The Coin Of Love E-Book

Barbara Cartland

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

Seitenzahl: 378

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Cleona Wickham, sheltered and excluded all her young life was going to Rome! Asked to accompany her childhood friend Lady Beryl to Italy, this unexpected change in her fortunes was to be an exciting adventure! Then a chance encounter with a stranger, who stole a kiss, changed everything as she discovered the man in question was none other than the fiancé of her friend. Detesting the man, yet under his protection, the travelling party departed for Rome. For the first time in her young life Cleona was to discover the beauty and joy of Italy, but the journey was fraught with peril - would their trip end in the love and happiness she had always dreamed of, but never had - or would she fall prey to the many dangers that lay in her path?

Leseprobe

1

“LUD, but I look a fright!” the Honourable Mrs. Wickham exclaimed, bending forward to peer into the gilt framed mirror on her dressing table.

“How can Madam think that she can be anything but beautiful beyond compare!” the milliner exclaimed. “See how the hat enhances the gold of Madam’s hair and the peerless transparency of her complexion.”

Eloise Wickham pursed her lips, turning first this way and then the other until finally her red lips parted in a fleeting smile and she said,

“Very well, I will take them all. But don’t think, woman, that you need come dunning me for the bill because Heaven alone knows when you will be paid.”

“Madam is most kind.”

The milliner was wreathed in smiles as she made a gesture to her assistant to pick up the empty boxes. It had been worth the long journey from London to get an order like this – and although she was well aware that her distinguished customer spoke the truth when she said it was no use dunning her for the bill, payment would be made eventually.

In the meantime there was the kudos of having provided the headgear of the acknowledged beauty of the moment. In fact, fashionable London gossiped of little else, for it was said that the Prince was definitely infatuated by the fair widow from Oxfordshire. But Mrs. Wickham’s thoughts, as she sat staring at her reflection in the mirror, were not occupied with the Prince of Wales – the First Gentleman of Europe – but with someone very different.

She had not moved among the Beau Monde of St. James’s for the past three years without learning how ephemeral Royal favour could be. She had seen the Prince of Wales in love and she had seen him out of love, and she was well aware that, although at the moment he had vowed himself besotted of her, there was every possibility that tomorrow might bring a new face and a new infatuation to the very susceptible owner of Carlton House.

No, Eloise Wickham thought to herself, she was playing a deeper game than that. She rose from the carved stool in front of her dressing table and stood preening herself in the mirror. Her figure was perfect! There were not many women of her age who could wear the new fashionable high-waisted, almost Grecian gowns that the Napoleonic regime had introduced in Paris. Her figure was still like a young girl’s, her waist tiny, her breasts tip-tilted, and her skin clear as if she habitually slept in the clean country air rather than amongst the smoke and fogs of London.

And yet she was thirty-seven! Every day Eloise Wickham remembered that she drew nearer to her fortieth birthday. The very thought of it terrified her. Every day she searched her face for the first signs of that tiny, spidery network of lines which would one day encircle her wide blue eyes. At thirty-seven what had she got to look forward to? Only a fading beauty, old age, and an ever-increasing avalanche of debts, unless – Eloise Wickham drew a deep breath – unless she found herself a husband.

She turned abruptly from the mirror and walked to the window. Outside the smooth, green lawns sloped down to a small stream winding its way through pleasant green pasture land. The chestnut trees were in bud, there was blossom on the cherry and apple trees – the daffodils were blowing in the long grass beyond the lawns. Soon the lilacs would be in bloom and then the garden would be a miracle of loveliness with that fresh, surgent beauty that was so essentially English. But Eloise Wickham saw only the empty landscape – trees that needed pruning and thinning, flower beds that needed at least half a dozen more men to work on them – a terrace with crumbling stone and moss-covered flagstones. Petulantly she turned from the window. The garden was unkempt, the house shabby and unrepaired. Both were in need of money, money, money – and she had none of it!

“Oh, how I hate the country!” She said the words out loud and had an instant impulse to order her carriage there and then to carry her back to London.

Then determinedly she fought against her own longing. To stay here was part of her plan – a deep-laid, long considered plan – and if it was to succeed she must not be impatient. She walked across the room and rang the bell imperiously. A few minutes passed before it was answered by an elderly maid in a mob cap.

“There you are, Matthews,” Mrs. Wickham said disagreeably. “I have been ringing the bell for nearly twenty minutes. I thought it must be out of order.”

“It is in perfect order, Ma’am,” Matthews answered. “Indeed, it was clanging fit to deafen me.”

