Danger to the Duke

by Barbara Cartland

  “Is there anything else, sir?”

  “No, not for the moment. I was going to tell you to light the candles in the Chapel, but you can do that early tomorrow morning after you have sent someone to fetch the Vicar.”

  “I will see to it, sir.”

  Michael bowed and left the room.

  He hurried along the passage to the dining room, where he found that his three helpers had cleared away the dirty plates and dishes and they were now putting the candelabra and ornaments back into the safe in the pantry.

  “We were wonderin’ what had happened to you,” one of the footmen said.

  “Do any of you live locally in the village?” Michael asked them.

  The footmen laughed.

  “We all does! We be workin’ on the land and in the garden, but when the Master sacks the footmen or they leaves, he tells us to come in and make ourselves useful.”

  “We does that right enough!” one of the other footmen said and they all laughed again.

  “I was wondering,” Michael said, “if any of you know if there is a wealthy young lady living in the vicinity. She is a woman getting on for about thirty.”

  “Oh, you means Miss Musgrove,” one replied. “She was left a huge fortune when her father died. Everyone’s been a-talkin’ about it.”

  “Where does she live?”

  “Not far down the road.”

  He pointed over his shoulder with his thumb and added,

  “The Manor it be called, though for all her millions it ain’t as big as this one.”

  “That be true,” another footman agreed and again they were laughing.

  Michael had learnt what he wanted to know. He did not say any more, but helped the boys to clear the table and told them to go to bed.

  Then, having seen that the pantry was tidy, he went back to the hall to see if anything was happening.

  The noise from the drawing room was even more raucous than it had been when he left and he thought that there was no point in going in to see if there was anything they needed.

  He therefore decided to take another look at the unconscious woman who he now recognised must be Miss Musgrove from the Manor.

  She had not moved since he left her and he wondered if, while he had been away, Jason had administered more of the drug.

  ‘I suppose I should do something about this appalling situation,’ he thought. But he could not think what.

  He had played for time in pretending that the Vicar was away, but he doubted if he would be able to do the same tomorrow.

  Surely the Vicar would refuse to marry one of his parishioners in such a hurried and disgraceful manner? He must be aware of the sort of men that Cyril was entertaining at the Hall.

  Michael reflected that as Jason had gone so far as to kidnap and drug an heiress with the intention of marrying her, he would certainly not be intimidated by the local Vicar.

  The service could easily be represented as a kind of shotgun wedding although on this occasion it would not be the bridegroom who was the reluctant party.

  ‘I do not know what to do,” thought Michael with some anxiety.

  *

  He went up the stairs to see if Adela was all right.

  He had left her in the charge of Mrs. Smithson and he did not believe that anything unpleasant could possibly have happened to her while he had been so occupied downstairs.

  He called in at the housekeeper’s room and looked inside, but it was in darkness, so he reckoned that Adela must have retired to her own bedroom.

  He climbed up to the second floor and when he reached his own room he saw the door next to it was half open.

  He knocked and even as he did so the door was flung open by Adela.

  “You have been away such a long time,” she cried. “I was wondering what had happened to you.”

  “They have only just finished dinner,” replied Michael, “and are now drinking in the drawing room.”

  He saw that she was still dressed.

  “Why have you not gone to bed?”

  “I could not do so until I knew you were safe. Why did we have to come here with these horrible people?”

  “How do you know they are horrible?” asked Michael sharply. “You have not seen them, have you?”

  “No, of course not, but Mrs. Smithson has told me how difficult things are in the house and that I must not go anywhere except into her room or mine. So I knew she was worried.”

  “She has every reason to be and indeed I should not have brought you here in the first place.”

  “Oh, do not say that please,” exclaimed Adela. “I know it was wrong of me to force myself on you, but I am so very grateful and you are not to worry about me.”

  Michael smiled because he could not help it.

  “Of course I worry about you and Mrs. Smithson is absolutely right. You are to stay in your room and not on any account to wander around the house.”

  “I am sure all the rooms are very beautiful,” sighed Adela, “and there must be a very large library.”

  “If you want any books, I will fetch them for you,” insisted Michael. “But seriously, Adela, you must do as I tell you and on no account go to any other part of the house.”

  “I am not frightened of anything except that you might send me away and I did promise you that I would do everything you told me to do.”

  “You have been very good and I promise you this will not last any longer than I can help.”

  Adela looked at him and he thought she was going to ask him questions.

  He rose and walked across the room to the window. The rooms they had been allocated looked out at the back of the house over a beautiful garden.

  In the distance the stars were in the sky, there was a small moon and Michael could see the artificial lake.

  He thought it would be a good idea for him to go and take a look at the cascade, where Cyril and his friends were apparently intending to deposit him.

