AUTHOR’S NOTE
Belladonna is one of the oldest poisons in herbal history. At the same time in the homeopathic form it can be a valuable medicine and minute quantities of a tincture made from the berries of the Belladonna will act as the prophylactic against scarlet fever.
Yet Belladonna is dangerous and the botanical name Atropa connects it mythologically with one of the Fates, to whom were entrusted the shears with which to cut the thread of human life.
Deadly Nightshade, as Belladonna is more often called in England, should never be grown in a garden where there are children, as they are tempted to taste the attractive, brightly coloured berries.
Doctor Fernie says that one of the peculiarities of poisoning caused by this berry is complete loss of voice, a curious movement of the hands and fingers and a bending backwards and forwards of the body. It affects specifically the brain and the bladder and influences all cold extremities and all forms of illusions of sight.
Chapter one 1870
The Duke of Wynchester felt that he was falling asleep and knew it was time he left.
It was not surprising, since his lovemaking with the woman now lying beside him had been passionate and insatiable since the early hours of the evening when they had come to bed.
In all his numerous love affairs, and there had been a great number of them, the Duke had never found anyone quite so passionate or so demanding as Olive Brandon.
The Duke was very fastidious in the choice of those on whom he bestowed his favours and, although when he first saw Lady Brandon, he had thought that she was without exception the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, she had not attracted him to the point where he felt that he must become involved with her.
But Olive Brandon had had very different ideas.
The Duke was the best-looking, the wealthiest, and the most important man at Court and she determined, with an iron will that had grown stronger than steel in the last few years, that she would have him.
Olive had developed her determination long before she astounded London with her beauty.
She had realised when she was quite young how valuable her looks could be to her. When she was brought to London for a Season by her father and mother, who lived in the depths of Gloucestershire, she had known that she must make the best of the two months she would have before they returned to the country, as it was unlikely that she would ever have such a chance again.
Her father was a fox-hunting Squire who was very popular in his own County, but was quite unknown in the fashionable circles that Olive longed to move in.
Her mother had aristocratic connections, but most of them had daughters of their own and would not be inclined to put themselves out for another debutante.
Olive had a flair for making herself noticed in an almost theatrical manner and she cajoled, pleaded and insisted on her mother buying the gowns she wanted.
She knew that when she walked into a ballroom, she would cause a sensation.
Nevertheless, it required a great deal of persistence and cunning to ensnare a comparatively distinguished husband in her first Season.
Lord Brandon was a widower of over fifty, but with Olive’s huge eyes hypnotising him, he had fallen in love as if he was a boy of twenty.
Olive had married just as she had planned, with a well-publicised ceremony at St. George’s Hanover Square and a crowded reception in Lord Brandon’s house in Park Lane.
From that moment she entered the world she had dreamed about and had longed to be a part of.
She was clever enough not to arouse in her husband the least suspicion when she took lovers and this was not very difficult as he grew older and liked to spend much of his time fishing and racing.
Fishing often took him to the far North of Scotland, which meant he was conveniently out of the way, while racing was to Olive an extremely boring pastime, unless she could show herself off at Ascot or Goodwood in a fashionable house party.
Everything worked out extremely well and Lord Brandon, although he was not as ardent as he had been when they first married, was still in love with his wife when she saw the Duke of Wynchester.
It had been impossible for her not to notice him, for he stood head and shoulders above the other men in the Throne Room at Buckingham Palace and, wearing his decorations, he looked to Olive’s eyes exactly as if he had stepped out from one of the stories she had told herself when as Cinderella she met Prince Charming.
The Duke, however, was at first very elusive. He was not only continuously in demand by the Prince of Wales at Marlborough House, to which she was not invited, but he spent a great deal of time watching the training of his horses which he raced and hunted.
Precisely because he was single, he was inevitably the favourite of every hostess and, of course, of every ambitious Mama, who thought wistfully that by some earth-shattering luck he might look at one of her offspring.
In fact the Duke at thirty-three was determined still to keep his freedom.
In the high Society in which he moved it was taken for granted that a woman after some years of marriage, having presented her husband with an heir and perhaps two or three other children, should amuse herself in the same way as he had always been able to do, without there being too much fuss about it.
The unfortunate thing, however, was that Olive did not qualify for this category because, although it was something Lord Brandon longed for, she had not given him an heir.
This did not so much worry her, since she did not like children and had no wish to spoil the perfection of her figure.
At the same time she was well aware that it was what was expected of her and that, although he never said so in so many words, her husband was disappointed.
She knew that George Brandon was fanatically proud besides being exceedingly jealous and, should he suspect that she was being in any way unfaithful to him, he would undoubtedly vent his wrath on her as well as on any man who had seduced her.
She was delighted when, although it was only the beginning of June, George had an invitation to fish on the River Tay in Scotland, which he found very tempting.
