Love is the Enemy
Barbara Cartland Ebooks Ltd
This edition © 2017
Copyright Cartland Promotions 1953
eBook conversion by M-Y Books
Barbara Cartland, who sadly died in May 2000 at the grand age of ninety eight, remains one of the world’s most famous romantic novelists. With worldwide sales of over one billion, her outstanding 723 books have been translated into thirty six different languages, to be enjoyed by readers of romance globally.
Writing her first book ‘Jigsaw’ at the age of 21, Barbara became an immediate bestseller. Building upon this initial success, she wrote continuously throughout her life, producing bestsellers for an astonishing 76 years. In addition to Barbara Cartland’s legion of fans in the UK and across Europe, her books have always been immensely popular in the USA. In 1976 she achieved the unprecedented feat of having books at numbers 1 & 2 in the prestigious B. Dalton Bookseller bestsellers list.
Although she is often referred to as the ‘Queen of Romance’, Barbara Cartland also wrote several historical biographies, six autobiographies and numerous theatrical plays as well as books on life, love, health and cookery. Becoming one of Britain’s most popular media personalities and dressed in her trademark pink, Barbara spoke on radio and television about social and political issues, as well as making many public appearances.
In 1991 she became a Dame of the Order of the British Empire for her contribution to literature and her work for humanitarian and charitable causes.
Known for her glamour, style, and vitality Barbara Cartland became a legend in her own lifetime. Best remembered for her wonderful romantic novels and loved by millions of readers worldwide, her books remain treasured for their heroic heroes, plucky heroines and traditional values. But above all, it was Barbara Cartland’s overriding belief in the positive power of love to help, heal and improve the quality of life for everyone that made her truly unique.
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Queen Victoria rose and gave her hand to the Prince Consort.
Sir Rupert Wroth stifled a yawn. It had been a tedious evening, as was to be expected at Buckingham Palace. He wondered how anyone could enjoy the solemnity of these long-drawn-out Ceremonials and thought that perhaps Her Majesty was the only person present who found the stiff formality entertaining.
The Queen was smiling as she began the slow dignified promenade through the Throne room. There was a fluster and a rustle of silk, satin, tarlatan and tulle as the ladies swept to the ground in low obeisant curtseys. There was the sparkle of Orders and Decorations as masculine heads were bowed.
It would soon be over now, Sir Rupert thought and he felt a sudden craving for a breath of fresh air after this over-heated stifling atmosphere of starched pomposity.
But Her Majesty was not to be hurried. She stopped to speak with the Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, and now she was smiling kindly on Lord Grey, the Secretary of State for War. The Prince Consort, severe and unsmiling, made an observation to Mr. Greville, which would undoubtedly be reported unflatteringly in his famous diary.
At last the Royal procession was on the move again and Sir Rupert was ready to bow and then realised somewhat to his surprise that the Queen was about to speak to him.
He looked down at her. It was extraordinary how, tiny though she was, she contrived to exude such an aura of regal dignity. It was impossible not to be in awe of her. Tonight she was smiling gaily, her eyes were bright and it was obvious that she had enjoyed the evening, but at other times that small mouth could be set in a hard line of affronted obstinacy and her eyes become steely with anger.
“It is nice to see you here, Sir Rupert,” Her Majesty said in her clear well-modulated voice, which always seemed to be a tone lower than one expected in such a diminutive person.
“I thank you, ma’am,” Sir Rupert murmured.
“But when you come again,” the Queen continued, “we shall be glad to welcome at your side – a wife.”
Sir Rupert had no reply ready.
He was so astonished that for a moment he thought he could not have heard aright and then before he could even bow an acknowledgement of the somewhat obscure honour that was being accorded him, Her Majesty had passed on.
The rippling wave of curtseying women and bowing men continued on down the room.
Sir Rupert stood very still. Indeed he felt for a moment as if his brain was paralysed, as if he could not understand or take in the full import of what had been said to him.
Then, as the doors were flung open by the red-liveried, gilt-laced flunkeys and the Royal procession with its attendant dignitaries and fluttering Ladies-in-Waiting disappeared from view, a murmur of voices restored his scattered senses.
The murmur grew louder and the restraint that had held the gathering silent for three hours vanished like a mist before the sun.
Suddenly Sir Rupert knew that he must get away and that he must escape before those around him began to question him. It would be only a matter of seconds before someone would be bold enough to ask him what the Queen meant.
Was he already betrothed? What were his matrimonial plans? Who was the fortunate lady?
They were questions that he had no intention of answering and, as he turned towards the door, there was an expression on his face that made those who were already approaching him shrink back abashed.
