Money Magic and Marriage E-Book

Barbara Cartland

• Herausgeber: Barbara Cartland Ebooks Ltd
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: The Eternal Collection
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 228

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Beautiful, demure and dutiful, Oletha the blessed heiress to her late mother's vast fortune. But the blessing becomes a curse when her father tells her '… because you are so rich, you will find the average decent English gentleman will never ask you to be his wife.' Worse still, he intends to marry her off to a famously dashing Duke. It goes against everything she believes – and especially her mother's precious words – '…trust your heart… Remember too the most valuable thing in the whole world is not money, but love'… Soon she is to discover which of her parents is right, which is wrong and whether she'll ever find love.

Leseprobe

Author’s Note

The Geneva version of the English Bible, published by Christopher Barker in 1576, is now in the Library of the University of Chicago. The First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays, 1623, is in the Folger Shakespeare Library.

Every important home in England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had large libraries and first editions that have been lost or forgotten down the centuries are still being found on their shelves.

At Longleat, the lovely house of the Marquis of Bath, I was recently shown two ships’ logs written by Sir Francis Drake.

Many libraries were, of course, sold and those dispersed by the Harleian Collection and that of Sir Hans Sloane became part of the newly founded British Museum in 1750.

In the late eighteenth century for the first time a group of dedicated wealthy Englishmen began systematically to collect early printed books.

These splendid pioneers included the first and second Earls of Oxford, the third Earl of Sutherland, the first Duke of Roxburgh, the eighth Earl of Pembroke and the second Duke of Devonshire.

The greatest collector of the generation was the third Earl of Spencer, whose books were headed by fifty-six Caxtons and first editions of the Greek and Latin classics (my daughter is now married to the eighth Earl) but, although there are also some lovely and valuable books at Althorp in Northamptonshire, the second Earl’s collection became, in 1892, the nucleus of the John Rylands Library in Manchester.

CHAPTER ONE ~ 1898

Colonel Ashurst put down the letter he was reading with a smile of triumph.

“I have won!” he exclaimed.

His daughter, Oletha, looked up from the other side of the table to say,

“I did not know that you had a horse racing this week, Papa.”

“Not a horse,” the Colonel replied, “but something far more important.”

Oletha waited.

She knew that her father liked to tell a story in his own time and she was well aware that it was something very pleasant by the expression on his face.

Colonel Ashurst was still an extremely good-looking man and in his youth he had been so handsome that, as her mother had told Oletha, every girl had fallen in love with him.

“When I arrived in England from America,” she had said in her soft musical voice that only very occasionally held the touch of an accent, “I was expecting Englishmen to be good-looking, but, when I saw your father, I was overwhelmed.”

“Where did you first see him, Mama?” Oletha had asked.

“At the first ball I had ever been to in England,” her mother had replied. “It actually was a Hunt Ball and it was fascinating for me to see all the gentlemen in their pink tail-coats with lapels in the colour of the Hunt they belonged to. But I was a little shocked at how boisterous they were.”

Oletha laughed.

She had always heard, although she had never been to one, that at Hunt Balls in the early hours of the morning the lancers, the polka and the gallop became a little out of hand.

“But you enjoyed yourself, Mama?” she asked.

“Immensely! But, when I met your father, I knew that something had happened to me. I had never expected to fall in love with an Englishman.”

“Was it such a terrible thing to do?”

“My father and mother thought so. They brought me to England because they themselves were curious about the country that their ancestors had originated from, but they had no wish to leave me here and they did everything they could to persuade me to return to America.”

“But once you fell in love with Papa it was impossible for you to go away,” Oletha said, haying heard the story many times before.

“He has always sworn that he would never have let me go and, even if I tried to do so, he would have kidnapped me and forced me to marry him however much I protested.”

Oletha thought this was very much in line with her father’s rather buccaneering attitude towards anything he wanted.

He was always determined to be the victor and it was this characteristic that had made him first a very good soldier and secondly a most successful Racehorse owner.

She thought now that it must have been one of his horses that made him look so pleased.

As she waited, he began,

“You know that I have always had great ambitions for you, Oletha.”

“What sort of ambitions, Papa?”

She thought then it must have something to do with her education, because unlike most English fathers, he had always wanted her to be clever.

She knew that it was partly the fact that she was an only child.

