She looked at his boots and the Duke laughed.
“I am well aware,” he said, “I look like a vagabond.”
He had thought as he dressed that morning that Jenkins would have been horrified at the state of his clothes.
His riding jacket, which came from the most expensive tailors in Saville Row, patronised by all the bucks and dandies, was badly in need of a brush and a press. His boots were dusty and had lost their polish and he had that morning put on the last of his clean cravats.
Aloud he said,
“I had a feeling that you are somewhat ashamed of me, so I hope tonight we can find an inn where there is a servant who can improve my appearance – if only by washing my cravats.”
“I will do that for you,” Valora suggested.
“Do you know how to?”
“Of course I do. Stepmama demanded the attention not only of her own lady’s maid but of all the housemaids and after Papa died and there was no money, I had to look after myself.”
She glanced at the Duke as if to see if he was impressed and went on,
“Actually I can sew very well, I can wash and press and I am sure I can polish your boots to make them shine as Papa’s used to do.”
“That is certainly something I would never allow you to do,” the Duke replied sharply. “At the same time you will undoubtedly make an excellent wife for some fortunate man who cannot afford the luxury of a great number of servants.”
“And he is certainly not going to have me as one,” Valora answered quickly. “As I have already told you I do not intend to be either a slave or a servant.”
“Then we shall obviously have to try to find you a man who is very wealthy,” the Duke answered.
“You are talking about my marriage to annoy me and to punish you,” Valora threatened, “I shall probably not wash your cravats!”
She popped another raspberry in her mouth and rose saying,
“I must stretch my legs before we start riding again, and perhaps – who knows? I shall see the fairies dancing over the moss. I assure you I would be far more thrilled by them than I would be by a mere man.”
She walked away and the Duke laughed.
He enjoyed their spirited skirmishes when he teased her and she always had a ready retort. And he thought that Freddie would think it extremely good for his soul that she obviously did not consider him in the least attractive nor was he capable of making her heart beat faster.
‘Perhaps I am getting old,’ he thought and decided that it was a lowering notion, which had certainly never occurred to him before.
He knew Valora was right in thinking that, if anyone knew that she was staying alone at night with a strange man in a country inn, they would be extremely shocked.
What was more her reputation would be ruined and all respectable women would ostracise her as a social pariah.
The Duke was aware that this was just as great a danger to her future as was Sir Mortimer, which was another reason why it was absolutely essential that their journey should be kept secret.
He was wondering if, when she reached her grandfather’s house, he should just leave her at the gate and disappear, when he heard her scream.
It was a scream of horror and the Duke jumped to his feet clutching his pistol with his finger on the trigger, as he ran in the direction he had seen Valora go.
She was out of sight among the green undergrowth, but, as he pushed his way through it, he saw the top of her head and a moment later realised, with a sense of relief, that she was alone.
It flashed through his mind that a snake or perhaps a wild animal menaced her. Then when he reached her he saw what had made her scream.
She was standing very still, her eyes wide with horror, as she looked to where the Duke saw in a small clearing lay the body of a man!
He could see at first glance why Valora had screamed. The man was sprawled on the grass and there was a crimson stain of blood over his white shirt and his coat.
The Duke also saw that he held a pistol in his hand and that, as the blood on his clothing was dry, he had obviously been dead for some hours.
The Duke walked past Valora and looking down at the man, saw that he was young, looked well bred and his clothes were expensive.
On his chest, as if he had placed it there carefully before he shot himself, was a piece of paper that read,
“This, Charlotte, is what you have done to me.”
There were some letters and papers scattered on the ground beside him as if he had been reading them or had thrown them down just before he took his life.
As the Duke stood looking at him, he felt Valora’s hand creep into his and she asked in a trembling little voice,
“Is – he – dead?”
“There is nothing whatever we can do for him,” the Duke said firmly, “so I suggest we go away and forget that we have seen him. We certainly don’t wish to be embroiled in any more trouble.”
Valora did not answer and he saw that she was reading the note on the young man’s chest.
The Duke turned to leave, pulling her by the hand.
“No wait!” she exclaimed.
“Look, there is nothing we can do,” he answered. “He shot himself through the heart and has been dead for some time.”
“How could he do anything so – foolish?” Valora asked. “Think what Charlotte – whoever she is, will – feel.”
“Perhaps she drove him to it,” the Duke replied.
He was still trying to pull Valora away, but she resisted him.
“He is entitled to take his own life, but not to ruin hers.”
“What do you mean?”
“Can you not understand what they will say about her when he is found?”
Valora looked again at the note before she went on,
“He has done that deliberately to hurt her and all her life people will point a finger at her and say, ‘she killed him.’ It is cruel – a cruel – unkind thing to do.”
