Love Me Forever. Barbara Cartland
was well aware that an invitation to Melyn was a prized possession. The house, of great beauty and antiquity, was also comfortable and full with treasures collected by each succeeding generation. He supplied his guests with superlative food and even more superlative wines and the company was chosen not because they were important or famous or even intelligent, but they could each bring some unique and unusual quality to the party.
If Politicians were included, it was not because they had power or influence, but because they themselves were outstanding personalities. That, of course, was the reason why Pitt had stayed at Melyn. He had been Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time, a post from which most men would have shrunk had they been twice his age, which was then twenty-three.
“Going to stay at Melyn?” people had questioned him. “I cannot imagine what you will think of Sebastian Melyncourt. He is an extraordinary person, I don’t suppose you will like him.”
But Pitt had liked the Duke. Strangely enough they had found many things in common and perhaps they had each recognised in the other a faith in their own infallibility. Whatever it might have been, the result of that one visit to Melyn was that the Duke now found himself here in France with a mission that was giving him, to say the least of it, a predominance of anxious thought.
The trouble was he had no idea how he was to obtain the information that Pitt said he required. The Prime Minister had in fact been able to be of little help save to give him a broad outline of what he wanted.
“When I was in France last year,” he said, “I was fêted and acclaimed in a manner that was meant to leave me with no apprehension of anything but that France had become, overnight as it were, our staunchest and truest friend. It was perhaps because my reception was so warm and overwhelming, that I am suspicious. I am English enough to suspect people when they are too voluble. I may be wrong in this instance that remains to be seen. But go and find out what you can. I have a feeling that your report will be all the more perceptive because you know none of the intrigues that use up so uselessly the majority of our Ministers’ time.”
That sounded all very well in the Cabinet Room of Number 10 Downing Street, the Duke thought, but it left him in a curious predicament when it came to the point. He had no idea whom to trust. He had no indication as to who might be presumed to be a staunch friend of Britain and who might not.
He had heard Walpole’s eulogies of the beauty, grace and charm of Queen Marie Antoinette. He had heard those who accompanied Pitt on his visit the year before laugh at the gauche clumsiness of Louis XVI. He had heard talk of the extravagance and the immorality of the French Court, but it meant very little to him for the reason that he was not particularly interested.
He had been to France often enough before the War. He had gone over nearly every year for boar hunting. He had stayed in Paris and visited Versailles when first Madame de Pompadour and then Madame du Barry had reigned over the vacillating heart of Louis XV. But now he felt that all he knew of France was as ephemeral as a glass of champagne.
He had gone to Paris in the past only to amuse himself.
This journey was so very different and yet he was determined to succeed. It was not only because he liked Pitt and because the young Prime Minister had chosen him.
It was not only because he wished to be successful in anything he undertook, it was something deeper than that. It was perhaps the sudden-realisation that in a life in which previously he had sought only pleasure and amusement here was something that he could do for the country he belonged to, the country that he was deeply and sincerely fond of.
The Duke looked towards the road. The horses were ready, the postilion’s mount had been placed in the traces vacated by the leader, the lame horse was standing on the grass verge and one of the grooms was kneeling to extricate something from its hoof. He walked over the uneven ground which lay between him and the coach and, as he did so, noticed for the first time on the far side of the road there stood a great wall.
It lay back from the road and he had not perceived it in the darkness. Now a young moon was rising over the trees and by its light he could see the wall, grey and austere, silhouetted against the paler sky.
For a moment he wondered what it was and then above it he saw the roofs mounting one above the other surmounted by a tapering spire and he knew it to be a Convent or a Monastery.
“A shoe has worked loose, Your Grace,” the footman said at his elbow.
“That is what I thought,” the Duke replied.
“There is but five miles to Chantilly where we spend the night, Your Grace. If there is a blacksmith by the roadside, the groom will call him up.”
“Tell him to bring the animal along gently.”
“Very good, Your Grace.”
The Duke stepped into the coach.
“And tell the coachman to hurry.”
“Very good, Your Grace.”
The door was closed and the coach moved off. The Duke sank back against the padded seats. He was tired of travelling and he allowed himself to reflect that he was also hungry. He preferred riding to being driven, but he knew that the Parisians would expect him to arrive in style and it would be a mistake to disappoint their expectations.
He had already sent his cousin, Hugo Waltham, ahead to engage a mansion where he would stay while he was in Paris and to make every possible arrangement for his convenience.
Hugo would see to it that all Paris was apprised of the distinction of the man who was about to pay the City a visit.
The Duke smiled a little. Quiet and unobtrusive in many ways Hugo managed to get things done with an efficiency that was entirely commendable.
The Duke yawned suddenly, thank goodness he would be in Paris tomorrow night. He found that travelling by coach invariably tried his patience. He stretched out his legs and, as he did so, he had a curious feeling that he was not alone.
Some sixth sense, some intuition he could not entirely account for, made him suddenly on his guard.
He felt his muscles tighten and almost without his being aware of it his hand went towards the pocket of his velvet coat in which reposed a pistol. Then at that moment there came a sound, a sound hardly articulate, but strangled at its very birth and yet nevertheless a sound.
Incredulous the Duke looked round the coach. A candle, flickering in the silver lantern, showed him the satin-covered seats empty save for himself, but on the floor there was a pile of rugs. Far too hot for them to be necessary this evening, there were, however, times on every journey when the occupant of a coach was glad of them. The Duke looked closely.
There was no doubt of it, the rugs appeared bulkier than they had done earlier in the day.
He drew his pistol from his pocket. It was primed and so ready for use for the Duke knew of old that on journeys such as this highwaymen and robbers were likely to appear when least expected.
Holding the pistol in his right hand, the Duke bent forward and with a swift, almost savage, gesture drew the sable rug from the floor onto the seat. For a moment he thought he was mistaken and that there was no one there and then there was a movement.
Slowly a figure wearing a black cloak raised itself from the floor.
The Duke put out his hand. His grasp was strong and merciless and there was a sudden cry of pain.
“Who are you?” the Duke asked. “What are you doing here?”
In answer the figure on the floor, twisting a little beneath the hand that gripped so mercilessly, a small soft shoulder, threw back the hood that obscured her identity.
For a moment the Duke could only stare at what the light from the lantern revealed.
A small white face was turned towards him, two very large, rather frightened eyes looked up into his and, as the dark hood fell further from the wearer’s head, it revealed a mass of soft red-gold hair, which glittered and shone in the candlelight.
“Who