Читать книгу Love and The Marquis - Barbara Cartland - Страница 2

The Earl of Kingsclere walked restlessly about the very impressive salon, not noticing the many magnificent pictures, the china, which in itself was worth a fortune, or the array of hothouse flowers that decorated every table.

There was a frown between his eyes and the lines on his very handsome face that had beguiled so many women were sharply etched.

He was worried and it showed in every movement he made and in every breath he drew.

He walked to the grog tray in the corner, which one would not have expected to find in such a very feminine room and poured himself out a glass of champagne.

He drank deeply as if he was in need of it and then with what appeared almost a reckless gesture he raised his glass and toasted aloud,

“To the future!”

As his voice echoed round the room, the door opened and the butler announced,

“Lady Imeldra, my Lord.”

The Earl started and then stared incredulously as a young girl, for she was no more, came running down the room towards him to fling her arms around his neck.

“Papa! I was so afraid that you might be away when I arrived.”

“Imeldra!” the Earl exclaimed. “What are you doing here? I was not expecting you.”

“I know that, Papa. I have run away!”

Her arms tightened around him and she kissed her father on both cheeks so that it was impossible for him to answer her.

Then he put his hands on her shoulders to hold her away from him so he could scrutinise her.

“You are lovely,” he smiled. “Far lovelier than I expected you to be.”

“Oh, darling Papa, I did so hope you would think so.”

“You are very like your mother,” the Earl said in a low voice, almost as if he spoke to himself. “And she was the loveliest woman I have ever seen.”

Imeldra would have kissed him again, but he held her firmly from him and saying,

“You have a great deal of explaining to do. Why have you run away from school?”

“To see you!”

The Earl’s eyes twinkled.

“I don’t believe that is the only reason.”

“Actually it is not,” Imeldra replied. “I was in trouble and I suspect they will sack me anyway.”

The Earl laughed as if he could not help it.

“That sounds more like the truth. Now come and tell me all about it. Would you like a glass of champagne to sustain you?”

“May I really have one?”

“I imagine you are old enough now and when you arrived I was just drinking a toast to the future.”

She looked at him questioningly.

“That sounds most unlike you, Papa, and I have never known you to drink when you are alone.”

The Earl did not answer. He merely poured her out a very small amount of champagne and filled his own glass again.

Then he walked to the window where the pale early April sunshine was just percolating through the clouds.

Then he sat down.

There were two chairs and, as Imeldra sat down opposite him, his eyes were on her hair, appreciating that the sun picked out the red lights amongst the gold.

He gave a deep sigh.

“You are beautiful, which is what I so hoped you would be.”

It was not a compliment. He was merely stating a fact that Imeldra’s eyes seemed to hold the light in them as if somebody had lit a candle within her.

They were very unusual eyes, large, liquid and their depth seemed to hold a mystery that the Earl knew would make a man look and look again as he attempted to solve the secret that lay hidden in them.

Then, as if he forced himself to be practical, he enquired,

“Now tell me why you are here.”

“Do you know how old I am, Papa?”

“Not old enough to leave school.”

“But I am! And it is very humiliating to be the oldest pupil by several months.”

“Is that true?” the Earl enquired.

“I promise you it is and honestly, Papa, I can learn no more there.”

She gave him a quick glance as if she expected him to argue with her and, when he did not, she went on,

“I am the Head Girl. I am top in every subject and it was really embarrassing last Speech Day when I won almost every prize. Finally I am not prepared to spend the Easter holidays alone.”

“Alone?” the Earl asked sharply.

“Oh, Papa, you must remember that schools have holidays. All the girls are going home next week except for me.”

“But I thought that something was always arranged for you in the holidays.”

“I have been fortunate that one of my friends has always invited me home with her, but now I have no invitations.”

“Why ever not?” the Earl asked mystified.

Imeldra’s eyes twinkled as his had done and there was a mischievous smile on her lips as she asked,

“Why do you think?”

“If I said what is in my mind, it would make you very conceited.”

“Yes, that is the reason. I am too pretty. My friends are grown up and they dislike seeing the young men who they think are courting them transferring their attention to me.”

“I suppose it is understandable,” the Earl murmured.

“Of course it is, dearest Papa, I am your daughter and – Mama’s.”

