A Miracle in Music

Chapter One ~ 1860-1

Chapter One ~ 1860The Duke of Arkholme ceased to listen to the rather indifferent performance of an Italian Prima Donna singing an aria from Faust.

As a patron of music he found the second rate almost intolerable and he was continually surprised at the people who had good taste in other directions but were extraordinarily undiscriminating where music was concerned.

He was in fact thinking of whether he should accept the invitation of his hostess. Lady Lawson, to stay after the other guests at her evening reception had departed.

He was well aware of what this entailed.

Lord Lawson was at the moment in the North of England and the Duke suspected that the reception, which had been hastily arranged in the last two days, had been entirely for his benefit.

When he arrived to find a small but distinguished dinner party in the large house in Berkeley Square, the way that his hostess greeted him and the expression in her eyes when she talked to him made what she intended and hoped for very obvious.

The Duke would have been extremely stupid, which he was not, if he had been unaware that, as one of the most distinguished men in England, enormously wealthy and a bachelor, he was not only an exceptional catch from a matrimonial point of view, but undoubtedly ‘a feather in the cap’ of any lady who could hold his attention and make him her lover.

That he excelled in the art of love just as he excelled in the hunting field and on the Racecourse went without saying, but over the years he had not only grown surprisingly more fastidious but also undoubtedly cynical about his own attractions.

When he sat next to Lady Lawson at dinner, she had said in a soft melodious voice that the Duke had a suspicion was assumed,

“I am hoping, Your Grace, that you will give me your invaluable advice.”

“About what?” the Duke enquired knowing what the answer would be.

“I have just persuaded my husband to give me as a present a new Steinway and, as he has complained of its being such an expensive gift, I want to be quite certain that I have the best and it will make the right music to please you.”

The way she spoke with a flutter of her eyelashes and an invitation on her curved lips told the Duke only too clearly that she was not thinking so much of the music pleasing him but of her own expertise in another field.

He was also quite certain that the Steinway in question would not be in any of the reception rooms, but in Lady Lawson’s boudoir.

A short time ago he had inadvertently allowed it to be known that he had a piano in the sitting room that adjoined his bedroom in his house in Park Lane.

“When I cannot sleep, which is not often,” he had confessed with what he thought later was an unfortunate frankness, “I play to myself the melodies that soothe my mind and, while they are still ringing in my head, I find it easy to fall asleep.”

Because everything about the Duke was of interest, the story flew from one drawing room to another of the fashionable world as if on the wind and was published in one of the gossipy newspapers.

After that every beauty who aspired to attract the Duke told him that she had a piano in her boudoir and invited him to inspect it.

It was amusing to see how each instrument had obviously been newly installed in a room that had been decorated without any thought of music.

In most cases the Duke suspected that the owner of a Steinway or Broadwood was no more accomplished than they had been when they left the schoolroom still doing five-finger exercises.

Now, as the Prima Donna trilled on, occasionally slightly off-key on her top notes, which would have made the Duke wince had he been listening, he was wondering whether Lady Lawson’s attractions were enough to make him begin a new affaire de coeur when he had only just ended another.

He had found as he grew older, having now reached the august age of thirty-three, that his love affairs were fiery and tempestuous, quickly ignited and just as quickly extinguished.

He could not explain even to himself why, after a very short time of finding a woman alluring or intriguing, he suddenly became restless and knew that it was the first stage of boredom.

At the back of his mind and on the tongues of every one of his relations was the question of when, and to whom, he should be married.

Because he had been an only son, there were no other direct heirs to the Dukedom and he was well aware that it was his duty to a long line of noble ancestors to produce an heir.

He kept telling himself that there was no hurry and as it happened he never came in contact with young girls.

He was far too astute to accept the invitations, of which he had hundreds, of ambitious fathers and mothers who thought both his title and his wealth would be an agreeable adjunct to their aristocratic lineage.

His interest therefore was always in married women with complacent husbands and even if they were not complacent they found it best to suppress their jealousy where the Duke was concerned.

They were uncomfortably aware that he could not only outride and outdrive them, but he was also a dead shot with a duelling pistol, should they be foolish enough to call him out.

Although duelling was forbidden by law and certainly frowned upon by Queen Victoria, the Duke had, as it happened, fought quite a number of duels both in England and in France.

He was always the victor and invariably remained unscathed while his opponent spent a miserable two or three months with his arm in a sling.

He was far too expert a shot to wound a man mortally. At the same time it was extremely humiliating for a gentleman who had a real grievance against the Duke to find himself an object of pity to his wife and a figure of fun to his contemporaries.

