Dennis Wheatley - Duke de Richleau 07 (28 page)

By the first
light of dawn he was up again and off for another long tramp with his
professional guide. This time they took the westward valley towards St.
Wolfgang, and returned to Ischl in time for the mid-day meal. But the
eight-hour expedition had been long enough for De Richleau to acquaint himself
with the best view-points in another wide area of country. Well before half
past two, with his four remaining gardenias made up into another little posy,
he took up his position outside the Palace gate.

As a clock in a
nearby belfry struck the half-hour, the carriage appeared, and pulled up on
reaching him. With an awkward bow he humbly held out the flowers. Ilona took
them, gave him an impersonal smile of thanks, and asked: “Where do you propose
to take us?”

“Will the
Erzherzogin
be so good as to inform me how far she is prepared to
walk?”

“For about an
hour. I do not wish to tire myself too much.”

“Then let us go
towards St. Wolfgang. There are some fine views to be had in that direction
without much climbing.”

As she nodded
assent, De Richleau nearly made a bad blunder. Sárolta Hunyády was in
attendance to-day, and he had assumed that she would move over to the back seat
beside her mistress, so that he could sit with Adam Grünne. He was just about
to stretch out a hand to open the carriage door, when Grünne said: “Jump up on
the box, then, and we’ll be off.”

The footman
moved closer to the coachman, and, scrambling up, the Duke squeezed himself
into the vacant space. Then they drove out of the town for about four miles,
until they came to a bend in the valley between two thickly-wooded slopes,
where De Richleau asked the coachman to pull up.

Jumping down, he
opened the carriage door and said to Ilona: “If the
Erzherzogin
pleases we will walk up through the woods over the
crest, and the carriage can meet us for our return journey on the far side.”

As he spoke, for
the first time he looked her straight in the eyes, but they did not show even a
flicker of recognition. When the occupants of the carriage got out, he waited
at the roadside track for them to join him, but Count Grünne said a trifle
impatiently, “What are you waiting for, my good fellow? Lead on.”

With a hidden
grimace of annoyance, De Richleau did as he was bid. Never having played such a
part before, it had not occurred to him that he would be expected to walk some
way ahead of the party, and act merely like a pilot tug, while they continued
to enjoy their private conversation. Unhappily he began to wonder if he had
been to all his trouble in vain, and whether another couple of hours would see
him back at the Palace gates without even having had a chance to reveal his
identity to Ilona.

For some twenty
minutes they walked through the woods up the easy gradient until they came out
into a clearing on the shoulder of the spur. He waited there for the others to
catch him up, and for a few moments they stood admiring the panorama above the
tree-tops, which dropped steeply to the valley then rose again to further
wooded heights beyond.

S
á
rolta
turned her dark, piquant little face to Adam Grünne and said: “It looks much
steeper going down than it was coming up, and I’m awfully bad at steep
descents. I wonder if you could find me a good thick stick to lean on.”

“Of course I
will,” he replied at once, and walking off to the edge of the clearing he began
to hunt about in the undergrowth.

In her remark
about disliking steep places, De Richleau instantly saw at least a slender
chance of getting Ilona to himself, if only for a few moments. Behind them, the
spur rose steeply for a hundred feet to another little plateau. Pointing to it
with his alpenstock, he said: “If the ascent is not too much for the
Erzherzogin,
there is a far better view from up there. One can
see over the next crest to the lake.”

Ilona smiled at
S
á
rolta.
“It will prove too much for you, my dear, but I think I’ll try it. Adam can
keep you company. The guide will look after me.”

Things had
panned out far better than De Richleau had dared to hope. He had thought that
if Ilona accepted his suggestion S
á
rolta might be left
behind, in which case he could have got a start with his lady-love before Adam
Grünne had a chance to rejoin them. As it was, he was to be spared the Count’s
unwelcome company for the next quarter of an hour or more.

Without looking
at him, Ilona said: “I had better go first; then you can catch me if I slip”
and set off up the rocky path.

De Richleau
followed her, watching her every step: but she made the ascent without
difficulty, and a few minutes later, when they reached the top, she sat down a
little breathlessly on a large slab of rock.

He wished that
she had gone a little farther, so that he could have sat down beside her
without being seen from below, and was just about to suggest that the view was
even better from the far end of the plateau, when she turned a smiling face up
to him, and said:

“I like you with
grey hair.”

He laughed. “So
you knew me all the time?”

“Of course! From
the moment I saw the first gardenias. An ordinary peasant would never have
bought such flowers for me. He would have picked some in the woods. But we’ve
got to be awfully careful.”

“Do the others
suspect anything?”

“S
á
rolta
knows. I told her. And just now she sent Adam Grünne for that stick in order to
get rid of him. If you hadn’t suggested coming up here I’m sure she would have
thought up some excuse to leave us on our own for a few minutes.”

“Bless her! May
the Gods reward her a hundredfold for her goodwill.”

“They are doing
so already,” Ilona laughed. “It is not easy for her and Adam to manage to be
alone together either, and they are in love.”

“Then I envy him.”

She looked up
with a frown. “Do—do you then admire Sárolta so much?”

“I think her
charming; but only a tiny star compared with the glorious planet Venus, at
whose shrine I worship. I meant that I envy him in having his love returned,
for that is more than I can ever dare to hope. I can only aspire to serve the
object of my devotion.”