“Then why didn’t you answer it?” Mrs. Wickham enquired.

“Because I was getting your chocolate ready, Madam. I’ve only got one pair of hands and we are short-staffed, as you well know.”

Matthews spoke with the familiar directness of an old servant, and Eloise Wickham bit back the words of anger that rose to her lips. She was aware that Matthews, for all her irritating habit of taking her own time over everything, was an excellent maid and completely trustworthy.

“Very well. Put the chocolate down,” she said ungraciously. “I only hope it is hot, now you have brought it.”

“It is hot enough,” Matthews said. “Is that what you were ringing for?”

“No, no! Of course, I had forgotten. I rang to ask if there was a letter for me, or a message?”

There was no mistaking the eagerness in the question. Matthews answered with what appeared almost deliberate slowness.

“As I was leaving the kitchen, I did see a groom in livery turn into the yard,” she said. “If the bell had not been ringing so loud, I could have waited and asked him who he was and what he wanted. But as you appeared to be in such a hurry, Madam, I thought it best to come upstairs without further delay.”

“A groom in livery! Oh, Matthews, he must be bringing a note. Hurry quickly and find out who he is. Hurry, Matthews!”

Eloise Wickham stamped her foot in her impatience and Matthews went from the room at her own pace. There was nothing that the beautiful Mrs. Wickham could do but walk restlessly across the threadbare carpet and pray that the groom was wearing the blue and buff livery that she had looked and hoped for every day since she had fled to the country. She had a sudden glimpse of herself as she moved about the room. Pink and white, gold and blue. Those colours described her own Dresden china prettiness, and Lord Vigor had made it clear, not once but a dozen times, that that was what he admired in a woman.

But was admiration enough? Eloise Wickham asked herself agonisingly. Enough to ensure that he should wish to bestow his name and his fortune on the woman he had toasted as “The Incomparable” at a dinner at Vauxhall?

For three months now he had danced attention on no one else. He was jealous of everyone. Yes, even of the Prince himself. But he had not come to the point of suggesting that their love affair should have a more permanent basis. Eloise Wickham was not a fool. She knew perfectly well that the bets at White’s Club were five to one against her inveigling Vigor into matrimony. And yet she went on hoping. It had been her own idea to run away. A wild, desperate effort to bring him to the point.

The door opened and she turned towards it, moving swiftly across the room like a kingfisher flighting over the water.

“Who is it, Matthews? What did the man say? Has he brought a note?”

The questions came swiftly but before Matthews could speak Eloise Wickham had reached her side and taken the big white envelope from the silver salver on which it was resting. One look at the writing was enough. She gave a little cry of triumph and held it against her breast. Then, with fingers that trembled, she tore the envelope open. She read a few lines and gave another cry, which was one of sheer delight.

“He is here, Matthews! He has followed me. He is putting up at the inn at Woodstock, and he asks if he may call on me this afternoon. Oh, Matthews, Matthews! I have won! I swear it. I have won!”

“The groom is waiting for a reply, Ma’am.” Matthews’ voice was flat and quite unemotional.

“Yes, of course he must take back an answer. What shall I say?” Eloise Wickham turned to look at the older woman, her eyes wide. “He must come to dinner. The house looks its best by candlelight. The gardeners can fill the drawing room with flowers and I will wear that new green gauze which I got from Paris. It will all be very spring-like – young and simple.”

“That will be one extra for dinner then, Ma’am?” Matthews enquired.

“No, no, of course not, you fool. Would I be so stupid as to have him alone and let him think that I have come here specially to trap him? No, it must be a party. Whom can we have? The Marlboroughs – I know they are at home. The Barclays – they are sure to come if I ask them. And who else? We must be eight at least.”

There was a moment’s pause and then Eloise Wickham held up her hand.

“But, of course! How stupid of me. Lady Beryl Knight is at the castle. Cleona was saying yesterday that she had seen her out riding. Cleona!” Mrs. Wickham stopped suddenly and put her fingers up to her lips. “I had forgotten Cleona,” she said in a very different voice.

“I thought perhaps you had, Ma’am,” Matthews said.

“But of course, she is only a child. There is no question of her coming to dinner.”

“Miss Cleona was eighteen last month, Ma’am. You will remember that I wrote and reminded you of her birthday.”

“Yes, and I sent her a present,” Mrs, Wickham said defiantly.

“Not a very suitable one, Ma’am. The dress was much too small and top young in shape.”