Imeldra’s voice softened as she spoke of her mother and she was almost sure that she caught a look of sadness in her father’s expression before he remarked,

“I am beginning to understand your reasons for leaving, Imeldra, but your decision to run away could not have come at a worse moment.”

“Why?”

For a moment the Earl seemed to feel for his words.

Then he said almost recklessly,

“Because I am doing exactly the same thing!”

Imeldra sat bolt upright.

“Oh, no, Papa, not again?”

“I don’t know what you mean by that,” her father answered. “This is different.”

“Dearest Papa, you know as well as I do that each new love affair of yours always seems different until you grow bored.”

The Earl rose to his feet as if it was impossible to sit still and he walked across the room and back again before he said,

“All right, Imeldra, I am in a mess and there is nothing I can do about it. So there is no use in your arguing with me.”

“I would not do that. But I realise now that I should never have left you.”

“Of course you had to leave me,” the Earl countered.

“You were too old to live the life I was leading. Now I think of it, it is a good thing that I am going abroad.”

“Going abroad?”

‘Tomorrow.”

“And – who is going with – you?”

It seemed for a moment as if the Earl was reluctant to answer truthfully and then he said,

“Lady Bullington,”

Imeldra thought for a moment before she answered,

“I have read about her in the newspapers. She is very beautiful.”

“Very,” the Earl agreed dryly.

“But, Papa, how can you be so foolish as to run away with her?”

“Lord Bullington intends to divorce her and so I have to do the gentlemanly thing and give her my name.”

“But that will take years, Papa. It always does.”

“I know, I know!” the Earl said testily. “But we are going to live in Venice where I have bought a Palazzo.”

“How lovely! That is something I have always wanted you to have.”

“But you know,” the Earl went on as if she had not spoken, “that you cannot come there until I am married and even then it would be best if you stayed away.”

Imeldra was silent, but he saw the hurt expression in her eyes and he sat down again to say,

“Dearest child, you have to be sensible about this. When I sent you to school, I told you, and you seemed to then understand, that I could not allow my way of life, enjoyable though it might have been from my point of view, to spoil yours.”

“We had such fun together, Papa,” Imeldra said. “It has been ghastly without you these two years, but I believed – as you promised – that I could come back to – you once I was educated.”

“If you remember,” the Earl contradicted her, “what I promised was that, when you were old enough, you should be presented to Society and I would do everything to see that you are accepted as your mother was when she was your age.”

“But I did not think that I would not be with – you.”

“You know perfectly well that the hostesses of London who would welcome you would not entertain me,” the Earl pointed out.

“There are plenty of other people who would,” Imeldra insisted stubbornly.

“Not the sort of people who I want you to meet and not the sort of people of whom your mother would approve and, more important still, not the sort of people where you will meet the sort of man I want you to marry.”

Imeldra was silent,

She knew that the reason why, two years ago, her father had sent her away from him to school was that he had found her struggling in the arms of a young Nobleman who was trying to kiss her.

The Earl had knocked him out. Then, before he could recover his consciousness he had thrown him bodily down the steps of the Château they were living in in France and told the servants never to admit him again.

But Imeldra, as her father realised, was growing up.

Nearly sixteen, she was no longer a child and it was a mistake for her to associate with his friends, either male or female.

She had therefore gone to school in England and, because she loved her father, she had agreed to work hard and try to become, in his words, ‘a perfect Lady.’

‘. But she had counted the days until she could be with him again and had no idea of his social ambitions for her, which would mean permanent exile from the one person she loved more than anyone else in the whole world.

Now her eyes filled with tears as she said in a broken little voice,

“Oh, Papa – how can you be so – cruel to – me?”

“I know that is how it seems, my precious one,” the Earl answered, “but it is because I love you and because amongst my treasures you are the most perfect of them all, that I cannot have you soiled and damaged by the life I lead.”

“I love your life, Papa, It has always been such fun moving around the world with you, meeting so many different people, some of whom I admit were very strange and some very charming and unusual,”

“Those sort of friends are perfectly all right for a man,” the Earl told her, “and if you had been a boy, it would not have mattered in the slightest way if you had what is known as a ‘Cosmopolitan education’. But for a girl it is disastrous.”

“Why? Why?” Imeldra asked.

“Because, my dearest, you have to marry and, if you think I want you married to one of the riff-raff who will not only fall in love with you but be well aware that I am a rich man, you are very much mistaken!”

