Читать книгу Love Me Forever - Barbara Cartland - Страница 2

The Duke, finishing a large breakfast in a private sitting room of the Hôtel de la Poste at Chantilly, was conscious of a sense of well-being.

The hotel was not a pretentious one, but the food was excellent. The omelette that he had begun his meal with had been very tempting and the chops that had followed it had come from a freshly-killed baby lamb. To accompany them there were delicious wines from the local vineyards.

The Duke had eaten heartily and well. He had no use for the type of dandy who picked at his breakfast and who started the day with nothing in his stomach save a glass of brandy. Amid all the dissipations of his life, and there were many of them, he had always managed to appear at a reasonable time the next morning.

It was perhaps due to this rule and to the fact that, when he was in England, he took an immense amount of exercise that the Duke was so healthy and many of his contemporaries called him a ‘man of iron.’

It was his virile good health that made him ever-increasingly attractive to the opposite sex. There had been tears and sighs the night before the Duke left England and yet it was characteristic of him that he had hardly spared a thought for the fair charmers he had left behind him.

He set down his glass now. It was time to be off, he was anxious reach Paris and start the work that lay ahead of him and, pushing back his chair, he made as if he would rise. As he did so, there came a tap at the door.

“Entrez!” the Duke called out briefly.

The door opened slowly and then, as he waited to see who might be approaching him so diffidently, a face appeared round the door and a gay voice exclaimed,

“You are alone, Monseigneur – c’est bon! I wanted you to see me first and be sure that everything is all right.”

As she spoke, Amé came into the room and closed the door. The Duke looked at her and realised that he had not been mistaken last night when he thought that she was pretty. If she had been attractive in the coach and when, disguised under her hood, he had hurried her into the inn and upstairs out of sight of the curious gaze of those who were watching his arrival, there was no doubt now, in the sunshine that streamed through the lattice-paned window of the sitting room that she was lovely beyond dispute.

Her hair, as the Duke had suspected at that first glance, when he had seen it in the light of the lantern, was that strange deep shade of Venetian red, which is rarely encountered but by artists who immortalise it on canvas. And in vivid and unexpected contrast her eyes were blue, the pale translucent blue of an English sky in summer.

Her eyelashes were dark and her eyes were so large that her tiny straight nose set between them seemed somehow lost and half-forgotten. Her lips were full and curved generously, her smile was very sweet, a little shy and yet eager with a touch of excitement in it as if within herself she was full of joy.

She was small, in fact the top of her head barely reached to the Duke’s shoulder, but there was an air of budding maturity about her so that one realised that, tiny though she was, she was no child.

Then, as she stood before the Duke, her eyes on his, her lips parted and an air of expectancy about her as she waited for his verdict, he took his eyes from her face and saw what she was asking him to approve.

Last night he had seen her with her hair tumbled about her shoulders, the dark cloak covering the straight, shapeless white robe of a novice.

This morning her hair was drawn back from her oval forehead and tied in a bow at the base of her neck. There was a fine lace cravat at her throat and she wore a page’s suit of black velvet.

The Duke raised his quizzing glass and looked her over carefully. As he said nothing, Amé could no longer wait in silence.

“Do you think I look all right?” she asked anxiously. “It is not Adrian’s best suit. I have kept that for when we arrive in Paris. It is his second best, but I think it fits me better than the one he has for grand occasions.”

“Has Adrian gone?” the Duke enquired.

“Yes indeed he left an hour ago. He was most delighted, your valet said, to be returning home.”

“And he did not see you?” the Duke asked.

“No, of course not,” Amé replied. “No one has seen me except your valet and I like him. I feel one could trust him with any secret.”

“Dalton has been with me for many years,” the Duke said. “You can be assured of his loyalty.”

“He would not betray me. But you have not yet told me, Monseigneur, what you think of me.”

The Duke smiled.

“That is a very feminine question. You make a very attractive page. Is that what you want to hear?”