“Well how was I to know the child had grown so enormously?” Mrs. Wickham asked crossly. “When I went away she was only tiny, playing with her dolls, and now I come back to find a strapping young woman.”

“The same height as yourself, Ma’am, and very like you, if you will forgive me saying so.”

“Very like me!”

There was something like terror in Eloise Wickham’s voice as she repeated the words and then almost instinctively turned her head to look at herself in the mirror. Yes, Cleona was very like her. She had seen that the moment she had walked into the house, after nearly three years’ absence, and seen her daughter waiting for her. She had the same heart-shaped face, the same pale gold hair and blue eyes, the same delicate white skin with those soft, peachlike cheeks and full red cherry mouth. And she was young – young, young!

“Matthews, what am I to do with her?”

“She’s your daughter, Ma’am, and she loves you.”

“I know that. But you must see, Matthews, that I can’t proclaim to all the world that I have a daughter of eighteen.”

“It’s unnatural for Miss Cleona to live here year after year seeing nobody, having no-one to care for her but myself. I’ve done my best, Ma’am, but it is time she took her rightful place in Society.”

“Not now – not at this very moment,” Mrs. Wickham cried. “And not tonight – not when Lord Vigor is coming. You will keep her upstairs, Matthews, you will keep her away. Tell her anything you please, but keep her out of the way!”

“Keep who out of the way, Mamma?”

The question came from the open door and both Mrs. Wickham and Matthews turned, with the quick, uncomfortable start of those who feel guilty about what they have been saying. There was no doubt at all that Cleona Wickham resembled her mother, but whereas every known artifice of coiffeur, cosmetic and fashionable couturier contributed to Mrs. Wickham’s beauty, Cleona was as natural as the spring itself.

She wore an old, outmoded cotton dress of pale blue, from which the colour had faded. Her sash was darned in a dozen places and the hem of the dress was several inches off the ground. It was too tight, too skimpy, for her sweetly curving figure, with its promise of future maturity. And yet, somehow, it did not look absurd on her, but it seemed as if, in fact, the very shabbiness of her clothes enhanced the radiance of her loveliness.

“Whom is Matthews to keep away, Mamma?” she asked again. “Do not say poor, silly Polly has been here again. She was such a nuisance a fortnight ago that we really contemplated asking the magistrates if they could do something about her.”

“That is just what Matthews was telling me,” Mrs. Wickham said. “And, as you know, I detest silly people. Now listen, Cleona, I want your help. I have got a dinner party and I want Henry to ride over to Blenheim and ask the Marlboroughs to come and George to go to the Barclays. They live in opposite directions or one man could have done both, but that disposes of both the horses and so I wondered if you could walk across the park and ask Beryl to be my guest?”

“Yes, Mamma, of course. I would love to,” Cleona answered. “She was looking so beautiful when I saw her on Wednesday. She had a riding habit of crimson velvet and a crimson feather in her hat. I wanted to speak to her, but I felt shy.”

“Well you can leave the note at the door if you do not want to see her,” Mrs. Wickham, suggested.

“I would like to speak with Beryl again,” Cleona answered. “It is senseless to feel shy of someone whom I have known all my life. Of course, she is older than I, but when we played together as children I always thought of us as being the same age. When I heard she had run away and got married at Gretna Green, I couldn’t at first believe it.”

“It was a very stupid thing to do,” Mrs. Wickham said sharply, “and, if you ask me, Beryl was a very lucky young woman that her husband got killed as soon as he did.”

“Oh, Mamma!”

“Indeed, it is no use mincing words about such matters,” Mrs. Wickham remarked. “It was a disastrous marriage for the Earl of Forncett’s daughter. An obscure Captain of Artillery – how did she ever meet such a man?”

“Out hunting, Mamma.”

“Well, there you are! I have always said that it is dangerous to bring up girls in the country. They are liable to meet all sorts of undesirable people, while in London, properly chaperoned, they meet only the most desirable partis.”

“Are you going to take me to London, Mamma?”

Mrs. Wickham turned quickly towards the writing desk.

“Really, Cleona,” she said peevishly, ‘I can’t think how you can be so selfish as to keep me here gossiping when you know I have so much to do. There are all the arrangements for tonight to be made and you had best help Matthews get out the fine linen tablecloths and lace-trimmed napkins. I hope they are not lost.”

“No, of course not, Mamma.”

“Lord Vigor’s groom must not be kept waiting too long either,” Mrs. Wickham continued. “I will write that letter first, Matthews, and you can take it down to him. At the same time tell George and Henry to get ready to carry the other notes. And you, Cleona, can start across the park as soon as I have written to Beryl.”

