The Prisoner Of Love

Chapter One 1851-1

Chapter One

1851The Duke of Nuneaton rustled The Morning Post before he said in an irritated tone,

“I see Winsford has been given the Garter. God knows what he has done to deserve it!”

He put the newspaper, as he spoke, down on the silver holder which stood in front of his place at the breakfast table and occupied himself with eating a plateful of sweetbreads in a manner which told the two women sitting on either side of him that he was extremely irritated.

“The Earl certainly has a leg which will show the Garter to advantage!” the Duchess said.

She spoke in a deliberately soothing tone, but her husband looked up from his plate to reply sharply,

“You would stick up for the fellow! It was quite obvious at the State Ball last week what you thought about him.”

The Duchess raised her eyebrows and replied in what her step-niece privately thought of as her ‘little girl voice’,

“What can you mean, Edmund, dear? I was sure that you would wish me to be polite to a near neighbour.”

The Duke growled something beneath his breath and went on eating his breakfast.

Sorilda, listening, knew that her uncle was jealous and, she thought, it was not surprising.

It had been as much of a shock to her as it had to everybody else at The Castle three months ago when the Duke, a week after his sixtieth birthday, announced his marriage to a young widow thirty-five years younger than himself.

At first Sorilda had thought it might be rather fun to have someone nearer her own age in the house and that she and her step-aunt would be friends.

She was swiftly disillusioned.

Iris had no use for women and certainly not for those who might, in any way, be rivals to her.

It never struck Sorilda that was what, to her aunt, she might seem to be. She was prepared to admire the new Duchess’s beauty wholeheartedly, until she learned all too quickly that it was only what her Nanny described as ‘skin deep’.

Six months after her uncle’s marriage Sorilda faced the fact that the home she had found after her parents’ death had been changed into, as far as she was concerned, a miserable and unhappy place where she found herself dreading each new day.

The Duke, besotted as only an elderly man can be with a young wife, could see nothing but the seductive charms of the woman he had married and had no idea that to other people in The Castle she was a dragon breathing fire and leaving tears and unhappiness forever in her wake.

It seemed extraordinary, Sorilda had often thought to herself, that while Iris looked externally like anyone’s preconceived idea of an angel, she should inside personify the Devil himself.

Sorilda was unusually intelligent for a young girl because she had spent so much time with her father who had been an amazingly brilliant man.

He had been Captain of the Oppidans at Eton, had taken a First at Oxford and, when he entered Parliament, had been spoken of as the most outstanding young politician of his generation.

The whole nation proclaimed it a tragedy when Lord Lionel Eaton and his wife were killed in a railway accident in France when on their way to a political conference.

To Sorilda her life crashed unexpectedly about her ears.

Although her uncle had tried to be kind and had taken her to live in his castle in Northamptonshire, she had for a long time found it impossible to do anything but mourn the loss of the father and mother whom she had loved so much.

Her home had always been a place, she thought, looking back, of light and laughter, and she had known that more than anything else it was because there was an atmosphere of love there, which she certainly did not find in The Castle.

Her uncle had been a widower for ten years. His sons were grown up and married, the oldest, the Marquis, having already made his mark as a diplomat, being the Viceroy of India.

The Duke led an extremely busy life. Not only was he constantly in attendance on the Queen at Buckingham Palace, he was also Lord Lieutenant of Northamptonshire and held an inordinate number of official posts in the County.

It had never struck Sorilda, let alone other people, that he was in fact a lonely man and, like many men before him, longed to grasp the pleasures of youth before he was too old to enjoy them.

He was therefore in exactly the right frame of mind for somebody like Mrs. Iris Handley, who was looking round for a fitting position to grace her beauty.

She had, of course, a large number of admirers, but the majority, being married men, were unable to offer her what she craved, another gold ring on her finger.

She had met the Duke at a large dinner party when she had found herself, by one of those quirks of fate for which there is no explanation, sitting next to him.

The Duke’s partner as planned, an elderly woman of great distinction, had been taken ill at the very last moment and rather than re-seating the whole table, the hostess had just put Iris Handley in her place.

It was not surprising that the Duke, who invariably found himself, as he had once said, having to escort ‘the Mayor’s wife’ into dinner, found it an agreeable surprise to be seated next to one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen.

Men were usually bowled over at their first sight of Iris.

Her pale blue eyes, her fair hair and her pink-and-white complexion were the average man’s ideal of what a woman should look like, especially when the Queen had set the fashion in everything that was small, sweet and feminine.

The Duke was not aware of it that evening, but when Iris’s blue eyes gazed into his, he was a lost man.

It was Sorilda who first sensed that her new step-aunt’s appearance belied her nature.

Iris and the Duke were married so quickly that there was no time for her to visit Nuneaton Castle before she became the Duchess.