“No! No!” Amé replied impatiently. “I just want to know if I look like a page. Am I well disguised? Will anyone who sees me believe me to be a boy of fifteen, your young cousin, Adrian – what was his name?”

“Court,” the Duke supplied.

“Oui – j’ai oublié, Adrian Court. It is not a very exciting name, I think.”

“I am sorry if it does not please you,” the Duke said drily. “Court happens to be my family name.”

“Melyncourt is exciting and lovely,” Amé exclaimed, “and it suits you. It is the sort of name you ought to have.”

“Thank you, I am gratified that you approve.”

“Now you are laughing at me,” Amé said quickly. “Was it wrong, what I said? I don’t quite understand.”

“No, no, it was quite right. It is just that ladies as a rule do not flatter a man quite so openly.”

Amé’s eyes opened a little wider.

“But I am not flattering you. Flattering somebody means to say things to them which you think will please them, but which are not quite true. What I say to you is the truth, the absolute truth. Is it wrong for me to say that I think you have un air distingué and that you are a very wonderful person?”

“Quite wrong, for it is not true,” the Duke said brusquely. “Let’s talk of you instead. You have taken the place of my page and therefore you must act the part completely or we shall both be in trouble before we are much older.”

“You mean I must do correctly the things a page should do?”

“I mean just that.”

“Will you tell me what they are?”

As Amé spoke, she approached the table and sat down in the chair next to the Duke.

“First of all,” the Duke said sharply, “you will not sit in my presence without my permission, you will not speak unless you are told to. If I address you and you reply, you add the words, ‘Your Grace’.”

“Yes, yes, I will remember all that.”

“You must remember as well that you are English. You must be very careful how you speak. I think that a Frenchman would not notice the little mistakes you make or the slight accent that tinges some of your words. But an English person would know at once.”

“Tiens!” Amé exclaimed and then, looking at the Duke’s face, she laughed. “I am forgetting already. You will have to be very severe with me or I shall make, how do you say it – a mistake that will let the cat out of the bag.”

She laughed at her own joke and it would have been difficult for anyone to resist the sparkle of her eyes and the lilt in her voice. Yet the Duke was frowning a little.

“I have been thinking that it would be best for you to powder your hair. Anyone who is looking for you will be told to search for red hair and blue eyes. That unusual combination would be noticeable anywhere.”

“But, of course,” Amé exclaimed, clasping her hands together. “I ought to have thought of that myself. I will run upstairs and get Dalton to powder me. It will not take long.”

The Duke drew a gold watch from his vest pocket.

“We leave in a quarter of an hour. The sooner we get away from here the better.”

Amé jumped to her feet.

Then she hesitated.

“You would not go without me, would you, Your Grace?”

There was something pathetic and wistful in the question, as if for a moment she doubted not only him but everything around her.

“I have given you my word that I will take you to Paris with me,” the Duke reassured her gravely.

The anxiety cleared away from Amé’s expression.

“Pardon, Monseigneur,” she said softly, “I don’t know why I asked you such a silly question, except that sometimes I think I must be dreaming. Yesterday I was in the Convent, angry, upset, afraid and uncertain of the future and now today I am with you, Your Grace. Everything is very different.”

“I think yesterday you were in the right place,” the Duke commented.

“No, it was not right,” Amé contradicted him. “It is without reason that one should be commanded to do things that concern one’s faith. And they commanded me, they ordered me as if I was a servant who must obey whatever feelings I might have myself.”

She raised her chin as she spoke. There was so much pride and unconscious arrogance in her words and in the carriage of her little head that the Duke smiled.

Whatever Amé’s name might be, he was very sure of one thing, she came from a good family. There was patrician blood in her.

Then, with a little cry, realising that the precious minutes were passing and she was not ready, Amé ran to the door and disappeared through it like a flash of quicksilver.

For some seconds after she had gone the Duke stared after her.

