Desire of the Heart

CHAPTER ONE ~ 1903-2

“But I cannot let you go like this!”

“You have to. There is nothing else for it,” Lily replied. “We will see each other across crowded rooms. You will be dancing with the debutantes while I am sitting up on the dais, a Dowager! Oh, Drogo!”

It was a cry of utter desolation and now blindly Lily put out her arms toward him. For some minutes they clung together like children lost in the dark and then her lips were turned to his and his arms tightened around her. His kiss grew fiercer, more possessive and after a moment Lily’s arms went around his neck.

“I love you! Oh, God, how I love you!”

The Duke’s voice was hoarse as he looked down at her. Her lips, rosy from the violence of his kisses, were parted a little and her breath was coming quickly. Her eyes were half-closed, dark lashes sweeping against her slightly flushed cheeks.

“I won’t give you up, I won’t!” he cried. “I am going to take you away with me now at once.”

For a moment, with her golden head resting against his shoulder, Lily let herself believe that it was possible. She thought of the lean athletic beauty of his body, of his hands reaching out towards her and of his mouth hungry for hers.

She thought of the times that they had been together, weekends in country house parties, secret meetings in London at Kew Gardens, the National Gallery, the British Museum and when George was away!

Her breath quickened as she remembered creeping up the stairs, the sleeping darkness of the house, the wild terror of a creaking board, the fright of a squeaking door! Then Drogo’s arms around her and the mad irresistible rapture of her surrender to his compelling strength.

She would go away with him and they would be together for ever! Then a vision of them wandering exiled and restless around the world, avoiding people, afraid of making new acquaintances, haunted always by the scandal in their past, dashed her elation from her as if she had been douched with cold water.

Lily gave an audible sigh and moved away from the Duke’s arms. She turned to look at herself in the heavy gilt mirror standing over the mantelpiece and gave a little exclamation of horror at the damage that had been wrought to her elaborate coiffure.

She raised her arms to her hair, pinning and patting the curls into place and was aware as she did so how the gesture revealed the exquisite curves of her bust, the tininess of her waist and the lovely flowing lines of her hips.

She loved Drogo, she thought to herself, loved him with all her heart, more than she had ever loved anyone before, but not enough to hide her beauty under a shadow, to live secretly in a hole-and-corner way and to know that everyone was talking about her not in admiration but with bated breath because of her impropriety.

Then, as she slipped a curl into place, an idea came to her that made her swing round suddenly to face the Duke as he stood behind her, sulky and disconsolate.

“Drogo, I have thought of something!”

“What?”

The monosyllable was abrupt, almost disinterested. The Duke was realising that he had failed, that Lily was lost to him and that nothing he could say or do could make her his.

“I have thought of something that will enable us to see each other and to be together as we have never been before.”

“What is it?”

Drogo did not sound hopeful. He knew now that Lily would never come away with him, no matter how much he pleaded. He had to face the truth that the Social world was more important to her than her love for him.

It was a blow to his self-esteem, even while at the back of his brain he had not expected her to make any other decision.

“I cannot imagine why I did not think of it before!” Lily exclaimed, her voice light and suddenly gay. “It is the obvious solution for both of us. You must marry this girl!”

“Marry! Who?”

“George’s niece, of course. The child who is coming here today.”

“Are you mad?”

“Drogo, don’t be dense! She is a millionairess. Think of it! Millions of dollars for you to spend on doing up Cotillion. You are always telling me how you cannot afford to keep the place as your grandfather did. Well, here is the chance. And if you marry her at once, I need not chaperone her or sit among the Dowagers or do any of the deadly horrible things George will make me do because he is angry with me.”

“It’s a crazy idea. You cannot be serious!”

The Duke spoke vehemently, but Lily was smiling.

“Darling Drogo, be sensible, it will solve everything. You have to marry sometime, your mother was talking about it only last week and saying that the tenants expect it of you. You have to have an heir and you will be twenty-nine next year. It’s time you did marry.”

“But I don’t want to marry unless I can marry you.”

“I know, darling. And I want to marry you more than anything else in the world, but George is as strong as a horse and he is likely to live until he is eighty. All the Bedlingtons do, there is no killing them off! But if you cannot marry me, why not the next best thing, George’s niece? Then you can come here as often as you like and George will not be able to say a word. How could he? We can be together and George cannot possibly object when you are married to his niece.”

“I am not going to marry George’s niece or anyone else,” the Duke stipulated positively.

Lily gave a little cry, flung herself down on the sofa and put her hands to her eyes.

“So you want us to part and never see each other again! How can you be so cruel and so unkind after all we have meant to each other. I love you, Drogo.”

“And I love you, you know that.”

He towered over her and clasped her wrists with a sudden show of strength that made her sway back against the cushions, pliant and yielding.

“Damn it, you drive me mad!”

“Don’t swear, darling. If only you will be sensible, we are saved! Saved!”

“I have told you already, I am not going to marry some idiotic girl I have never seen.”

The Duke spoke the words, but somehow they lacked conviction. He was looking down into Lily’s upturned face, her lips, soft and inviting, were raised to his, her eyes were half-closed and he knew that if he kissed her now he would feel a wild rapture rising within them both, uniting them with a flaming pulsating passion that would thrill them until everything else was forgotten.

“I will not do it”

“Then you will say ‘goodbye’?”