He strode quickly from the Throne room, passing through the Green Drawing Room where refreshments were being served and down the wide crimson-carpeted stairs where the Yeomen of the Guard were on duty.
Once or twice his name was called, a hand touched his arm and a friend attempted to impede his progress, yet he was blind and indifferent to everything save his own urgent desire to escape, to reach the fresh air he had craved so urgently but a short while ago and which had now become an absolute necessity.
At the door of The Palace he dismissed his carriage, which was waiting for him, and walked quickly past the Guard of Honour mounted in The Palace yard. Quite oblivious in his preoccupation to the big crowds waiting outside the gates he strode with long strides down The Mall.
In his Court dress, knee breeches and silk stockings, his purple-lined cloak blown back by the wind to reveal the shining decorations on his breast, he was obviously a person of distinction and as such of interest to those who had waited long hours for a glimpse of Her Majesty’s guests.
But it was not his clothes that made people stare at Sir Rupert Wroth. There were one or two ribald remarks as he passed, but there were many others that were invariably complimentary, softly spoken amongst the women who watched him hurry by.
It would have been strange if they had not admired him. He was handsome enough in all conscience, tall and broad-shouldered, his clear-cut features admirably set off by his raven dark hair. There were few people who, meeting Rupert Wroth for the first time, were not impressed by his looks.
But although nature might have intended him to be surpassingly and pleasingly handsome, the expression on his face was of his own making. Brooding and cynical there was a coldness and proud disdain in his eyes that chilled the most genial gesture of friendship.
There was too something aggressively arrogant in the way he held himself, in the way he asserted his opinion or contradicted an opponent and there was a bitter twist to his lips that would have been more fitting in a man of middle age than in one who had not yet reached the prime of his manhood.
And yet it was impossible to deny his attraction and one woman in The Mall said to another with a nudge in the ribs,
“That’s the sort of man I’d like to lie with, dearie, a man who is a man and looks it! Though something’s upset his Lordship for sure. There’s a touch of the Devil in his face right enough.”
She was not far wrong, for as Sir Rupert walked away into the darkness he was seething with a fury beyond anything he had ever experienced. Those who had stood beside him in the Throne room at Buckingham Palace might wonder what the Queen had meant by her remark, but he had no need to wonder.
He knew that Her Majesty was giving him both a warning and a command.
It had been so unexpected, something that he had not anticipated might happen in his cautious calculations, yet now that it had occurred he knew that it had been absurd to think that there would not have been those ready to spy on his private life.
There was little the Queen did not know. She had her own method of learning the most hidden secrets about people she was concerned with. And yet he had imagined himself too clever to be found out. Only to be publicly disillusioned. More than that, he knew that he had received a direct instruction that he dare not disobey.
Fool to have thought for one moment that his love affair with Clementine would pass unnoticed and not reach the ears of Court circles!
He wondered how long the Queen had known about it – a month, two, three or perhaps even when it had started six months ago? No, not as long as that, for it was in January that Lord John Russell had spoken to him and said frankly that when Lord Palmerston resigned from the Foreign Office he would be offered the appointment.
Sir Rupert had been overwhelmed. He had planned for it and worked for it, but he had not expected the realisation of his most aspiring ambition to come so soon. His political success had already been phenomenal, there was no doubt about that. From the moment he had entered the House of Commons he had been outstanding, first as a back bencher and then as an Undersecretary.
He was only twenty-seven when he had been sent on a mission to the Colonies to represent Her Majesty’s Government. The Foreign Secretary had been ill and there was no one else in a ministerial capacity at that moment to take his place. Rupert Wroth had his chance of showing his capabilities and he had not failed those who had trusted him. He had in fact been brilliantly successful, so successful indeed that Her Majesty had been pleased to Knight him for it and overnight he had become the most promising young man in the House of Commons.
The aptitude for Diplomacy that he had shown during his mission had not been forgotten. The Prime Minister had singled him out again and again for special attention and soon after the New Year of 1850 had been heralded with its usual train of international incidents, the threat of War and a dozen Diplomatic crises, Lord John Russell had sent for Sir Rupert and told him frankly what was in his mind.
He intended, he said, to remove Lord Palmerston from the Foreign Office. The Queen, who disliked the Foreign Secretary and had repeatedly complained of his behaviour not only to Lord Palmerston himself but also to Lord John, must, the Prime Minister thought, at long last be conciliated.
“I have told Lord Palmerston so often,” the Prime Minister told Sir Rupert, “that Her Majesty’s uneasiness is not always groundless, but he pays no heed.”
