls that she had gradually acclimatised herself.
Then, as she had said, she enjoyed being at school.
As Safina drove away through the streets of Florence, she was saying goodbye and thinking that no place in the world, even England, could be so beautiful or so redolent with centuries of history.
The Mother Superior had sent with her, on her stepmother’s instructions, a nun to take her safely to her own country.
Sister Benedict was an elderly woman and an extremely intelligent one.
She had been born into an aristocratic Italian family and she had taken her vows only when the man she had been engaged to was killed in a duel.
Although it had been an arranged marriage, as was usual amongst the aristocratic families of Europe, she had loved him. She therefore felt that she could not face the world without him and entered the Convent.
The school was a separate part of the Convent and she had not intended to be involved with the young girls.
But she had been very well educated herself and she was so intelligent that she had finally been persuaded by the Mother Superior to teach as well as to pray.
Now, as they passed over the Ponte Vecchio, which spanned the river Arno, Safina said impulsively,
“I shall miss all this, Sister, it is so beautiful.”
“Wherever you go, it will remain in your heart,” Sister Benedict replied, “but I know when you return to England you will find it beautiful too.”
“It is beautiful,” Safina answered, “and I am looking forward to being in my father’s house in the country.”
She paused for a moment before she went on,
“I am thinking of the horses I can ride, of the beauty of the woods and the gardens that my mother loved so dearly.”
She was thinking as she spoke of how painful it would be to walk in the Rose Garden and over the smooth green lawns without her mother.
When she was a very small child, her mother had taken her every day into the garden.
She had told her stories about the flowers, the herbs, the birds and the butterflies and the garden had become very much a part of Safina’s dreams.
She had not only dreamt about it but it had been in her imagination all the years she had been away in Florence.
She had felt when she was alone at night that she could walk in the garden at home and she could smell the scent of the flowers and hear the song of the birds.
‘I will soon do that in reality,’ she told herself now, ‘but it will not be the same without my beloved Mama.’
It was then inevitably that she remembered her stepmother.
She had known since the day her father had married again that his new wife disliked her.
She not only saw it in her eyes but heard it in the hard voice she used when she spoke to her.
When she first learnt that her father was to marry someone very much younger than himself, she thought perhaps that it would be rather fun.
If her stepmother was young, they could laugh together and it might even alleviate some of the misery she felt at losing her mother.
She was quickly disillusioned.
Isobel had made it absolutely clear the moment that she and the Earl of Sedgewick were married that Safina was to go away.
“Safina is old enough for Finishing School, dearest Albert,” she said in the soft cooing voice that meant she wanted something.
She smiled beguilingly at her husband and went on,
“As she is so pretty, it would be a great mistake for her to be ignorant and badly educated like so many young girls.”
“Of course.” Safina remembered her father had agreed.
He was obviously besotted with his new wife and Safina somewhat resented it because she thought it insulted the memory of her mother, yet she was intelligent enough to understand.
He had been at first stricken by the death of his wife and had seemed to grow old in just a few weeks.
He mooned about dismally and found it hard to attend even to his duties at Court.
It was then, quite unexpectedly, that Safina noticed a glint in his eye and a different note in his voice.
She had not understood why until she heard from one of her relations what was happening.
“There is no fool like an old fool,” her aunt had said tartly, “and that applies to your father!”
Safina stared at her, not understanding until she explained,
“You are going to have a stepmother and I think it is my duty to tell you so before you hear the news from your father and upset him by making a scene.”
“I will – not do – that,” Safina stammered.
At the same time she felt like crying because her father had forgotten her mother
so soon.
As if her aunt knew what she was thinking, she observed,
“You know as well as I do, Safina, that your father needs an heir. Sedgewick is an ancient Earldom that we are all very proud of.”
Safina had not thought of it before.
But now she remembered that her father’s Heir Presumptive was a nephew whom none of them had ever liked.
He had been sent out to Australia because he was so extravagant and her father had paid his debts a dozen times and had eventually refused to support him any longer.
She could understand that all her relations had wanted her father and mother to have a son.
Any failure was no fault of their own and, as her mother had said,
“It is not God’s will.”
Safina was therefore an only child.
Bravely she said to her aunt,
“Of course I hope that Papa will have a son and it will be very exciting for me to have a brother.”
“You are a sensible girl,” her aunt said approvingly.
Safina had therefore forced herself to welcome Isobel.
Yet she knew at their first meeting that there was no longer a welcome for her in her own home.
But her father was very happy.
She had therefore tried to tell herself all the way to Florence that it would be very selfish of her to wish him to be anything else.
She only knew that it was agonising to see Isobel in her mother’s place and it hurt her to see her wearing the Sedgewick jewels and re-arranging the rooms.
It was with the greatest difficulty that Safina prevented herself from saying that it was her mother’s money that had made everything so luxurious at Wick Park.
It was her mother’s money that allowed Isobel to spend a fortune on clothes, furs and anything else that took her fancy.
‘I must try to love her for Papa’s sake,’ Safina instructed herself over and over again.
But she knew that every hour she spent with Isobel made her dislike her more than she did already.
So it was in a way a relief to be sent away to Florence.
Isobel had in addition persuaded her father that it would be a mistake for Safina to come home for holidays.
“It’s such a long way, dearest Albert,” she had said, “and very unsettling for a young girl. She will have friends amongst the other pupils and I am sure that they will take her out occasionally. It’s what happened to me when I was at school.”
Magic From the Heart Page 2
