Never Laugh at Love Read online

  Never Laugh at Love

  Anthea Forthingdale and her sisters Thais, Chloe and Phebe have all been named after famous poems.

  They are all beautiful and, after their father’s death at Waterloo, the girls and their mother, Christobel, are alone and isolated, living in poverty in a small Yorkshire village.

  Struggling for money and appropriate suitors for her daughter, in May 1819 Lady Forthingdale writes to an old friend, the Countess of Sheldon, in London and asks if she will have her Godchild Anthea to stay for the rest of the London Season.

  The Countess is delighted to have Anthea as her guest because otherwise her husband wishes her to leave for the country.

  How Anthea meets the handsome Duke of Axminster in her Godmother’s house, how he appears bored and contemptuous of her when they dance at Almack’s, how Anthea draws a caricature of the Duke with far-reaching and dramatic results and how she learns never to laugh at love, is all told in this exciting romance by Barbara Cartland.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  James Gillray was the first British master draughtsman to make caricature a primary occupation and he became the most ferocious and brilliant caricaturist of his time. He was famous for his political and Social satires, mainly published between 1792 and 1810.

  He was so popular that there were queues outside Miss Hannah Humphrey’s print shop, whose shop was first at 227 Strand, then in New Bond Street, then in Old Bond Street and finally in St James's Street, over which he lived, waiting for his latest cartoon. By the end of 1811, when he was still in his middle fifties, he was already half mad, the victim of hard drinking from the terrific pressure of work.

  Thomas Rowlandson became friends with Gillray. He came from the comfortable middle class and had art training in Paris and at the Royal Academy of Arts.

  He began as a painter of serious subjects. However he lost so much money gambling that he turned to satirical cartoons. Although popular, some of Rowlandson’s political cartoons got him into trouble and he was accused by his critics of being “coarse and indelicate”.

  George Cruikshank's early career was renowned for his satirical Social caricatures of English life for popular publications. His work was thought to lack Gillray’s tremendous force and Rowlandson’s zest. He was successful in his early twenties and lived, after fifty years of aggressive teetotalism, until 1878.

  CHAPTER ONE

  1817

  “It has come! It has come!”

  Chloe tore into the schoolroom, where her sisters were sitting at the big table in the centre of the room.

  “It has come!” she repeated.

  “The letter?” Thais questioned.

  “What else?” Chloe answered. “I was certain when I saw the post chaise turn in at the gate that something exciting was going to happen!”

  “How do you know it is a letter from Godmama?” Anthea asked.

  She spoke in a quieter tone, but there was no mistaking the excitement in her eyes.

  In answer Chloe held up the letter, which the girls could all see was written on the most expensive white vellum paper and addressed in flowery, elegant handwriting to their mother.

  “She has answered quickly,” Thais said. “We did not expect to hear from her until at least the end of the week.”

  “I am sure she has said yes,” Chloe remarked. “Oh, Anthea, think how exciting it will be!”

  “Shall I go and tell Mama?” Phebe enquired.

  She was the youngest of the sisters and was only ten. Chloe was sixteen and Thais a year older.

  Phebe had fair hair and blue eyes and was in fact a small replica of Thais and they both looked exactly like their mother.

  “No, you cannot disturb Mama,” Anthea said quickly.

  “Why not?” Chloe enquired.

  “Because she is communicating with the Muse.”

  “Oh, Lord, not again!” Chloe exclaimed. “I suppose we dare not disturb her?”

  She looked enquiringly at Anthea as she spoke, as if she hoped that her oldest sister would contradict her.

  But Anthea said firmly,

  “No, of course not. You know how it upsets Mama when she is writing to have us interrupt her train of thought.”

  Chloe put the letter on the mantelshelf, propped up against the clock.

  She gave a little sigh and added,

  “I think I shall die of curiosity if Mama does not open it soon.”

  “It is only eleven o’clock,” Anthea said. “We shall just have to wait until it is time for luncheon.”

  Thais groaned.

  “Why ever did she have to have a visitation today of all days?”

  “I think she has been thinking over a poem for some time,” Anthea answered. “I know what it means when she gets that faraway look in her eyes.”

  “If only they were good enough, we might sell them,” Chloe remarked.

  “Of course we could not do that,” Anthea retorted sharply.

  “Why not?” Chloe enquired innocently. “They say that Lord Byron has made an absolute fortune out of his poems. I am sure Mama’s are nearly as good.”

  “I am certain she would be extremely shocked at the idea of commercialising her art,” Anthea said. “So you are not to suggest it to her, Chloe, it would only worry her.”

  “It is far more worrying to be without money,” Thais interposed in a practical tone. “Supposing your Godmama will have you stay with her in London, Anthea, what do you think you are going to wear?”

  “I made myself a new gown last week,” Anthea replied.

  “That is not going to take you very far,” Thais said. “Not if one is to believe The Ladies Journal! They say a debutante requires at least ten gowns for a Season in London.”

  “If I do go, which I very much doubt,” Anthea added, “then there is only a month of the Season left. We all know that the Prince Regent goes to Brighton at the beginning of June.”

