But when the Duke told her that he wished to speak to her in his room and his sister said goodnight, Leona was well aware that her hands were trembling.
There was also a distinct and unpleasant feeling fluttering within her breast.
“Butterflies!” her mother had called them once, but Leona thought they were more violent than that lovely and colourful insect could ever be.
The door was shut behind the Duke’s sister and His Grace walked slowly to the fireplace to stand with his back to the burning logs while his eyes rested on Leona.
He did not ask her to sit down and she remained standing, aware that the full skirts of her crinoline were moving a little with what was now a trembling of her whole body.
“I understand that you rode off my land today,” the Duke began slowly.
“Yes – Your Grace.”
“You did not inform me yesterday that you intended to do so.”
“I made up my – mind at the – last moment – Your Grace.”
“You wished to visit Strathcairn?”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to thank him for his hospitality to me after the – accident and I also wished to – see him.’
“Why did you wish that?”
“He has become – a friend, Your Grace.”
“A friend of whom you knew I would disapprove!”
“I am not – concerned, Your Grace, with feuds or – disagreements which arose before I arrived in Scotland.” “But you knew I would disapprove?”
“You had not spoken of it – but I had the – idea that Your Grace would perhaps not be best – pleased.”
“You are at least truthful.”
“I – try to be, Your Grace.”
Leona wished he would ask her to sit down, because she was genuinely frightened that her legs would no longer support her.
Although the Duke was speaking in a controlled, almost unemotional voice, she could feel his anger vibrating from him and it was impossible not to be over-awed by his very presence.
He seemed to fill the whole room and, as she waited for him to speak again, she felt he must hear her heart beating.
“You are quite right in thinking I would not approve of your friendship, if that is what it is, with Strathcairn,” the Duke said after a moment. “I do not intend to give you any reasons why I do not consider him a suitable acquaintance for someone who is under my protection, but you will obey me when I tell you that you are not to see him again!”
“I-I am afraid I – cannot agree to that, Your Grace.”
Leona tried to speak firmly, but her voice sounded weak and ineffectual even to herself.
“Why not?”
“I – like Lord Strathcairn, Your Grace.”
“Like him?”
The Duke’s voice rose and he seemed almost to roar the question.
“I suppose you imagine that you are in love with him?” Leona did not answer and after a moment the Duke added, “I presume he has told you about his wife?”
“His – wife?”
Leona could barely whisper the words.
“Yes – his wife!” the Duke answered. “He is married to a play-actress who does not live with him, but who nevertheless bears his name.”
For a moment Leona thought that she would faint, then as she clenched her fingers until the nails hurt the softness of her palms, she asked in a whisper,
“Is this – true?”
“Of course it’s true!” the Duke retorted. “But I am not surprised that Strathcairn kept you in ignorance of what is undoubtedly a blot on his family escutcheon.”
Without waiting for permission, Leona moved towards the nearest sofa and sat down.
She felt as if the ceiling had descended on her head and darkness had risen from the floor to engulf her.
It could not be true!
What the Duke had just said must be a lie and yet Lord Strathcairn had not spoken to her of marriage.
He had said that he loved her. He had drawn her very heart from her body and made it his, but he had never asked her to be his wife.
Now she could understand. Now perhaps she knew the reason why he had said he must protect her reputation.
What in fact could be more reprehensible than to be alone with a married man, to fall in love with him, to give him her lips, her very soul, when he belonged to someone else?
The emotions she was feeling must have made her look stricken and very pale, as the Duke pulled the bell violently. When the Major Domo appeared, he ordered brandy.
It was brought in a very few minutes in a cut-glass decanter on a silver tray on which there were crystal glasses.
The Major Domo would have poured it out, but the Duke waved him away and, when the door was closed, he half-filled a glass and handed it to Leona.
“N-no – thank you,” she tried to say.
“Drink it!” he commanded. “You have had a shock.” Because she felt too weak to argue with him Leona did as she was told.
She felt the fiery liquid burn its way down her throat and, although she hated the taste of it, she knew it cleared her mind and she was not trembling so violently.
The Duke took the empty glass and set it back on the tray. “And now, Leona, I wish to talk to you.”
She wanted to tell him that she could not listen, that she wanted to run to her bedroom to hide her unhappiness and the feeling that she had been betrayed.
But because the Duke’s will was stronger than her own, she raised her eyes to his face and forced herself to attend to what he was about to tell her.
“I intended to wait a little longer,” he began, “before I told you of my plans for your future.”
Leona did not speak and he went on,
“I wanted you to feel at home here in The Castle. I wanted you to get acclimatised to our way of life.”
“Y-your – Grace has been very – kind,” Leona managed to murmur.
It was difficult to speak, since all she was conscious of was a hard lump in her breast as if someone had set a stone there.
