Love is Innocent

Chapter 1 1887-1

Chapter 1

1887The Duke of Atherstone stood on the deck of The Sea Lion as his yacht steamed into the harbour of Algiers.

It was early in the morning and there was that strange translucent light which in North Africa preludes the full force of the sun.

The bay with its terraces of dazzling white and the emerald hills in the background blending with the haze in the azure blue of the sea seemed almost unreal.

But the Duke had a frown on his forehead and his eyes were hard as he watched his yacht move slowly towards the quay and saw the usual crowd beginning to congregate with the arrival of a newcomer.

He had slept little the night before and was still angry with the fury that had driven him down to the harbour at Monte Carlo where he had ordered his Captain to put to sea immediately.

It was typical of the perfectly organised manner with which the Duke ran his life that everything was always ready for a change of mood or a quick decision.

In his numerous houses his servants needed no announcement of his arrival.

Three months might elapse before he revisited any one of them, but when he did everything was exactly as he expected it to be.

He travelled without luggage as his clothes were duplicated in his various residences. Although his secretary and his valet were part of his personal entourage they had underlings to take their place should the Duke travel without them.

Already the Duke had the reputation of being a perfectionist, which was unusual in a man of thirty-four, and conscious of his own consequence he ensured that his comfort was a first consideration with those he employed.

At the same time his life, which should have been without a cloud on the horizon, had unexpectedly run into a storm.

It was indeed a storm that had made him lose his temper the night before and which had brought him quite without forethought into the centuries-old port of Algiers.

It had been deservedly called ‘The Garden of the Gods’, but this did not lessen the frown on the Duke’s face or the hard line of his lips.

With a great deal of noise from the boatmen and sailors on the quay, who looked a piratical and cut-throat gang and whose instructions were ignored by His Grace’s crew, The Sea Lion was tied up alongside.

The Duke went below.

Breakfast was already laid for him in the Saloon and he seated himself with an expression of one who would be surprised if he found anything to tempt his appetite.

The Stewards served him in respectful silence. They were too well trained to speak unless they were spoken to.

But gradually, as he sampled the half-dozen dishes that had been prepared for him by his superlative chef, the Duke appeared to relax a little.

When breakfast was finished still without a word uttered, the Stewards withdrew and he sat alone in the luxurious Saloon of his yacht, which had no equal in the world.

The Sea Lion had been delivered to His Grace only the previous year and last night when he had turned to leave the Casino he had remembered in the midst of his anger that she was in the harbour.

His carriage was waiting outside and, as he stepped into it, his secretary and Comptroller of his household, Colonel Grayson, had come running down the steps of the Casino just before the coachman drove off.

“Are you leaving, Your Grace?” he had asked in a voice that held a note of incredulity in it.

“Yes!” the Duke replied in a monosyllable.

“Have you forgotten your supper party? It is arranged as you requested.”

“Cancel it!”

Colonel Grayson looked at him in surprise, but merely murmured,

“I will do that, Your Grace!”

“Tell the coachman to take me to the yacht,” the Duke said, “and what is more, Grayson, get all those people out of my villa. With the exception of Mrs. Sherman of course.”

It seemed for a moment as if Colonel Grayson would protest and then he asked,

“Are they to leave at once, Your Grace?”

“First thing tomorrow morning,” the Duke replied.

He spoke in a manner that told his Comptroller he had no more to say on the matter.

Colonel Grayson stepped back and the footman, wearing the Atherstone livery that was as well known in England as that of the Royal Family, shut the carriage door on which was emblazoned the Atherstone crest.

The footman obviously awaited instructions and Colonel Grayson with an effort told him,

“His Grace desires you to take him to the yacht immediately.”

“Very good, sir.”

The footman sprang up onto the box, the coachman whipped up the horses and they started off down the steep hill that led from the Casino to the harbour.

As the yacht put out to sea, nosing its way between the other ships moored in the small basin lying between the high rock on which was perched the Royal Palace and the white-domed Casino that looked like a wedding cake, the Duke stood on deck staring ahead.

He did not see the lights of Monte Carlo, which gave it a Fairytale-like appearance or the stars glittering overhead in the sable sky.

Instead he was concerned only with the darkness of his own anger, which filled his mind to the exclusion of all else.

How could it be possible, he asked himself, that he should be in such an intolerable position and at the same time not have foreseen that he was running into disaster?

The Duke had been well aware ever since his boyhood that he was one of the greatest matrimonial catches in the whole of the British Isles.

The state his father lived in was comparable only with that of a Royal personage and, while he was still in the nursery, he had known that it was all to be his one day.

