The Unbreakable Spell

CHAPTER ONE 1820-2

She was made aware as soon as she came to The Castle that she was an object of contempt.

Seldom a day passed that the Duchess did not point out that she was not only an orphan but a penniless one and that she had to be grateful to her uncle not only for a roof over her head, but for every crumb of food she put into her mouth.

“Extravagant, irresponsible and utterly improvident, that is what your father was!” she would say contemptibly. “As for your mother – !”

There was no need for words for the Duchess to describe what she thought of her dead sister-in-law.

When Rocana looked in the mirror and knew she resembled her mother, she realised why the Duchess hated them both.

The Duke of course had made an arranged marriage, as was usual, and as it was the merger of two great families, it had been considered very commendable.

The Duchess’s father, the Duke of Hull, had given her a very large dowry and on his death she had inherited several squares and streets in London, the rents of which every year came to quite a considerable sum.

She had given the Duke the heir he desired and had intrigued until he was appointed Master of the Horse to the King, a position in which at the moment he had little to do since the Monarch was dying.

The Duchess then produced Caroline some years later, who fortunately took after her father and inherited the good looks of his family.

There had been beautiful Duchesses of Bruntwick all down the centuries and yet, because her mother was so lovely, Rocana had managed to combine the beauty of both her English and her French ancestors in a manner which made her unique.

It also resulted in her being kept by her aunt from taking any part in family Social activities from the time she left the schoolroom.

As she was nearly a year older than Caroline, this meant their companionship was confined to their bedrooms and the schoolroom and, unless the family were alone, Rocana did not go downstairs for meals.

At first she could hardly believe that her aunt really intended to isolate her in such a way and thought perhaps she was just prolonging her mourning for her father, who had died a year after her mother.

Then the Duchess had spelt it out to her very simply,

“I never approved of your father, Rocana,” she said in her sharp voice, “and, as you know, your mother was an enemy of this country, an alien, who should in my opinion have been imprisoned whilst we were at war. I therefore have no wish for you to meet Caroline’s friends or impose on her when we are entertaining.”

She paused before she went on spitefully,

“You can try to make yourself more useful than you are at the moment by helping with her gowns and tidying her room when the housemaids are busy. When we go to London, you will of course stay here!”

It had taken Caroline’s old nanny to make it clear to Rocana why she was being treated in such a way.

“Now don’t upset yourself, dearie,” she said when she found Rocana in tears. “Her Grace’s just jealous and there’s no other word for it.”

“Jealous?” Rocana asked incredulously.

“She always was plain, even when she was young, and now with lines on her face and a stout figure you could hardly expect her not to see the difference between herself and your mother!”

“I never thought of her being jealous of Mama!”

“Of course she was jealous!” Nanny said sharply. “Just as His Grace was jealous of Lord Leo. How could he help it when everybody loved your father? He rode better than His Grace and always beat him in any Steeplechase or Point-to-Point, even when they was young boys!”

Rocana had stood in front of the mirror and realised that while she had fair hair, which was characteristic of the Bruntwicks, her eyes, because her mother was dark, were not blue like Caroline’s, but a strange colour that in certain lights seemed almost purple.

“Pansy eyes,” her father called them and told her mother that hers hypnotised him so that he could never escape from them.

They certainly were strange, Rocana thought, against her pink and white complexion, which again was part of the Bruntwick tradition.

But her face was heart-shaped, which she had seen in so many portraits of her French ancestors and when she smiled she had a mischievous twist to her lips which was unlike the perfect Cupid bow in Caroline’s face.

She remembered her father saying to her mother once,

“I think, my darling, you are a witch. You have certainly bewitched me! Perhaps you are the reincarnation of Morgan le Fay or one of the mediaeval witches who were burned at the stake because the people were frightened of them!”

“Are you frightened of me?” her mother asked softly.

“Only frightened of losing you,” her father replied, “and you know, as well as I do, that a man has only to look at you to find you irresistible!”

Her mother had laughed and said,

“If they do it is only a compliment to you, my darling. As far as I am concerned, there is only one man in the whole world and I shall use every spell I know to keep him captive!”

As if she was following her thoughts, Nanny, standing behind Rocana, remarked,

“You’re too pretty and that’s the truth! And I often find myself wondering since Her Grace never lets you meet anybody where you’ll find yourself a husband!”

It was a dismal thought because, when she passed her eighteenth birthday, Rocana knew that she would like to be married, if only to escape from The Castle.

Of course she dreamt of finding a Knight in shining armour or a Prince looking exactly like her father, who would fall in love with her at first sight and carry her away on his charger.

But she had known ever since she had come to The Castle that the reason why she was unhappy there was not only that her aunt disliked her, but also that it was a house without love.

When she lived with her father and mother in the small manor on the estate which the Duke had condescendingly given his brother, it had always been filled with sunshine and happiness.

