The Duke Comes Home by Barbara Cartland

Author:Barbara Cartland
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781788671132
Published: 2018-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIVE

Pegasus moved.

And Ilina woke and for a moment could not think where she was.

The horse nuzzled at her. She patted his nose and, sitting up on the straw, realised that she had cried until she was exhausted.

Now she smoothed back her hair from her forehead and pulled some pieces of straw from it.

She felt calmer but at the same time had a sense of despair, which she knew would increase every moment until the terrible deed that the Duke contemplated was completed.

As the horror of it swept over her, she asked aloud,

“How – could he? How could he do – anything so – wicked?”

Then she realised that it was no good going back over it all again and the best thing she could do would be to go to bed and hope that in the morning by a miracle he might have changed his mind.

There was, however, not even a glimmer of hope in her heart because she had known since she first saw him that he had a vital determination and a sense of purpose in which he differed from most people she had met.

She was certain that, if he was determined to destroy everything that belonged to the Burys, then he would do it.

Even to think of it now she was awake, made her feel her own helplessness, that she was beating her head against a rock and the only thing that would be hurt would be herself.

“How do I make him see, Pegasus?” she asked, “that his desire for revenge is utterly unimportant in comparison with the achievements, the happiness and the inspiration that the family has given people – in the past?”

Then, as Pegasus could not answer her, she rose to her feet knowing that she could go on talking all night and it would get her nowhere.

She patted the horse, laid her cheek for a moment against his neck and then walked from the stall closing the door behind her.

As she came out into the stable yard in the moonlight, the glory of it seemed such a contrast to her own feelings of darkness and despair that she thought for a moment that it must be an omen sent by God to tell her that after all there was hope.

But, although instinctively her spirits rose for a moment, her brain told her that she had to face the truth however unpalatable it might be.

Slowly she walked across the cobbles of the yard through the stone arch and when in front of her she saw the Park, the lake and then the house, it made a picture that she knew however long she lived she would never forget.

It was so mystical and so ethereal that she thought that in all the years that she had lived at The Abbey, she had never seen it so beautiful.

Then she had eyes only for the house, thinking that on the Duke’s orders the windows would soon be covered with boards, the great front door barred and it would be, as he had said, nothing but a tomb.

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