DOLLARS FOR THE DUKE

Following the sudden death of his rakish father, Seldon Burn unexpectedly inherits the title of Duke of Otterburn. Returning to the family estate, he swiftly discovers that the title is the only thing he has inherited – along with a mountain of his father’s debts and nothing to pay them with.

A brave and proud soldier, nothing has prepared the new Duke for the devastation to the family coffers caused by his late father’s love of lavish entertainment, Gaiety Girls and good living. Meeting with the family Solicitor, the Duke is horrified to discover the Ducal properties are crumbling, everything of value is entailed and even the racehorses have not been schooled properly. 

Desperately seeking to rebuild the family fortune and honourably fulfil his duty of care to the old and infirm of the village, his cousin Edith, a sophisticated Socialite, offers a solution.

She suggests that he follows in the footsteps of many an impoverished English aristocrat and marries a wealthy American heiress – she even has a fitting bride in mind from her recent visit to New York.

With no viable alternative and a pressing demand for money, a wedding is hastily arranged – but will the English traditions of generations of the Burn’s family be overshadowed by the razzle-dazzle of the Duke’s mother-in-law to be, Mrs. Vandevilt, the renowned New York hostess?

Horrified at being married for his title and not love, the Duke is so angry that he barely considers the feelings of his young and vulnerable bride. Meanwhile, the lovely Magnolia Vandevilt, one of the richest heiresses in America, is equally disgusted and contemptuous of a man who is marrying her only for her money.

Joined together in holy matrimony, can this marriage of convenience ever be more than a disappointment and battleground as both parties dream of the love they might have had?

AUTHOR’S NOTE

As I have related in this story, the long line of American heiresses eager to marry titles in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries started with Jenny Jerome who married Lord Randolph Churchill in 1874.

Historians estimate that by 1909 there were around five hundred marriages in which the bridegroom might have been dissolute, homosexual, brutal or have serious mental health issues, but so long as he appeared in Debrett’s Peerage or the Almanach de Gotha he was deemed eligible.

The wedding ceremonies tended to highlight the differences between the reserved and traditional British bridegrooms and the ‘new money’ of their American brides, resulting in celebrations that could be described as ostentatious displays of wealth, which were vividly publicised. For example, at Sherry’s, a famous restaurant of the time in New York, an immense ‘bird’ was exploded to shoot ten thousand roses over the guests, which shocked British Society.

In circumstances in which these young brides had no say, many thousands of miles away from home, it is amazing that any ever coped with the cultural differences and adjusted to the Society into which they had married.

As a child the loveliest person I ever saw was the Duchess of Marlborough. Before her marriage she had been Consuela Vanderbilt, an immensely wealthy heiress, and who, despite being desperately unhappy, was adored by everyone who knew her. Her biography, The Glitter and the Gold, describes her sufferings and unmasks the way her dominating mother used threats and even violence to compel her to marry the Duke.

CHAPTER ONE
1882

“I have set out the whole amount, Your Grace, as you asked me to do.”

The accountant put a sheaf of papers down in front of the Duke.

He looked at them and then stiffened, as if he could hardly believe what he read. There was a long silence as he turned over several pages before he said,

“Is it possible, Fossilwaithe, that my father could have run up such a mountain of debts without you or anyone else remonstrating with him?”

“I assure you, Your Grace,” the accountant said respectfully, “both I and my partners spoke to His late Grace on several occasions, but he brushed us aside. Once he even informed me that I was to mind my own business!”

The Duke sighed.

He was quite certain that the accountant was telling him the truth, remembering that his father was always exceedingly impatient when anyone argued, let alone opposed him.

He looked down at the figures again as if he thought that by some miracle they might be changed.

Then he said,

“Well, Fossilwaithe, what do you suggest we do about it?”

He had no idea that the elderly man had been watching him with an expression of compassion in his eyes.

Now he made a little helpless gesture before he said,

“It is a problem that has kept me awake for nights, Your Grace, and quite frankly I do not know the answer.”

The Duke sat back in his chair.

“Let’s put it more bluntly – what have I to sell?”

Again Mr. Fossilwaithe, Senior Partner of the Solicitors firm that had looked after the Otterburn estates for many years appeared to have no ready answer.

As if he felt the situation was intolerable, the Duke rose from his desk and walked across the room to stare out with unseeing eyes over Park Lane towards the green trees in Hyde Park.

Otterburn House in London was large, impressive and a fitting town house for the Dukes whose name it bore. But the present and fourth Duke of Otterburn was currently thinking of The Castle and the huge estates in Buckinghamshire he had inherited unexpectedly and to which he had returned from the East only a month ago.

He had never expected to find himself in the position of being the Duke of Otterburn since he had an elder brother besides a father who had seemed a young man at fifty and likely to live for at least another forty years.

However, the late Duke had been stricken down in what he liked to call his prime by an epidemic that had swept the country last winter, taking its toll of more lives than were usually lost in any one of the small wars in which Britain was regularly engaged in one or another part of the world.

When Seldon Burn heard of his father’s death, he was only just recovering from the blow of learning that his elder brother, of whom he had been extremely fond, had broken his neck out hunting.

The information when it reached him had been much delayed because he was fighting a bitter campaign against the treacherous tribesmen on the boundaries of Afghanistan and he was not in a position to communicate with his father until he returned to Peshawar.

It was there he found waiting for him a telegram to inform him that his father was also dead and that his presence was required in England, as soon as it was possible for him to return.

He easily obtained compassionate leave.

At the same time, as he journeyed back across the hot plains, sometimes by train, sometimes by the slower but much more agreeable means of horseback, he faced the fact that his life in the Army had come to an end.

As a younger son, it had been very clear to him, as he grew into manhood, that he could expect to receive nothing but a small allowance from his father and must make his own way in the world.

Later he had become aware that although his father had lived ever since his grandfather’s death, in a flamboyantly extravagant manner, there were obvious signs that the estates did not pay their way and that debts were accumulating.

It was, however, nothing to do with Seldon and he joined the Army taking part in several skirmishes in parts of the world like the Sudan before he was posted to India and found that there, at any rate, it was a life after his own heart.

Because he was an excellent soldier and a born leader of men, he commanded a company of soldiers who survived the perils of war by being unremittingly courageous and quick-witted.

This accurately described Seldon Burn himself and he soon earned the reputation of being a daring, if slightly unpredictable Officer, on whom the Higher Command could rely in a crisis.

There were always crises on the North-West Frontier and there was always in that part of India an enemy lurking behind every rock and every boulder.

The fact that Seldon and his men could outwit those who were supplied with Russian guns and activated by Russian treachery was a reward in itself.

Yet now as he steamed through the Red Sea and into the Suez Canal, Seldon knew that a chapter of his life was closing and a new and very different one lay ahead.

He was not sure what he felt about becoming the fourth Duke of Otterburn.

When he had last been on leave three years ago, he had discussed the position with his brother.

He had been quietly confident that Lionel, at any rate, would uphold the dignity of the name and somehow manage to repair the damage that their father was doing to their finances.

“The old man is spending money like water,” he told Seldon.

“Where does he get it from?” Seldon enquired curiously.

“God knows! As you well know, he will never discuss his private affairs with me.”

“Does he really need to live in such an extravagant style?” Seldon asked. “I notice that we now have twelve footmen in Buckinghamshire, six in London and the stables are so full of horses that one can hardly put a pin between them!”

“I know,” his brother groaned, “and Papa is determined to extend his racing stable at Newmarket. He has not had a win this year and it infuriates him!”

“And apart from the horses,” Seldon remarked, “there are the pretty women who are the prerogative of every rake!”

The two brothers laughed.

They were both aware that if their father was an extremely handsome man and had an eye for a pretty woman, they certainly did not miss seeing him.

“You should see the latest,” Lionel remarked. “She really shows off the diamonds he gives her to advantage!”

“Who is she?”

“One of the famous Gaiety Girls. She cannot dance, she cannot sing, but she looks like a Goddess, and Papa keeps her cornucopia filled to the brim!”

The brother laughed again.

Then Seldon said more seriously,

“You know, Lionel, it is going to be very hard on you when you do inherit.”

Lionel shrugged his shoulders.

“It’s no use worrying,” he said, “and as Papa is strong and healthy, there is every likelihood that he will outlive both of us!”

Thinking of his brother now, Seldon could remember his saying it carelessl, and yet at the same time, as far as he was concerned, it was to be a prophecy of what actually happened.

Now Lionel, who had never married, was dead, and so was his father and Seldon, who had never expected for one moment that he would become the Duke, was left with a mountain of debts, which were even greater than he had anticipated.

He turned from the window.

“We have to find a solution, Mr, Fossilwaithe.”

“I agree, Your Grace.”

“I suppose there is no chance of our selling this house?”

“It is entailed, my Lord, otherwise your father, if you will forgive the impertinence, would have sold it a long time ago.”

The Duke sat down again at his desk.

“I suppose that applies also to the contents of The Castle, especially the pictures?”

“Almost as if the first Duke, your great grandfather, Your Grace, anticipated that something like this would happen, they too were entailed by him and your grandfather tied up everything else in such a manner that it would be almost impossible to have anything released.”

Mr. Fossilwaithe paused before he added,

“There are of course, five hundred acres on the North-West of the estate which belonged originally to Your Grace’s grandmother.”

The Duke’s eyes lightened.

“What would that fetch on the open market?”

“Not very much, Your Grace. And I think I should remind you that not only are the almshouses situated on that particular land, but also a great number of the cottages occupied by your pensioners.”

The light faded in the Duke’s eyes.

He knew only too well that if he sold the land to speculators or even to other conscientious landlords, the pensioners could be turned off, the almshouses emptied and filled instead with tenants who could pay a reasonable rent.

He stared down at the paper in front of him as if once again he could hardly credit that Mr. Fossilwaithe had not invented such a preposterous figure.

Then he suggested,

“I think the best thing for me to do is to read very carefully through these papers you have brought me and I would also like to study the survey which I understand your firm made of the Otterburn estates when my father died.”

“There is a copy of it at The Castle, Your Grace,” Mr. Fossilwaithe replied, “but I have another here if you would like me to leave it with you.”

“Thank you.”

Mr. Fossilwaithe produced the copy.

Then he said respectfully,

“I wish, Your Grace, I could have brought you better news and given Your Grace a more optimistic forecast for the future.”

“You have told me the truth,” the Duke replied, “and I know you will agree that only by knowing exactly where I stand, can I have a chance of finding my way out of this mess.”

There was a sharp note in his voice as he said the last two words and, looking at him, the accountant realised how much he disliked the position he found himself in.

He was, in fact, feeling that because the debts were so astronomical the family name was being dragged through the mire.

“You know, Your Grace,” Mr. Fossilwaithe said quietly, “that my firm will do anything in our power to help you.”

The Duke rose to his feet and held out his hand.

“I am aware of that,” he said, “and I can only thank you for all you have done so far and your tact and understanding in what I know has been a very difficult situation.”

“I thank Your Grace.”

Mr. Fossilwaithe shook the Duke’s hand and bowed himself to the door.

Only when he had gone did the Duke sink back in his chair, almost as if he was exhausted by the mammoth task that lay ahead of him.

It was as if the question, like the beat of a drum, repeated and repeated itself over and over in his mind.

‘What the devil am I going to do?’

He was glad in some ways that it was he who had to cope with the problem rather than Lionel.

Lionel had never been a hard man and would have found it impossible to be as ruthless as the Duke felt that he might have to be.

First The Castle had to be closed.

He was aware that this in itself would horrify his Burn relatives, who had always looked on it as the focal point of their lives.

It was to The Castle they flocked on every possible occasion that called for a gathering of ‘the Clan’.

For weddings, for funerals, for anniversaries, festivals like Christmas and Easter, the christening of their children, discussion of all the problems that they could not solve individually. They stayed at The Castle so that somehow with the help of their other relatives a solution could be found.

The Duke knew that to close The Castle would make them feel as if they were deprived of the central point of their existence.

‘What else can I do? It’s a huge place and needs a fortune spent on it,’ he ruminated sadly.

He had gone to The Castle as soon as he arrived in England and found that his father had redecorated the best rooms regardless of expense in the last five years, but the kitchens, the sculleries and the pantries were a disgrace and the servants’ quarters would not have seemed out of place in a slum.

There were no modern facilities and his father, because he was quite content to have the water for his bath brought up two flights of stairs and along endless corridors by stalwart young footmen, had no idea of the inconvenience lesser mortals had to endure in order to keep clean.

The gold and silver plate used in the dining room was priceless, but the cracked crockery from which the household ate and drank was only fit for the dustbin.

The peach and orchid houses were in excellent repair, but the gardeners complained they were short of tools and the roofs of their houses leaked.

It was as if, the Duke had thought as he looked around, he was afraid to turn over a stone for fear of what he would find underneath it.

The horses must be sold, that was obvious.

The racing stable was still as unsuccessful as it had been three years ago and he doubted if he would get very much for it.

Although the horses at The Castle were certainly spectacular animals the amount of money they would bring in when they were sold would be a drop in the ocean against the sum total of his father’s debts.

As if he felt he could not bear to sit at his desk staring at the figures that Mr. Fossilwaithe had just put in front of him, the Duke put the papers in a drawer.

He walked from the library with its exquisitely painted leather books along the passage to the drawing room that overlooked the garden at the back of the house.

Here his father had employed one of the most expensive decorators in London to cover the walls with silk brocade and to pick out the cornices and the frieze in gold leaf.

He had also imported an extremely expensive artist from Italy to paint the ceiling with an allegorical picture of Venus surrounded by cupids.

It was extremely beautiful and the room was certainly a showpiece, but nothing in it was sellable and the pictures, while undoubtedly outstanding, were of course entailed.

The Duke looked around the room in a depressed manner and then walked to the grog tray standing in one corner, which, on his father’s instructions, was always to be found in every room.

This was not because he drank a lot himself, but because if he wished to talk to one of the pretty ladies with whom his life was surrounded, he did not want to be interrupted by servants bringing in drinks and preferred to pour them out himself.

The Duke noticed the bottle of champagne that stood in a golden ice bucket bearing the family crest, the decanters of brandy, whisky and sherry and a plate filled with pâté sandwiches.

Thinking back over the years the Duke never remembered seeing anyone eat any of the sandwiches that his father ordered to be placed fresh, in every living room every morning and every evening.

He only hoped that some member of the household enjoyed finishing them off when they were taken away at the end of the day, only to be replaced the following morning with a fresh batch.

He had just poured himself a very small brandy and was filling up his glass from the soda siphon when the door opened and the butler announced,

“Lady Edith Burn, Your Grace!”

The Duke turned round in surprise to see his cousin, nearing middle age who was not only still extremely good-looking but also very smartly dressed.

“Edith!” he exclaimed in astonishment, putting down his glass. “This is a surprise! I thought you were abroad.”

“I came back especially to see you, Seldon,” Lady Edith answered. “In fact, I only docked in Southampton yesterday morning.”

“Then you were in America.”

Lady Edith nodded.

She walked across the drawing room to sit down on a blue brocade sofa and regard her cousin from under the brim of her elegant hat, which was decorated with ostrich feathers.

The Duke eyed her with a faint smile.

Then he asked,

“Well, what is the verdict?”

Lady Edith laughed.

“You are not so modest, Seldon, that you do not know you are extremely good-looking, and in fact so handsome that I am sure hundreds of British hearts will start to beat faster at the first glimpse of you!”

“I doubt it,” the Duke replied dryly.

Lady Edith raised her eyebrows.

“What does that mean?” she asked.

“That a Duke without a penny to his name and debts which will prevent him from playing an active part in the Social life you enjoy is not particular asset.”

There was a sudden softness in Lady Edith’s voice as she replied,

“I was afraid, dear Seldon, that was what you would discover when you reached home.”

“I knew things would be bad,” the Duke said, “it was something that Lionel and I both accepted, but not catastrophic!”

Lady Edith sighed.

“I liked your father. He was one of the most fascinating men I have ever met in my life, but he never could deny himself anything he wanted and the more expensive it was, the more he was determined to possess it.”

“I am glad he enjoyed himself!” The Duke said wryly. “But the truth is that I have somehow to pay his creditors, which as far as I can judge will take the rest of my lifetime and while I am doing so, I must find a job, unless I am prepared to starve!”

There was no doubt now of the note of bitterness in his voice and Lady Edith murmured,

“I am sorry, Seldon, dear.”

“So am I,” the Duke replied, “and I daresay you will all be sorry when I close The Castle and this house, but there is nothing else I can do and the sooner the family accept it, the better!”

“I think it will break their hearts,” Lady Edith commented quietly.

“I was sure you would feel like that,” the Duke said, “but Fossilwaithe has just left me and the sum total of my father’s debts could buy this country several much needed Battleships or supply an Army with at least two Regiments!”

As if he could not bear to look at Lady Edith as he spoke, he walked once again to the grog tray to ask when he reached it,

“What will you have to drink?”

“A small glass of sherry, please,” Lady Edith replied.

When he had poured it out, the Duke was thinking he was glad in a way that the first to hear the bad news was his cousin Edith.

She had always been one of the most charming and sympathetic of his relatives and he had thought that she had more common sense than most of the others.

Her history was a sad one, for she had become engaged when she was eighteen to a charming man, rich and titled, who had fallen in love with her at first sight – and she with him.

He was several years older than she and had spent many years travelling round the world, sometimes just for amusement, sometimes because he spoke a great many languages and acted as an unofficial, but very talented envoy for the Government.

They became engaged, but, as was to be expected, Lady Edith’s parents insisted on the conventional six months wait before they should be married.

Then her fiancé was asked to take part in some very tricky negotiations that were taking place between the Foreign Secretary and the Sultan of Morocco.

It was difficult for him to refuse, so taking a fond farewell of Lady Edith, he told her that he would carry out his mission as quickly as possible and be back at least two months before the wedding was arranged to take place.

He left and Edith busied herself buying her trousseau while writing every day to the man she was desperately in love with. But when the time came for his return, there was no sign of him.

It was only when another month had passed that she insisted on her father getting in touch with the Foreign Office. It was then he learned to his consternation that Lady Edith’s fiancé had reached Morocco, and then inexplicably had disappeared.

It took some time to reach with the British Consul and for his reply to reach England.

As the months passed, the only information Edith received was that her fiancé had been seen with a tribe hostile to the Sultan and he was thought to have been taken prisoner by them.

The authorities imagined he was being held captive somewhere, but nobody could work out where it was likely to be.

Because there could be no official statements, it always seemed to Edith that the Foreign Office dragged its feet even to find him, much less insist on his release.

The months went by, a year passed and still there was no news.

On her father’s insistence, the Foreign Office sent out a representative to Morocco to make enquiries.

There were rumours that Lady Edith’s fiancé had been seen in the interior of the country, that he was kept closely confined, that he had escaped and all traces of him had vanished into the sand, and a dozen other stories, none of which seemed to be true.

But whatever was said, the fact remained that he had not returned and the Foreign Office intent on not displeasing the Sultan did not appear to press the matter as urgently as they might have done.

Time passed and Edith still waited.

Then when her parents and everyone else said there was no hope and she must assume her fiancé was dead, she still went on waiting.

Only ten years later, when some explorers coming back from the unknown parts of Morocco told of a tribe who had kept a white man their prisoner until he had died, did Edith accept there would be no return of the man she loved.

After this she made some sort of life of her own, but she never married.

Being comparatively well off, she began to travel, first with her parents and then with a chaperone and finally when she grew older with just a lady’s maid.

She was thirty-five when she published her first book, Travels in the East and followed it the next year with another, Travels in the West.

As Queen Victoria’s subjects were interested in the world of which the British had appropriated a great amount, the books were very popular and Lady Edith became a celebrity.

Her independence brought her a lot of criticism from those who believed that women could not survive without the protection of a man, and should be content to stay at home with their children, if they had any, or given to good works, if they had not.

But Lady Edith merely laughed and enjoyed her fame and the Duke thought, looking at her now, that because she had through her wide experience become wise and sensible, she could help him with what would be the inevitable protests and arguments from the rest of the family.

He handed her the glass of sherry, then picking up the brandy and soda he had poured for himself when she arrived, took a sip of it.

“That is the position, Edith,” he said, “and there is nothing I can do about it.”

“On the contrary,” Lady Edith replied, “I have an alternative, if you would like to listen to it.”

“Of course. I am prepared to listen to anything you have to say,” the Duke answered.

He had the feeling as he spoke that the alternative that Edith would suggest would not be a practical one.

Lady Edith set her sherry down on a table beside the sofa before she began,

“It is quite simple, my dear Seldon. What you have to do is to marry money!’

Her answer was certainly not what the Duke had expected.

He stared at her as if he felt he could not have heard her aright.

“I have just come from America,” Lady Edith explained as if he had asked the question, “and New York is simply full of ambitious women determined to marry their daughters first and foremost to English aristocrats. The French, the Italian and other nations are close runners up, especially if they are Princes.”

“You cannot be serious!” the Duke exclaimed.

“I most certainly am!” Lady Edith replied. “Ever since Jenny Jerome married Lord Randolph Churchill in 1874, the matrimonial ambitions of the hostesses on Fifth Avenue are to see their little girls wearing a coronet and strawberry leaves have an attraction all of their own.”

“If what you are telling me is the truth,” the Duke said, “the whole idea is disgusting and it makes me feel sick!”

“That is what I expected your reply to be,” Lady Edith smiled, “but, because you have been out of England for so long, you have no idea that a great number of Englishmen find their title is a very pleasant exchange for several million dollars.”

“I can hardly believe what you are telling me,” the Duke said, “and let me tell you now that any suggestion that I should sink to that level will receive a categorical no!”

Lady Edith picked up her glass of sherry.

“Of course, dear Seldon, you are right,” she answered, “and I admire you for it. But after what you have just told me and what I knew only too well before I came here, there are just a few questions I would like to ask you.”

“What are they?” the Duke enquired in an uncompromising voice.

“Your great-aunt wrote me a letter, which I received just before I left New York, telling me that she has not, since your father’s death, received her pension.”

She waited for the Duke to speak and as he did not do so, she went on,

“Your father made her an allowance of seven hundred and fifty pounds a year, which is now all she has to live on. Of course she has a house on the estate, which I understand is badly in need of repair, but she is nearly eighty and I doubt if she could manage on less money with the two old servants who have been devoted to her for many years.”

The Duke did not speak and Lady Edith continued,

“And there are quite a number of other elderly people who have always been looked after by the family. I have a list of them and they start with your old Governess. You must remember Miss Chamberlain? She only receives two hundred pounds a year, but she is sixty-seven and crippled with rheumatism, so it would be impossible for her to work, even if she tried to do so.”

Lady Edith, as she spoke, had been drawing a piece of paper from her handbag and now she looked up at the Duke to see that he was scowling.

“The servants,” she went on, “and other employees who have been pensioned off, come, I understand, in a special category that has always been seen to by the Solicitors who manage the estate, but it was considered indiscreet to let them know what our actual relatives receive.”

She held up the pieces of paper.

“I have a list of them here and it comes to just over three thousand five hundred pounds a year, and quite frankly, Seldon, they have a struggle to exist unless the sums can be increased.”

“Increased!” the Duke exclaimed. “How do you think for one moment that I can find three hundred five hundred pounds a year?”

Lady Edith sighed.

“I know it is impossible, but what do we do with these old dears? Without any money they will all end up in the workhouse.”

The Duke of Otterburn again walked across the room to the window.

“This is intolerable,” he said furiously. “When I think of the money my father spent on actresses and horses that never left their stables for the racecourse and a whole army of unnecessary servants.”

“It is very hard to think of it,” Lady Edith sighed sympathetically, “but, as we cannot put back the clock, what is done is done.”

“I know that,” the Duke said testily. “The question is – what can I do about it?”

“Unless you intend to all intents and purposes to murder the people on this list, there is only one thing you can do.”

“Marry for money?” the Duke exploded. “It is degrading, obscene – a solution that I consider worse than the bartering of slaves or the buying of a woman’s body in a brothel!”

