“When will I be – up – again?” he asked as she took the glass from his lips.
“The doctor has been very gloomy about it,” Samala answered, “but I think that because you are so strong you will be better far sooner than he expects. Doctors are always over-cautious like fussy Nannies.”
The way she spoke made the Duke want to laugh, but he knew it would hurt his chest if he did so and instead he lay back against the pillows, which she had patted into position for him and said,
“I feel we should be introduced to each other and I should ask why you are nursing me. Surely it would have been easier to engage a nurse?”
“On the contrary,” Samala replied. “Nurses, as you must be aware, are almost unobtainable in the country. The village midwife, who would be only too willing to oblige, is old and keeps herself awake only with tots of gin!”
Her eyes were twinkling as she spoke and the Duke found himself watching for her dimples.
“Then I must thank you for saving me from her ministrations!” he said. “At the same time I feel it is a shocking imposition.”
“Your valet looks after you most of the time during the day,” Samala told him. “In fact, I nursed my father when he broke his collar bone out riding and another time when he fell off a high ladder and suffered concussion.”
“I feel sure that this is not the way you envisaged starting your married life,” the Duke remarked.
“I am happy to be here with you,” Samala said. “While you were lying here unconscious, you looked exactly like your ancestor on the tomb in the Church.”
The Duke thought for a moment. Then he said,
“I think you must mean Sir Harold Buckhurst, who went to the Crusades.”
“Of course,” she replied. “And that is exactly how I thought you looked the first time I saw you.”
The Duke was silent for a moment. Then he asked,
“Are you saying that we have met before?”
Samala shook her head.
“No, we have never met, but I saw you and I thought – ”
She stopped.
“I must let you rest. I will tell you all about it another time. The doctor was most insistent that you should not be overtired.”
“I am sick of sleeping,” the Duke complained petulantly, “and I am interested in what you are saying to me. If you do not finish that sentence, I shall lie awake wondering about it and that will be very bad for me.”
Samala gave a little laugh and he thought it was like the sound of a songbird.
“Now you are blackmailing me,” she said, “but if you promise to go to sleep, I will tell you that the first time I saw you was eight years ago, riding in a steeplechase.”
She saw a flicker of recognition in the Duke’s eyes as she went on,
“You were on a magnificent black stallion and leading the field and, as I watched you, I thought you looked exactly like a Crusader Knight! When I have thought about you since, I have always felt that actually you were wearing shining silver armour and that there was a cross on your shield.”
She spoke with a rapt note in her voice that the Duke did not miss and her eyes seemed to catch the light from the candles.
He knew, although it seemed very strange, that what she had seen had meant a great deal to her.
Then in a very different voice she continued,
“Now you have to be good and do as you promised and go to sleep. Otherwise the doctor will be very angry with me for tiring you and will insist on the village midwife, with her gin bottle, coming to take my place!”
The Duke could not prevent a little laugh from coming to his lips. Then, feeling the expected pain in his chest, he controlled it.
He suddenly realised that he was very tired. At the same time, Samala had given him something to think about.
“Goodnight,” he said, as he closed his eyes and felt her hand on his forehead.
*
The Duke sat up in bed feeling extremely irritable.
The back of his head, which had hit the bough of the tree, ached and the bruise on his chest made it extremely painful to move.
The doctor had come early in the morning and prescribed nothing except rest and categorically refused to allow him to get up at least for another week.
Now, after he had been washed and shaved and the sheets and pillowcases on his bed had been changed, he felt it was humiliating to be kept in bed as if he was a child and the sooner he asserted himself and dressed, the better.
“I will get up tomorrow,” he said aloud to his valet.
“We’ll see what Her Grace says about that,” Yates replied.
The Duke stared at him in utter astonishment.
He could hardly believe that Yates, of all people, would consider anybody’s orders except his own to be of any consequence.
“I will do what I want to do,” the Duke snapped. “Bring me the newspapers!”
“The doctor said, Your Grace, that you’re not to use your eyes because they might have been affected by the blow on your head. Her Grace’ll be along shortly and she told me that, as soon as you were ready to listen, she’d read you anything you wished in the newspapers.”
As if Yates knew that his Master was going to argue, he said no more and slipped out of the bedroom, closing the door behind him.
The Duke was astounded and would have thrown himself petulantly back against the pillows, if he had not realised that it would hurt him to do so.
He was just wondering whether he should ring and order Yates to return to him for further instructions when the door opened and Samala came into the room.
The Duke had not seen her since the previous evening and he thought, as she came across to the bed, that she was in fact the child he had thought her to be at first sight.
She was so slight, so thin, that it took him a moment or two to realise that her gown, which was very elegant, revealed the soft curves of her breasts.
