"I am glad you are enjoying the ride so well," he said coolly.
"Very well indeed, thank you. Mr. Kenly is a most delightful companion."
"Does he speak enough Latin for you?"
"Fie, Your Grace! There is more to charming company than Latin."
"I am glad you think so."
"Mr. Kenly is also pleasant, generous and correct in all his thoughts and sentiments."
"Since he invariably agrees with you, you would be bound to think so."
"There is that to be considered," she said thoughtfully. "I hold it to be true that compatibility of mind is of the greatest importance and, alas, the hardest to find."
"You are too demanding, I think. If we all go through the world searching for compatibility of mind, it will be a long and fruitless search for some of us."
She smiled. It was very faint, but to John's eyes it seemed more mysterious than any woman's smile he had ever seen. He never knew what this girl was thinking, he realised. With Athene it was always quite obvious.
"Have I said something amusing?" he asked.
"No, something melancholy. You remind me how hard it is for me to find someone whose mind chimes with my own."
"Until last night I thought our minds were pretty much in step," he replied. "But that, of course, was before you met Benedict."
"Ah yes! Such an excellent young man and one who talks equally well on all subjects."
"Good grief!"
They rode on for a while in a silence only broken by the twittering of birds, and the soft murmurs coming from Athene and Benedict.
"Surely," John resumed at last, "the mental compatibility you speak of cannot be essential in every relationship."
"In some it is more vital than others," she conceded.
"Human beings are more than minds, there is also charm and beauty to be considered."
Gina looked at him innocently.
"But I was speaking only of friendship."
To his dismay he found himself going red.
"So was I," he said hastily.
Raising his voice he called,
"Miss Wicks-Henderson, Benedict, we are nearing a charming spot with a stream. Would you care to dismount?"
The others expressed themselves delighted with this idea and a few minutes later they came to the place where trees overhung the water.
Then the gentlemen dismounted and prepared to assist the ladies. John turned to Athene, but Benedict was there before him, reaching up to place his hands about her tiny waist.
She put her own hands on his shoulders, looking down into his face with the same dazzling smile that John had seen turned on himself many times that morning. There was something automatic about it, he realised.
Then he saw that Gina, with that lamentable independence that characterised her, was preparing to dismount unaided and hastened to forestall her.
"Behave yourself," he told her, reaching up his hands. "Accept a gentleman's help, even if only for the look of things."
"The look of things can be very important," she responded demurely.
"Now what do you mean by that? You see, I do not trust you," he told her.
Her only answer was a laugh that shivered through him so thoroughly that he almost lost his grip. But he managed to recover himself, settle his hands on her waist, lift and lower her.
It was only for a moment that she slid down his chest, but it lasted forever, yet was over in a flash.
He was looking into her eyes and they seemed to be telling him something – if only he could be sure.
Perhaps her hands lingered on his shoulders for an instant. He was not certain. His head was spinning and all was confusion.
Benedict's voice seemed to come from a great distance.
"What a delightful place, old fellow. Is this still part of your land?"
"Er – yes – yes, we are still on my land."
Reluctantly he released Gina. She turned away from him at once, leaving him standing there, breathing hard.
The horses drank eagerly from the stream, while the ladies picked flowers and the gentlemen hovered solicitously around them.
"Such pretty flowers," Athene exclaimed. "How lucky you are, Your Grace, to have an estate that is so beautiful. Your Grace?"
John was staring into the distance.
"You are right," he said hastily. "It is, potentially, very beautiful."
"Oh, surely not potentially, but actually," Athene gushed. "I feel sure that it is perfect just as it is."
"You are very kind, madam, but it is far from perfect. Much needs to be done."
"You are right, of course," she conceded instantly. "Gentlemen understand these things. I am afraid that we poor, ignorant females allow ourselves to be distracted by trivial diversions."
He gave her a forced smile.
It was hard to concentrate on Athene when he was straining to overhear what Benedict and Gina were saying. But he forced his mind away from them and walked with Athene beside the stream.
"Did you know Miss Wilton very well when you were at school?" he asked, picking a flower and handing it to her.
She accepted it with a teasing smile of thanks.
"Oh, we were the best of friends for the little time she was there. We had a lot in common, being both only children and both rather isolated."
"Isolated? Why was that?"
"Most of the other girls came from titled families, but our fathers had invested in railways, so they looked down on us as tradesmen's daughters."
"Railways?" John echoed.
It was common knowledge that there were vast profits to be made in the railways that were springing up everywhere. The result was a girl like Athene with no title but money enough to buy a dozen of them.
"Railways," he said again. "I thought Gina's father was a builder."
"I suppose you might say that," Athene agreed thoughtfully. "I believe he started in a small way, but he has a huge firm now, and he made so much money that he invested in railways and made even more. He is reputed to be a millionaire."
"What?"
