Desire in the Desert

CHAPTER ONE ~ 1895-1

CHAPTER ONE ~ 1895“Mr. Julius and Mr. Nigel Pevel have arrived, my Lord,” the butler announced.

The Marquis of Peverell, who was sitting at his desk, looked up with a frown between his eyes.

“They’re in the library, my Lord,” the butler continued.

“Tell them I will come and join them in a few minutes,” the Marquis said.

“Very good, my Lord.”

The butler closed the door of the study that was the Marquis’s private sitting room when he was alone.

He put down the pen that he was writing with and then stared across the room with unseeing eyes.

He was wondering what he should do about his two cousins, who he was well aware had called on him for one reason only and that was to demand yet more money from him.

The sons of his uncle, who had died seven years ago, he had already paid both Julius’s and Nigel’s debts several times.

He felt that it was something that he could not continue.

As Head of a Family, which was a very large one, the Marquis had innumerable calls on his purse, while Peverell Park his house in Kent cost an astronomical sum a year to keep up.

He did his best to make the farms pay and the land produce good crops and he was determined to make his estate an example to the rest of the country.

He was responsible for more alms-houses, more schools and more orphanages than any other landlord in the country.

Recently Queen Victoria had congratulated him on his good works.

She had just received an excellent report on the innovations that he had started at Peverell Park.

But his biggest problem at this moment was his two cousins.

He was well aware that they were both banking on his horror of a scandal in the family.

Which meant however large, he would eventually have to pay up what they owed to endless creditors mostly in the seamy side of London

It was better than having them taken to Court by a tradesman whose patience was finally exhausted.

They were also sure, he thought grimly, that Julius, who was the elder of the two brothers, would inherit his title and everything he owned.

Not only the family but regretably the world in general, knew that the Marquis’s marriage had been a disaster.

When it was ended, he had sworn somewhat indiscreetly that he would never marry again.

It was not surprising that the Marquis had been disillusioned.

He had been married when he was twenty-two, on his father’s insistence, to the daughter of the Duke of Dorset.

It had been the sort of marriage that was expected of him in the Social world.

His father and the Duke were close friends.

They raced their horses together, greatly enjoyed each other’s company and thought that nothing could be better than that their children should be united in marriage.

Their ‘blue blood’ equalled each other’s and their relatives on both sides exclaimed enthusiastically that it was indeed a perfect arrangement.

They also declared that the bride and bridegroom could not help but be enormously happy together.

They were, the Marquis had found on the very night that he married, completely and absolutely wrong. j

He had seen little of his fiancée before they were actually joined together in marriage by the Archbishop of Canterbury in St. George’s Church, Hanover Square in Mayfair.

The Prince of Wales and his wife, Princess Alexandra, were present and Her Majesty the Queen sent a silver rose bowl.

The rest of their presents filled to overflowing a very large room at Peverell House in Grosvenor Square.

Louise was very pretty in a milk-and-roses English manner with blue eyes and fair hair.

As she came up the aisle, she looked so young and so sweet that a number of the gentlemen in the congregation told themselves that ‘young Druce Pevel was a very lucky chap.’

On the other hand the women in the large congregation were looking at the bridegroom.

They felt a little tremor in their hearts as he was so handsome.

Tall, broad-shouldered, with clear-cut features and grey eyes, he looked just like every woman’s ‘dream man’ and a great number wished that they were in the bride’s place.

At a long and exhausting Reception they had shaken hands and spoken with nearly one thousand people.

They cut a large and indigestible cake and listened to several rather embarrassing speeches.

Finally they were able to drive away amidst a shower of rose petals and confetti.

Druce Pevel had thought with a sigh of relief that it was over.

Now he would be able to laugh about it with his bride.

Louise, however, was silent.

He thought, as they drove to Peverell Park where they were to stay for two nights before they went abroad, that she was shy.

There was no time for them to talk before dinner.

When they had then bathed and changed, they were served an excellent meal in the small dining room, which was well decorated for the occasion.

Only when the butler and footmen who had waited on them withdrew were they actually alone.

“It has been a very long day,” Druce said, “but you have come through it with flying colours and I do hope you can say the same about me.”

“I want to talk to you,” Louise replied, “and I think we should go into the salon.”

“We can do that if you like,” Druce Pevel replied, “but the boudoir next to your bedroom has been decorated and I am sure the gardeners would be disappointed if we sat elsewhere.”

His bride shrugged her shoulders and led the way upstairs.

The boudoir off the State Bedroom was very attractive.

Besides the flowers, which had made the Church look very beautiful, the gardeners had also managed to fill up the room with white blooms. There were roses, carnations, lilies and orchids with just a touch of pink in them.