Although he would seldom admit it, the Colonel had been desperately disappointed that he had not produced a son to carry on the Ashurst name in the house and estate, which had belonged to the family for four hundred years.

But, because he would never be defeated, he had brought Oletha up to excel in many activities that were generally the perquisite of men.

Under his tuition she became not only an outstanding rider but also an excellent game-shot.

In the hunting field she was invariably ‘in at the kill’ and, although it would have been far too outrageous for her to shoot with the guns when her father had a party, he would often arrange a special shoot just for her, himself, the estate Agent and one of his old and trusted comrades.

Sometimes Oletha knew that when, because her eye was so accurate, she brought down a particularly high pheasant or a partridge at long range, the old gentlemen were quite annoyed.

Apart from this she had the best tutors in all the subjects at which any intelligent man would have wanted his son to excel.

Oletha had therefore learnt Greek and Latin and her father would sometimes say almost wistfully that it was a pity that she could not go to Oxford University where it was certain that she would have been an outstanding success.

When she told him that there was a women’s College at the University sacred to men, her father had told her in no uncertain terms that no daughter of his would be anything but a feminine woman.

This was a contradiction that he had introduced her to as soon as she was old enough to understand serious subjects and strangely enough she had indeed achieved the impossible and surprised him by being exactly as he wanted her to be.

She certainly looked very feminine now from the other side of the breakfast table.

Slim, graceful, at the same time with an athletic and coordinated body from the amount of exercise she took, Oletha was unusually lovely.

She had huge eyes which, when she was angry or emotionally aroused, seemed almost the colour of pansies.

They were a complement to the colour of her hair which, thanks to some far-off Swedish ancestor who had made his way into America centuries earlier, was the gold of ripening corn.

Also from the other side of the Atlantic had come the strong little chin that could at times make her as determined as her father!

Most people, however, found themselves noticing only the loveliness in her eyes and the straight classical little nose that lay between them.

It seemed to Oletha that her father looked at her in a strangely scrutinising manner before he said,

“My ambitions, my dearest one, concern your marriage.”

Oletha’s eyes widened and she could not have looked more astonished than if her father had dropped a bombshell on the table.

“My – marriage, Papa?”

“It is something I have not mentioned before,” the Colonel answered, “because you are so young and I was planning that next year you would have a Season in London and then be presented at Court. But something has happened now that has made me change my plans.”

“What is – that?” Oletha asked, because she knew that it was expected of her.

She was feeling as if her father had dealt her an unexpected blow and she was finding it difficult to think clearly.

She had expected that he would plan every other aspect of her life, especially since her mother’s death, but she had thought the possibility of marriage was so far in the future that she seldom even gave it a passing thought.

She was aware that he thought when she was only seventeen this last Season that she was too young to be a debutante and had been quite content to wait until next April when she would be nearly eighteen-and-a-half.

There were so many things to do on their estate in Worcestershire and so many horses to ride that she was in no hurry to embark on the hectic round of balls, Receptions and other Festivities that were an inseparable part of a lady’s debut in London.

She had thought, however, that with her father beside her it would be fun, but now he had other ideas.

“You will remember, Oletha,” the Colonel was now saying, “that I have often spoken to you of my friendship with the Duke of Gorleston.

“Yes, of course, Papa. I remember how you told me that you met him some years ago at Epsom and that he was extremely grateful because you told him to back your horse, which was an outsider, and it won.”

“That is certainly true,” the Colonel answered, “and after that, whenever we met on the Racecourse the Duke would always come up to me and say,

“Have you a good tip for me today, Ashurst? I am relying on you to send me home with some guineas in my pocket.”

“I am sure you never failed him, Papa.”

“Not often,” the Colonel agreed, “and, as I was able to help the Duke when he needed it, we became friends, which needless to say I found very gratifying.”

Oletha looked surprised because she thought that it was a strange way for her father to speak and, because they were so close to each other’ he understood what she was feeling and explained,

“Dukes, my dearest child, are a race apart and yet I have always maintained that sport makes all men equal. That has certainly been true where I am concerned.”

“I don’t think I understand, Papa.”

Colonel Ashurst took a sip of coffee from the cup beside him before he replied,

“Let me explain and, as it happens, it is very pertinent to what I am going to say to you later.”

“I am listening, Papa.”