His voice was harsh and raw, and when there was silence behind him he turned to say,

“Forgive me, Edith, I should not speak to you like that.”

“I understand, Seldon,” she replied gently, “for anyone with principles and as straightforward as yourself, it does sound an unpleasant traffic.”

The Duke made an inexpressible sound and she went on,

“At the same time, it is something which has happened in English Society since the beginning of time. Look at every family we know and respect. They have always at one time or another, brought in heiresses to fill the family coffers and I cannot help suspecting that a little red blood mixed up with so much blue must improve the species!”

“That is an impractical remark, if ever there was one,” the Duke said impatiently.

“I prefer to think of it as a practical one,” Lady Edith persisted, “and because I have spent quite a lot of time in New York, I think I understand the feelings of the New World mothers who want their girls to have the best of the Old World.”

She saw the expression on the Duke’s face and added,

“Some of the American girls are very attractive and very well educated – far more so than our girls – and have both personality and character.”

She thought that the Duke looked sceptical and continued before he could speak,

“American men are different. They start off when they are young by concentrating all their energy, their strength and their ambition on acquiring money. Very few of them are at all cultured and very few, when one thinks of it, have any interest outside their own subject – finance!”

“I don’t want to listen to this!” the Duke exclaimed.

“Yes, you do!” Lady Edith replied sharply. “I am telling you, Seldon, that your only chance of saving the family, The Castle and the lives of those dependent on you is to marry a charming American wife who will bring you an enormous fortune, which you will spend as you like, while she will be content in exchange to bear your name and be a Duchess.”

“You sound exactly like an eighteenth century procuress!”

Because he was angry, he meant it to be an insult.

But Lady Edith laughed.

“If you are trying to hurt me, Seldon, you are not succeeding. I know what you are feeling, but even idealistic people like yourself have to accept the world as it is and not as they would like it to be.”

Her voice softened as she said,

“I consider marriage is your duty and you will find once you take the plunge that it is not as disagreeable as you anticipate. I promise you, the wife I choose for you will be both attractive and adaptable – two things which it may surprise you to know are something the Americans have and which we usually lack.”

Lady Edith paused for a moment before she went on,

“You have to marry sooner or later. If you look at the English girls when they first leave the schoolroom, where they have been chaperoned by Governesses and never allowed to appear in public until the moment they make their debut, you will find it depressing.”

She gave the Duke no chance to reply but continued,

“They will have spoken to no men except for the local Curate and it is impossible to believe that they will become the charming and witty sophisticated women you doubtless found very alluring when you were far away on some unknown battlefield.”

There was laughter in her voice as Lady Edith spoke and she added,

“Your life will be one long yawn if you choose an English girl as your wife. Instead I am offering you someone very different and, apart from her physical attractions, you will be many a million dollars better off.”

“I will not do it!” the Duke said positively. “I am damned if I will!”

Lady Edith did not answer. She merely drank a little more sherry.

“You heard what I said, Edith?” the Duke demanded.

“I heard you, Seldon,” his cousin answered, “but you will marry, because there is nothing else you can do.”

CHAPTER TWO

Magnolia closed the door and hastily thrust the note she had been reading down inside her gown.

Then she stood with a tense and wary expression in her eyes as her mother came into the room.

Mrs. Vandevilt, who privately was known as ‘The Dragon of Fifth Avenue’, was an extremely handsome woman.

She carried herself like an Empress and the ropes of perfect pearls she wore round her long neck and the huge diamonds in her ears made one think of some Eastern Potentate.

But her eyes were hard and there was no smile on her lips as she regarded her daughter with a steely glance.

Magnolia felt herself tremble and there was a long uncomfortable silence before her mother said,

“I understand some flowers were delivered here to you an hour ago. Who are they from?”

“I-I don’t – know.”

It was a lie, but not a very successful one as it was impossible for her to look her mother in the face.

Instead she glanced across the room to where, on a table inlaid with ivory displaying priceless Sevres porcelain, was a basket containing lilies-of-the valley.

Mrs. Vandevilt followed the direction of her daughter’s eyes and her lips tightened.

“Lilies-of-the-valley!” she said scathingly, “I suppose your admirer thinks you are like a lily. Well, I want to know what he wrote to you.”

There was an uncomfortable silence before Magnolia stammered in a frightened little voice,

“I – don’t – know what you mean – ”

“Stop trying to hoodwink me, Magnolia,” Mrs. Vandevilt said sharply, “which you have never been able to do. I know the man who sent you this rubbish and I want the note that came with it?”

Magnolia did not reply and her mother saw that her face was very pale and her hands were trembling.

Mrs. Vandevilt moved a little closer.

“I have not beaten you, Magnolia, since you were fifteen, but if you go on lying I shall have no hesitation in giving you the biggest thrashing of your life!”

“Mama!”

It was a cry of sheer terror.

“You know that I mean what I say,” Mrs. Vandevilt thundered. “Give me the note!”

She held out her hand and, after a second’s effort to stand firm before a parent who had always frightened her, Magnolia unbuttoned the front of her gown and drew the note from its place of concealment.

With shaking hands she gave it to her mother, who said,

“The man who wrote this will be dealt with and in future you will leave the house only in my company and will attend no dances or parties until we leave for England.”

Magnolia stiffened and there was a pregnant silence until she questioned,

“Leave for  – England? Are we going – abroad, Mama?”

“You are going to England to marry the Duke of Otterburn,” Mrs. Vandevilt answered decisively.

She intended to speak severely, but there was a note of triumph in her voice that was unmistakable and she was quite unmoved by the fact that her daughter was looking at her with an expression of horror.

“B-but – Mama,” she stammered at length as her mother said no more, “how can I  – marry the Duke of – Otterburn? I have – never met – him.”

“That is immaterial,” Mrs. Vandevilt snapped. “Everything has been arranged by Lady Edith Burn and you can consider yourself a very fortunate young woman. I am just waiting to see Mrs. Astor’s face when the engagement is announced.”

“But  – Mama  – I cannot  – I cannot  – it is  – impossible!” Magnolia began to protest.

Her mother, as if she had nothing more to say, turned towards the door.

She had almost reached it when she looked back at the basket of lilies-of-the-valley on the table.

She walked towards it, picked it up, threw it on the ground and deliberately stamped on the fragile blossoms.

Then she left the room without another glance at her daughter.

Magnolia gave a cry and put her hands over her face.

She felt as if in destroying her flowers her mother had destroyed something that had been born within her last night and seemed in retrospect like the first flowers of spring.

It had been quite an ordinary ball until she had danced with him.

Her other partners were all so familiar from the years when she had met them first at children’s parties, then teenage dances and finally the ball that had been given for her on her eighteenth birthday.

As she had grown older, she felt the boys were all exactly the same, either tongue-tied, or over-effusive with their –‘Gee-whiz, you’re a honey!’ comments.

As she had said once to her father,

“It sounds absurd, Papa, but I feel as if I am immeasurably older than the men with whom I have to dance and, when I sit next to them at the dinner table, they literally have no conversation except about horses and then they more often back them than ride them!”

Her father had laughed, but she thought there was a sad expression in his eyes as he said,

“It is quite unnecessary, my darling, for you to be clever as well as beautiful.”

“I am glad you think I am both of those things,” Magnolia smiled.

“Of course I do,” her father answered, “and now I want to show you this picture I have just bought, which no one else in the house will appreciate as you will.”

Magnolia had known that, in an obscure manner, he was referring to his constant frustration where her mother was concerned, since Mrs. Vandevilt despised her husband’s interest in art and thought it was a waste of time.

She also thought the very extensive education he had insisted Magnolia should receive had cost money that would have been far better spent on jewels.

But while Mr. Vandevilt was a quiet complaisant man in many respects who bowed to his wife’s wishes and let her do just as she liked, where his daughter’s education was concerned he had been adamant.

He chose the Governesses and teachers who instructed Magnolia and because Mrs. Vandevilt was not interested in anything that could not be seen and admired she accepted his choice.

Magnolia was quick and intelligent and what she learned opened the windows of her mind to new vistas. This was fortunate for the simple reason that she was sure no other girl in the whole of America was so confined, restricted and, as she often thought herself, imprisoned.

But then no girl in America was quite as rich as Magnolia Vandevilt.

When her father and mother had married it had been a union not only of two extremely good-looking people, but also of two huge fortunes.

These had been accumulated by their pioneering ancestors who had come to the New World to make money and then had the intelligence to invest it in the land on which they stood.

Mr. Vandevilt’s grandfather and his father had bought acres and acres of the swampy islands on which New York was now built and Mrs. Vandevilt’s father had invested in the first gold mines and then in the first oil strikes.

The big tragedy for the present day Vandevilt couple was that they only had one child to leave their vast fortune to, but it was much more of a tragedy for Magnolia.

As soon as she was old enough to think for herself, she realised that she was special.

She could not go out in her pram or later walk in Central Park with her Nanny without there being two bodyguards in close attendance.

She became used to this and it was only when she realised that no man could reach her mother’s standard of what she considered to be a suitable husband for her that she began to be afraid.

Because she was romantic, a trait that had been much cultivated by her father, she had imagined that some day she would find true love with the Prince of her dreams.

It was her father who gave her Romeo and Juliet to read, who told her the story of Dante and Beatrice, made her cry with the tale of Heloise and Abelard and who, looking back further still, sat on her bed when she was only five and told her the story of Cinderella.

As she grew older, Mr. Vandevilt found with an irrepressible delight that his daughter had the same feeling for pictures that he had.

He had started his collection when he was a very young man on his first visit to Florence.

He had always found it difficult to explain to anyone but Magnolia what he had felt when he stood entranced in the Uffizi Gallery, gazing at the pictures by Botticelli.

His heart went out to them and he actually fell in love for the first time.

It was a love that mattered to him more than anything else in the whole of his life and he was lucky in that his huge fortune enabled him to acquire pictures not only from art dealers, but also artists whose works had for him a magic that other collectors missed.

Hanging in private rooms in the huge brownstone house on Fifth Avenue there were canvases by Sisley, Monet and even a Renoir that he had bought for a few paltry francs when everyone else was laughing at the absurdity of the Impressionists.

“There is something about you, my darling,” he said to Magnolia as she grew up, “which reminds me of a Sisley picture.”

She gave him an enchanting smile.

“Now you are really flattering me, Papa.”

“I am stating a fact,” Mr. Vandevilt said. “You have a grace, a fragility, an impression of light that only Sisley could portray on canvas.”

Her mother had a very different opinion.

“You are too tall, your neck is too long and I can’t think where you get that absurd baby-face from,” she would say sharply. “Massage your nose to try to make it grow longer.”

She gave an exclamation of annoyance and went on,

“Heaven knows, I wanted a daughter with classical features and you would think all those pictures your father drools over would have produced one.”

Her mother was thinking of the Rubens, the Rembrandts and the Van Dykes that were all in the huge drawing room, the hall and the picture gallery.

Mrs. Vandevilt’s friends looked at them with envy, and the Press described them as ‘being part of the most important private collection in America’, an accolade she loved.

Magnolia would sit quietly with her father, when she was allowed, in his small study that was very unostentatious, and look at the light on Sisley’s trees, on a field of corn that seemed to shiver in the wind, praying that her father would always think her as lovely as the pictures that meant so much to him.

Yet she found as she grew up that it became difficult ever to be alone with her father.

Now, her mother was concentrating on her as if she was one of the Social or charitable projects for which she was extolled almost daily in the National Press.

There were fittings for clothes until Magnolia moaned to her father,

“I wish I could run about naked or have just one simple robe like those the Greeks used to wear.”

Her father had smiled at her and she knew he understood how boring she found it.

“I tried to read when I was fitting,” Magnolia went on, “but Mama took the book away from me and told me that no man would want a woman whose head was stuffed with a lot of dreary facts and figures.”

Her father sighed, but he did not say anything and after a moment Magnolia asked,

“Why did you marry Mama?”

They had always talked very frankly to each other ever since she had been a small child, asking him questions to which no one else would give her the answer.

Her father did not reply at once, but Magnolia knew it was not because he was embarrassed by her question, but merely because he was looking back into the past so that he could answer her truthfully.

“Our parents brought us together because they thought the union between two such large fortunes would be a suitable one,” Mr. Vandevilt explained at length. “And indeed your mother was very beautiful.”

He smiled a little wryly before he went on,

“I knew very little about women in those days, since I had concentrated almost exclusively on pictures. But she looked to me very like a Madonna portrayed by the early Italian Masters.”

Magnolia did not speak and he said no more.

They were both aware that Mrs. Vandevilt after nineteen years of fighting her way to the pinnacle of Social fame did not look in the least like a Madonna, but more perhaps like a Medusa with diamonds instead of snakes in her hair.

What had emerged soon after their marriage was the fact that Mrs. Vandevilt had a will of iron and a determination to have her own way whatever the opposition.

She browbeat those she employed, and her husband, finding it distasteful to be involved in arguments of any sort, just retired into the background of her life.

He was content to enjoy his pictures and the very few congenial friends who shared the same interests that he had.

It was impossible for him therefore to interfere with Magnolia’s early upbringing, even though he thought his wife’s handling of her was too strict.

“I have to be both father and mother to my child,” Mrs. Vandevilt would confide to her intimates. “My husband does not take the slightest interest in her.”

This was totally untrue, but Mr. Vandevilt had already accepted that it would be hopeless for him to assert his authority, which in most cases would only make matters worse.

It was therefore his wife who punished Magnolia when she was naughty and as her own father had whipped Mrs. Vandevilt when she was a child, Magnolia received the same treatment.

She was usually lashed on the legs with a riding whip and, because she had a pride that was unusual in so young a child, she forced herself not to scream or even cry until she was alone.

This inevitably made the punishment more severe owing to Mrs. Vandevilt’s determination to break her daughter’s spirit.

She did not succeed, but because Magnolia was vulnerable and sensitive not only to physical punishment but to stormy rows and sharp voices, she was frightened of her mother.

Her one consolation was that she could escape as her father escaped, only in her case it was through books. She read and read and was beaten innumerable times for reading when she should be asleep, but that did not stop her.

She built herself a dream world where life was very different from the reality of her own home. Because she was very feminine, inevitably her world contained a Knight in shining armour, a Prince Charming, who protected her and fought for her and to whom she eventually gave her heart.

Last night at the ball she thought she had found him.

The man who had come up to her and asked her to dance had been English, a nephew by marriage of one of the most important hostesses in New York, whose sister had married an English Lord. Their son as announced in the Press, had just arrived in America on a trip around the world.

Tall and fair with blue eyes and, when Magnolia looked at him, she felt he might have stepped straight out of one of the Fairy stories which her father had told her when she was small.

They danced together and he said,

“You are very beautiful and different from any other girl I have ever seen. In fact, you remind me of a lily-of-the-valley.”

“Thank you,” Magnolia smiled, “but actually my name is Magnolia!”

“That suits you too,” he replied. “How did you get such an unusual name?”

Magnolia laughed

“Apparently when I was born, the nurse said to my father, ‘She is a funny little thing, but she has a skin like a magnolia’!”

The man she was dancing with laughed.

Then he said,

“I am sure your skin has not changed with the years and I would very much like to touch it.”

Magnolia looked at him in surprise, thinking it a very familiar thing to say. Certainly none of the gauche young Americans with whom she normally danced would have dared to make such a remark.

Then, as her eyes met his blue ones, she had a strange feeling of excitement and yet at the same time she felt shy.

“I have to see you again,” he said insistently. “How can we manage it?”

Magnolia shook her head.

“It will be impossible unless you come with your aunt to call on Mama.”

“You know I did not mean that,” he said. “I want to see you alone.”

“I am never allowed to see people alone.”

“I will think of something,” he replied. “Leave everything to me.”

She felt his fingers tighten on hers and with his other arm he seemed to draw her a little closer. Then the dance came to an end and he took her back to her mother.

There was no chance of her having another dance with him as her programme was full, but their eyes met across the room and she knew that she wanted to see him again and felt despairingly that it was something that would never happen.

Now she knew with a kind of sick horror what her mother had been planning so arduously these last three weeks.

She had sensed that something strange was going on when Lady Edith Burn was incessantly in the house and her mother was locked in close conversation with her so that Magnolia was left unexpectedly free to be with her father.

“Oh, Papa, I have missed you,” she said the first day they could be together.

“And I have missed you, my dearest,” he replied.

They smiled at each other and then he told her eagerly,

“Look what I have to show you. It is a Boudin, one of the loveliest I have ever seen and I have also bought another Sisley.”

“How gorgeous!” Magnolia had exclaimed.

They sat together eulogising over the light in the trees and the sun-kissed beach that Boudin portrayed better than anyone else.

When they had finished talking about pictures, they had ranged over a whole field of philosophy, history and literature.

“I have a new French novel for you to read,” her father said, “but don’t let your mother see it.”

“No, of course not, and anyway Mama does not speak French,” Magnolia answered.

“But she might have heard of Gustave Moreau as everyone is talking about him,” her father suggested dryly.

“I will hide it away, as I always do,” Magnolia told him, “and now, Papa, I have some very important questions to ask you about Buddhism, which I feel only you can explain to me.”

They talked away happily until Lady Edith had left, but she was back again the next day and the day after that.

Magnolia thought now that she should have realised that something of immense importance was taking place.

The Duke of Otterburn! Who was he?

She took her hands down from her face to look at the bruised and battered lilies-of-the-valley that her mother had left on the carpet.

They seemed to her to be a symbol of her own feelings, her own future life.

Then, because she was frightened in a way she had never been frightened before, she knew she must find her father.

She ran down the stairs to his study and to her relief she found him, as she had hoped, studying some more pictures which one of the art dealers, who never missed an opportunity to interest such a rich client, had left for his inspection.

At first he was not aware that she was there, then as he turned to see who was disturbing him, she threw her arms around him and hid her face against his shoulder.

He could feel that she was trembling and after a moment he said in a quiet voice,

“I imagine your mother has told you.”

“I cannot do – it, Papa! I cannot – marry anyone I have not – seen and do not – love.”

It was the cry of a child and, as he held her close, Mr. Vandevilt said,

“I was afraid you would be upset, my dearest.”

“You – have to – save me, Papa. You know Mama will not – listen to – me if I say I will not – marry him.”

Her father kissed her forehead.

Then he said,

“Come and sit down, my dear. I want to talk to you.”

She was surprised at his tone, expecting, because they had always been so close and he understood her as no one else had ever done, that he would promise to talk to her mother.

Instead he drew her to a sofa and they sat down together.

“You have to save me, Papa!” Magnolia insisted. “I know you never – oppose Mama and always let her – have her – own way – but you understand, as she will – never do – that I am not interested in becoming a – Duchess – but in – marrying a man I – love.”

She thought of the man with the blue eyes who had looked into hers last night and added in a very low voice,

“I thought – last night at the – ball I had met – someone I could love – if I was – allowed to – see him.”

Her father sighed, but did not speak and Magnolia said,

“What can I do, Papa? If you do not – help me, Mama will – force me into doing – something which I know is – horrible and degrading! And anyway why should the Duke – want me, when he has – never even – seen me?”

Even as she said the words, she knew the answer.

She had not been particularly interested, but the conversation of friends at the luncheons and dinners she had been allowed to attend since she was officially grown up, had all centred on the Social gossip of whose daughters would make the best marriage.

It had not been of the least interest to Magnolia, but she had gathered that there had been tremendous excitement when Jenny Jerome, whose family everyone knew, had married an Englishman called Lord Randolph Churchill.

And even more so when Consuela Ienaga of 262 Fifth Avenue had become the Duchess of Manchester.

The ball of conversation had bounced backwards and forwards across the table.

Magnolia would have been very stupid, which she was not, if she had not been aware that the mothers with daughters of the same age as herself were all manoeuvring to get important and if possible titled men to their parties.

One hostess was giving a ball for an Italian Prince, who had just arrived in the country.

Another had invited and she produced his name as if he was an ace in the Social pack, – an English Earl.

Several other ladies who looked, Magnolia thought, slightly green with envy and had no better trumps in their hands than a somewhat dubious Count or a Texan oil magnate.

She had not paid very much attention at the time, but now ominously it all came back to her.

She realised that if her mother could pull a Duke like a rabbit out of a hat, she would definitely be the winner of the contest.

“I will – not do it, Papa!” she said fiercely. “I will run away – or rather – you must – take me away. We can – hide, so that Mama – cannot find us.”

She clasped her hands together as she spoke, only to stiffen as he replied very gravely,

“You know that would be impossible, my dearest, and you have to marry one day.”

“Yes, of course,” Magnolia agreed, “but I want to marry the man I – choose – and someone I – love, as in all the stories you told me when I was a little girl.”

There was a very sad expression in her father’s eyes as he replied,

“That is something I would like too. But, Magnolia, you are intelligent enough to face facts. Where are you going to meet such a man?”

“I thought – perhaps I had – met him – last night.”

There was silence before her father said,

“I saw you dancing with the man you are thinking about.”

“If you know him, please tell me about him, Papa,” Magnolia asked eagerly.

“I grant you he is an attractive young Englishman,” her father answered. “I talked to him later in the evening and I realised he had asked to be introduced to me so that he could meet you again.”

“Oh – Papa!”

The exclamation was very revealing and so was the excitement in Magnolia’s eyes.

“There were however, plenty of people to tell me why Mr. Eric Dinsdale was in America.”

There was something in the way her father spoke that made Magnolia look at him enquiringly and he went on,

“He is here, my darling, to find a rich wife!”

His reply made Magnolia feel as if her heart had suddenly fallen onto the ground and smashed into a thousand pieces.

Then her father continued,

“You have not, my dearest, met many young men, which I have always thought has been a mistake, so now it is going to be difficult for you to sift the grain from the chaff.”

“And you – think,” Magnolia said in a voice that did not sound like her own, “that he was only – interested in – me because I am rich?”

“I am quite certain,” her father replied, “he was interested in you because you are beautiful, which made it impossible for him to notice any other girl at the ball. At the same time, he was thinking how very lucky it was that someone whom he fancied was so heavily gilded!”

Magnolia tried to stifle a little cry and jumped to her feet.

“You make – everything seem horrible and – unclean,” she stormed. “How can I ever – trust any – man if all he – thinks about is my – money rather than – me?’

Her voice broke on the last word and her father reached out to take her hand and pull her back beside him on the sofa.

He put his arm around her and, after a moment’s instinctive resistance, she laid her head against his shoulder as she had when she was a child.

“Now listen to me,” he said quietly. “Everybody has some form of handicap in their lives.”

He knew that Magnolia was attentive as he asked,

“Have you ever thought what it would be like to be born crippled or blind? Or if you had inherited some incurable disease through no fault of your own?”

Magnolia made a little murmur, but she did not interrupt and her father continued,

“Money can be a blessing and a comfort. It can also be a handicap. You have therefore to adjust yourself to living with it, just as the blind have to train their senses to compensate for their loss of sight and a deaf man has to lip-read.”

“I can – understand what you are – saying, Papa. At the same time – there must be a man – somewhere in the world who would – love me for – myself?”

Her father smiled.

“There will be a great many men who will love you, Magnolia, and doubtless, sooner or later, you will fall in love yourself. But in the world in which you live, for a girl to be free of the restrictions that confine her from the cradle to the grave, she has to be married!”

“But she only changes the jurisdiction of her father and mother for that of a husband,” Magnolia answered.

Even as she spoke, she thought that her mother was certainly very free of any jurisdiction and that her friends, either male or female, were her choice without any interference from the man she had married.

It then flashed through Magnolia’s mind that the ladies at her mother’s parties had also talked of the love affairs taking place in New York.

Although they had chosen their words carefully in front of the girls, she had been sharp enough to realise the innuendo in much of what had been said.

She had been aware that the man and woman concerned were both already married, but she was not interested because she did not know that their ‘liaison’, if that was what it was, was a clandestine one.

There was also, she thought, a great deal said about the English Prince of Wales’s infatuation for Lily Langtry. She was an actress who had taken America by storm, but who in some incomprehensible way was also a lady and accepted by a number of hostesses in New York, although her mother had not been one of them.