  “Well, even for a month you will need more than one gown,” Thais retorted.

  At seventeen Thais was very clothes conscious.

  Of the four sisters she was the who that most resented having to make their own gowns from the cheapest materials and hated being unable to afford the ornamentation that The Ladies Journal said was essential if one was to be stylish.

  It was true, Anthea thought, that her appearance would be lamentable if she did go to London and as her mother confidently expected, she was to move in the smart Society in which her Godmother, the Countess of Sheldon, was a leading light.

  Actually Anthea had never thought for a moment that her mother’s sudden idea of sending her to London for the Season would prove to be anything but a pipe dream.

  Always vague, always, as her husband had said so often, with her head in the clouds, Lady Forthingdale had failed to realise that at nineteen Anthea, her oldest daughter, might expect a more amusing existence than could be provided in the small house where they lived in an obscure Yorkshire village.

  It had been, of all unexpected people, the local Vicar who had awakened her to her responsibilities.

  He had been obliging enough after Sir Walcott Forthingdale’s death to give the younger girls, Thais, Chloe and Phebe, lessons in history, scripture and Latin.

  They learnt French from a French woman who, having previously taught her native language at a young ladies’ Seminary in Harrogate, had retired to the village when the school had no further use for her.

  Lady Forthingdale paid extremely little for the lessons, but Anthea always thought that Mademoiselle enjoyed them far more than her pupils simply because she felt lonely in her cottage and longed for someone to talk to.

  The Vicar, calling on Lady Forthingdale to report on Phebe’s progress in Latin, had remarked on leaving,
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  “I often think, my Lady, how fortunate you are to have such charming and delightful daughters. It will undoubtedly be a sad day when they marry and leave home, which of course Miss Anthea might do at any time.”

  “Marry? Anthea?” Lady Forthingdale had exclaimed.

  “I believe she has passed her nineteenth birthday,” the Vicar replied. “A time when most young ladies, especially one as pretty as Miss Anthea, begin to think of setting up a home of their own.”

  “Yes, of course, Vicar,” Lady Forthingdale had agreed.

  But when he had gone, she had sent for Anthea and said in a self-reproachful manner,

  “Dearest, how could I have been so thoughtless? I had forgotten that you were nineteen! It is remiss of me to have done nothing about it.”

  “About what, Mama?” Anthea answered.

  “About making your debut,” Lady Forthingdale replied.

  “Me, Mama? But how could it be possible?”

  “It was what your father and I always intended. But I have been so distressed, so helpless since he was killed that it never struck me how old you are.”

  “Very old, Mama!” Anthea laughed. “Soon my teeth will be falling out and my hair going grey!”

  “I am talking seriously, Anthea,” Lady Forthingdale said reprovingly. “We may be poor, but the Forthingdales have been respected in Yorkshire for hundreds of years and my own family came to England with William the Conqueror.”

  “Yes, I know, Mama, but being blue-blooded does not pay the bills and it certainly will not provide for a Season in London.”

  Since her father’s death she had taken over the running of the house and the paying of the bills.

  Better than anyone else Anthea realised how little they all had to live on and how careful they had to be with every penny.

  “I was not suggesting that we should pay for you in London,” Lady Forthingdale said. “I am not quite as stupid as that, Anthea.”

  “Who else is likely to do so? You know how few relations we have.”

  “I would not ask your father’s relations to help, not even if we were starving in the gutter!” Lady Forthingdale replied with a sudden note of anger in her soft musical voice. “They were always horrible to me because they expected your father to marry money. In fact they never forgave him.”

  “He fell in love with you, Mama, and that is not surprising. You are the most beautiful person I have ever seen in my life.”

  Lady Forthingdale smiled.

  “You take after your Papa, dearest, and just as he was exceedingly handsome, you are very pretty.”

  That was certainly true, but while Anthea had her father’s dark hair, she had very large green-grey eyes that sparkled mischievously and a curving smiling mouth that was complemented by two dimples in either of her checks.

  Ever since she had been a baby in a cradle anyone who looked at Anthea had smiled at her and she had responded with a laugh that made people laugh with her.

  “You are flattering me, Mama!” she said now. “But do go on! I adore being paid compliments!”

  “Which should not be given by your mother,” Lady Forthingdale said sharply. “Oh, how could I have been so selfish and forgetful as not to have thought of this before?”

  “Thought of what?” Anthea asked.

  “Of writing to your Godmother, my dear friend Delphine, the Countess of Sheldon.”

  Galvanised by her remorse at being so negligent, Lady Forthingdale had sat down there and then and written to the Countess of Sheldon to ask if, in memory of their old friendship, she would do her a great favour and invite Anthea to stay with her in London.

  “She has been such a wonderful daughter to me since my beloved husband’s death,” she wrote, “that in my grief and distress I completely overlooked the fact that this year, now that we are out of mourning, Anthea should have appeared in Society.

  I have always remembered your own ball and how beautiful you looked, Delphine, and how every man was at your feet. I am therefore begging you to remember Anthea, your God-daughter and let her, just for a few weeks, sample the delights of London and meet a few young men who, you will understand, are sadly lacking in this small village.”

