CHAPTER ONE ~ 1903
“Drogo! Thank God you have come!”
Lady Bedlington waited until the butler had closed the door and so she was now certain that she could not be overheard before she spoke, but even so, her voice was low, hardly above a whisper.
Yet there was no mistaking the dramatic intensity of it and the smile on the lips of the man watching her from the other end of the room faded.
It was perhaps one of the few occasions when Lily Bedlington was not thinking about her appearance and yet she had never looked more beautiful.
Suffering gave her face an almost spiritual loveliness and her blue eyes, that were often surprisingly vacant, were dark now with the violence of her feelings.
“What has happened?”
The question was quick and worried, yet somehow the Duke of Roehampton’s voice seemed to ease some of her tension and Lily gave a sigh and held out both her hands to him.
“Oh, Drogo! Drogo!” she cried. “I knew you would come as soon as you received my note.”
He took her hands in his and raised them to his lips.
She watched his face as he did so, the clear aristocratic features, the deep-set grey eyes beneath straight uncompromising eyebrows, the square chin and firm rather obstinate mouth. A handsome face, a face that had made so many women’s hearts beat more quickly when they looked at him, a face that had ensnared and captivated Lily Bedlington as she had never thought it possible to be ensnared or captivated by any man.
His lips were warm and insistent. Now he turned her hands over in his and kissed the soft palms lingeringly and passionately.
Lily Bedlington felt herself quiver. For a few moments she closed her eyes. Never in her whole life had she known such ecstasy, such a wild glory of love as with this young man, ten years younger than she was, had brought her.
Lily had been acclaimed as a beauty almost since she was a child. There had never been a time when she had not been pursued and flattered, admired and worshipped by every man she came into contact with. Her beauty had remained unrivalled and yet it seemed to her now that it had been an unawakened beauty, a beauty that must still wait for the kiss of a Prince Charming before it came to the zenith of perfection.
And then Drogo had fallen in love with her! She had known him, of course, almost since he was born, for his mother was a good close friend of hers. He had always been an attractive little boy, but she had not thought of him as a man until he came back from a world tour about six months before and they had met as if for the first time.
Then, Lily thought, she had learned what love really meant.
She opened her eyes and, taking one of hand from his, laid it against Drogo’s cheek. He still retained the other one and now he was kissing her wrist and the blue veins leading down to it, pushing back the frill of her sleeve to find the dimpled bend of her arm.
His eyes were raised to Lily’s as he did so, a daring invitation in them that she knew only too well.
Abruptly, with a little cry, she turned away from him.
“Don’t look at me like that, Drogo,” she commanded. “You don’t understand.”
With her back to him she drew a tiny lace-edged handkerchief from her belt and applied it to the corner of her eyes.
“Darling, tell me what this is all about,” Drogo asked her.
He stood watching her and the sun, coming through the window that overlooked Hyde Park, shone on her bent head, glinting on her skilfully arranged curls. When it was down, her hair fell almost to her knees and the Duke remembered how often he had buried his face in the silken fragrance of it.
No one could be more beautiful, he thought, watching Lily. The pink and white of her skin, the gold of her hair and the blue of her eyes were all essentially English.
“An English rose” was how she was described so often that it had become banal and yet it was true and there was something essentially English as well in the lovely flowing lines of her body. Her waist was tiny and she was inordinately proud of it, but there was grace and dignity as well as beauty in every movement she made and in every gesture.
“What is worrying you?” the Duke questioned impatiently.
Lily turned towards him.
“George has found out!” she whispered faintly and, as she spoke those fatal words, her lips trembled and two large tears ran down her cheeks.
The sight was too much for the Duke’s self-control. In two steps he was at her side and had taken her in his arms. For a moment he held her closely and in return she clung to him, the strength and urgency a comfort beyond words.
“Don’t cry, darling, I cannot bear it,” he muttered but, when his mouth sought hers, she pushed him from her.
“No, no, Drogo! You have to listen. It is serious, don’t you understand it? George has been very angry. He has forbidden us to see each other again.”
“But that is ridiculous and absurd,” the Duke asserted.
“Yes, yes, I know. I argued with him and I pleaded. I said everything I could think of, but it was hopeless. Someone saw us in Kew Gardens just last week. They told George and he remembered that, when he had asked me where I had been that day, I told him I had been at the dressmakers. I believe he has been watching us for some time and this has merely confirmed all that he has suspected. Drogo, what are we to do?”
In answer the Duke put his arms around her shoulders.
“Come away with me now,” he urged. “We can go abroad. George will divorce you and we can be married.”
“Are you crazy? How could I do such a thing? How could I endure the scandal and the horror of it? Of being cut by my friends and of not being able to go to Court? Oh, no, Drogo, you know such an idea is impossible.”
“But I cannot give you up – I will not!”
There was something desperate in the Duke’s tone now and, miserable though she was, Lily Bedlington felt a complacent sense of satisfaction. Yes, he loved her, loved her as much as she loved him, if not more, this handsome, elegant, eligible young man, whom all the ambitious mothers in London were besieging on behalf of their daughters. They had all tried to catch him, but he was hers, bound to her by a love stronger and more passionate than anything those old harridans had ever imagined in their wildest dreams.
“We have been so happy,” Lily moaned.
“How can I lose you now?” the Duke asked.
She freed herself from his arms and walked across to the fireplace.
“There is nothing we can do about it,” she said in a voice of despair. “Nothing! After George had spoken to me, I lay all night trying to think of a way out but there is not one.”
“Come away with me!”
The words were spoken urgently and roughly, yet even as he said them the Duke knew how hopeless it all was. Lily was not the stuff that heroines were made of. She would never stand being ostracised and he knew as well as she did that the Society they both belonged to would forgive an erring man but never an erring woman.
Even when she was his Duchess, doors would still be shut to her, faces would be turned away and voices would lash at her. It would be an unendurable crucifixion for someone who had all her life belonged to the most exclusive and elite Social set.
For perhaps the first time the Duke realised that love definitely took second place to being persona grata at Court and that love such as he felt for Lily and she for him would never stand up to the cold blast of Society disapproval.
For a moment he was overwhelmed by a bitterness that made him angry and indignant. Spoiled all his life, he was used to being denied nothing he wanted and at this moment he wanted Lily more than he had wanted anything else in the world. His lips were