Aloud she said,

“Are you seriously suggesting, Papa – that I should marry this – Duke, as Mama says I am to do without – knowing him – let alone – loving him?”

“I think it is quite wrong that he will not come to New York to meet you,” her father replied. “If it was in my power, Magnolia, I promise you I would prevent your mother from taking you to England and your wedding would take place here, as it ought to do.”

“You will let Mama do – this to me?” Magnolia cried. “How – could you, Papa?”

“I don’t think that anything I said would make the slightest difference,” her father answered frankly. “And in a way I think, my dear, it is your only solution and one you have to accept.”

Magnolia raised her head from his shoulder.

“I don’t know what you are – talking about, Papa. I just don’t – understand.”

“Then let me explain,” her father said, taking her hand in his. “You know without my telling you that you are one of the richest heiresses in America. Not only my fortune, but also your mother’s will come to you when we die, and you were left a great deal of money in your grandmother’s will. That, while you have been growing up, has increased astronomically.”

“Yes, I know,” Magnolia remarked.

“This means you are the target of every fortune-hunter in America, England, Europe and for all I know, Outer Mongolia!”

Because she could not help it, Magnolia felt a faint smile curve her lips, but she did not interrupt and he went on,

“In the circumstances, it is very unlikely that any decent man who has any pride would ask you to marry him.”

Magnolia looked startled, and her father continued,

“That is the truth and one you have to accept. Most men dislike a wife owning more money than they have. Most Englishmen particularly would run a mile rather than be accused of fortune-hunting.”

“You mean,” Magnolia, said in a very small voice, “that – no one who you would call ‘decent’ would – ever ask me to – marry him?”

“Shall we say that it is such an outside chance that it is not worth thinking about,” her father replied. “Therefore you have to face the alternative.”

“What is that?”

“If you are going to sell yourself, for that is what it comes down to, you might as well accept your mother’s proposition and aim for the highest!”

“The Duke!” Magnolia exclaimed scornfully.

“As a matter of fact,” her father answered, “I know she was considering a Prince, if there is a reputable one still free in Europe, but an English Duke is almost the equivalent. Kings, she discovered insist on mixing their Royal blood with other Royalty!”

Her father spoke in such a funny way that despite herself Magnolia gave a little laugh.

“You are making a joke of it, Papa,” she said accusingly, “but it is not funny – for me.”

“I know that, my dearest,” her father replied, “and because I realised that this was what your mother was contemplating as soon as Lady Edith Burn arrived back in New York, I made some enquiries about the Duke of Otterburn.”

“And what did you find out, Papa?”

“That he did not expect to inherit the title as he had an elder brother. That he has had a distinguished career in the Army and was capable of supporting himself until he became unexpectedly the Duke of Otterburn with a mountain of debts.”

“Which can be paid off with – my money,” Magnolia said sharply

“I don’t suppose otherwise a Duke would demean himself to marry an American.”

“Demean himself? What do you mean?”

“I mean,” her father replied, “that the English aristocrats, who give themselves great airs, consider they are doing us a favour if we prop up their crumbling ancestral homes and modernise their out-of-date farms in return for our daughters being able to walk about with a moth-eaten coronet on their heads.”

Now Magnolia laughed and it was a very pretty sound.

Then the smile slid from her lips and she said,

“But the – Duke would be my – husband. I – suppose you could not – give him the money to do – all the things you say need – doing and let me stay with – you?”

“It would, unfortunately, be a quite impractical solution, my dearest. Your mother is determined to be able to boast, ‘my daughter is a Duchess!’”

“What you are – saying, Papa, is that if it is not this – Duke, then it will be – another?”

“Exactly!” her father agreed. “However, he sounds a slightly better bet than others your mother has been contemplating ever since you left the schoolroom, so I can only say that, speaking about a man I have never met and has not the decency to cross the Atlantic to meet his bride, you might do worse!”

“Oh – Papa!”

Again it was the cry of a child who feels that her sense of security is being taken away from her. For the first time since she had come into the study, Magnolia’s eyes filled with tears.

She looked at her father and said brokenly,

“I really thought you would – save me – I thought you would – stand up to – Mama – and think of some – wonderful way in which I could go on being with you – I don’t want to marry some – horrible – beastly fortune-hunter, who does not care if I am ugly, have a – harelip – or a deformed body so long as I am – rich!”

“That is not quite true,” her father replied. “Lady Edith has undoubtedly told him how lovely you are.”

Then, as the tears ran down his daughter’s face, Mr. Vandevilt pulled her against him and said harshly in a voice she could hardly recognise,

“Don’t cry, my dearest. If you cannot bear it, I cannot either. Can you imagine what my life will be without you and how much I shall miss you?”

Because of the pain in his voice, Magnolia burst into tears and sobbed unrestrainedly against him as she had done when she was a child.

“I-it – is so – hard – Papa.”

When he realised how much it upset her, Mr. Vandevilt forced himself to say in a different tone altogether,

“I can cross the Atlantic now in nine days, and I promise you, if your husband will invite me, I will be staying with you a dozen times a year and I believe anyway the Duke has some very good pictures.”

Magnolia choked on her tears and said in a sad little voice,

“If he had – he would surely – sell them.”

“He probably is not entitled to,” Mr. Vandevilt replied. “But, pictures or no pictures, I promise you, my dearest, I shall be a constant visitor to England, because I cannot lose you.”

Magnolia raised her head.

She looked very lovely, despite the fact that her long dark eyelashes were wet and the tears that were running down her cheeks.

Looking at her, her father thought she was so beautiful that it was not only wrong but positively obscene that she should be married off in the Social marriage market to a man who was interested only in her bank balance and not in her as a woman.

He knew only too well that what he had said to Magnolia was true.

There were few men, if any, he would be glad to have as a son-in-law, who would contemplate taking anyone as rich as Magnolia as their wife.

The others were so disreputable that he could not bear to think of her being subjected to the humiliation that such a marriage would entail.

There was one young Italian Prince, whose escapades since he had married an American heiress had been the talk of New York and Mr. Vandevilt was glad that Magnolia had not heard of him.

It had been reckoned that in seven years, the Prince had spent over five million dollars of his wife’s money. He had spent it on gambling, on women of every class and nationality and on yachts, houses, fireworks, dancers, musicians and enough drink to fill an ocean.

In America and in Europe, the Prince’s extravagances made him a celebrity, while his wife from whom the money came had faded into an insignificant ghost who was seldom recognised and usually forgotten.

‘That shall not happen to Magnolia!’ Mr. Vandevilt had vowed to himself.

At the same time, as he listened to other stories in the same vein, he had been afraid.

When his wife set her heart on anything, it was with a one-point concentration and nothing and nobody could prevent her from obtaining what she desired.

Mr. Vandevilt, who had travelled a great deal in Europe, knew that an English gentleman did on the whole behave in a respectful manner towards his wife. He also had an inborn dislike of publicity and scandal and would therefore in most cases behave circumspectly.

What was more, where the aristocracy was concerned, they believed it was their duty to look after those dependent upon them. This embraced their old-age pensioners and impoverished relatives, their almshouses and their orphanages and included in the same category were their wives.

It was not much of a choice, Mr. Vandevilt had thought bitterly, when he viewed Magnolia’s future objectively and with the intelligence, which he brought to everything in his life.

On the whole, however, he favoured the British and his daughter, whom he loved and who he thought was far too clever and sensitive for the sons of New York Socialites, might, as he had said to her, do worse than marry an Englishman.

Magnolia had risen now from the sofa to walk across the room to where the first Sisley her father had ever bought was hung in a place where the light from the window seemed to be reflected in the picture itself.

She stood looking at it and now it made her feel as if she was reaching out towards something so beautiful and yet so intangible that she could not put a name to it.

However, the feeling was so unmistakably there that she knew it lifted her mind and a living force within her up into the light.

If she could only see it more clearly, she felt as if the whole secret of the Universe would be hers.

It was like a light her father had told her glowed in Greece, which had been the light of the Gods.

The revelations had come to the Greeks with the light so that the splendour and the glory of what they had thought had spread to bring enlightenment to the world.

It was what she had always tried to find herself, the light which had made men think and in thinking become as Gods.

Then, as if even the magic of Sisley could not prevent her from knowing that she was very human, tears once again misted her eyes and she ran back to her father to put her arms around him.

“Oh, Papa – help me – help me! How can I do – something which I know is wrong – and at the same time – go on living?”

CHAPTER THREE

“Lady Edith Burn, Your Grace!”

A flunkey announced and the Duke, who was reading the newspaper in a chair in his Study, rose to his feet.

His cousin came in looking extremely elegant and as usual dressed in the latest fashion, but he knew by the expression on her face before she spoke that she was perturbed.

“I can hardly believe there could be such a chapter of disasters!” she exclaimed.

The Duke held out his hand.

“What else has gone wrong?” he enquired.

Lady Edith had journeyed to Southampton to meet the wedding party, consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Vandevilt and Magnolia, because he had refused firmly and categorically to do so.

“How can you be so discourteous, Seldon?” his cousin had asked.

“I have so much to do here,” the Duke replied, “and I have no intention of standing about, waiting on a quay for a ship which is already delayed by several days.”

“How could one possibly imagine that there would be a gale in the Atlantic to upset all our arrangements?” Lady Edith had groaned.

“Perhaps even the Gods are on my side in delaying my marriage,” the Duke remarked cynically.

“Really, Seldon!” Lady Edith snapped, “you are making things very difficult! What with you and Mrs. Vandevilt, I wish I had not started the whole thing in the first place.”

“And so do I!” the Duke agreed in a tone of deep sincerity.

Lady Edith sighed in an exasperated fashion.

It had been hard enough to make the Duke agree that the only way to save The Castle, the estates and everyone dependent upon him was for him to marry Magnolia Vandevilt.

What she had found far more difficult was to persuade Mrs. Vandevilt that the marriage should take place in England.

Mrs. Vandevilt had wanted a really fantastic wedding with typical American opulence to impress the world and she did not think it could be the same if they went to England where Magnolia’s wedding would not have the same publicity or impact on the Social scene.

Lady Edith had to be extremely persuasive to make her change her mind and accept the Duke’s inflexible determination that he would not be made a ‘peep show’ for the Americans to gape at.

“I have heard,” he had said to his cousin, “of the Carnivals the Americans make of their weddings.”

He paused to make sure that Lady Edith was listening before he added,

“I have read of hundreds of doves being released over the heads of a happy couple, watched by a mob of thousands who grappled with each other to get into the Church and grab a flower or a ribbon as a souvenir, which resulted in the Police having to be summoned.”

He brought his fist hard down on the table at which they were sitting, as he added,

“If you think I will go through that sort of thing, even to marry the daughter of Midas himself, then you are much mistaken.”

If the Duke was determined, so was Mrs. Vandevilt, so it required hours of patience and a great deal of charm on Lady Edith’s part before the Vandevilts had finally agreed to leave New York.

They had been expecting to dock in Southampton a week ago, but the ocean had been unprecedentedly tempestuous and first there was an announcement of three days delay, then of four.

Finally the ship had limped into harbour with damage to her superstructure, an astronomical amount of breakages and a number of her passengers injured.

As she sat down on a chair and undid the sables she wore around her neck, Lady Edith related what had happened and added,

“One of the casualties was Mr. Vandevilt!”

“He was swept overboard?” the Duke enquired.

“No, of course not! It was not as bad as that!” Lady Edith replied, “but his leg was broken and we had to make arrangements to take him to London on a stretcher, which was the reason I did not arrive here yesterday, as I intended to do.”

“I wondered what had prevented you from doing so,” the Duke remarked in a tone, which told his cousin it had not worried him unduly.

“He is now installed at the Savoy,” Lady Edith went on, “and Mrs. Vandevilt has taken over a whole floor. I managed to get his leg attended to by Sir Horace Deakin who, as you may know, is one of the Queen’s doctors. He has provided two nurses and has promised that Mr. Vandevilt will be on his feet within a month.”

The Duke’s eyes seemed to light up.

“Does that mean the wedding has to be postponed?”

“It does not!” Lady Edith replied. “Mrs. Vandevilt is determined the plans shall go ahead as made, before they left.”

She did not add, because she knew it would annoy the Duke that the reason for this was that Mrs. Vandevilt had paid the fares of the reporters from some of the most prestigious newspapers in New York.

They had travelled over in the same ship and it would obviously be impossible for them to stay longer than was strictly necessary before returning home.

The Duke, who was looking forward to a quiet wedding because he had insisted on it being in England, must, Lady Edith had decided a long time ago, be kept in ignorance of his future mother-in-law’s intention to ensure by every means in her power, and whatever it cost, that it hit the headlines.

In case the Duke should be curious, Lady Edith said hastily,

“Mrs. Vandevilt has no wish, Seldon dear, to upset your plans and she will therefore arrive with Magnolia, as arranged, to stay with the Farringdons tomorrow afternoon.”

It was Lady Edith with her usual tact who thought it might be uncomfortable if the Vandevilt’s stayed at The Castle before the wedding. Moreover she thought the less the Duke saw of Mrs. Vandevilt, the better.

She therefore arranged with Lord Farringdon, who was a relative by marriage, to have the Vandevilts to stay with him and from his house it would be easy for them to drive to The Castle in under an hour.

The Duke had only remarked cynically,

“I am sure that as William’s house is much more comfortable than mine, Mrs. Vandevilt will be satisfied with the arrangements you have made for them.”

Now Lady Edith said,

“I thought you would agree, Seldon, that in the circumstances William Farringdon should give Magnolia away. She is naturally upset that it cannot be her father.”

“In that case, I am sure she would prefer to wait until he is well enough to perform such an important task.”

“It is quite impossible to change everything around at the last moment,” Lady Edith replied. “ Besides, I expect your tenants and employees are looking forward to their party.”

The only thing the Duke had agreed to with a good grace was that, as was traditional, there should be a party in a marquee for all those employed on the estate together with the tenant farmers.

This meant that barrels of beer had been ordered and a large quantity of local cider which was almost as intoxicating.

The cooks at The Castle had been preparing the traditional fare such as boar’s head, great joints of roast beef and hams, which had been cured by ancient recipes passed down from mother to daughter.

The Duke was well aware that to put off the wedding now would entail a great number of difficulties.

No less than six hundred guests had already accepted the invitations that Lady Edith had sent out with the help of a secretary borrowed from Mr. Fossilwaithe’s office.

Presents had been pouring in and the picture gallery was full of them, so much so, that Lady Edith had wondered whether there would be room for the large number she was quite certain Mrs. Vandevilt would be bringing with her from America.

The Duke merely looked at the presents already there in surprise.

“As I have never met half of these people or at any rate not seen most of them since I was a boy,” he remarked. “I cannot imagine why they should wish to spend so much money on me.”

Lady Edith had laughed.

“You are being very naïve, Seldon. You must be aware that not only is a Ducal wedding a unique excitement in the rather dull countryside, but the fact that you will have money to spend in the future in the same way that your father spent it in the past will not escape anyone’s notice.”

The Duke’s eyes had darkened.

“If you imagine I am going to throw my wife’s money about in the same profligate manner that my father threw his, you are very much mistaken!”

He spoke angrily, but Lady Edith only laughed again.

“Of course, I am not suggesting anything of the sort,” she said. “At the same time I imagine the neighbours are feeling deprived of the parties, some of which were very raffish, that your father gave here, whenever he was at home.”

“There will be no parties,” the Duke stated categorically, “not until the debts are paid and the roofs on the houses of the farmers, the pensioners and the employees have been repaired.”

“Your wife might have something to say about that!” Lady Edith remarked.

She only meant to tease him out of his sombre mood, but she realised as soon as she had spoken that she had been tactless as she saw his chin square and his lips tighten.

He was resenting more than ever that he had to be beholden to a rich wife and an American at that!

Because Lady Edith was extremely astute where men were concerned, she deliberately was not too fulsome in her praise of Magnolia nor did she eulogise about her beauty.

‘He will find out for himself,’ she thought and hoped that in consequence the Duke would become curious. Instead, as the weeks passed and letters and telegrams sped backwards and forwards across the Atlantic with instructions, requests and information, Lady Edith was aware that the Duke was withdrawing more and more into a reserve that was difficult to penetrate.

The announcement of his engagement in the newspapers only seemed to make him worse and she knew he was deliberately isolating himself from those who wished to meet him on the pretence of having too much to do.

But however difficult he might be, she was well aware, as he was, that no other solution had presented itself for the problems that his father had left him except that of marriage.

Now, as the Duke brought her a glass of sherry, she sipped it gratefully as she sighed,

“I don’t mind telling you, Seldon, I feel quite exhausted from all I have been through, and you are very lucky you were not in my place.”

“I apologise for not having said ‘thank you’ more graciously,” the Duke replied with a charm that Lady Edith thought made him seem very attractive.

“I, too, am disappointed that you will not meet Mr. Vandevilt before your marriage,” she said. “He is such an intelligent and delightful man that I know you would get on well with him.”

She thought as she spoke that his presence would certainly have mitigated the effect that she was sure Mrs. Vandevilt would have on her future son-in-law.

Following the accident to her husband, she had arrived at Southampton in what Lady Edith recognised was one of her worst moods and that she had been extremely seasick during the storm had not made things any better.

She first of all demanded a special train to convey her incapacitated husband, herself, Magnolia, their mountain of luggage and their army of servants to London.

As such a thing was impossible at such short notice, she had to be content with the whole of a First Class coach and even then, Lady Edith thought, it seemed somewhat overcrowded.

Used as she was to rich Americans, she had no idea that three people could require so much baggage for a nine day sea voyage.

There was not only a Courier, secretaries and assistant secretaries to organise everything, but two lady’s maids, one each for Mrs. Vandevilt and Magnolia and two valets for her husband.

There was also, Lady Edith saw, four or more special guards who were always in attendance on the family and a number of young men who she suspected were reporters and photographers.

When they reached the Savoy, Lady Edith found that the mountainous pile of luggage which had filled two vans contained not only a great number of presents but the luxuries that every American millionairess considered essential to her comfort when she travelled.

Mrs. Vandevilt’s own linen, some of her own silver, as well as rugs for her feet and an ermine cover for her bed, had all been transported across the Atlantic.

Lady Edith longed to tell the Duke how funny she thought it was, but decided he might not be amused and she had best keep such information to herself.

Instead she said,

“I am so sorry for Magnolia. She adores her father and is actually very upset not only by his accident, but also that he cannot be present at the wedding.”

Again the Duke’s lips tightened but he said nothing and Lady Edith went on,

“You will meet her of course tomorrow night at a family dinner party that I have arranged before the wedding. We shall only be thirty, or rather twenty-nine now that Mr. Vandevilt cannot come.”

“Fossilwaithe informed me,” the Duke said, “that he had received a letter summoning him to London as soon as the Vandevilts arrive. I suppose now they will not, have time to see him before they leave London to stay with the Farringdons.”

“There is no need to worry about that,” Lady Edith answered. “I saw Mr. Fossilwaithe at the Savoy. He had the papers ready to be signed and was quite resigned to waiting until either Mr. Vandevilt or his wife were willing to see him.”

“I suppose,” the Duke said after a moment’s pause, “I should be glad that he is so businesslike, but even now, Edith, I have an impulse to call the whole thing off.”

Lady Edith gave a little cry.

“If you try to do such a thing, I shall never speak to you again!” she stressed. “It has taken years off my life making all these arrangements and if you upset them I think I shall kill you!”

“Perhaps death might be preferable to the tortures you have subjected me to!”

He tried to speak lightly, but somehow, despite himself, there was a serious note in his voice.

Lady Edith sighed.

“Oh, Seldon, we cannot go through all this again – unless while I have been waiting at Southampton you have found a gold mine in the herb garden or the gravel on the drive has suddenly turned to diamonds! You need the Vandevilt millions as much as they need your coronet. It is a fair exchange.”

“I am glad you think so,” the Duke replied in an uncompromising voice.

“I am too tired to argue,” Lady Edith said. “I am going upstairs to lie down and I will see you at dinner. Who else has arrived?”

The Duke reeled off the names of some of the older members of the family, who had come from various parts of England to be the advance guard for the rest of them.

They would therefore have the first look at the heiress whose millions of dollars would make a great difference to them all.

At the same time the Duke knew already that none of them would be in the least grateful to Magnolia as a person for the money that she would pour into the family coffers.

Instead they had come ready to criticise and if necessary to disparage his future wife because she was to them a foreigner.

They were, however, too diplomatic to say anything he could take exception to.

He merely sensed their attitude, and instead of it making him annoyed because it was what he felt himself, he only felt guiltier than he had before.

‘Am I a man or a mouse?’ he asked himself.

It was a question that repeated itself over and over again as he wondered how he personally could find a solution to the financial problem rather than rely on an unknown woman whom he hated because she was marrying his title.

The Duke, during one of their arguments, had said to Lady Edith,      

“How can you expect me to do anything but despise a woman who will marry me, not as a man but simply because I am a Duke?”

“Don’t be so ridiculous!” his cousin scolded him. “You know as well as I do that Magnolia herself has had no say in the matter, any more than an English girl would be allowed to refuse you if you offered her marriage.”

She thought the Duke looked surprised and she added crossly,

“I cannot think where you have been living all these years, Seldon. With your looks and your undoubted attractions, you must have known a few women in whatever benighted places you were fighting.”

The Duke smiled.

There was no point in explaining to his cousin that the women he met at Simla when he was on leave, or at any other station, meant nothing serious to him even for a short while.

They were the attractive, sophisticated, flirtatious wives of men who were sweating away in the heat of the plains or on some special mission in another part of the country.

His affaires de coeur had therefore often been fiery and alluring, but definitely only interludes in a life of discipline and danger. They had moreover not taught him anything about the habits and minds of young girls.

Nor, as he thought about it, did he remember ever having even a conversation with one.

He told himself cynically that he would pay for the money he obtained from his marriage with years of undoubted boredom, if nothing else.

‘God knows what one talks about to a girl of eighteen,’ he would murmur, especially at night when he had lain awake ruminating about his future.

Instead of it being one of excitement and anticipation as it had always been before, now it appeared dark and dreary.

He knew that he would spend his days working to restore the estates to a perfection that he had expected never to be able to achieve, and those he employed would look to him for leadership, just as his sepoys had in India.

On one thing he was determined, if he enjoyed the good things of life, was that they should share them with him.

He was almost startled when just before the Vandevilts sailed for England, Lady Edith quizzed him,

“Mrs. Vandevilt is anxious to know where you intend to take Magnolia for a honeymoon.”

“A honeymoon?” the Duke had repeated blankly.

“You will have to have one,” Lady Edith said, “and people will be astonished if you do not go abroad.”

“I had not thought about it. There seemed to be so much to do here.”

“You could go to the South of France, where your father’s villa would certainly be a good place to start from.”

“His villa?” the Duke questioned.

“Surely Mr. Fossilwaithe has told you that two years before he died your father bought a villa near Nice at a small place called Beaulieu. It is, I believe, very attractive. He certainly spent a great deal of money enlarging it.”

“I had no idea of this.”

The Duke vaguely remembered that on the long list of expenses there had been an item for something in France, but he had not examined it very closely because of the amount of money owed in other directions.

On Lady Edith’s insistence, he sent for Mr. Fossilwaithe who told him to his surprise that not only had his father bought a villa, but there was also a yacht moored nearby in the harbour at Villefranche.

His father’s yacht, which was kept fully manned, was an expensive item that had somehow been ignored amongst the other extravagances!

As soon as he learned of these new possessions, the Duke had related his findings to Lady Edith and added,

“I intend to sell both the villa and the yacht.”

Lady Edith had given a cry of protest.

“For Heaven’s sake!” she exclaimed, “not until after the honeymoon!”

“Why?”

“For the simple reason that the South of France is exactly where Mrs. Vandevilt would wish you to start your married life so that she can enjoy saying, ‘my daughter, the Duchess, is spending her honeymoon in the South of France, where my son-in-law has a villa and, of course, there is a yacht which will carry them when they are bored to romantic places like the Greek Islands’.”

