The River Of Love

Chapter One ~ 1892-1

Chapter One ~ 1892“I have something to tell you.”

The Duke of Darleston, who was just thinking sleepily that he should return to his own bedroom, roused himself to ask,

“What is it?”

“Edward Thetford has asked me to – marry him!”

There was silence before the Duke said,

“I think you would be wise to accept him, Myrtle. He is slightly pompous, but rich and good-natured.”

There was no response for a moment and then Lady Garforth said hesitantly,

“I suppose – you would not – marry me?”

The Duke smiled.

“I cannot remember if it was Oscar Wilde or Lillie Langtry who said that a good lover makes a bad husband.”

“It was the Prince of Wales!” Lady Garforth replied. “And it is certainly true where he is concerned.”

“As it would be for me.”

“We have been – so happy,” Myrtle Garforth murmured with a little sob in her voice. “And I love you, Dasher, as you well know.”

“Thetford will make you a good husband. Does he know about us?”

“I am quite sure he suspects, but it is not something he would put into words and he certainly would not embarrass me by asking questions!”

The Duke laughed.

“If I know Thetford, he will know only what he wants to know and will ignore the rest. Marry him, Myrtle. You will be able to twist him round your little finger and the Thetford diamonds, which I believe are very fine, will become you.”

There was silence again.

Then Lady Garforth exclaimed tearfully,

“Oh, Dasher!” and turned to hide her face against his shoulder.

The Duke held her close and thought as he did so that she was a very sweet person and he was very fond of her.

They had enjoyed a fiery but at the same time an amicable relationship for the last five months. Inevitably, however, he had found himself thinking that Myrtle’s love tied him to her and if there was one thing he was afraid of it was of being tied.

The Duke’s nickname of ‘Dasher’ was an extremely apt one and he had earned it from the moment he was born.

His father, the fourth Duke, had just watched his horse, The Dasher, pass the Winning Post on the Epsom Racecourse a length in front of the rest of the field, when his Comptroller, pushing his way through the crowds outside the Jockey Club, came to his side.

For a moment it was difficult to speak to his Master because his friends were congratulating him so heartily on his win.

“Well done!”

“A tremendous victory!”

“The Blue Riband of the turf and nobody deserves it more!”

The Duke was just about to move away to see his jockey weigh in, when he found his Comptroller at his elbow.

“Excuse me, Your Grace.”

“What is it, Hunter?” the Duke asked testily.

“Her Grace has just been delivered of a son!”

“A son?”

The Duke roared out the word and his voice arrested the attention of quite a number of men near him.

“A son! At last!” he ejaculated.

His closest friends echoed the cry, well aware that after four daughters, a son was what the Duke wanted more than anything else in the world.

Then he laughed and it shook his large frame.

“A son and three weeks early!” he cried. “It seems to me he intends to be a bit of a Dasher too!”

From that moment the Marquis of Darle was never known by any other name.

He was duly christened after his grandfather, his Godparents and his mother’s favourite brother, but he became The Dasher by name and inevitably The Dasher by nature.

Extremely good-looking, by the time he left Eton it seemed as if few women could resist his engaging smile and what was undoubtedly a raffish face.

It was easy to understand why he was so irresistible.

It was not only his good looks, his social position and the immense wealth of the Darleston family. It was because he found life an exciting and amusing adventure.

But it meant that nothing lasted permanently where The Dasher was concerned, least of all women.

“What the hell have you got to be so happy about?” his friends would sometimes ask when he seemed to radiate a joy of living that they somehow missed.

As he grew older, the women came into his life in such numbers that even the most inveterate gossips lost count.

The strange thing, unusual in most men’s affaires de coeur, was that the women he loved so fleetingly were seldom bitter or even resentful when he parted from them.

Undoubtedly many of them had aching hearts, but in some extraordinary and quite unusual way they thought of The Dasher with gratitude for the happiness he had given them and were prepared to defend him against his enemies.

It was inevitable that quite a number of people, especially men, were jealous and envied him, but he also had many friends who were concerned with him as a person and with his sporting rather than his amatory activities.

There was little in the sporting world that The Dasher had not attempted. He raced his own horses, riding even in the Grand National and had made his name on the polo field.

He had sailed his own yacht in the races at Cowes and had nearly been drowned trying to beat the record when paddling a light canoe.

As a fast bowler he had captained the First Eleven at Eton, owned the champion greyhound for two years and naturally was Master of his own pack of foxhounds.

The shooting on his estates had been greatly improved since he had inherited the title and the Prince of Wales had said only the previous year that he would rather shoot at Darle Castle than anywhere else.

All these interests, numerous though they were, seemed to leave The Dasher time to want more and yet more out of life.

“It is almost,” somebody had once said, “as if he is racing against time or perhaps seeking something that he is afraid he may miss if he does not hurry.”

