The Dawn of Love

Chapter One ~ 1913-1

Chapter One ~ 1913The Honourable Peregrine Gillingham jumped out of the hansom carriage, paid the cabby and walked up the steps of Windlemere House.

The front door was already open and he handed his tall hat to a footman who wore a powdered wig and then he nodded to the butler.

“Good evening, Dawkins.”

“Good evening, sir.”

“Is His Grace in the library?”

“Yes, sir, he’s been waiting for nearly an hour.”

There was a touch of rebuke in the butler’s well-modulated voice and Peregrine smiled to himself as he followed the servant’s rather pompous tread across the marble hall.

Windlemere House of all the magnificent mansions in Park Lane was the most outstanding.

It had been built by the Duke’s grandfather and was the early Victorians’ idea of what a Ducal house should look like.

Fortunately there was still an architectural hangover from the Georgian period, so it had been designed in better taste than had many of its neighbours.

But Peregrine was not concerned with Windlemere House, which he had seen often enough. He was only hoping that Alstone would not be in one of his disagreeable moods because he was late.

The Duke had an awe-inspiring effect on friend and foe alike and even Peregrine, who was one of his closest friends, found that when he withdrew into an icy reserve to show his disapproval, it was distinctly depressing.

“Mr. Peregrine Gillingham, Your Grace,” Dawkins announced at the library door and the Duke, who was reading The Times, looked up from the newspaper to say,

“Perry! Why the devil are you so late?”

“I am sorry, Alstone,” his friend replied, advancing towards him. “My father sent for me unexpectedly and you know how long-winded he can be.”

The Duke threw down the newspaper.

“I suppose I must accept that as an excuse, as I well know that there is no stopping your father once he gets going on a subject that interests him.”

“He was not particularly interested in anything,” Perry replied ruefully, “only annoyed.”

“Money?” the Duke questioned.

“Of course. What else does my father ever talk to me about?”

“You should not be so extravagant!”

“That is all very well for you – ” Perry began and then, realising that the Duke was teasing him, he laughed.

“All right, I have been slightly overdoing it lately, but you know as well as I do that Molly is extremely expensive and very much more so since you took an interest in her.”

“I did not spoil the market, as you so often tell me I do, for long,” the Duke replied.

“Long enough,” Perry retorted. “You gave her a taste not only for caviar and champagne but for diamonds too and my allowance from my father has never been able to stretch that far.”

He groaned before he added,

“It’s hell being a younger son, a situation you have never had to face.”

“I also have my difficulties,” the Duke pointed out.

“It bewilders me to think what they can possibly be.”

As Perry spoke, he accepted a glass of champagne from a silver tray presented to him by a footman.

The Duke also took a glass and then the bottle of champagne, which Dawkins carried, was placed in a magnificent silver wine cooler filled with ice before the two servants withdrew.

“You were telling me about your troubles,” the Duke said with a faint smile. “Would you like to listen to mine?”

“I would be delighted, but I have always imagined that you had none.”

“Mine are not financial but mental,” the Duke replied. “The truth is, Perry, I was thinking before you arrived that I am bored!”

Peregrine sat upright.

“My God, Alstone!” he exclaimed, “if ever I heard a preposterous statement, that is the tallest. You, bored? You, who have everything? I don’t believe it.”

“It’s true,” the Duke answered, “and I blame you because by being late you have made me realise it.”

“What in God’s name have you to be bored about?” Perry asked. “You are the richest man in the British Isles and the biggest landowner, you own the finest and most outstanding horses and you have the pick of every ‘fair charmer’ in London who takes your fancy!”

He drew in his breath before he continued,

“And we all know the answer to that, it’s because you are so damned good-looking and the hero of any maiden’s dreams!”

“Shut up, Perry, you make me feel sick,” the Duke interposed.

“It’s nothing to what you make me feel by saying you are bored. Shall I go on with a list of the rest of your possessions? Your yacht, your Château in France with the best boar hunting in Europe, your salmon river in Scotland – ”

“Keep quiet!” the Duke ordered him. “What I am talking about is something quite different.”

“In what way?”

“I think I can best express it as a need for mental stimulation,” the Duke said slowly. “The trouble is that everything I do has a certain familiarity about it, which completely eliminates any element of surprise or of anticipation.”

He was speaking unexpectedly seriously and his friend looked at him in perplexity.

Perry was in fact quite intelligent when he wanted to be. He realised now that the Duke was not joking or speaking idly but clearly pursuing an unusual and serious train of thought.

“I was thinking last night when we were playing poker,” the Duke went on, “that we all knew one another too well for the game to be really amusing. I know immediately when Archie has a good hand because his eyes flicker, Charles’s lips tighten when he has a bad one and you click your fingers when you draw to a straight flush.”

“Dammit all, Alstone, that is almost cheating!” Perry protested.

“Oh the contrary, it is simply being observant and thus knowing for sure what is going to happen, which I may add applies also to my other interests.”

“I suppose by that you are referring to Daisy,” Perry hazarded. “I have felt for some time that she was beginning to get on your nerves.”

He thought for a moment that he had gone too far. The Duke was always very reserved when it came to anybody talking of his love affairs.