Lady Edith not only mimicked Mrs. Vandevilt’s voice, but also her American accent and despite himself, the Duke laughed.

He was just about to say that he had no intention of spending a honeymoon of that sort with a woman he had never even seen and he already despised.

Then he thought that he personally would enjoy being the possessor of a yacht, if only for a short time.

Later he felt that it would be easier to endure the silences that he expected would exist between himself and his wife at mealtimes, the dreariness of dinners in restaurants or worse still when they were alone in an empty dining room.

“Of course,” he said aloud, “Mrs. Vandevilt and her daughter must not be disappointed. Find out the size and ambience of this villa, and you had better ask Fossilwaithe the tonnage of the yacht, which I forgot to do.”

As Lady Edith expected, Mrs. Vandevilt had written back quite enthusiastically by return about the suitability of such a honeymoon and added that she was buying her daughter many new clothes, some with quite a nautical appearance that she could wear on board the yacht.

Lady Edith, as she read the letter, could only think it was a good thing that the Duke would not read the gossip columns in the American newspapers which she was certain would grab at every juicy tit-bit that concerned the Vandevilt, Otterburn wedding.

When Lady Edith went upstairs, the Duke left The Castle by a garden door and walked down towards the lake.

Whenever he found himself having to discuss his wedding, he always felt desperately in need of air, almost as if his lungs were choking.

It had been a warm day, but now there was a sharpness in the air, which was just what the Duke wanted.

He wanted to feel something cold and astringent as an antidote to the feeling that he was being suffocated by all the exotic and expensive objects that money could buy.

Then he thought savagely that he positively liked the discomforts of The Castle – the plumbing that needed improving, the parts of it, although they were not seen, where the walls were crumbling, the damp and stained ceilings.

He knew the gardens required a lot of money spent on them and told himself that as soon as they went back to the jungle-like wildness the better.

Then he remembered that old Briggs who had served his father and grandfather for over forty years would be retiring in a month or two and he was glad he would be able to give him a decent pension and a comfortable cottage where he could spend the remainder of his life

‘I am being damned ungrateful,’ he chided himself.

At the same time it seemed humiliating and pretentious.

His cousin Edith had been right when she said he was idealistic about women. But his ideals had not concerned him until now because they had played a very small part in the life he had had in the Army.

Then he thought that when he married he would treat his wife with respect, which was in itself a kind of chivalry. And he believed that every woman should be protected, cosseted and directed by a man.

That meant, of course, if he put it into plain English, that she should be entirely dependent on him.

But an American who was extremely rich would be very different from an Englishwoman who had to ask her husband for ‘pin money’, and be effusively grateful for everything he spent on her.

‘I suppose at Christmas and on birthdays I shall be buying my wife presents with her own money,’ he thought bitterly. ‘I will drink her health in the wine she has paid for and arrange some sort of treat that will be a quite impossible extravagance unless we open her purse to pay for it.’

He felt as if he had reached the point where he wanted to hit something.

It was no use saying that from the moment he married Magnolia Vandevilt her money became his, as the law decreed.

He knew he would always be conscious that, if he remonstrated or disagreed with her on any subject, she would always be able to say,

‘It is my money which is enabling you to live in your castle, my money which is paying for the servants who run it and the horses you ride and my money which provides the entertainment for your friends.’

These were the same thoughts that had bedevilled him insistently day and night and the Duke, knowing that he must relieve his feelings one way or another turned round and walked sharply back towards the stables.

He knew that only by riding both himself and his horse to the point of exhaustion would he be able to sleep tonight.

*

In the bedroom at the Savoy, which overlooked the Embankment and the Thames, that had a fairy-like quality about it now that the lights were just beginning to gleam in houses on the other side of the water, Magnolia, holding her father’s hand tightly in hers. asked,

“How do you feel, Papa?”

“Not too bad,” her father replied. “I think the surgeon that Lady Edith brought here has made my leg much more comfortable and he says it is not a very bad fracture.”

“I am so glad, Papa. How could such a terrible thing have happened to you?”

“I must say I have always prided myself on my sea-legs,” Mr. Vandevilt said, “and who could suspect in that gale that a spar or whatever the thing was, would hit me and be able to do so much damage?”

He smiled before he added,

“Perhaps it is a punishment for thinking I was such an experienced traveller that I could even defy the weather!”

Magnolia’s fingers tightened on his.

“Papa, I cannot be – married without – you there.”

“I was afraid you would say that, my dearest,” he replied, “but there is no point in upsetting your mother, or indeed, as Lady Edith has pointed out, all the arrangements that have been made at The Castle.”

There was a little pause.

Then Magnolia said in a voice he could hardly hear,

“I-I cannot – face the – Duke without – you.”

Mr. Vandevilt put his free hand in a consoling manner over his daughter’s.

“We have been through this before, my dearest,” he said. “I promise you things will not be as bad as you expect and you have promised me you will try to do what is right.”

“I – will try – Papa, but it is not – going to be – easy.”

“I think you should look on this as a challenge. Something you must tackle and win!”

Magnolia gave a deep sigh.

“I love you, Papa! If only we could have a few more years – together.”

She bent her head as she spoke and therefore did not see the sudden pain in her father’s eyes.

Apart from his pictures, his daughter was the only thing that mattered in his life, the only thing he really loved. He knew that if she would miss him, he would feel as if he had lost a part of himself.

Yet there was nothing he could do but persuade her to marry the man her mother had chosen for her and pray that she would not suffer in the same way as other women had suffered in arranged marriages.

Because he had been to France so often, he was aware that among his French friends their marriages were generally a mariage de convenance, based on an advantage for both parties.

What was more, in a great number of cases they turned out extremely successful and produced if not the perfect idealistic love that Magnolia wanted, at least a companionable contentment which lasted for life in a Society where Social and religious convention did not allow divorce.

Not that there was any question of Magnolia being able to obtain a divorce in England, as it was possible to in America.

There was no point in saying so, but divorce, Mr. Vandevilt knew, would in the case of the Duke, have to be approved by Parliament and a scandal was something he would never contemplate in any circumstances.

Because he wanted to comfort Magnolia and at the same time give her the courage he knew she would need, he said,

“Listen to me, my dearest. When we have talked on subjects like Oriental religions and especially Buddhism, we have both agreed that what you give to life is what you get back.”

Magnolia raised her head to look at him and when he saw that she was listening he went on,

“If you want love, you have to give love, if you hate, then you receive hatred. That is an unwritten law which exists the world over in every nation, in every culture, in every creed.”

“I know what you are trying to say to me, Papa,” Magnolia replied. “You are asking me to love a faceless man who desires only my money. I am giving him what he wants. Surely there is no need to offer him any more?”

There was a little smile on Mr. Vandevilt’s lips as he replied,

“That would be a very logical argument, my darling, if I did not know that you are deliberately trying to evade the point I am making. Let me put it very plainly – try to make your husband love you, then perhaps you will find it easy to love him in return.”

He knew from the expression on Magnolia’s face that it was something she thought would never happen and she shrank from the implications of it.

Because he was afraid to press her any further, he only added,

“Love is a strange thing. It comes sometimes when you least expect it or it grows from a small forgotten seed into something large and overwhelming. But remember this, love is what we all want, what we all need in our lives, and love, when you do find it, is worth all the pain, the sacrifice and the agony that you have suffered.”

His voice was very deep and moving.

Then as Magnolia did not answer he realised that she was crying.

CHAPTER FOUR

As the private train sped towards London, the Duke thought that he had never spent a more unpleasant and uncomfortable day.

He had not expected to enjoy his wedding, at the same time he had not anticipated it would be an occasion that made him continually grit his teeth with sheer fury.

It all started the night before when a groom had driven over from Lord Farringdon’s house with a note to say that the Vandevilt plans had been changed.

Mr. Vandevilt would after all be arriving with his wife and daughter in a private train which it had been arranged would stop at the nearest halt to Lord Farringdon’s estate.

The note also informed the Duke that dinner would have to be later than had been intended since the party escorted by Lord Farringdon could not arrive until nearly nine o’clock.

The Duke found this irritating as it meant that other relatives who were staying in the neighbourhood could not be informed of the change of hour. They would therefore arrive at The Castle just before eight and there would be a long wait before the American party appeared.

Lady Edith suspected that the reason for the change of plan was that Magnolia would not come without her father, but she did not say so

She was, however, relieved that the Duke would meet Mr. Vandevilt and hopefully find him as charming as she did, instead of being subjected exclusively to the overwhelming personality of his wife.

But even this plan went awry.

The strain of the journey caused Mr. Vandevilt so much pain that it was impossible once he had arrived at Lord Farringdon’s house for him to make the effort to drive for nearly an hour to The Castle and be present at a large dinner comprised of strangers.

Therefore, to Lady Edith’s consternation and the Duke’s annoyance, both Mr. Vandevilt and his daughter stayed away from the family dinner party.

“It certainly is a case of Hamlet without the Prince,” Lady Edith remarked wryly to one or two of the Burn relatives who had more sense of humour than the others.

But, she knew as soon as Mrs. Vandevilt walked into The Castle that, as she had expected, the Duke’s hackles rose.

Owing to the upset and undoubtedly because she was slightly on the defensive, Mrs. Vandevilt was at her very worst.

The fact that she looked in her own way magnificent did not soften the impression she made on the Burn family who, as the Duke suspected, had come prepared to criticise the bride.

Wearing a gown that had obviously cost a fortune, the design of which had originated in Paris, Mrs. Vandevilt had made the mistake of wishing to appear impressive without realising that her appearance would seem to the conventional English ostentatious if not outrageous.

The gown she wore would have been more suitable in a ballroom or on the stage of a theatre and she wore enormous diamonds that glittered in her hair, round her neck and outlined the low-cut bodice of her gown.

Her wrists were weighed down with bracelets, the rings on her fingers were dazzling and to the Duke she exemplified everything for which he had sold his title and – himself.

There was, however, nothing he could do but make a superhuman effort to be pleasant to his future mother in-law and try not to be aware that her sharp eyes were taking in every detail in The Castle that required money to be spent on it.

The evening, as far as his other guests were concerned, passed off well, owing the Duke thought afterwards, to the fact that while they were waiting for Lord Farringdon’s party to arrive the amount of champagne they consumed was considerable.

When finally at what seemed a very late hour dinner was over and the gentlemen joined the ladies in the drawing room, relatives who lived some distance from The Castle started to make their farewells.

“I shall be looking forward to meeting your future wife tomorrow, Seldon,” they all said in one way or another to the Duke.

He thought there was a slight note of commiseration in their voices, which he instantly resented.

Lady Edith could have related how overwhelming Mrs. Vandevilt had been when the ladies had retired to the drawing room while the gentlemen drank their port.

Instead of being quietly pleasant to the older women in the family, she had gone out of her way to impress them by boasting of her husband’s wealth and possessions, of the unassailable Social position the Vandevilts held in New York and the fortune that Magnolia was bringing into their family.

She left them in no doubt who would provide the money to pay for the repairs to The Castle and to the estate and redeem the debts incurred by the late Duke.

His prodigality was something of which not only his son but also his relatives were deeply ashamed, and the fact that a stranger was confronting them, as it were, with the bills made it worse.

Only when the front door had closed behind Mrs. Vandevilt and she was carried away from The Castle in Lord Farringdon’s carriage, did Lady Edith draw a deep sigh of relief.

She knew, however, by the expression on the Duke’s face what he was feeling and she had no intention of discussing it with him.

“I am tired and tomorrow will be another tiring day,” she said. “I am going straight to bed. Goodnight, Seldon.”

“Goodnight, Edith!”

He had walked away without another word and she had known by his voice that the depression encompassing him was like a black cloud.

He sat for a long time in the library before finally going up to bed and even then he thought it unlikely he would sleep.

He had actually fallen into a doze and his troubles had receded for the moment into an indecisive mist, when he was awoken by the sound of voices, hammering and the movement of people.

For a moment it flashed through his mind that burglars were attempting to steal the presents.

Then he was aware that no self-respecting burglar would create enough noise to draw attention to himself and remembered vaguely that Lady Edith had said that the private train which had brought the Vandevilts down from London had also carried the presents, which would be arriving early in the morning at The Castle.

The Duke looked at the clock by his bed and saw that it was not yet five o’clock. Mrs. Vandevilt’s employees, he thought, started work earlier than their English counterparts.

When finally he rose finding it impossible to rest with such a commotion going on, let alone sleep, he found to his astonishment that a positive army of men was invading The Castle and a gang of workmen was erecting in the garden something that looked like a huge crown of flowers.

He thought it quite unnecessary that the Vandevilts should wish to add to the flowers that were there already, which being natural to their surroundings made a most attractive picture.

But he told himself it would be foolish to criticise or alter any arrangements of his future in-laws.

At the same time he thought angrily that he should have been consulted.

The bower of flowers was being erected outside the rooms where the Reception was to take place and in the centre of the lawn where the guests would, if it was a fine day, walk and talk in the sunshine.

But, as the day proceeded, this was just one of the innumerable irritations that occurred.

The Duke discovered too late to countermand the order, that champagne, in fact innumerable cases of it, was being supplied to the employees and tenant farmers in the tithe barn, for whom he had already ordered beer and cider.

It was an expensive addition to the menu that the Duke could not afford and also he knew that as the majority of them were not used to drinking it, they would inevitably become quite unnecessarily drunk.

In addition he was astonished to find that, inside The Castle, Mrs. Vandevilt had arranged for huge wreaths of flowers to be affixed to the staircase in the hall.

Most of the reception rooms were literally smothered in white blossoms in such profusion that they obscured the pictures and even the furniture itself.

When he dressed, he put on his uniform for what he thought would be the last time.

This added to his depression, for he had delayed sending in his formal resignation just in case his marriage fell through and he could continue to be a soldier.

Now the life he had organised was closed to him forever and it did not make his future seem any brighter

But it was when the Duke realised how many photographers and reporters there were, easing their way in his own words ‘into every nook and cranny of The Castle’ that his anger finally spilt over.

“What the devil are all those newspaper men doing here?” he demanded of Lady Edith, and her answer did nothing to soothe his feelings.

“I was afraid you would be annoyed, Seldon.”

“Annoyed?” the Duke almost shouted. “Do you know, I found two of them in my bedroom a few minutes ago, photographing the bed and they asked me if that was where I intended to sleep with my bride!”

“I am sorry, Seldon.”

“Is that all you can say?” the Duke enquired. “They informed me they had come from New York at the invitation of Mrs. Vandevilt. I told them what I thought of their behaviour and they wrote it down in their notebooks!”

“I am afraid that Mrs. Vandevilt wants the wedding to be very fully publicised,” Lady Edith said meekly, “but I am sure that nothing of that sort will appear in an English newspaper.”

The Duke glared at her as if he was bereft of words.

Then he said,

“This whole thing makes me sick. I deliberately insisted on being married in England so that I could avoid this type of vulgarity, which I find degrading both to me and to the family.”

“I agree with you,” Lady Edith said, “and I can only say again how sorry I am. I had no idea, I promise you, that Mrs. Vandevilt would bring reporters over with her.”

The Duke made an exclamation that was untranslatable and walked out of the room.

Lady Edith looked out of the window at the workmen on the lawn with an anxious expression in her eyes.

There was every need for her to be anxious.

*

When the bride and bridegroom had finished receiving the long line of guests that had filtered from the hall, through the drawing room and out into the garden, it was to the Duke the climax of an intolerable afternoon.

Because it was such a lovely day and there seemed to be more guests than expected, Lady Edith had arranged at the last moment for the wedding cake, or rather cakes, to be brought from the dining room into the garden.

This in itself was another irritation to the Duke. When he had seen the cake that Mrs. Vandevilt had brought with her from New York, it had been difficult for Lady Edith to restrain him from having it removed and thrown away.

The cooks at The Castle had worked day and night to produce the sort of cake that had always graced a family wedding.

With three tiers it had been made from an old recipe and the icing skilfully applied portrayed the family crest which was a raised hand holding a sword and the same crest cleverly modelled in sugar surmounted the top tier of the cake.

The Duke had warmly congratulated the cooks when they had shown it to him and said to their delight that he considered it such a work of art that it was almost a pity that it had to be demolished.

“They’ll enjoy eatin’ it all the same, Master Seldon – I means Your Grace!” the oldest of them said who had been at The Castle for over forty years.

The Duke had smiled and said that he was looking forward to eating a piece himself and he knew that everybody concerned was delighted at his praise.

Later in the day when proceeding into the garden to cut the cake in the traditional fashion with his sword, he saw not only the cake that had been baked at The Castle waiting for him and his bride, but also the other which, when he had been shown it earlier, he had considered such a vulgar monstrosity that his first intention had been to have it destroyed.

Instead he was forced to cut both cakes and it was no consolation to find that the one from America was commanding the most attention from his guests.

This was because it consisted not of three tiers but of seven and the bottom one was as large as a cartwheel.

There was certainly nothing refined in its decoration, which consisted of lucky horseshoes, tufts of white heather and a profusion of silver bells. It was surmounted on top by two dolls, one dressed, it seemed to the Duke, entirely in diamonds, the other in a parody of his Regimental uniform.

It was when the cakes were cut and pieces of them were being distributed to the guests that a Toast Master who the Duke had not previously realised was there and who had obviously been imported by Mrs. Vandevilt called for attention.

Speaking with an American nasal accent, he commanded everyone to drink the health of the bride and bridegroom.

Then, as they obediently raised their glasses, there was a sudden explosion that seemed to shake the windows of The Castle behind them. The bower of roses in the centre of the lawn opened and out of it shot a huge bird high into the air from which fell ten thousand red roses.

The confusion caused by the noise and the exclamations of fear from some of the elderly turned into what the Duke thought a murmur of contempt at an exhibition that obviously had been planned entirely for publicity.

He saw the excitement among the photographers with their cameras and the reporters with their notebooks and knew, whatever Lady Edith might say, this would undoubtedly be an item for the English papers as well as for the American.

Only years of self-control prevented the Duke from saying what he thought of so vulgar an innovation.

When finally he and his bride drove away from The Castle in an open carriage bombarded with flower-petals supplied by Mrs. Vandevilt, drawn by horses decorated with wreaths of roses, he felt he had passed through a maelstrom of horror and indignity that he would never forget.

The ordeal however was not yet over, for the drive to the station took them through a small village which was part of the estate, where they passed under an arch decorated with bunting, flowers and flags.

The carriage was brought to a standstill while the Duke received an address from the oldest inhabitant, while Magnolia was presented with a bouquet from a small child who was unwilling at the last moment to relinquish it.

When they reached the station, the Duke saw apprehensively that there was a crowd outside it and what he thought were more decorations than were fitting.

“Let’s hope this is the last reception we have to endure,” he remarked sharply.

He realised as he spoke that it was the first time he had addressed his bride since they left The Castle.

He had, in fact, not looked at her, either when she joined him at the altar or when they walked together the short distance from the Church to The Castle.

The Church was so near that it would have been ridiculous to drive on a fine day and the Duke with Magnolia on his arm had set off briskly up the gravel path which had mysteriously been covered with a red carpet.

It was only when he found that his wife had difficulty in keeping up with him that he was aware that what he thought was her ridiculously long train was being carried by three small pages dressed in white satin Court dress of the time of Louis XIV.

The train was obviously far too heavy for them and the mothers of two of the little boys were assisting them to keep if off the ground.

The Duke supposed that Lady Edith had provided the pages, whose mothers he recognised as his relatives.

The train that was impeding their progress was, however, undoubtedly American and he disliked it like everything else that had transformed the simple wedding service he had envisaged into something very different.

For one thing, again he supposed on Mrs. Vandevilt’s insistence, a Bishop, assisted by four other Clergy, had married them.

As the Church was small, there were far too many Priests congregated around the altar, and similarly the choir stalls were filled to overflowing with a choir that had been brought from London to augment the villagers whose usual duty it was to perform at weddings and funerals.

That they sang like angels did nothing to mitigate the Duke’s feelings that despite all his efforts the wedding had become a peep show.

Enormous arrangements of lilies filled the Chancel and every pew had bunches of flowers affixed to them with long white ribbon bows trailing to the ground with a very theatrical effect.

They reached the station and the Duke thought he might have expected that the small platform that was little more than a halt for The Castle should be covered with a red carpet with huge bowls of lilies set outside the entrance, and inevitably, framed in flowers, were the American photographers and a large posse of journalists.

They descended on the newly married couple like a swarm of bees

The Duke was bombarded with questions and he heard his wife attempting to answer what seemed to him to be extremely impertinent ones in a soft, rather frightened voice.

Fortunately the private train, which had brought the Vandevilts from London, was waiting for them and the Duke pushed Magnolia through the photographers and into the compartment, instructing the attendant to keep everybody out.

The doors were shut, but the cameras were at the windows and so were the faces of their persecutors.

The Duke indicated the seats on the far side of the carriage.

“I suggest,” he said, “that we sit over here and keep our backs towards them. There is little they can do then.”

Magnolia obeyed him without replying.

At last, to the Duke’s relief, the train started and amid cheers and waving hands moved slowly out of the station.

It was then he exploded, as if the words burst through the control that he had exerted all day,

“I never in my life thought I would be subjected to such a disgusting display of vulgarity!”

He rose as he spoke and walked out of what was the drawing room carriage of the train to find his way to another compartment where he could be alone.

It did not assuage his temper to discover that the train was larger than he had expected, and quite a number of the photographers and journalists were fellow travellers.

Because he had no wish to involve himself with them, knowing that anything he said would be taken down and used in their newspapers, the Duke returned to the compartment he had just left.

He saw that his wife, who had been staring out of the window, quickly opened a magazine when he appeared.

He therefore made no effort to sit in an armchair either near or opposite her, but sat down on the other side of the coach and picked up a newspaper.

They travelled for a little while in silence, then Stewards came in to offer them food and drink.

The Duke now realised that he must behave in a civilised manner, whatever he might think of his wife and her mother’s arrangements.

He had only been able to have a few words with Mr. Vandevilt, who had been brought to The Castle in Lord Farringdon’s carriage just before the wedding.

His quiet cultured voice without a trace of an accent, his handsome appearance and the manner in which he greeted his future son-in-law told the Duke that here was a man he could like and respect.

He had always prided himself on being a good judge of character and he knew the moment he met Mr. Vandevilt that he was very different in every way from his wife.

There had unfortunately been no time for conversation and almost as soon as he arrived, Mr. Vandevilt had been taken from The Castle to the Church in a wheelchair where he was to watch Lord Farringdon bring his daughter up the aisle in his place.

Now as a Steward arranged a table in front of Magnolia and placed upon it sandwiches, cakes and biscuits, besides tea that she had obviously asked for, the Duke crossed the carriage to sit down opposite her.

“I suspect,” he said in what he hoped was a pleasant tone, “that you and I were the only people at the Reception who had nothing to eat or drink.”

There was a little pause before Magnolia answered him and because her head was bent it was difficult for the Duke to see her face.

He knew when they were being married, that he had been afraid of seeing what she looked like.

Last night, after Mrs. Vandevilt had left, he had known that if his wife was like her mother, it would be impossible for him to contemplate the horror his married life would be.

Now, as if she forced herself to do so, Magnolia raised her head and he saw that she was in fact very different from what he had feared.

To begin with, she was very slight and her face was thin and had somehow a fragile look about it, dominated by her eyes.

They were very large and he was not sure whether they were blue or grey, but one thing was very obvious, she was frightened.

The pupils were dilated and there was an expression on her face that told the Duke that she was looking at him, as he told himself, although he could hardly believe it, with an unmistakable expression of terror.

Then, having looked at him, her eyes flickered and her eyelashes were dark against her pale cheeks as she said, although he could hardly hear it.

“I-I am afraid you must have – been upset by the – explosion of roses.”

It struck the Duke before he answered her that her voice was also very different from what he had expected, being soft and musical and like her father she had no accent.

“It was not something that should happen at a wedding in England,” he said before he could stop himself.

He only realised after the words had been said that he had spoken sharply in the same way as he might have addressed a recalcitrant soldier or a servant he was reprimanding.

“I-I am – sorry.”