“Very well, Mamma. It will not take me long and I can help Matthews when I come back.”

Cleona went towards the door and then, as she reached it, she stopped a moment.

“It was me, Mamma, that you wanted kept out of the way this evening, was it not?”

Mrs. Wickham looked up from the writing table at which she was already seated. For a moment it seemed as if she would deny the accusation and then, as she looked at her daughter, her eyes hardened. What if Lord Vigor should see her?

“Yes, Cleona, it was,” she answered, and her voice was sharp almost to brutality. “You have no decent clothes to wear. I would not want my friends to be ashamed of you.”

“Do not worry, Mamma. I will keep away from them. I do not mind about your friends, but I would not want you to be ashamed of me.”

Cleona ran from the room, but not before both Eloise Wickham and Matthews had seen the tears in her eyes.

“That was cruel, Ma’am,” Matthews said quietly.

“It cannot be helped,” Mrs. Wickham replied defiantly. “This is my last chance, do you hear me? My last chance. Oh, I have had offers and I shall have others – but not from anyone who matters - not from anyone who can give me the position I want.”

“And supposing His Lordship does offer for you?” Matthews asked. “Are you never going to let him see the child? Are you going to keep her hidden for ever?”

“Lord, woman! Don’t worry me with such senseless questions at this moment,” Mrs. Wickham said angrily. “Sufficient unto the day. It is tonight that matters, get that into your head. Tonight! For Heaven’s sake go and see to the dinner table or nothing will ever be ready. And tell the cook I want to see her now.”

“Very good, Ma’am.”

Matthews went from the room. At the top of the staircase she hesitated for a moment. She knew Cleona had gone to her own bedroom. Matthews guessed that she would be sitting on her bed fighting against her tears – fighting, too, against an inexpressible feeling of hurt that her mother’s words would have caused her. She was too young, too vulnerable for this sort of thing, the older woman thought. She would not understand it or know how to cope with it. And then, because Matthews, too, felt unable to cope with the situation, she walked slowly down the stairs towards the kitchen.

Half an hour later Cleona set off across the park. Her mother’s letter was in her hand and two black spaniels, without whom she seldom stirred anywhere, were at her heels. She crossed the rickety wooden bridge that joined their own park with Lord Forncett’s. Her father had never owned the old manor house in which she had been born and where she had lived the whole of her life. He had rented it from his distant cousin, the Earl of Forncett, and had forgotten to pay the rent for so many years that it had become accepted by him and by everyone else that he was, indeed, its natural owner.

Both Cleona and the Lady Beryl were only children, and being distant cousins, it had seemed a most sensible arrangement on both sides that they should spend as much time as possible together and even take their lessons from the same teachers, it was only when, at seventeen Beryl had eloped, that Cleona had been startled into the knowledge that her friend was far older and more experienced than herself.

Those two years’ disparity in their ages had never seemed obvious until then. But now, Cleona thought, she was meeting not so much her childhood’s companion, but a stranger. Because she was suddenly overcome with shyness at the thought, just as she had been the other day when she had seen Beryl riding by and had not called out to her, a sudden panic made her turn from the gate that led through the herb garden to the Castle. She decided to take the longer way across the paddocks that adjoined the stables. She had just reached one of the swing gates when she saw someone riding towards her. It was a man on horseback – a very large man, his excellently cut riding coat showing off the breadth of his shoulders, his black polished boots shining with every movement of his horse.

She stood watching him approach. Thinking not of herself, but appraising the way he rode the spirited animal, which, prancing and rearing, seemed ready to fight against the restrictions of the bridle. The rider was at the gate before Cleona realised that he would wish to pass through it. He looked down at her and said sharply,

“Come along, my girl, aren’t you going to open the gate for me?”

For a moment Cleona’s eyes widened in surprise, and then she realised that he must have mistaken her for one of the milkmaids whom Lord Forncett employed in the dairy. It was not surprising, she thought. Her dress was shabby enough, and although she had set off with a bonnet on her head, she had found the warmth of the sun so inviting that she had pulled it off and was carrying it now by its ribbons.

Half amused and half embarrassed she put out her hand towards the gate.

“I can see you are a daydreamer,” the rider said, in a low, deep voice, his eyes watching her as she moved. “That’s not the way to get your work done, you know.”

Cleona did not answer him. She had remembered that if she spoke he might realise from her voice that she was not the farm girl she appeared to be. They all spoke with a soft, broad Oxfordshire accent.

