The instructions were in Edmund’s handwriting and there was really no need for the prisoner to give a quite easily recognisable description of him.
When the Chief Constable returned to the house with the Duke, he suggested that the charge against the man who was alive should be one of robbery with violence, which would be punished by transportation.
Edmund’s name would not be brought up at the trial, but the Chief Constable would on the Duke’s behalf go to London and insist that he and his wife leave the country immediately, otherwise they would be arrested and charged with conspiracy to murder.
“Will you really do that for me?” the Duke asked.
“Quite frankly,” the Chief Constable replied, “I think that, after suffering concussion, you are not fit to undertake the journey and you should stay here and look after your wife.”
He smiled before he added,
“After all, you are on your honeymoon and you have not had much chance to enjoy it until now.”
“That is true,” the Duke agreed.
He saw the Chief Constable glance at the champagne and, as he rose to pour him out a glass, he said,
“Will you make it absolutely clear to Edmund – you have known him as long as you have known me, so perhaps he will listen to you – that I will give him an allowance of two thousand pounds a year, as long as he stays abroad?”
“I will make it even clearer,” the Chief Constable replied, “and inform him that if he puts one foot in this country again he will be arrested.”
The Duke gave a sigh of relief before he said,
“Actually, I was thinking of how much it would worry my wife if she thought Edmund was always plotting to be rid of me in order to become the next Duke of Buckhurst.”
“I will make sure that never happens,” the Chief Constable said. “I have heard a great deal about Edmund lately, which I have not troubled to tell you, but which, if you knew of it, would upset you more than you are already.”
“Nothing would surprise me,” the Duke replied.
“Edmund has been a problem ever since he was a child and you know what my father thought about him.”
“I do indeed,” the Chief Constable answered. “Just leave everything in my hands. I promise you this sort of thing will not happen again and I will see that Edmund and his wife are out of England within the next twenty-four hours.”
“Thank you, Colonel,” the Duke said simply. “And now, as it is luncheon time, I hope you will have a meal with me.”
“I will, if we can eat quickly,” Colonel Stoner replied. “Then I will be on my way to London, and it will save time if I don’t return home.”
The Duke went from the room to give orders and tell Higson that Her Grace was to have luncheon upstairs and was to be told that he would join her as soon as possible.
*
When Samala received the message, she felt desperately disappointed.
As well as riding with the Duke that morning, she had looked forward to having luncheon with him again in the small dining room with the Greek Gods and Goddesses watching them.
Then, as she tried to eat the luncheon that was brought up to her, she kept worrying in case the Duke was feeling overtired and she sent her maid to fetch Yates.
He came into the room with a look of concern on his face.
“Your Grace’s all right?” he asked.
“I am quite all right,” Samala replied, “but I am worried that His Grace is doing too much on his first day up. Please persuade him when the Chief Constable has left to come upstairs and lie down.”
“I’ll see that he does that, Your Grace,” Yates said. “I think, if you asks me, His Grace’ll be feeling a bit stiff after his first ride since his wedding day.”
He made Samala a little happier about the Duke, although she still could not help worrying.
When her luncheon tray had been taken from her room, she felt so restless that she got out of bed and walked to the window.
The sun was shining on the lake and the Park looked very quiet and peaceful.
It seemed extraordinary that they should have passed through such a traumatic experience and that in the midst of such beauty there should have been the threat of death.
‘Thank you – thank you – God – for helping me to – save him,’ Samala prayed.
Then the horror that she might have failed to do so swept over her and because it was so terrifying she felt herself shiver and the trees and the sunshine seemed to swim before her eyes.
She heard the door of the sitting room open and she thought it might be her maid or Yates.
Then her instinct told her that it was somebody else and she turned round with a little cry to see the Duke come into the room.
Without thinking, simply because her terror about what had occurred was still with her, she ran towards him and flung herself against him.
“You – are safe – you are – safe! Promise me that will – never happen to you – again! I don’t – think I could – bear it!
Her words seemed to fall over one another. Her hands had reached up towards the Duke’s neck and, as he put his arms round her, she held on to him frantically, as if she was afraid she might lose him.
He looked down at her for a long moment, her eyes misty with tears, her lips trembling, her fair hair tumbled round her cheeks and he thought that no one could be lovelier, more angelic or so different.
Then his lips came down on hers.
For a moment Samala could not believe it was happening.
Then, as the Duke’s arms tightened and his lips became more insistent and demanding, she knew that this was what she had been longing for, this was what she had prayed would happen.
Her feelings of anxiety and terror vanished and instead the sunshine seemed to invade her body and move upwards through her breasts and into her throat.