“I have no intention of marrying anybody at the moment.”

“Every woman should marry,” the Earl said sharply, “especially someone as beautiful as you. You need a man to look after you and protect you, but the sort of gentleman I want as a son-in-law is not to be found at parties I give. If he is, he will not treat you with respect.”

“Why not?” Imeldra asked.

“Because, my darling one, you cannot touch pitch and not be defiled by it and a man of aristocratic birth, especially an Englishman, wants his wife to be pure and untouched and certainly not to have had a ‘Cosmopolitan education’.”

Imeldra laughed because the way her father spoke sounded so funny. At the same time she knew that in a way he was speaking the truth.

When she had last been with him, she had become aware for the first time that, although she was dressed as a young girl and her hair was loose over her shoulders, the expression in men’s eyes was different from what it had been before and they no longer treated her as a child.

Aloud she asserted,

“I cannot lose you, Papa! You know you are the only person I belong to.”

“That is not true,” the Earl answered. “You have a great number of relations and I have already been in communication with them. I have in fact arranged that your Aunt Lucy will present you at Court.”

Imeldra looked at him wide-eyed.

“The Duchess?” she exclaimed. “But I thought she never spoke to you.”

“She loved your mother and I have promised her that I will not interfere or even see you as long as you are under her chaperonage.”

“Papa! How could you promise anything so – horrible – and so cruel to me?”

“And to me,” the Earl added quietly. “But, my dearest, it is best for you.”

Imeldra rose to stand at the window and looked with unseeing eyes out into the garden.

The daffodils were coming into bloom and the first buds were appearing on the trees, but she was thinking that she had only seen her aunt, the Duchess, once at her mother’s funeral.

She had seemed an austere woman, cold and controlled, who looked at everybody else as if they were beneath her condescension.

Equally Imeldra was intelligent enough to know that under the Duchess’s patronage she would be accepted everywhere in the Social world that her father thought so necessary for her.

She knew too that the Duchess was a Lady-of-the-Bedchamber to Queen Adelaide.

She was also aware that, while her father’s raffish reputation as a roué had been easily acceptable during the reign of George IV. King William and his prim little German wife had changed the whole attitude of Society towards morality.

This meant that the Earl, whose amorous indiscretions had been admired and envied by the Georgian bucks and beaux, now evoked upraised hands and gasps of horror from those who wished to ingratiate themselves at Court.

Because the Earl was so handsome and because, as Imeldra knew, women gravitated to him like rats to the Pied Piper, he was always engaged in one love affair after another.

It was what prevented him from mourning the one woman in his life he had really loved, her mother.

He was also a keen sportsman and his racehorses romped home regularly to take the most treasured prizes of the Turf.

He had when young been an acknowledged pugilist and a champion swordsman.

Men admired, envied and fêted him, but those of them who prized their wives kept them away from a man who was too fascinating to be anything but a danger.

After her mother’s death, when she had gone everywhere with him, Imeldra had noticed the gleam that came into many women’s eyes the moment they saw him.

She knew that long before he was aware of them they were yearning after him in a way that she found sometimes amusing and sometimes irritating.

“I want to see Papa,” she had said once to one of her Governesses, who had kept her in the schoolroom when she had wished to go downstairs.

“Then you will just have to wait for your turn,” the Governess had answered somewhat brusquely.

The only consolation was that her father grew bored very quickly in every love affair and his invariable habit when this happened was to move somewhere else.

Imeldra could remember when they had packed up and left a Palace that he had rented in Rome at only twenty-four hours’ notice as the dark-eyed and passionate beauty who had been constantly with them had suddenly become no longer welcome.

Her father in leaving so precipitately avoided the floods of tears and recriminations that inevitably followed one of his swift changes of mood.

He and Imeldra had journeyed often to Greece, but while the Acropolis and Delphi had entranced Imeldra, her father’s dalliance with a Maid of Athens did not last much longer than Lord Byron’s and they had both moved on.

Egypt had been such a wonderful place for Imeldra because her father found no modern Cleopatra there and the women depicted on the Temple walls were very much more attractive than those who lived and breathed.

The Earl was a very well-educated man and Imeldra had often thought recently that she had learnt so much more from him than from her teachers and books at school.