In repose his face was curiously saturnine, it was only when he smiled, which was not very often, that the natural gravity of his expression gave place to one of youthfulness. The years in which he had sought pleasure both by day and by night had taken their toll, not of his strong healthy body, but of his face.

It was a handsome face, no one would deny that, and yet the lines of dissipation were there upon it for all to see, the dark circles beneath his eyes, the heavy lines between nose and mouth, the cynical twist to his lips and the expression in his steel-grey eyes. It was the face of a man who had grown used to querying life itself, who had found little that he might take on trust and less than he might put his faith in.

After some minutes the Duke rose from the table and, as he did so, there came a knock at the door.

“Entrez!”

The fat good-natured Proprietor stood there.

“May I have a word with Your Grace? It is of importance.”

He glanced over his shoulder as he spoke and closed the door behind him.

Then he walked across the room to say,

“There are two gentlemen here to see Your Grace. They insist on an audience, although I have told them that Your Grace is just about to depart.”

“Who are they?” the Duke enquired.

“One is a Priest, Your Grace, and the other wears the Cardinal’s livery.”

What can they want with me?” the Duke asked.

“They are making enquiries, Your Grace, about someone who is missing from the Convent de la Croix at St. Benis. It is but five miles from here on the road that you yourself travelled last night.”

“Why should these strangers imagine that I should have knowledge of what has occurred at a Convent?”

The Proprietor glanced again over his shoulder.

“They are making searching enquiries as to who came here last night with Your Grace’s entourage. I have told them that Your Grace arrived alone and your servants came an hour later.”

“It is good that you have said that,” the Duke approved. “Can your people be trusted?”

“Implicitly, Your Grace. The staff in the house are fortunately all my own family, my two daughters, my wife’s niece and the wife of my eldest son who is at present away in the Army.”

“And the outside staff?” the Duke enquired.

“I can swear they saw nothin’, Your Grace. There are but two grooms, local village boys and they were gaping at Your Grace’s horses. I can be as certain of that as I can be of my ultimate salvation.”

“Good and do these gentlemen know that one of my coaches left here this morning?”

“They saw it go, Your Grace. They were in the yard as it drew away.”

“That is all I wanted to know,” the Duke said. “You may show them in.”

Then for a moment the Proprietor did not move. He stood in front of the Duke looking up at him, his eyes worried, his hands plucking nervously at the coarse cambric of his apron.

“Whatever happens, Your Grace, will you be sure that I don’t get into trouble? I am a poor man and the Cardinal is very powerful.”

“You will get into no trouble so long as you keep your mouth shut,” the Duke replied. “You have already told these strangers I came here alone. I will assure them that you spoke the truth. Now, show them in.”

“Yes, Your Grace. Of course, Your Grace.”

The Proprietor hurried to the door, he then opened it and gave an exclamation that told the Duke only too clearly that the gentlemen in question had been waiting in the passage directly outside the sitting room.

He glanced quickly at the door. It was stoutly made and he doubted if it was possible to hear what had been said, however sharp an ear had been applied to the keyhole.

“Two gentlemen to see Your Grace,” the Proprietor announced after a muttered conversation outside the door.

The Priest came into the room first. He was a tall gaunt man, unprepossessingly thin with eyes that seemed to bore through those on whom he turned his gaze. He was followed by a younger man wearing the elaborate and ornate livery of the Cardinal de Rohan.

The Duke, drawing his snuffbox from his pocket, took a pinch of snuff before he so much as glanced at his visitors and then with a somewhat haughty inclination of the head he acknowledged perfunctorily the bows they accorded him.

“You wish to see me, gentlemen?”

“You are the Duke of Melyncourt?” the Priest asked.

“I am.”

“I am Father André and this is Captain Theve of His Eminence the Cardinal de Rohan’s Guard.”

“And your business with me, gentlemen?” the Duke enquired. “You must not think me rude if I ask that what you have to say you say quickly. I am at this moment leaving for Paris and if there is one thing I dislike more than another it is to keep my horses waiting.”

