loved Drogo, she thought to herself, loved him with all her heart, more than she had ever loved anyone before, but not enough to hide her beauty under a shadow, to live secretly in a hole-and-corner way and to know that everyone was talking about her not in admiration but with bated breath because of her impropriety.
Then, as she slipped a curl into place, an idea came to her that made her swing round suddenly to face the Duke as he stood behind her, sulky and disconsolate.
“Drogo, I have thought of something!”
“What?”
The monosyllable was abrupt, almost disinterested. The Duke was realising that he had failed, that Lily was lost to him and that nothing he could say or do could make her his.
“I have thought of something that will enable us to see each other and to be together as we have never been before.”
“What is it?”
Drogo did not sound hopeful. He knew now that Lily would never come away with him, no matter how much he pleaded. He had to face the truth that the Social world was more important to her than her love for him.
It was a blow to his self-esteem, even while at the back of his brain he had not expected her to make any other decision.
“I cannot imagine why I did not think of it before!” Lily exclaimed, her voice light and suddenly gay. “It is the obvious solution for both of us. You must marry this girl!”
“Marry! Who?”
“George’s niece, of course. The child who is coming here today.”
“Are you mad?”
“Drogo, don’t be dense! She is a millionairess. Think of it! Millions of dollars for you to spend on doing up Cotillion. You are always telling me how you cannot afford to keep the place as your grandfather did. Well, here is the chance. And if you marry her at once, I need not chaperone her or sit among the Dowagers or do any of the deadly horrible things George will make me do because he is angry with me.”
“It’s a crazy idea. You cannot be serious!”
The Duke spoke vehemently, but Lily was smiling.
“Darling Drogo, be sensible, it will solve everything. You have to marry sometime, your mother was talking about it only last week and saying that the tenants expect it of you. You have to have an heir and you will be twenty-nine next year. It’s time you did marry.”
“But I don’t want to marry unless I can marry you.”
“I know, darling. And I want to marry you more than anything else in the world, but George is as strong as a horse and he is likely to live until he is eighty. All the Bedlingtons do, there is no killing them off! But if you cannot marry me, why not the next best thing, George’s niece? Then you can come here as often as you like and George will not be able to say a word. How could he? We can be together and George cannot possibly object when you are married to his niece.”
“I am not going to marry George’s niece or anyone else,” the Duke stipulated positively.
Lily gave a little cry, flung herself down on the sofa and put her hands to her eyes.
“So you want us to part and never see each other again! How can you be so cruel and so unkind after all we have meant to each other. I love you, Drogo.”
“And I love you, you know that.”
He towered over her and clasped her wrists with a sudden show of strength that made her sway back against the cushions, pliant and yielding.
“Damn it, you drive me mad!”
“Don’t swear, darling. If only you will be sensible, we are saved! Saved!”
“I have told you already, I am not going to marry some idiotic girl I have never seen.”
The Duke spoke the words, but somehow they lacked conviction. He was looking down into Lily’s upturned face, her lips, soft and inviting, were raised to his, her eyes were half-closed and he knew that if he kissed her now he would feel a wild rapture rising within them both, uniting them with a flaming pulsating passion that would thrill them until everything else was forgotten.
“I will not do it”
“Then you will say ‘goodbye’?”
He knew there was no alternative for George, though complacent in some ways, was not a man to be weak where the honour of his family name was concerned. He had learned not to be jealous of Lily as a woman, but he was exceedingly sensitive of his name and position.
Fools that they were to think for one moment that they could keep this mad infatuation secret. They were both too well known and too good-looking to escape being seen.
“Darling, I cannot lose you.” Lily whispered the words beneath her breath but Drogo heard them.
He hesitated for a moment longer.
But the sight of her lips, parted and quivering, was too much for him. With a sound that was a half a groan, he bent forward and crushed her mouth beneath his.
As she surrendered herself to him, he felt a flame sear its way through his body and knew, as she trembled against him, that Lily felt it as well.
It was ecstasy, it was agony and the price he paid for it was his freedom, but somehow at this moment he did not care.
*
When the Duke had left the house, Lily slipped upstairs to her bedroom to tidy her hair before George returned with his niece.
As she stared at herself in the white-framed mirror over her dressing table, she noted with concern that a sleepless night had left her with dark lines under her eyes and the many emotions she had experienced that afternoon had undoubtedly taken their toll of her looks.
Nevertheless she thought with elation that she had had her own way and for the moment nothing else mattered. There would be other advantages too, for with the Duke married to George’s niece, they would be drawn even closer than ever into that exclusive Social set of which the Duke’s mother Emily Roehampton, was undoubtedly the leader.
There was only one rule in that particular clique, as Lily knew only too well. It was the only commandment they all obeyed, “thou shalt not de found out’. There were old-fashioned hostesses who regarded the Roehampton set askance, but Emily Roehampton was far too important, too powerful a personage to care what was said about her and the knowledge that the new King, Edward VII, was a frequent guest at Cotillion was enough to silence all but the most discordant voices.
There was always the chance, of course, that Emily Roehampton would stop her son’s marriage with an unknown girl whose upbringing, to say the least of it, was problematical.
But she would be very pleased about the money, Lily thought shrewdly. No one in the Roehampton set ever had enough money to go round and, although Drogo was undoubtedly wealthy, Cotillion was a monster so insatiable in its demands that it would have proved a drain on anyone’s fortune however enormous.
When she thought of the huge house, spreading