The Duke had therefore brought her back to the traditional rejoicings – a feast for the tenants in the Tythe Barn, arches of welcome erected in the village and up the drive and a display of fireworks as soon as it was dark.

When Iris had stepped out of the carriage earlier in the day wearing the widest crinoline that Sorilda had ever seen, a taffeta pelisse that matched her eyes and a bonnet trimmed with small ostrich feathers of the same colour, she had gasped at her beauty.

Then she ran forward spontaneously to curtsey to her uncle and put her arms round his neck as she said,

“Congratulations, Uncle Edmund! I do hope you will be very very happy! We have all been so excited to meet your bride!”

“Then you must meet her, my dear,” the Duke replied good-humouredly.

He turned to his wife as he spoke saying,

“This is my niece, Sorilda, who lives with me. I am sure you will be good friends.”

“Lives with you?”

There was a note in the question that made Sorilda stiffen. Surely, she thought, her uncle would have told his wife that she lived in The Castle?

“Yes, yes,” the Duke replied. “Sorilda’s parents died in the most tragic circumstances. I have not yet had time to tell you about it, my dearest.”

Sorilda, having curtseyed, was waiting and, as she saw the expression in the Duchess’s eyes, she felt as if there was a sudden cold wind blowing around her shoulders.

The Duke noticed nothing in his joy at showing his new wife her future home.

Taking her hand, he led her up the steps into the hall where the vast array of servants were lined up to receive her.

She was very gracious, accepting the congratulations and the good wishes with a smile on her lovely face, which, Sorilda was to think later, would deceive all but those who knew her too well.

It was extraordinary how one woman could completely alter the atmosphere of a building as impressive arid historic as The Castle within a few weeks of her arrival.

And yet Iris contrived to do just that.

It was not only what she said, it was the manner in which she grasped power with the avid greed of a fanatically ambitious woman.

Nothing and no one should stand in her way. Everything would be exactly as she wished it to be.

The Castle had always been rather gloomy and everything in it moved slowly as if time was of no particular object.

Suddenly it was galvanised into new life and although some of the innovations were good, the way that they were introduced and the manner in which the new Mistress extracted obedience was revolutionary.

Several of the older servants were pensioned off with hardly time to realise what was happening and this alone created a feeling of unease amongst the others.

Sorilda could sense it in the manner in which they moved about the house more quickly but nervously and she had a feeling that their security had been snatched from them when they least expected it.

As far as Sorilda was concerned, Iris wasted no time in showing her very clearly that she had no wish to chaperone her husband’s niece.

Sorilda was not in the least conceited, but she would have been very stupid if she had not realised that her own good looks were the cause of the new Duchess’s instantaneous dislike of her.

Her mother had been of Austrian heritage and she had inherited the dark red hair that was peculiar to the great Viennese beauties. Her eyes were distinctly green and her skin, as might be expected, had the softness of a magnolia petal.

In the three years since her father’s and mother’s deaths when she had come to live in The Castle, Sorilda had grown from a pretty fifteen-year-old child into a beauty who would have been undoubtedly acclaimed had she ever gone to London.

The Duke had not yet thought there was any necessity for her to embark on a Social life, as she seemed quite content at The Castle.

Vaguely at the back of his mind, he told himself that sooner or later she must be presented to the Queen at Buckingham Palace and he must find one of his less obnoxious relations to chaperone her.

The Duke had always been bored by the innumerable Eatons who fawned on him, when they had the chance of meeting him, and who were constantly bombarding him with letters that he seldom bothered to read.

Unlike his late father he did not envisage himself as Head of the Family, a father figure for anyone who needed his assistance.

Instead he preferred to choose a few friends with whom he enjoyed associating and to keep everybody else at arm’s length.

This meant that the visitors entertained at The Castle were usually of his age and, because he made no effort to introduce Sorilda to anyone else, she was seldom invited to parties in the County.

This was also because most people were frightened of her uncle.

He was, in fact, a very awe-inspiring man and had been extremely handsome when he was young and the years had in no way lessened his appreciation of his own consequence.

He certainly considered himself to be head and shoulders above the ordinary people he met and saw no reason to entertain anyone who did not interest or amuse him.

This further limited those who were invited to The Castle and Sorilda would have had a very bleak and lonely existence if it were not for the fact that she was extremely concerned with her own education.

By conspiring with the Duke’s Comptroller who had been fond of her father, she managed to have not only a Governess whom she liked to teach her but also Tutors who came from many parts of the County to give her instruction.

If the Duke resented the high cost of her education, he did not say so and, because Sorilda chose the subjects that interested her most, her education was, to all intents and purposes, that of a man rather than a young woman.

A year before, when she became seventeen, her Governess said that she thought it was time for her to leave, since otherwise she would be too old to find another post. Sorilda consequently found herself very much on her own, but she still kept up her music lessons, and studied hard for her Tutors, who taught her modern languages and the Classics.