She struggled with the gate, but it would not open. She put all her strength to pulling and tugging at it, but it was too heavy for her. Finally, with a sound that was half exasperation and half amusement, the man watching her sprang from his horse and came to her assistance. It seemed as if at the mere touch of his hand the gate swung open, and then they stood facing each other.

He was taller than she had imagined he would be, seeming, she thought, to tower above her. But she felt sure, by the elegance of his clothes, the jewelled fob hanging from his vest pocket and his gold-mounted riding whip, that he was someone of importance. He was handsome, but there was an uncompromising severity about his dark straight eyebrows, and the hard line of his mouth was broken by a cynical twist at the corners of his lips. It was the face of a man who mocks at life because he has been disillusioned.

“I suppose I must reward you for your help,” he said, “inadequate though it proved.”

He held out his hand towards Cleona and she saw that he held something that glittered between the fingers of his gloved hand. Hastily she backed away from him and spoke for the first time,

“No! No!”

Now he was smiling and his eyes were flickering over her face. They rested on the astonishment in her blue eyes, the dishevelment of her gold hair, blown by the wind about her cheeks, and the soft swell of her breasts beneath the tightness of the outgrown dress. And then, before she could move, he had stepped nearer to her.

“You will never be much use on a farm,” he said with laughter in his voice. “But doubtless you will make some young farmer very happy.”

Even as he spoke he tipped her face up to his and bending, kissed her on the lips. His action was so unexpected, so unanticipated, that for a moment Cleona could neither move nor cry out, nor even fight against him. One moment she was free, the next moment his fingers were against her chin and his lips had found hers.

She felt them, hard, warm, possessive, and was frozen into immobility. She could only feel the very surprise of his action paralyse her voice and her limbs so that she might have been turned to stone. His lips held her captive, but a second later she was released.

“That farmer will be a very lucky man,” he smiled.

He put something into her hand and then, swinging himself on to his horse’s back, had cantered away before she could move or even cry out against him. She stood staring after him and then, very slowly, raised the fingers of one hand to her lips. As if the touch restored to her a full consciousness of what had happened, she stared down into the palm of the other.

He had given her a guinea, a golden guinea, and he had left on her lips the first kiss she had ever known. She raised her arm and with all her strength flung the guinea as far as it would go and then she stared after the retreating horseman, and with a stamp of her foot, defied him.

“How dare you? How dare you?”

Her voice sounded weak and ineffectual even to herself.

The dogs stared up at her and then drew nearer as if they thought she had called them.

“How dare you?” she repeated. She took a handkerchief from her waist and rubbed vigorously at her lips, trying to rub away the touch of his mouth, to erase the sense of insult in her own mind.

Had she been mad, she asked herself, to stand there as if she were, some half-witted dairymaid? How could she have been so inane, so stupid? Bewitched because a man had mistaken her for a farm wench and commanded her to open the gate!

The unknown rider’s kiss was still burning on her lips as she reached the door of the castle. The old butler greeted her with respectful affection.

“Yes, Her Ladyship is in, Miss,” he said. “And it’s glad we are to see her home again. There has been great rejoicing here, I can tell you. And His Lordship’s like a young man again.”

He talked all the time he led Cleona down the passages to the drawing room, which looked out over the rose garden.

“I’ll inform Her Ladyship that you are here, Miss,” he said.

He left Cleona alone and she moved across the room to look out of the window. What fun she and Beryl used to have chasing each other round the fountain and even splashing each other with the water from the marble basin!

Intent on her thoughts and reminiscences, she started when she heard the door open at the further side of the room, but when she turned she saw it was not Beryl who entered, but Rex, the big mastiff who was Lord Forncett’s constant companion. He came across the room to her side, thrusting his black nose into her hand while the spaniels pranced around him with wagging tails, delighted to see a friend they had missed sadly these past eighteen months since Beryl ran away.

Rex had left the door open, which led, as Cleona knew well, into the library, and now she heard voices speaking on the other side of it.

“I tell you I will not allow you to make a fool of yourself with this man any longer. You need not think that because I am old, I am out of touch with what is happening – not where you are concerned at any rate. You are making a cake of yourself, my girl, and well you know it.”

“Father, it is ridiculous to take up that sort of attitude. Surely, as a married woman, I can have what friends I like.”

“You’re not a married woman, you’re a widow – and thank the Lord for it! But you are still my daughter and if you think I am going to have you talked about, your name bandied by every young blade who hiccoughs in his cups, you are much mistaken. Mountavon is a married man, and you will see no more of him.”

