The King Without a Heart (2 page)

The Duke of Starbrooke was like his father.

The fifth Duke had been determined to keep the blood of the Starbrookes as blue as it had been for the last two hundred years and had arranged his son's marriage with Princess Louise of Hughdelberg.

It was not a particularly important Principality, but there was a distant connection with Queen Victoria and no one could say Princess Louise was not the perfect wife for the next Duke.

Unfortunately the second son, Lord Rupert Brooke upset his father's plans. 

He had insisted on marrying a commoner. 

He had gone to Scotland for the salmon fishing and was staying with a distinguished friend, where he always enjoyed a freedom he did not have at home.

If he wanted to go riding, he rode, without there being a fuss about it. In the same way if he wanted to go fishing he would leave the castle and just walk down to the river.

He did not have to be accompanied by ghillies or anyone else unless he particularly asked for them.

As it happened, Lord Rupert liked to be alone, especially in Scotland, as he found it a tremendous relaxation after the pomp and ceremony observed in his own home. And indeed for that matter in most of the great ancestral houses in which he stayed as a visitor.

“You can do as you please, Rupert, whenever you stay with me,” his friend had said. 

Lord Rupert often thought it was the one holiday in the year when he could really enjoy himself.

His friend, the Chieftain of a famous Clan, was fey because he was a Scot. He could understand people's inner feelings far better than any Englishman could possibly do.

This year, when Lord Rupert had come to stay, there were no other guests in the castle and he and the Laird spent the evenings discussing the issues that interested them both and it was what they had always done when they were at Oxford together.

Next morning Lord Rupert went down to the salmon river alone. He was carrying his own rod and a landing-net in which, when he had hooked and played his fish, he would take it from the river.

He had caught two salmon, when to his astonishment he hooked a really big fish.

It was bigger than any salmon he had ever seen in the river and he was determined not to lose it. He played it firmly but not roughly, knowing that because it was so heavy he must be careful not to snap his line.

The fish had come straight from the sea and fought like a tiger to regain its freedom.

It was a fearsome battle which Lord Rupert relished and he was equally determined to take home this great fish as a trophy for which he would certainly be congratulated.

The huge fish jumped and jumped again and as Lord Rupert let out his line, he was beginning to fear that the fish would get away.

He needed to find a way to lift it out of the water as the net he had brought with him was far too small and he had very stupidly left his gaff on the bank.

It was then to his relief, he realised that he had attracted an audience.

Coming down a path which led to the part of the river where he was standing was a young woman. He was not able to look at her, although one glance told him that she was present.

Instead he raised his voice,

“Can you help me, please?”

“Yes of course,” the young woman answered.

“You will find my gaff on the bank.”

“Yes, I can see it.”

Now he had secured some help, it was only a question of a few minutes before he could bring the salmon in.

The girl gaffed it and then handed the fish to him to lift out of the river as it was far too heavy for her.

It was an extremely large salmon and would, Lord Rupert thought, weigh over twenty pounds and he was certain that his host would be delighted, as it was unusual to find such a large fish in this part of the river.

Then he looked at the girl who had helped him and was astonished.

Smiling at him, because he had been so successful, was the most beautiful young woman he had ever seen.

She had a beauty that was different from any of the many lovely women whom Lord Rupert had associated with in London.

Because he was so handsome and the son of a Duke, he was invited to every party and every ball as well as to every alluring candlelit dinner given in Mayfair.

But of all the women he had pursued and who had pursued him, he had never seen anyone quite so lovely as the girl he was looking at now.

It was difficult for him to explain her difference from the others.

Her heart-shaped face was very young and innocent.

There was nothing flirtatious or provocative in the way she was looking at him with her large grey eyes, which seemed to fill her whole face and there was something magical about them.

In the same way she seemed to belong to the river and the moors rather than to the world in which he lived.

She was simply and correctly dressed, but Lord Rupert could see that her hair under her bonnet had touches of red that proclaimed to him her Scottish ancestry.

Yet he had never seen a Scot who looked like her and he wondered if she was real.

It was later when he came to know her that he believed she was in fact part of a dream that had always been in his heart, but he thought it was something he would never find.

As Lord Rupert looked at Iona, Iona looked at him.

Something passed between them that was beyond words and was indeed inexplicable. 

Quite simply they fell in love at first sight. 

There was no question of Lord Rupert thinking again, as his father had begged him to do, nor would he postpone the date of their marriage. 

He and Iona had found each other and nothing else in the world mattered.

Lord Rupert's father, the Duke, was furious, although he admitted that Iona was a lady and her father a respectable Chieftain of a small clan.

“But that,” he shouted furiously to his son, “is not good enough for the Starbrookes.”

It was doubtful if Lord Rupert listened or understood what was being said to him, as he was head over heels in love and merely counting the days until he could marry Iona.

He paid his own family the compliment of taking her to Starbrooke Hall with her parents before the wedding actually took place.

Because he behaved like a gentleman, the Duke was polite to Iona's father and mother, but when he had his son alone, he raged at him.

“All right she is beautiful, I am not arguing about that,” the Duke had thundered. “But all down the centuries the Brookes have married their equals and nothing you can say can make this woman our equal.”

When Iona and her parents returned to Scotland, Lord Rupert travelled with them and they were married quietly by the Minister of the Kirk where Iona had been christened.

When they left on their honeymoon, Lord Rupert took his wife first to Paris and then on to Venice, Athens and Cairo. He wanted her to see the world and he hoped it would amuse her as much as it had always fascinated and interested him.