Although it was what he expected, Druce felt that the beauty of the flowers was overwhelming and stood looking around him in delight.

Louise, however, had moved to the fireplace where there was a small fire burning as the evening was quite chilly.

It then struck Druce Pevel that perhaps she was a little piqued because he had not kissed her since she had became his wife.

There really had not been an opportunity until now.

He walked towards her and found that she was staring into the fire.

“I want to tell you, Louise,” he said, “how very beautiful you looked today. I am sure that we shall both be very happy together in the future.”

He sat down beside her and put his arm around her, but she winced away and then rose to her feet.

Afterwards he could never bear to think of what was like a bayonet thrust coming when he least expected it.

Louise told him in no uncertain terms that she was not happy and there would never be any chance of her being so.

She did not want to be married and had been forced into it by her adamant father.

She was in point of fact wildly in love with a young man who had been Tutor to her brother.

“They sent him away,” she said with a sob in her voice, “to a position in Italy where I can never see him again, but I shall never forget him.”

Druce Pevel sat staring at her in sheer astonishment.

This was something he had never imagined could happen to him.

He saw clearly how he had been trapped into marriage in the same way as Louise had been.

He had spent his Wedding night all alone, unable to sleep and very apprehensive about the future.

Perhaps, if he had been a little older, he might have somehow persuaded Louise that they must make the best of a bad job.

Because he was so attractive, he might have wooed her so that she would have fallen in love with him eventually.

Instead they had both raged at each other.

By the time their honeymoon was over it was impossible for either of them to speak without expressing hatred in their eyes and with their lips.

They came back to the house in London that the Marquis of Peverell had given his son, together with another house, which was attractive and was on the family estate.

Louise was interested in neither of them and, because she was feeling so miserable, she confided her feelings to a number of her girlfriends.

They naturally could not keep such a story to themselves.

Druce soon learnt that there was a nasty whispering campaign spreading through London about himself and his wife and he was infuriated by it.

It reached the stage where he disliked her so much that he was afraid that one day he would murder her.

Then Fate, unexpectedly and unusually kind, took a hand.

Louise, who was an excellent rider, having ridden her father’s superb horses all her life, criticised those belonging to her husband.

It was just because she so wanted to upset him and he replied that, if they were not good enough for her, she should buy her own.

She taunted him by doing so because she knew that everyone would think it strange.

She went to Tattersalls Salerooms in London and then bid for several fine horses that boasted Arab blood.

They were expensive and had belonged to a Frenchman and he had brought them to England hoping for a higher price than he would have obtained in his own country.

He was not disappointed and Louise had them brought back to the house in the country.

Although Druce was angry with his wife, who considered her taste in horseflesh was far better than his, he had to admit that the animals looked outstanding.

They were certainly different from those he owned himself.

His Head Groom told him that he did not think that they had been properly trained and one of them, a large stallion, had already thrown one of the stable boys.

He told the man rather curtly that if he had any complaints he must inform her Ladyship.

He then walked away knowing that, if Louise thought he was interfering, she was quite capable of being rude to him in front of his own servants.

She would make him, in his own words, ‘feel a fool’.

Two days later Louise was dead.

She had ridden the stallion at a jump that any of her husband’s horses would have taken without difficulty.

The stallion had refused at the last minute, throwing her over his head and when she fell she broke her neck.

Druce would not have been human if he had not felt relief at losing a wife who had made every day that they spent together a battleground.

When the year of mourning was over, his father, the Marquis had suggested that, as it was so essential for him to have a son, he should marry again.

It was then he expressed the thoughts that had been turning over in his mind until they became a fixed decision which he had no intention of altering,

‘I shall never get married again. There are plenty of people to inherit the Marquisate when I die. In the meantime I intend to enjoy myself.’

In the following years nothing his father said could change his mind.

The Marquis’s younger brother had married and his wife had produced two sons and the Marquis himself had eventually given up the effort to try and make Druce see sense.

When, however, he did come into the title and so became the Head of the Family, there was an unending number of his relatives who thought it their duty to plead with him.

His grandmother, of whom he was very fond, was the most persistent,

“You need a wife, my dear boy,” she said, “and, although you enjoy at the moment the fact, the world treats you as if you were a Greek God, there should be a hostess at the end of your table and at least two or three children in the nurseries.”

The Marquis had chuckled.

She knew despairingly that he was not moved by her pleas and he simply refused to listen to any of his other relatives.

He was, however, well aware that in his position any of the important families in the country would indeed welcome him as a son-in-law.

In fact, debutantes were paraded in front of him like horses at the Spring Sales.