He knew there was no alternative for George, though complacent in some ways, was not a man to be weak where the honour of his family name was concerned. He had learned not to be jealous of Lily as a woman, but he was exceedingly sensitive of his name and position.

Fools that they were to think for one moment that they could keep this mad infatuation secret. They were both too well known and too good-looking to escape being seen.

“Darling, I cannot lose you.” Lily whispered the words beneath her breath but Drogo heard them.

He hesitated for a moment longer.

But the sight of her lips, parted and quivering, was too much for him. With a sound that was a half a groan, he bent forward and crushed her mouth beneath his.

As she surrendered herself to him, he felt a flame sear its way through his body and knew, as she trembled against him, that Lily felt it as well.

It was ecstasy, it was agony and the price he paid for it was his freedom, but somehow at this moment he did not care.

*

When the Duke had left the house, Lily slipped upstairs to her bedroom to tidy her hair before George returned with his niece.

As she stared at herself in the white-framed mirror over her dressing table, she noted with concern that a sleepless night had left her with dark lines under her eyes and the many emotions she had experienced that afternoon had undoubtedly taken their toll of her looks.

Nevertheless she thought with elation that she had had her own way and for the moment nothing else mattered. There would be other advantages too, for with the Duke married to George’s niece, they would be drawn even closer than ever into that exclusive Social set of which the Duke’s mother Emily Roehampton, was undoubtedly the leader.

There was only one rule in that particular clique, as Lily knew only too well. It was the only commandment they all obeyed, “thou shalt not de found out’. There were old-fashioned hostesses who regarded the Roehampton set askance, but Emily Roehampton was far too important, too powerful a personage to care what was said about her and the knowledge that the new King, Edward VII, was a frequent guest at Cotillion was enough to silence all but the most discordant voices.

There was always the chance, of course, that Emily Roehampton would stop her son’s marriage with an unknown girl whose upbringing, to say the least of it, was problematical.

But she would be very pleased about the money, Lily thought shrewdly. No one in the Roehampton set ever had enough money to go round and, although Drogo was undoubtedly wealthy, Cotillion was a monster so insatiable in its demands that it would have proved a drain on anyone’s fortune however enormous.

When she thought of the huge house, spreading over fourteen acres of ground with its Parks and gardens, its lakes and terraces, its farms and woodlands, Lily realised that Emily Roehampton would welcome a rich daughter-in-law and that wealth would cover a multitude of other discrepancies.

George never exaggerated and therefore, when he said that his niece was worth millions of good American dollars, he undoubtedly spoke the truth. There had as well, been an awed kind of note in his voice that had not escaped Lily’s notice and she was shrewd enough to realise that the news of this unexpected wealth had in part drawn George’s attention from her own misdemeanours so that he had not been as harsh with her as he might have been had he had nothing else on his mind at the time.

Perhaps, Lily thought philosophically, everything would work out for the best. It was obvious that Drogo would have to get married some time, if only to provide an heir to the Dukedom and she would have hated to see him marry one of the young girls who were flaunted before him every Season. It would have been such a scoop for an ambitious Mama, apart from the fact that she would have been wildly jealous of Drogo’s choice.

She could not help hoping, as she finished tidying herself, that George’s niece would not prove too attractive. It would be hard to surrender Drogo to a wife, whatever she was like, but almost intolerable if she was pretty.

And yet it was impossible for anyone to be as lovely as she was herself, Lily thought complacently. At thirty-eight she was still the most supremely beautiful woman in the whole of London Society. What was more many people considered her the most beautiful woman in all England and it was indisputable that a photograph of her in a shop window drew as large a crowd as those of the professional beauties.

Lily gave a sigh. One day, she supposed, it would pass but at this moment it was very pleasant to be a famous beauty and to know that she was admired wherever she went and was loved too.

Her hands went suddenly to her heart as she thought of Drogo, so tall, so handsome and almost as beautiful in his way as she was in hers.

What a perfect couple they made! If only she had met him when she was eighteen, she thought. Then she remembered that he had been eight at the time, playing with soldiers in the nursery at Cotillion while she had been downstairs, a member of Emily’s gay and frivolous house parties.

She experienced the stabbing pang of anguish that always came to her when she thought of her real age. Thirty-eight! In another two years she would be forty.

‘I am getting old.’

She felt herself shiver with sudden cold and then she threw up her golden head with an air of defiance.

She was not old yet and she could still drive men crazy with love of her. Because he loved her, Drogo was prepared to marry a girl he had never seen and because he loved her, she would not have to be a Dowager on the dais.

She heard a bell ring and a door open downstairs. George must have returned. Lily gave a last look at herself and turned to the door. She went down the stairs slowly, the froufrou of her silk petticoats rustling as she moved.

The servants were bringing in the luggage. The door of the library was open and she knew that George would be waiting for her in there and with him, his niece.

She walked quickly across the marble hall and into the library.

George was standing with his back to the fireplace and beside him was a girl.

For a minute Lily could only see an old-fashioned grey travelling coat and an ugly green felt hat trimmed with a feather but, as George spoke, the girl turned towards the door and Lily could see her face.

Then she laughed, a little light laugh of relief and at the same time of surprise, for the girl was wearing darkened glasses and there was nothing about her that was in the very least distinguished let alone attractive.