It was as if this idea came to Myrtle Garforth’s mind now, as she asked,

“What are you looking for in a wife, Dasher?”

“I have no intention of getting married,” the Duke replied.

“But you will have to sooner or later. Don’t forget that your father had four daughters before you arrived.”

“My relatives leave me no choice of forgetting that!”

He was thinking, and he was very honest with himself, that it was not surprising that he had been spoilt as a child.

His four sisters had adored him and, as far as his father was concerned, the sun and the moon rose for him alone.

He remembered his mother, when he was very small, saying,

“You must not spoil him. If you give him his own way in everything, he will be impossible by the time he grows up.”

What had saved the Duke from becoming impossible was the fact that he was extremely intelligent.

He was well aware of his good fortune in being born into a family that was respected and admired by everyone from the Monarch downwards. Even the Queen, extremely critical of the Nobility, especially those who surrounded her son, had no fault to find with the fourth Duke and his wife.

And, although some of the present Duke’s more outrageous exploits must have been repeated to her, she treated him with an indulgence that she seldom granted to any other young man of his age.

The Duke’s critics said sourly that Her Majesty had always been susceptible to flattery.

But actually the Duke did not flatter the Queen. He merely talked to her, as he talked to every woman, as if he found her both attractive and interesting.

And like all women the Queen responded to it like a flower opening its petals to the sun.

In fact the only problem in his life, if you could call it that, was how to avoid being married to one of the innumerable females who were determined by hook or by crook to shackle him for life either to themselves or to their daughters.

“One day, Dasher,” Myrtle Garforth said now, “you will fall in love.”

For once she actually surprised the Duke.

“Are you suggesting,” he enquired, “that I have never been?”

“I am not suggesting it, I am stating a fact!”

The Duke was about to laugh at her for saying something so absurd when it suddenly struck him that it might be the truth.

He had always thought himself to be in love when he was attracted by some beautiful face turned towards his and saw two eyes gazing at him with an unmistakable invitation in their depths.

Whenever he felt a response within himself and knew an irrepressible desire to kiss a pair of provocative lips, he would tell himself that Cupid had struck again and he was in love!

Now, looking back at what had invariably been a short-lived rapture, an ecstasy that had slowly but inevitably subsided, he wondered if Myrtle was right.

She was aware that she had made him think and, settling herself a little more comfortably, she said,

“I love you, Dasher, and I know that I shall love you all my life and there will never be another man to compare with you. But I am not so foolish as to think that what you feel for me is something that will last.”

“How do you know that?” the Duke enquired.

“Because, darling, you have never been in love in the way that has inspired men and women since the beginning of time so that if necessary they would be prepared to die for it.”

“I understand what you are trying to say,” the Duke remarked, “but do you really think that that sort of love, the love of the poets, the musicians and the romantics, is likely to happen to a man like me? I am a roamer.”

“Of course you are,” Myrtle agreed. “But that is because you have not found what you seek.”

“I am certainly not seeking love, if that is what you mean,” the Duke answered sharply. “I am quite prepared to admit that what you are talking about exists, but I am very content with what I can find and enjoy.”

His arm tightened round Myrtle’s soft body as he said the last word and she responded by putting her arm round his neck as if to pull his head down to hers.

Then she changed her mind.

“Because I love you, Dasher,” she said, “I would like you to find real happiness. And I have the feeling, although I may be wrong, that one day you will find it.”

“When I do, I will let you know!” the Duke said lightly.

“No, I am serious. You give so much happiness to others, in all sorts of different ways, that I want you to find the greatest happiness that human beings can attain, and that is real love.”

“You are trying to make me dissatisfied,” the Duke complained, “and I understand you think that I am missing something! In which case, you know as well as I do that I shall do everything in my power to find it. And win it!”

“I hope what you are saying is true,” Myrtle said, “but perhaps it would only be fair if you failed. You have too much already.”

“Now I am quite certain that you are trying to punish me for saying that you should marry Thetford!” the Duke exclaimed.

“That is unkind,” Myrtle protested. “I only want you to have the best out of life.”

“That is what I thought I had already.”

There was silence as the Duke thought over what she had said.

In a way it annoyed him to think that she might be right.

He had always been so sure that everything he wanted was within his reach and, while he enjoyed having to strive for what he wanted, deep down he always had the conviction that sooner or later he would be the victor.

Even now it was impossible for him to believe that there was some strange sort of love that so far had evaded him.

He thought of the women he had been infatuated with, if that was the right word, and the pleasure they had given him and he had given them.

The excitement they had engendered together had sometimes been like fireworks sparkling against the darkness of the sky, at others like flowers growing at the water’s edge and the lap of waves on golden sand.

Love, many diverse and different types of love, but always the initial fiery flames dying down to a mere glow.