Yet because it pleased him she had worked at her lessons until, as she had said, she was top in everything and there was really nothing more that they could teach her.

She had been so sure that she would be with her father at least for a little time that she could hardly believe now that she was to be separated from him and the mere idea of it made her want to cry.

The Earl disliked tears, having endured too many of them from the women he had loved and left.

So Imeldra bit her lips to stop herself from sobbing and said in a voice that only trembled a little,

“Can I not – stay with you for – just a little time – Papa? I have dreamt of you and – longed to be with – you and to talk to you.”

“That was what I too have wanted,” the Earl answered, “but because I have been a fool, Imeldra, it is now impossible.”

“Must you – really run away with – this lady?”

“It is something I have to do,” he replied, “and you must expect me, as your father, to do the honourable thing.”

“Not if you don’t love her.”

“Love? What is love?”

Then, as he saw the expression on his daughter’s face, he said in a very different voice,

“You know as well as I do that I have only loved once in my life and that sort of love never comes again.”

“Is that true of everyone, Papa? That they love only one person with ‒ a real love, which is what you had for Mama?”

“It was the way I loved your mother and she loved me,” the Earl replied, “and, because we were the other part of each other, it would be impossible for any other woman to mean the same to me.”

He spoke simply and to Imeldra his words were very moving.

“At the same time,” he said as if he must tell the truth, “you know there have been times when I have been infatuated, beguiled and bemused by women, but because I have known the best, I am not prepared to accept second best in my heart whatever my lips may say.”

“I understand, Papa,” Imeldra answered, “and I hope that one day I shall love in the same way.”

“That is the whole point,” the Earl said as if she had played into his hands. “That is what I want for you and that is what I am determined, if it is at all possible, you shall find.”

Imeldra did not speak and he went on,

“But as I have already said told you, you will not find it in the gutters or in the sort of places where I reign as King, albeit over a very scruffy little Kingdom.”

He laughed, but the sound had very little humour in it.

“Yes, a real King, because I am rich and because in a foreign land I am accepted by the noblest families who excuse anything I do since I am an English ‘Milord’! But you, dearest child, are not concerned with the French, the Italians, the Austrians or the Spanish but with English ladies. Their Society is the most snobbish and the most critical in the world.”

“Then why must I mix with them?”

“Because, my precious, only from the heights to which they can take you will you marry into the life that I wish you to lead and then meet the right sort of man who will offer you marriage.”

There was a sudden sharpening of the Earl’s voice as he went on,

“Make no mistake, from now on you will find it a great handicap that I should be your father. But your beauty, your wealth and the fact that your aunt is a Duchess of impeccable respectability will make you acceptable.”

“But, Papa, do you imagine I would agree to marry any man who thought of me in those terms?”

The Earl’s voice softened and he declared,

“He will also love you, my darling, love you passionately and with his whole heart. But his mind and his critical sense must assure him that in making you his wife he is doing the right thing.”

Because Imeldra was perceptive and so closely attuned to her father, she knew exactly what he was trying to say to her.

She would have been very stupid if she had not been aware that many of the people he entertained in foreign Capitals would not have been acceptable in the aristocratic houses of England when ladies were present.

There had often been times when she had been told not to come downstairs and she had known the following morning that the party that went on until dawn had been rowdy and very far from respectable.

She accepted it because she loved her father deeply and because her life with him was so adventurous, delightful and constantly changing.

She had never known from one day to the next what would happen and often, when the lessons at school seemed extremely dull, she had slipped away back into the past.

When the class was droning on over French irregular verbs, she could see in front of her eyes the beauty of Versailles, the clouds over Mount Vesuvius, the Coliseum or the crowds at St. Peter’s when she was learning Italian.

When the teacher pointed to Greece on the map, she saw the Acropolis and the ruins of Delphi.

‘I am so lucky to have seen the real thing,’ she told herself.

She knew that the other pupils in the class could not understand the beauty of such places that had become a part of her and something she could never lose.

The butler announced luncheon and while she and her father ate they talked of the places they had visited in the past and he told her about the Palazzo he had bought in Venice, which was a very old one.

As she had never visited Venice and could not visualise what he was trying to tell her, she suggested,

“Please send me a painting of it, Papa, so that I shall be able to feel that I am near you.”

“I will do that,” the Earl promised, “but even if we do not see each other, my dearest, we can still keep in touch by letter.”

