‘If only Papa was still alive to inherit the Dukedom,’ he mused, ‘it would have been poetic justice. But for me it is merely an embarrassment and I have no idea what I am expected to do as the new Duke.’
As he picked up the newspaper again, he began to laugh.
What could be funnier?
That Major Michael Moore, who at this moment was not even using his own name, should find himself without any warning the Fifth Duke of Grangemoore.
CHAPTER TWO
Michael found plenty of time to think between Alexandria and Tilbury.
He was finding it more and more difficult to decide what he should do when he reached London.
He knew for one thing, although it was not important except to himself, that he must buy some new clothes. His Regimental uniforms had been well made and were very smart, but he had left them behind in India.
As he had departed at a moment’s notice and had gone aboard late at night, only his civilian clothes were packed to go with him.
Michael had spent a great deal of time with the Viceroy who he greatly admired and he had in many ways assimilated unconsciously many of the Marquis of Dufferin’s particular qualities.
He was a charming and cultured diplomat with a talent for literature and the arts.
He was also a romantic and in many ways a dandy.
Every man round the Viceroy instinctively smartened himself up because he was always dressed so immaculately.
When Michael looked at his civilian clothes now, he was very dissatisfied with them and he decided that one of the first things he must do on reaching London was to go to a good tailor.
It might have been something of a problem as he well knew that the first class tailors in Savile Row and St James’s were very expensive, but now, as the Duke of Grangemoore he was an extremely rich man.
As he put on his clothes day after day he found himself thinking of exactly what he would buy. Only when he looked as smart as the Viceroy would be feel satisfied.
When he looked in the mirror, he would have been very stupid if he had not been aware that he was extremely good-looking.
The hard and dangerous life he had lived in India had made him slim and athletic and equally it had sharpened his features a little.
As was usual in his Regiment he had worn a small moustache, but before he had come aboard he had shaved it off on the Viceroy’s advice.
“Because no one must know who you are,” the Viceroy had said, “you must change your appearance. That should not be difficult for you, Michael, knowing how many disguises in the past you have adopted one way or another!”
Michael had laughed, although he was well aware it was not really a laughing matter. It was true that he assumed a great number of disguises in the Great Game and only because they had always been so clever had he so often escaped losing his life.
It was, however, not only his clothes that he was thinking about as they passed through the Mediterranean.
The ship stopped for a short time at Marseilles and again at Gibraltar. Then they were in the Bay of Biscay, which traditionally was very rough.
Two days after the ship left Alexandria, Michael had taken his Steward’s advice and joined in the dancing and the other amusements arranged for the passengers.
He had studied the passenger list very carefully and noted that there had been many changes since they had left India.
He found there was no one aboard whose name meant anything to him and so he therefore moved amongst the other passengers who seemed pleased to meet him.
When they asked what he had been doing in the East he replied that he was travelling on business, which might have meant anything and he was careful not to go into details of what interested him.
More English newspapers were available at Gibraltar and one of them included a brief description of the Duke of Grangemoore’s funeral.
There was a short list of the mourners and Michael noticed that there appeared to be only a very few of the family present.
He remembered his father saying at one time that he did not have many relatives and that most of them lived in the North of England.
‘Once they know I am home,’ Michael ruminated, ‘they will all call on me. There will be no necessity for me to go looking for them.’
At the same time it would make the situation easier if there was an older member of the family who could tell him everything he wanted to know.
It seemed extraordinary, but he could not remember his father or mother ever talking about the Moores. It might have been his father’s pride or more likely, he was determined not to allow the knowledge that he was exiled from his family to influence or upset him in any way.
Whatever the reason, Michael was aware that he knew very little about the Moores.
In fact he knew more about the Viceroy or many of the other distinguished men he had met in India.
He made up his mind that as soon as he reached London he would call on the Solicitors as according to the newspaper they were looking for him.
To do so he had first to find out their name and where their offices were situated.
His grandfather might have employed a local firm near to Grangemoore Hall in Norfolk, but Michael thought this was unlikely and then he remembered Grangemoore House in Park Lane. Of course someone there would know the name of the Solicitors.
He might also obtain some information about who was living at the Hall.
Having made up his mind, he hired a carriage to take him to the centre of London as soon as the ship reached Tilbury.
As he had his luggage with him, he thought it would be embarrassing to arrive at Grangemoore House with it as he would appear to be expecting to move in without warning.
He therefore asked the driver to take him to a quiet hotel somewhere in Mayfair.
“There be quite a number, sir,” the coachman informed him, “but they be a bit expensive like, so to speak.”
“I will not be staying long,” replied Michael.
He was taken to a hotel not far from Park Lane, which appeared to be quiet and respectable and when he asked if he could have a room for the night, it was available for what he thought was a reasonable sum.