But tonight he was in a confiding mood.

“Daisy is without exception the most beautiful woman in London, but even beauty can have a certain sameness about it.”

“I agree,” Perry replied.

He thought as he spoke that he was not surprised that the Duke was growing bored with the Countess of Hellingford.

There was no doubt about her beauty, which was breathtaking when you first saw her, but she was also inclined to be possessive and at times bossy and, to be honest, he was surprised that the Duke had tolerated her for as long as he had.

“What about a trip abroad?” he asked aloud.

“Where shall I go?” the Duke enquired. “Another thing I was considering last night is that I have visited nearly all the most attractive places in the world, so unless I am prepared to cross the Gobi Desert or climb Mount Everest, there is not much left for me to do.”

Perry laughed.

“It really is a case of ‘poor little rich boy’!”

“Exactly,” the Duke agreed disarmingly. “And so I am asking you for suggestions.”

“For Goodness sake, confine your enquiries to me,” Perry said. “You know what a furore it would cause if you said anything like this to the Gang. They are very content with things as they are.”

The Duke’s lips curved in a cynical smile.

He was well aware that what Perry called ‘the Gang’ was a collection of his friends who depended on him for their racing, fishing, yachting, shooting and every other entertainment that was provided so generously on the Duke’s estates and in the many houses he possessed in the countryside.

It had become almost a habit for him to entertain the same people every weekend at Mere, his large and extremely fine house in Surrey.

His special coterie of friends looked on it so much as part of their existence that the same bedrooms were always kept ready for them and they even left a number of their personal possessions behind to save the bother of taking them back to London.

If the Duke intended to change his way of life, Perry thought, there would certainly be weeping and wailing amongst what he secretly called ‘hangers-on’ and he had no wish to be there to listen to it.

“Where are you thinking of going?” he queried.

“I am not going anywhere, as far as I know,” the Duke replied. “I am just asking you what I should do and what I might find interesting instead of sitting waiting as I am now and feeling as if I am becoming fossilised.”

“That is the last thing you will ever be,” Perry exclaimed. “At the same time I understand what you are saying to me and I shall try to think of a solution.”

“All I want is something new, something that is different from the ordinary pattern, that makes my life at the moment seem as dull and unruffled as a duck pond.”

“Would you change places with me?” Perry asked. “I can assure you there would be a great deal of ruffle if you had to listen to my father croaking on about responsibility, extravagance and my aimless life that shows that I am nothing but a waster!”

The Duke laughed.

“Your father has always resented your being a friend of mine. He does not think I take my responsibilities seriously enough, as he told my father almost before I was old enough to wear long trousers.”

“If he could hear you at the moment, he would realise that you are taking everything far too seriously. Enjoy yourself, Alstone! Or why not try marriage? That would certainly be a change!”

There was for a moment an ominous silence.

Then the Duke said,

“You well know the answer to that. Never again! Never!”

“That is the most ridiculous statement you have ever made,” Perry responded. “Of course you have to marry sometime. What about an heir?”

“My brother, Thomas, has three sons.”

“That is not the same as having one yourself. It would amuse you to teach your own boy to ride and shoot and to know that he would carry on the family traditions.”

“It is a picture that does not appeal to me in the slightest,” the Duke stipulated firmly. “When Elaine was killed, I had no feeling of grief and I can assure you that, having escaped the noose of matrimony once, I have no wish to put the rope round my neck for a second time.”

Perry did not answer.

He was remembering that the Duke had been very young when his father arranged for him to marry the daughter of another Duke.

From a social point of view it had been an admirable alliance, but the bride and bridegroom had quarrelled from the moment they had left the Church and, when Alstone’s wife was killed while out hunting, everyone expected him to marry again.

From that moment on, however, he made it clear that his intentions where women were concerned were strictly dishonourable.

Surrounded and pursued by the loveliest and most sophisticated women in Society, he chose to amuse himself always with those who were married and had complacent husbands, most of whom were years older than himself.

Only recently, now that he was thirty-three, had the Duke chosen as his companions beauties who were near his own age or younger, but they too were always already married and it is doubtful if he ever met a marriageable girl or spoke to one.

It was the traditional pattern set by the late Monarch, King Edward VII, with the ‘Marlborough House Set’ at the end of the last century.

Once a beautiful woman had been married for some years and presented her husband with an heir then it was more or less expected that she should enjoy a love affair, provided that it was discreet and never in any way caused a scandal.

King Edward’s liaisons, which continued up to the day of his death, were, of course, known to his close friends, but outside the Royal circle, the presence of the beautiful Queen Alexandra on every public occasion protected him even from the newspapers.

Perry was aware that his friend the Duke, while described as a ‘lady killer’ by his friends, was a paragon of virtue to the outside world.

“Even if you are not at present inclined towards matrimony,” he said now, “we shall still have to look round for someone suitable to attract your interest.”

“I doubt if you will find anyone,” the Duke said gloomily. “I have begun to believe that they are all alike from whatever stratum of Society they may come.”

He rose to his feet to walk across the room and poured himself another glass of champagne and, as he did so, he said,