“I had the idea,” the Duke continued, “that we were making you happy. You are certainly different in appearance from when you arrived.”
“I – have told Your Grace how – g-grateful I am for my gowns,” Leona stammered, “and for the p-pearl necklace.”
“They are only a part of all I wish to give you,” the Duke said, “because I decided before you arrived, Leona, that you were the girl I was looking for to be my daughter-in-law!”
For a moment Leona thought that she could not have heard him aright. Then, as her eyes questioned what he had just said, the Duke repeated,
“I intend you to marry my son, the Marquis of Ardn!” “But – why should you have – chosen me?”
“Because I admired your mother. You come from good Scottish stock. You are strong and healthy and you will, I believe, give my son an heir to the title, so that our family may continue in the direct line.”
Leona clasped her hands together.
“But – I have not – met the Marquis, Your Grace.”
“I am aware of that and, before you meet him, I want you to understand exactly what such a marriage will entail as far as you are concerned.”
He paused before he continued,
“You will live here, but there is also a family mansion in London, a house in Edinburgh which is finer than Holyrood Palace and many castles and properties in other parts of Scotland and on the Isles.”
The Duke paused.
“You will be able to go abroad, Leona, and travel – something, I understand, you have never been able to do in the past. You can visit France and Italy. You can see the glories of Greece and, if it pleases you, I shall be prepared to send you to other parts of the world.”
Leona looked at him wide-eyed.
“And – your son? Has he been – consulted on this matter?”
“Euan will marry you because I tell him to,” the Duke said. “But I am go
ing to speak frankly, Leona, and tell you that you need not concern yourself to any great extent with your husband once you have given him an heir.”
“But why? I don’t understand! I was told that he was sick – but – ”
“He has never been strong,” the Duke interrupted, “and I have taken him to doctors all over the world. But doctors are fools! However, he is now a man and capable of breeding a child – that is all that need concern either of us!”
The Duke spoke almost roughly and Leona said,
“I am – sorry to sound foolish, but I still do not – understand. Why should the Marquis want such a – strange and – unnatural marriage?”
“I want you to marry him, Leona. You are everything that I admire in a woman – everything that I have wanted in the mother of the future Duke.”
“I am – honoured, Your Grace. At the same time you will understand, I could not – marry a man I did not – love.”
Even as she spoke, she thought wildly that she would never love again, in which case she would never be married.
“That is a romantic idealism of a very young girl,” the Duke remarked.
He rose to his feet to stand once again in front of the fire.
“You are intelligent enough to be aware that marriages in aristocratic families are always arranged. It is not a question of some sickly, sentimental emotion between two people who are too young to know their own minds, but an amalgamation of money and property between two families in whose veins runs the same type of blood.”
“I have no – property, Your Grace. In fact I am penniless – and I should not have thought my blood the – equal of yours.”
“Your father was an English gentleman and his antecedents are nothing to be ashamed of,” the Duke replied sharply. “Your mother was a Macdonald and your great-grandfather was a Chieftain of whom the Bards still sing.”
Leona knew this was true, but she was surprised that the Duke should be aware of it.
“I am therefore proud that you should bear the McArdn name,” he went on, “and, when I die, you will be the Duchess of Ardness!”
There was something so positive in his tone that it made Leona say hastily,
“Your Grace will – understand that I would like time to – think over your – suggestion.”
“Think?” the Duke questioned. “What is there to think about? I have arranged your marriage, Leona and it will take place tomorrow or perhaps the day after.”
“No – no!” Leona cried.
She felt that a tidal wave was sweeping her away and she was drowning beneath the force of it.
“I had meant, as I told you, to wait a little longer,” the Duke said. “But, by your action today, you have precipitated things to the point when I can no longer play about with something which is to me of such paramount importance.”
“But how can I be – married so quickly?” Leona asked. “It is impossible! Besides – ”
Her voice died away.
She was about to say that she loved someone else, when she remembered that in any case she could never see Lord Strathcairn again or speak to him.
He had deceived her and, she thought wildly, he had stolen her heart under false pretences.
“I love you, my beautiful darling!” he had said. “I have loved you since the first moment I saw you!”
But he was a married man!
He had no right to love anyone but his own wife.
While he had talked of looking after her and seeing that they both behaved with propriety, he was behaving in such a reprehensible manner himself that even to think of it was as if a dagger pierced her breast.
He was another woman’s husband – she knew that to love him would be a sin that offended against every instinct of decency and honour in which she had been brought up.
So what did it matter what happened to her now?
If the Duke wanted her to marry his son, it might be better than yearning for a man who had been unworthy of what she offered him.
As if he knew the conflict within her, the Duke said,
“Shall we look at the alternatives, Leona? If you will not marry Euan, then what will become of you?”