He went on to speak of the difficulties of foreign relations at such a crucial time in British history and Sir Rupert listened attentively, forgetting for once to look aggressive. But his hopes, like the Queen’s, of being rid of Lord Palmerston were to receive a severe setback.
The Prime Minister’s intention of replacing the Foreign Secretary was defeated partly by the attacks made on the foreign policy of the Government by the Opposition and also by Lord Palmerston’s vindication of it in the House. It was a vindication that put him on a pedestal of popularity. Sir Rupert, listening from a backbench, knew that he would have to wait and wait patiently, at least to all outward appearances, for office.
Well aware that time was on his side he was not unduly perturbed by this, but while he waited he amused himself or rather as usual suffered a woman to amuse him.
His love affairs were already the subject of much talk and speculation and to choose Lady Clementine Talmadge at this particular moment had been a mistake.
To begin with she was a notorious beauty and as such was very much in the public eye.
Secondly she had a reputation for being indiscreet, which was bound to bring upon her head the censure of the strait-laced and easily shocked young Queen Victoria.
Lady Clementine had spent the summer in the country and Sir Rupert had no idea how what happened in the rural North had so speedily come to the ears of those who were in London or Windsor. He had apparently underestimated for perhaps the first time in his life both his opponents and his friends.
Striding now towards St. James’s Street, he felt the first heat of his anger ebb away from him and the cool calculation of his brain taking in the situation. He was well aware that behind him those who would be leaving The Palace would be chattering about what the Queen had said to him.
There would be gossip of a hidden engagement, perhaps even of a secret marriage. Rumours of every fantastic sort would be rife before the morning, but only he and the Prime Minister would understand exactly what the Queen had said so clearly and unmistakably.
As plainly as if she had put it into words, Sir Rupert thought, she had told him that she would tolerate no indiscretions in his private life if he was to become Foreign Minister in place of Lord Palmerston. What was more his present entanglement with a married woman had gone far enough. Before he came to Court again he must produce a wife acceptable to Society, a bride worthy of becoming the wife of Her Majesty’s Foreign Secretary.
The calm insolence of it took his breath away and yet he could not help but admire the Queen’s methods, which were invariably direct. Indeed there was seldom any doubt left in the minds of those who listened to what Her Majesty required of them.
He had laughed often enough in the past when by sheer force of will she had discomfited those who had opposed her. And yet now, when it happened to him, he did not find it in the least humorous.
Sir Rupert stopped walking and saw where his feet had carried him. He found himself standing outside White’s Club. His foot was already on the first step when a faint burst of laughter came to his ears. He had no idea at what the members might be laughing, but it might be at himself. He pulled a watch from his pocket. It was barely ten o’clock. It was too early to go to bed and quite suddenly he decided what he must do.
He must see Clementine and tell her what had occurred. It was unthinkable that she should learn of his predicament from someone else.
The Talmadges were in the country, where they had been the whole of the summer.
Sir Rupert turned away impatiently from the door of the Club. He was tired of London, he would go to the country. He walked across Piccadilly and down Berkeley Square. As he went, a number of beggars and several women of easy virtue tried to attract his attention, but he neither heard nor saw them.
He was making his plans with that clear icy concentration which those who worked with him in the House of Commons knew only too well.
He was well aware that after what had occurred in The Palace this evening he must be careful. If he sought Clementine out too deliberately after what had happened, it would be playing into the hands of those who would be expecting him to do just this very thing and who would undoubtedly report it immediately to the Queen. Besides, being fastidious about such matters, Sir Rupert never, if it was possible, went to the Talmadges’ house. He and Lady Clementine met secretly and disguised as incognitos that they thought were impenetrable, when they were in London or in the glades and forests surrounding Wroth, where they were quite certain that no one would observe them.
But apparently they had been wrong in imagining themselves unseen and Sir Rupert knew now as never before that they must be careful and circumspect.
He would go at once to Wroth, he decided. There would be nothing wrong in that and the fact that the Talmadges’ estates matched with his could not be expected to deter him from returning to his own home.
Once there he must contrive in some clever unobvious way to see Clementine at once. If he left tonight, he should be at Wroth before breakfast and he could then make his plans.
He entered his house in Berkeley Square, handed his cape, hat and cane to the butler and in a calm unhurried voice gave orders for a carriage to be prepared immediately for the journey.
“I heard at The Palace this evening,” he added, “from an old friend of the family that my grandmother is far from well. I expect she has forbidden anyone to tell me of the deterioration in her health, thinking that I should be busy at the House of Commons, but naturally I shall leave for Wroth at once.”
