The Keys of Love (19 page)

Next the curtain was wrenched aside.

Prince Vasily was torn from where he was standing and thrust heavily to the floor.

An enraged Duke of Merebury stood outlined in the light that now flooded the alcove from the ballroom.

A sea of faces Miss Foss, Lady Butterclere, Kitty, Lady Bridgely hovered behind him.

The orchestra meanwhile had stopped playing.

“I knew I'd heard someone,” said Kitty grimly.

The Duke spoke through gritted teeth.

“Get up, you scoundrel, and take the beating you damn well deserve.”

“No! No!”

A weeping Romany Foss rushed forward and flung herself on Prince Vasily as he attempted to rise.

He sank back onto a seated position with Romany clutching his knees.

Lady Butterclere paled.

The Duke took Henrietta's hand in his and drew her gently to her feet.

“You are unscathed?” he enquired.

“Y-yes,” she blushed beneath his concerned gaze.

“What is going on?” asked Lord Radford, pushing his way through.

In one glance he understood the scene and turned in dismay to his daughter.

“My God! Are you all right, Henrietta?”

The Duke's gaze flickered.

“Henri
etta
?”

“Not Miss Reed?” spluttered Lady Butterclere.

Lord Radford started.

“Miss Reed? Oh, that was only the name I invented for her to travel under on
The Boston Queen
. To try and protect her from fortune-hunters.”

He threw a contemptuous look at Prince Vasily.

“Her real name is of course Henrietta Radford, who most of you will know as my own dear daughter.”

“Your daughter, Lord Radford?” echoed the Duke in surprise.

“Yes. Henrietta, with whom you danced long ago at Lushwood Manor,” he smiled.

The Duke stared down at the floor, the muscles in his jaw tightening.

‘
Now he knows all
,' thought Henrietta in despair.

Lady Butterclere's features distorted with rage.

All her plans to marry off her daughter to the Duke were now dashed. Romany had made it all too clear her allegiance to the shamed Prince Vasily.

Well, if Romany was not going to have the Duke, neither was that conniving Miss Reed or Miss Radford or whatever she was!

“I had no idea at all that Miss Reed was of such an established family,” she began. “Her escapades on board ship were such as to ”

It was the Duke who cut in, lifting his head quickly.

“Madam, I suggest you would be better employed removing your friend from the scene to compose herself.”

At these words Romany gave a loud wail.

“I won't leave Vasily! Whatever he's done, Mama, I won't leave him.”

Everyone looked around in considerable confusion, wondering who ‘
Mama
' might be.

Few noticed Lady Butterclere stagger for a moment as if about to fall.

She knew her game was now finally up!

Lord Radford whispered a few words to Henrietta and she nodded, a look of relief on her features.

“Lady Butterclere,” he said, “it might interest Miss Foss that my daughter will not be pressing charges against Prince Vasily.”

The Duke glanced at Lord Radford.

“That rogue had better leave England at once and for good!” he growled.

“He must marry Miss Foss first,” put in Henrietta.

She was cognisant of the fact that poor Romany's reputation would otherwise remain in tatters.

Romany threw her a surprised and grateful look.

Prince Vasily nodded sullenly.

He and Romany rose and, without a further word, followed a cowed Lady Butterclere from the ballroom.

“I think I now understand everything,” muttered the Duke, gazing after them sorrowfully.

Henrietta bit her lip miserably.

She had no doubt that the Duke was also referring to her own deception.

Lady Bridgely gestured for the orchestra to resume playing. Onlookers began to drift back to the dance.

The Duke glanced at Henrietta and then took Lord Radford's elbow and led him to one side.

Henrietta felt Kitty take her hand.

“Harrie I'll never stop calling you Harrie, shall we go and take some refreshment?”

Henrietta shook her head and disengaged her hand.

“N-no, I just need to be alone for a while. It has all been t-too much.”

Sobs rose in her throat as she turned away and did not hear Kitty's concerned reply as she launched herself in to the dancing crowd.

The Duke knew everything now! She never wanted to have to look him in the eye again.

She did not have the strength to decide her course across the ballroom floor as she was buffeted to and fro.

It was by sheer chance that she found herself before a set of French doors that led out onto a terrace.

Blindly she pushed through the doors, ran down the terrace steps and found herself in an ornamental garden.

Only now able to give vent to her feelings, she sank weeping onto a stone bench.

*

“You seem to have an odd predilection for weeping on stone benches.”

Startled, Henrietta raised her tear-stained face. The Duke, one hand thrust beneath his waistcoat,

stood observing her with what seemed a cool detached eye.

Stung by his comment to the point of forgetting that she hoped never to have to meet his eye again, she sat up.

“And you s-seem to have a predilection for finding me out,” she stammered. “When I do not w-want to be!”

The Duke's lips twitched. “You seem to forget that the last time you resorted to

this despair
en plein air
you became ill. Lucky I found you when I did.”