  It had never entered his mind that in England there could be Englishmen wanting to kill him. Yet he could now appreciate that Cyril would do anything to keep the Hall for himself and his appalling friends.

  “What I want to do now, Adela, is to get a little fresh air before I go to bed.”

  He knew without turning round that the words ‘can I come with you?’ were on her lips, and he added hastily,

  “I will not be away long, but I want to think and I find it easier to think when I am alone.”

  “I will go to bed,” said Adela meekly, “but please tell me when you come back.”

  “Of course I will.”

  He smiled at her and went into his own room next door. He took off the tailcoat he had worn for dinner and the black bow tie from around his neck as he wanted to be comfortable.

  He thought he would walk to the cascade and into the wood beyond where he could perhaps find some inspiration for what he should do now.

  Not only for himself, but for the poor drugged woman lying below as well.

  How could he have imagined in his wildest dreams that this sort of behaviour could be occurring in his grandfather’s house?

  In India it would not have surprised him in the slightest, but in England, especially in the case of an ancestral home, where he always believed that everything carried on exactly as it had done for the last hundred years.

  ‘If I stay here much longer,’ he ruminated, ‘I expect I shall find that every one of Cyril’s friends is breaking the law in one way or another.’

  They were just a band of crooks, while the women who associated with them were no better.

  He could understand only too well why Mrs. Smithson had sent away her young housemaids. The mere idea of Adela coming into contact with such men made him shiver.

  He thought that if one of those drunken beasts he had seen sitting round the table even touched Adela, he would kill him.

  She was so innocent, so unspoilt and so completely unselfconscious and she would have no idea that such people as those drinking d
ownstairs even existed.

  He could not bear to think of her being disillusioned or, worse still, shocked and frightened if one of those swine approached her.

  ‘We will have to go away,’ he decided. ‘I cannot stay here and risk something happening to her.’

  He dressed himself in a pair of comfortable trousers and a tweed coat over a cotton shirt.

  Lying at the bottom of his box was his revolver and almost without thinking he loaded it and slipped it into his pocket.

  He always went armed in India and instinctively he felt he must do the same here.

  He walked from his room to Adela’s door and knocked very gently so that no one else could hear.

  “Have you gone to bed, Adela?”

  He heard her run across the floor and the door opened.

  “I was standing at the window looking at the stars,”

  she said.

  “I felt sure you were praying. Was it for me?”

  She nodded her head.

  “I don’t know quite what you are doing,” she answered, “but I was praying you would be safe.”

  “I think in my own way,” he replied, “I was doing the same for you.”

  He thought that the light that came into her eyes and the smile on her lips was very moving.

  “You are so kind,” she sighed, “and you have been so wonderful to me. I do not know how to thank you.”

  “You can thank me by being a good girl and doing exactly as Mrs. Smithson and I tell you. Now go back to bed. I shall not be long.”

  She smiled at him again.

  Michael felt a sudden impulse to kiss her goodnight.

  Then he told himself severely that he must keep to the part he had chosen for himself. He was her brother.

  “Goodnight, Adela,” he whispered. “I hope you will be asleep when I get back.”

  “You will not be long?”

  He sensed a touch of anxiety behind the question.

  “No, I will not be long, but you are to go to sleep and enjoy happy dreams.”

  He turned away and started to walk down the passage, knowing that she would stay awake until he returned.

  ‘I will just walk up to the cascade,’ he thought.

  He descended the stairs and took the next flight to the ground floor where he found a passage he had noticed earlier leading to a door into the garden.

  The door was bolted, as it must have been all day. He opened it and stepping out closed it quietly behind him.

  After all he had been worrying about, it was a relief to feel the cool night air on his face and the light from the stars and moon made the garden look mysterious and magical.

  The view was so lovely that he felt his spirits rise.

  This was all his and one day, quite soon he hoped, he would be able to take possession of it and the whole estate He walked over to the lawn and then in case someone might see him from the drawing room window, he moved into the shadow of the almond trees which were just coming into bloom.

  At the end of the lawn he discovered a bowling green and beyond was the beginning of what he thought was a shrubbery. It would end with the fir trees which made such a perfect background for the house.

  At the side he found there was a well kept pathway and he was sure it would take him directly to the artificial lake.

  Thinking over everything he had overheard, Michael realised that Cyril was being extremely astute in what he was planning.

  He had intended to come directly from London to Grangemoore and there would only have been Mr. Barrett to warn him that things were not as he might have expected.

  Even he would not have been aware of Cyril’s plot.

  The old servants who had been loyal to his grandfather had all left in disgust or been sacked and there were only the women in the kitchen who he gathered had been there for some years.

  But they had little knowledge of what they called ‘the front of the house’.

  Finally there was just Mrs. Smithson who was indispensable if Cyril was to entertain his friends and those who worked outside the house had, Michael suspected, little real knowledge of what went on inside.

