An Introduction To The Eternal Collection Jubilee Edition (39 page)

A sudden idea presented itself to Iona’s mind. Might this lady be the Duke’s wife? But surely, she answered herself, the Duchess was too old for the Duke if Colonel Brett was right in supposing him to be about thirty?

Yet men did marry women older than themselves. If this then was the reigning Duchess, was there a Dowager Duchess who was the mother of Lady Elspeth? How many possibilities there were, how many problems? And again Iona remembered Hector’s warning.

The door at the end of the room was opening. She felt her eyes drawn towards it and awaited expectantly the Duke’s entry into the room. She saw a tall, broad shouldered figure wearing a coat of blue velvet embroidered with silver and sparkling with decorations. His hair was powdered and it was perhaps this last fact that for a moment blinded Iona to the truth.

Then, as he came nearer, crossing the room slowly with an unhurried dignity, she recognised him, recognised the handsome features, the cold aloof air, the dignity which was almost an arrogance and the irresistible authority which once before had made her obey his wordless command.

It was difficult for her to prevent herself from giving a cry of astonishment. Incredible though it seemed, the Duke was the tall stranger who had rescued her from the odious attentions of the amorous French
roué
.

For a second she thought wildly that already her plot was discovered. He had been in France – he was here. He knew why she had come, what planning and scheming was behind her visit. Then desperately she pulled herself together. It was a coincidence, a chance encounter that was all. The Duke could not have known where she was going that evening and had indeed shown little interest in her. He performed an act of mercy and that was all.

From a long distance it seemed to Iona she could hear the Duchess’s voice.

“I have something to show you, Ewan,” she said. “It is a letter brought by this girl from France purporting to show that she is your half-sister, Elspeth, who was drowned seventeen years ago.”

The Duke took the letter the Duchess held out to him, but ignoring it he looked straight at Iona.

It seemed to her there was no recognition in his eyes and she said nothing. She only met his glance, her head thrown back a little because he was so tall, her gaze steady beneath his, though something quivered within her.

“What is your name?” he asked.

His voice was quiet and courteous.

“I have been called Iona.”

Her answer seemed to satisfy him and he looked away from her to the sheets of paper he held in his hand. Impatiently the Duchess broke in.

“It is, of course, a preposterous tale,” she said. “Elspeth was drowned, there is surely no doubt about that? Who is this Jeannie MacLeod? I have never heard of her.”

The Duke raised his eyes from the paper.

“There is no reason why you should have,” he said. “She was my sister’s nurse – and mine.”

The Duchess shrugged her shoulders petulantly. The Duke merely glanced at her and then turned to Iona.

“Won’t you sit down?” he asked. “If you have indeed come from France, you must be fatigued for it is a tiring journey.”

With a gesture of his hand he indicated a chair opposite the Duchess beside the fireplace. Iona went to it, hoping that she held herself gracefully, and sat down. The Duke stood with his back to the fire between the two women and read the letter carefully, a quizzing glass raised to his eye. When he had finished, he folded the pages together.

“It speaks here of a miniature,” he said. “You have it with you?”

Iona held out to him the little packet containing both the miniature and the bracelet. The Duke opened it and took out the miniature, then stared at it for some seconds.

“Whom does it portray?” the Duchess inquired. “Let me see.”

“It is a miniature of my grandmother,” the Duke said quietly. “I cannot remember seeing it before, but it is a good likeness. There is a portrait of her to compare it with in the State dining room.”

The Duchess took the miniature from his hands, looked at it and then across at Iona.

“I suppose,” she said slowly and reluctantly, “that there is a –”

“ – distinct resemblance.” the Duke finished.

“Then – ” the Duchess began, and stopped. “But this is nonsensical! We must have more proof of this.”

“Of course! Who has suggested otherwise?”

The Duke turned to Iona.

“I think we should express our thanks to you for coming all this way from France with information which is, of course, of the greatest interest to me and my family. Please accept the hospitality of Skaig whilst investigations are made and your claim established. You will be aware that this will take time, but I can only hope that it will give us the opportunity of getting to know each other.”