As on the Viceroy’s instructions he was not to return to India until it was safe, he had drawn out a considerable sum in cash from his bank there.
He had actually saved money when he was in the Army and by investing in some of the companies which were developing rapidly in Calcutta, he had increased his fortune quite considerably.
He had planned that he would spend some of it on decorating his home and as it was quite a small house it would not have been very expensive, but now he was the new owner of Grangemoore Hall, a very different building from his own home.
At the moment, money was quite obviously of no consequence.
Having deposited the luggage with the porter in the hotel, Michael walked towards Park Lane. He was thinking of how excited he used to be when he went to call on Felicity and he remembered as well, although now it seemed of very little consequence, how desperate he had felt the day he had left her.
As he passed her house, Michael vowed to himself that never again would he allow himself to be tortured by love.
Never again would he wish to die because a woman no longer loved him.
Grangemoore House was a little further up Park Lane and when he reached it he saw that it looked just the same as it had all those years ago.
The shutters were still closed over the windows and the house was even more dilapidated. It was obvious, he thought, that no one had lived in it since he had last seen it.
Then it was almost as if he was back in the Great Game.
He told himself he would be wise to find out, if he could, what the situation was at Grangemoore Hall without revealing how much it meant to him personally.
It was just a precaution, but Michael had learnt the hard way never to take a step forward without considering where it might lead him.
It was
as if his instinct was guiding him and it was the same instinct which had guided him in India and had saved his life and that of hundreds of others from an unseen enemy.
He thought quickly what he should say and then he raised the knocker on the front door which badly needed cleaning.
The rat-tat sounded loud to him but attracted no response and it was then for the first time he wondered if the house was shut up completely. Perhaps there was no one even in charge.
He knocked again and waited a few more minutes and as no one came to the door, he walked round to the back.
The house stood, like so many houses in Park Lane, in its own garden and there was a door at the bottom of the garden which opened into the Mews where the horses were stabled.
When Michael walked round the side of the house he noticed that the garden was severely neglected. There were just a few spring flowers peeping their heads through a mass of weeds.
The back door of the house was down some stone steps in the basement area.
The steps were clean and Michael could see that the curtains had been pulled back from one of the windows.
This at least was encouraging and he knocked on the door.
There was only a short pause before he heard the sound of heavy footsteps.
The door was opened by an elderly man with white hair and Michael thought he must be the caretaker.
“I am sorry to bother you,” he began, “but I could get no answer at the front door.”
“I be sorry about that, sir,” replied the old man, “my hearing ain’t what it used to be.”
“I wonder if I could speak to you for a moment?”
“Of course, of course, come in, sir.”
The old man held the door open.
Because he had called him ‘sir’, Michael thought the man must have been in service and knew how to behave.
There was a carpet on the floor of the narrow passage and the old man, going ahead, opened the door of a room in front of him.
It was, Michael observed, adequately furnished with a sofa and two comfortable armchairs as well as a polished round table and several decorative pictures.
“We can talk in here, sir,” muttered the old man.
He pulled the curtains on the window a little further back.
“You do seem very comfortable here,” commented Michael.
He thought for a moment the man looked guilty before replying,
“The wife and I have been here for nigh on fifteen years and as we’ve grown old in the place, so to speak, we have needed a few comforts.”
There was just a note of aggression in his voice, which told Michael he had brought the furniture down from upstairs and he was now prepared to prove he was entitled to it.
“What I came to ask you about,” began Michael, as he sat down in one of the armchairs, “is whether you have any news of Major Michael Moore. I was at Oxford with him and I have seen in the newspapers that he has become the Duke of Grangemoore.”
The elderly man listened to what he had to say and then without answering went to the door which he had left open and shouted,
“Ma! Ma! Come here!”
A woman’s voice cried out that she was coming and the old man waited for her.
A minute or so later she entered the room. Like her husband she had white hair and was obviously about sixty or older.
She was wiping her hands on her apron and she stared at Michael in surprise.
“We has a visitor, Ma,” the man said. “He be a friend of Mr. Michael and asks if us knows anything about him becoming the new Duke.”
“Well, that’s something we’re asking ourselves,” the woman answered. “The newspapers has told us that he be in India, but my husband and me had never seen him afore he went out there.”
“I just thought you might have received some news of him,” persisted Michael, “but I suppose when he arrives home he will be going straight to Grangemoore Hall.”
“And a nasty shock he’ll get when he reaches it,” came in the woman.
“Why do you say that?” asked Michael, bending forward in his chair.
“Now be careful, Ma,” the old man cautioned her in a low voice. “We knows nothing and it ain’t our business.”
“If the gentleman be a friend of Major Moore,” the woman answered, “we should warn him.”