Once again the words were faint, but he could hear them.

“I don’t suppose it was your fault,” he said, and thought even to himself it sounded somewhat patronising.

“Mama did not – tell me what she had planned – but I – knew when it happened that it – annoyed you.”

The Duke felt that was an understatement, but nothing he could say now could undo what had been done. He was only too well aware what his relatives would say and the amusement it would cause amongst his neighbours.

Because he thought it would be a mistake to express any farther his feelings in the matter or about any of his mother-in-law’s other arrangements at the wedding which was now over, he picked up the glass of champagne which the Steward had poured out for him, without his really being aware of it, and drank it.

He noticed that his wife sipped some tea, but ate nothing.

Because he still felt angry he thought that food would choke him, but he deliberately ate a cucumber sandwich as if he felt that to do something ordinary and normal might help him to control the temper he felt rising within him like a tide that nothing could suppress or turn back.

After a moment he was calm enough to say,

“I expect you are tired, but the railway has made the journey to London far quicker than it was, so we should be at Otterburn House by about eight o’clock.”

“That – will be very – nice.”

Magnolia had once again dropped her head, so that it was impossible for the Duke to see her face.

He decided she must be shy and supposed it must be an ordeal for any women to be married to a man she had never even seen until she walked up the aisle.

Yet that was her choice, not his, and he hoped that she would become more conversational later on. If not, he was appalled by the future.

He tried to think of something to say to ease what was obviously a tension between them, but decided it was too difficult to talk above the noise of the train.

A Steward then appeared to ask if there was anything else they required and, having refused another glass of champagne, the Duke, while the tea was being cleared from in front of Magnolia, moved to the other side of the carriage.

He picked up a newspaper and attempted to read it, but all the time he was conscious that he was married and there was nothing he could do about it, however disagreeable he might find it.

As they journeyed on, it seemed to him that the wheels beneath him were laughing at his discomfort, but at the same time telling him that his financial difficulties were at an end and, however unpleasant he might find his wife, his other problems had disappeared.

As the daylight began to fade, the Duke found his head nodding and knew that his lack of sleep last night was beginning to take its toll of him.

He shut his eyes and awoke with a start as a Steward said at his side,

“We’re just coming into the station, Your Grace. The carriage’ll be waiting.”

With an effort the Duke remembered where he was.

“Thank you.”

He glanced across the compartment and saw the back of his wife’s head as she stared out of the window. She was sitting upright and he wondered what she had thought about his inattention and lack of any effort to entertain her.

However, there was nothing he could do about it now, except to make amends by saying as the Steward left them,

“You must forgive me for sleeping, but I was in fact awake most of last night.”

“I – understand,” Magnolia answered. “I – also found it – difficult to – sleep.”

The Duke was saved from having to reply by the fact that the train drew up at the platform and the Station Master, resplendent in gold braid and top hat was waiting to welcome them.

After receiving somewhat fulsome congratulations on their marriage, they were escorted to where the town carriage drawn by extremely fine horses that had belonged to his father, was waiting at the main entrance.

There a small child, who the Duke learned was the Station Master’s daughter, presented Magnolia with another bouquet and there were quite a number of officials to shake hands with, who had also brought their wives to stare at the bride.

Finally they drove away and now the Duke thought with a feeling of relief that there were only the servants at Otterburn House left to greet them, after which they could cease being offered any further expressions of goodwill.

“We will have a meal as soon as you are ready,” he remarked, as they set off from the station. “I understand that your lady’s maid and my valet left with the luggage early this afternoon, so that everything should be in readiness for us.”

Magnolia inclined her head, but she did not reply and the Duke went on,

“Tomorrow we have to leave early to catch the boat-train to Dover.”

He thought as he spoke it sounded as if he was going to suggest that they both had a good night’s sleep.

Then he remembered it was his wedding night.

The thought of this made him feel that he was in a trap that had been baited for him skilfully from the moment he knew of his father’s debts and which now snapped shut and there was no escape.

Just for a moment he recoiled from the whole implication of it.

Then he told himself that whatever else might be involved in this flamboyant and unpleasant wedding, he himself would behave like a gentleman and do what was expected of him.

It was a sentiment he reiterated in his mind as he was changing for dinner, but which made him feel grateful for the champagne he was offered when he descended to the drawing room just before the clock in the hall struck nine.

The room was decorated with white flowers and he hoped irrepressibly he would never again see so many white flowers, until he was comfortably in his grave.

Then he told himself that if he had disliked his wedding, for his wife it had presumably been an enjoyable experience and the least he could do would be to avoid depressing her with his reactions.

As he thought of her, Magnolia came into the room.

She was wearing a very beautiful gown, although the Duke thought she was slightly overdressed for an evening alone with him.

He hoped that in a few years she would not look like her mother and he thought that if she attempted to do so, he would have to do everything in his power to prevent it.

Now, as she walked towards him, he realised that she was much more slender than he had expected and she also moved with a grace unusual in such a young girl.

She might almost have been a ballerina, he thought, and wondered if in America girls took ballet lessons as part of their education.

Without looking directly at her, he said,

“I expect you are tired and would like a glass of champagne. It has been a very long day for both of us.

“Thank – you.”

He thought there was a tremor on the words, as if she was shy or frightened.

She accepted the glass he handed her.

Then, as she took it, he saw to his surprise that she was trembling and he thought that her fingers held the glass very tightly as if she was afraid she might spill the contents or even drop it.

“Come and sit down,” he suggested. “You must have been standing for hours while we shook hands with that endless stream of guests.’

Magnolia sat as he suggested.

As she sipped the champagne, he looked down at her and realised for the first time that her hair was so fair that it had little silver lights in it.

It was something he had never noticed in another woman’s hair and he saw too that the skin on her hands was very white and clear.

Before he had a chance to see her face, dinner was announced and, as Magnolia rose and put down her glass of champagne, he offered her his arm.

He had a feeling that she hesitated for a moment before she laid her fingers very lightly on it.

Then, as they moved towards the dining room, the Duke was quite certain that he was right and that she was afraid.

He thought it strange and then substituted the word ‘shy’ for ‘afraid’.

Of course she was shy! Any girl finding herself alone for the first time in her life with a man whom she had never met before but whose name she now bore would be shy!

The dining room table was also decorated with white flowers, but they were not overwhelmingly prominent amongst the gold candelabra and goblets, which were very old. They were something the Duke was certain his wife, as an American would appreciate.

Then he remembered the conversation he had with Mrs. Vandevilt at dinner last night, in which she had made it clear that whatever possessions he might have, she and her husband had more and better because they had ransacked the storehouses of Europe to furnish their own houses.

Lady Edith had described to the Duke in great detail Mr. Vandevilt’s collection of pictures.

But Mrs. Vandevilt had not minced her words in describing the statuary, the gilt wood furniture and the tapestries, all of which she assured the Duke had a history twice as long as any possessed by the Otterburns.       

Because it was in his mind, he said to Magnolia,

“I wonder, as your father collects pictures and your mother collects antiques, if you are a collector too?”

There was a pause before she replied,

“If I collect anything – it is books.”

“Books?” the Duke questioned. “Do you mean first editions?”

“No, books to read.”

Her answer surprised him and he asked,

“What subjects do you enjoy or do you prefer novels?”

He thought there was a faint smile on her lips as she replied,

“I like any books. They are the only way that I have been able to – escape.”

“Escape? From what?”

“From the – life I have – lived.”

The Duke was puzzled.

“I don’t understand.”

“Why should you? But I suppose it is – ungrateful of me to think – like that.”

“Think like what?”

“That I have been in a – prison.”

“Did I hear you right?” the Duke queried. “You tell me you were a prisoner. Do you mean at home, or at school?”

Magnolia shook her head.

“I did not mean to become involved with explanations. When you asked me what I collected, I replied ‘books’, because in that way I can travel and explore the world.”

“Are you telling me that is something you have not done otherwise?”

“No, of course not.”

“Why not?”

“Because – I am who I – am.”

“I suppose I am being rather obtuse, but I still do not understand. I imagined that you could have everything you wanted.”

He thought it was unnecessary to add, ‘with your money’, but that was obvious unless she was really stupid.

“It is boring talking about – myself,” Magnolia said unexpectedly. “Will you tell me instead about your life in India? That is a place I would very much like to visit.”

“You have left it a little late,” the Duke replied. “You should have gone out there as a young girl and enjoyed the balls that take place in the hill stations and the excitement of being one woman amongst a great number of men.”

“I would never have been allowed to do that! What I would have liked to see in India would have been the Temples and the people. I knew when Papa and I studied Buddhism that here was a place I would really like to visit.”

“You have studied Buddhism?”

“We read also a great deal about Hinduism. But it was Buddhism which I found the more interesting and the more helpful.”

“Helpful in what way?”

“In learning how to live.”

Magnolia spoke quite simply and without pretension.

Then she said with a little sigh,

“I want you to tell me what you found in India.”

The Duke was aware that he had expected to tell her about the beauty of the Taj Mahal, the appearance of the Red Fort at Delhi, the crowds of pilgrims by the Ganges.

Instead he said,

“I am surprised that you are interested in Buddhism. I always felt that because it was so unemotional and perhaps in a way difficult to understand it was much more a man’s religion than a woman’s.”

He thought Magnolia smiled, but her face was turned away from him as she said,

“That is obviously a man’s point of view about all religions, but women, I think, need the calmness and the inevitability which is very much part of Buddhism.”

The Duke was astonished.

He never in his life remembered talking to any woman about the religions of the East and it was certainly something he had never expected to do with a young girl – and an American one at that!

“I know many of the Buddhists teachers and Priests feel – ” he began.

Then he was describing to her the men he had met on his travels, men who he had sensed had hidden powers, men who brought solace and healing to all those with whom they came in contact.

He talked for quite a long time, because he realised that Magnolia was listening with rapt attention to everything he said.

When finally dinner was at an end and they rose to leave the dining room, he was aware that once again she was frightened.

They walked back to the drawing room and the Duke said looking with slight surprise at the clock on the mantelpiece,

“I see it is growing late and I think that, as your maid will be waiting up for you, you would be wise to retire. As I have already said, we have to leave early tomorrow morning.”

“Yes – that would be a – good idea,” Magnolia agreed.

They had only just entered the drawing room and now the Duke moved back into the hall with Magnolia beside him.

She paused at the foot of the stairs and he thought she was about to say something. Then without a word she put her hand on the banister to walk up.

He expected her to look back, but she did not do so and, when she reached the top, he returned to the drawing room.

He was aware that the evening had been very different from what he had expected, but whether it was better or worse he could not decide.

He only knew that for the moment he did not hate his wife as violently as he had done earlier in the day – then he reminded himself with a feeling of resignation that the night was not yet over.

It was his wedding night, and he was a bridegroom.

He walked up the stairs to his own room where his valet was waiting. As he undressed because he thought to say nothing seemed unnatural, the Duke enquired,

“Is everything ready for the morning, Jarvis?”

He actually knew the answer before he asked the question.

“Yes, Your Grace, and the luggage’ll go ahead. I’ve only to pack the things you’ll use tonight.”

“That is good. We don’t want a rush.”

“No, Your Grace.”

“Goodnight, Jarvis.”

“Goodnight, Your Grace.”

The valet left the room and the Duke, wearing a long robe over his nightshirt, walked to the window.

He drew back the curtains and stood looking out at the trees in Hyde Park.

The shadows beneath seemed dark and mysterious, but the sky overhead was alight with stars and the Duke had a longing to walk, as he would have done at The Castle, across the grass and to feel free and unrestrained.

Then he told himself that he had saved The Castle by sacrificing his freedom and it was something he had resented from the day he had learned everything about the bargain he had made.

The meaning of all that had occurred seemed to surge over him and he was drowning in the feelings of hatred and disgust that had coursed through him when he saw the huge wedding cake and heard the explosion that had brought a shower of red roses falling onto the heads of the unsuspecting guests.

‘Could anything have been more unsuitable at an English wedding in an English garden?’ he asked himself.

He had found himself, as he watched, clenching his fingers together until his nails hurt the palms of his hands.

It was only with the greatest difficulty that he had prevented himself from telling Mrs. Vandevilt, as she stood with an expression of triumph on her face, what he thought of her and her ideas.

Now he reckoned that by refraining he had behaved with a gentlemanly restraint and the final part of his duty was waiting for him.

He would be expected to contribute his ‘pound of flesh’ down to the very last ounce.

He felt for a moment a throbbing in his head, as if he must revolt against what was expected of him and against what he had contracted to do.

But there was no appeal.

It was as clear as if it had been written on the documents he had signed which had been countersigned both by Mr. and Mrs. Vandevilt.

Documents that had given him the handling of such an immense sum of money that he wondered whether, if he did everything that was necessary for the estates, The Castle and all his other possessions, he would spend even a tenth of what his wife had brought him on their marriage.

His wife!

He still, although he had sat opposite her and talked to her, could hardly visualise what she looked like.

It seemed, looking back, as if he had seen her face only vaguely through a mist when she had looked at him and he had known that she was afraid

After that she had always managed somehow to keep her head bent or else turned away from him and now he thought that her profile was another thing that was different from what he had expected.

The small delicate nose, the softly pointed chin, the curved lips that he fancied trembled.

Why should she be afraid and of what?

He had always understood that American girls were positive and independent with strong ideas of their own, very different from the sheltered gauche English variety, who were not allowed out of the schoolroom until they made their debut.

Of course he must have been mistaken in thinking that Magnolia was afraid. Perhaps she was trembling because she felt ill. With her millions behind her there was nothing to make her afraid, except the collapse of the American economy, which was very unlikely ever to happen.

His mind was far away and he had no idea how long he had been standing looking out onto the green leaves of Hyde Park.

Then he braced his shoulders, almost as if he was a soldier going on parade, and walked to the communicating door that opened from his bedroom into a small passage leading into Magnolia’s bedroom.

With a sigh of resignation, the Duke opened the door and walked a few steps into the passage and put his hand onto the door that led into the next door room.

He turned the handle gently, then more firmly.

The door would not open.

It struck him that perhaps the servants had been foolish enough to leave it locked, as it had been in the past, when visitors had used these rooms during his father’s lifetime.

The Duke therefore went back into his own room to open the door onto the passage. To the right there was the outside door into Magnolia’s room.

He turned the handle, thinking he must apologise for the inadequacy of his staff, but as he did so, he found that that door too would not open.

He tried it again until he was unmistakably aware that the door was locked.

This was something he had not expected and now it struck him that perhaps Magnolia’s fear was of him as a man.

For some seconds the Duke stood looking at the door, wondering what he should do.

Then, as if he could find no answer to his question, he walked not back into his own bedroom but slowly down the front stairs.

There was nobody on duty in the hall, because the Duke had learned from the butler that it had been an arrangement during his father’s time that when the last person in the house had retired the footman on duty could also go to bed.

“I don’t know if it’s something, Your Grace would like to continue?” the butler had asked a little anxiously.

“I find it an eminently sensible one,” the Duke replied. “I see no point in keeping the footmen up all night. There are nightwatchmen?”

“Yes, of course, Your Grace. They go round the house every hour.”

“You may make what arrangements you think best,” the Duke suggested with a smile.

The house was very quiet and he walked not into the drawing room, but to the library that also opened out of the hall.

The lights had been extinguished, but, by the light from candles in the sconces in the hall, he could see his way to the desk.

He lit the candelabrum that stood on it, the three candles enabling him to see his way to the grog tray in the corner of the room.

He was in need of a drink, hoping it would help him to think what he should say to his wife in the morning.

‘Surely,’ he asked himself, ‘she does not intend to keep me at arm’s length and start off our married life in what would obviously be an abnormal and unusual manner?’

With the glass in his hand, the Duke drew back one of the curtains over the windows and opened the casement as if he was in need of air.

Now he was looking not at Hyde Park but onto the garden at the back of the house.

It was not very large, but it contained several fine trees and the gardeners who tended it had ensured that it was regularly ablaze with flowers although they were impossible to see at this time of the night.

The starlight seemed to give the trees a mystery the Duke thought echoed his own life at the moment.

How could he have imagined, how could he have thought for one moment, that his wife, who was so eager for his title, would lock her door against him – and not one door, but two?

He thought with a faintly wry smile that it was the first time any woman in whom he was interested had locked her door against him.

That was why it had surprised him.

Always before, bedroom doors, if not wide open, were very easy to manipulate, after which there had been somebody warm, eager and passionate waiting for his arms, a face turned up to his and lips hungry for his kisses.

‘Now what am I to do?’ the Duke asked.

As the question repeated itself, he was suddenly aware of a sound behind him.

He had left the door open and, by turning round, he could see part of the hall and the staircase and now he was aware that there was someone on the stairs.

For a moment there was only a shadow, then as the shadow moved, the Duke knew that his wife was moving slowly and on tiptoe down the stairs, so softly that if he had not been particularly alert and keen of hearing he would not have heard her

Still moving very slowly and surreptitiously she reached the hall.

Because she was now out of sight, the Duke turned from the window to walk nearer to the door to see what she was doing.

If she had come in search of him, she was certainly behaving as if she did not wish to be seen or heard.

Then, still in the room, he realised that she was not looking for him, but was in fact standing at the front door trying to open it.

CHAPTER FIVE

Slowly, because he was not quite certain what he should do about it, the Duke moved quietly into the hall.

Only when using all her strength and both hands, Magnolia was still unable to move the bolt at the top of the door, did he say,

“Perhaps I can help you.”

If he had fired a pistol, she could not have seemed more startled. She appeared almost to jump into the air before she turned round to stare at him, her eyes seeming to fill her whole face with terror at his appearance.

The Duke saw that she was wearing a dark gown and over it a long cloak trimmed and lined with ermine. She had a small, comparatively plain bonnet on her head, and beneath it her hair with its strange streaks of silver looked very unusual and, if he had thought about it, very lovely.

As she was obviously stricken into silence, he asked,

“May I, as your husband, know where you are going?”

There was a long pause before in a voice that trembled so much that it sounded as if it was strangled in her throat, Magnolia managed to murmur,

“A-away!”

“That is obvious,” the Duke replied coldly, “and I imagine someone is waiting for you outside.”

“N-no – !”

“You really mean there is no one?”

“No – of course – not – ”

“Am I to understand,” he asked, deliberately keeping his voice very quiet and calm, “that you are going out into the street alone? Where to?”

Again there was a pause before she replied almost as if she was reluctant to answer him,

“I-I don’t – know.”

The Duke looked at her as if he felt she could not be telling the truth.

Her eyes in the light from the candles in the sconces revealed only that she was frightened to the point of immobility and he realised that she had not moved since first he had spoken to her.

He looked down at her feet and saw there was a leather box that she must have placed on the floor before she tried to move the bolt on the door.

It was a very expensive looking box and he suspected it held her jewels.

Again quietly, so as not to frighten her more than she was already, he suggested,

“Suppose we sit down and you explain to me what is happening, and why you feel you have to leave me?”

She made a little convulsive movement and he thought that she was going to refuse.

Then, as if she was too helpless to do anything but obey him, she moved a trifle and the Duke walked forward to pick up the jewel case.

Carrying it, he walked back into the room where he had been when she came down the stairs and was aware as he did so, that she was following him.

He set the jewel case down on the desk and, as she stood indecisively in the doorway, he said in quite an ordinary casual tone,

“This room seems rather cold. I think I should light the fire.”

He took a spill as he spoke from the place where they were kept on the mantelpiece, lit it from one the candles on his desk and applied it to the fire.

As the flames burnt the white paper against which the wood and coal were laid, he rose again to his feet to see that Magnolia was still standing by the doorway.

“Come and sit down,” he said invitingly.

As she obeyed him, he lit four more candles, two on each side of the mantelshelf.

She sat down in an armchair and the Duke first crossed the room to close the door she had left open. Then he turned to sit opposite her on the other side of the hearthrug.

The flames from the fire illuminated her face and he saw she was very pale as she stared at the fire, her fingers clasped tightly in her lap.

The Duke knew that this was to stop them from trembling.

There was a silence while he wondered what he should say to her and how he could persuade her to tell him the truth.

Then at last when he realised she was waiting for him to speak, he said,

“You have just told me that you have no idea where you are going. If that is true, how could you possibly manage alone in a country in which you are a stranger?”

“I-I thought I could hide somewhere where – no one could – find me.”

“I suppose by ‘no one’ you mean me.”

“And – Mama.”

He hardly heard the words, but they were spoken.

“Now that you are a married woman, your mother is no longer responsible for you,” the Duke said. “But I am and you must be aware what a commotion there would be if the day after our marriage you vanished.”

“I – thought you would be – glad.”

Magnolia was not looking at him as she spoke, but was still staring at the fire.

He thought there was for a moment a faint flush on her cheeks as she said the words.

“I should not be glad,” the Duke answered her quietly, “but extremely perturbed, worried and upset.”

He felt that she did not believe him and he went on,

“Surely you must be aware of the danger you might encounter?”

As he spoke he wondered how he could explain to her that if, as he suspected, the leather case contained jewels, both that and her expensive fur-lined cloak would doubtless be stolen from her before she reached the end of Park Lane.

If thieves did not attack her, then undoubtedly it would be by the women who were always lurking about the streets at this time of the night.

“I-I want to – go away!”

The words, spoken a little louder and more positively than she had spoken until now, seemed to burst from her lips.

“But why?”

“Because I don’t – want to be your – wife – and you – hate me!”

The Duke was surprised and now, as he did not answer, Magnolia turned her head to look at him. Once again he saw the terror in her eyes as she murmured,

“I knew it in the – Church, in the garden and in the train. It was almost as if you were – saying it out loud.”

This was indisputable and the Duke was for the moment astonished into silence and, as he felt for words, Magnolia went on hurriedly,

“Let me go – please – let me go away – and find somewhere where I can – live quietly. You can – keep my money – all of it – but as you don’t want me – I cannot – stay with you – let me go!”

Her voice was very insistent, at the same time pathetic and the Duke said,

“You must be intelligent enough to realise that it is not as easy as that. If I have upset you today, then I can only apologise.”

“I thought Mama’s – arrangements would annoy you,” Magnolia said, “but neither Papa nor I had any – idea of what she had – planned.”

“I was annoyed,” the Duke admitted, “because I thought as we were being married in England that it would be a quiet private ceremony for ourselves, our relatives and our friends.”

“I – know,” Magnolia said with what sounded like a sob in her voice, “but Mama would have – found that very – dull, because there would have been – nothing for the Press to – write about and she wanted everybody to know I had married a – Duke.”

There was something in the way she said the last word that made the Duke ask inquisitively,

“And you did not wish to marry one?”

“No – of course not!” Magnolia replied. “I had no wish to marry anybody – except – ”

She paused and after a moment the Duke enquired,

“Except who?”

He thought she was not going to answer him, but now she looked away from him again and after a moment she replied,

“Somebody who – loved me – and, as no one can – ever do that – I had no wish to be – married.”

“I don’t understand,” the Duke said, bemused.

Magnolia made a little gesture with one hand and then, because it was obvious that her fingers were still trembling, she clasped them once again in her lap.

“Please explain what you mean.”

He spoke coaxingly, as he would have done to a child, and he thought as he did so, that there was something very childlike about Magnolia.

She seemed very immature as she sat upright on the edge of the chair and he could see the delicacy of her profile silhouetted against the marble mantelshelf.

“After I left – school,” she muttered, “I realised that Mama was – planning to – marry me to somebody very important – and Papa explained that no one of whom he would – approve would wish to – marry me because I am so rich.”

Her voice deepened on the word.

Then with an effort she went on,

“He – persuaded me that if I did not – marry you, there would always be – somebody else who might – in fact be – worse.”

After she had spoken there was silence for a moment.

Then the Duke said,

“I had not thought about that, but I think I know what your father meant. At the same time – ” he was about to say, ‘there must be a man somewhere in the world who would marry you for yourself.’

Then he thought that because of her great wealth, Mr. Vandevilt had probably been right in thinking that the average man like himself, unless in exceptional circumstances, would have no wish for a wife who was so outrageously and enormously rich.

