“How can you possibly have been so poor?” the Duke asked somewhat sceptically.
“Papa used to ask the same question,” Samala answered. “First of all, the war upset everything and the farmers had no money and no young men to work the land properly, which meant that they could not pay their rent.”
She sighed and then went on,
“But, of course, Papa could not turn them out and so they stayed on and paid nothing, but that meant that we had nothing either.”
“But your father must have had some other income?”
“My grandfather was very extravagant. He did leave a few shares, besides his debts, but unfortunately they were in Companies that did not pay dividends or went bankrupt and there were Bonds which Papa said were not worth the paper they were written on.”
“It’s certainly a very sad story,” the Duke said, “but now it’s all over and I hope I will be able to help your father in some way which will not make him feel he is under an obligation to me.”
“Could you do that?” Samala asked. “It would be very wonderful, because I know that Papa will always feel that he should not have married a woman richer than himself.”
She had already told the Duke how she had contrived to make her father marry Maureen Henley before she left him.
Because she had told the story in an amusing way, she had made him laugh, even though he had been perceptive enough to realise that Samala had been desperately worried about leaving her father with nobody to look after him and without even the means of feeding himself properly.
“I have not thought it out yet,” the Duke went on, “but perhaps I could suggest to your father that because I intend to expand my breeding of mares very considerably in the next few years, I would like to rent some land from him and that would mean I could keep it in good trim, reseed it and perhaps even take over one of his farms.”
Samala clasped her hands together and said,
“Could you really do that without Papa thinking you were being charitable?”
“I assure you I am well known for my tact in matters of that sort.”
“I am sure you are!” Samala exclaimed. “But how can you be so marvellous and so kind as to think of something that would make Papa happy and rich again?”
“I want to make you happy,” the Duke said in his deep voice.
“That is what I want to make you – ”
She jumped off the window-seat to kneel beside his chair.
“Please – please – get well quickly,” she pleaded. “Then we can ride over the boundary and I will show you exactly the place where you could turn out your mares with their foals and there is a derelict farm that only wants repairing.”
The Duke put out his hand to touch her hair.
It felt just as he had expected it would – soft, silky and yet somehow vibrant, as if it had a life of its own.
“I am well!” he exclaimed. “If it would be too long a ride tomorrow, we will definitely try to do it the next day or the day after that.”
He heard Samala draw in her breath. Then, as his hand dropped from her hair, she bent forward and kissed it.
*
Having gone up to bed early after dinner, pretending to himself that he was doing so to please Samala, but really because he was beginning to feel very tired, the Duke awoke feeling different in every way and knowing that he was almost back to his old vitality and inevitably in need of exercise.
He had eaten a good breakfast in the sitting room and wondered why Samala had not come to join him, until he learnt that she was already dressed and had gone down to the stables to consult with his Head Groom as to which horse he should ride.
Just for a moment the Duke thought it rather irritating that he was not even allowed to make his own choice.
Then he knew that Samala was only thinking of him, being aware that a horse that pulled violently would be very tiring for him on his first day on horseback.
Although none of his horses was tame and docile, it was not for the moment wise for him to ride anything as spirited as Wild Rufus.
“I suppose,” he said almost grudgingly, “she was thinking of me.”
He spoke the words aloud, without realising that Yates was there and he answered,
“There’s never been a lady, Your Grace, who’s thought of you as Her Grace does and Your Grace knows I be speaking the truth.”
“I believe quite a lot of ladies have thought about me in one way or another,” the Duke remarked cynically.
“But they’ve not been like Her Grace,” Yates persisted. “Mr. Higson was saying only yesterday that, it’s as if ever since Her Grace came here, the sunshine has come into the house and there’s a new feeling about the place that wasn’t here before.”
“What on earth do you mean by that?” the Duke enquired.
He was used to Yates expressing things in his own way and, because he had been with him for so long, the Duke found the little man rather amusing and often listened to him as he would not have listened to any of his other servants.
“Well, it’s like this, Your Grace,” Yates answered. “As you asks me, Her Grace is different because her heart’s in the right place and she’s good through and through.”
He paused for a moment and then went on,
“It’s not only because she has a kind word for everybody she meets and a smile that makes you smile back whether you wants to or not, but it’s just that she seems to give us all something and it’s something we wanted, even if we didn’t know it.”
The Duke looked at him in astonishment and Yates scratched his head as he added,
“I hopes I’m explaining it right, Your Grace, but that’s what I feels and there’s a great number round here as feels the same.”
Then Yates, as if his own oratory embarrassed him, walked from the sitting room into the bedroom.
The Duke stared after him in amazement.
Then he thought strangely that it was what he had been thinking himself and, although he had no wish to admit it, this was what Samala had given him.