“Very good, Sir Rupert,” the butler replied. “May I venture, sir, to express the hope that it is but a false alarm and that you will find her Ladyship well?”
“I hope so indeed,” Sir Rupert said and leaving the hall he walked into the library.
It was an excuse, he thought, that would serve well to ward off those who enquired the following day as to where he had gone. He walked across the room to a table set between the windows and poured himself a drink. He felt in need of one, yet when his lips touched the wine he knew that he was not thirsty. Instead, his mind was turning over and over again the thought of what lay ahead, marriage to some suitable girl. And where, he wondered, was he to find one?
For his very varied experience of lovely women had not brought to his notice many marriageable jeunes filles.
Sir Rupert gave a sigh and put down his wineglass. Perhaps Clementine would help him to find one, unless she was foolish enough to be jealous and inclined to advise him to flout the Queen’s instructions. But no, he was certain that she would not be as stupid as that. She knew as well as he did what lay at stake, the post of Foreign Secretary at the age of thirty-three. To find a parallel one would have to quote Pitt who had become Chancellor of the Exchequer when he was ten years younger.
Sir Rupert took up his glass again and drank off the wine before he turned to leave the room. As he did so, his eyes caught sight of the row of invitations propped on the mantelpiece beneath the great Chippendale mirror. There were dozens of them, but one in particular, a large white card, held his attention.
“The Earl and Countess of Cardon – At Home,” he read, “on July 16th at 3 o’clock at Rowanfield Manor, Rowan.”
Sir Rupert stared at it for some moments.
“Tomorrow at 3 o’clock,” he said aloud, “and Clementine will be there.”
Yes, Lady Clementine Talmadge would be there, as would most of the County, and it would be easy to meet each other quite casually and openly.
Sir Rupert Wroth left the library with the invitation card in his hand.
*
The drive to Rowanfield Manor was crowded with carriages of all sorts, sizes and designs, but the horses that drew them were almost uniformly finely bred. Tossing their well-combed manes and with their silver-crested harnesses jingling, they drew up when their turn came under the pillared portico of the mellow red-brick house where several liveried flunkeys with powdered hair were in attendance.
Nerina Graye, looking out of the mud-splashed unpolished window of the Hackney carriage which she had hired from the Railway Station, gave a little gasp at the sight of the other vehicles and then shrank back into the corner of the ancient musty-smelling cab with an expression of dismay on her face.
She had forgotten that it was the day of the garden party, indeed why should she have remembered it as she had not intended to be there?
Now she knew full well that she could not have returned to Rowanfield Manor on a more unfortunate day.
By the evening everyone would be tired and irritable. Her return, unheralded and unexpected, would be bad enough on any occasion, but today of all days it would be catastrophic! On an impulse she reached up and opened the tiny communicating window between herself and the driver.
“Cabby!” she called, “Cabby! Set me down at the back door please.”
He cupped his ear with dirty fingers swollen with arthritis.
“The back door, did you say? Very good, miss.”
Nerina sat down on the seat and watched a smart dogcart with yellow and black wheels flash by them. It was driven by a young gentleman with large well-curled side-whiskers and she recognised him for one of the most eligible bachelors in the County.
Everybody would be here today, she thought miserably, and she would be the only uninvited guest and indeed the most unwelcome one.
“I could not help it, I had to come away. There was nothing else for me to do.”
She said the words fiercely out loud to herself and, as though the very sound of them gave her the reassurance she was needing, her chin went up a little higher and her air of dismay and dejection was replaced by a more characteristic expression of defiance. And yet her hands were cold and she knew that inside herself she was frightened.
Her aunt had been angry the last time she had returned home, but Nerina was not afraid of her Aunt Anne. It was her uncle who made her tremble. She dreaded hearing his bullying voice raised to a shout as he forced her to explain her actions. She dreaded the heckling tones he would use as he tore her explanations to ribbons, deriding her fears and told her, as he had told her so often before, that she had to earn her own living and the sooner she stopped being fastidious and fanciful the better.
How she loathed those scoldings and how she shrank, although she pretended to herself she did not, from his anger, from his bullying and his jeering laughter at her efforts to preserve her chastity!
She remembered the last time when she had been forced to tell him why she had left the position of Governess to the two children of a middle-aged widower. She remembered how her uncle had insisted on every detail of the amorous advances made to her by her employer, and when, shamed and humiliated by what she had to recount, she had eventually subsided into an embarrassed silence, he had laughed mockingly and told her that she was making a mountain out of a molehill and that most of what she had resented had been nothing but the imaginings of her own love-sick mind.