“Thank you,” she
said seriously. Then she lowered her eyes and went on in a low voice. “After I
had sent that letter to you I was terribly ashamed. I—I was afraid you might
think—”

“I thought only
that you had reconsidered your decision,” he answered quickly, “and that you
felt, after all, that you would like to have a friend outside the court circle:
someone you could confide in if you wished, and who, perhaps, would be
fortunate enough to fill a small place that is now empty in your life.”

“I do want
someone like that,” she admitted after a second. “Apart from Sárolta and a few
other girls of whom I am fond, I have no one to whom I can talk about all sorts
of things that interest me; and at times I feel terribly lonely. But why did
you not come to the Prater?”

“I left Vienna
two days before you, Princess, and I did not receive your letter until my
return.”

“I wish I had
known that. I thought you were too angry about the way I had treated you to
forgive me.”

“I would forgive
you anything, to see you smile again as you did just now, when we reached this
summit.”

She looked up at
him, her blue eyes shining and her lips parted in a dazzling smile. For a
moment they remained gazing at one another, then she said; “There could have
been another explanation, and at times I was inclined to adopt it. To become my
friend in secret like this is to court grave danger. After our waltz I could
hardly have blamed you, had you felt that the game was not worth the candle.”

“If you thought
me so poor-spirited, that was very wrong of you.”

Her brows drew
together; then she gave a little laugh. “Do you know, I was just on the point
of rebuking you. People tactfully express the hope that I may change my
opinion, or that I will give a matter further consideration, but it is years
since anyone has dared to tell me to my face that I was wrong. But you are
right. I should have known that you really are the sort of man who would climb
over a garden wall in the middle of the night without thinking twice about it.”

“You have only
to describe the situation of your window, and look out at midnight to-night to
find me beneath it.”

“No, no!” She
shook her head hurriedly, so that a little chestnut curl came free and lay
tantalizingly on the back of her neck. “You must do no such thing. This
masquerading as a guide is bad enough. Heaven knows what a rumpus there would
be if the good
Grafin
Aulendorf got to hear of it. How clever of you, though, to
devise such a plan. I laughed so much over that little bit in your note, where
you said you were prepared to forgo any payment for your services.”

He smiled. “I
put that bit in as a precaution against anyone other than yourself reading it.
But what of the future? May I hope to be taken on as your guide, permanently?”

“Yes. Providing
you promise me to be terribly careful. Of course we don’t really need a guide.
I have spent so much of my life at Ischl that I expect I know the country round
about far better than you do. But then, I don’t really need eight women to look
after my clothes, either. And I can say that having you will save me the
trouble of making up my mind every day in which direction we shall go.”

“To-morrow,
then, I will be waiting for you at the same hour.”

“No. To-morrow
is Sunday. In addition to the trippers, the townspeople will be picnicking all
over the woods for miles around: so on Sundays we always have tea in the garden
instead of going for a drive. But we shall have all next week. I am not
returning to Vienna until the end of the month.”

“Is it wise to
go back so soon?” he asked with quick concern. “I have been most worried about
your health, and was overjoyed to see you looking so well. But you came here
for rest, and a fortnight isn’t very long in view of the many duties you will
have to perform once you are back in harness.”

She shrugged. “There
is nothing really wrong with me, you know. It is just that I sometimes run a
temperature and get these awful bouts of coughing. My grandmother, Elizabeth,
suffered from the same thing, and for years everyone was afraid that she had
consumption. But she hadn’t. It was only nerves, coupled with an unusual
sensitiveness in the muscles of the throat. She was over sixty, and still
remarkably energetic, when that horrible Italian stabbed her. If I live as long
as that I shall be more than satisfied.”

“What you tell
me is a great relief,” De Richleau murmured. “I have been fearing that your
illness might be of a serious nature.”

“Then worry no
more, dear knight. My life is so full of dreary etiquette that whenever we meet
I want our companionship to be a gay one.”

A tremor of
pleasure ran through him as he asked “Do you really mean that you will take me
for your knight?”

She rose slowly
to her feet. “Yes. I am a princess, but I have never had a knight. I am sure
you are chivalrous, and I want you to be faithful and true; just as knights are
in the story books.”

He would have
given a great deal to be able to kiss her hand, but they had not moved from
their original position so were still in sight of Adam Grünne, should he chance
to look up; and the risk was too great. All he could do was to murmur. “No lady
ever had a truer knight than I will be to you. Princess.”

She smiled at
him again, then said quickly. “We have been here over-long already. We must go
down and rejoin the others. You go first this time, in case I slip.” And in
single file they clambered down to the lower plateau.

The descent to
the far side of the mountain spur did not prove as steep as Sárolta had
appeared to fear, and in a quarter of an hour they had regained the road where
the carriage was waiting. With De Richleau on the box they returned to the
Palace, but instead of halting at the gate it drove straight on up to the
portico. While the Duke stood with his hat clasped to his stomach, the footman
threw open the carriage door and Adam Grünne jumped down and handed the two
ladies out. As they entered the Palace he took a five
schilling
piece from his pocket and held it out to the guide.

Although the
Duke had said in his note that he did not ask any payment for his services, he
felt that no good purpose was to be served by arguing the matter; so, with a
murmur of thanks, he extended his hand and took the coin. As he did so the
Count said:

“Her Imperial
Highness tells me that she has ordered you to report here again on Monday. I
would like a word with you about the expedition on which you then propose to
take us. Have you a map on you?”

“Jawohl, Herr Graf”
replied the Duke, and produced one from his pocket.

The carriage had
just driven off to the stables, and the Count pointed across the drive to a
small arbour, with a table and chairs in it, on the far side of the lawn. “Let’s
go over there,” he said. “Then we can spread the map out.”