104. A Heart Finds Love (10 page)

The Duke then asked her,

“Well, you must tell us the rest, you have made my flesh creep as it is!”

Alnina smiled.

“One Chieftain found his son dead. He then cut his body into small pieces and sent his horsemen across the mountains, each one with a fragment to be given to his kinsmen.”

“What happened then?” William enquired.

“For each piece an enemy’s head was returned to him and his son’s death was avenged.”

“I only hope they have quietened down by now,” the Duke said, “or we will never get home!”

“Of course they have,” Alnina told him soothingly. “At the same time I still think they were very brave.”

“Let’s hope that the future will be less violent, but I am glad I have brought my revolver with me.”

“That is slight comfort, John,” William added, “but I can readily assure you, unless my friend who told me about Prince Vladimir was lying, an English Nobleman is more valuable to him than a Prince from another country.”

“Then let’s hope he looks after us and makes us comfortable while we are bargaining with him,” the Duke murmured. “Perhaps if he values us as much as that, he might reduce the price or even give me the mountain as a present!”

William laughed.

“Only if you marry his daughter and that you have made certain you cannot do.”

“Certainly not while I am there at any rate!” Alnina exclaimed. “I am sorry to have frightened you, but I think it’s very interesting to know how brave the Georgians have been in the past.”

They then talked about other matters.

When they finally went to bed, she thought that she had never enjoyed herself more.

It was fascinating to be able to talk with two such intelligent men and to discuss many subjects when recently she had had no one to talk to except Brooks and his wife.

She said a special prayer of thankfulness when she climbed to bed in the very comfortable cabin she had been allocated.

The Duke had, of course, taken the Master cabin, but she realised that hers was the best of the others.

It was decorated more prettily than even the Master cabin and it never struck her, although it had the Duke, that her cabin was the one always used by the Marquis’s most favoured beauty.

He was noted for his
affaires de coeur
with a large number of the most acclaimed ladies in Society.

He was able to enjoy himself because his wife had been crippled after a fall out hunting and was obliged to live in the country. And, because she was having special treatment from the local doctor, she did not accompany her husband when he went to sea.

Alnina had led a very sheltered life, first at school and then with her father and therefore it did not strike her that her cabin was especially feminine.

“The curtains are such a lovely shade of pink,” she said at dinner when they were talking about the yacht, “and I love the number of mirrors in my cabin, while the others have to be content with one or two at the most.”

She did not notice the twinkle in the Duke’s eye as he commented,

“It is a perfect beginning for anyone as beautiful as you. I feel the owner of this yacht must have been thinking of you when he decorated it!”

“As I have never met him, that is an easy thing to say,” Alnina replied. “I am very happy to be in such a lovely cabin on such an exciting journey.”

“I will drink to that,” William came in, “but I don’t want it to be
too
exciting. I have been thinking of what you told us at luncheon and I am only hoping that we will not have to use John’s revolver to protect ourselves.”

“I think we are safe for a while,” the Duke replied. “At the same time I cannot be sure, if the Russians go on infiltrating into Asia as they are doing at the moment.”

*

The next day, when breakfast was over, the Duke said that they should start their lessons, but Alnina must forgive him, he added, if he became so bored that he went away in the middle of them.

“I will try not to bore you,” Alnina answered him. “But you will be far more bored when we reach Tiflis and William and I chatter away with everyone we meet while you have to remain silent.”

“Now you are bullying me,” the Duke complained. “All right, I will try to speak the abominable language, but I will be extremely hostile if I fail!”

William laughed and teased him.

But they sat down in the Saloon and Alnina began their lesson.

She realised that it would definitely be a mistake for the Duke to be bored, so she concentrated on teaching them as quickly as possible the way a sentence was formed in Russian.

Then she told them very simple children’s stories, which they had to translate from English into Russian.

They looked up the words they would require in a dictionary. It was the way Alnina had learnt herself which she had found amusing.

She was sure that was what the men would want, rather than just listening to what she said.

At the end of two hours they had certainly made no complaint. They merely thanked her and the Duke then went on deck for some fresh air.

It was what Alnina enjoyed herself for the rest of the afternoon, watching the waves breaking against the bow of the yacht.

When they reached the Bay of Biscay, she was so delighted to find that she was a good sailor, although at one time the sea was very rough.

At dinner the two men drank champagne and vied with each other in telling Alnina elaborate stories of ships at sea.

They tried to make her flesh creep and told her how in a storm a ship could be shattered on the rocks however strong it appeared to be.

“I refuse to let you scare me,” she insisted. “It has been a long and interesting day and I am going to bed.

She smiled at both of them and added,

“Thank you, thank you so much for bringing me on this thrilling adventure. Whatever happens in the future, I will always remember it.”

She walked towards the door as she spoke and, when she reached it, she turned and blew a kiss, first to William and then to the Duke.

“Good night and do sleep well,” she said, “and be ready for lesson number two in the morning!”

When she had gone, the Duke poured himself out another drink.

“She is certainly a find,” he said. “We might have searched England from top to toe without finding anyone so intelligent or indeed so beautiful.”

“You will certainly be complimented on your wife if nothing else,” William remarked. “Equally be careful, because that Prince is undoubtedly a nosy-parker. If he suspects for one moment you are deceiving him, I hate to think what your punishment would be.”

“So do I,” the Duke agreed. “After what Alnina told us about the Tiflians, I am really quite nervous about going there.”

“I expect that they have settled down and are now enjoying peace and plenty instead of killing each other.”

“That is true, but we fight when we have to,” the Duke replied. “I am only afraid that, if the Russians go on behaving as they are at the moment in Bulgaria, we will find ourselves at war with them.”