“The Ashursts, as you are aware, are a well-known family here in Worcestershire where our ancestors have lived in this house for generations. My father and my grandfather before him, served in the Worcestershire Yeomanry and we have filled many Official appointments in the County with the exception of that of Lord Lieutenant.”

“I have often wondered why that post was not offered to you, Papa.”

“I can answer that quite simply,” the Colonel replied. “I am not important enough! The Lord Lieutenant represents Her Majesty the Queen and, although we have every reason to be proud of our lineage and of being acknowledged as gentlefolk, we are not, in the real sense of the word, aristocrats.”

Oletha gave a little laugh and then she asked,

“Does it trouble you, Papa?”

“Not in the slightest where I am concerned.”

Her father paused, looking at her in a way that made her know instinctively that he was thinking about her.

Then he continued,

“My father was not a wealthy man, nor was I, but, when I married your mother because I loved her, I found long after I had proposed that she was by English standards a considerable heiress.”

“Mama has often told me how surprised you were,” Oletha smiled, “and she told me that because you were so proud it was hard to convince you that it did not matter if she had more money than you had.”

“Of course I minded,” the Colonel admitted, “but whether your mother was penniless or as rich as Croesus it was of no consequence beside the fact that we deeply loved each other.”

Oletha clasped her hands together.

“Oh, Papa, it is so romantic! I have always hoped that I would meet someone just like you and fall in love in the same way.”

She saw her father glance down at the letter that lay on the table.

Then he said,

“Perhaps that is asking too much, my dearest. Love at first sight happens perhaps only once in a million times and so I have always been exceedingly grateful that I was so fortunate enough to experience it.”

For a moment he sat staring across the room as if he was looking back into the past and the happiness that he had known with his American bride.

“Go on, Papa, with what you were saying,” Oletha prompted him.

With a start his eyes came back to her and he said,

“There is no need for me to remind you that, while your mother and I were well off when we first married, it was not until five years ago when your American grandfather’s oil wells were discovered that we became really wealthy.”

“I well remember the excitement when the letter came telling you that Mama was now a multi-millionairess,” Oletha said, “and yet, after the first excitement was over, it seemed to make very little difference to our lives.”

“That is true,” her father agreed. “You see, Oletha, we had everything we wanted, each other and you, our very adorable daughter. So the only thing we really spent your mother’s fortune on, apart from putting in a number of bathrooms, was horses.”

“The Ashurst Stud is now famous,” Oletha pointed out with just a slightly mocking note in her voice.

“And so it ought to be!” the Colonel said, “I bought the best and after years of studying, breeding and training horses myself and not leaving it just to those I could pay, my theories, you have to admit, have come off.”

This, his daughter knew, was a source of great pride to him and she answered quickly,

“No one could have been more successful than you, Papa. Everybody agrees that you are more knowledgeable than any other owner in the Jockey Club.”

“How do you know that?” the Colonel asked.

“I read it in The Sporting Times.”

“You must show it to me,” her father murmured. “It is the sort of thing a man likes to have said about him.”

Then, as if he realised that the discussion had wandered from Oletha to himself, he said in a different tone,

“But we were talking about you. After your beloved mother died I realised that I had to look after you alone and I began to think very seriously about your future.”

“Almost as if I was one of your horses!” Oletha said with a twinkle in her eye, but her father ignored the interruption.

“Every woman wants to be married and every father, if he loves his daughter, wants to see her married to a man who she will not only be happy with but who can give her a position in the Social world that will command respect.”

Oletha did not speak, but she was listening intently as her father went on,

“You will understand, my dearest, that being a racing man, I would like to see you first past the Winning Post in the matrimonial stakes and then watch you being awarded the finest trophy possible.”

“The Gold Cup at Ascot, for instance!”

Oletha spoke lightly. At the same time she was beginning to feel rather perturbed.

She did not like the way that her father was talking of her marriage as if he had already arranged it without even consulting her.

Although she seldom if ever opposed him, she was already very determined that, where her marriage was concerned, it would be a matter of her decision and not his.

“You are taking a long time to come to the point, Papa,” she said aloud. “Are you trying to tell me that you have already chosen my husband for me?”

Because she was a little afraid of the answer, the question was spoken in a voice that was louder than normal and seemed to echo round the walls of the breakfast room.

