Chapter Two

As the Duke drove out of London and into the countryside, he grew angrier and angrier.

With all the money his predecessor had when he died, a great deal must surely have been at the disposal of his daughter.

Why then should his Cousin Alvina have dealt with the pawnbrokers?

He could not imagine why she should need money unless, of course, there was some man she was supporting who her father disapproved of.

The Duke thought cynically that he had a very poor opinion of most women’s morals or sense of honour.

He had always, in the back of his mind, despised married women who were unfaithful to their husbands.

There was also something fastidious or perhaps almost puritanical, in his makeup that made him dislike the idea that he was by no means the first of Lady Isobel’s lovers.

He was quite certain, although she had never said so, that she had been unfaithful to her husband while he was alive and she had certainly made the most of being free after his death.

It was all part and parcel of the pace set by the Heir to the Throne when he was Prince Regent and his example had been accepted by the majority of those in Society.

When he thought it over, the Duke knew that, although it seemed impossible, he would want his own wife to be very different.

He had never really thought about marriage before.

He had been quite certain as a soldier that he could not afford it.

But now he was in the position not only of being obliged to marry, but of finding a wife who would both please him and prove suitable as the Duchess of Harlington.

He was well aware that, although it did not always happen, the Head of a great Family was looked up to and respected in the same way as the Chieftain of a Scottish Clan.

Before the Duke of Cumberland had defeated the Highlanders and the rule of law in Scotland had been revised and restored, the Chieftains had the power of life and death over their Clansmen.

The Dukes of England certainly did not have that, but they were, in most cases on their own estate, looked upon almost as if they were Kings. And their word was law.

‘It is like commanding an Army,’ the Duke thought to himself, and remembered how Wellington was admired, honoured and loved by the men under his command.

He had also known in his Army life Officers who had such powers of leadership that those they commanded were not only ready to serve them but if necessary to die in obeying their orders.

He did not boast to himself of having that particular quality, although actually he did possess it, but he had been praised often enough for the fact that his troops were smarter finer fighters and certainly better disciplined than those in other Regiments.

Discipline had been the keyword in the Army of Occupation, when it had been difficult to keep soldiers who were not fighting from looting or bullying the beaten enemy and invariably causing trouble where women were concerned.

But now that task was over and the Duke asked himself whether he would ever be able to discipline a woman or force her to obey him as he had managed to do so successfully with his men.

He was quite certain that with Isobel it would be impossible, and he knew that she used the passion she aroused in a man as a weapon to get everything she desired without exerting herself unduly.

His lips tightened as he decided that she would certainly not be able to do that with him.

Yet he wondered, if it actually came to the test, if he would not be as compliant as her other lovers.

His thoughts then returned to the extraordinary behaviour of his Cousin Alvina.

First he tried to remember what she looked like, but could not recall seeing her since she was a little girl of nine or ten years of age.

He had spent a great deal of his time at The Castle when he was very young because he and his cousin, Richard, were the same age.

He had very few memories of Alvina before meeting her at Richard’s twenty-first birthday party.

He remembered thinking then that there was a large age gap between brother and sister.

But it had been explained to him that the Duchess had unfortunately lost two other children prematurely in the intervening time.

It had therefore been a triumph for the doctors when the Duchess’s daughter had survived.

Alvina must by this time, the Duke calculated, be nineteen or twenty years of age.

He wondered what she would look like now. The Duke had been a handsome man and he knew that the Duchess had been acclaimed as being outstandingly beautiful.

He actually found it hard to remember her face because on that occasion he had been so amazed by the magnificence of The Castle and the extravagance of the festivities which celebrated Richard’s coming-of-age.

Never, even in his later travels, had he seen better and more spectacular fireworks and he could remember the fantastic decorations in the Banqueting Hall, which had been filled with distinguished guests.

The ladies had glittered like Christmas trees with diamonds on their heads, their necks and their wrists and the gentlemen all wearing their decorations were not eclipsed.

Because the Duke of Harlington was of such importance, there were several guests of Royal rank present besides nearly all the Ambassadors to the Court of St. James.

He remembered thinking that their gold-braided uniforms, jewelled decorations and beribboned chests out-glittered even the splendour of a full Regimental dress like his own.

Richard had made an excellent speech that night, but now lay buried on the battlefield of Waterloo, while he, a distant cousin, was to take his place at The Castle as the fifth Duke of Harlington.

Then, as he drove on, having left the suburbs of London far behind, and was moving through the open country, the Duke’s thoughts returned to Lady Alvina.

Once again he squared his chin and tightened his lips.

‘How could she have dared to pawn anything so priceless as the Germain bowl?’ he asked himself.

When the pawnbroker had mentioned that among the other things in his possession there were several miniatures, the Duke had stiffened.

The Harlington collection of miniatures was the most famous in the country.

Some of them dated back to the reign of Queen Elizabeth and almost every Harlington who had owned The Castle had added a miniature of himself and his wife.

The Duke recalled that they decorated the walls of the Blue Drawing Room and it had given him intense satisfaction when he was in Paris, Vienna and Rome to realise that none of these three Cities could boast miniatures that could in any way rival the Harlington collection.

He had never expected to be in the possession of any one of them or even to have the pleasure of seeing them frequently.

But just as the Harlings always believed that The Castle belonged to them as a family, so they thought the same of its contents.

On his way back from France the Duke had known that the one thing he wanted to do more than anything else was to see The Castle, live in it and make it the focal point of his new life.

‘Harlington Castle,’ he repeated the name to himself and knew that it meant more than could possibly be expressed in words.

The way that his father had talked about The Castle was one of his first boyhood memories and it had always seemed to him to be inhabited by Knights.

When he first read the tale of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, he pictured them living in a Castle that was exactly like the one that he belonged to by name and birth.

Later it coloured every Fairytale he read and every history book he opened.

When he was taught about the Crusades, he imagined very vividly the Knights setting out to attack the Saracens from Harlington Castle.

Queen Elizabeth had stayed there on her travels around England and she therefore had a special place in his mind because she had feasted and slept as the guest of one of his ancestors.

So it went on through his history lessons until, when in real life he was fighting against the domination of Napoleon, he was fighting for England, but especially for Harlington Castle.

Yet in the moment of his personal victory, when it was now his, he had discovered that there was a traitor in the family, a woman who had dared to take from The Castle some of its most precious treasures to pawn them for money.

‘I can only be thankful,’ the Duke thought, ‘that by some sense of decency, or was it perhaps fear, that she has not sold what has been passed down from one Duke to the next.’

He remembered asking his father once, when he was a small boy and they had stayed at The Castle, whether the Duke felt like a King.

“I am sure he does,” his father smiled, “but at the same time just as in the case of the King, the Palace is his only for his lifetime. He must protect it and improve it for the next Duke, who will come after him.”

Ivar had found it a little hard to understand and his father had explained further,

“Each Duke in turn is a Guardian or Trustee of treasures that do not belong to him personally, but to the family as a whole. It is his duty not only to leave The Castle as he finds it but also to look after the family and see that they are cared for and do not want.”

“He must have a lot to do,” Ivar had replied.

“It’s a very big task indeed,” his father had answered solemnly, “and one in which we can thank God that no Duke so far has failed.”

From what he could remember of the fourth Duke, he had been an admirable Head of the Family.

It seemed therefore almost unbelievable that his only daughter should...