“We will not keep you waiting long, Your Grace. You arrived here last night?”

“That is so.”

“Five miles from this village you passed the Convent de la Croix. It is about two kilometres outside the hamlet of St. Benis.”

“Indeed? I am afraid I am not very conversant with small hamlets on this road or indeed for that matter with Convents.”

“As you passed by the Convent last night you did not see anything unusual on the road? You were not stopped? No one asked you for a lift?”

“No, and if they had, is there any reason why I should relate what happened to you?”

The Duke’s question was suddenly aggressive.

“None, none, Your Grace. We were but asking for your help.”

“Indeed? You did not mention that you required my assistance until now. In fact I appeared merely to be undergoing some form of Papal Inquisition.”

“No, no, of course not. We intended nothing of the sort,” the Priest said. “It is just that you came by that road last night and someone whom we seek might have asked your help or enquired about the way.”

“A coach travelling at the speed of mine does not halt easily nor for the first person who signals to it from the roadside.”

“No, no,” the Priest agreed. “It was just that you might have seen something. Did you not stop in the neighbourhood of St. Benis?”

There was something in his question and in the glint in his eyes as he spoke that told the Duke that he knew more than he pretended.

The Duke drew out his snuffbox again slowly.

“Now that you mention it,” he said, “it may have been in the neighbourhood of St. Benis that I was forced to change horses last night. It was dark and I was getting hungry, so I paid little attention to anything save the need to move on as speedily as possible.”

“What happened during that halt?” the Captain asked quickly, speaking for the first time.

“What happened?” the Duke repeated. “I have already told you, gentlemen, we changed horses. One of my postilions followed on more slowly with the horse that had gone lame. It was, in fact, a loose shoe and I am told this morning that the horse in question is back in the traces.”

“And while you were waiting when this exchange was taking place on the road, you did not see a lady?”

“A lady!” the Duke exclaimed. “What sort of lady?”

“The Captain looked at the Priest and there was a quick exchange of glances between them.

“A nun, as it happens.”

“A nun!” the Duke repeated. “No, I am quite certain I should have noticed it if a nun had been walking abroad at that hour of the night. Was she elderly?”

At his question the Priest and the Captain glanced once again at each other.

“You saw no one,” the Priest said, “in which case there is no need for us to bother Your Grace further. We must regret if our questions have sounded in any way impertinent. We have orders from the Cardinal himself.”

“Yes, of course,” the Duke said. “I am grieved that I have not been able to be of any assistance to you.”

The two men turned towards the door and, only as they reached it, did the Priest turn back.

“I understand from the Proprietor here that one of your pages left for England this morning. Was there any particular reason for his return?”

“He was ill,” the Duke replied. “My Major Domo asked my permission to send him back, as the boy was obviously sickly. ’Tis curst inconvenient as I like always to have two pages in attendance upon me. Now I have but one, who will doubtless find the exertion of all that he has to do far too much for him. I repeat, ’tis curst inconvenient.”

“Your Grace will accept our sympathies,” the Priest said suavely.

He bowed and the door closed behind him and the Captain. For a moment the Duke did not move, then he slipped his snuffbox back into his pocket and moved to the window.

He saw them cross the courtyard, the Priest in his black robes and broad-brimmed hat, the Captain of the Guard as colourful as one of the cocks strutting about on a dung-heap.

They were out of sight in a few seconds, but the Duke still waited.

There was the sound of horses’ hoofs and a moment later there passed down the road a guard of six men in the Cardinal’s livery with the Priest perched amongst them like a black crow.

Seven men in search of one runaway girl!

A soft voice at his elbow awoke the Duke from his reverie.

“What did they say? What did they want?”

Amé was standing there, her hair powdered by the skilful hands of Dalton. It made her look, if possible, even lovelier. It showed up the clear transparency of her skin. It made her eyes glow more vividly than they had done before.