Her father’s eyes then met hers and she knew that he intended to answer her bluntly and without further prevarication.

“Yes,” he said, “I have already made up my mind that you shall marry the new Duke of Gorleston!”

His reply was so surprising that Oletha gave a little gasp.

Then she queried,

“The new Duke? I did not know you had met him.”

“He arrived from India just before the Goodwood Races,” the Colonel replied. “I think before I spoke to him somebody had told him that I was a friend of his father’s and he greeted me most effusively.”

He smiled as if it had pleased him and he went on,

“Since then we have met on various occasions, but it was only when I was talking to him at Doncaster that I became aware of the position that he finds himself in now that he has inherited.”

“And what is that, Papa?” Oletha asked, knowing almost before her father spoke what the answer would be.

“He is in desperate need of money.”

She might have known, Oletha thought, that the whole conversation was leading up to this, but somehow now that the words had been spoken they came as a distinct shock.

She had been aware that she was ‘handicapped’, which was the actual word she used to herself, by the fortune that set her apart from other girls of her own age and which created in many ways a barrier that she found it hard to bridge.

Even at the parties she had attended over the last few years with her contemporaries, she had heard the whispers amongst the Dowagers when she came into the room,

“Of course she is immensely wealthy!” while her special friends were quite outspoken about it.

“It is not fair, Oletha,” one of them had exclaimed only a few weeks ago, “that you are not only far more beautiful than anyone else but also so rich.”

“They are two things I cannot actually help,” Oletha replied.

“Yes, I know,” her friends had said, “and that makes it even more infuriating than it is already!”

They had laughed, but Oletha had been aware that there had been just a touch of envy that she hated to hear and in the minds of other people there was often not only envy but also malice.

“Never worry about having money, my darling,” her mother had said to her, “except that you must be kinder, more generous and more understanding to those who are without it.”

“I don’t quite understand, Mama,” Oletha had reacted.

“Let me explain,” her mother replied. “Because you are rich people will always be a little jealous and perhaps try to take advantage of you. But it must never make you cynical or, even if they defraud you, bitter.”

“Of course ‒ not,” Oletha had murmured.

“You have to realise that it is a real privilege to be able to help other people,” her mother went on. “What is far more important than money is giving yourself in the way of sympathy, understanding and love. Those are the things that really matter in life and the mere fact that your grandfather has worked hard and been very lucky and has accumulated a fortune is no particular credit to you, but a responsibility that you cannot ignore.”

“I think I understand, Mama,” Oletha said solemnly.

“It is not always easy to be rich, although people think it is what they most want in life,” Mrs. Ashurst had gone on. “But always trust your heart, Oletha.”

“My heart?” Oletha had questioned.

“Yes,” her mother answered. “Your heart will tell you whether the people who approach you are genuine and true or pretentious and evil. Remember too the most valuable thing in the whole world is not money but love.”

Oletha remembered her mother’s words to her now and she said quietly in a voice that was strictly controlled,

“Are you seriously asking me, Papa, to marry a man I have never seen? I cannot believe that you could ever suggest anything so outrageous to the Duke himself.”

“Not exactly in so many words,” her father replied a little uncomfortably. “So let me tell you what happened.”

“I am very anxious to hear it,” Oletha said.

“We met in the Jockey Club Stand and I thought that the Duke seemed very pleased to see me. He does not know many people in England because he has been abroad, I learned, for nearly seven years.”

“With his Regiment in India.”

“Exactly! I believe that he distinguished himself on the North-West Frontier and was mentioned in Despatches.”

There was now an undoubted note of triumph in the Colonel’s voice since anything that concerned the Army always meant something personal to him.

“I asked the Duke,” he continued, “what horses he had in training and he said to me,

“As a matter of fact I was going to speak to you about that, Colonel Ashurst, because I need your advice.”

“I am more than willing to help in any way I can,” I replied.

“Then let me put it bluntly,” the Duke suggested. “I cannot afford to keep up my father’s Racing Stable and I want you to tell me what the best way is to dispose of it.”

“You can easily imagine,” the Colonel said, looking across the table at Oletha, “that I was completely stunned! The idea of no longer seeing the Gorleston horses taking part in the Classic races really shocked me!”

He gave a sigh before he added,

“The late Duke was so proud of his stable and, when he won a race, he was as excited as any schoolboy. It was a delight to see him so happy.”

