The Duke & The Preachers Daughter

CHAPTER ONE 1817-2

There was silence, then the Duke said quietly,

“Not even to save Richard or prevent Kingswood being turned into a glorified brothel would I take a wife!”

“But why? Why have you got this ridiculous attitude with regard to matrimony?” Major Haverington asked.

As he spoke he thought ‘ridiculous’ was a mild way of expressing it.

Not only was the Duke one of the wealthiest men in England and his possessions were unequalled by any other nobleman, but he was in fact so attractive and so handsome that the women who pursued him were not only activated by his rank or what he possessed.

The great majority loved him for himself – and looking at the Duke, the Major could hear one woman saying brokenly,

“I loved Nolan. I loved him with all my heart. When he left me, I knew it would be impossible for me ever to be happy again.”

“Why should he leave you?”

“I wish I knew,” she sighed. “There is something hard and reserved within him which no woman can touch – a block of ice that nobody can melt.”

It was an extraordinary idea, the Major thought, but the same story had been repeated to him so many times that he had begun to believe it.

He knew from his own observation that, while the Duke was prepared to accept the favours that a beautiful woman would offer him, he gave them in return nothing of himself.

He was generous, almost overwhelmingly so, but those who loved him were not content with diamonds and pearls, but desired his heart.

But they never had a chance of possessing it.

As if the Duke had no more to say on the subject, he rose from the dining room table, although he had not touched the glass of brandy.

The Major followed him and they walked along the wide corridors hung with magnificent pictures towards the great library where the Duke usually sat when he was alone or with a few men-friends.

The big comfortable armchairs, the background of books that were the envy of scholars, the painted ceiling, the gold-balustraded balcony running along the top of the walls were a delight to the eye.

The Major had always thought it was one of the most attractive rooms he had ever seen and particularly suitable as a background for its owner.

The Duke sat down in an armchair in front of the stone mantelpiece that craftsmen had brought to England early in the last century from Italy.

Although it was May, the nights were inclined to be chilly and there was a fire burning in the grate.

The Major stood in front of it.

“You know, Nolan,” he said after a moment, “I am now regretting that I am the bearer of bad news. Perhaps it would have been best for you to have found out what was happening for yourself.”

“I would rather I heard it from you than from anybody else,” the Duke replied.

“That is what I hoped you would, say,” the Major remarked simply.

“At least you and I can be frank with each other,” the Duke said, “and we know that if Richard marries Delyth Maulden he will soon discover that his life is a hell on earth.”

“Because he loves her – ”

“That is what I am saying. Richard is trusting and idealistic.”

The Duke paused and his lips twisted cynically as he went on,

“Something I ceased to be long before I was his age.”

“What happened?”

“That I do not intend to tell you or anyone else,” the Duke replied. “But it was sufficient for me to understand what he will go through.”

“Then what can you do to prevent it?” the Major asked.

“There must be something,” the Duke muttered.

They were both still saying more or less the same thing three hours later.

It was impossible for any other subject to hold their attention and, although both men tried, inevitably their thoughts returned to Delyth Maulden and her latest capture.

She had actually tried her wiles on both the Duke and the Major.

The Duke had been immune to every enticement she offered him – to the provocative invitation in her huge eyes and on her red lips.

Major Haverington had not received the full blast of Lady Delyth Maulden’s allure for the simple reason that he was not important or rich enough.

She had merely dallied with him at a party at Tring Castle, the one he had spoken about to the Duke. He could remember how lovely she had looked in the moonlight when she had insisted that he took her out onto the terrace.

She looked at him from under her eyelashes and as they leaned over the balustrade, she had moved a little nearer and he had been conscious of the seductive scent of her hair and the low décolletage of her evening gown.

He had so nearly succumbed and behaved as she expected, but a burst of drunken laughter from the room behind them had saved him.

Firmly he had taken her back to join her raucous friends and he had known that she was furious, and in fact after that, had been an implacable enemy.

The clock on the mantelpiece struck the hour and the Major looking up exclaimed,

“It is one o’clock and, if we are going to ride at the particularly early hour you usually favour in the morning, I am going to bed!”

“A wise decision,” the Duke remarked. “We have expended a great many words tonight and are no further towards solving the problem than we were when we started.”

“Perhaps I shall dream of a solution,” the Major said, “but I think it is unlikely.”

He walked towards the door and when the Duke made no attempt to follow him he asked,

“Are you staying up?”

“For a little while. I got into the habit when I was in the Army of sleeping only for a few hours and now I find it hard to break.”

The Major yawned.

“Well, personally I am tired. Goodnight, Nolan.”

“Goodnight, Bevil.”

The door shut behind his guest and the Duke picked up a newspaper from the stool in front of the fire.

He opened The Times, but laid it down on his knee to sit thinking.

What could he say? How could he persuade Richard that he was making the greatest mistake of his life?

He thought of the boy as an untrained recruit under his command and felt a protective urge towards him that he had felt for so many of the young men who had come out from England.