Lying on the breakfast table were letters from both his sisters, but he did not open them, having the feeling that they had written to him more out of curiosity than for any other reason.
He knew that Elizabeth had been in touch, not only with the doctor, but also with Samala and had made extensive enquiries about his health.
He was astute enough to know that what really interested her was how he was progressing with his marriage.
She would be yearning to know whether or not his gloomy forebodings had been swept away by Samala’s charm or if she was making his convalescence a long period of unendurable boredom.
But that was something he had no intention of talking about. If his sisters were curious, he thought, they could damn well go on being curious, as they had always been about him in the past.
What he thought about Samala was his business and his business alone and he had no intention of being pressured by his sisters or anybody else to talk about his private affairs until he was ready to do so.
Then, because he knew Samala would be waiting for him, he started to dress himself with Yates’s help and knew he was looking forward to riding with an eagerness he used to feel on his first day home from Eton.
When finally he came down the grand staircase, the footmen in the hall looked at him admiringly.
They were well aware that there was nobody to equal their Master in his appearance in the sporting field and in the manner he rode the horses he owned.
As the Duke reached the hall, Samala came hurrying through the front door and he saw how the extremely attractive blue habit she wore accentuated the blue of her eyes and was echoed by the gauze veil that encircled her high-crowned riding hat.
“The horses are outside,” she said breathlessly, “and I do hope you will be pleased that we thought Crusader would suit you best.”
The Duke was aware by the way she spoke that it was not only because she thought Crusader would suit
him, but also because the name was most appropriate for the first occasion they would ride together.
Crusader was in fact a black stallion very much like the one he had been riding the first time Samala had seen him when he won the steeplechase.
He knew without her telling him that all this had passed through her mind and that at the same time she was afraid that he would not understand and would spoil what was a very special occasion for her by having different ideas.
He had no idea why he was so perceptive about Samala’s thoughts and feelings, yet he knew that he was, and he saw her eyes light up like stars and a radiant smile curve her lips when he said exactly what she wanted to hear.
“I am delighted to ride Crusader” he said, “and I only hope you have chosen a horse for yourself that will keep up with him.”
“Of course I have!”
She paused. Then she said,
“I am riding White Knight.”
The Duke gave a little laugh because the choice was so obvious. Yet, he thought it was all part of the Fairy story and he would not do anything to spoil it.
“Let’s set off together,” he suggested and started to walk down the steps.
He was not allowed to do that alone and Yates was ready for him to put a hand on his shoulder.
Samala took two steps after them before she suddenly turned and ran back into the hall.
She had forgotten her whip and she was just about to tell Higson so, when she realised that he was outside on the steps, watching his Master’s descent and ready to go to his other side should he be required.
Without waiting to tell a footman to bring it to her, she ran under the stairs and picked up what she thought was the whip Higson had recommended to her.
Only when the Duke was already in the saddle and the Head Groom had assisted her onto the back of White Knight did she realise that she had not brought the ordinary riding whip with her, but the special one with the jewelled top that had come from India.
For a moment she thought that she should change it and then she told herself it would only delay the Duke and was quite unnecessary, as she was unlikely to need to use it on White Knight, who was already moving restlessly as if anxious to be off.
Quickly she moved him level with the Duke and, as they rode away everybody was watching them, thinking what a picture they made.
The Duke was magnificent on the black stallion, and Samala, small, fragile and seemingly too delicate to control White Knight and yet she was riding, as the Head Groom said beneath his breath, “As if ’er were the spitting image of His Grace!”
They reached the bridge over the lake before the Duke said,
“Now I am going to take you somewhere which I am sure you have not discovered. It is a very special place, which I always visit my first day when I come home.”
“Tell me about it,” Samala enquired eagerly.
“It is another lake which is through some woods at the bottom end of the Park, where there are many species of wild duck and other birds that you will not see anywhere else on the estate.”
“How exciting!” Samala exclaimed. “I am glad I have not seen it before and it will be very very special to see it with you.”
“I thought you would think that,” the Duke answered. “We can now ride quite quickly along to the bottom of the Park, but, when we get to the wood, we have to go in single file down a narrow ride and I will lead the way.”
“Of course,” Samala said, “and when we reach your secret lake we must have a competition to see who can recognise the most birds.”
She gave a little sigh.
“I am sure you will win. At the same time I want to try to beat you!”
“It will be very humiliating if you do,” the Duke said, “because, as I have already said, since nobody else has ever been interested in it, I have always felt it is my own special lake and belongs especially to me.”
Then, as if he felt he was shutting her out, he added,
“But now, of course, I will share it with you.”
“Not if you don’t want to,” Samala answered quickly.