She loved every moment of their honeymoon and everything they experienced, just in the same way that she loved him.

They were so perfectly attuned to each other that they never had to explain to the other what they were thinking or what they wanted as they each knew instinctively.

When Titania was born, both Lord Rupert and his wife adored their small daughter and it did not worry him that it would be very difficult for Iona to have any more children.

Her home was a home of love and joy because her parents were so supremely and completely happy and they both cherished their only child.

Titania travelled with them, sleeping in many strange places. Sometimes in a tent or on the back or a camel.

Occasionally she cuddled up between her father and mother in the open air, when they were exploring unknown territory and could find nowhere else to sleep at night.

It was an education which most boys would have enjoyed, but most girls would have found uncomfortable.

Titania enjoyed every moment of it and for her the whole world consisting of her father and mother was one of love.

Then tragically Lord Rupert and his wife were killed in a railway crash when they were travelling home after a short visit to Wales.

For Titania it was the end of the first part of her life.

Overnight as it were, she ceased to be a child, because her parents were no longer alive and she became a woman with all the difficulties and troubles that lie in wait for those who have been forced to grow up too quickly.

When the funeral was over, Titania's uncle ordered her to pack her boxes.

“You are coming to live with me at Starbrooke Hall,” he commanded.

She tried to persuade him to allow her to remain in the house where she had been born. She had been so happy there with her father and mother, but he had told her curtly it was impossible.

She was informed later that the house was to be sold with all its contents and she was not permitted to keep even some small pieces of furniture that she particularly loved.

Only with Nanny's help was she able to save some small ornaments, which her mother had always prized and Titania kept them hidden from her uncle.

In fact there were only two things the Duke allowed her to take with her to Starbrooke Hall.

One was Nanny who had looked after her since she was a baby and the Duke had said somewhat grudgingly she could be Titania's lady's maid.

The second was her horse Mercury, which her father had given her the year before and which now she loved more than anyone else in the whole world.

She told all her troubles to Mercury and he seemed to understand and it was Mercury who made life worth living because she could ride him every morning.

The reason she was so unhappy at Starbrooke Hall was, to put it mildly, mental cruelty.

Her father and mother were dead, but the people around her were continually in one way or another pointing out how wrong it had been for her father to make such an inferior marriage.

And then of course to produce her.

It was not what they said in words.

It was the way they looked and the tone of her aunt's voice when she spoke to her.

Lady Sophie was a year older than Titania and she soon discovered how clever her cousin was at arranging hair and how beautifully she sewed.

After that Titania became more or less an unpaid lady's maid.

It was – “Titania, do my hair – Titania, mend this lace – Titania, fetch my bag.”

Titania was much quicker and much more effective than anyone who had looked after Sophie before and she was therefore in demand almost every hour of the day.

The only time she could escape was very early in the morning and as her cousin slept late she could go riding alone on Mercury.

Because her uncle considered her of no importance, she did not have to be accompanied by a groom.

Titania often found it difficult to fulfil all Sophie's demands, but at the same time she had her moments of happiness.

Apart from riding Mercury she had discovered the library at the Hall and found all the books her father had prized so much, but which she had not been allowed to keep when their house was sold.

There were also a great many others which she knew he had read when he was a young man and he had often quoted them to her when they were having one of their exciting and interesting discussions.

Just as he had talked to his Scottish friend and then to Iona, Lord Rupert had talked to his daughter.

He taught her far more than any governess could have done and the books that she had studied in her father's library and now in her uncle's completed her education.

Lord Rupert had learnt a great number of languages because he loved travelling around the world.

It amused him when Titania was small to speak to her in French and make her try to pronounce the words after he had said them.

The same applied to other languages and when she grew older she found that a number of books in her father's library were in a variety of languages. As she was intelligent she forced herself to understand them, just as her mother had done when she found where her husband's interests lay and was determined to share them.

Another factor she had found almost intolerable at Starbrooke Hall was that neither the Duchess nor her daughter ever talked about anything except the latest gossip or what the newspapers were reporting about the social entertainments in London.

Titania often thought that if she could not go to bed to read one of the books from the library, she would have wanted to scream at the boredom of it all.

None of the family had the slightest idea that she was reading books that her father would have enjoyed, but which would have been considered completely and absolutely incomprehensible to any other young woman.

Equally it was a very lonely life.

There was only Mercury to hear which exciting incidents in history she had discovered the night before or a poem she had found written by an ancient Greek, which was ringing in her ears so that she must recite it to him.

*

 Now as she finished her breakfast, Titania was thinking that she had been unexpectedly fortunate in not being scolded very angrily for being late for prayers, although her aunt's words had scalded her.

Her uncle usually considered lateness to be an unforgivable sin.

However this morning having reproved her, he was reading a letter which lay on top of his pile and apparently had no more to say to her.

She was just contemplating whether she could slip away from the table without being noticed when the Duke announced,

“I have something to tell you all, which I think will surprise and at the same time please you.”

“It sounds most intriguing,” muttered the Duchess.

She glanced at her daughter Sophie as she spoke and Sophie who had been thinking of something else, immediately turned her head towards her father.

Titania realised it would be impossible for her to leave the room and therefore sat waiting expectantly for what the Duke had to say.

“I have received,” he began, as he put his glasses on again, “a letter from Velidos, which I am sure you will all find extremely interesting.”