“Did you know that he was in need of money before he died, Papa?” Oletha asked.

Her father looked a little embarrassed and she exclaimed before he could speak,

“You did know and you helped him!”

“It was easier for me to lend him money than for him to go to moneylenders,” her father mentioned as if excusing himself.

“It was kind of you, Papa. At the same time I am sure that you were glad to be able to help someone you thought of as a good friend.”

Her father was always generous to his friends, Oletha knew, and it would please him in a special way to be able to help one not only because he had had an affection and admiration for him but also because he was a Duke.

She could hear her mother’s voice saying to her in the past with a hint of amusement in it,

“All the English are snobs, darling, as you will surely find out yourself when you grow older and there is not an Englishman born who does not truly love a Lord.”

Oletha knew that her father must have been delighted when his money, of which he had plenty, assisted anyone as important as the Duke of Gorleston.

“Go on with your story, Papa,” she prompted him for the second time.

“We found somewhere quiet in the stand where we could talk,” her father began, “and the Duke told me of the conditions that he had found when he had returned home.”

His father was in debt for quite a considerable amount and what was far worse the estate had been neglected and the house is in a desperate need of repairs, which should have been carried out many years ago.

“You have always told me it is one of the finest houses in England,” Oletha remarked.

“So it is to look at,” her father agreed, “and I must admit when I stayed there, which was only once, I was too impressed by the contents to worry if the roof leaked or the ceilings were likely to fall down.”

“You mean to say that the pictures and furniture are very valuable? Then why does the new Duke not sell them?”

“Because they are entailed,” her father replied. “In all great ancestral homes the contents, as well as the house and the estate itself are not the property of the current holder, but are all entailed from generation to generation from the past to the future and there are Trustees who see that the place is handed down without depletion from each Duke in turn to his son.”

Oletha did not speak. She was beginning to understand exactly what her father had in mind.

He glanced at her speculatively before he went on,

“I talked to the Duke for a long time and, because he was obviously anxious to continue the conversation, he asked me to meet him in London after the races were over and we had both returned home.”

“So you saw him last night.”

“He dined with me because he told me frankly he could not afford to open Gorleston House in Park Lane and, in fact, is closing completely several of his other houses.”

There was silence and then the Colonel said,

“As soon as the Duke told me exactly what his position was, he finished by saying,

“Because you were such a good friend of my father’s I feel you will help me to sell what has to be sold without there being too much publicity in the newspapers or criticism of my father for letting things get as bad as they are.”

Oletha smiled and the Colonel added,

“I respected him for that. It was the way I would want my own son to feel if I was in the same position.”

Oletha knew that this was unlikely, if not impossible, but she did not say so.

She only waited and Colonel Ashurst carried on,

“It was then that I said to the Duke, ‘I have a better idea than your selling possessions, which I know, because they are part of your family tradition, mean a great deal to you. It is that you should do what all great families have done, that is, to marry an heiress to enable you to preserve the prestige of the Gorlestons and to keep what they have treasured for centuries, intact.”

Oletha drew in her breath.

“What did the Duke say?” she enquired.

“I realised that I had, for the moment, surprised him,” the Colonel answered. “I am sure that it had never struck him as a possible solution to his difficulties!”

“And then?”

“Then he said harshly, ‘I have a rooted objection, Colonel, to being a fortune-hunter!’

“I can understand that,” I replied. “At the same time, if you think it out, it is a sensible and actually a time-honoured way of meeting one’s obligations and responsibilities.”

“He said nothing and I then went on, ‘You must think not only of yourself and your own feelings but of all the many pensioners whom I know will suffer if you cannot look after them as your father and grandfather and their fathers before them did at Gore and on your father’s other estates.”

The Duke frowned and I know that this aspect had been in his mind and he had been wondering what he could do about it.

“There are also,” I continued, “the orphanages, the alms-houses and all the servants who have been in your family’s employment from father to son all down the generations.”

“I am well aware of what you are saying,” the Duke interrupted, “but the very idea of choosing a woman because she has money and selling my title appals me! I think it degrading and, if the word is not too strong, obscene!”

“He spoke very sharply,” Colonel Ashurst said, “and I knew because he is an extremely attractive man that there must have been many young women in his life, who had loved him for himself and not because he was the son of a Duke.”