“You cannot have forgotten,” the Duke said, “that at the Marriage Service I said distinctly that ‘with all my worldly goods I thee endow,’ and that certainly includes my secret lake.”
She gave him a smile that showed her dimples very clearly. Then she said,
“One day I will think of something I can give you, but as I own no worldly goods, it will have to be something very special that comes from the Heavenly spheres.”
“That is certainly an idea,” the Duke said, “and I shall look forward to receiving it.”
Then, as they crossed the bridge and Crusader indicated that this was no time for conversation, the Duke relaxed his hold on the reins and they were moving swiftly along the bottom of the Park towards the wood in the far distance.
Chapter 7
Riding with the Duke, Samala thought that it was the most exciting thing she had ever done in her whole life.
Sometimes in her dreams she had imagined that they were riding together, but since he was a Knight in armour, she had felt that she herself did not quite fit into the picture.
Yet it had been a thrill that she translated into her stories when she was awake and she hoped each night that the dream would be repeated, so that she and her Knight would be together.
But now she was actually with him and it was even more wonderful than she had imagined it would be.
Despite the fact that she was mainly concerned with keeping White Knight under control, she kept glancing at the Duke and thinking that no man could look more magnificent or exactly as she had dreamt he would be.
She loved the way he wore his tall hat a little to one side of his dark head.
Although she thought, when he was actually mounting his horse, he had suffered a little pain from the bruise on his chest, but now that he was in the saddle he appeared to have forgotten it.
Crusader, whom she had made a great fuss of in the stables, not only because of his name, but also because he was one of the Duke’s most exceptional horses, looked exactly as if he had stepped out of a painting and the same might have been said of the Duke himself.
When Samala put on her blue riding habit, she had hoped that the Duke would think that she looked no less smart and attractive than the dozens of other ladies he must have ridden with.
No one had spoken to her of the Duke’s past or of the women there must have been in his life, but Samala was too intelligent not to know that there must have been many of them and that they had loved him to distraction because he was so handsome.
It had astonished her that he had not been married until now and once again she was saying a little prayer of gratitude because he had chosen her to be his wife.
‘How can I make him happy?’ she asked herself, as she had asked the same question hundreds of times every night.
But she knew, marvellous though it was to be with the Duke, that there was something missing in their relationship and that, if she was honest, was love.
She loved him and every moment of every day that she was with him her love grew until it filled her whole world.
She thought sometimes that she could feel her entire being reaching out towards him, giving him the love she could feel in her heart, her mind and her body.
She had always known that love would be like this, overwhelming, irresistible and rapture like the sunshine and the music she had heard on the wind.
‘That is what I feel about him,’ she said to herself in the darkness, ‘but why should he feel the same about me?’
Because she was so unselfconscious about herself, Samala was very modest and humble.
The years of being poor and having to struggle at The Priory had taught her never to think of herself but only of her father and the house.
Now, when she had no material worries as to where the next meal was coming from or whether the mice were eating their way through the wainscoting, she had time to think a
bout somebody called ‘Samala’, who seemed almost a stranger.
When she looked at herself in the mirror, she could hardly believe that the very elegantly gowned reflection she saw was her own.
Because she had had so much more to eat and time to enjoy it, the dark little lines under her eyes had disappeared and she thought that the line of her chin was not so sharp and her breasts had grown a little fuller.
It made her, even though she did not think of it that way, look even younger and more angelic than she had before.
She had no idea that, when she looked at the Duke with love, there seemed to be a light burning within her, which shone in her eyes and created an aura around her that to anyone with perception was inescapable.
It was because she was happy and in love that the servants saw her like a ray of sunshine and she found everything she looked at so entrancing that she wanted to share it with other people, but most of all with the Duke.
She would wake in the morning trying to think of new ideas that would interest him, subjects they could discuss and questions she could ask him because he was so wise that she wanted to learn from him.
‘He is wonderful – so wonderful!’ she told herself a dozen times a day.
Now she was saying it again and it was as if it was in time to the rhythm of the horses’ hoofs.
‘He is wonderful and there is no one in the world like him!’
As if he was aware of her feelings, he turned his head to smile at her and she felt her heart turn over in her breast.
“Enjoying yourself, Samala?” he asked.
“So much that I have no words to express it.”
“I too am loving being back in the saddle.”
“I thought you would feel like that.”
He smiled at her again and, without really thinking about it, she edged White Knight a little nearer to him.
The wood was not far ahead and the Duke drew Crusader to a trot, then to a walk.
“You see the trees?” he said. “That is where we are going. Next year I intend to thin them out, so that it will be easier to reach the lake.”
“You must not make it too easy,” Samala suggested, “otherwise there will be people who will find their way there besides us.”
A Marriage Made In Heaven Page 12