She felt as if it carried her love towards the Duke and became a part of him.
He kissed her until she felt as if he drew first her heart, then her soul from between her lips and she was no longer herself but his.
A long time later the Duke raised his head and said,
“My darling, my sweet! How can you have been so brave as to save my life in the way you did? How can I tell you how glad I am to be alive?”
“I love – you!”
Her words were almost inaudible, but the Duke heard them.
Then he was kissing her again, kissing her until Samala felt that she must have died and he had carried her into a Heaven where there were only flowers and music and love.
Then, as if the feeling was too great to bear, she made an inarticulate little murmur and hid her face against him.
As she did so, she realised that he was not wearing his riding clothes as she had expected.
He had undressed and was wearing the long velvet robe she recognised, because he had worn it when he had first been allowed out of bed to sit in an armchair in his room.
“You are – going to – rest?” she asked and her voice seemed to be unsteady and to come from a long distance.
“That is what I told you to do,” the Duke replied, “and I think it would be sensible, my precious, if it was something we both did.”
Before she could answer him, he picked her up in his arms and carried her to her bed and laid her down against the pillows.
Then he went to the door, locked it and came back to stand beside her to say,
“I have so much to tell you and I know it is what you are longing to hear. So shall I rest with you?”
He saw the light in her eyes and did not wait for her answer, but went round the other side of the bed and, taking off his robe, climbed in beside her, thinking as he did so that the cupids and love-knots were very appropriate.
Samala’s eyes watched him, then, as he turned towards her and put his arm around her, she whispered,
“When you – kissed me it was the most – wonderful perfect thing that has ever – happened to me – I thought I must have – die
d – or have been dreaming.”
“I want to teach you about love, my darling.”
“Are you – saying that you – love me?”
“Of course I love you!” he answered. “I feel as if I have loved you for a thousand years! Perhaps that is true and we have only just found each other again.”
Samala drew in her breath.
“I have felt like – that ever since I first saw you looking like a Knight,” she said, “and now I am sure you are – right and we have – loved each other for a – million centuries – and now we are together – forever and ever.”
There was a little pause before she spoke the last two words, as if it was a question, and the Duke said with a smile,
“Forever and eternity, my precious. I know now that you are what I want in my life, a little angel who will guide me and help me and who also has a very special place in my heart, where I will always worship her.”
Samala gave a cry. Then she said,
“You cannot – really be saying – this to me! I must be – dreaming!”
The Duke laughed.
“If you are, then I am dreaming too and let me say it is a very exciting dream.”
As he spoke, he kissed her eyes, her small turned-up nose and the two dimples on either side of her mouth, which he had watched for from the first moment he had really looked at her.
Then, only when he knew that Samala’s lips were parted and waiting for his, did he kiss the line of her chin, the softness of her neck, then finally his mouth was on hers.
As he felt her quiver against him, he knew it was just as thrilling and as ecstatic as he had thought it would be to awaken her to the realisation that she was a woman.
Then the Duke was feeling sensations he had never known before and which were very different from those he had experienced in his numerous love affairs.
They were not only physically wildly exciting, but at the same time spiritually uplifting and ecstatic and he kissed Samala until he was aware that the fire burning within himself had ignited a tiny flame within her.
He knew from long experience that he must be gentle and very controlled and nothing he did must frighten her or destroy the trust she had given him.
This was very much a part of their love and it was also, although the Duke felt shy of the word, part of their souls.
Then he found that the divine ecstasy he had awakened in Samala was so unique and so rapturous that he was sure he too was in a dream.
“I – love you – I adore – you!” Samala murmured against his lips.
As he responded, he knew that the words had a deeper meaning than they had ever had for him before in all the years he had been a man.
“I love and worship you, my perfect little wife!” he murmured.
Then the sunshine enveloped them with a dazzling light and the angels were singing.
*
A long time later, when the heat of the sun had gone and the rooks were going to roost amongst the trees in the Park, Samala said,
“I am so happy that I am – afraid!”
The Duke pulled her a little closer to him and said,
“You must never be afraid again. I will look after you, protect you and keep you safe as long as we both shall live.”
“I am only afraid that everything is too perfect, because God has – answered all my – prayers.”
He pulled her closer still and, as she lifted her face to his, she said,
“I prayed that He would make you – love me a little – just a very little – because I love you so much, but now I can hardly – believe that you – love me as you say you do.”
“It is something I am very willing to prove,” the Duke replied, “and, my darling, we have a long time in which I can do so and we have a great many things to do together.”
“I know that is what I have – wanted you to say,” Samala said, “but I have been so – afraid that you would find me a – bore or inadequate and would want to fill your life with – other exciting people rather than just me.”
