sitting room.
Elfa was breathless by the time she reached the door and she paused for a moment not only to get back her breath but also to collect her thoughts.
How could she tell Caroline? What could she say?
She realised as she opened the door that she was like the messenger of doom in a Greek tragedy.
*
“I – cannot! I cannot – lose – Edward,” Caroline repeated for the one hundredth time.
Even as tears were running down her face, her sister thought that she still looked lovely and no man, not even the Duke of Lynchester for all his smart sophisticated women, could fail to find her attractive.
“I know, dearest,” Elfa said, “but Papa is determined and I cannot think for the moment what we can do to prevent the Duke from offering for you.”
“I can – say ‘no’,” Caroline quavered in a tremulous voice.
“I don’t think he would listen nor would Papa now that he has made up his mind.”
Elfa had tried to break the. news as gently as she could to Caroline.
At first her sister had grown so pale as she spoke that she thought she might faint, then she burst into floods of tears.
Caroline was not a strong character. She was sweet, gentle, very amenable and so lovely that every man who looked at her stopped and looked again.
She was actually, Elfa thought secretly, the very type that the Duke would envisage as his ideal Duchess. She was tall, nearly five feet ten inches, and she had fair hair, the colour of ripening corn, blue eyes and a pink-and-white complexion.
She had never in her whole life caused her parents a moment’s anxiety until she fell in love with Edward Dalkirk.
She was so very much in love with him that no other man existed for her. Any who had wished to court her for her beauty had found it impossible to hold her attention or to make her even aware of their existence and any ideas they had of wooing her soon vanished.
The Duke had nothing against Edward except that he was poor.
He was the one and only son of the Viscount Dalkirk who had a crumbling Castle on an impoverished estate in Scotland and, when he left his Regiment in which he had served with distinction, he decided to try to make a little money by breeding horses.
This ambition was facilitated by the fact that his uncle had left him a house and seven hundred acres on the borders of the Duke of Northallerton’s land, which was how he had met Caroline.
From that moment, as he loved her as deeply as she loved him, he had worked feverishly to make enough money so that he could ask her to be his wife.
Unfortunately breeding the right type of horses from the quality mares he could afford to buy took time and he had not anticipated that he would be able to approach the Duke for at least another year.
“I suppose that you could run away together,” Elfa suggested, “and then hide somewhere where Papa would not find you.”
“In which – case Edward would lose the – money he has – invested in his – horses and we could not afford to find another house to live in. But I cannot marry the – Duke! I must marry – Edward!” Caroline wailed. “I love him! I love – him and I would – die if I had to marry any other man!”
Elfa rose to her feet and walked to the window.
She was very fond of her sister and it hurt her to see her so unhappy.
But while she turned over and over in her mind every argument by which Caroline could try to persuade her father she must marry Edward Dalkirk, Elfa was quite certain that the Duke would not listen to her.
She had always known that he was ambitious for Caroline.
He had been so proud when she was acclaimed a beauty and, looking back, Elfa could remember the expression of personal triumph on his face when Caroline had looked so lovely at her first ball.
It had been two years ago now and she herself was a schoolgirl at the time but she had thought then with a little twist of her lips that, when it was her turn to have a ball, her father would not be proud of her in the same way.
She could understand that the Duke, who had always wanted the child he loved best to shine, would glory in the fact that Caroline could wear a coronet of strawberry leaves and her Social position after the Royal Family would be undoubtedly the most important in England.
Elfa knew that there had always been a rivalry in rank and influence between the two Ducal houses whose lands marched side by side.
The old Duke of Lynchester had been a somewhat dissolute character and so her father had been much more respected and admired in the County which consequently became, to all intents and purposes his Empire.
But the new Duke, who had recently inherited, was different.
He was a friend of the Prince of Wales and, as far as Elfa could gather, the leader of the Social Set in London, which was acclaimed and envied by those who were not shocked by it. And he undoubtedly had an influence that had something Imperial about it.
As she thought of the Duke, this was not surprising.
In the hunting field he stood out not only as a superlative rider to hounds but also as a personality who it was impossible to ignore.
She had never spoken to him, but she was certain that she would find him overbearing and even intimidating and she knew that this would leave Caroline crushed and helpless.
Because Caroline had always been so amenable, it was Elfa, even though she was two years younger, who had been the leader, the instigator of all their pranks and who, if they were punished, protected Caroline by taking all the blame herself.
In a way this was only fair because Caroline had little imagination and it was Elfa who, as her father often pointed out, had too much.
“What can I – do? What – can I do?” Caroline murmured now and she went on crying into a handkerchief that was already soaked with her tears. “I cannot marry the Duke!”
Even when she was crying she still looked lovely, although her nose was now slightly pink and her blue eyes were swimming with tears.
“There must be something,” Elfa muttered almost beneath her breath.
Then she gave a sudden cry.
“I have an idea!”
Caroline did not reply. She just seemed to sink a little lower into her chair and her hands went up once again to her eyes.
Elfa was standing very still.
“It is coming to me,” she said, “I can see it like a picture unfolding in front of my eyes. I can do it! I know I can do it.”
“Do – what?” Caroline asked dully.
“Save you!” Elfa answered.
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