This time it would be worse, much worse and, although she might resolve now to tell him as little as possible, she knew that when the moment came he would force admissions from her that she never intended to make. She knew, as she had known ever since she was a child, that he took an obscene pleasure in humiliating her. He had hated her ever since she had grown old enough to wince away from the very unpaternal kisses he had given her at bedtime.
He had hated her since she had run sobbing from his library one wet Saturday afternoon and he had hated her too ever since she had grown too old for him to be able to beat her, because he had a bestial pleasure from doing so.
Yet he was her uncle, her Guardian and her only relative. She wondered sometimes whether it was better to endure the humiliations and miseries that she encountered in the positions she had found as a Governess or wiser to return home and endure others almost as bad under the roof of her uncle.
The last time she left Rowanfield Manor she had told herself that she would stay away whatever she had to suffer, yet here she was, returning in three months. It had been impossible, utterly impossible to remain in the same house as the Marquis of Droxburgh.
She could see now his cruel dissolute eyes fixed on her face, his hands reached out towards her and his tongue wetting his thin lips. He had been evil beyond anything she had imagined possible in the whole world and she had stood it for three months, three whole months until she had known that breaking point had come and she could go on no longer.
She had not slept for weeks, she had been too frightened to do so, and all through the day when she was supposed to be teaching her charge in the schoolroom she was listening for that soft footfall outside the door. No, she could go on no longer. Flesh and blood could not stand it any further. Better to brave Uncle Herbert’s anger than that, better to acknowledge herself defeated than to collapse where she was.
Another carriage passed by the window, this time an open Victoria. Nerina had a glimpse of a pretty face framed with a bonnet trimmed with roses. There was a parasol to match of flounced lace caught with rosebuds and the girl, for she looked nothing more, was escorted by a gentleman with a curly brimmed top hat and a huge carnation buttonhole.
There was something elegant and romantic about the couple. As they flashed out of sight, Nerina looked instinctively down at her own dress. It was creased and dirty from the railway train. She had been travelling since dawn and she knew that her face and her hair were smutty and that she looked generally dishevelled and untidy. She smoothed her dress impatiently and realised that there was little she could do to improve it.
Faded and of a shape which had been fashionable two or three years ago, it was a bright blue that Nerina had always known was unbecoming to her. But invariably she had to wear clothes that were like that, because they were her cousin Elizabeth’s cast-offs.
Lady Elizabeth Graye was fair-haired and blue-eyed and looked her best in shades of sky blue or blush-pink. On Elizabeth such colours were perfect, on Nerina they were disastrous.
The cousins were about the same height, but there the resemblance ended. Nerina had inherited the flaming red hair and mysterious green eyes that had made her mother an acclaimed beauty wherever she went. Indeed it was that particular combination coupled with a magnolia-white skin that had made the penniless younger brother of the Earl of Cardon run away, while he was still at Oxford, with a concert singer.
That they had been happy had abated not one iota the family’s wrath and indignation and, when they were drowned while yachting off the coast of Devon eleven years later, everyone said that it was exactly what they had expected to happen all along.
Nerina had been brought to Rowanfield Manor to be brought up with her cousin Elizabeth. They were the same age and it should have been of advantage to both children to have companionship, but, as Nerina was to learn later, Lord Cardon had loathed his younger brother and was irritated almost unbearably by any remembrance of him.
Perhaps he had grudged him his happiness, perhaps it was a more obscure emotion than that based on some twist and turn of their childhood relationship. Nerina was never to know what it was, except that as she grew older she sometimes suspected that her uncle had been repulsed by her mother and that he placated his dignity by punishing her for any humiliation he had suffered.
But whatever the reason, she only knew that from the moment she came to Rowanfield Manor she was made to feel apologetic for being alive. Everything she did was criticised and it was almost impossible for her to do anything right. But as she grew to maturity she became aware that at times her uncle’s interest in her was obscurely horrible. She shrank away from him and he punished her for it swiftly and relentlessly.
She could remember all too vividly her shame at his beatings, realising subconsciously from the very first that her mental humiliation was more intolerable than the physical pain she suffered.
The cab drew up at the back door. There was no one about and Nerina knew that the servants would all be busy on the lawns and in the front of the house. They were invariably short-staffed and on occasions like this Lord Cardon’s meanness or penury would make him expect the work of two people from every one employed.
“If you will put my trunk in the yard,” Nerina told the cabman, “I will have it taken in later.”