“It’s not our business,” the Duke insisted. “Come along, Valora, and stop imagining things you know nothing about.”
“I do know that she will have to go on living with a stigma no one will ever let her forget,” Valora answered.
The Duke did not reply and she added,
“I realise a little of what it is like to be ignored and – snubbed, because people disapproved of Stepmama. So I understand what will happen to this girl. Her life will be a – hell, perhaps through no fault of her – own.”
The Duke capitulated.
“Very well,” he said. “It may be unethical, but if it makes you happy.”
He released Valora’s hand and bent down to take the piece of paper from the dead man’s chest and picked up the letters that were scattered on the ground beside him.
He then walked back to Valora and, as he reached her, she put out her hand and once again slipped it into his.
“Thank you – I feel that was a kind thing to do.”
“The sooner we can go away from here the better,” the Duke said. “I have no wish to be questioned as to whether I was responsible for that young man’s death, as now we have removed the evidence that he killed himself.”
As he spoke, the Duke looked down at the letters and saw that they were addressed to ‘the Honourable George Hughes’.
He vaguely wondered who owned the family name of Hughes and then realised that among the letters was a piece of paper that was a marriage license.
He opened it and found the Honourable George Hughes was the son of Lord Bentford and he was licensed to marry Charlotte Mayhem, a spinster of the Parish of Wentbury.
He supposed that Charlotte Mayhem had refused, perhaps at the last moment, to marry young Hughes without paternal permission and in consequence he had shot himself.
Alternatively she might have found someone better and perhaps explained why she was no longer interested in one of the letters he held in his hand.
Because the Duke thought it a mistake for Valora to dwell on wh
at had happened, he thrust the letters into the pocket of his riding coat and determined that the episode should be forgotten as soon as possible.
‘She has enough troubles of her own,’ he told himself, ‘without adding anyone else’s to them.
At the same time the Duke was aware from Valora’s pale face and the stricken look in her eyes that she was upset and shocked by what she had seen.
He imagined, but did not like to ask her, that she had not seen many people dead, perhaps only her mother and father.
But a corpse laid out with hands crossed on the breast, surrounded with flowers and candles, was very different to the young man dead under the trees with blood staining his clothes.
It made the Duke remember that the highwayman had said that their journey might be a bloody one before they had finished.
‘The whole thing is turning into a nightmare,’ he thought and forced himself to concentrate on avoiding the town while still moving North.
*
Soon they were again in the open countryside and the Duke was considering where they should stop for the night when Valora asked,
“What will you do with the letters that you took from that – young man?”
“Burn them.”
“Will you read them first?”
“Certainly not – it would be a most dishonourable thing to do!”
“I expected you to think that and now we shall never know what happened and why Charlotte forced him do anything so wrong and cowardly.”
“Cowardly?” the Duke questioned.
“Of course it was cowardly to kill himself rather than face living. Life is a gift from God and however difficult it may be we have no right to – destroy ourselves.”
The Duke glanced at her, but did not say anything.
Then in a moment she said in a small voice,
“I did – think that if I had to – marry Sir Mortimer I would rather – die.”
“Now you admit it would be a cowardly thing to do, we can concern ourselves with keeping alive and that means reaching York as quickly as possible,” the Duke said sharply.
They did not talk any more and the Duke found a small village inn some way from the main road that he thought looked clean and very like the other places they had stayed at.
However, it was somewhat deceptive in that it proved to be larger than it had appeared from the front of the building and there were other guests staying there.
The Duke, with an air of authority that belied his appearance, managed to procure two of the best rooms with a private parlour.
He thought that the publican looked at him somewhat questioningly, but, when he saw Valora, his suspicions, if that was what they were, changed and he showed them to their bedrooms with a flourish.
“I am sure this is too grand,” Valora said when she was sure that what she said to the Duke would not be overheard.
“I thought it would be a mistake to withdraw after we had asked for accommodation,” the Duke replied. “I cannot believe that so far from home there is anyone who will recognise you or me for that matter.”
“I suppose not,” Valora answered a little doubtfully.
The Duke did not explain that his friends would certainly not patronise so insignificant an inn and if they were forced to stay on their way North, would choose one of the larger posting-houses on the main road.
He thought, however, just in case there was someone who had seen him on a Racecourse or at one of the pugilist mills that he and Freddie attended so often, he would take every precaution.
He therefore made certain that there was no one in the passages as he left his bedroom for the private parlour and decided not to visit the stables again until the other guests had retired to bed.
He did discover that there was a valet of some sort to wait on the guests.
For the first time since they had started on their journey he changed from his riding breeches into the tight-fitting pantaloons Jenkins had packed for him.
He had the slippers that had been in his saddlebag to wear instead of his boots, which he told the servant to clean as best he could.