As if she knew what he was thinking, Magnolia said,

“Now you understand so please – let me go. I will – find somewhere – where I shall be safe – and if no one knows where I am – I can make a life of my own.”

He did not answer and she went on,

“I thought if I was near – places where there were – books, like a – library or a Museum, I would have – plenty to occupy me.”

Now she was looking at him appealingly as she begged,

“Let me go – please – please – let me go!”

The Duke thought that never in his whole life had he been confronted with quite such a difficult problem and he knew that he must handle it with the utmost tact and diplomacy.

After a moment he asked,

“You have thought of how you would keep yourself?”

“Yes – of course,” Magnolia replied. “ I am not – stupid. I have a little money with me – not very much, but my jewels are worth a great deal.”

“You intend to sell them?”

“Yes. I know I may not – get what they are really worth, but certainly – enough to – live on.”

“What I think you do not understand,” the Duke said, “is that a woman living alone would be open to a great deal of misunderstanding and insults.”

He saw Magnolia look at him in surprise.

Then she said,

“Not if I don’t – speak to anybody – and live very – quietly.”

“It is not that,” the Duke explained. “I am afraid you will find that no hotel would accept you unaccompanied, especially without proper luggage, and it is unlikely the landlord of a house or rooms would let them to a young woman with no credentials.”

He saw that this was something Magnolia had not understood or considered and after a moment she asked,

“Why should they – think there is – anything wrong? After all, even in England – women are more – emancipated now than they have – been in the past.”

“There are women like that,” the Duke conceded, “but they don’t look like you nor are they so young.”

“Then – what am I to – do?”

Again it was a cry that came from her heart and the Duke answered,

“Suppose you try staying with me?”

Instantly the fear was back in her eyes and he suggested quickly,

“We can make our own arrangements as to how to live and how we behave towards each other.”

He knew she did not understand what he was saying and went on,

“We only met today for the first time which is most unfortunate. We should have had at least a week to get to know each other before we were married.”

He saw she was listening.

“Suppose we avail ourselves not only of that week but a number of other weeks and try to see if we are suited to each other. Meantime we can be just – friends.”

“You – mean,” Magnolia said after a moment, “ that I – would not be – your wife?”

There was no doubt what she meant by the word and the tremble in her voice was very revealing.

“I propose,” the Duke said, “that from the very beginning we behave as if we were not married, but strangers who have been brought together by circumstance or Fate if you like.”

He thought she shuddered, but she did not speak and he carried on,

“We will discover whether or not we have anything in common and if there is any chance of our friendship developing into something deeper.”

“You mean – I might – fall in love with – you?” Magnolia enquired.

“It is what I hope you may do in the future.”

“I thought – you – wanted me only for my – money – not because you wanted – love.”

“I understood,” the Duke retaliated, “that you wanted me only for my title!”

“It was Mama who wanted – that,” Magnolia commented. “She would have preferred a Prince, but there was not one available.”

She spoke scathingly and the Duke remarked with a faint smile,

“I thought myself it was rather a bad exchange, but, as I was desperate, I accepted it.”

“You were – desperate for – my – money?”

“I expect you have been told that my father left such enormous debts that it meant closing The Castle and all our pensioners, besides many of the older members of the family who are dependent on me, would starve.”

Because even to speak of it upset him, there was a sharpness in his voice that made Magnolia cry,

“So, although you – hated me, you had to – marry me!”

“You appeared to have the answer to my problem. But I was hating not you, but the fact that I had to marry anyone under pressure. I too wished to fall in love.”

Magnolia’s eyes widened and he knew this was something that had never occurred to her before.

“You wanted to – marry somebody, who would – love you for – yourself?”

“Of course!” the Duke replied. “If you had no wish for a husband who wanted you only for your money, I certainly did not want a wife who is not interested in me as a man, but merely because I am a Duke.”

“There – must have been – other ways to obtain – the money,” Magnolia murmured after a moment.

“I have only been a soldier and have no other trade,” the Duke answered. “And, as you have said that to me, I shall say to you, surely you have met men who would love you for yourself?”

He thought that an expression of pain flashed across Magnolia’s face.

Then she said,

“No – no – there was – no one.”

“So, as your father said, I was the best of what was undoubtedly a bad bunch,” the Duke exclaimed. “It is a humiliating thought, even if it is the truth!”

There was a note of sarcasm in his tone, which made Magnolia look up at him nervously.

“You must be – aware that it would be – best for you to let me go somewhere so that I shall not – irritate and annoy you – and you can spend my money without – hating me.”

“I hope, if that happened,” the Duke said, “I would have the decency and sense of propriety not to touch your money, for I would not have earned it.”

“That is a very stupid – attitude.”

“Stupid or not, it is the honourable way to behave. So if you leave me, I shall be as poor as I was this morning before we were married.”

“But I want you to have my money. Besides legally it is – yours already.”

“I am not concerned with the law, but what I feel personally. We entered into a business argument, you and I – unless you honour your part of the bargain, I cannot honour mine.”

Magnolia bent forward, her lips parted as if she would argue with him.

Then she made a little helpless gesture with her hands.

“What am I to – do?” she asked. “Please – what am I to – do?”

“I think what we can both do,” the Duke said, “is to talk this over sensibly. As it is getting warm in here, I suggest you take off your cloak and your bonnet and let me give you a glass of wine.”

“No, thank you, I don’t want wine.”

“Then perhaps some lemonade?” the Duke suggested.

He rose from where he had been sitting and went to the grog tray where, as he expected, there was a small jug of homemade lemonade, which he remembered as a child had always been included amongst the other more potent drinks.

He poured out a glass and, as he took it to Magnolia, he saw that she had unfastened her cloak and let it fall on the chair behind her and was at the moment lifting her bonnet from her head.

Her hair was swept back from her forehead and arranged very simply in a knot at the back.

He was sure she must have arranged it herself after her maid had gone to bed and she had dressed again, so that she could escape from the house when everybody was asleep.

The Duke handed her the lemonade and, as she took it, he walked back to the grog tray to pour himself a brandy and soda.

He thought he needed something strong to help him cope with a situation, which he had never in his wildest dreams imagined would occur on his wedding night.

As he sat down again in the chair opposite Magnolia, he realised that, when he had handed her the glass of lemonade, she had shuddered and she had been afraid of him.

He had never imagined that he would evoke fear in any woman, although quite a number of men had shuddered when he was angry or had remonstrated with them.

The Duke sipped his brandy before he said,

“You know, Magnolia, that, if the newspapers which your mother has alerted in this country as well as in America to an awareness of our marriage, heard that you were missing or had disappeared, the whole country would be out looking for you! It would be impossible for you to hide anywhere where you would not have people hunting you as if you were a fox.”

Magnolia gave a little cry.

“You are – scaring – me!”

“I am only telling you what is the truth. And I think on the whole you must admit it would be easier and much safer for you to be with me than alone in a very strange world of which you know nothing.”

“I will  – stay if you  – promise – ”  Magnolia began.

“There is no need for me to promise,” the Duke interrupted, “when I have already given you my word. You must have heard that the word of an English gentleman is something that can be trusted, at least as far as I am concerned.”

“And – we can just – get to know each other – as you say – and you will not – touch me?”

Once again the last word was almost inaudible and the Duke knew by the way she spoke exactly what she was saying.

“ I promise that I will not touch you unless you ask me to do so and I think, Magnolia, that we must both be sensible about the extraordinary and unusual circumstances in which we have just been married.”

He now spoke more slowly,

“The first step is for us to forget the reason why we have been drawn together and accept that since for the moment it is impossible for us to separate, we have to make the best of it.”

“Does that – mean I shall have to – come away with – you tomorrow?”

“That is what has been planned, but we can stay in England if you prefer.”

He tried to sound casual.

Then she said,

“But all the – arrangements have been – made for us to go. And I would like to see the South of France.”

“It is something I should enjoy myself too.”

“You have never been there?”

“We called at Villefranche for two days in a ship that was carrying troops to Egypt.”

“Then it will be – interesting for you as well as for me.”

“Very interesting,” the Duke agreed. “And I am looking forward to seeing the yacht my father bought and which I did not even know I possessed until a few weeks ago.”

“I should like that too,” Magnolia said simply, “and I am a good sailor. Neither Papa nor I felt in the least sick during the storm in the Atlantic, while Mama and almost everybody else were very ill.”

“Then we shall certainly make use of the yacht.”

Magnolia put her glass down on the table beside her before she said,

“Perhaps I should go to – bed and – you too must be – tired.”

“Although I did sleep a little on the train,” the Duke smiled, “I admit to feeling somewhat exhausted.”

He picked up the jewel case, but, when Magnolia would have risen to her feet, she hesitated and asked,

“You are – quite – quite sure you are doing the – right thing? Suppose when you – get to know me, you hate me even more than you do now?”

“If that happens, which I am convinced is an impossibility, then I think we must be frank with each other and discuss the future very carefully.”

He paused to say with a smile that many women had found extremely attractive,

“I can assure you I no longer hate you. But if you continue to hate me, then there are a number of possibilities concerning what we can do about it.”

“What are they?”  Magnolia asked curiously.

“I own several houses in different parts of the country where, if you wish to make a life for yourself on your own, you could be very comfortable,” the Duke replied. “Of course you can always afford to buy any house you want for yourself in London or the country or anywhere else you please.”

He spoke in a businesslike manner and, even as he did so, he thought it would be impossible for anyone so fragile, so young and so helpless to cope on her own.

He had a sudden feeling that whether he liked it or not he must protect and look after Magnolia. It was a question of protecting her not only from other people, but also from herself.

“I don’t  – have to make  – any decisions at the – moment, do I?”  Magnolia enquired.

“We were discussing, if you remember, what would happen if we hated each other so violently that it would be impossible for us to stay together,” the Duke replied.

“Yes  – of course,” Magnolia agreed. “And, because I am so tired, I am afraid I am being rather stupid.”

“Actually, I think you are very sensible and intelligent and, when you think it over, you will be as glad as I am that you are not stepping out of the front door alone. You are much safer here.”

Magnolia picked up her ermine-lined cloak and put it over her arm. Then she looked up at the Duke and, because he was so much taller than she was, she had to tip back her head to do so.

Her eyes were enormous in her face as she said hesitatingly,

“I think – perhaps I ought to – thank you for being so much – kinder and more – understanding than I – thought you would be.”

“If you intend to thank me,” the Duke replied, “I should apologise for frightening you in the first place.”

“I – understand why you were so – angry and it is a – pity that big wedding cake and the – bird filled with roses were not – lost during the storm!”

She looked up at him anxiously as she spoke and the Duke found himself smiling quite naturally before he answered,

“I agree that would have been a merciful release. I certainly found them both extremely obnoxious!”

Magnolia suddenly gave a little laugh.

“I have only just thought of it,” she said, “but when the bird flew out of the roses I saw one of the waiters dive under the tablecloth.”

“I can understand his feelings.”

Now the Duke too found it possible to laugh at the commotion that Mrs. Vandevilt’s grand idea had caused.

“I will go to bed  – now,” Magnolia said quickly, as if she was afraid that once again he might be angry.

“As I intend to do the same thing, Magnolia, I will carry your jewel case for you. May I suggest that you put it in a safe place until tomorrow morning?”

“You are not afraid of my being burgled?”

“No, of course not, but very valuable jewellery can be a temptation to even the most honest of men.”

He thought as he spoke that money in whatever form it was, was a temptation in one way or another, temptation to a sneak thief and a temptation even to somebody like himself.

Then he realised that Magnolia had reached the door and he turned back to blow out the candles on the mantelpiece and then those on the desk.

When he left the room, it was to find that she was already halfway up the stairs and only when she reached the door of her own bedroom did she wait for him to catch up with her.

As he did so, she held out her hand for the jewel case.

“Shall I take it?” she asked. “Or will – you keep it safe?”

He had the feeling she was telling him that when he left her she would not try to run away again.

“I will do whatever you want, Magnolia. But rest, and try to sleep. We have a long journey in front of us tomorrow and I feel you will find there are a great many subjects to interest you and talk about.”

There was a smile on her lips and he thought a light in her eyes that were no longer frightened as she said,

“You will tell me about India?”

“Of course and, if we are to visit the Greek islands as your mother suggested we should, we should both polish up our mythology!”

Magnolia gave a little cry.

“Do you mean we might go to Greece? It is somewhere that has always fascinated me.”

“We can go anywhere you like,” the Duke replied. As he spoke, it flashed through his mind that the sentence should continue, ‘because you are paying’, and he was angry that the idea should be there, even though he had not invited it.

But while he said nothing, he was sure his thoughts had communicated themselves to Magnolia, for he thought the light had gone from her eyes, as she said,

“It is not – as you well know for me – to make such – decisions, but – you.”

As she spoke, she did not look at him as she opened the door of her bedroom.

Then without another word, without even glancing in his direction, she left him and he found himself standing outside a closed door with her jewel case in his hands.

*

The sun was shining and it was extremely hot and the garden of the villa was a riot of colour.

Magnolia stood outside the long windows on the terrace and thought the view over the blue sea was indescribably beautiful.

In fact, she wondered how she could ever explain in the letters she was writing to her father the beauty they had found when they stepped out of the train at Nice into what seemed for the moment to be an enchanted land.

The journey from England had been comfortable in a way that was new to the Duke, although he was aware that to Magnolia it was something she had been accustomed to all her life.

The Courier had made all the arrangements and travelled with them to see to the luggage and the servants.

The only contretemps was on the first morning when, before Magnolia had come down to breakfast, the Duke was told that the luggage, his valet and Magnolia’s lady’s maid had already left with the Courier for the station.

“Three guards have gone with them, Your Grace,” the butler said. “The fourth is waiting to accompany Your Grace’s to the station, when you’re ready to leave.”

“Guards?”  The Duke questioned.

“The bodyguards, Your Grace. They came here yesterday in the special train and stayed the night.”

“Are you telling me,” the Duke enquired, “that it has been arranged for bodyguards to accompany Her Grace and myself on our honeymoon?”

“That was the orders given, I understand, Your Grace, by Mrs. Vandevilt.”

“Well, they can be cancelled!” the Duke said sharply. “I have no intention of proceeding on my honeymoon with four bodyguards. This is England, not America! And we shall be as safe in France as we are here.”

The butler looked uncomfortable and the Duke said quickly,

“It is not your fault, of course, Dawkins, but tell the bodyguard who is left here in the house that I do not require his services and I will send the others back when we reach Victoria Station.”

“Very good, Your Grace.”

The Duke did not tell Magnolia when she appeared of his decision, but she saw the three men waiting for them at Victoria.

Before they proceeded to the train escorted by the Station Master, the Duke dismissed the three bodyguards and left them standing indecisive and at the same time looking sulky before he joined her.

Only when they were alone in the private coach, which was to carry them to Dover, did Magnolia ask,

“Did you refuse to allow the bodyguards to – come with us?”

“Of course!” the Duke answered. “You may need bodyguards in New York, Magnolia, but I assure you in this country and in France I can protect my own wife.”

“They must have been surprised that you did not need them.”

“I am not concerned with their feelings, but mine and yours. It is absolutely ridiculous to move about as if we were Royalty, expecting anarchists to throw bombs at us.”

“We might be kidnapped and held to ransom.”

“That is extremely unlikely,” the Duke declared firmly.

He thought Magnolia might argue with him, but instead she smiled.

“You are making me – feel that I have escaped from my – prison.”

“So that was what you meant when you said that you only felt free when you read!” the Duke exclaimed.

Magnolia nodded.

“I have never been anywhere without being guarded. There were always two men with us when my nurse took me out in my pram in Central Park and armed guards all around the house when we stayed in the country.”

She gave a little sigh.

“The girls at school used to laugh at me because a bodyguard would wait in the hall to escort me home, however many Nannies or Governesses I had with me!”

“All I can say is that I am sorry for you.”

“When I thought about it, I was sorry for myself,” Magnolia answered. “I often used to envy the children who ran about the streets barefooted and think they had more fun than I did.”

“I suppose it is inevitable that we should imagine that other people are more fortunate than ourselves,” the Duke said. “Personally, until now, I have enjoyed almost every minute of my life.”

He did not realise exactly what he said until he heard Magnolia repeat almost under her breath,

“Until – now?”

“I did not mean it like that,” he said quickly. “I was referring to the moment when I had to leave the Regiment and come home to all the troubles and difficulties of being a Duke.”

“Which included – me!”

“I have a feeling,” he said with a twinkle in his eye, “that you are asking for compliments.”

“No – no, of course not!”  Magnolia said in a voice of horror. “I was actually – thinking I am sorry for – you!”

“There is no need for you to do that, because if I want to, I am quite capable of feeling sorry for myself. What I suggest we both do, Magnolia, is to try to enjoy ourselves.”

He looked at Magnolia as he spoke and added,

“We are travelling very much deluxe, which is something that as a soldier and a poor one at that, I have never been able to do before.”

Magnolia gave a little laugh.

“Tell me about it,” she begged.

“I will tell you what it is like to travel in a troop-ship,” the Duke answered.

He proceeded to describe the discomforts of an overcrowded troop-ship where the majority of the soldiers who had never been at sea before, were extremely sick.

He described the difficulties in keeping the horses in the hold from panicking and how when they reached the Red Sea the sun was unbearable and it was sometimes difficult to get decent water to drink.

He had already found out that Magnolia was a good listener and all the way across France she plied him with questions about his travels, the countries he had visited and the different people he had met and studied.

He was surprised at the intelligence of her questions and he found that he enjoyed the novelty of being a teacher. 

At the same time he was aware that she was still frightened of him as a man.

If he touched her inadvertently or took her arm to help her down the stairs, he would feel her give a little shudder at the physical contact.

He told himself somewhat wryly it was very good for his ego, but equally somewhat insulting.

Not a conceited man, the Duke would have been very stupid, which he was not, if he had not been aware that women found him extremely attractive and that almost any woman to whom he made himself pleasant would regard him with a glint in her eye, which was more flattering than anything she might say.

While Magnolia obviously found what he had to tell her interesting and informative, there was no doubt that she shrank from him as a man and even more so as a husband.

What is more, she was always on her guard in case he presumed on what appeared to be on the surface a quite pleasant but distant relationship.

When he went to bed at night in the comfortable bedroom in the private sleeping car that the Duke was aware cost an astronomical sum to have attached to the main Southbound Express, he found himself thinking of Magnolia.

It was in a very different way from how he had before when she had been just a faceless American with whom he was making a business contract.

Now, as he grew to know her better, he realised how absurdly sensitive and vulnerable she was and that, while extremely intelligent and well read, she was as innocent as a new born baby about the world outside the cloistered and guarded life she had lived as a great heiress.

When he thought of what might have happened to her if she had done as she intended and run away into the streets alone and unaccompanied, the Duke was appalled.

Because she was so innocent, she would undoubtedly have found herself being robbed and left senseless by the roadside or worse still inveigled into some unsavoury brothel from where there would be no escape.

The Duke had no idea that American heiresses were guarded and isolated from reality to the point where they lived not in the real world, but in a ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ that left them as people completely helpless.

It struck him that if she had married a different type of man from himself – perhaps some European Prince who was interested only in her money – she might have been shocked and intimidated to the point where she would have found it impossible to go on living.

Then he told himself he was exaggerating, but the thought was there and it made him in consequence speak very quietly and gently to Magnolia and do nothing to make her more fearful of him as a man than she was already.

Then he found himself asking the question to which there was no reply,

‘How can I be sure that in the future I shall not frighten her?’

CHAPTER SIX

The sea was smooth, it was early in the morning and there was a mist over the horizon, which the sun was just beginning to disperse when the Duke came up on deck.

He was not surprised to see that Magnolia was already there.

He had realised that ever since they had set out in the yacht she seemed to have an energy that he had not noticed before and a new day was an excitement she would not miss.

She was certainly unrestrained in a way that she had never experienced in the past and it amused him to see her reaction to being free from a constraint that had encompassed her ever since she had been born.

To begin with, when he had said they were boarding the yacht for an unknown destination, Magnolia’s lady’s maid flatly refused to go with them.

“Not for all the tea in China would I go through, Your Grace, what I suffered crossing the Atlantic!” she stated firmly.

When she realised the woman was adamant, Magnolia had gone in search of the Duke.

She was looking worried and before she could speak he had asked,

“What has upset you?”

“I am not exactly – upset,” she replied, “but my maid refuses to come with me on the yacht.”

The Duke smiled.

“So the earth-shaking problem is whether you engage another lady’s maid or look after yourself.”

He saw from the surprise in Magnolia’s face that this was something she had never thought of doing.

“If you are in difficulties,” he suggested, “I assure you that Jarvis, my valet, will be able to help you if necessary and I am quite prepared to lend a hand – ”

“Are you saying that I can come with you in the yacht without a maid?”

“Of course,” the Duke answered. “We shall not be going anywhere very smart, I hope that nobody will wish to entertain us and, if you don’t look as if you have stepped out of a bandbox, there will be only the fish and me to criticise!”

There was silence for a moment.

Then Magnolia said,

“I know you are  – laughing at me  – and think it – ridiculous, but I have never been – allowed to look after – myself before.”

“Then that will be a new experience for you,” the Duke said.

When they had gone aboard without the somewhat austere American lady’s maid who stayed sulking and disagreeable at the Villa, he was sure, although he said nothing, that Magnolia enjoyed being on her own.

He could hear her moving about in her cabin very early and she was usually up on deck long before he appeared.

She had arranged her hair in the way she had done on the night of their wedding when she had tried to run away and, he thought, because it was so simple, that it became her better than any elaborate coiffure could possibly have done.

As the Army had given him a sharp eye for any disorder, he noticed that sometimes Magnolia’s gown was wrongly buttoned at the back and her sash was not always as well tied as it could have been, but he said nothing.

After two days sailing, he was quite prepared to admit that her face lighting up with excitement and her eyes shining compensated for any disarray in her clothes.

Knowing his father’s extravagance the Duke was really not surprised to find that the steam yacht, The Werewolf, contained every possible improvement, gadget and luxury that could be found in any yacht of the same size anywhere in the world.

It was elaborately decorated and, as he might have expected, the main cabins all contained very comfortable brass bedsteads large enough for two.

He had thought of giving Magnolia the Master cabin his father had occupied, but she preferred the one next to it, which was far more feminine and decorated in pink, which made her exclaim that it looked like a rose.

As she said it spontaneously, she looked at the Duke from under her eyelashes a little apprehensively.

He knew she was remembering the ten thousand roses that had fallen from the air on their wedding day and was wondering if even to mention the flower would make him as angry as he had been then.

But he merely remarked,

“I said you could choose whichever cabin you prefer and one which reminds you of a flower is certainly a suitable background for you.”

It was a compliment, but he knew that she was considering if he meant it.

Then after a little pause, she said,

“Then, please, I would like this one.”

The Werewolf included in its crew an excellent Chinese chef and as, they moved along the French coast towards Italy, the Duke felt almost guilty of enjoying such comfort.

The Captain and the crew were delighted to see him, for they had found it boring and somewhat demoralising to spend their time waiting in harbour for an owner who never appeared.

He learned that his father had held two large and very gay parties aboard The Werewolf the previous year and the Captain had in fact been apprehensive as to whether they would now be dismissed and the yacht sold.

The Duke did not enlighten him to the fact that this had been his intention before he married and even now he had not actually been certain whether a yacht was necessary.

But Magnolia’s delight in it and the pleasure she obviously gained from the thought of seeing the Greek Islands, and perhaps going on to Constantinople, made the Duke feel that, as their marriage stood at the moment, the yacht might play an important part in their search for happiness.

He had already admitted to himself that was what he wanted and it would be ridiculous to go on hating Magnolia’s wealth instead of accepting it, if not with pleasure, at least with gratitude.

What surprised him after their first week of marriage was that she was even more intelligent and certainly better educated than he had at first realised.

He knew without Lady Edith having said so, that no English girl could have conversed with him on subjects that would have been unusual even if he had been talking to a man of his own age.

Magnolia had told the truth when she had said that she collected books and read them avidly.

