LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

this into words.

      She was, however, intelligent enough to realise that there would be fortune-hunters in London who would consider it a triumph if they could marry her and into a Ducal family

      It would not be for herself, but, as he had said, as her father’s daughter.

      “We have not really had a chance to talk of this before,” her father was saying, “but I had intended to do so before we go to London.”

      He paused a moment to cough and then went on,

      “My dearest, you have to be sensible and leave things in my hands. You have trusted me since you were a child and I cannot believe that you will not do so now.”

      “I love you, Papa, and, of course, I trust you,” Aletha said. “But I want to fall in love as you fell in love with Mama and she with you.”

      “That is something that happens only once in a million years,” the Duke replied. “When I walked into the room and saw your mother, there seemed to be a dazzling light about her and I knew that I had found the girl whoever she might be and from wherever she came that I wanted as my wife.”

      “And Mama said,” Aletha replied, “that when she saw you she knew that you were the man of her dreams.”

      “We were very very happy,” the Duke insisted.

      There was a pain in his voice that was always there when he spoke of his wife.

      “I too want to feel like that,” Aletha said quickly. “I want to meet the – Prince of my – dreams!”

      “Then you must just pray that is what you will do,” the Duke replied.

      She knew as he spoke that he did not believe it was possible.

      As he had said, what had happened to her mother and him was something that might happen once in a million years or in a cheap novelette from a bookshop.

      The Duke rose to his feet.

      “If I am to leave so early, I think I should go to bed. Don’t you worry about anything, my precious, and we will talk about this when I come home and before we leave for London.”

      He put his arm around her before he added,

      “Enjoy yourself with the horses. I promise I will make it up to you for the two weeks of boredom as soon as I return.”

      “I shall miss you – Papa.”

      “As I shall miss you.”

      The Duke walked up the stairs with his arm round her shoulders.

      When they reached her bedroom door, he kissed her affectionately.

      As he went down the passage to his own room, the Duke was mulling over in his mind the young gentlemen whom he had seen recently at Court.

      It was not going to be easy to choose one who seemed to be suitable as a husband for his beautiful daughter.

      There always seemed to be some flaw somewhere, which told him instinctively that they would be unfaithful within twelve months of the Wedding Ceremony.

      ‘I will find somebody,’ he thought confidently as he climbed into his comfortable bed.

      *

      Aletha, having undressed, then pulled back the curtains in her bedroom and was looking out of the window.

      There was a full moon and a multitude of stars filled the sky.

      It was still cold at nights, but the moonlight on the lake glimmered like silver.

      The daffodils were just beginning to make a carpet of gold beneath the old oak trees.

      Usually Aletha was very moved by the glorious beauty of her home and everything about it.

      Tonight, however, she was looking out with unseeing eyes.

      She was thinking of leaving everything that she loved and that was familiar and of going away with a strange man to a strange house.

      There would be strange servants instead of those who had known her since she was born.

      There would be strange relatives who would doubtless disapprove of many of the things she did.

      Perhaps the man she married would not ride as well as her father did, or for that matter, as well as she rode herself.

      ‘How can I possibly bear it?’ she asked the stars. ‘And yet I want love, the love that will make everything – even a cottage seem – wonderful because – he is there.’

      She found herself thinking again of the Empress Elizabeth.

      Because of the beauty, so many men loved her and, if all the gossip was really true, there were some she loved in return.

      Aletha knew only too well that she wanted something very different for herself.

      She wanted marriage in which the outside world did not matter in the least.

      A marriage where the only thing that counted was her love for her husband and his love for her.

      She gazed again at the moon.

      ‘Am I asking the impossible?’ she enquired. ‘Must I really be content with second best?’

      She knew that hoped-for love after marriage could never be the same as marrying the man of her dreams.

      Would horses, however magnificent, however swift and however exciting be the same as love?

      She wished that this topic of conversation had not arisen the night before her father was to leave for Denmark.

      She so wanted to go on talking to him.

      She wanted to try to make him fully understand that, while she was may be asking for the impossible, she must nevertheless strive to attain it.

      She suddenly had a terrifying feeling.

      Suppose, almost before she could realise what was happening, she found herself the wife of some odd man with whom she had very little if anything in common?

      “I cannot bear it!” she called out aloud in the darkness of her room.

      She thought that, if this should happen to her, she would run away.

      Her father was going to Denmark.

      Perhaps in Denmark he would find her a husband although it seemed very unlikely?

      A foreigner, a man whose language was different and about whose national customs she knew nothing.

      She felt a sudden panic sweep over her.

      It was almost as if she had been out sailing on a smooth sea which had suddenly become tempestuous.

      ‘I must escape!’ she thought.

      Then she told herself that she must be sensible, talk to her father and explain to him how she felt about his ideas for her.

      Because he loved her he would surely understand.

      She had an impulse to run to his room to tell him now what she was feeling.

      She wanted to know that he understood, as he had understood when as a child she was frightened of the dark.

      Then again she told herself that it would be a very selfish thing for her to do.

      He had to leave very early in the morning to cross the North Sea to Denmark.

      ‘Why does he have to go now at this moment?’ she asked herself angrily.

      Instead they could have been setting off together from Tilbury to Ostend and travelling from there by train to Budapest.

      Together they could have inspected the Hungarian horses that he was so determined to buy.

      They could have ridden side by side in the wild open country that was the joy and delight of the Empress Elizabeth.

      ‘If

Скачать книгу