“And in our thoughts,” Imeldra added. “I have often believed at night when I have been at school that I was sending my thoughts winging towards you and wherever you were you would receive them.”

“I am sure I did,” the Earl replied, “and I am telling you the truth when I say that I was often conscious of your presence and my thoughts were continually with you.”

“I think I know that, Papa, so you see that we can never really lose each other.”

“No, of course not,” the Earl said, but his eyes were sad.

As they walked back to the salon, Imeldra asked,

“When are you leaving?”

“I was intending to do so this afternoon,” he said, “but I have changed my plans. It will not matter if I reach London tomorrow morning instead of tonight.”

“Then I can dine with you?” Imeldra asked in a rapt little voice.

“Of course,” the Earl agreed. “And we must also, my darling, make plans about where you are to go until your aunt is prepared to receive you.”

Imeldra looked at him and he said,

“I happen to know from reading the Court page of The Times that she is in Scotland at the moment staying with the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch.”

“Good!” Imeldra exclaimed. “That means I cannot go to her until she comes South.”

“Exactly,” the Earl said dryly. “Therefore, as you cannot return to school, you must go to your grandmother’s.”

“Oh, no, Papa!”

She was not at all fond of her grandmother who was old and at times very disagreeable.

She disapproved of the deep affection Imeldra had for her father and had always resented that her granddaughter had not been sent to live with her as soon as her mother died.

There was no doubt, however, Imeldra knew, that her grandmother would welcome her as a guest.

At the same time she would not lose the opportunity of finding fault with the way she had been brought up and Imeldra felt that to have to listen to endless diatribes against her beloved father would be unbearable.

“Please, Papa,” she pleaded, “don’t send me to Grandmama’s.”

“Where else can you go, dearest, at a moment’s notice?” the Earl asked. “You can drive there in the carriage in three to four hours.”

Imeldra knew that this was true.

“I will send a letter to my mother,” he said, “explaining, for she will undoubtedly learn sooner or later the reason why I am leaving for France and shutting up the house.”

Imeldra gave a little murmur of distress, but she did not speak and the Earl went on,

“Dutton will be in charge of everything. You can tell him to do anything you want.”

Imeldra looked around the salon.

She had not spent much time since her mother died at Kingsclere, which was the family seat. Before that it had been their permanent home.

It was after his wife’s death that the Earl felt that the place was haunted by the woman he had loved so deeply and he could not bear to be there without her.

It was then that with his small daughter he had set off on their travels to foreign lands.

Once or twice a year they came home and the Earl would run his horses at Ascot and at Newmarket.

He would be in the Jockey Club or the Royal Enclosure with some beautiful woman who had taken his fancy at that particular moment, while Imeldra, properly escorted, was allowed to roam amongst the crowds.

The gypsies would tell her her fortune and, as she was so pretty and well dressed, they were always very glamorous forecasts.

She would watch the many shysters and the bookies and those who made their living by entertaining the crowds and extracting pennies from their pockets by doing so.

It had all been the most immense fun and the summers at Kingsclere were as vivid and as beautiful in her mind as anything she saw abroad.

But inevitably the end of the summer meant the end of the Earl’s latest affaire de coeur.

As soon as he had finished shooting the first partridges, he would be off to the sun from the Mediterranean to North Africa and once unforgettably down the Red Sea to India.

It was a strange and varied life for any child, but Imeldra grew to girlhood with a wider knowledge than any of her contemporaries had, not only of countries and places but of people with strange religions and conflicting political ideals.

Because her father was so intelligent, he spent his time not only with beautiful women but with the Statesmen of the countries they visited, the Prime Ministers, the Chancellors and the Foreign Secretaries.

And whenever he entertained, Imeldra would listen to what they were saying and try to understand so that she could discuss the most interesting points with him afterwards.

As they talked together after dinner that evening, she had a feeling that no man she would meet in Society would ever be able to take his place, since even if he loved her, their brains would not match each other’s.

What was more, she would never be able to learn from him as she had learnt from her father.

Inexorably the evening came to an end and, when Imeldra looked reluctantly at the clock over the mantelpiece, the Earl said,

“I am going to say ‘goodbye’ to you now, my precious daughter. You know that I cannot bear emotional farewells, so I am asking you, my darling, not to come downstairs until I have left tomorrow morning, which will be very early.”