With asthmatical wheezings and chokings and the creaking of ancient bones the cabman lifted the box from his cab onto the flagged stones of the back yard. It was not heavy, but he was an old man and he wiped the sweat from his brow when he had finished.
Impulsively Nerina added the last sixpence in her purse to the money she had ready for him in her hand. He glanced at the sum suspiciously and then seeing that she had tipped him generously, he raised a finger to his forelock.
“Thank you, miss, thank you kindly.”
He climbed into the box of his cab, whipped up the tired underfed horse and turned down the drive. Nerina watched him go. She put off the moment when she must enter the house until the cab was almost out of sight and then she turned sharply and walked swiftly down the stone passage that led past the kitchen and the servants’ quarters towards the green baize door that divided it from the other part of the house.
There was no one about, but in the distance she could hear the chatter of many voices and the strains of music from a string band. It took her but a few minutes to hurry up the back stairs to the second floor and reach the big low bedroom she had shared with her cousin Elizabeth.
The room was empty, but Elizabeth’s things lay scattered on the bed and over the dressing table. The muslin gown she must have worn that morning, her stockings, frilled petticoat and hair-ribbons, a dirty handkerchief, lace mittens and a lawn chemise were all thrown down in untidy disarray, as if Elizabeth had waited until the last moment to change and her maid had had no time to tidy up before being required to help in other parts of the house.
It was unlike Elizabeth to be untidy or unpunctual, Nerina thought with a little frown and, picking up one of her ribbons from the floor, she wound it over her fingers, smoothing away its creases. As she did so she caught sight of herself in the mirror on the dressing table and made a grimace in dismay. She had no idea that she could look so dirty.
She had only been able to afford the cheapest seat in the train in an unclosed carriage. The smoke from the engine had been terrible and the wind had blown her hair about until she looked very unlike a prim and respectable Governess.
Nerina pulled her bonnet from her head. Her hair fell in heavy curls on either side of her face, framing it with a vivid fire that seemed to catch the sunlight and reflect it back again. The lashes that framed her green eyes were naturally dark and curly, but Nerina, looking at her own reflection, did not see any beauty in them or in the aristocratic perfection of her tiny tip-tilted nose. She saw only the superficial dirt that defaced her white skin and the fear that made her lips quiver however hard she pressed them together.
“I will not be frightened, I will not,” she said out loud and suddenly her hands were clenched and she flung back her head as if she would free it from invisible shackles. “I am not afraid, I am not. I hate men, I hate all of them! They are beasts and devils and, if I could, I would make them all suffer for what has happened to me!”
She stood for a moment tense and stiff, her nails digging into the soft flesh of her palms and her eyes closed with the almost unbearable intensity of her feelings. Then she ran across the room to bury her face in the cool clean water of the wash basin.
It took her some time to wash and change, and when at length she was ready, having borrowed a clean muslin gown of her cousin’s, she felt calmer and more courageous.
She decided that she would go down and brave out her arrival in front of the other guests. Perhaps if her uncle got over the first shock of seeing her while other people were there it might make it much easier for her later on when she had to give him an explanation as to why she had returned.
Slowly and purposefully Nerina walked along the passage to the grand staircase. Of exquisitely wrought ironwork it had been added to the house at a later period and several rooms on all three floors had been removed to accommodate it. As she reached the first floor landing, she heard another carriage arrive at the front door and a moment later saw a man step into the hall. She stood still for a moment, watching his arrival.
He was tall and dark and, as he took his polished top hat from his raven dark hair, Nerina thought that he was one of the most distinguished-looking men she had ever seen.
She watched him cross the hall, following a footman through the drawing room onto the terrace where she knew that her uncle and aunt would be receiving the guests.
As he went, he glanced up at her as if inadvertently she had attracted his attention. For a moment she saw him full face and was surprised at his expression. It was almost as if anger smouldered behind his eyes and in the sharply etched line of his lips. There was contempt and disdain, Nerina thought, in the glance he gave her and an arrogance beyond all bearing in the way he slowly turned his head away again.
‘Another bad-tempered man,’ Nerina thought and knew that she hated him as she hated all others of his sex.
They were all the same, she thought, as she descended the stairs, sanctimonious hypocrites when they appeared in public amongst their own class and all too self-revealing when it came to their relationships with other women and particularly unprotected Governesses like herself who had to earn their own living through no fault of their own.
Nerina felt a sudden desire to hurt someone as she had been hurt. She thought how she would like to wound or maim a man such as had just passed through the hall. To know him to be in subjection to her, to know that he was mortified or abased would, she thought, be a pleasure and a satisfaction beyond any she had ever experienced. Yet even while she thought of such things she laughed at her own imagination.