Her father and mother had given it a warmth which had nothing to do with the big log fires that burned in the open fireplaces.

But in The Castle, even in the height of summer, Rocana always found herself shivering.

When Caroline had gone to London this April, excited by the lovely gowns that had been given to her for the balls, and anticipating that she would be a success, Rocana, left behind, felt very lonely.

Then she told herself it was no use crying for the moon. She must just be grateful for the few pleasures that were left to her.

These consisted mainly of the horses she was allowed to ride, though that was often impossible when the Duchess found her a great deal of sewing to do and the books she could read.

This usually had to be at night, often until the early hours of the morning, because she had been kept so busy in the daytime.

She was never accompanied when she went riding because the Duke thought it was a waste of time to send a groom with either her or Caroline when they rode just around The Castle grounds.

It was inevitable that Patrick Fairley was waiting for her, distraught in case when she reached London Caroline would forget him.

“Do you think Caroline loves me, Rocana?” he would ask her over and over again. “I mean – really loves me? Or that she remembers she belongs to me?”

Rocana tried to console him, for she was sure that Caroline loved him as much as she was capable of loving anybody.

It was not that ecstatic, rapturous love that her mother had had for her father, but then she doubted if anybody as wholly English as Caroline would be able to feel like that.

When Caroline returned to The Castle in the middle of June, when the Prince Regent had left London for Brighton and the Season was over, there was no doubt that she was delighted to see Patrick.

Every morning she would ride with Rocana across the Park, through the woods in the direction of Patrick’s much smaller estate that marched with the Duke’s, and he would meet them halfway.

Rocana would then tactfully ride off on her own and would leave them until it was time to return home.

She would not have been human if sometimes she did not long for somebody to look at her with loving eyes as Patrick looked at Caroline, and to hear the deep note in his voice which was very different from when he spoke to her.

‘Perhaps I shall just grow old, never meeting anybody and never going anywhere,’ she thought sometimes despairingly.

She tried to lose herself in her dreams and in the books that she took down one after another from the shelves of the library which otherwise remained undisturbed, year after year.

She knew now, however, that whatever Caroline might say, however much she loved Patrick, she would be forced to marry the Marquis of Quorn, and perhaps she would find him, if nothing else, a very exciting husband.

“What am I to do, Rocana?” Caroline was asking desperately. “I have to marry Patrick! You know I have to! Anyway, I could never cope with a man like the Marquis, even if I liked him!”

Rocana thought that was undoubtedly true and she asked,

“What is he like? Describe him to me.”

“I suppose he is handsome,” Caroline said reluctantly, “but he is overpowering, overwhelming, and the other girls in London all whispered about him and his love affairs.”

“And told you about them?” Rocana asked.

“Of course they did,” Caroline replied. “Nobody in London talks of anything but love and they were always saying how some woman was weeping because the Marquis had left her or another was really crowing her head off because he had transferred his affections to her.”

It was what Rocana had already heard from the servants and she enquired,

“Why do you think he wants to be married?”

“I know the answer to that.”

“You do?”

“Yes, he is in a mess with some Diplomat’s wife and he is trying to escape from what might cause an international incident.”

“Are you saying,” Rocana asked incredulously, “that that is why he is proposing to marry you?”

Caroline sat down on the window seat.

“When I arrived in London, everyone talked about the Marquis – they never seemed interested in anybody else. They said he was determined never to marry because to live with one woman would bore him in a week and he preferred having a whole pack of them like foxhounds!”

“I think that sounds horrid!” Rocana exclaimed.

“That is what I thought,” Caroline agreed, “but I was not really interested in him because I was thinking of Patrick.”

“Yes, of course! Go on!”

“Then they began to talk about this ‘Madame something or other’ – I cannot remember her name – and how beautiful she was with red hair and green eyes and they whispered and whispered as to what she and the Marquis were doing together.”

“Then what happened?”

“I came home and today Papa has told me the Marquis is coming to stay and that when they met at Royal Ascot he had intimated that he might pay his addresses to me.”

“Might?” Rocana questioned.

“I suppose he did not wish to commit himself in case his difficulty turned out to be not as awkward as he thought,” Caroline answered her bitterly.

Because she seemed to have grasped the situation far more clearly than Rocana would have expected her to do, she merely stared at her cousin as she said,

“I think the way he is behaving is insulting and your father should have refused.”

“I think Papa would, if I asked him to do so,” Caroline replied. “But you know Mama would prevent him from doing anything but accept the Marquis with alacrity and she will never, never let me say ‘no’.”

As this was the truth, Rocana did not argue.

She merely said sympathetically,

“Oh, Caroline, I am so sorry for you.”

“What can I do, Rocana? I must tell Patrick and ask his advice.”

“You will have to wait until tomorrow morning.”