“But, Ewan – ” the Duchess protested, “aren’t you assuming that this girl, of whom we know
nothing
, is indeed Elspeth?”

“I am assuming nothing,” the Duke replied. “This lady has made a claim which appears to be, on the face of it, a very reasonable one. It is for our attorneys to examine the proofs of its authenticity. In the meantime this lady will, I hope, accept our invitation.”

Iona found her voice.

“I thank Your Grace,” she said, “but perhaps under the circumstances it would be better for me to return to the inn until you have decided what would be the best course to pursue. I have kept the coach which conveyed me here and it can take me back.”

She was conscious as she spoke of going against Colonel Brett’s instructions, but somehow she felt that she could not force herself upon the Duchess.

Hospitality, unless freely given, would stifle her. It was then that the Duke smiled. To Iona’s surprise it transformed his face. The coldness vanished and he looked in that second younger and far more human.

“I cannot recommend the inn at Fort Augustus,” he said. “You had best stay with us at least until you have time to rest after your journey.”

“Thank you,” Iona said.

The Duchess got to her feet.

“I fail to understand your attitude, Ewan,” she said. “It seems to me all very peculiar. And what, may I ask, are we to call this – this –
person
until we learn if she is indeed your half-sister or an imposter?”

Again the Duke smiled.

“This lady has already told us her name, my dear, and to be sure it is a very charming and very Scottish name. To us, for the time being, she will be Miss Iona from – Paris.”

He looked at Iona as he spoke and now she knew that he had not forgotten. He, too, remembered that strange encounter in Paris.

4

My Lady Wrexham was bored. She shut her eyes against the swaying of the coach, but her mind was active and she found it impossible to relax. It seemed to her that she had been jolting over bad roads, fording swollen rivers and being held up by floods for an endless length of time. She felt bruised and battered and utterly fatigued, and her red lips tightened ominously as her head rested against the blue satin upholstery of her coach – a sign, her maid thought, watching her timidly from the other side of the coach, that boded ill for somebody.

A bad rut in the road caused the coach to bump more than usual and Beatrice Wrexham sat bolt upright.

“A plague on it!” she exclaimed. “Will this journey never end?”

“The coachman was certain that we should reach Aviemore by five o’clock, my Lady,” the maid ventured timidly.

“Aviemore!” Lady Wrexham made the name sound like a swear word. “We have many miles to go beyond Aviemore and we are a day late as it is.”

“The floods were uncommon bad in Yorkshire, my Lady.”

“I know that, you fool. Heaven knows why I was insane enough to undertake a journey such as this!”

Beatrice Wrexham threw herself petulantly into the corner of the carriage. She – as well as Heaven – knew the answer to her own question. The reason she had undertaken the long journey from London to Scotland was because, success or failure, what she would receive would make it worthwhile.

Yet now she wondered if any sum of money, however vast, or any jewel, however valuable, was worth the endless exhausting monotony of being a traveller. Few people journeyed in such luxury, but then, if Beatrice Wrexham, the most beautiful and by far the most notorious woman in England, could not command comfort, who could?

Beatrice yawned, then taking a small gold-framed mirror from her reticule, she scrutinised her face. She might be tired, but her reflection showed no sign of it. There was no doubt that she was beautiful. The milk-white skin, the deep blue of her eyes, the almost classical perfection of her features seemed to have no flaw in them, and her hair, which was the colour of ripe corn, rippled, unpowdered for the journey, high upon her head, making a halo for the exquisite heart-shaped contour of her face.

Yes, she was beautiful! But how cleverly and successfully had she exploited that beauty!

Beatrice yawned again, her red lips parted to reveal her even, pearly teeth. She held out the mirror to the maid.

“Put it away, woman,” she said sharply, “and take good care of it. I am told that Scotland is full of thieves and robbers.”

“Oh, my Lady, are our lives likely to be in danger?” the woman quavered.

“I swear I would welcome danger at this moment,” Lady Wrexham answered, “if it did ought to relieve my ennui.”