The great broad acres of land that surrounded Atherstone Castle, the grouse moors in Scotland, the hunting lodge in Leicestershire, the ancestral ruins in Cornwall and the lands surrounding them, besides Atherstone House in London, would all be his.

And they were but a part of the incredible number of possessions, so many that it was impossible to remember them all.

Pictures, furniture, tapestries, treasures that had been handed down through the family for generations, besides a racing stud, carriage and hunting horses and every other possession that a man could think of and desire.

Besides all this there were properties abroad, a house in Paris, a château in the Ardennes where he could hunt wild boar, a palazzo in Venice and a villa in Monte Carlo.

Was it possible to own so much and not be happy?

The fly in the ointment of course lay, he learnt as he grew older, in the number of women who wanted to own it with him.

By the time he left Eton there were already innumerable mothers contriving with every bait and lure to inveigle him into a position whereby he must become their son-in-law.

When the Duke was in a good mood, he would laugh at some of the tricks they employed to force from his lips the fatal invitation that would tie him to one woman for the rest of his life.

He had made up his mind that he would not marry until he himself positively wished to do so and nothing would induce him to be captured like a lassooed steer in the manner that some of his friends had been.

The protocol of Victorian Society made it very difficult for an eligible bachelor to avoid the ambushes that were set for him.

To talk to any unmarried young lady alone for more than a few moments was tantamount to offering her marriage. To dance with her twice was to set the gossips’ tongues wagging and a third time was the equivalent of an announcement in the Engagements column of The Times.

It was little wonder that gentlemen who wished to preserve their freedom avoided debutantes like the plague and fixed their affections on married women.

It was far less dangerous to risk the jealousy of a husband than the ambitions of an aspiring Mama.

Moreover Society adjusted itself to making it easier for discreet liaisons between those of more mature years.

Following the example set by the gay Prince of Wales, the jeunesse dorée found that beautiful young women after ten years of marriage, when they had presented their husbands with a son and heir, were only too willing to evoke the light of admiration in another man’s eyes.

The Duke naturally had not refused an invitation when it was offered to him in the shape of provocative, sophisticated lips and questioning glances from under long dark eyelashes.

He had moved from one beautiful woman to another or as one critic put it “from boudoir to boudoir”, until he had encountered Lady Millicent Wealdon.

‘Millie’, as she was known to everyone, even the adoring fans who bought postcards of what were known as the ‘Professional Beauties’, had excited him from the moment they met.

She was dark and willowy and with a full figure and tiny waist in the admired fashion of the moment.

The daughter of a Duke, she had been outrageous in many ways ever since she had left the schoolroom. But then Lady Millie’s beauty had made her sure that the world was there for her to walk on and accordingly she stamped on it!

Her parents, sensing that only to look at her was to be certain that there was trouble ahead, married her quickly when she was only seventeen to a man thirty years her senior.

Lord Wealdon was rich, important, persona grata at Court and a crashing bore!

He was, however, proud of his wife’s beauty and Lady Millie was clever enough to make him believe that all she enjoyed was the adoration of her admirers en masse and was not in the least interested in them individually.

There might have been some truth in this until the Duke came along.

The moment they looked at each other, there had been a fire in their eyes that was unmistakable and the passionate desire that drew them together was impossible to control.

The Duke had made love to many women, but he had never found anyone so insatiable, demanding or fiercely stimulating as Lady Millie.

It was impossible to conceal their infatuation for each other and the world knew about their liaison from the very moment of its inception.

As long as Lord Wealdon was prepared to turn a blind eye, there were few who condemned their behaviour, although there were quite a number of smiles and sly innuendoes.

Then unexpectedly Lord Wealdon died of a heart attack.

Lady Millie was in deep mourning, Queen Victoria having set an example of heavy and prolonged gloom that every widow was expected to follow.

It had therefore been difficult for the Duke to see much of Lady Millie although there were a few snatched assignations during the first six months.

During the second period things became easier.

They had been invited to the same house parties and their hostesses made quite certain that their rooms were not too far distant from each other.

Lady Millie could not yet attend full Court functions, race meetings or garden parties, but she was staying in London at a home that was only a stone’s throw from Atherstone House.

Their love affair renewed itself with all the fire, excitement and drama that had been theirs when they first began it.

And yet the Duke found himself chafing a little, not only at the secrecy that must surround their meetings and which bored him but also the fact that Lady Millie tried to tie him to her side.

He was used to roving freely as the spirit moved him from London to the country, from race meeting to cricket week, from Cowes, where he invariably won several races, to Epsom where he had a number of horses in training.

Lady Millie began to pout when he left her and pout again when he returned.

And he found it rather irritating.

Finally, when the prescribed year of mourning was almost at an end, she decided, without his having expressed the wish for her to do so, to join him in Monte Carlo.