John's exclamation was under his breath and he hoped that Athene did not hear him.
What he had just heard was terrible.
Gina was the only child of a hugely rich man. In fact, she was a great heiress.
She had advised him that he needed an heiress.
But, far from attempting to fill the place herself, she had thrown another rich girl into his path.
She could hardly have said more clearly that he did not interest her.
He remembered when he had lifted her down from her horse, the heady excitement that had filled him, the sensation of holding magic in his arms.
She could have turned that moment into a kiss with a look, a smile. But he had detected no encouragement from her.
And the reason was obvious, he realised with dismay. He was being plucked, tied, trussed and served up like a turkey to another woman.
CHAPTER EIGHT
In the following days the castle began to hum. Gina was making a detailed inspection of every room, accompanied by Sonia and Imelda, who seemed to function as her aides-de-camps, taking notes of her ideas and scurrying around to carry them out.
John felt moved to protest.
"Gina, you are here as a guest. I cannot allow you to do the work of a housekeeper."
She seemed to consider this remark seriously.
"Very well. I will hand the work over to whoever you name."
That brought him to a standstill. There was nobody with Gina's organisational skills, except possibly Pharaoh and he was already fully occupied.
These days it was hard for John to know how to talk to her. The discovery that she had rejected him as a possible husband at the outset, even though he was officially unaware of it, was a blow to his pride.
At first he refused to admit that more than his pride was damaged, but as he thought of the sweetness of their friendship and what might have been, he discovered an ache of unhappiness.<
br />
Now more than ever it seemed pleasant to talk to her, but he had to make excuses to do so. Luckily their various duties in planning the ball gave him many opportunities, but it was always he who sought her out and never the other way round.
She had withdrawn altogether from the business of sending out the invitations. Ambrose had suggested that, as Lady Evelyn was to be the hostess, he could work just as well to her direction. Gina had agreed to this with relief.
So the invitations went out far and wide and almost at once the acceptances began to pour in. As Athene had predicted, the news of the young Duke's return had spread like wildfire. No family with a daughter to marry off, whether she be titled or moneyed, wished to miss the chance.
Lost sheep began appearing everywhere, although John saw few of them because they scuttled out of his sight at every opportunity. They were not afraid of him, but he was still unknown to them.
Their major task now was cleaning the picture gallery, which, like so many other chores, was under the direction of Pharaoh.
John came to inspect the work in progress and walked up and down silently, surveying the great room which looked better than it had, but still had one dismaying flaw.
"Is there something worrying Your Grace?" Pharaoh asked.
John stopped in his pacing and indicated the walls.
"It is a pity that my uncle had to sell so many of his pictures," he sighed. "It leaves great bare patches on the walls of a lighter colour than the rest. I know that people are supposed to see that the castle is in a poor way, but still –"
Pharaoh nodded sympathetically.
"It's a matter of pride, Your Grace. You want them to know in theory, but not see in practise."
"Exactly. But what can we do?"
"We could bring out some of the pictures that are in storage. The late Duke used to hide away the ones he didn't like."
"I don't blame him. Many of them are rubbish, but they will be useful now. Where are they?"
"In the attic."
Together they climbed to the upper floors where, by the light of a lantern, Pharaoh showed him a room packed with pictures, wrapped in brown paper, leaning against the wall. Together they began to unwrap them.
Most of them, as John had said, were rubbish, painted by indifferent artists.
"My grandfather considered himself a connoisseur," John said, trying not to wince at one particularly hideous example.
"Did he, Your Grace?" Pharaoh echoed. "Did he, indeed?"
His carefully blank tone revealed his opinion better than words could have done.
"And he knew nothing about the subject. I believe he squandered a fortune on poor pictures, most of which he had mistaken for Old Masters. He would bring them home, have them valued and then realise his mistake. But he wouldn't admit it. Too stubborn. And they still went up on the walls."
"Shall we put them back up for one night, Your Grace?"
"Yes, it's better than bare patches. I will leave it to you to decide which. But not that one," he added quickly, glancing at a large picture and then away again.
Pharaoh studied it.
"It's very – full of action, Your Grace," he said. "Unfortunately the artist had no skill in painting figures."
"I guessed that even as a child," John said with a shudder. "I remember my grandfather telling me that it was called the Crossing of the Rubicon. I think this figure here is meant to be Julius Caesar. Or it might be a donkey."
He added with wry self-mockery,
"Perhaps Miss Wilton could tell us. Her classical education was far superior to mine."
"Did I hear my name?" came a voice from the door.
Gina appeared, her clothes covered in a vast grey apron and a smudge on her nose. She looked enchanting, John thought.
"We were choosing some pictures to hide the gaps on the walls," John told her, offering his hand to help her pick her way through the debris.
"That one?" she asked, aghast, indicating the picture which Pharaoh was still holding.
"No, I promise you."