Not surprisingly there was no library on board the yacht, for the Duke knew that his father had studied not books, but the human species and especially the feminine branch of it.

He had therefore taken the precaution of going to the largest library in Nice before they left to buy almost every book that he thought might interest Magnolia in one way or another.

Her delight was all the thanks he needed.

“Did you really buy all these for me?”

“I thought we might both read them if we ran out of conversation,” the Duke replied.

She gave a little laugh.

“I think what you are really saying is that, when you get tired of answering my questions, you will give me a book to keep me quiet!”

“I had not thought of it that way,” he smiled, “but it is certainly an idea!”

She looked down at the book that she had picked up from the stacks of others on the floor and asked a little hesitatingly,

“You don’t – really mind my being so – inquisitive?”

“I am delighted to tell you everything I know, Magnolia. The only thing is I am rather afraid that I shall disappoint you by not knowing the answers or giving you a wrong one.”

“It is very exciting for me,” she said seriously, “to find somebody who has done so many things – personally.”

She hesitated as if she was feeling for the right words and went on,

“Papa has travelled all over the world, but he really only looks at pictures, not people or places, so everything you tell me and everything you have done is quite different from anything I have heard before.”

“I think what you have to face,” the Duke said, “is that you must live your own life and not get it in a second-hand manner from anyone else, whether your father or me.”

She looked at him in a startled fashion as if this was a revolutionary idea before she asked,

“You have started already,” he answered. “You are here, you are married and you have left behind everything that has been familiar for eighteen years of your life.”

“When you say it like that, it sounds rather frightening,” Magnolia replied. “But I like being here and I am looking forward to what we shall see tomorrow, the next day and the day after that.”

“That is exactly the right attitude,” the Duke approved, “and it is, in fact, living.”

He knew that she had thought over what he had said to her because when they were having dinner that evening in the pretty Saloon decorated in sea blue, which was the colour of the sea in the sunshine, Magnolia enquired,

“What do you feel when you are in danger?”

The Duke thought for a moment.

“If you are speaking of a battle or when one is faced with an enemy, I suppose it is excitement, mixed with fear,”

“Fear!”  Magnolia exclaimed. “I thought that men were never afraid.”

“Anyone, if he is honest, is afraid of being wounded or killed,” the Duke replied. “But a soldier is trained to control himself to the point where he does not show fear and in most cases this makes the feeling less acute than it would otherwise be.”

Magnolia considered this for a moment and then she commented,

“So discipline teaches self-control.”

“That is what it should do.”

Then, as if the Duke knew what she was thinking, he smiled and said,

“It is, of course, very regrettable when one’s feelings break through the control which discipline imposes so that they become revealed to other people.”

He knew they were both thinking of how his feelings at the time of their wedding had not been controlled as they should have been and, after a moment, he added with a twinkle in his eyes,

“At least I did not hide under the tablecloth!”

Magnolia gave a little laugh that seemed to echo round the Saloon.

“That would have been very undignified. No, you stood straight and unshrinking, as a soldier should. At the same time there were sparks coming out of your eyes and, I suspect, your heart.”

“You are making me feel ashamed,” the Duke complained.

“I am actually being unfair,” she said quickly. “I don’t think  – anyone else would have been aware of your – feelings.”

“Nevertheless I shall reprimand myself and on another occasion of that sort keep well away from you!”

Magnolia chuckled before she said,

“You are not suggesting we might have to be married again?”

“God forbid!” the Duke said half-seriously. “At the same time your mother might wish to celebrate the anniversary of our wedding or perhaps – ”

He broke off his words quickly realising he had been about to say, ‘a christening’.

It flashed through his mind that as things were at the moment there was no chance of the bells being pealed according to the Burn tradition when an heir was born to the reigning Duke or to his eldest son.

And there would certainly not be the fireworks and a party for the workers and the tenants, which always took place when the heir came of age.

As if it suddenly struck him, that, despite the easy way they talked and had become friendly these last few days, the marriage was still a sham one.

The Duke then put down the glass he had been holding and, putting his hand over Magnolia’s, said in a very different tone,

“I want to have a serious talk with you, Magnolia.”

She read his thoughts as she had done before and with a little cry she snatched away her hand and answered,

“No – no – we have – nothing to talk about – nothing. I want to go up on deck – ”

Before he could stop her, she had jumped up from the table and, snatching the wrap that matched her gown and was lying on a chair, she had slipped out of the Saloon before he could even rise.

Hearing her footsteps running towards the companionway, he did not attempt to follow her. Instead his lips tightened and he told himself he had been a fool to be impatient.

But, because she had talked so easily and unaffectedly ever since they had been at sea, he had almost forgotten her initial fear of him.

He had thought perhaps optimistically that she had begun to like him, but now he knew he was back to the beginning again, trying to make her trust him, trying to make her believe that he was a friend and not an enemy.

He knew the answers and yet found the situation extremely frustrating and at the same time worrying.

How could they go on playing games?

He could understand that at first she shrank from him in a natural reaction to a hasty marriage. But how could he ever make her accept him in his rightful position as her husband and – lover?

The last word, as it came into his mind, seemed almost to hit him between the eyes.

He knew that if he was honest, he already desired Magnolia as a woman.

He would, in fact, have been blind and deaf if he had not been beguiled by her beauty and had not found the soft, rather breathless way she spoke, extremely fascinating.

It was certainly different from the way other woman he knew talked and she seemed to make any subject, even the most erudite, feminine or perhaps the right word was ‘enchanted’, because of the music in her voice.

He liked the way she moved, her grace, and the pride with which she carried her small head on a long swan-like neck.

‘She is lovely!’ the Duke thought, ‘and, dammit, she is my wife!’

Then he berated himself for being not only impatient, but perhaps too easily aroused by their surroundings, the warmth of the weather and, above all, the fact that he was alone on what was supposed to be his honeymoon with a very desirable woman.

‘God knows, I would be inhuman if I did not desire her!’ he excused himself.

Equally he was aware that he had acted far too hastily in the task he had set himself of wooing a woman, as he had never had to do before.

Always in the past his conquests had been very easy ones. In fact, he had often thought that it was the women who were the victors, not himself, which, as a very masculine man, he intended it to be.

But with Magnolia it was going to be very different and already he had been stupid enough to frighten her away and make things perhaps even more difficult than they had been before.

The Duke suddenly realised that this was a campaign in which he was totally inexperienced and would have to use tactics that he had never employed before.

He had worked out a plan for an operation that he had the uncomfortable feeling might take a very long time and which indeed he could not even be certain of winning.

Supposing that, instead of making her like him, if not love him, he merely increased her hatred to the point where, when they returned to England, she would leave him as she had tried to do that first night?

He thought of the embarrassment and the difficulties this would entail. He saw also how bleak his own life would be and found himself wondering frantically what he could do about it.

If there was one thing that the Duke had always disliked, it was married men who philandered with other women. He had always thought it not only cheating but also unsportsmanlike, since a woman did not have the same opportunities for illicit enjoyment that were open to a man.

He had always felt slightly disgusted when he had heard a man say,

“My wife? Oh, she is quite safe in the country!”

He knew men who were always on the look out for every bit of fun they could find and he was determined that he would not be like them and that, once he was married, clandestine love would play no part in his life.

But even as he thought of it he knew that Lady Edith would laugh at this as being another of his out-of-date ideals.

Nevertheless the feeling was there. At the same time he was practical enough to realise that marriage to a wife who would have nothing to do with him would make his own life very difficult, frustrated and lonely.

A man needed a woman and, as he was no longer fighting a dangerous enemy on the North-West Frontier, he knew that was what he now required.

What was more, now he was married, he wanted a family to fill The Castle with the noise of children and to know that the nurseries in which he had been brought up, were being used again.

Then in a few years there would be a son he would teach to ride and shoot and daughters who would grow up as lovely as their ancestors.

He had never thought of it before, but he knew now, that Magnolia’s strange, fragile, rather ethereal beauty would add a new lustre to the glory of the Burn women and the handsome features of the men.

But – only if she became his wife in reality as well as in name.

Then his feelings rose like a flood tide.

He wanted her! He wanted to hold her close against him, to feel her quiver not with fear but with excitement. He wanted to take the pins from her hair and let it fall over her white shoulders.

Then he wanted to kiss her, to hold her soft innocent untouched lips captive with his.

The Duke pushed his glass away from him as if the intensity of his feelings had no need of a stimulant.

Then, as he decided that he would join Magnolia and try to erase from her mind the fear he had evoked in her, he heard her footsteps passing the door.

He knew that she was retiring to her own cabin and he would not see her again that night.

*

The following day the Duke was aware that there was a barrier between them that had not been there since they left Villefranche.

He therefore schooled himself to talk amusingly and lightly on many subjects and to make no reference to what he had said at dinner the night before.

By the end of the day he thought the trust was back in her eyes and she had forgotten that she had been frightened.

But he could not be sure.

Knowing now what he felt about her, he had the idea that with every turn of her head, every movement of her hands, with every glint of sunshine on her hair, she seemed lovelier than she had been before.

It was a feeling that persisted and grew as the days passed and they reached the foot of Italy and started across the Ionian Sea.

It was then, when it was almost too hot to do anything in the afternoons but rest under the awning that had been erected over the deck, that the Duke admitted to himself that he was madly in love.

It was something he had not expected, and yet he realised it as he started each day with a feeling of excitement because he would see Magnolia.

He would pass lonely nights tossing restlessly because he was alone and she was only a wall away in the next cabin.

And he admitted that it was love that was making him feel differently about his wife than he had ever felt about any other woman.

It was love that made the pulse in his temples throb and his lips ache because he longed to kiss her, but it was also love that made him feel that she was not only desirable as a woman but that she filled his mind to the exclusion of everything else.

It was impossible to think of anything but her. He not only wanted to touch her and hold her against him, he wanted to hear her joyous, almost child-like, musical laughter and the softness of her voice when they talked together.

Her English was almost classical in its purity and she had a vocabulary far greater, the Duke thought, than any other woman he had ever known.

He loved her little flashes of humour and the way she would sometimes tease him, then look at him apprehensively in case he had misunderstood and been offended by what she had said.

“I love her! dammit – I love her!” he said to the stars and it was an agony that was inexpressible to stand looking at them alone when he wanted Magnolia with him.

*

They had been married for nearly three weeks when they passed through the Strait of Messina and began to steam towards Greece.

“Which island shall we visit first?” Magnolia had asked after they had left Messina where the Captain insisted they should call in because of some small repair he wished done to the yacht.

She had enjoyed seeing a little of Sicily, but the Duke had been aware that she was more excited than anything else at the thought of the Greek islands.

They had already talked of the Gods and Goddesses, who were particularly connected with each island and tried to cap each other’s quotations from Lord Byron, until the Duke was obliged to admit that Magnolia’s knowledge of his poems was greater than his own.

“I suppose the first island we shall encounter,” he replied in answer to her question, “will be Corfu.”

“Kerkyra,” Magnolia corrected.

“Are you suggesting,” he asked, “that we should talk Greek? In which case I feel I shall be at a distinct disadvantage.”

“You have learnt it?”

“A very long time ago.”

“Then you must try to remember what you know,” she said firmly, “and anyway, I want to understand what the Greeks say to us. One of my Governesses taught me a smattering of Modern Greek.”

While they were talking a Steward came to tell the Duke that the Captain wished to speak to him.

“What is it?” the Duke enquired when he had joined the Captain on the bridge.

“If you would not mind, Your Grace,” the Captain replied, “I would like to put into a harbour on the mainland before we proceed any further.”

“What is wrong?”

“The new fitting that we picked up at Messina is not as well adjusted as I should like. It is only a question of two or three hours work, but I would rather not proceed until it is working as perfectly as possible.”

“Of course, I understand,” the Duke agreed.

“What I would like to suggest, Your Grace, is that we anchor in one of the small bays along the coast. The men can start work at dawn and that should enable us to move onto Corfu by midday.”

“That sounds excellent, Captain!”

He went back to tell Magnolia and she exclaimed delightedly,

“That means we can set foot in Albania if only for a few minutes and that can be another country I have visited.”

“Are you counting them up?”

“But of course! I have to catch up with you and I have already counted no less than fifteen countries you have mentioned visiting, while so far I have only been to four or is it five?”

“You must certainly add Albania to your list,” the Duke replied, “but it is not very prepossessing, although there are impressive mountains and the flowers should be attractive at this time of the year.”

“You are not to spoil it for me before I even get there!”  Magnolia chided and they both laughed.

Next morning the yacht lay at anchor and as usual the Duke heard Magnolia rising very early and thought it was something he should do himself.

He found her on deck and arranged that, as she wished to go ashore as quickly as possible, they should have an early breakfast.

The air was cool and fresh and the sun had not a great deal of warmth in it when they were rowed ashore.

Magnolia jumped from the boat onto the sand.

“Albania!” she exclaimed triumphantly. “Now it is definitely on my list!”

“Thank goodness for that!” the Duke exclaimed. “Now we need go no further!”

“I have every intention of exploring the top of the cliff.”

The Duke realised that the sailors who had rowed them from the yacht were waiting for his instructions.

“Come back for us in an hour and a half,” he ordered.

“Aye, aye, Your Grace!”

He turned and followed his wife, who was already climbing up a path that led from the bay.

There was a twisting steep and stony track to the top of the cliffs, then an undulating panorama to the South, while to the North the mountains rose sharply.

Trees covered the lower slopes while their barren peaks were silhouetted against the blue of the sky.

It was very beautiful and Magnolia exclaimed in delight at the many species of flowers that were profuse in the thick grass.

They followed a path that wound away Northwards and were soon in the thick of the trees.

The Duke hoped that Magnolia would see some of the wild animals that he knew were to be found in the Albanian mountains, but although there were plenty of hares and occasionally small deer, there was no sign of the chamois or even the mountain goats that were characteristic of the country.

She was, however, very happy with all that she was seeing.

Then suddenly she stopped and cried,

“How stupid of me. I never thought of it until now, but we should have brought a camera with us.”

“I did not think of it either. I believe there is a new one on the market which is quite easy to use and it would certainly provide us with delightful souvenirs of our honeymoon.”

“I particularly want to show Papa where we have been,” Magnolia said. “That is why it was stupid of me not to think of it before.”

“I am sure we can purchase a camera when we reach Athens,” the Duke consoled her.

“Can we do that?”

She looked up at him eagerly.

“We can certainly try.”

“Think what the view would be like at the top of these mountains!”

“You are not suggesting, I hope, that we should climb them with or without a camera?” the Duke said quickly.

“I want to climb a little higher,” Magnolia answered. “Then we can look down at that magnificent view.”

“Very well,” the Duke agreed, “but I would not want you to tire yourself.”

“I am not tired,” Magnolia replied, “and we have taken very little exercise these past weeks except for a walk around the deck.”

“That is true,” he admitted, “and, when we reach the Greek Islands, I intend to swim every day.”

She gave a little cry.

“May I do that with you?”

“Can you swim?”

“I always swam in the pool we had at one of our houses, so I am not likely to drown, if that is what you mean.”

“I am surprised.”

Then he thought it was not really surprising. It was the sort of thing he would expect an American girl to be able to do, while English ladies would be too modest to appear in a bathing-dress, even privately.”

“Please let me swim when we reach Greece,” Magnolia asked pleadingly.

“I shall look forward to your doing so,” the Duke replied.

She smiled at him so delightedly that he had to control an impulse to put his arms around her and say he would let her do anything she wanted while she looked as happy as she did at that moment.

He forced himself instead to make some commonplace remark about a bird that flew out of the bushes as they approached.

When at last they rested for a little while under the trees and looked back at the view, he found it was well over an hour since they had left the yacht and suggested that they should go back.

“The Captain will be worrying what has happened to us.”

“It is so lovely and so peaceful,” Magnolia said. “I think perhaps I would like to build a house here. Then we could escape from everybody and everything.”

“It is certainly an idea,” the Duke agreed, “but perhaps you would become bored after a while.”

She looked at him speculatively for a moment.

Then she answered,

“Not if you will go on telling me of everything you have done and the places you have been.”

“By that time we might be down to the things I want to do,” the Duke answered.

“And what are those?”  Magnolia asked.

He was about to reply when suddenly from the trees behind there was a sound and he turned his head to see, to his astonishment that a number of rough looking men were approaching.

They had long hair and mustachios and carried long old-fashioned muskets.

Instinctively the Duke rose to his feet and Magnolia rose too and, as the men came nearer, she put out her hand and held onto his arm.

The Duke knew that she must be frightened, for he saw that their visitors had stuffed into their wide belts swords and knives that he had always connected in his mind with bandits.

He knew moreover that Albanians were usually fighting amongst one another or attacking their neighbours and these need not necessarily be outlaws.

Before he could move, the Duke found that the men and there were about a dozen of them, had already encircled them.

He was just wondering if he and Magnolia could try to run away through the trees when one man, older, taller and obviously with more authority than the rest said in almost incomprehensible English,

“You – own – big ship?”

He pointed with his finger in the direction of the yacht and the Duke nodded his head.

“Yes.”

A smile emerged from under the man’s long mustachios and he added,

“Good! You come – with us!”

“Why?” the Duke asked. “We are just returning to my yacht.”

“You – come with – us,” the man repeated.

There was no doubt now that he intended what he said and the men with him moved nearer to the Duke, one of them putting a hand on his back to push him forward.

Magnolia gave a little cry and she slipped her hand into the Duke’s and held onto his arm with the other.

“What do they want? Where are they taking us?” she asked fearfully.

“ I don’t know,” the Duke answered, “but I am afraid we unfortunately have to do what they say.”

He felt he knew as he spoke what the men intended and had the uncomfortable feeling that they were being kidnapped for ransom.

It was then to his surprise that Magnolia, still holding tightly to his hand, spoke to them in Greek.

“What do you want? Where are you taking us?” she enquired in a clear voice.

The men stood still for a moment to listen to what she said. Then the leader who had spoken before replied in a half-Greek, half-Albanian that was even more difficult to follow than his English.

To the Duke it was completely incomprehensible, but after he had spoken and once again they were moving forward along the path as it wound between the trees, away from the direction of the yacht, Magnolia said,

“I think, although it is difficult to understand, that we are his prisoners and he is going to shut us up while he applies to somebody – I cannot understand who.”

“Ask him how much money he wants to set us free,” the Duke suggested sharply.

Magnolia did as he told her and now they did not stop walking, but the chief man, moving ahead of them merely shook his head and made it quite obvious, although he took a long time in saying so, that he was replying,

“No!”

“It is not money they want,” Magnolia said when he had finished speaking.

“Then what do they want?”

Again Magnolia put the question, and this time the answer was even longer than the one before.

“I think, although he is almost impossible to follow,” Magnolia told the Duke, “that he has taken us as hostages because two of their ‘brothers’ – I think he means that members of their ‘band’ – are to be hanged in Athens.”

“Athens!” the Duke exclaimed. “Do you mean to say that we are going to be kept prisoner until we can be exchanged for two criminals?”

“I am sure that is what he means.”

“Tell him – “ the Duke began and he then stopped.

He wondered frantically what they could say to threaten that if they were not released immediately there would be dire consequences.

Too late the Duke realised he had been extremely foolish in going ashore in a strange country without making certain that he and Magnolia were properly protected.

He remembered now hearing how the bandits of Albania were extremely powerful and although they appeared romantic when written about in magazines and newspapers, the Duke was aware that they could be ferocious and cruel when it suited them.

If they were the Pallikares, they were famous and he remembered reading that Otto I experienced a great deal of trouble with them when he was King of Greece.

These might be the same or they might be a very different gang, but, whatever they were called, the Duke was quite certain that being their prisoner would be very uncomfortable if not dangerous.

Had he been alone, he thought he might have found some opportunity of fighting or outwitting them and making his escape, but with Magnolia there was nothing he could do but obey their commands.

They walked on for about half-an-hour until the trees cleared and then they saw what appeared to be the remains of a ruined village.

It was built on the very edge of the mountain which towered about it and the Duke saw that the reason why it had been abandoned was that there had been a landslide which must have destroyed at least half of the village and left the rest of the houses in a precarious condition.

No self-respecting person could have braved a winter there of torrential rain, floods and doubtless avalanches.

They were escorted over rubble and stones which hurt Magnolia’s feet until the bandits came to a stop in front of a tall building that appeared to be only half demolished with one side still remaining.

The heavy door was opened and, as the Duke hesitated, he was pushed inside and, with Magnolia still clinging onto his arm, they were propelled through another door into what appeared to be a long high cell without windows.

It was then the chief bandit made a long speech. While he spoke, he looked at Magnolia, knowing she was more likely to understand him than the Duke.

Once or twice she checked him to ask a question in her very halting Greek and impatiently he proceeded with what he wanted to say until finally as he finished he said to the Duke in English,

“You stay – if brothers not released – you die!”

Then he left them, shutting the door behind him, which they realised because of the noise it made was of iron and a few minutes later they heard the outer door being closed.

Then there was silence.

Magnolia was looking at the locked door with frightened eyes and the Duke said quietly and calmly,

“Tell me what he said.”

“He said, I think,” she answered in a strangled voice, “that the two men – who have been – taken to Athens for trial are to be hanged for their crimes – but these men will exchange us for them, if the authorities – agree, if they will not – we – die – as they – will die!”

Her voice trembled so much that she could hardly say the last words and the Duke said,

“It is obvious that it will take some time for them to get to Athens and make the authorities understand that they are holding us prisoner, so what we have to try to do, Magnolia, is to escape.”

“H-how  – how can  – we do  – that?” Magnolia asked.

She looked around her desperately as she spoke and the Duke realised it was a good question.

“I imagine we are in what was the old prison of the village,” he said.

It was certain an unprepossessing one. The walls of the cell in which they found themselves had been scrawled all over by the prisoners who were the last to use it and, where the plaster had crumbled away, there was only the bare bricks.

He looked up at the ceiling, which did not look as if it would keep out the rain and far out of reach there was a very small barred window.

In one wall there was an opening and the Duke, moving towards it, saw that it had once been either a kitchen or a washing place for the prisoners.

But the washing bowls or any other equipment it had contained was now gone and there was only a rusty tap projecting from a wall and a drain on the floor that was blocked by moss and fungus.

This room had no light and he moved back into the cell to note that there were two hard benches against the walls, which might have been used for beds, but there were no mattresses or furniture of any sort.

While he moved round, Magnolia had been watching him and now she asked,

“How can we – stay here? Please – find a way – out!”

If the Duke had not been so worried, be might almost have been pleased that she had turned to him to save her.

The only trouble was, he had not the slightest idea how he could do so.

He sat down on one of the benches somewhat gingerly, wondering if it would support him, and found it was securely made, being one continuous plank of plain wood, firmly nailed to three legs protruding from the wall.

It was so firm that it had survived the devastation of the village when a great many other objects, including the houses themselves had crumbled.

He put out his hand towards Magnolia.

“Come and sit down while I think,” he said. “It was a long walk and I know that soon the Captain of the yacht will be worrying as to why we have not returned.”

“But – how can he find us?” she asked.

The Duke thought it would not be impossible, except that if the Captain and the crew tried to rescue them the bandits might shoot at them and they had the advantage of knowing the country.

He sat thinking for some time.

Then he said,

“You saw how this place was built when we approached it. I imagine that, as there is a sheer drop on one side, they will not guard us as carefully there as they would have done if they thought it was possible we could escape. That is why somehow we have to find a way of doing so.”

“How? How?”  Magnolia asked.

“That is what I have to discover,” the Duke replied quietly. “I suggest you sit as comfortably as you can and put your feet up. We may have another uncomfortable walk during the night.”

He knew as he spoke that it was not going to be easy. In fact very difficult, especially as he had to protect Magnolia from the men who would undoubtedly handle them very roughly, if they thought there was any chance of their getting away.

Then he thought that, if he had managed to escape from some difficult situations on the North-West Frontier, it should not be impossible to escape from a few Albanian bandits who he could not believe were experienced in holding prisoners to ransom in this isolated part of the country.