William did not reply.

Then the Duke remembered that his father had been a soldier and his mother had suffered acutely because of her fear that he might be killed. He had fought in many campaigns in obscure parts of the world, which made the British Empire greater than ever.

‘I have never had a wish to fight anyone,’ the Duke thought before he went to sleep. ‘So I have been luckier than most men and I am extremely grateful for it.’

He was thinking of the huge house he had inherited with the title and the vast acres of land surrounding it.

There was also the large house in Berkeley Square, besides enough money for him to hire this yacht without for one moment having to consider the cost of it.

‘How could I possibly have been so lucky?’ he asked himself. ‘I am extremely grateful to Fate which has been so kind to me.’

Then, when he did not want to think about her, he remembered the girl he had been in love with and who had jilted him three days before their wedding to marry a Viscount.

He had hated her and he had also despised himself for having believed that she loved him for himself.

Now unexpectedly he found it no longer hurt him as it had before to think about her and he could possibly understand why she had jilted him.

Just as he had longed to have that special mountain that he believed contained gold, so she had longed to wear a coronet at the Opening of Parliament and she had wanted to be acclaimed as someone of social importance because her husband was titled.

‘I suppose really we all have a winning post in our minds which we want to reach,’ the Duke thought. ‘Now I have passed mine, I can be generous and no longer bitter.’

He gave a heartfelt sigh of satisfaction before he continued to think,

‘I have been lucky, very very lucky.’

He stretched himself out in the big bed and then, instead of falling asleep as he intended, he began thinking of what he would do when he returned home.

Of course he still wanted to travel, but there was so much to be done in England. He thought that perhaps this particular journey would be his last for some time.

He was thinking new and unaccustomed thoughts when he fell asleep.

*

In the cabin next door Alnina was also thinking how happy she was and how lucky.

Who would have guessed for a moment when she was sitting alone at The Hermitage that a Duke would appear? It was almost as if he had dropped down from Heaven.

Before she really knew it was happening, she was here in this luxurious yacht and sailing towards one of the countries she had longed to visit, but thought she would never get further than illustrations of it in a book.

‘I only hope,’ she mused, ‘that we don’t arrive there too quickly or leave it the moment we arrive.’

She had read so much about Georgia and especially on the beauty of the Caucasus mountains and she felt as if she had already seen them, as if she had seen the glowing lowlands and beyond them the shadow of the mountains.

She had read in books that there was an atmosphere in Georgia of seduction, voluptuous adventures and even political uprising.

She wondered if she would really experience any of this.

She had also read of the vineyards and the orange groves and bazaars piled with silks and spices.

Persian jewellers were there weighing turquoises by the pound and Caucasian armourers were working on beautiful damascened swords for which they were justly celebrated.

Her thoughts aroused in her a strange sensation that seemed to make her whole body glow.

‘How could I be so fortunate,’ she asked herself, ‘as to be on my way to see a place such as that?’

She knew that ever since she had read about it, it had remained in her mind. It made her long for the East and yet she never thought that she would ever go there.

She said a little prayer of thanks.

Then she thought how difficult it was to thank the Duke enough for what he had already done for her.

She had known when she left The Hermitage that there was now no need to worry about it and both Brooks and Mrs. Brooks would have enough to eat and they were actually receiving their wages.

‘They have been so kind to me,’ she reflected, ‘and I must take them back marvellous presents.’

Then she remembered that she did not have any money of her own.

The clothes she was wearing had been paid for by the Duke. The mere idea of it would have shocked her mother and all her older relations.

But they were not given to her as a gift – rather for the ulterior purpose of deceiving Prince Vladimir.

‘I am sure it makes a difference,’ she told herself.

At the same time she hoped that no one would ever know that the beautiful dresses she had bought in Bond Street had been paid for by a man!

‘I have broken all the rules,’ she thought. ‘But not in the way other women would break them, immorally or just to enhance their own beauty.’

She then added to herself,

‘I am doing it so that the Duke can achieve what matters to him, apparently much more than anything else – a mountain!’

It sounded so ridiculous that she had to laugh.

What other man could, she now asked herself, be so much in love with a mountain that he just had to own it, whatever the cost?

But then what other man would have taken her, disguised as his wife, on this exciting voyage?

‘It’s all unbelievable and that is what makes it so thrilling,’ she told herself. ‘I will always remember this journey when the Duke has no further use for me and I am sent home.’

She only hoped that things would not be as bad when she returned as when she left.

There were still some items left to sell and she had told the Solicitor exactly what she required for the different pieces she had pointed out to him.

He had argued with her over one inlaid table.

“I think that you should ask more than that, Miss Lester,” he said. “That’s a very fine table.”

“But some of the mother-of-pearl inlay is missing,” Alnina had said. “And I think it is only fair to point out to any purchaser that it will have to be restored.”

“That can easily be done,” the Solicitor had replied. “It’s merely a question of money.”

“Exactly,” Alnina said, “and, as I have none, I shall be grateful to sell it even if it does not go for the top price it would have fetched had it been perfect.”

“I will see what I can do,” the Solicitor had said.

She knew by the way he spoke and the expression on his face that he was really determined to obtain what he considered the right sum for the table.

There were other pieces of furniture also which she was sure that he thought she was not asking as much for as they were worth.

At the same time it was impossible to tell him the truth – that she had been desperate for lack of enough money to pay for bread and butter!

‘I am so lucky, so incredibly lucky,’ Alnina said to herself, ‘and it’s all due to the Duke.’

She then snuggled down against the lace-trimmed pillow and as she did so she was thinking of him.

Suddenly she felt that strange little quiver within herself that she had felt when she looked into his eyes.