Barbara Cartland - Love Me Forever

“Now, listen,” the Duke said severely. “I am perfectly prepared to give you a lift to Chantilly, there is no harm in that and, if you disappear as soon as we get there, I will swear that I have seen nothing of you, should any questions be asked.”

“But that will be lying,” Amé said reproachfully.

“I don’t think we can worry at this moment about a lie here and there,” the Duke said lightly. “I will also give you money for some clothes. You can then enjoy a little freedom before you return to the Convent. They will find you sooner or later or else you will decide that it will be best for you to return, but that is none of my business. When we reach Chantilly, we will part. I think I shall always have a moment of regret that I shall not know what eventually happens to you.”

“It would be much easier for me to go to Paris with you,” Amé persisted.

“I cannot see that there will be anything easy about it,” the Duke replied. “I can hardly arrive in Paris with an escaped nun. They might even say that I had abducted you. It would cause a great scandal and do nobody any good.”

“But I am not a nun, I am only a novice and they would not think that you had abducted me when you have never seen me before,” Amé answered, “and besides, why should anyone know? I can be your maidservant or something like that.”

“It is not my habit to travel with maidservants,” the Duke retorted. “The staff who are accompanying me are all men and any maidservants required will already be engaged when I arrive in Paris.”

“Then that is easy – I must be a man. What sort of man can I be?”

“Now you are being ridiculous,” the Duke said.

“ Alors , but I am not! I could be your page. Of course I can be your page. One of the new postulants was telling me how her brother is page to the King. He is not yet fifteen years old and yet he has already been three months at Versailles. Now, if the King can have a page, you can have a page – you are a Duke and surely a Duke is entitled to a page?”

“I already have a page,” the Duke replied sharply.

“Where is he?”

“In a coach that is following me. When we arrive at Chantilly, he will undoubtedly turn up. He is a cousin of mine, a weakly boy who was seasick the whole way across the English Channel and who has complained of feeling ill ever since.”

“ Voyons , but he is obviously unfitted for his post,” Amé said firmly. “In which case he must go home and I will take his place.”

The Duke put his hand to his forehead.

“Listen, my child,” he said patiently. “The whole idea is preposterous from beginning to end. I am left in no doubt that your fertile imagination is unsuited to a Convent, but that is not my concern. I will help you in any way I can, but I will not, under any circumstances, take you with me to Paris. Now is that clear?”

“ Mais, Monseigneur , you could not be so unkind.”

The words burst forth half-indignantly and half-reproachfully and then suddenly the Duke felt a very small warm hand slipped into his.

“Please help me,” a soft voice pleaded. “Please! Please !”

“I cannot,” the Duke answered. “You must see that it would be utterly impossible.”

“Why should it be? I promise you I will be no trouble to you. I will do anything you say, I will obey you in every way, except to go away from you at Chantilly. Please let me stay, please !”

There was a pause and then, before the Duke could speak, Amé said again,

“I did not know that men could be so hard and cruel. First the Cardinal, then those two Priests giving me orders in a way that made me hate them and now – now – you! I did not think, as I saw you in the light of the lantern that you would be like this somehow.”

“What did you expect me to be?” the Duke asked, curious in spite of himself.

“I thought you looked so strong, like – like someone who would avenge a wrong and – how do you say it – protect those who are weak. I thought too as I looked at you that you were very handsome.”

Quite suddenly the Duke began to laugh. This child, flattering and pleading with him, her hand holding his as they journeyed together, was something that he had not anticipated in his very wildest dreams. He laughed, and even as he laughed he was well aware that her fingers had tightened on his as if she clung to him almost desperately.

He remembered that first quick glance at her as she had risen from the carriage floor, the fear in her eyes, the loveliness of her hair in the candlelight and, even as he thought of her, he recalled the last time he had seen the Cardinal de Rohan.

The Prince had been sitting in the opposite box to him at the Opera. One of the wealthiest Seigneurs of France, the Cardinal’s manly figure was shown to its best in his ecclesiastical clothes. But there was nothing saintly about his witty tongue or indeed about the lines of dissipation beneath his lecherous eyes.

He had been surrounded by several attractive women that evening and the Duke remembered that he had been told that it was a well-established fact that the Cardinal’s mistress often travelled with him disguised as an Abbéss . He knew that he had disliked the Prince Louis de Rohan. There was something sensuous and vicious about him, something that decent men shrank from even if he was dressed in the trappings of Holiness.

But undoubtedly he had great influence, his was a power to be reckoned with, yet Amé, this child without a name, was pitting herself against him. Amé versus Prince Louis de Rohan .

The Duke chuckled.

Quite suddenly the whole scenario appealed to his sense of humour.

He glanced out of the window.

They were nearing Chantilly.

If he was to make a decision, he must make it now and quickly.

“Please help me, please take me with you! Only you can save me.”

Amé was now speaking again and her face was turned up to his, her lips trembling with the intensity of her plea.

The coach was slowing down. The inn lay just ahead of them.

Lights were burning brightly in a dozen windows and the Landlord was hurrying out to welcome his most distinguished guest.

The Duke made up his mind.

“Very well,” he said curtly. “I will take you with me.”

The Duke, finishing a large breakfast in a private sitting room of the Hôtel de la Poste at Chantilly, was conscious of a sense of well-being.

The hotel was not a pretentious one, but the food was excellent. The omelette that he had begun his meal with had been very tempting and the chops that had followed it had come from a freshly-killed baby lamb. To accompany them there were delicious wines from the local vineyards.

The Duke had eaten heartily and well. He had no use for the type of dandy who picked at his breakfast and who started the day with nothing in his stomach save a glass of brandy. Amid all the dissipations of his life, and there were many of them, he had always managed to appear at a reasonable time the next morning.

It was perhaps due to this rule and to the fact that, when he was in England, he took an immense amount of exercise that the Duke was so healthy and many of his contemporaries called him a ‘man of iron.’

It was his virile good health that made him ever-increasingly attractive to the opposite sex. There had been tears and sighs the night before the Duke left England and yet it was characteristic of him that he had hardly spared a thought for the fair charmers he had left behind him.

He set down his glass now. It was time to be off, he was anxious reach Paris and start the work that lay ahead of him and, pushing back his chair, he made as if he would rise. As he did so, there came a tap at the door.