Magnolia watched him wide-eyed as he sat thinking and looking up at the small window at the very top of the cell, until finally rising to his feet, he walked into the dark, low-ceilinged washing place.

She could see him from where she was sitting, bending down to look apparently at the floor and then touching the walls beneath the rusty tap.

He came back to her smiling.

“What – have you found?” she asked.

“I may be mistaken,” he replied, “and I may be raising your hopes in vain, but the wall next door seems nothing like as thick as those here. In fact, because it has been continually kept wet by the tap, it should be, I imagine, easy to push through.”

Magnolia gave a little exclamation as he went on,

“At the same time we have to be careful, very careful, that we are not seen doing it in case our jailors are warned and tie us up.”

Magnolia gave a cry of fear and put out her hands towards him.

“Please – don’t let them do – that! I should be – frightened – very  – frightened if it happened  – to you.”

“When they return, which I imagine they will, we must try to look resigned to our fate. And, Magnolia, let me say how sorry I am.”

“About what?”

“About being conceited enough to think that I could look after you without guards.”

She stared up at him for a moment as if she thought he was not serious.

Then she answered,

“You do realise that they are not the least interested in me or my money? It is you who are important to them because you own what they call a ‘big ship’. When I offered them millions of dollars or pounds if they would let us go, they said they did not want money.”

She gave a little laugh.

“Mama would be horrified! It is the first time – our dollars have been quite useless and unable to buy what we want!”

Magnolia sounded so amused that the Duke laughed too.

“It is certainly a salutary lesson,” he agreed, “from which we must draw the obvious conclusions.”

“And what are they?”

“That we have to rely on ourselves and our brains,” he replied. “That means that you and I, Magnolia, have to do something together.”

She laughed as if she thought it funny.

Then her eyes met the Duke’s and it was difficult for either of them to look away.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Magnolia stood with her ear to the door listening.

All she could hear was the Duke in the small washroom striking at the wall with both his feet.

She knew that he was lying on his back to do it and, having taken off his coat to blunt the noise, was driving both his feet with all his strength at the damp wall.

He had explained to her simply what he intended to do, and she was well aware that if they were overheard, there would be no future chance of their escaping since they would be tied up to prevent them from trying again.

As she listened she prayed and the intensity of her prayers somehow made her feel as if she had an extra acuteness of hearing as well as of thinking.

Although the Duke was calm and quiet, she knew perceptively that he was really very anxious and it made the fear that kept rising within her threaten at times to overwhelm her.

Because she wanted to be brave and because she wanted him to think she was controlled, until darkness fell she hid her fear successfully.

Now she was aware that they must either escape or remain prisoners, perhaps to be killed after the criminals in Athens were hanged.

There was suddenly a rumbling noise which made her start and she knew that the Duke must have succeeded in demolishing part of the wall and what she had heard were stones rolling down the side of the mountain.

Magnolia held her breath.

If the bandits had heard it too, then they would come storming into the prison.

They had brought them coarse brown bread, cheese and a bottle of local wine about two hours ago, but the men who came into the cell did not include the chief and when she tried to talk to them there was no answer.

Instead they looked at her curiously in what she thought was an unpleasant manner that made her shrink towards the Duke.

They said something obviously impertinent or rude to her that fortunately she did not understand and went away, slamming and locking the door behind them.

Now Magnolia waited, but the bandits made no move and after a few minutes she realised that the Duke was near her.

She moved towards him, groping with her hands in the darkness, until she touched him.

“Now listen to me, – ” he said in a deep serious voice.

*

Afterwards Magnolia could never bear to think of the awful moment when, following the Duke’s instructions, she had crawled through the hole in the washroom wall to find that there was a sheer drop of thousands of feet directly below her.

“Don’t look down!” the Duke commanded. “Stand up slowly facing the wall of the prison and hold onto it with both your hands.”

He told her how to move slowly, very slowly along the ledge from which one slip would mean instant death. He had instructed her before she left the cell to remove her shoes to give her feet a better chance of holding onto the rocks.

It seemed to take hours, although it was actually only four or five minutes before, following him step by step, she had rounded the wall of their prison.

While the ledge along which they moved was now a little wider, there was still that frightening precipice below it.

“Keep moving!” the Duke ordered in a whisper. “Don’t look down. Press yourself as closely as you can against the wall. You have not far to go now – ”

Because he was so authoritative she obeyed him automatically, while at the same time her heart was beating frantically with fear and her lips were dry.

When the ledge came to an end, the Duke ordered her to stand still and he dropped down several feet.

Then, although he had told her not to look, Magnolia could see in the moonlight that there was a chasm to cross caused by a landslide before they could reach what seemed security amongst the trees on the other side.

She felt the Duke lift her gently from the ledge down beside him.

Then he said in a voice that she could hardly hear,

“I am going to carry you over my shoulder. It will be uncomfortable, but it is the safest way, so trust me.”

She wanted to answer, but somehow it was impossible and she was afraid he would realise that her teeth were chattering.

Without waiting, he picked her up, put her over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift and set off across the chasm feeling his way to find each foothold and gripping the rocks with one hand.

Only once during that perilous journey did Magnolia open her eyes and when she saw what lay beneath her she had to stifle the scream of terror that rose in her throat.

Then, when she thought the Duke must fall and they would both die, he was scrambling up on the other side, pulling himself and her to safety by the shrubs that overlooked the chasm and, when she dared look again, they were in the shadows of the trees.

He put her feet down gently on the ground.

Then, when she was unable to do anything but rest her head against his shoulder and gasp for breath, he said,

“We have to get out of here quickly! It may make the blood go to your head, but I am going to carry you in the same way, until we reach ground where it will not be painful for you to walk without shoes.”

She did not answer because it was impossible to find words and once again he put her over his shoulder and, holding her tightly with his left arm, started to run.

She had not expected he would move so swiftly or that he would be so strong that her weight made little difference to his progress.

She was bumped about, but the discomfort was unimportant beside the knowledge that they were free of their prison and, if they were lucky, would be back in the security of the yacht before their captors could discover what had happened.

On and on the Duke ran, sometimes stumbling, sometimes slipping on the loose stones, but always holding her securely until unexpectedly he stopped and put her down.

“What – is the – matter?”

She could hardly speak and the blood coming into her head made her feel dizzy. But she was terrified that there was a new danger and an unexpected one.

“Are you all right?” the Duke asked. “The way I am carrying you must be agonisingly uncomfortable.”

“I am – all right,” Magnolia replied breathlessly, “please – please – let’s – go on in case – they come after us.

Instinctively the Duke looked over his shoulder into the darkness behind them and now in the moonlight they could see the roof of their prison above the trees. It seemed a long way away, but there was still some distance between them and the yacht.

“Please – let’s hurry,” Magnolia begged. “I can – run now.”

“The ground is too stony,” the Duke replied.

He picked her up in his arms again, but now he held her against his chest.

Magnolia wanted to protest that she would be all right, but the closeness of him and the fact that her cheek was against his thin shirt so that she could feel the warmth of his body gave her a strange feeling she had never known before.

With his arms tightly around her, he started running again and she knew that she was safe and close to him.

Although she could not understand it, her fear had gone and she was happy.

So happy that she instinctively put her left arm up round his neck to make it easier for him to carry her.

As if he thought she was afraid, he said, and there was a note of triumph in his voice,

“Don’t worry, Magnolia. We have won, they will not catch up with us now.”

Even as he spoke, there were men’s voices shouting far away in the distance behind them and, as if he knew he had boasted too soon, the Duke accelerated the speed at which he was running and Magnolia clung to him in sudden terror.

They could not lose now, at the last moment!

They could not be re-captured after that perilous, terrifying escape along the side of the prison.

She thought in a panic that the men’s voices were growing louder and then there was the sound of a shot followed by several others that echoed in the silence of the night.

She heard the Duke give an exclamation, then looked to see ahead of them the light of two lanterns.

As they drew near, she saw they were carried by two of the crew from the yacht.

The Duke reached them and as he did so an English voice said,

“We’ve been awfully worried about Your Grace. We thought perhaps you’d had an accident.”

“Worse than that,” the Duke answered, “but get us back to the yacht as quickly as possible. There is no time to be lost.”

One sailor hurried with his lantern ahead of them down the twisting path from the cliffs to the beach, the other following behind.

A boat was waiting in the sandy bay and the Duke deposited Magnolia in it before he helped the sailors push it out into the water.

The lights from the yacht were the most welcoming sight that Magnolia had ever seen, but as the sailors began to row towards it there was a sudden shout from the top of the cliffs!

Looking back Magnolia with an exclamation of sheer terror saw the bandits silhouetted against the starlit sky.

“Move quickly!” the Duke ordered. “They may shoot at us!”

Even as he spoke, there was the sound of an explosion from a pistol fired in their direction. It went wide and the next minute on the Duke’s orders they rounded the yacht and were out of sight.

A rope ladder was let down from the deck and Magnolia was helped up it.

She stood indecisive, shivering with fright until the Duke joined her.

Then he picked her up in his arms, saying as he did so,

“Put to sea immediately, Captain Briggs! Are there any weapons aboard?”

“There are several sporting guns, Your Grace.”

“Get them!” the Duke ordered.

He carried Magnolia into the Saloon and set her down on the nearest sofa.

When he would have left her, she put out her hands to hold onto him, crying,

“No – no – don’t – leave me! They may – ”

The words she would have spoken were lost, for the Duke had already gone from the Saloon and she heard his voice asking again for a gun.

Then she thought with a sudden terror that the bandits might shoot him before the yacht could get under way and they would be out of range.

With the lights blazing from the portholes and the lanterns lit on deck the Duke would be an easy target and if he was killed –

The mere thought of it made Magnolia cry out.

Then there was the sudden sound of shots from the shore and the noise of them being returned from the yacht.

‘He will be killed – I know he will be – killed!’ she murmured beneath her breath and fainted –

*

It seemed a long time later before Magnolia was fully conscious and then all that mattered was that there was no longer the sound of shots, but only the steady throb of the engines.

They were moving – moving away from the bandits and the Duke was safe and unharmed, because Jarvis had told her so.

It was Jarvis who had found her unconscious and, as she realised later, had carried her down to her cabin, revived her with brandy and helped her undress and get into bed.

She had been too scared about the Duke, too bemused and exhausted from what she had been through to feel that he was anything but an attentive Nanny and that she was in his charge.

Only when she heard the Duke’s voice outside in the passage, did she ask anxiously,

“His Grace is – all right?”

“Perfectly all right, Your Grace. I’ll just see to him. I expect he wants to clean himself up. Then I’ll tell him Your Grace’d like to see him.”

The valet did not wait for her answer but left.

Lying back against the pillows, Magnolia thought the sound of the Duke’s voice in the next cabin was the most comforting thing she had ever heard.

He was alive and safe and now she knew she need no longer be afraid, and they could relax and rest after all they had been through.

“He is safe!”

The words came to her lips as she felt once again that he was holding her against him and she could feel his heart beating as he ran with her to safety.

She had liked the strength of his arms and the feeling of security he gave her even though she had been afraid and she knew it was something she did not want to lose.

Then, as next door she heard the Duke laugh, she knew that she loved him!

It was so astonishing, so unexpected that, as the feeling crept over her, for a moment she stiffened thinking it must be untrue.

Then she realised it was what she had felt in New York when the Englishman had danced with her and she had wanted to see him again, but was now multiplied and intensified until it invaded her whole body from the tips of her toes to the top of her head.

‘I – love – him!’ she said to herself and felt it could not be true and that she must be dreaming.

How could it have happened? How could she love a man she had hated and despised?

But her brain told her that her love was really very understandable.

The Duke was not only the most handsome and attractive man she had ever seen in her life, he was also the kindest the most gentle and the most protective.

She was intelligent enough to realise that no other man, not even her father, would have been clever enough to make her walk without screaming with fear, along a ledge only a few inches wide from which one slip meant certain death.

Because the Duke had made her trust him and because, as she now realised, she had loved him, she had never envisaged that he would not succeed in what he had undertaken.

‘He is – wonderful! Magnificent!’ she told herself and felt her heart beating frantically in a very different way than it had done when they were escaping.

The door of her cabin opened but, when she looked eagerly, it was not the Duke, but Jarvis.

“His Grace’s compliments, Your Grace, but the chef should have some nourishing soup ready by now and His Grace asks if he can drink it in here with Your Grace,”

“Yes – of course!” Magnolia said eagerly.

Jarvis disappeared and returned a few minutes later with a tray on which was a tureen of soup and cups into which to ladle it, beside a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket.

He arranged them on a table by the bed and Magnolia knew that while she was not hungry, because the Duke had made her eat some of the food the robbers had brought them to keep up her strength, she would linger over the soup so that he would stay with her longer.

“His Grace’s been having a bath,” Jarvis said conversationally and he went from the cabin.

When the door next opened, the Duke came in.

His hands as well as the clothes he was wearing when they escaped had been, Magnolia knew, like her own, dirty and stained both from the cell and the rocks.

Now he was wearing a long robe of dark blue satin and there was a silk handkerchief tied at his neck like a stock, which made him look, she thought, somewhat raffish and his hair, which he must have washed, was still a little wet.

Because she was so pleased to see him, Magnolia did not think of her own appearance.

She did not realise that in the pink draped bed with her fair hair hanging over her shoulders she looked very lovely and insubstantial, while her eyes seemed to fill her whole face.

“You are feeling all right now?” the Duke asked in his deep voice as he came nearer to the bed.

“Yes – thank you.”

“Jarvis told me that you fainted.”

“It was  – stupid of me, but I was so  – afraid they might – shoot you.”

There was a little silence.

Then the Duke asked,

“You were thinking of me?”

“Yes – and I was sure they would want to – kill you for being so  – clever as to – escape from them.”

“Well they failed!” the Duke said in a tone of satisfaction, “and we definitely wounded, if not killed, two of them.”

As he spoke, he ladled the soup into a cup and held it out to her. Then he filled a cup for himself.

She drank the soup because he had given it to her, but realised she was not really hungry and after a few sips set it down on the table by the bed.

As the Duke drank his soup, she realised that his eyes were on her and it made her feel shy.

At the same time, because he was there and because he was safe, she could only feel an inexplicable gladness that seemed to light the whole cabin as if it was filled with sunshine.

The Duke finished his soup.

Then he said,

“ How could I have imagined – how could I have dreamt – that we should be involved in such a terrible situation? But, because we have survived and I think with honours, we should drink a toast to ourselves.”

As he spoke, Jarvis came into the cabin and removed the tureen and the cups, leaving only the champagne.

The Duke filled two glasses, handed one to Magnolia and lifted his glass.

His eyes met hers and then he said very softly,

“To the bravest woman I have ever known!”

Magnolia felt the blood rising in her cheeks, but she replied,

“To the – bravest man – who – rescued us!”

Her eyes flickered and her eyelashes were dark against her cheeks as she took a sip of the champagne.

Then with a little leap of her heart she realised that the Duke had sat down on the bed facing her.

“I want to tell you,” he said, “how wonderful you were. I did not think any woman in such frightening circumstances would not scream or cry or at least protest and complain.”

Because of the way he spoke and because of the note in his voice that she had never heard before, Magnolia not only felt shy but also she felt tears come into her eyes.

It was so marvellous that he should think of her like that when it was he who had made their escape possible – he who had carried her to safety.

If he had not been so strong, they could easily have been re-captured and would now be in a very different position.

“It was  – you, who was  – wonderful!” she exclaimed impulsively.

The Duke put down his glass.

“It is difficult to find the right words to tell you what I am feeling,” he said, “and I am desperately afraid, Magnolia, of frightening you.”

“I don’t – think after today,” she answered a little breathlessly, “I shall – ever be frightened of – anything if you are there.”

“I hope that is true,” the Duke said, “ but I was not thinking of your fear of bandits, but of me!”

He saw the flush that made her look lovelier than she was already and he knew too that at his words she gave a little tremor and he was aware that it was not one of fear.

Then he said very softly,

“If you were not an heiress and were not married already, I would ask you, if necessary on my bended knees, if you would be my wife!”

He felt as he spoke almost as if like a gambler he was throwing everything he possessed on a green baize table and praying that the right card would turn up.

After what seemed to him a very long pause, Magnolia answered,

“If you – were not a – Duke, and did not already have a very – possessive wife – I would say – yes!”

The Duke drew in his breath.

“Is my wife possessive?”

“Very – very possessive! She will – never let you – go – ”

The Duke moved nearer.

“My darling, my sweet!” he said. “Do you mean what you are saying to me?”

Magnolia could not answer him and after a moment he said in a different tone,

“For God’s sake, Magnolia, don’t play with me! I want you so desperately that I cannot think clearly. But I could not bear that you should turn away from me in fright. I will do anything you want, but I beg of you to try and trust me.”

Magnolia looked up at him and now his face was near to hers.

“I do – trust you,” she whispered. “And – and – I – love you!”

The Duke made an inarticulate sound as his hands clasped hers.

“Do you mean that?” he asked. “Do you really mean it? Oh, my darling, when I was running with you to safety, I had a strange feeling that I was also running towards our happiness.”

“I thought that – too. I could feel your heart – beating – and I wanted you to hold me  – closer and still – closer.”

“That is what I will do now.”

He put his arms round her, then slowly, very slowly, as if he was still afraid to frighten her, his lips found hers.

As he kissed her, he knew, just as he had expected, her mouth was soft, sweet and innocent and gave him an ecstasy he had never known before in his whole life.

To Magnolia it was everything she had wanted and longed for and which she had thought she would never find.

It was the love she had been told would always be out of her reach, a love that had nothing to do with her money, but only herself.

She felt, as he kissed her, that she gave the Duke her whole heart and soul and she was sure that was what he gave her.

He was so close and she felt as if she had ceased to be herself but was part of him and he was part of her.

As his lips became more demanding, she felt as if the Duke carried her away to the very topmost peak of the mountains, where the world was left behind and there was only the stars, the sky and themselves.

She wanted to press herself closer and still closer to him and when he finally raised his head, she said in a voice that seemed to lilt with happiness,

“I – love you – I love – you!”

“And I love you, my darling,” the Duke sighed. “I love you because you are the most enchanting person I have ever met and I believe that we were meant to belong to each other since the beginning of time.”

“That is – what I want to – believe too,” Magnolia said, “and it would not – matter who we – were or what we possessed – would it?”

The Duke knew how important the question was.

“I would love you as I do now,” he vowed, “if you had been born in the gutter and possessed nothing but your adorable and fascinating lips.”

He kissed her again until she felt as if he carried her even higher, from the peaks of the mountains up into the very stars themselves and they were enveloped in the light of the Gods.

“I – love you!” she said again when she could speak, “and I wish you were not – a Duke – then we could live in some small cabin somewhere in the mountains  – where I could look after you  – and show you that nothing is of the least importance to me except – you, who are so – brilliant and so – brave.”

“Do you really think I am brave?” the Duke asked.

He looked down at her and she could see the love in his eyes as he added,

“You are the most beautiful person I have ever seen, besides being the most intelligent and the bravest. But now you must be something else as well.”

“What is – that?”

“The most loving wife! I want your love, Magnolia. I want it desperately! And I cannot contemplate my life without you –”

“It is yours – all yours,” she answered with a note of passion in her voice. “I want to – belong to you – to be with you  – always and safe  – as I was when you carried me over that – terrible chasm!”

“I will protect you in the future very much better than I have so far,” the Duke promised firmly.

“Perhaps it was a – good thing that it – happened, because it made me realise how much I – love you. When I thought the bandits might shoot you – I felt that if you died – my whole world would – come to an end.”

“My precious, my sweet!” the Duke exclaimed. “It was foolish and careless of me not to realise that in wild primitive places there are always bandits of some sort, wanting to use people for their own ends.”

“I am not – afraid of them if you are – with me.”

“I will never let you be afraid of anything again,” the Duke said. “And never of me.”

“I shall – be – afraid only if you are – angry with me.”

“How could I be angry with anyone so sweet and perfect!”

“There – might be – another ten thousand red roses – to upset you.”

The Duke laughed.

“If there are, I will make you pay for them with ten thousand kisses!”

“I would adore – that.”

Magnolia put her arms around his neck to pull him closer to her as she spoke, but instead of kissing her lips as she expected, he kissed the softness of her neck and he felt her quiver with a new sensation she had never felt before.

He kissed her until the breath was coming quickly from between her lips, her eyelids felt heavy and she stirred beneath the bedclothes.

She did not understand what she was feeling, but she wanted him to go on kissing her in such an exciting strange way that was different, so very different from what she had imagined anyone could feel.

“I love you, Magnolia!” the Duke said and his voice was deep and hoarse. “And I want you, my darling, I want you as my wife! But I will do nothing you would not wish me to do.”

“I-I want to be – close to you,” Magnolia whispered breathlessly. “Much – much – closer, please – darling – wonderful Seldon – make me your wife – your – real wife.”

The Duke made a sound of triumph.

Then he turned out the lights except one and, pulling off his blue robe, he slipped into bed beside her.

He took her in his arms.

“It is rather late to say this now, my adorable one,” he said, “ but I did promise I would not touch you until you asked me to do so.”

Magnolia gave a laugh of sheer happiness that swept away her shyness.

Then, moving nearer to the Duke than she was already, she whispered,

“Touch me please  – please touch me  – my Seldon – only – ”

“Only what?”

“You make me feel – so strange – so excited.”

“That is what I want you to feel and, if I excite you, my beautiful little wife, you excite me to madness.”

His voice was deep with passion, but he checked himself to add,

“But I will be very gentle. You must not let me frighten or shock you.”

As he spoke, he had pulled away her nightgown from her shoulders and his hand was touching her breast.

“I love – you,” Magnolia cried. “I love you and everything you do  – will be perfect and  – also – Divine.”

“I love you! I adore you! I worship you!” the Duke cried.

Then their hearts were beating against each other’s and his kiss was that of a fighter, a conqueror who had fought against tremendous odds and was the victor.

Yet he was very gentle as she surrendered herself to the insistence of his mouth, his hand and his body.

Then love carried them on the waves of ecstasy into the starlit sky and they knew that nothing mattered except that as a man and woman they were one, now and through all Eternity.

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.

Named the Eternal Collection because Barbara’s inspiring stories of pure love, just the same as love itself, the books will be published on the internet at the rate of four titles per month until all five hundred are available.

The Eternal Collection, classic pure romance available worldwide for all time .

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

THE LATE DAME BARBARA CARTLAND

Barbara Cartland, who sadly died in May 2000 at the grand age of ninety eight, remains one of the world’s most famous romantic novelists.  With worldwide sales of over one billion, her outstanding 723 books have been translated into thirty six different languages, to be enjoyed by readers of romance globally.

Writing her first book ‘Jigsaw’ at the age of 21, Barbara became an immediate bestseller.  Building upon this initial success, she wrote continuously throughout her life, producing bestsellers for an astonishing 76 years.  In addition to Barbara Cartland’s legion of fans in the UK and across Europe, her books have always been immensely popular in the USA.  In 1976 she achieved the unprecedented feat of having books at numbers 1 & 2 in the prestigious B. Dalton Bookseller bestsellers list.

Although she is often referred to as the ‘Queen of Romance’, Barbara Cartland also wrote several historical biographies, six autobiographies and numerous theatrical plays as well as books on life, love, health and cookery.  Becoming one of Britain’s most popular media personalities and dressed in her trademark pink, Barbara spoke on radio and television about social and political issues, as well as making many public appearances.

In 1991 she became a Dame of the Order of the British Empire for her contribution to literature and her work for humanitarian and charitable causes.

Known for her glamour, style, and vitality Barbara Cartland became a legend in her own lifetime.  Best remembered for her wonderful romantic novels and loved by millions of readers worldwide, her books remain treasured for their heroic heroes, plucky heroines and traditional values.  But above all, it was Barbara Cartland’s overriding belief in the positive power of love to help, heal and improve the quality of life for everyone that made her truly unique.

DOLLARS FOR THE DUKE

Barbara Cartland

Barbara Cartland Ebooks Ltd

This edition © 2012

Copyright Cartland Promotions 1981

eBook conversion by M-Y Books