"What is it meant to be? It looks like a herd of cows fighting in a quagmire."
"It is the Crossing of the Rubicon. That is Julius Caesar."
"You will never get anyone to believe it," she said firmly.
She began to giggle, sitting down on a box to enjoy the joke better. John joined in, simply enjoying the sight of her merriment. Pharaoh quietly lifted the great ugly painting and hauled it away.
Suddenly John's smile faded.
"Gina," he said anxiously, "this is going to work, isn't it?"
"Of course it is," she told him firmly. "Everything is going to work out well, you simply must believe."
"I do, but only when you tell me. You seem able to make me believe anything. In fact, I realise now that that is what you do with everyone.
"I have seen you talking to Pharaoh and the twins, and some of the other lost sheep – those that don't run for cover when they see me."
"They only run because they are not sure they are safe here. They are afraid that you'll turn them out," she said.
"That would be very ungrateful of me, considering the work they are doing for me."
"Ah, yes, you need them now, but later, when you have money, you will probably want more conventional servants. Then you will send them away."
"Is that what they tell you?"
"Not directly. It is more something that I sense in the air."
"What do you tell them?"
She shrugged.
"I tell them how good-hearted and kind you are, but I cannot speak about your plans. I have no right."
"Good-hearted? Kind? It is not that long ago I was the most unspeakable, abominable – well, I forget the rest."
She laughed.
"I did not say you were not those things. I just said you were kind as well."
He grinned.
"Thank you. As for my plans, suppose I promised to do what you say?"
Regretfully she shook her head.
"You must not promise that to me.
"Why not?"
"Because I have no right to ask promises from you."
"But if I volunteer –"
"No, John," she said firmly. "Of course I would like to see you act kindly to them, but I have no doubt of that, because you are kind and generous. I trust to that. But there must be no promises because –"
"Because –" John prompted when she paused.
"Because one day there will be others in your life, who will have the right to ask promises of you. You cannot have divided loyalties."
She meant that he would have a wife, John thought, and telling him that she would never be that wife. In her sweet generosity, she was saving him from proposing to her and having to endure a rejection.
"Very well, no promises," he agreed quietly. "Except that I will say this. If you believe me to be kind and generous – though Heaven knows how you formed such an idea – then that is what I will be.
"I told you that it was your gift to put heart into people and for the rest of my life I will strive to live up to your belief in me. And that is something that you cannot make me unsay by any argument."
He thought that there were tears in her eyes, but in the gloom of the attic he could not be sure.
"I don't want you to unsay it," she told him at last. "You have told me that you will always be true to the highest in yourself and that is all I ask."
"Is that really all you want of me?" he asked, a little sadly.
"But of course. What more could I possibly ask than that?"
"Nothing, I suppose. I think –"
It took a moment for him to find the courage to go on, but when he saw her beautiful, earnest eyes on him he felt impelled to say the rest.
"I think, when I marry, my wife will owe you much."
"Oh, I don't think so," she said. "At any rate, you had better not tell her as much. Not if you wish to live in domestic harmony."
"I shall take your advice on that issue,
as in everything," he said gravely.
"Which reminds me," she said, rising hurriedly, "I came to tell you that Lady Evelyn has received a letter from Athene's parents, accepting her Ladyship's kind invitation for her to remain here until the ball. Isn't that nice?"
"Wonderful," he agreed in a hollow voice.
*
With two days left to go, John's younger brothers came rollicking home from Eton. Timmy and Roly were twins, twelve years old and full of fiendish, zestful life.
Within an hour of arriving home they had released a pair of crows in the kitchen, creating mayhem and causing two scullery maids to have hysterics.
They followed this up by donning sheets and running up and down corridors making ghostly sounds until their brother threatened them with dire retribution. After which they gazed at him in wide eyed innocence.
Their mother praised their high spirits.
Drusilla said they should have been drowned at birth.
John said they were exactly like himself at the same age and he did not mean it as a compliment.
Benedict said they were 'great guns' and took them ratting in the barn.
Athene said she positively doted on them, but that was before they put a mouse in her bed, resulting in a shrieking fit that required all Benedict's efforts to comfort.
After that Athene maintained a deadly silence.
Gina got on well with them, because she always capped their blood-curdling ghost stories with even more spine-chilling stories of her own.
*
On the evening before the ball John took Gina aside, saying,
"Walk with me. There is something I wish to say to you."
For a while they walked in silence in the garden. Having made a start, John seemed to have difficulty deciding what he meant to say.
Gina waited with a heavy heart. She knew that after tomorrow she might never be happy again.
Then, as if their minds were intertwined, he said,
"After tomorrow, everything will be different."
"I know," she agreed sadly.
"Nothing in the castle or in our lives will ever be the same again."
Tomorrow night there would be the ball at which he would win support for the castle and probably announce his engagement to Athene.
Love Finds the Way Page 10