“Of course you must go, dearest,” she said. “It is very kind of the Earl to ask you and as it’s a river you have never fished before, you must accept.”
“I would like to go,” Lord Brandon admitted. “At the same time, I don’t like to leave you alone in London.”
Olive had laughed that silvery sound, which was like a peal of bells.
“I shall be perfectly all right,” she said. “And you know, dearest George, how much you hate those large dinner parties night after night, which usually give you indigestion.”
This was true and Lord Brandon needed little more persuasion to accept the Earl of Kilkenay’s invitation.
When he left for Scotland, Olive’s heart leapt.
This was exactly what she had been waiting for.
For the last three months she had been enticing, beguiling and in her own way mesmerising the Duke, until he found it almost impossible to resist her.
The evening after her husband had left she asked him to dinner at her house, but was clever enough to invite other guests also.
This was not what he had expected, and he was quite surprised when he found that there were two other couples, both of whom he knew, the men in particular being close friends.
They had laughed a great deal, enjoying the excellent food and wine, which Olive took great care always to provide for her guests.
Then, when the others had left at a quite reasonable hour, Olive had looked at the Duke questioningly.
She was looking exceedingly lovely in a gown with a bustle of green tulle, which matched the green of her eyes and the emeralds in her dark hair.
A necklace of the same stones ac
centuated the perfection of her magnolia skin, which the Duke thought was whiter than any other woman’s he had ever seen.
For a moment he told himself that, while she was very lovely, the climax to the evening was too obviously planned, too ordinary to excite him.
Then, as Olive put her arms around his neck and raised her lips to his, saying in a voice that vibrated with passion,
“Are you going to say goodnight to me?” it seemed ridiculous to ask for anything different.
When much later he left her, he had to admit that he had not been disappointed.
She was certainly unusual and he thought that, as her green eyes gleamed at him, she was like a tigress from whom it was impossible for her prey to escape.
Because he wished to assert himself and was determined that no woman, however attractive, should dominate him, it was three days later before once again he accepted an invitation to dine with her.
This time they were alone.
She attempted now to make her conversation glittering and very amusing and he thought that her provocative double entendres were worthy of any Frenchwoman.
Once again she was alluringly dressed and he had to admit that when she was not so modestly gowned, she had the figure of a Greek Goddess and a man would have been inhuman to find fault.
From that moment the Duke found that Olive was with him whatever he did, wherever he went.
But now their idyll was at an end for tomorrow Lord Brandon would be back.
Once again the Duke found that his eyelids were drooping and, as he threw back the lace-edged silk sheet preparatory to rising, as if dismayed Olive asked,
“You are not leaving, Hugo?”
“It’s time I went home,” he replied. “Thank you, Olive, for being more exciting than I have ever known you. I shall miss you tomorrow night.”
He rose as he spoke and started to dress swiftly and efficiently, having no need, as so many Gentlemen of Fashion had, of the services of a valet.
Olive raised herself a little farther up against the soft pillows embroidered with her initials and surmounted by her husband’s coronet and said,
“There is something I want to talk about to you, Hugo.”
The Duke was hardly attending.
He had seen by the clock on the mantelpiece that it was nearly two o’clock. He had given orders for his carriage to call for him at exactly that hour and he disliked being late.
He was, although he had not told Olive, leaving for the country.
He had thought it would be a relief from the scented warmth of her bedroom to feel the clean air on his face and to know that, when he reached his house in Hertfordshire, his horses would be waiting for him.
They would give him the strenuous exercise he needed to bring himself back into the peak of condition.
He could see, as he tied his tie, Olive’s face in the mirror.
“You know, Hugo dear, that I love you,” she was saying, “and I have therefore decided that when George returns tomorrow, I shall tell him about us.”
For a moment the Duke thought that he could not have heard aright.
Then he turned around and saw that by now Olive was sitting upright, her dark hair falling over her shoulders and in the heavily curtained bed she looked very alluring.
“What are you talking about?” he asked after a moment.
He spoke lightly, as if he thought that she had made a joke and he had somehow missed the point of it.
“I want to marry you, Hugo!” Olive said firmly. “I know that once he is aware that you have been my lover, George will divorce me.”
For a moment the Duke was stunned into silence. Then he said as if it was a remark he had heard before,
“I am afraid, Olive, I am not built to be anyone’s husband, and I am quite certain if I did marry you, that I should make a most reprehensible one.”
“I have worked it all out, Hugo,” Olive replied and now her voice held a note of steel in it. “I love you, I love you more than I believed it possible to love anybody and I therefore intend to marry you.”
“As you are already married, I am afraid that is impossible,” the Duke answered, “and, anyway, I cannot believe you would be so foolish as to throw away the substance for a shadow. As you well know, a divorced woman is irretrievably ostracised by the Society that means so much to you.”