A man was always the Master and always the conqueror. What chance had a woman against their born superiority and their natural suzerainty?
Nerina felt suddenly helpless and knew that she could not face her uncle and aunt standing on the terrace expecting to greet another County notability, their hands instinctively outstretched before they realised who she was.
Swiftly she crossed the hall and opened the door of the morning room. Through the room, which was seldom used, was a conservatory with a door at the far end of it leading into the garden. No one noticed Nerina as she let herself out of the conservatory and, crossing a small part of the flower garden, she vanished behind the rhododendron bushes that bordered the lawns.
Keeping out of sight of the crowds, Nerina made her way by small unfrequented grass paths behind the bushes until she had partially encircled the garden and was facing the house from the other side of the lawns.
The warm red brick of Rowanfield Manor, which had been built at the time of Queen Anne, made a perfect background for Lord and Lady Cardon’s guests. In their big hooped skirts the women themselves looked like inverted flowers as they moved gracefully amongst the rose beds or stood listening to the band which, wearing Hussar uniforms ostentatiously ornamented with gold lace, played spirited tunes from the operas.
There was a big marquee on one side of the garden and a croquet tournament in process on the other. Nerina watched for a moment from the bushes and then, afraid of being seen, slipped away towards a small building that lay just ahead of her. A summerhouse, it had been built by Lord Cardon’s father who had quite without justification fancied himself as an architect. The summerhouse, which had occupied his fancy when he was nearly eighty, was an elaborate edifice that reminded one a little of a Japanese Pagoda with a Grecian foundation, but which had all the damp discomfort of a religious grotto.
The mixture was not surprising for the Earl changed his mind several times in the execution of his plans and the local contractor and the estate carpenter had many wordy rows as to how his Lordship’s wishes should best be achieved. The resulting building, which when completed was extremely ugly, had fortunately been mellowed by time and a climbing honeysuckle that obscured the more crude outlines and gave the whole edifice a somewhat tipsy rusticity quite out of keeping with its builders’ intentions.
But whatever its appearance, the summerhouse had been to Elizabeth and Nerina a source of unending joy, for they had discovered that in lowering the roof to suit another of the ancient Earl’s requirements, a small attic had been inadvertently contrived. This was just large enough for the children to sit in upright and they had made it their secret hiding place, having found that it was easy to effect an entrance by a series of footholds in the wooden panels that the walls of the summerhouse had finally been covered with.
It was here they had told each other their innermost secrets. It was here they had kept their most treasured possessions and it was here they had feasted on food stolen from the larder or given to them by an indulgent cook. It took Nerina but a few seconds now to climb up the back of the summerhouse, to open the door that gave access to the low attic and to crawl through it, closing the door behind her.
The attic was, to her surprise, cleaner than she had expected. To its furnishings of dolls’ tea sets, tattered books and a heap of jam jars, someone had recently added a satin-covered cushion that Nerina had never seen before. She was surprised at its appearance, but without too much speculation as to how it had come there she used it to sit on and look out of the window.
The window had been made many years earlier when she and Elizabeth had knocked a hole in the patterned mosaic of polished wood. The honeysuckle obscured the crime and by moving some of its bugled blossom Nerina now had a panoramic view of the whole garden.
In the distance she could see her uncle and aunt standing on the terrace, a party of guests filing past them and then descending the wide grey stone steps onto the lawn. Outside the marquee Elizabeth in her new gown of frilled pink organdie was entertaining two young men. Even at this distance Nerina could see that she was nervous and her mittened hands were clasping and unclasping the handle of her sunshade.
Nerina could recognise a large number of people walking about the grounds. She could see the Lord Lieutenant of the County, pompous and loud-voiced, his face purple with the heat, his eyes searching the crowds as if he was concerned about missing someone more important than the person he was talking to.
She watched the Vicar of Rowan, looking rather like a crushed black beetle as he cringed before the Bishop of the Diocese, magnificent in purple, the jewelled Cross on his fat stomach catching and reflecting the rays of the sun.
Settling herself more comfortably on the cushion and cupping her face in her hands, Nerina watched the people with enjoyment. It was nice to see and not be seen and it was pleasant to know that it was some hours now before she need face her uncle.
It was then she became aware that two people had detached themselves from the little crowd watching the croquet tournament and were walking straight towards the summerhouse.
She recognised the woman at once. Elizabeth had admired Lady Clementine Talmadge for years, but Nerina had always felt vaguely antagonistic to her, even though she always went out of her way to be charming to the ‘dear children’ as she called them.