“We leave immediately,” the Duke replied sharply after a quick glance at her. “There is no time for talk. We must get away. Is the coach ready?”

“Yes, everything is ready,” Amé answered. “The baggage went downstairs some time ago and the bill has been paid. The Proprietor is wreathed in smiles and bowing himself nearly double, so his pourboire must have been a good one.”

“Come at once,” the Duke ordered.

He picked up his cloak from the chair and swung it over his shoulders.

Then he glanced at Amé who was watching him.

“You should hand me my hat and gloves,” he said correctively. “And outside be sure you help me into the coach with the right degree of deference, you never know who might be watching.”

There was something in his voice that told her that what he said was of importance. Soberly she picked up his hat and gloves and handed them to him and then followed him from the room down the passage.

The coach had drawn up at the main door of the inn, a footman in blue and silver livery held the door open. Amé sprang forward and lifted her arm so that the Duke might rest his fingers on it as slowly and with great dignity he walked up the red-carpeted steps.

Inside he seated himself on the soft seat facing the horses. The footman arranged a rug over his knees. When he was comfortable, Amé climbed the steps.

At a glance from the Duke she sat opposite him on the smaller seat. The door was closed, the coach began to move and the horses pulled out of the yard.

As they did so, the Duke bent forward a little as if to see if the postilions were following. As he glanced at them, he saw something else, a man standing in the shadow of the stable doors, a man in a black cassock and wide-brimmed hat.

The Duke said nothing to Amé but examined her more critically than he had done when she came to show herself to him as he was finishing breakfast.

‘Was her disguise good enough?’ he asked himself.

She certainly made an extremely pretty boy and yet he decided that she might pass muster, at least where there were those who were not suspicious in the first place that she might be anything else. She was the same height as Adrian Court, his clothes fitted her well and gave slightly more breadth to her shoulders.

But boys of fifteen are not as a rule very prepossessing and the Duke saw that there were undoubtedly dangers ahead in this masquerade into which he had entered because Amé had been so persuasive but about which he now had very grave doubts.

And yet the more he thought of the Cardinal, the more determined he was to outwit him. At that moment the Duke of Melyncourt was more concerned not so much with helping a forlorn young woman but in a chase in which for the first time in his life he was on the side of and in the role of the hunted.

“Tell me what those men said to you, Monseigneur,” Amé said as they were free of the village of Chantilly and were proceeding at a good pace down a road that was bordered by thick woodland.

The Duke told her what had happened.

“The Priest was one of those who came to see me at the Convent,” Amé told him. “I saw him from the bedroom window. I have never seen the man in purple uniform before.”

“He is the Captain of the Cardinal’s Guard,” the Duke explained.

“The Cardinal!” Amé gave a little cry. “Then the Cardinal knows I have run away! How could he know that?”

“I have no idea. They must have sent a message to him last night. At what time would they be likely to find that you had gone?”

“I did not expect them to discover it till this morning,” Amé said. “There was, however, always a chance that the Mistress of the Novices would look in to see that we were safely in our rooms. That must have been it, of course. Sister Marie is very sweet, but old and rather fussy. There is a grid in every door through which the Mistress of the Novices can look and see if we are asleep. Sometimes if one is restless or awake, she will come in to bring a glass of water and say a prayer.

“Last night Sister Marie must have looked to see if I was there. Perhaps the Reverend Mother had told her to do so because she thought btat I might be worried about what had happened.”

“When she found you had gone, what would happen next?”

“Sister Marie would go at once to the Reverend Mother. Some of the other nuns might not have been so perturbed. They would think we were talking in each other’s rooms. It is forbidden after lights out, but often we disobey. Sister Marie is, as I have told you, very particular. She would have gone and told the Reverend Mother when she saw that my bed had not been slept in. Then they would all begin to look for me.”

“By ‘all’ you mean the nuns?” the Duke asked.

“Yes, of course. Some would be awakened. They would get up and look for me in the bedrooms, in the Cloisters and in the garden.”