He also insisted that the man brush and sponge his coat before, having nothing else to wear, he put it on again.
While he was waiting for it to be returned, Valora knocked on his door and, when he opened it, she said,
“Give me your cravats. I will wash them now and then they will be dry by the morning. You must be careful not to wear them if they are damp or they will give you a stiff neck.”
“You are very solicitous about my health,” the Duke said mockingly.
“I am saving myself from having to nurse you!” she flashed.
He laughed, but handed her the cravats, thinking what was so obviously a woman’s work was as good for her soul as he was finding in having to fend for himself.
‘God knows why I ever got into this position,’ he thought and was suddenly aware that he was enjoying himself.
Not once since leaving London, except the first afternoon when he had ridden alone, had he been bored.
For a moment he queried whether that was the truth and then he knew he could say honestly with his hand on his heart that he felt more alive than he had done for years.
‘It’s the element of danger in the whole thing,’ he decided but he knew it was also because he enjoyed being with Valora.
She was certainly different from any woman he had ever known before and, although he knew very little about and had practically no acquaintance with young girls, he was quite certain that she was unique.
There was no comparison between her and the rather vacant debutantes who stood beside their mothers in ballrooms waiting to be invited to a dance by some goofish young man.
When he had thought about it, the Duke knew that what was extraordinary was that Valora did not seem embarrassed by the fact she was alone with him nor was she coy or in any way self-conscious.
In some ways, when they were arguing with each other, he thought he might have been talking to Freddie.
He almost forgot that she was a woman – and a very young one at that – as he endeavoured to prove his point or refute some statement she had made.
Then he remembered how she had looked that second morning when he had called her and she had sat up in bed and how the outline of her breasts beneath her diaphanous nightgown had made her appear very much a woman.
‘One day she will fall in love,’ the Duke told himself, ‘and then all this nonsense about never being married will be forgotten.’
Because the idea of love was in his mind, he must have conveyed it to hers, for when they had finished dinner in the private parlour Valora said,
“I have been – thinking about the young man who – killed himself!”
“I told you not to do so,” the Duke reminded her.
“I know you did, but I was wondering why – love, which is surely a gentle and romantic emotion – should make a man so – desperate that he would kill himself.”
“Love is not always gentle and romantic,” the Duke replied.
Valora looked at him enquiringly as he went on,
“It can be fiery, tempestuous and, above everything else, uncontrollable.”
“Is that – what it – makes you feel?”
“I was talking impersonally – academically if you like.”
“Explain it to me.”
“You can read about it,” the Duke answered. “Romeo and Juliet died for love, Othello murdered for it, I just cannot believe you don’t know your Shakespeare.”
“Of course I have read his plays,” Valora answered, “and I have read Sir Walter Scott’s novels, but nothing they wrote about love seemed real – until today. Now I will have to begin to think about it – all over again.”
“Why? If it is something you are determined never to feel.”
“That is what I was – going to ask – you.”
She saw he looked puzzled and explained,
“When anyone falls in love – d
oes it just happen? And is there – nothing you can do to – prevent it?”
“I suppose so,” the Duke replied.
“Why do you speak like that? Surely you must have been in love?”
“I have thought I was,” the Duke said honestly. “I have certainly been excited, entranced and fascinated, but I can assure you it has never been so uncontrollable that I have wished to shoot myself.”
“I expect what you are saying,” Valora answered, “is that you have never been what country people call crossed by love.”
The Duke laughed.
“Perhaps that is true.”
“No lovely lady has – ever killed herself for – you?”
“Certainly not.”
“Then what is love? Why does it mean so much to some people and not so much to others?”
There was a faraway expression in her eyes the Duke found rather touching.
In a serious tone, which he had not used before, he said,
“I think everyone wants an ideal love, which is hard to find. It is an ideal we all seek, even though we are unaware of it. After all, it is natural for a man to try and find what the Greeks thought of as ‘the other part of himself’.”
“Of course, now I understand! I remember the legend – that the Gods cut the first human being they made in half and called them man and woman and ever since they have tried to find each other and be complete again.”
“That answers your question,” the Duke said.
“But – suppose one never – finds one’s other half?”
“Then you have to make do with second best.”
“No, no!” Valora cried. “That would be wrong – and spoil everything.”
The Duke sat back in his chair to look at her.
“Now I have given you a new quest,” he said. “Instead of seeking knowledge, you must seek the man who the Gods chose for you a million years ago. Perhaps you have been travelling towards each other and one day you will meet. Then you will never be lonely or afraid again.”
As he spoke, the Duke was astonished at his own words, which had come into his head involuntarily as if from some outside source.
He thought they were a part of the enchantment that had been his ever since he had started on this mad journey – first because he had accepted Freddie’s wager and then in saving Valora.
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