The maid sniffed and quivered with fright at the thought of what lay ahead of them, but Beatrice Wrexham closed her eyes again and for a moment there was a faint smile on her lips. She had never been afraid of danger. She had supreme belief that her own plausible tongue and the enticement of her beautiful body would carry her through any difficulty, however perilous, however unpleasant.

And she had just cause for such confidence. For ten years she had used her womanhood as a man might use his sword – a weapon to gain her whatsoever she desired.

At twenty-five Beatrice had come to the full blossoming of her beauty. As she closed her eyes, she could see herself as a child of fifteen, innocent, unsophisticated and unpolished, yet already lovely and with a promise of still more beauty to come.

Her mother had brought her to the Court of St. James, openly defying her father’s wishes in the matter. He was an unimportant, impoverished country squire, the owner of a dilapidated manor and a few acres of land in Kent. Beatrice had neither noble birth nor wealth to assist her, but she had an ambitious mother and a magnetic, irresistible beauty.

Her mother was friendly with one of the Queen’s ladies in waiting, and presuming on that friendship, she pleaded and implored the unfortunate lady until she obtained permission to bring Beatrice to St. James’s.

Beatrice might have been innocent in some ways at fifteen, but she would have been deaf and an idiot if she had not understood very clearly and without pretence what her mother desired for her.

They had taken a stagecoach from Sevenoaks to London, as they were too poor to afford a post chaise. Every penny they could scrape together or borrow from their equally impecunious relations had been expended on Beatrice’s wardrobe. Even then they were heavily in debt, but supremely confident that the future would enable them to pay their dues.

They were not mistaken. Beatrice’s beauty did not go unnoticed and within a few weeks of their arrival in London it was obvious that her most eligible admirer was Lord Wrexham. That he was over sixty, a licentious, dissolute man was of no consequence. Younger men waited on Beatrice, flattered her and avowed to be her most devoted slave, but the majority were seeking a bride with a dowry.

Lord Wrexham could not only afford to marry, he was wealthy enough to be a matrimonial catch. The fact that he had sworn, when his third wife died ten years earlier, never to take another did not depress either Beatrice or her mother.

They played their cards carefully. Lord Wrexham was encouraged to call and Beatrice was paraded before him. He was tantalised and tempted by her beauty, but he soon realised that the price of making her his was the cost of a plain, gold wedding ring.

His Lordship paid and was the first of Beatrice’s triumphs, although by no means the last. Those who were shocked by the marriage and the disparity of age between the bride and the groom, and who knew the unsavoury reputation of the latter, foretold the future with gloom. They were disappointed. Beatrice showed no sign of being disgusted or affronted by her husband’s licentious ways. Gorgeously dressed, wearing fabulous jewels that even the Queen would have been proud to own, she became the toast of London.

For so young a girl her self-assurance was phenomenal. Her beautiful face was a mask to hide her real feelings, whatever they might be. There were those who said that Wrexham, entranced by his young bride and converted by her innocent purity, had turned over a new leaf, there were others who averred that he had merely drawn her into the vortex of sin and vice in which he himself wallowed.

It was hard to know the truth. One thing only was certain – Lady Wrexham enjoyed her position as the wife of a nobleman.

Four years later Lord Wrexham suffered a stroke. He retired to his country seat, but his wife did not accompany him. She remained in London and there were those who said that she was preparing to make a much more important marriage as soon as she became a widow.

But Lord Wrexham did not die, he remained in the country half paralysed, his senses somewhat impaired, enjoying, it was true, many comforts but not the companionship of his wife.

Beatrice Wrexham began to be talked of in a hushed voice. It was not only scandal that surrounded her, it was the aroma of intrigue. Still the most beautiful and the most extravagantly dressed woman in London, she appeared to demand more of life than the social gaiety of Ball, Masque and Rout. Her ambition was insatiable. Once she had craved money, jewels and a title, now she wanted much more – that insidious, delectable, but dangerous possession of all – power.

It was noticeable that among the beauties at court, Beatrice was unique in that she chose her lovers not for their physical attributes, but because they were of political consequence.