“And when they did not find you, they would send a message to the Cardinal?”

“I don’t understand that. It would be unlike the Reverend Mother to send for the Cardinal until she had given me time to return or made every possible enquiry for herself. I cannot comprehend – mais oui!”

Amé gave a sudden exclamation.

“Je suis imbecile! The Priests only came yesterday. They would have stayed the night with Father Pierre in the Presbytery. Always when Priests come and we sometimes have special Priests in Lent and at Christmastime and they stay with Father Pierre.”

“Well, that explains that,” the Duke said. “The Reverend Mother told the Priests that you had disappeared. A messenger must have ridden through the night to inform the Cardinal, who sent back a bodyguard to assist in the search.”

“What I cannot understand,” Amé queried, “is why they should worry so much about me. Why does the Cardinal want me to take my vows so quickly and, if I am missing, why does it matter?”

“That is what I would like to discover and that is what we must find out. We shall doubtless then know who you are and why the Cardinal himself should take so much interest in you.”

Amé sighed.

“I wish they were not so interested,” she sighed. “Do you think the Priest and Captain were suspicious?”

“We cannot tell,” the Duke replied.

“I am sure you sent them away quite unsuspecting,” Amé said admiringly. “I am sure you were too clever for them.”

“I hope so, but I have not had any great experience of subterfuge of this sort.”

“That is why I am sure that you will do it so well,” Amé replied. “No one would suspect you. What is more, no one would think for one moment that you would befriend an unknown and penniless girl. Why indeed should you bother with me?”

She made a little gesture with her hand, her eyes were very innocent.

The Duke glanced at her for a moment and then looked away.

“I have asked myself the same question.”

“And what was the answer, Your Grace?”

“I told myself that I have always had a dislike of seeing powerful forces crush something that is weak and defenceless,” the Duke replied.

“Yes, of course, that is exactly what you would think,” Amé said.

There was a note of disappointment in her voice. Suddenly she moved from the seat opposite the Duke to the place beside him.

“I want to sit next to you,” she said. “It will not take us long to reach Paris and then we shall go to your house there. What is it like? Who will be there? Tell me all about it.”

“I am as ignorant as you. I sent my cousin, Hugo Waltham, who looks after all my affairs, ahead to prepare everything for me. You can be certain he will have chosen exactly the right environment for an English Duke in search of pleasure and amusement.”

“Is that why you are going to Paris?” Amé asked.

“Yes, of course,” the Duke replied. “Now the War is over I want to enjoy the gayest Capital in Europe. I want to see the beautiful women of whom one has heard so much. La Princesse de Polignac, La Comtesse d’Artois, La Princesse de Guémenée, and others of whose charms even London talks.”

“And seeing these beautiful women will make you happy?” Amé asked in a small voice.

“I did not say it would make me happy,” the Duke replied. “I said it would amuse me.”

“Oh!” There was a little pause and then after a moment Amé said in a low voice, “It would be so nice if, when we got to Paris, I could be a woman again.”

“Are you tired of your breeches already?”

“Not exactly tired of them,” Amé replied, “but I should like to look pretty. I have never had a pretty dress in the whole of my life.”

“We must see what we can do about it,” the Duke nodded.

Amé turned eagerly to him.

“Will you give me dresses in which I will look attractive and in which I too can try to amuse you?”

There was something in the candid innocence of her eyes and the breathlessness of her question that made the Duke feel suddenly angry.

“I promise you nothing,” he answered. “You must remember that I did not wish to become involved in this adventure of yours. As it happens, I have other things to do. It will do me no good at this particular moment to quarrel with the Cardinal. With this in mind we must be circumspect. We must take the greatest care.”

He felt, even as he spoke, as though he had slapped in the face a child unable to defend herself.

He felt Amé shrink away from him and then suddenly in a voice that was pathetic and young, she said,

“If you really think that I shall do you harm just by being with you, then I will go away. You can drop me at the outskirts of Paris. I will fend for myself, just as I meant to do when I left the Convent. Whatever may happen to me, I would not wish to harm you.”