Vaguely the Duke seemed to remember that that was exactly what he had intended, but now everything he had thought of and planned before he met Samala seemed to drift away into a mist.
All he could think of was that she was his and he could not believe that anything in the whole world could be so exciting as holding her in his arms and teaching her about love.
“I am going to take you away from here,” he said, “as soon as we feel well enough to travel, to one of my other houses, which is very quiet and no one will interrupt us.”
Samala gave a cry of joy. Then she said in a low voice,
“You have forgotten – something.”
“What is it?”
“It is Ascot – next week!”
The Duke laughed.
“I really had forgotten, but it is not important. I will send my horses and I hope they win several races, including the Gold Cup, but you and I will not be there.”
Samala stared up at him incredulously.
“Do you really – mean – that?”
“I am going on my honeymoon,” the Duke said firmly, “and I have a special prize of my own to collect.”
Samala hid her face against him.
“Now,” she said in a broken little voice, “I know – you really – love me.”
“I will make love to you, my little angel,” the Duke answered, “until you never doubt that again.”
Then he added softly, as if he spoke to himself,
“But I must not frighten you.”
“How could you ever do that?” Samala asked, her little nose wrinkling in confusion. “When you loved me just now it was – so glorious – so thrilling – I wanted you to go on forever and ever!
The Duke laughed, but very tenderly.
“What did you feel?”
“As if – all the stars were – twinkling inside me!”
“And it made you happy?”
“I did not know that – love was so perfect and that – God could lift us up into Heaven and make us – one with – Him.”
“Is that really what I made you feel?” The Duke whispered, humbled by the strength of her love and trust.
“That, and so much more,” she said. “When you loved me, there was the music of the angels and the scent of the flowers which I have always known are in Heaven, but then there was only you – and your love.”
She paused, then asked tentatively,
“Did you – feel anything – like that?”
The Duke kissed her forehead before he answered,
“You promised me a present from the Heavenly spheres and that, my darling, adorable little wife, is what you gave me.”
Samala gave one of her little cries of joy before she said,
“Do you mean – that? Do you really – mean that I gave you – something which – nobody else has ever – given you before?”
“I swear to you that is the truth – no one has ever made me feel the way you do,” the Duke replied, “and, darling, nothing I can give you could be so precious or so perfect.”
As he spoke, his lips found hers again and, as he felt her love vibrate towards him and become part of his vibrations, he knew that the life they would live together in the future would be very different from anything he had done in the past.
Just as he vowed to himself that he would protect her, so he knew that to do so he must live up to all the ideals she had endowed him with from the moment she had seen him ride in the steeplechase all those years ago.
He was her Knight, her Crusader, and she must never be disillusioned. Her love would make him the man she wanted him to be.
He put his arms round her and, looking down at her, he said very gently,
“I know now, my precious, that our marriage was made in Heaven. That is where we will keep it and, as our love is a part of God, we will never lose it.”
Even as he spoke, he thought that those were very strange words for him to utter, but they came from his so
ul, which had never been owned by any woman before, but which he knew now was Samala’s forever.
“I love you – I love you!” Samala cried.
As the Duke’s heart beat against hers and his lips kissed her and his hands touched her body, she felt once again as if he was carrying her into Heaven.
The music of the angels vibrated in the air and they were enveloped with the Divine Light, which is the power and perfection of Love.
* * *
OTHER BOOKS IN THIS SERIES
The Barbara Cartland Eternal Collection is the unique opportunity to collect as ebooks all five hundred of the timeless beautiful romantic novels written by the world’s most celebrated and enduring romantic author.
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Elizabethan Lover
The Little Pretender
A Ghost in Monte Carlo
A Duel of Hearts
The Saint and the Sinner
The Penniless Peer
The Proud Princess
The Dare-Devil Duke
Diona and a Dalmatian
A Shaft of Sunlight
Lies for Love
Love and Lucia
Love and the Loathsome Leopard
Beauty or Brains
The Temptation of Torilla
The Goddess and the Gaiety Girl
Fragrant Flower
Look Listen and Love
The Duke and the Preacher’s Daughter
A Kiss for the King
The Mysterious Maid-servant
Lucky Logan Finds Love
The Wings of Ecstacy
Mission to Monte Carlo
Revenge of the Heart
The Unbreakable Spell
Never Laugh at Love
Bride to a Brigand
Lucifer and the Angel
Journey to a Star
Solita and the Spies
The Chieftain Without a Heart
No Escape from Love
Dollars for the duke
A Marriage Made In Heaven Page 14