  He had yet to ascertain if the Head Groom had been on the estate in his grandfather’s time and the Head Gardener might have been and doubtless a number of other workers too.

  They would be shocked to learn what was happening inside the Hall, but it was not their business and they would have no wish to leave and lose not only their jobs, but also their cottages and their pensions when they retired.

  He had to appreciate, he pondered, as he walked on, that Cyril was being very clever. He had dispensed with all the people who might be a danger to himself and he was now in complete command.

  ‘If I had come unsuspecting straight here from London as they expected me to do,” thought Michael, ‘by this time I would have fallen into the cascade by accident. Then, when my body was found, perhaps a day or two later, Cyril would have been appropriately distressed.’

  He knew he would have been buried with much pomp and ceremony and because he was the Duke the funeral would have been attended by the Lord Lieutenant and other Nobility in the County.

  The Moores would all have been notified and later, if his supposition was correct, Cyril would have claimed to be the heir.

  If his claim was substantiated, he would have inherited the title as well as the house and the estate.

  Now he could think it all through, Michael could see everything much more clearly.

  Just as he had seen in his mind’s eye what the Russians were scheming in India, he realised that somehow he had to prevent this plot from happening.

  Of course he could denounce Cyril, but what could he prove?

  He was living a drunken and debauched life in what he now considered his own house, but there was no law against that.

  ‘If he has been committing other crimes,’ Michael told himself, ‘I do not know about them and have no wish to stay long enough to find out.’

  His mind returned to the woman he had carried into the morning room, who Jason intended to marry first thing tomorrow morning.

  Kidnapping was an offence under the law, but if she was under the influence of a drug, she would not be able to protest at what was happening to her until after she was actually married.

  Once she was married, her husband was responsible for her and her fortune and there would be nothing anyone could do about it.

  But Michael did not see how he could save her without revealing his identity.

  Then as climbed up the path which lay ahead of him he was struck again by the beauty of his surroundings. On one side of him was the first of the fir trees and nestling amongst them he saw there was a small wooden garden house.

  There had been one in the garden at home where Michael had played as a boy and he could imagine the former Duchesses of Grangemoore finding it a delightful place in the summer.

  They would sit in it with their friends looking down into the flower-filled gardens with the cascade on the other side.

  There must have been a great deal of rain last month as the small artificial lake above the cascade was overflowing.

  The cascade itself was magnificent and fell with a steady roar of steaming water for over forty feet.

  As Michael stood on the edge he could look at the water above and below him and he could see the stream from the bottom of the cascade flowing swiftly to a larger artificial lake.

  From this it led through the garden and several paddocks until it finally reached the natural lake at the end of the Park.

  The water feature was brilliantly designed and Michael thought that no house he had ever heard of could have such exceptional surroundings.

  Equally an inner voice told him that where he was concerned the cascade was dangerous and it would be all too easy for an unsuspected enemy to push him forward into it.

  He would lose his balance and fall into the water which would doubtless knock him out and before he could recover and try to swim to safe
ty, he would drown.

  ‘I have to be careful, God knows I have to be careful!’

  Michael lectured himself.

  In addition he recognised that he would have to be extremely careful for Adela’s sake as well as his own.

  If he were no longer present, what would happen to her?

  He could not face the question, even to himself.

  He understood only too well what an innocent girl, as beautiful as Adela, would mean to those coarse drunken brutes.

  He had seen them caressing the women sitting next to them even while they were eating their dinner.

  ‘I will take her away at once,’ Michael decided. ‘It would be a great mistake to stay here any longer, in case from some unwary word or action Cyril guesses who I really am.’

  He looked again at the cascade and because he was curious he thought he would climb a little higher up the hill as he wanted to see where the water teeming past him came from in the first place.

  As he turned away he thought once again how incredible the cascade was with the moonlight turning it to silver.

  The stars were reflected in the slowly moving water.

  Though every prospect pleases and only man is vile.

  The quotation came to his mind and he accepted how true it was.

  Yet there were many fine and decent men in the world like the Viceroy whom he had so much admired and had in many ways been an inspiration to the Indians he ruled over.

  In a much smaller way the Duke of Grangemoore ruled over his house and estate and the people he employed looked to him for help and guidance.

  ‘If I live to do so,’ Michael determined, ‘I will bring them happiness and peace and that, of course, is something I want for myself as well.’

  Peace!

  It was what he had sometimes longed for in India, especially when he had been on the trail of some appalling outrage following infiltration by the Russians.

  Peace was indeed what he had expected to find here in the home of his ancestors and now, when he least expected it, he was faced with endless problems and difficulties as if of war.

  If he was to save the woman who had been drugged, he would have to do so before tomorrow morning.

  How was it possible?

  Defenceless and with no one to assist him, he would doubtless die a quick but unpleasant death.