  She went on to recall how delighted Delphine had been when at the age of fifteen and just after her confirmation, Lady Forthingdale had asked her to be Godmother to her first child.

  Delphine’s parents had lived in Essex, a mile from Lady Forthingdale’s. Their mothers were close friends and their fathers were joint Masters of the local foxhounds.

  At fifteen Delphine had adored with an adolescent passion, the beautiful Christobel, who three years her senior, had married the dashing Sir Walcott Forthingdale almost as soon as she left the schoolroom.

  Sophisticated, worldly and inclined to be somewhat of a rake, Sir Walcott had been bowled over by Christobel the moment he saw her at her first ball.

  From that time he had never left her side and, disregarding all protests from her parents, they had been married at the end of the year.

  Anthea had been born when her mother was just nineteen and had gone back to her parents’ house for her confinement.

  Delphine had been a daily visitor and, when the baby was born, she had appeared to adore Anthea as much as she adored her mother.

  It had been therefore an inexpressible thrill when Lady Forthingdale had suggested that Delphine should be one of the Godmothers at Anthea’s Christening.

  But after that they had seen very little of each other.

  Sir Walcott had settled down on his family estates in Yorkshire and he was not really to blame for the fact that the rents he raised could not pay for the upkeep.

  Gradually with the passing years and the financial difficulties that arose during the war with Napoleon, their income shrunk so that, when he was killed at Waterloo, there was in fact very little left.

  “You are too old! How can you possibly leave me?” Lady Forthingdale had protested when Sir Walcott insisted on rejoining his Regiment and buying himself a Captaincy.

  “I am damned if I am going to sit here rotting,” he had replied, “and let all my friends fight for me.”

  He had, however, listened to her pleas until after the battle of Trafalgar when everyone had been quite certain that the war would be over very quickly.

  “I have to be in at the kill!” he asserted. “I have shirked my fences long enough.”

  He had gone off to fight under Wellington, but fortunately for Lady Forthingdale’s peace of mind was not posted to the Peninsula.

  But when finally the Army had proceeded to Brussels for the final showdown with Napoleon, Sir Walcott was with the Cavalry.

  It had been inevitable, Anthea had thought when they heard of his death, that he should be amongst those who made the wild Cavalry charge at the beginning of the battle in which there were 2,500 casualties.

  “It is just the way Papa would have wished to die,” the young girl had told her broken-hearted mother, realising as she spoke that it was no consolation to those left behind.

  But she knew that her father, who had always been a thruster in the hunting field, would never have held back or been content not to be first in the field of battle.

  They had been forced to leave the house where they had lived all their lives and, because the estate was in bad repair, the small amount they received for it had mostly gone in paying Sir Walcott’s debts.

  Luckily there had been enough to buy the small house in smaller Shireoaks where they now lived and to invest the surplus to bring in a minute income every year which they all had to live on.

  It had never even crossed Anthea’s mind that she should be doing anything other than looking after her mother and sisters.

  Occasionally there was a ball in the neighbourhood to which she was invited and in fact she had attended two last winter after they were out of mourning.

  But, while she had plenty of partners, they were mostly married men or youths whose mothers kept a strict eye on them and had
no intention of allowing them to become involved with, ‘that penniless Forthingdale girl, however pretty she might be!’

  When the letter had actually been sent to the Countess of Sheldon, Anthea had allowed herself a few daydreams in which she took London by storm and found herself not only a suitable husband, but also one rich enough to help her sisters.

  Now that the idea had been put into her head she realised that it was essential for Thais, who was also pretty, to come out the following year.

  ‘Even then she will be older than most of the other debutantes,’ Anthea reasoned, ‘and after her there will be Chloe and lastly Phebe. I must find myself a husband who will allow me to entertain for each one of them in turn!’

  At the same time she was well aware that her mother had not seen the Countess of Sheldon for more than eight years.

  People altered, drifted apart from their old friends and, as Anthea was well aware, did not wish to be encumbered with other people’s daughters.

  She calculated without much difficulty that the Countess was now thirty-four and, although she knew little of Social life, she could not help feeling that it was rather young to undertake the duties of a chaperone.

  However, the letter had gone to London and, while Anthea could not believe the Countess would totally ignore her mother’s appeal, she was quite certain it was a 99 to 1 chance that she would say no.

  “I cannot wait an hour-and-a-half for Mama to open that letter,” Thais said sitting down at the schoolroom table. “Shall we steam it open and see what’s inside?”

  “Oh, yes, let’s do that!” Chloe cried.

  “Certainly not!” Anthea said automatically. “You know that would be most underhand and ill-bred, and certainly unbecoming to a Lady of Fashion!”

  “From all I read of Ladies of Fashion,” Thais said, “they do all sorts of things that would be considered unladylike. In the novel I have just finished the heroine was always listening at keyholes.”

  “Servants do that, not heroines,” Anthea scolded her. “I cannot think where you find such books. Certainly not in Papa’s library or the Vicar’s.”

  Thais giggled and looked exceedingly pretty as she did so.