Yet her face was that of a child or rather, he thought to his surprise, of a very young angel! With the sunlight behind her, her hair seemed almost like a golden halo for her bright blue eyes and translucent pink-and-white skin.
For the moment she was concentrating on what she was holding in her hands, which was a bowl of small orchids of a very rare and unusual kind, which were white but changed to pink at the end of each petal.
Then, as she neared the bed, she looked up and smiled at him and he saw once again the dimples he had noticed before.
“Look what I have brought you,” she said and there was a lilt in her voice. “Your Head Gardener says you have been waiting for two years for these to flower and what could be more appropriate than that they should do so now and cheer you up?”
The Duke looked at the vase she held out to him and replied,
“They are certainly as lovely as I thought they would be.”
“Where did you find them?”
“In Darjeeling, when I visited India.”
Samala gave a little cry.
“You have been to India? Tell me about it. It is a country I have always longed to visit! I have read books and books about it, but nothing could be the same as actually going there.”
The Duke was surprised, because, although he had travelled quite extensively in his life, he had found that most women were not interested in his adventures unless they concerned themselves.
He watched Samala put the orchids down on the table by his bed and then she said in a different tone,
“Forgive me, I should have asked you first how you feel today.”
The Duke frowned.
“I will not have Yates tittle-tattling to you,” he said sharply. “I shall get up when I want to and that will doubtless be tomorrow.”
He expected Samala to look abashed or at least to feel rebuked by what he said, but instead she put out her hand and laid it on his.
“Please, please, be sensible,” she said. “There are so many things I want you to show me and, if you take a long time getting well
because you got up from bed too quickly, we shall both find it very frustrating.”
The Duke looked at her in surprise.
Then, as he saw the pleading in her eyes, he realised that she was completely sincere and it flashed through his mind that she was not aware that his intention had been to leave as quickly as possible after their wedding and return to London.
Then he told himself that as that now was obviously impossible and the Baroness would have to wait, he might as well make the best of being at home, even with a wife he did not want.
Then, as if she knew what he was thinking, she said in a low voice,
“I am really not trying to stop you from doing anything, as I know I could not do that. It is just that everybody has been so worried about you, and I have been praying very – very hard that you will soon be strong again.”
“Does it matter so much?” the Duke asked.
“Of course it does!”
She gave a little sigh and looked round the room.
“I had no idea when I thought about you that everything that surrounds you would be so exactly right for you.”
“What do you mean by that?” the Duke asked curiously.
“This house, the treasures in it, your horses, the people who not only serve you but love you, all make a frame that is exactly what it should be for the Knight I saw winning the steeplechase.”
“Do you really mean to tell me that you have thought of me ever since then?” the Duke enquired.
He asked the question mockingly, but then was surprised when she looked away from him and he saw the colour creeping into her cheeks almost like the first fingers of the dawn.
It was such a long time since he had seen a woman blush that he watched her in silence until she turned her face to him and replied,
“Perhaps I should not have – told you – but you must have wondered why I agreed to – marry you when, as far as you were concerned we had never even – met.”
The Duke looked at her in astonishment. Then he asked,
“Are you telling me that you agreed to become my wife simply because you had seen me ride in a steeplechase and had thought of me ever afterwards?”
“Of course that was the reason! When your sister came to see Papa with the proposition that I should marry her brother, I did not realise at first who she was speaking about. In fact, I thought it most insulting that we were not to – meet before – our wedding day.”
She paused and then the Duke said,
“Then what did you think?”
“When she said her brother was the Duke of Buckhurst, I thought it was fate that you should want to marry me – when I had thought of you not only in my dreams but in the thousand stories I have told myself ever since I watched you ride over that last fence, and knew that you could win anything you set your – heart on.”
The Duke thought that the way she spoke was so mesmeric that he felt as if he was being carried away into a Fairy story himself.
He remembered that race well and, because the going was hard and the fences very high and he was riding a young horse, he had thought his chances of winning were slight.
He had actually lifted his horse almost by willpower over the last fence, then down the straight to the winning post.
When he had received the cheers and congratulations of those who had watched him, he had known he deserved them and it seemed extraordinary now that Samala should have been watching him and understanding what a victory it had been.
“I can see you are fond of riding,” he remarked.
Her eyes lit up.
“I love it more than anything else and that is why I want to ride with you. But you must not attempt to break in Wild Rufus until you are really strong enough.”
“Are you once again telling me what I should or should not do?” the Duke asked in an amused voice.
“Not really,” Samala replied in a serious little voice. “I am telling you that you are a very precious person and must not take any unnecessary risks with yourself.”