Lord Lawson was, as the Duke knew, not likely to kick up a fuss if his wife took him as her lover, as long as she was discreet about it.

Lord Lawson was a good deal older than the very beautiful young girl he had married immediately she had made her debut and, because his own main interest was in horses, he continually left her alone while he journeyed North, South, East and West in order to attend Race Meetings where he won a considerable number of prizes.

It was inevitable that Eileen Lawson should sooner or later lose her heart, which had not at all been involved in the spectacular and brilliant marriage she had made from a social point of view.

Equally, because she was rather frightened of her husband, she was very discreet and the Duke thought that it was a point in her favour that, although inevitably she would fall in love with him, she would be careful not to cause more gossip than was necessary.

It was impossible to claim that they would not be talked about.

Because they were seen together, there would be knowing smiles and a certain amount of sniggering amongst the habitués of the Clubs, who had nothing else to do but gossip about the latest scandal and could ferret out a new love affair like a terrier at a fox’s hole.

However, recently the Duke had been very careful not to involve himself with women, who not only lost their hearts where he was concerned but also their heads.

Because he was invariably by far the most attractive man who had ever come into their lives, they found it difficult to think of anything but love and the fact that he aroused in them new sensations and new emotions they never before knew existed.

The Duke often wondered why other men left their women not only frustrated but also unawakened to the fires of passion.

Because the women he made love to always told him that he was different from any man they had ever known before and it was obvious that he excited them almost to the point of madness, he could not help knowing that he was exceptional.

At the same time it made him all the more cautious when it was a question of starting a new love affair.

As usual he was not swept off his feet by Lady Lawson.

He only knew that she was a very attractive woman and that if he touched her the desire he would see in her eyes would arouse a response in him which made it inevitable what the end of the story would be.

‘What shall I do?’ he wondered. ‘Shall I stay as she expects? Or shall I make some excuse and say that I have to leave with the other guests?’

It was all too obvious, he thought, what was intended.

As they began to say their farewells, he would vanish discreetly into another room and only when the front door was closed behind them could Lady Lawson join him.

Then still keeping up the pretence of having no other motive, she would invite him to come upstairs to her boudoir to view her Steinway.

The Duke knew exactly what he would find there, shaded lights and the fragrance of an exotic perfume mingling with the flowers that made the room a bower.

Although it was May, it could still be quite cold in the evenings and undoubtedly there would be a fire burning in the grate beneath some beautifully carved marble mantelpiece on which had been arranged exquisite ornaments of Dresden figures.

He would have no time to inspect the piano, which would have been placed in a position where it could not interfere too drastically with the comfortable furnishings that had been there before its arrival.

He would be expected to have eyes only for the occupant of the room and she would stand looking at him with her blue eyes turned up to his and her lips parted a little as they invited his kisses.

There would be no need to move before she was in his arms and he would know as he kissed her passionately and demandingly that the half-open door on the other side of the room led into her bedroom, where only a few discreetly shaded candles showed a great bed draped with silk and lace.

The Prima Donna had finished her performance with an aria that was spectacular but certainly not brilliantly performed and everyone was clapping.

Automatically the Duke clapped too because it was expected of him.

Then Lady Lawson was on her feet and already shepherding her party into the next room where there were footmen with white wigs and a somewhat pretentious livery carrying around silver trays on which were crystal glasses filled with champagne.

As the Duke watched her walk ahead of him, he thought how graceful she was with her large crinoline swinging from a very tiny waist.

Her neck was long, her skin white and the diamonds glittering on her fair hair seemed almost like fireflies to entice him.

‘She is certainly very attractive,’ he told himself.

Then, as she reached the doorway into the salon, she stopped for a moment to speak to one of the servants and there was a sudden sharp note in her voice that was very different from the way she had spoken previously.

It was in point of fact as discordant as music that was off-key and in that second he had his answer.

‘No,’ he told himself, ‘not tonight, at any rate!’

Twenty minutes later he was driving in his comfortable carriage that he used in the evening back from Berkeley Square to his house in Park Lane.

He had seen the disappointment in Lady Lawson’s eyes when he said ‘goodnight’ long before the last guest was ready to depart and he knew by the way her fingers tightened on his as he raised her hand perfunctorily to his lips that she longed to beg him to change his mind and stay.

The Duke could, however, be very ruthless when it suited him and he was aware that even if she had gone down on her knees and begged him to love her he had for the moment no desire to do so.

Driving away he asked himself why it was that such a small thing should make up his mind for him.

He knew the answer was quite simply that he sought nothing less than perfection.