With an almost superhuman effort Imeldra bit back the words of protest that came to her lips.

She knew that her father was right in that they had nothing more to say to each other but, when she saw him drive away, she would want to cry because he would be going out of her life for a very long time.

She was aware that he was really saying to her that it would be a mistake for them to meet again until she was married.

The idea of losing him as well as having to marry somebody because he considered it the ‘right thing to do’ was terrifying.

However there was no point in saying so and it would only make him unhappy.

She could already feel the misery she would know once he had gone surging over her.

Instead she put her arms around his neck saying as she did so,

“I love you, Papa, and nobody in the whole world could have a kinder more wonderful or more handsome father than I have.”

“But not a very good one, I am afraid, my precious.”

“That is where you are wrong,” Imeldra said. “You have not only given me a marvellous childhood but you have also given me high ideals and aspirations.”

The Earl looked at her to see if she was telling the truth and she continued,

“Because we have always talked over things so sensibly, I am not bemused or fascinated by the things that are wrong. I merely accept them as part of living. But you have always pointed out to me the things that are right and good and noble. And because you have always wanted me to aim for them, that is what I intend to do.”

The Earl put his arms around her and held her very close to him.

“Thank you for saying that to me, my sweet,” he said. “It makes me very happy. I have often been afraid that your mother was reproaching me because I had not let you be brought up by your grandmother.”

“Mama would have understood that I had to be with you,” Imeldra said. “And because I know what you meant to each other, I also know exactly what I want to find in a husband.”

Because the Earl could find no words to answer her, he merely kissed her.

Then he said,

“If things go wrong, if you are in trouble, you have only to send for me and you know I will come to you from the very ends of the Earth.”

“Just as I will come to you, Papa, if you ever want me.”

Her father kissed her again and, as if there was nothing more they could add to what they had already said to each other and with their arms linked they walked up the great staircase to where they were sleeping in bedrooms adjacent to each other.

The Earl kissed her again on both cheeks and on her forehead.

Then without saying anything he went from her bedroom and closed the door.

For a moment Imeldra thought that she must throw herself down on the bed and let the tears that were pricking her eyes become a tempest of weeping,

Instead she went down on her knees to pray to her mother to protect her father and keep him from coming to any harm.

It was a long time before Imeldra went to sleep and when she woke up the next morning it was to hear movements in the passage and to know that her father was leaving.

It was then that once again the misery of being without him seeped over her and it was only thanks to years of exerting self-control that she prevented herself from rushing out and holding onto him and begging him to take her with him.

Then she recalled that it was just the sort of thing that the women who had loved him and with whom he had grown bored would have done and she refused to lower herself to be like them.

Instead she put her hands over her ears and stopped herself from hearing him go.

Only when she was quite certain that he had driven away in his smart phaeton drawn by four horses did she take her hands away and lie back against the pillows, feeling as if she was exhausted by the conflict seething within her.

Finding it impossible to stay in bed, she climbed out and dressed without ringing for the housemaid and went downstairs.

Everything in the house looked so beautiful and so attractive that she could not bear the thought of it being left empty and unloved.

She knew that, as soon as she had left the house, the Holland covers would be put over the furniture, the flowers thrown out and the windows shuttered and barred.

The garden would come into full bloom with no one to appreciate it or enjoy its beauty.

She did not walk into the salon where she had sat with her father last night, because for the moment to remember the things they had said to each other then was upsetting, but into the library.

She had only just reached it when Mr. Dutton, her father’s secretary, who he had said would manage the house when they had left, followed her.

“Good morning, my Lady,” he said. “I was wondering at what time you wish the carriage brought round. Your father has given me a letter to her Ladyship to explain your unexpected arrival.”

Imeldra hesitated for a moment.

“Shall I think about it after breakfast, Mr. Dutton? As I am sure you are aware, I have no wish to arrive before I have to.”

She had known Mr. Dutton since she was a child and now his kind middle-aged face was filled with sympathy and an expression that told her that he knew how she was feeling.

“There’s no hurry, my Lady,” he said. “And while you are here I suggest you have a look round and see if there is anything you wish to take with you.”

“Thank you, Mr. Dutton.”

He left her as if he sensed that she wished to be alone and after spending a little time in the library she walked to the breakfast room where the old butler, who had been at Kingsclere with her mother, was waiting to serve her.