“Warn him about what?” insisted Michael.
The woman looked at her husband and Michael saw that he was shaking his head.
“I had hoped,” he said, “you would help me find Michael as he is such an old friend, and I expect when he does arrive from India he will come here to you first before he goes to the country.”
“We’ve thought of that,” the woman answered, “and I says to my husband, I says, we’ll have to tell him what’s happening, otherwise if he walks in knowing nothing it’ll be a terrible shock for him.”
“And that would be a mistake for my friend,” added Michael. “From all I hear he has been very brave in India and made quite a name for himself. Now he is the Duke, he will want to make things shipshape and I expect he will open this house if he is to spend any time in London.”
“That’s exactly what I says to my husband,” the woman answered. “He’s a young man and he’ll not want to bury himself in the country. He’ll want to be in London where there be balls and parties and men of his own age.”
Michael smiled at her.
“I am sure you are right and that is why I want to meet him as soon as he arrives.”
“Well, we ain’t heard nothing,” said the woman.
“But I hope when he comes to see you and perhaps stay here,” continued Michael, “that you will help him and tell him if there is trouble waiting for him at Grangemoore Hall. After all, I believe he has never been there and when I stayed with him it was in Worcestershire.”
“That’s what I’ve always heard,” replied the woman.
She sat down on a chair opposite Michael and went on,
“Cut off without a penny by the old Duke, his father be, just because he married the girl he loved. Wicked I thinks it was when I were first told about it.”
“When was that?” queried Michael.
“Oh, many years ago – my husband and I comes here when we was first married. I were the cook and he were the butler. He had two footmen under him and I had all the help I wanted in the kitchen.”
“It sounds very pleasant. What happened?”
“Oh, at first we had parties for Lord James and Lord Henry.”
She gave a little laugh.
“They enjoyed themselves right enough when their wives weren’t with them.”
The old man made a warning sound.
“Now Ma, careful with what you be saying.”
“It all happened so long ago,” she resumed. “Then as they got older and we got older there were no parties and our help were taken away from us.”
“That must have made life difficult for you.”
“It were indeed, sir, but we stayed on. We had our wages right enough and there seemed no point in going elsewhere when we were getting old.”
“That’s true,” agreed the old man.
“Now you say there are some strange things happening at Grangemoore Hall,” Michael prompted.
“It’s only what we’ve been told when the staff comes to visit us,” the woman replied. “Most of the ones we knows well has left, but there still be a few and they has a mouthful and more to say!”
“What is happening?” insisted Michael, “and why should it be such a shock for my friend Michael Moore?”
The woman looked over her shoulder as if she was afraid someone might be listening.
Then she answered,
“It be Mr. Cyril! He stayed here when it suited him and I never thinks he was up to any good.”
“Now, Ma!”
“Well that be the truth.”
“Let me say,” intervened Michael, “that anything you tell me is of course confidential and I would never
betray your confidence. All I want to do is to help my friend Michael.”
“You tell him when you sees him,” the woman said,
“just as I’ll do, that he’ll have to take care of himself when he gets to Grangemoore.”
“I will certainly do so.”
“His Grace were in a coma, so I hears all the last year afore he dies. But when he were still alive that Mr. Cyril had moved in.”
“Is Mr. Cyril a relative?” asked Michael.
“He be a cousin, I thinks, and from what I hears goes to Grangemoore to cheer His Grace up or so he says, and sneaks his way in. Once His Grace be bedridden, who be there to stop him?”
“Now, Ma. You’ve really said enough. Perhaps the gentleman would like a cup of tea and a piece of your sponge cake.”
Michael rose to his feet.
“It is very kind of you, but I think I will now go to Tilbury and see if there is any news of Major Michael arriving on one of the P&O Liners.”
“That’s how he’ll come for sure,” said the old man.
Michael paused.
“I suppose you do not know the name of His Grace’s Solicitors? It said in the newspapers that they were looking for Major Michael.”
“Yes, that be true, and it’s them as pays our wages every month. I has their address somewhere.”
He left the room as he spoke.
When he had gone his wife rose and came nearer to Michael.
“Now you tell your friend,” she said, “to be careful of what he does and what he says. There be strange happenings at the Hall, so they tells me, and Mr. Cyril has people staying there who would never have been allowed to cross the threshold when His Grace were alive.”
“I will indeed tell him,” Michael assured her. “Thank you very much and I am sure the Major will be very grateful to you for being so helpful and concerned for him after he has been abroad for so long.”
“Poor young man, sent away from home just as his father were. A crying shame, I calls it, what were done to Lord Charles.”
“I have always felt the same,” agreed Michael.
The old man came back into the room holding a piece of paper in his hand.
Danger to the Duke Page 3