“Are you sure you can prevent me?”

How well Cleona knew that provocative, almost too sweet voice of Beryl’s, which she assumed when she was most angry.

“I have every intention of preventing it,” Lord Forncett said. “In fact I have made arrangements to do so. You are engaged to Raven, and I do not intend this time to have you break your promise or mess up my plans for you.”

“Really, Father, you might be mediaeval in the way you go on. It is true I have agreed to marry Lord Raven, but that does not mean to say that I intend to be a prisoner in this house, and I do not believe he expects it of me.”

“No, indeed, he does not,” Lord Forncett agreed. “For you are not staying in this house.”

“Not staying here! What do you mean?”

“I am sending you abroad at once. A grand tour, my child. It is time you improved your mind – and now that peace has been declared with those demmed Frenchmen, you can see a bit of the world and let us hope, get a bit of sense knocked into your head.”

“So that is what you and Lord Raven were talking about last night,” Beryl said accusingly.

“Yes, that is what we were discussing. It is all arranged.”

“Perhaps you will be kind enough to inform me of your plans – for me.”

“You will leave for the Continent next Tuesday. You will have no time before that for saying goodbye to Mountavon, or any other mountebank. You will pack your trunks and travel to Rome to stay with Raven’s mother. She wishes to see you and approve the match her son is making.”

“So Lord Raven is behind all this, is he?” Beryl asked. “I thought he was determined not to lose the estates a second time. He does not want to marry me, Father, he wants to marry your fifteen thousand acres of good Worcestershire soil!”

“And why shouldn’t he?” Lord Forncett enquired. “Our lands have marched together for the last six generations. Raven’s a sensible chap. He wants a wife who will be some use to him, and you want a husband, my girl, make no mistake about it. You will go out to Rome with Raven escorting you. You will meet his mother, and on your return you will be married from here, as I always intended you should.”

“La! that is certainly a very pretty plot to get your own way!” Beryl said. “And does His Lordship relish the idea of prancing over the Continent alone with me – a prisoner at the wheels of his carriage?”

“Alone! I’m not so raw as all that? Lord Forncett exclaimed. “You will be properly chaperoned, my dear, and no mistake about it. Your cousin Hester is going with you. If anyone can keep you in order, she will.”

“Cousin Hester? Now that is, indeed, the outside of enough,” Beryl said. “If you think I am going anywhere with Cousin Hester, you are very much mistaken. I shall run away again – and this time I will not come back. I will marry the first man who wants me. I will pick up a beggar out of the ditch! but I won’t go abroad with Cousin Hester, not if you beg me to do so from now until next Christmas.”

“Now, now, what is wrong with your cousin?” Lord Forncett asked, a little gruffly.

Beryl’s passionate remonstrances had obviously surprised him.

“Everything is wrong with her,” Beryl said fiercely. “It was she who drove me away in the first place if you wish to know. It was she who made me so unhappy here that I jumped at the idea of marrying poor Arthur, without for one moment considering the consequences. Oh, yes, I admit I made a mistake. There wasn’t a chance of our being happy together and if he had not been killed I do not know what I should have done. But it was Cousin Hester’s fault that it all happened, I can promise you that Father. And if you send me away with her now, Heaven knows what will happen – that is if I don’t murder her long before we get to Dover, let alone anywhere else.”

There was a moment’s silence and then Lord Forncett said more gently,

“I do not want to be hard on you, Beryl. It is to stop you making another mistake that I have taken you away from London. It will be good for you to go abroad. Your mother and I had always planned for you to visit Paris and Rome, but with the War we have all been cooped up in our back yards these past eleven years. But you know as well as I do that you cannot go unchaperoned. You cannot go without another woman. Raven will be escorting you, but that does not make it any better – some female has got to travel with you. The question is, who?”

“Not Cousin Hester at any rate,” Beryl said firmly.

“Well then, who?” her father demanded.

“Father, shall I tell you a secret..?” Beryl began.

It was then Cleona realised, as if for the first time, that she was eavesdropping. It had been bad enough to stand there listening, almost despite herself, but now the idea that she might hear a secret forced her to overcome her shyness and walk across the drawing room and through the open door into the library.

Lady Beryl Knight and her father were standing in front of the fireplace as she entered. They both looked round as if surprised at being interrupted, before Beryl called out her name,

“Cleona, my dearest love!”

She ran towards her, her face alight with genuine pleasure, her hands outstretched. And then, as she reached Cleona, before she kissed her, she turned towards her father.