They had been forced to face the withering fire of the enemy and the discomforts of a campaign where one night they would be billeted in some flea-infested hovel in a Portuguese village, and the next would be bivouacking on a barren hillside without a shrub or a tree to protect them from the elements.

He had known, however, it was not only an unknown enemy or the fear of death that had frightened them, but the fear that they might disgrace themselves in the eyes of their comrades.

He remembered moving amongst them, talking to them, sustaining them, encouraging them.

But a raw recruit had to obey his orders. Richard was a free man.

The Duke looked round the library and thought not only how beautiful it was, but how peaceful.

How could he tolerate the people with whom Delyth Maulden associated turning the place into a bear-garden, as he had seen happen in other large houses?

The rowdiness of the young Bucks that had been growing steadily since the beginning of the century had been censured by the more sober-minded members of Society.

But it was difficult for them to say much when the behaviour they so deprecated had been encouraged by the Prince of Wales before he became Regent.

Now that he was older he had become more circumspect, although his long lists of elderly mistresses were virulently deprecated by the cartoonists.

A way of social life once started was difficult to control and some of the behaviour amongst the younger men had made the Duke wish that he had them under his command and could treat them with the severity they deserved.

Delyth Maulden headed a variety of attractive women who had laid aside their very femininity to take part in wild parties, crazy escapades and indiscretions that in the past had been the hallmark of actresses and prostitutes.

As the future Duchess of Kingswood, Delyth Maulden knew only too well that marriage to Richard meant that a great many doors that were closed to her now would be opened, and she would have to be accepted in circles which previously had given her the ‘cold shoulder’.

*

“The Duchess of Kingswood!”

The Duke uttered the words through gritted teeth and turned his head in surprise as the door opened.

A footman stood waiting for his Master’s attention.

“What is it?” the Duke asked.

“Lord Tring has called to see you, Your Grace.”

“At this hour of the night?” the Duke exclaimed, then added, “show his Lordship in.”

A few seconds elapsed while his visitor was being brought along the corridor and then the footman announced,

“Lord Tring, Your Grace!”

The Duke had only to glance at his visitor to realise that something was seriously amiss.

Lord Tring was still wearing his evening clothes, but he had pulled a pair of riding boots over his skin-tight trousers which fastened under the instep and his intricately tied cravat was slightly crumpled.

His hair, that had obviously been arranged in the windswept fashion introduced by The Prince Regent, was now merely untidy and flopping about his forehead.

“Good evening, Tring,” the Duke said in quiet unhurried tones. “What brings you here at this time of the night?”

The young man looked over his shoulder waiting for the footman to close the door. Then he said in a voice that was curiously unsteady,

“I had to come, sir! You are the only person who I felt would know what to do and be able to cope.”

He spoke, the Duke knew, as a young soldier addressing his Commanding Officer, and there was an expression of trust in his eyes which was almost movingly familiar.

“Have a drink,” the Duke suggested, “and tell me what has happened.”

As if he felt in urgent need of it, Lord Tring went to the grog tray on a table in a corner of the room which the Duke indicated.

He poured himself out a large brandy and drank it down in one gulp. Then he pushed back his hair from his forehead with a hand that trembled and came back towards the Duke.

“It is – Richard, sir!”

“Richard?” the Duke exclaimed. “What has happened to him?”

He saw Lord Tring take a deep breath, then he replied,

“He shot Sir Joceline Gadsby, then tried to kill himself!”

The Duke remained quite calm.

His eyes searched Lord Tring’s face as if he sought to substantiate the words he had just heard.

Some seconds passed before he said, again calmly,

“Sit down! You look as if you have ridden hard.”

“When I saw what had happened,” Lord Tring replied, sinking down into a chair as if his legs would no longer carry him, “I knew that the only person who could help would be you.”

“Why did Richard shoot Gadsby?” the Duke asked.

He remembered the Baronet as a rather fulsome, over talkative member of White’s Club whom he had gone out of his way to avoid.

He thought the man was an outsider and wondered how he had ever been admitted as a member.

Then, as he thought of it, he knew what Lord Tring would reply.

“Richard – found him,” his Lordship replied in an embarrassed tone, “with – Lady Delyth.”

“Where?”

“In – in bed, sir!”

The Duke, who had been standing, sat down in an armchair as if he too needed its support.

“Tell me from the beginning!” he commanded.

“Richard arrived two days ago to stay with me and that night at dinner he announced that he and Lady Delyth were engaged to be married. Of course we toasted them and wished them every happiness.”

“Of course!” the Duke commented sarcastically.

“Quite a number of the men in the house party protested they were broken-hearted and half-jokingly tried to persuade Lady Delyth to change her mind.”

The Duke thought she was unlikely to do that and Lord Tring went on,

“I gathered that Sir Joceline was an old friend and therefore somewhat piqued that she was engaged.”

The Duke knew that by saying ‘an old friend’ Lord Tring meant in fact that Sir Joceline had been, like so many other men, Delyth Maulden’s lover.