‘
Despair in the open air
!' she thought crossly.

“If you have come to m-mock me ” she began.

The Duke's gaze softened.

“I do hope you do not believe that, Miss Radford.”

“You are mocking me again,” she cried. “You have never known me by that n-name!”

“You seem to forget that I have. Long before I ever met Miss Reed, I was enchanted by Miss Radford. Though I have to say, she was a good deal more gracious as a seven year old than she is now!”

Tired, confused, her nerves stretched to breaking point by the dramatic events of the last few hours Henrietta now burst into tears.

“Why d-don't you just say it?” she wept. “You are disappointed in her. She grew up to be s-someone who pretended to be someone else Miss Reed, who played the piano in an orchestra and d-dressed like a saloon keeper's d-daughter!

“But you don't know she only did that to h-help out E-Eddie and then it all got
so
complicated ”

The Duke listened in silence.

He took out a handkerchief and knelt before the still weeping Henrietta and dabbed at her cheeks.

“Hush now, hush,” he murmured. “I don't want you ill again.”

Henrietta's sobs subsided but her breast still heaved with emotion.

The Duke's touch as he wiped away her tears was indescribably tender.

She stared at his face so close to hers.

“Y-your knees will get w-wet,” she sniffed.

The Duke glanced down and gave a smile.

“Since I now find myself in this most convenient position,” he said, “I should perhaps use the occasion to say what it is I came out here to say.”

Her sobs were now mere hiccups of emotion.

“I h-hope it is not something d-disagreeable.”

The Duke repressed a smile.

“I sincerely hope you do not find it so.”

He waited for a moment, his eyes becoming graver, and then he gave a sigh.

“Can you not guess, Miss Reed? I wish you to be
my wife
. Harrietta Henrietta will you marry me? I am so desperately and passionately in love with you.”

Henrietta pushed him away and sprang to her feet.

“Henrietta Harrietta! You see, you
are
mocking me.”

She turned to run, but he caught her and swung her to him. She struggled against his breast.

“Do not flee away from me again, my darling!” he groaned against her hair. “You cannot imagine the agony I endured the last time you disappeared.

“You so intrigued me, so haunted my every waking moment. I came here tonight hoping against hope that you would be here with the orchestra and that I would find you

 free.”

“But you are not free yourself!” cried out Henrietta accusingly. “You are engaged to Romany. Why, even the night I was lost in the maze, it was after I discovered the two of you together.”

“Engaged to Miss Foss?” he echoed in amazement. “Never, never, never, my darling, whatever my stepsister may have hoped. Why, that night in the garden, I had only taken her out there because she said she needed some air. And anyway she now seems to be much more taken by that ghastly Romanian Prince!”

Henrietta blinked.

“I don't know what to believe!” she wailed.

“My dear darling, believe this,” rejoined the Duke softly, and taking her hand, he placed it over his heart.

She almost swooned as she felt his heart beating hard beneath his shirt.

“I did not know what to believe myself,” continued the Duke. “I knew you were no longer with Eddie Bragg and I knew that as Prince Vasily became a confidant of my stepsister that you had rejected him too.

“I did not know the truth of your relationships to these two men until your friend Kitty told me this evening.

“The knowledge that you were innocent of all these charges against you both shamed and thrilled me,” went on the Duke.

“Shamed me that I had ever doubted you. Thrilled me that it would be I and I alone who introduced you to the pleasures of love.”

“B-but how could you m-marry someone who had played in p-public with an orchestra?”

The Duke bent his head to hers.

“Sweet creature, do you really think I would care about that? Times have changed a lot in England since you went away, don't you know! Besides, I do have my own form of punishment for such transgressions.”

“W-what is that?” asked Henrietta fearfully.

“This,” whispered the Duke as his lips met hers.

The feeling that burst through her veins was painful in its intensity.

She found herself longing to press closer and closer to the Duke's body, closer and closer until they melted the one into the other.

She utterly relinquished her struggle, allowing the Duke's strong grasp to lift her first onto tiptoe and then off the ground altogether.

At last their heads drew apart.

Panting for breath, their eyes locked.

“Let us be married as quickly as possible,” groaned the Duke. “I must possess more than your mouth or go mad with desire.”

Henrietta touched his lips with her finger teasingly.

“B-but who is it you wish to possess, Your Grace? Miss Harrietta Reed or Miss Henrietta Radford?”

The Duke roared with delight.

“Ah, my darling, you might be either and it would not matter. Both ladies have played upon me so artfully that I have been captured body and soul.”

He bent his head again to hers, pressing his lips to every inch of her face.

“Now, my angel,” he murmured between kisses, “it is for me to play upon you!”

Henrietta thrilled at his words.

“I love you, Joe, I love you. You have captivated my heart and soul for now and for always.”

Already she was responding with every fibre of her impassioned being to the mysterious and irresistible keys of love!

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