Dennis Wheatley - Duke de Richleau 07 Read Online Free Page A

him;
and one certainly could not call it a love affair.”
    “And then?”
    “A few months
later I had a serious hunting accident myself, so naturally no further plans to
marry me off could be considered for quite a time. I was twenty-three when my
next engagement was mooted. The man proposed for me was considerably older than
I was and, although I respected him, I found him rather a bore, so I was by no
means keen about the match. Fortunately for me there were religious difficulties
which could not be surmounted, and after months of fruitless attempts to get a
dispensation from the Holy See the project had to be abandoned. Then, last
year, I lost my mother, so I was sent on my travels again to occupy the period
of mourning. Can you wonder that I feel it high time now to find a husband?”
    “Not in the
least. Yet, with your fine figure and lovely colouring, plus the beautiful face
you persist in hiding from me, I marvel that both at home and on your travels a
score of eligible young men have not sought to make love to you.”
    She hesitated. “My—my
family have rather grand ideas about the term ‘eligible’, in connection with
myself.”
    “Naturally! As
you are an heiress, they would do their utmost to protect you from fortune
hunters. But what of your own feelings? Surely, during the past few years you
must have met someone who attracted you?”
    Opening her fan,
she began to flutter it gently, and replied with a reminiscent smile: “When I
was fourteen I used to weave the most marvellous romances round a handsome
gardener’s boy, who tended the flower beds underneath my windows. But, of
course, he never knew it. Then, for the best part of a year, I was desperately
in love with my music master. He knew, I’m sure, and returned my love; but he
never had the courage to declare himself. Since then, there have been several
young men that I rather fancied, but immediately they showed their interest in
me they were warned off. One sent me flowers secretly for a few weeks, and
another poems. But I suppose both of them were found out, as the flowers and
poems stopped arriving without any apparent reason. I often wish that I could
change places with some little shop girl. As it is, I am the prisoner of my
circumstances. If it were not for the prospect of marriage I might just as well
be a nun in a convent.”
    De Richleau saw
nothing beyond the bounds of reasonable possibility in this pathetic story. In
England, at that date, unmarried girls of good family were rarely allowed to go
out shopping without their mothers, and when they did were always accompanied
by a maid; while on the Continent young women of position were still more
carefully guarded from the possible attentions of undesirable males. Even
engaged couples were allowed to be alone together only within earshot of their
elders, and to conduct a clandestine affair bristled with danger and
difficulties. Yet it did strike him as strange that his obviously lovely
partner should have reached the age of twenty-four without having acquired a
single swain with the audacity to secure a succession of rendezvous with her,
however innocent and fleeting.
    After a moment’s
consideration, he decided that he did not believe it. Her full mouth, fresh
complexion, and limpid eyes all suggested th. it she
was far from cold by temperament. On her own confession, it was ten years since
she had first become conscious of the opposite sex. In all that time it seemed
incredible that she had not had a single active love affair. Suddenly, it
occurred to him that she, in her turn, was amusing herself at his expense. Just
as he had pretended to be cruel and dissipated, so she was now acting the role
of the maiden in the ivory tower.
    At once he
decided to scale the tower and call her bluff.
    “You poor little
rich girl,” he said softly. “It is high time that someone opened your prison
doors for you, and I am prepared to do it if you will let me.”
    She started,
looked at him in