The Duke thought he had received many compliments in his life, but this was perhaps the most ingenuous of them all.
“Thank you,” he said. “At the same time if you expect to keep me wrapped up in cotton-wool, you are going to find me very disagreeable and irritable about it and it would be wise to keep out of my way.”
“You have forgotten that as your wife I am here to amuse you,” Samala replied, “and I have therefore planned all sorts of different ways in which we can pass the time, starting of course with the newspapers. Do you wish to hear what they said about our wedding?”
“No, I do not!” the Duke replied emphatically and without thinking.
As he spoke, he remembered how much he had hated the wedding and everything about it and, almost as if they forced themselves upon him, he could see Edmund with his vulgar wife, Lottie, reading the reports in the newspapers.
Then he heard a very small voice that seemed to come from a long distance say,
“I am – sorry. I did not mean to – upset you, but I had – no idea that you – hated our wedding as much as – all that.”
Too late the Duke realised that he had spoken without consideration in front of Samala, which was exceedingly rude to say the least of it.
With an effort he forced the frown from between his eyes and responded a little lamely,
“I was just wondering how many of the people who came to imbibe our champagne, drink our health and give us their good wishes were really sincere about it or just curious to see you.”
“I think most of them were sincere, because they admire you so much,” Samala answered. “You are a very distinguished man and what is more important, you are an inspiration to sportsmen all over the country. They want to be like you, they want to win without cheating and to follow your example, not only on the racecourse, but in every other way as well.”
The Duke looked at her in surprise.
He could hardly believe that she was not flattering him for some personal reason of her own and yet he felt sure that the sincerity in her voice could not be assumed.
The Duke was a very good judge of men and those who had served with him in the Army were aware that he was a born leader.
The men he led not only admired but also respected him and they knew too that they could never put anything over on him.
He would know when a man was going to lie to save himself from punishment before he opened his lips.
While the Duke had seldom exercised that particular intuition where it concerned a woman, he knew now that Samala spoke with a sincerity that surprised him and was undoubtedly utterly and completely genuine.
Because he knew that he had made a mistake in the way he had spoken about their wedding, he said,
“I wish I could believe that what you said is true, but there is no doubt that the English at heart are all sportingly inclined, which is something our politicians often forget when they are dealing with them.”
“That is what I was thinking,” Samala said, “and there is so much for you to do in the House of Lords.”
The Duke raised his eyebrows and she went on,
“I liked the speech you made about the cruelty of gin-traps and even more when you spoke against bull-baiting, which is a horrible degrading sport that no one should ever watch.”
“You read my speeches?” the Duke asked in astonishment.
“Of course I do!” Samala said. “I have cut out and kept the report of every speech you have ever made.”
The Duke looked at her as if he could hardly believe what he had heard and Samala continued,
“Papa and I used to discuss them and sometimes I longed to write to you and ask you to speak on other subjects which we thought needed to be brought to the attention not only of their Lordships but of the public too.”
“Now you will be able to tell me what you want,” the Duke said, and thought this was certainly something he had not expected from his wife.
Samala then read to him
the leading articles in The Times and in The Morning Post and the Parliamentary Reports in both papers.
At first the Duke listened because he was interested in what she was reading, then he found himself thinking of how soft and musical her voice was.
He had always disliked women with hard strident voices, but most of all he loathed those who were affected.
He remembered one beautiful woman who had beguiled him for only a very short time because he had always known when she was pretending something which she did not feel or being gushingly effusive in a manner that sounded so contrived that it set his teeth on edge.
Then the music of Samala’s voice made him close his eyes and before he was aware of it he had fallen asleep.
*
Later that afternoon, when the Duke felt rested and somewhat resentful that he had spent so many hours sleeping, Samala produced various games she had found downstairs which she thought might amuse him.
“Your curator is such a charming man,” she said, “and he told me that you are a good chess player. I am afraid you will beat me easily, but I will try to give you a game, if it would amuse you.”
They played several games, in which the Duke found himself the winner but only with some difficulty.
“You are too good for me!” Samala said with a little sigh when the Duke had called, “checkmate!” with a note of triumph in his voice. “But of course, as I have already told you, you will always be the winner, whoever your opponent may be.”
“You will make me very conceited if you talk like that,” the Duke commented.
She shook her head.
“I don’t think so.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because people are conceited only when they cannot understand their own potential. You know that what you set out to achieve is yours if you approach it the right way and that is not really conceit, but an inner knowledge that comes from those who have the power to win.”
The Duke listened to her in astonishment and then he said,
“I have never heard it explained quite like that before, but I think I understand what you are trying to say.”
A Marriage Made In Heaven Page 9