“Now you are talking nonsense again,” the Duke answered.

“I will leave you,” Amé went on with a little sob. “You have been so kind to me already that I cannot ask for more.”

“Don’t be so ridiculous, child,” the Duke exclaimed and then he stopped as he saw the tears in Amé’s eyes.

Big and shining, they overflowed beneath her dark lashes and ran down her cheeks, which had suddenly paled.

“You are not going to leave me, not if I can possibly help it,” he said, unexpectedly even to himself.

“Do you mean that?”

Amé’s smile was like the sunshine coming through an April shower.

“I always say what I mean.”

“Merci, merci, Monseigneur, thank you! Thank you!”

Amé bent her head suddenly and the Duke felt her lips against his hand.

For a moment he was very still and then he took his hand away and laid it on Amé’s shoulder.

“You upset yourself unnecessarily.”

Amé gave a little gasp.

“For a moment,” she murmured, “I thought I had lost you.”

“I think,” the Duke said with a smile that twisted his lips cynically, “it would be difficult for either of us to lose each other at the moment.”

He had hardly spoken when there was a shout outside and the coach drew up with a jerk.

Both Amé and the Duke turned to look through the window. They saw a number of men on horses circling around the coach. They heard commands shouted out and, as Amé put out her hand in sudden terror towards the Duke, the door was flung open and a man stood there.

“What is the meaning of this outrage?” the Duke thundered.

The man swept his hat from his head and it was with a sense of relief that the Duke saw that he wore, not the uniform of the Cardinal, but a very different livery of red, white and blue with a design of three fleurs-de-lis upon the breast.

“Your pardon, Monseigneur,” the man said, “but my Master invites Your Grace to visit him. He heard but a short while ago that you were on the road, otherwise a message would have been sent to the inn where you passed the night. It is not many kilometres to my Master’s Château and he asks that you will accompany us there so that he may proffer you his hospitality.”

“Who is your Master?” the Duke enquired.

“My instructions are to remain silent until you meet each other in person,” the man replied.

“Then, as I do not know your Master’s name, I cannot accept his offer. Convey my apologies and say that I have urgent affairs that require my presence in Paris.”

“I regret, Your Grace, my Master’s instructions were quite explicit. He wishes you to avail yourself of his hospitality and we are here to take you to him.”

There was no mistaking the threat underlying all the formal politeness. There was no mistaking either the gesture that the man accompanied the words with. It embraced some thirty men or more, all astride fine-looking horseflesh and all carrying pistols stuck into the sashes that they wore round their waists.

The Duke knew that any resistance was quite useless.

There were but nine of them counting himself, the coachmen, footman, postilions and outriders. Without looking down the road they had already travelled, he knew only too well that the rest of his household would be far behind.

Quickly he made up his mind. In this instance there was nothing to do but to surrender.

“You may lead me to your Master,” he said.

The man bowed and then the coach door was dosed. Through the window the Duke and Amé saw him spring onto his horse and give an order as he rode ahead. The coach started forward. The escort surrounded it. The Duke was suddenly aware that Amé was clinging onto his arm and, as they moved, she gave a little cry.

“I am frightened,” she whispered. “Is this all because of me?”

“I don’t know,” the Duke said grimly.

Amé’s fingers, small and fluttering, came to rest against his palm.

“It must be my fault,” she said miserably. “You should have refused to take me with you. You should have put me out on the road once you had discovered me beneath the rugs.”

“Would you have gone?” the Duke asked.

She heard the sudden lightness in his tone. She looked up amazed to see that his eyes were shining. He looked down then at her astonished face and he laughed, the gayest laugh she had heard for some time.

“We are in the middle of a great adventure,” he said, “the sort of adventure that I thought had gone out of fashion when I was a boy. Yes, this is an adventure, Amé, and damn it all, I am going to enjoy myself.”