“Here is the answer to your question, Father,” she said. “The perfect answer to who will take Cousin Hester s place. Cleona, of course – my own dear Cleona!”

2

“Pray forgive me,” Cleona said shyly, “but I overheard your conversation. I couldn’t help it – Rex opened the door.”

“Then you know how irritating His Lordship is being,” Beryl said laughingly. “He is trying to force me to take Cousin Hester abroad with me, and you my love, of all people, are aware how detestable she has always been to me. I declare that I will not stir a foot out of this place if she accompanies me! But a fig for Cousin Hester. Everything is settled – you will come in her place.”

“Hold hard! Hold hard!” Lord Forncett exclaimed. “You are rushing your fences, Beryl. I haven’t yet given my consent. Besides, I cannot allow you two feckless young creatures to gallivant about the Continent alone.”

“Have you forgotten I am a married woman, Papa?” Beryl asked. “Besides, you can hardly call it alone with my Lord Raven to escort us and at least six servants in our entourage.”

“Six!” Lord Forncett said with something like consternation.

“Yes, six,” his daughter repeated firmly. “I can assure you, Sir, that all the best people travel en prince!”

“I still think that you and Cleona are too young,” Lord Forncett said, but it was obvious that he was weakening.

“Ma foi, Papa! As a sop we will take Captain Ernshaw as a courier. He is a dead bore but you know as well as I do, he is trustworthy to the point of exasperation.”

“Oh, well, if Ernshaw will go,” Lord Forncett murmured, capitulating.

“Go? He will be in a-twitter at the opportunity,” Beryl smiled. “All through the War we have listened to nothing but his acclamations about the ruins of Rome and the art galleries of Florence. Now he will be able to take us there, and it will serve him right if we do not find them half as romantic as he has made them out to be.”

“Very well then. Have it your own way,” Lord Forncett said. “I only hope the two of you don’t get up to your old tricks.”

He smiled as he spoke, recalling the pranks they had indulged in as children and the times he had been called upon by Cousin Hester to give them a lecture.

“Do you really mean it?” Cleona asked, her eyes alight with excitement as she looked at Beryl. “Do you really mean to take me with you? Indeed I must be dreaming for I cannot believe it’s true.”

“Of course it’s true, you goose. And don’t think that it’s going to be as wonderful as all that. His Lordship is sending me away as a punishment.”

“No, no! Not a punishment, but a safeguard!” Lord Forncett put his hand, as he spoke, on his daughter’s shoulder and there was no mistaking the affection and pride in his face as he looked at her. It was not surprising that he should love his only child, for Beryl was very attractive. She was taller than Cleona and above the fashionable height – nevertheless, she carried herself proudly. She had a small straight nose between dark eyes, which seemed always a-twinkle with mischief, and a red mouth that pouted adorably when she did not get her own way.

There was so much grace in the tilt of her curly head and in the movement of her white hands that it was not surprising that Lady Beryl Knight’s arrival in London as a newly bereaved widow had sent the bucks of St. James’s scurrying to Lord Forncett’s house in Berkeley Square.

“We shall make good foils for each other,” Beryl said later to Cleona as they sat alone with so much to say to each other that it was difficult to know where to begin.

“Foils! What do you mean?” Cleona asked.

“Oh, don’t be bird-witted, dearest. You know exactly what I mean. I am dark, you are fair – and we are both exceedingly attractive young women. If we don’t cause a sensation in Italy, I, for one, will die of chagrin.”

“You will cause a sensation,” Cleona smiled. “But you know full well that I shall be content to watch you and to stay in the background.”

Beryl laughed.

“Haven’t you learned yet, dear love, that being unselfish and self-effacing never gets one anywhere?”

“But I don’t know where I want to get,” Cleona replied.

“I can tell you what you want,” Beryl said. “A nice rich, distinguished husband.”

“No, indeed, that is not true,” Cleona replied. “Besides…” She stopped suddenly and put her hand to her face in a gesture of horror. “Beryl, I had forgotten Mamma’s letter – that is why I came here. She sent me with it and it is an invitation to dinner.”

“Your Mamma is at the Manor!” Beryl exclaimed. “Good gracious, she is the last person I expected to hear had taken to the country.”

“She arrived two days ago quite unexpectedly,” Cleona replied. “We were all very surprised to see her.”

“I should think so, indeed. Why, when I left London everyone was talking about...” Beryl stopped, then added, “Perhaps I oughtn’t to say such things to you, or do you know?”

“About the Prince of Wales being very attentive?” Cleona enquired. “Oh yes indeed, Mamma told me all about it as soon as she arrived.”