“By English Society, I agree,” Olive replied. “But you have forgotten the Social world outside this boring island. As the Duchess of Wynchester, I should certainly be accepted in Paris and Rome and doubtless in every other country in Europe.
“What is more,” she went on, “I have not forgotten that your grandmother was Russian and I am quite certain that, if we visited St. Petersburg, we should be welcomed with open arms.”
Listening to her speaking firmly in a clear determined voice that was very different from the passionate tones with which she had been addressing him earlier in the evening, the Duke felt that he had stepped into a nightmare.
He could only hope that what she was saying was some amusing trick she was playing on him, but there was a wary look in his eyes and his body was tense as he moved across the room from the mantelpiece to sit down on the side of the bed facing her.
“Now, what is all this about?” he asked. “Are you pulling my leg?”
“On the contrary,” Olive declared. “I have thought it out very carefully. I want to marry you, Hugo, I want to be your wife and once the unpleasantness of the divorce and the first year is over, we will be very very happy.”
“You are crazy!” the Duke exclaimed. “For one thing, you would lose your position here in England and for another it is problematical whether the French or any other Europeans, who are very snobby, will accept you.”
“They will accept you, dearest,” Olive said sweetly, “and will therefore ultimately accept me.”
There was a little pause before the Duke said and now his voice had a touch of anger in it,
“Suppose I don’t marry you?”
Olive’s eyes narrowed and he saw the glint of them.
“You are too much of a gentleman, dearest Hugo,” she said, “not to make an honest woman of me. I expect, when he knows the truth, George will call you out and, although it is forbidden, there will be a duel in which inevitably you will be the winner.”
She smiled before she added,
“Then after the divorce we can be married in any part of the world you choose and be together for the rest of our lives.”
She spoke as if she was reciting like a child, who had learnt a lesson cleverly and was sure of the approval of her teacher.
The Duke rose from the bed to walk to the window and pull aside the curtains as if he felt that he must have air.
He could hardly believe that what he had just heard was real and not some wild fragment of his imagination.
Then, as he questioned his own sanity, he heard Olive behind him say,
“I love you, Hugo, I love you until nothing else matters except that I should be your wife and that you should make me yours, not just for one or two snatched evenings, but forever!”
The Duke drew in his breath.
So many women had said to him,
“If only we could go on like this for ever!” And invariably on their lips had been the question, “Will you always love me as you do now?”
Why, why, he asked himself angrily, should they always want to tie a man down, keep him captive and restrict his freedom?
But never, in all his many philanderings, had he been faced with a situation quite so nerve-racking as this one.
He was well aware, as he stared into the night, that he had no wish to marry Olive and she was, in fact, the last type of woman he desired as a wife.
When he had determined not to marry until he was much older, he had not given much thought to the sort of woman he really would like to bear his name and, of course, his children.
One thing, however, he did know positively and without any argument was that she w
ould not be in the least like Olive Brandon or indeed the majority of the other women who had pursued him.
He could imagine nothing more unpleasant than to wonder how soon his wife would take a lover or suspect that she was already enticing one of his friends into indiscretions that would offend his pride and the honour of his name.
Now he thought about it, he had always rather despised the women who deceived their husbands by falling into his arms, usually with immodest haste.
Every time he deceived another man by making his wife his mistress he had, although he refused to admit it in so many words, felt as if he too was humiliated.
He knew that such an idea would be laughed at by the majority of his friends and certainly by the raffish set that centred round the Prince of Wales, who was habitually unfaithful to his beautiful Danish-born wife.
He had set the pace and Society had followed him blindly, but, when the Duke thought about it, he knew he had always had reservations in his own mind.
Now he was determined that somehow he must extricate himself from the trap that Olive Brandon had set for him, yawning like a deep chasm in front of his feet, though it was impossible for the moment to think of a way out.
He pulled the curtains to and, turning back, said in a quite calm voice,
“I think, Olive, before you do anything precipitately, we should talk this over. Now is hardly the time, as we are both tired, to make fundamental decisions about our future.”
He saw from the expression in her eyes that she was somewhat disconcerted by the way he was speaking, and after a moment she said,
“But, of course, dearest Hugo, if that is what you want, I am agreeable. George will be arriving on the sleeper train tomorrow morning. I will not say anything to him before the evening. If you will come to tea, when he will be at his Club, we can then make plans.”
“I am afraid I cannot come to tea tomorrow,” the Duke replied slowly, “as now I am leaving for the country, but I shall be back the following day in time for luncheon.”
“You are going to the country at this hour of the night!” Olive exclaimed.
“I have some horses in training, which I particularly want to see,” the Duke replied carelessly.
The Love Trap Page 1