He bowed respectfully and since her father was not present he arranged the newspapers, which had just arrived, on a silver stand in front of her plate so that she could read while she was eating.

Because she thought it would please him she glanced at The Morning Post while playing with the food she had chosen from half-a-dozen silver entrée dishes engraved with the family Crest.

Inevitably she remembered how when she and her father were in France they had been quite content with a French breakfast of croissants and coffee. But in England to have refused the innumerable dishes that had been cooked by the chef would most certainly have upset the household.

As her father had always said laughingly,

“When in Rome we must do as the Romans do.”

The butler moved discreetly from the room and Imeldra, feeling as if food would choke her, pushed aside her plate and picked up the newspaper.

The headlines, as she had expected, told her that there had been innumerable speeches in Parliament for and against the Reform Bill.

Then she looked further down the page and an item caught her eye and she read it with interest,

“The Marquis of Marizon has engaged Mr. William Gladwin to rebuild the orangery at Marizon his country seat, which was recently destroyed by fire.

Mr. Gladwin, who is an expert on orangeries, is, it is understood, following the famous Regency architect, Mr. Humphrey Repton, who was the first builder to include top-lighting in conservatories and glasshouses. He has also in many mansions incorporated the orangery, or the winter garden, with the house rather than make it a separate building.”

Imeldra read the report twice.

She knew William Gladwin because for three years he had worked at Kingsclere to add the orangery that for some unknown reason had never been erected before, to the house that had existed since the sixteenth century.

When William Gladwin had finished, it was a most impressive sight and, in Imeldra’s opinion, very beautiful.

She had read of how Humphrey Repton had come to believe that light was important for plants and had introduced top-lighting, instead of providing light only through the sides of the buildings.

“I wish we had one here, Papa,” Imeldra had said to her father.

“I am quite content with the building as it is,” he replied, “and whatever people may say, not only our orange trees but also the orchids and azaleas and all those other unusual plants we brought from Africa are flourishing extremely well.”

“Yes, they are,” Imeldra agreed, “so why should we be envious of anybody?”

“I never am,” the Earl had replied and she knew that it was the truth.

‘William Gladwin,’ she said to herself now. ‘He was such a kind man.’

She remembered the hours when she used to sit watching him work and supervising the bricklayers, then the carpenters and the glaziers, checking everything they did with his plans.

It suddenly struck her that the Marquis of Marizon lived not very far away.

She had never met him because her father had once said that he was a very serious young man who did not approve either of him or, as he described it, of the ‘goings on of the King’.

Imeldra had been too young at the time to understand what her father had meant by that.

She was quite certain, however, that the Marquis must be a bore if he did not approve of her father and therefore dismissed him from her mind,

Now she thought perhaps she had missed something not as regards the Marquis but in not seeing Marizon.

She was well aware that it was reputed to be one of the finest houses in the country and often there were references in the newspapers and magazines to the pictures in the Gallery at Marizon and the furniture and silver.

‘I ought to have persuaded Papa to invite the Marquis here,’ she thought now.

She then remembered with a little pang of her heart that, when her father married Lady Bullington, she would be the hostess at Kingsclere and not herself.

It was then for the first time that it swept over her what it would mean to have her father married and a woman in the place of her mother. And the realisation made her angry.

‘How dare any woman aspire to being Papa’s wife?’ she asked herself and knew that a good number of women had done just that, but had then failed in their aspirations while Lady Bullington had succeeded.

The anger that now seemed to invade her whole body made her feel suddenly defiant and rebellious.

Because she loved her father so deeply, she had agreed to everything that he had said last night, in fact agreeing with him without making any protest.

Now she thought that it was intolerable, first that he should leave her, secondly that she should have to go to her grandmother’s and thirdly that in the future her place in her father’s life would be taken over by his wife who would then by right have priority in everything that concerned her home.

“I cannot bear it!” she almost screamed aloud.

Then, as she looked down at the newspaper that lay on the table, a daring plan came into her mind.

It took her a minute or two to think it out and, when she had done so, there was a light in her eyes that her father would have recognised and understood.

She lifted her chin in a way that, although she did not realise it, was a clear imitation of him.

‘I will do it!’ she said to herself. ‘It will be quite easy as there is nobody to stop me.’