“And about Lord Vigor? Has he come up to scratch?” Beryl asked. “No, of course he hasn’t – what a silly question. Your Mamma wouldn’t be here if he had.”

“He is coming to dinner tonight.”

“Is he really?” Beryl’s voice was eloquent of her surprise. “Then he is really serious this time. The betting was heavily against it being anything but a passing phase.”

“What is he like?” Cleona asked.

“Personally I have no partiality for him,” Beryl answered. “But he is rather a friend of my father’s. In fact, now I come to think of it, perhaps that was who Papa was entertaining this afternoon. I was told there was a gentleman with him and as I had an idea it was someone very different, I slipped out into the orchard and hid in the oak tree where we used to hide when we were children – do you remember?”

“You think Lord Vigor was with your father,” Cleona said slowly.

“It might easily have been him if, as your mother says, he is staying at Woodstock. I expect really he was trying to get Papa to invite him to stay here. Oh, I pray that Papa avoided that snare. In some ways Lord Vigor is quite detestable.”

“What is his appearance?” Cleona enquired.

Beryl did not notice that her voice sounded strange.

“He is tall, dark, and in my opinion, rather sinister.”

Almost instinctively Cleona’s hand went up to her lips. So it had been Lord Vigor whom she had met at the end of the paddock! It was Lord Vigor who had asked her to open the gate and who had given her a guinea and kissed her because she had failed to do his bidding. She felt again that surge of anger which had shaken her whole body as she had watched him ride away. How could he have dared to insult her in such a manner? And he was the man whom her mother wanted to marry!

Beryl’s voice broke in on her thoughts.

“What are you thinking about, Cleona? You look so serious and yet, somehow fierce. Has anything made you angry?”

“No, no, it is nothing,” Cleona said quickly. “Tell me more about Lord Vigor.”

“Well, he is noted for his wealth and his amours. He has made love to every pretty woman who has ever set foot in St. James’s. All the match-making mammas have been trying to catch him for years, but they have had no success. He is far too wily for them. Of course, your mother may succeed where everyone else has failed.”

“She talks as if it is the only thing that will make her happy,” Cleona said.

“I do not envy her, but of course he is very rich – nearly as rich as Sylvester.”

“Who is Sylvester?” Cleona asked curiously.

‘Don’t be provocative, Cleona. You know full well that Sylvester is the Earl of Raven, whom I am to marry.”

“Do you love him?”

Beryl looked at Cleona and pouted her pretty lips.

“What has love to do with marriage? Well, sensible marriages at any rate. I have known Sylvester ever since we were in our cradles together. I am told that his father and mine agreed at my christening that we should be wed and the two estates joined as one. Last year when I returned to London a widow, Sylvester was the first person to call on me. I promised to marry him, but I am determined to be in no hurry about it this time.”

“But, Beryl, I could not help overhearing your father speaking of someone else – the Marquis of Mountavon!”

Beryl got suddenly to her feet and walked across the room. There was a great vase of hothouse flowers on the side table. She stood rearranging them and then abstractedly pulled a carnation to pieces.

“I would like you to meet Ian Mountavon,” she said at last in a low voice. “He is so very different from anyone I have ever known before ... in the whole of my life.”

“And, you love him?” Cleona asked, her voice hardly above a whisper.

“Yes, I love him.” The words seemed to burst from Beryl’s lips before she turned and walked back towards Cleona.

“But … but…” Cleona began, only to be interrupted.

“But what’s the use?” Beryl asked in a voice that she made deliberately light. “He is a married man and I am betrothed to Lord Raven. As I have already told you, Cleona, love has nothing to do with marriage.”

“How can you say such a monstrous thing?” Cleona asked. “It is not true.”

“But it is, I assure you. You forget that I married for love once, only to be exceedingly disillusioned within a week of our marriage at Gretna Green. Oh dear, how foolish one is when one is very young! I thought Arthur Knight entrancing until I was married to him, and then I found he was both a bore and a prig. My father was right when he said it was a lucky day for me when he was killed fighting in the war.”

“Beryl, how can you say such things?” Cleona asked in a shocked voice.

“But they are true.”

“I don’t believe it,” Cleona cried. “I have dreamed that one day I shall fall in love, that I shall find someone who will love me and whom I shall both respect and admire. I have no care if he is rich or important or if he is just a very ordinary person – as indeed, I am sure he will be. If we love each other, nothing else will matter.”

Beryl stopped suddenly and kissed the earnest little face looking up into hers.