She made a little helpless gesture with her hands and he went on,
“It would be embarrassing for you to stay here. In any case, I will be frank and say that I should find someone else to take your place. That would mean you would have to find employment and, although you are very beautiful and very charming, I doubt if you are skilled in anything that would be of value to the commercial world.”
He paused before he said in a different tone,
“As the Duchess of Ardness, you would hold a position in Scotland that is second to none. In England you would be welcome at Court. You would be feted and acclaimed and your beauty would have the frame it deserves.”
Again he waited for Leona to speak, but she was looking down at the ground, her eyelashes very dark against the pallor of her cheeks.
“I think there is only one answer to my proposition,” the Duke said. “It will be a very quiet wedding. In fact there will be no one present at the ceremony except for the Minister and myself.”
“I-I could not – marry anyone I had not – met beforehand.”
An idea came to Leona that she must play for time.
Again she had the frightening feeling that she was being swept away on a tidal wave and she knew that the Duke was overriding her, compelling her to do as he wished.
It was only because she felt so bewildered and stricken by the news that Lord Strathcairn was already married, that she knew she had no strength with which to resist the Duke.
‘I must not – allow this to – happen,’ she told herself.
And yet it was happening and she felt as though nothing she could say or do could stop the course of events.
“I had a feeling,” the Duke replied, “that you would ask to see my son. It is in fact possible for you to do so at once.” Leona sat upright startled.
“You mean – he is here?”
“He is in The Castle and has been for some years,” the Duke answered. “But I keep it a secret because he has not been well.”
His lips tightened and he said with a sudden bitterness in his voice,
“It seems impossible that I, who have never known a day’s illness, should have fathered a weakling, but it is a cross that has been laid upon me.”
For the first time Leona realised that the Duke was indeed suffering and she began to understand what it had meant to him, with his pride in his family, to be inflicted with a son who was apparently an invalid.
“It is not just a question of inheritance,” the Duke went on, almost as if he spoke to himself. “As you are aware, a woman in Scotland can inherit and it has often happened that the daughter of a Chieftain has carried on the Clan. But Elspeth died.”
Leona’s heart was touched.
“I am so – sorry for you.”
“There are cousins of course to take my place,” the Duke continued, “but they are not of my own flesh and blood. The hereditary line, as you saw for yourself on our family tree, has been handed down from father to son for hundreds of years.”
Once again his voice changed and there was a beseeching note in it as he said to Leona,
“Give me a grandson of whom I can be proud! Give me an heir to my title, a Chieftain of the McArdns, and everything I possess, everything you could desire, is yours!”
Leona knew that, if she had never met Lord Strathcairn, it would have been impossible for her not to respond generously to the appeal in the Duke’s voice.
But despite what she had learnt, despite the horror she felt in knowing he had betrayed her, some part of her was still his and the thought of another man touching her made her shiver as if at the touch of a reptile.
“Perhaps your son and I could – meet and get to – know each other?” she faltered.
The thought came to her that perhaps the Marquis wished to marry someone else, someone of
whom the Duke did not approve and therefore they could come to some understanding.
‘If the Marquis and I could be friends,’ she thought, ‘if we could understand each other’s feelings, then perhaps it would not seem so horrible.’
“As he is in The Castle,” she said aloud with sudden resolution in her voice, “may I – please meet your – son?”
“I have already arranged that. You see I am fey where you are concerned.”
Leona looked at him in surprise.
It was somehow the last attribute she would have imagined in the Duke.
For the first time she thought of him as an ordinary man, sorrowing over his children without a wife to comfort him and help him bear the many responsibilities of his position.
‘I must try to do what is right,’ she told herself.
She tried to forget the frozen weight within her breast and to ignore the knowledge that her whole being was crying out despairingly for Lord Strathcairn.
‘I want him! I want him!’ she cried within her heart as the Duke led her from the room and along the wide corridor.
‘A married man!’ her brain jeered at her. ‘A man who belongs to someone else! What about the ideals your mother believed in, ideals that have been installed in you since childhood?’ The Duke walked the whole length of the corridor on the first floor and Leona realised that they had reached another part of The Castle she had not been shown.
The Duke unlocked a heavy door and they passed through it.
There were rooms opening off a small corridor with a window at the end of it.
He opened a door on the left and they entered a room that was only dimly lit by a few feeble candles.
There was, however, a bright fire in the fireplace and, as they entered, two men rose to their feet.
For a moment Leona found it difficult to look at them because she was afraid, then she saw that one man was much taller and bigger than the other.
Because he was wearing a kilt, a very impressive sporran and the usual silver-buttoned jacket, she knew that he was the Marquis.
Automatically she followed the Duke across the room towards him.
“Good evening, Euan!” she heard the Duke say. “I have brought Leona with me as I promised you. She is very pretty. Say good evening to her, Euan.”
The Secret of the Glen Page 10