Lady Clementine was looking ravishing this afternoon in a crinoline of pale yellow organdie over watered silk. Yellow feathers trimmed her bonnet and her shoulders were draped with a scarf of crystallised gauze.
Her dark hair framed her oval face with its long slanting eyes. There was something sensual about her that was irresistible and her very femininity was a challenge. Even to Nerina her beauty seemed almost deliberately provocative. It was impossible not to be aware of her small swelling breasts beneath the tight-boned bodice of her gown and the cumbersome hoops of the crinoline succeeded on Lady Clementine in being neither modest nor a womanly protection.
There was something primitive and feline in the way she moved and in every breath she drew. She was as uncivilised beneath the polished surface of her environment as a woman of the jungle. She was the daughter of a Duke, the respected wife of a Nobleman, a person of consequence in the County, but the look she gave the man who walked beside her now was frankly and unashamedly rapacious.
Nerina, watching Lady Clementine, had not, until she intercepted that strange sidelong glance which she did not entirely understand, noticed her escort. Then, as they reached the door of the summerhouse, she saw that it was the man who had crossed the hall when she was about to descend the stairs, the dark man with burning hatred in his eyes and an expression of contempt and disdain.
She listened to their footsteps crossing the wooden floor beneath her and then she heard Lady Clementine say,
“But, Rupert, this is such a surprise. I had no idea that I should see you here today.”
“I left London last night,” Sir Rupert replied. “I had to see you immediately, something has happened.”
“What is it, Rupert?”
There was a note of alarm in Lady Clementine’s voice.
“You look strange and unlike yourself.”
“There is every reason for me to look strange,” Sir Rupert replied. “Clementine, I have to find myself a wife immediately.”
Lady Clementine gave a little cry,
“Rupert! What can you mean?”
“What I say. I have to get married and quickly.”
“But why? I cannot understand. Rupert, for goodness sake explain yourself.”
“It is the Queen’s command,” Sir Rupert replied and his voice was grim. “Her Majesty has obviously been informed that we have been behaving, if not improperly, at least without propriety.”
“Her Majesty has been informed,” Lady Clementine repeated. “Then – then – there is only one person who can have done it – my mother-in-law. She has been spying on us. I feel certain of it. There has been something in the way she has looked at me, at the things she has said and yet I was certain that no one suspected.”
“You don’t think that your husband – ?” Sir Rupert began.
“Oh no, not Montagu! He knows nothing. Besides, he is always too drunk to notice anything even if it happened in front of his very nose. But my mother-in-law is different. She has always hated me. She swears Montagu never drank until I married him.”
“And did he?” Sir Rupert enquired.
“How do I know? I was not there,” Lady Clementine replied petulantly.
Sir Rupert laughed. It was a sound without much humour, but nevertheless it was a laugh.
“I am glad I am so amusing,” Lady Clementine said in a sharp tone.
Sir Rupert laughed again.
“No, Clementine, my dear, you are not amusing, but just occasionally your very ingenuousness appeals to my sense of humour. Now don’t look cross because I am teasing you. You are far too beautiful to need any other virtues and least of all that of being amusing.”
“I wish you would not talk like that, Rupert,” Lady Clementine pouted. “You know I don’t understand in the very least what you are trying to say.”
“No, I can see that,” Sir Rupert said. “Let me put it more plainly. You are a very beautiful and seductive woman, Clementine.”
“There, that is what I like to hear,” she smiled, “but, Rupert, this command of the Queen’s, what will it mean?”
“It means,” he replied, “that I have to find myself a wife and speedily. At any moment now the Prime Minister may make up his mind to ask Lord Palmerston for his resignation. There are many people who would be bitterly opposed to my taking his place and, if they had any real argument against it, I doubt if Lord John would be strong enough to support an unpopular fancy.”
“Then you will have to marry,” Lady Clementine said in a low voice. “I declare that I can hardly bear to think of it.”
“I am not exactly enamoured of the idea myself,” Sir Rupert retorted. “Besides what do I know of these puny misses? To tell the truth, I do not number even one amongst my acquaintances.”
“That I can well believe,” Lady Clementine said, “and, Rupert, how you will hate Holy Matrimony!”
“Well, I suppose it was inevitable sooner or later,” Sir Rupert said, “but I would prefer to be older before I have to grow used to respectable domesticity.”
Lady Clementine made a little sound that was neither a laugh nor a sob.
“The Queen means you to settle down. It’s an appalling thought! Shall we ever be able to see each other?”