Chapter 11

His Grace the Duke of Northriding shut his study door behind him with a sigh of profound relief. He was alone at last save for his dogs, Tam and Nico, and they settled into their accustomed positions either side of the fire. He wished he could be so relaxed and at ease. Easier to be a dog than a duke, he sometimes thought, and then reproved himself for preposterous self-indulgence and maudlin self-pity.

Although he knew that nobody would disturb him here against his explicit instructions – and he had given instructions quite explicit enough that even servants far less well-trained than his own would have been foolish to ignore them – he felt a strong impulse to lock the door behind him. His home, which had been his sanctuary, no longer seemed anything of the kind.

It was his own fault, of course. When his sister Blanche had suggested this misbegotten house party as a solution to the problem of his marriage, he should not have listened to her. In the past he had always been most careful what guests he brought here, and his displeasant sensations upon contemplating the assembled company over the last few days showed how right he had been, and how wrong to go against those deepest instincts at Blanche's urging. He should have conducted this ridiculous… this ridiculous, degrading – degrading for all concerned – parade of candidates for his hand in London, or at one of his other residences. Anywhere but here.

But Blanche had argued – and he was obliged to admit that her argument had carried some weight – that he was not only looking for a bride for himself, a mother for his children, but also a mistress for Northriding Castle. Any woman who looked on this ancient place with indifference or disdain, any woman who could not appreciate its special wild beauty, simply did not belong here. If a young lady disliked the Castle in July, even an inclement and unseasonable July such as this one, she would hardly wish to spend a day, a week, a month here in January or February, when the wind across the North Sea knifed at your skin, and howled and moaned around the walls and turrets with the banshee wail of a soul in torment. Did she shiver now, and pull her shawl about her? Only imagine her discontent when the snow lay on the ground for weeks at a time and icicles appeared inside the windows. It took a certain kind of person, his sister said and he agreed whole-heartedly, to appreciate such a place and accommodate herself to its occasional discomforts as the price to be paid for its glorious setting and enormous, ever-changing skies and sea. For everything had its price in life, as he knew all too well.

Blanche was right, of course, and it was a matter for serious consideration. He had not the least desire to marry, but he knew he must, and it would be foolish in the extreme to choose a bride who would be miserable here, in his ancestral home, the jewel of his inheritance, the place where Mauleverer children were always raised. The trouble was, most of the young women assembled here were so very anxious to be duchesses – not to marry him, he could not so flatter himself, for he was in himself no great bargain, but to be duchesses – that had he been Satan himself and this the chief castle of the infernal regions, they would have complimented him upon the fine situation and healthful airs, and declared that no prospect could be finer than the lake of fire and brimstone that they beheld seething and boiling in the middle distance.

This being so, the whole exercise took on the aspect of a gigantic waste of time, since it was all but impossible to ascertain how any of his guests actually felt about the potential future that he laid before them. Could any of them say in perfect honesty that they thought they might be happy here? He had taken several of them riding just now, he had listened to them sing last night and the night before – that was an experience he would be perfectly content never to repeat – had walked and conversed with them together and separately, and felt he was no further on in understanding the private feelings of any one of them. Did he feel the slightest partiality towards any of the group of women he had brought here as prospective brides, did he feel any desire at all to take any one of them in particular as his wife and companion at bed and board, as a mother to his children, God willing? He did not. Christ knew he did not.

He walked over to the window, frowning abstractedly, and looked down upon the deserted beach below. He had not, he realised now, so much as thought to propose to the young ladies that they should brave the Duke's Stair and go down through the bowels of the Castle to walk upon the shining sands and breathe in great lungfuls of salty air. He could all too well imagine their faces if he made such an outlandish suggestion, their unsuccessful attempts to dissemble and feign pleasure at the prospect. He made a small sound of disgust, of impatience with himself as much as with them, and it was at that moment that he saw that he was wrong; that some young ladies, two at least, had without any prompting from him descended the steep steps, and were striking out along the beach at a brisk pace.

Gabriel watched them walk – these were not feeble town-bred damsels, he saw, they strode out with a will and were plainly taking pleasure in the exercise – and then he watched them come to a halt, and engage in what appeared to him at this distance to be an intense and enthralling conversation, apparently untroubled by the strong onshore wind that was whipping their hair about their faces and their skirts and petticoats about their ankles. One of the ladies was excessively tall, and he recognised her without difficulty as Miss… Miss Spry, the authoress, Lady Louisa Pendlebury's Sapphic companion. He had previously come across pieces that she had written, and been impressed by them, by the mind and sensibility they revealed. But he had little attention to spare for her just now, or her literary attainments, because with a certainty he did not think to question he knew exactly who her companion was. Her, it was her.

She was not tall or short, she was not fat or thin, there was nothing obviously distinctive or unusual about her to make her stand out at this distance, and so there was no reason at all for such certitude, and yet he knew. Put her among a thousand others, masked and cloaked, conceal even her extraordinary bright blue eyes from him, and still he would know her. Blindfold him, he thought, and he would know her, by smell, by feel, by taste. God almighty, that most of all.