Running Away to Love Read online

  Author’s Note

  The fêtes and parties given by the Prince Regent at Carlton House became a legend for their fantastic extravagance and elaborate preparations.

  Ever since the Prince Regent had moved into Carlton House, he had been building and increasing its size. Houses were demolished on either side and Carlton House enlarged. The extensive gardens extended from Pall Mall to Marlborough House.

  At the time of one of H.R.H.’s parties The Morning Post reported that five hundred men had been at work for a month to produce the ‘most brilliant fireworks ever seen in the country’.

  At the first party the Prince Regent gave when he was Prince of Wales and allowed to have his own house, two thousand invitations were sent out for a fête in June.

  By eight o’clock on the appointed day, Pall Mall, St. James’s Street and the Haymarket were blocked with carriages, although guests were not invited until nine o’clock.

  The proceedings were so brilliantly done that despite the crowds there was ‘no hustle or bustle in waiting and everything was done as in a private house’.

  Even those who had been in the rooms inside Carlton House before had not seen all the furniture, pictures and ornaments in them. The Prince Regent was continually improving his collections,

  When he became King George IV in 1820 and moved to Buckingham Palace, most of his collection went with him.

  I was, however, broken-hearted to learn that it was not until 1927 that Carlton House was pulled down, so I could have seen it. Unfortunately I did not write any historical novels until 1948.

  There was no doubt that, despite his extravagances, the Prince Regent was a remarkable man.

  He not only had extraordinarily good taste, but as he walked amongst his guests he was affable, amusing, brilliantly witty and undoubtedly charming.

  One can only agree with someone at the time who said of him that ‘he was graciousness personified’.

  Chapter One ~ 1812

  Ivana walked quietly down the corridor towards the study.

  She had come in from a walk in Hyde Park with her old Nanny, who had been with her since she was a child.

  Outside the house she had seen a phaeton drawn by two well-bred horses.

  She thought, unhappily, that they belonged to Lord Hanford.

  He was a man she disliked exceedingly and was, she well knew, a bad influence on her stepfather.

  The last time Keith Waring had gone out to dinner with Lord Hanford they had gambled afterwards and Keith Waring had lost thirty pounds to his Lordship.

  This had meant that something else had to be sold from the house.

  It was always the treasures that Ivana prized, because they had belonged to her mother.

  She was wondering how, if it was Lord Hanford, she could persuade her stepfather to refuse to accept his next invitation to dinner.

  She reached the study, which was a small room where they usually sat when they were alone.

  She could hear a harsh somewhat vulgar voice speaking loudly.

  Her heart sank, but there was nothing she could do about it.

  She was just turning away to tiptoe away and back to her bedroom in case Lord Hanford asked to see her, when she heard him say,

  “I want Ivana and I intend to have her!”

  There was a pause.

  Then Keith Waring replied,

  “I have been trying to find a rich husband for her.”

  “You know perfectly well that I cannot offer her marriage,” Lord Hanford answered, “but I will settle enough money on her so that she will never want again, in fact I was just thinking of one thousand pounds a year.”

  Again there was a pause.

  Ivana stiffened and felt that she could not be hearing aright.

  Then, to her horror, she heard her stepfather somewhat hesitantly say,

  “And what about – me?”

  “I have not forgotten you,” Lord Hanford replied. “I will give you five thousand pounds, which will pay off your immediate debts and a thousand pounds a year for as long as Ivana and I are together. You will not get a better offer from anyone else.”

  Ivana held her breath.

  Surely, she thought, her stepfather would tell Lord Hanford that his idea was degrading and impossible.

  Instead of which she heard Keith Waring saying,

  “I suppose as I am ‘below hatches’ I shall have to accept your offer.”

  “You would be a damned fool if you did not,” Lord Hanford replied. “You will not get a better one.”

  There was no answer from Keith Waring and Lord Hanford went on,

  “The sooner all this is settled the better. And I expect you feel the same as the duns are at the door.”

  “That is true enough,” Keith Waring said plaintively, “but I doubt if Ivana will agree.”

  “She can hardly refuse, considering that you are her Guardian,” Lord Hanford said. “You know as well as I do that by the law of the land a Ward has to obey her Guardian, whether she likes it or not.”

  “Ivana is very self-willed,” Keith Waring muttered.

  “You can leave her to me,” Lord Hanford responded.

  “I am quite certain that she will kick up a fuss,” Keith Waring replied. “Perhaps it would be wise to give her something to make her more pliable.”

  “If a horse is difficult, I don’t drug it,” Lord Hanford retorted. “I give him a taste of the whip.”

  With the greatest difficulty Ivana prevented herself from screaming.

  Then Lord Hanford went on,

  “I have never yet failed to master a horse or, for that matter, a woman. So stop worrying and just do as I tell you.”

  “I am not going to tell Ivana what you are planning,” Keith Waring remarked.

  “Nobody has asked you to,” Lord Hanford retorted.

  There was a pause as if he was thinking it all out in his mind.

  “All you will tell Ivana,” he carried on, “is that you are coming to stay at my house in Hertfordshire. I will collect her in a phaeton and you will say you are following in another. When you don’t turn up, I will console her from worrying over you.”

  Keith Waring sighed.

  “I suppose you know what you are doing. When do you want her to be ready?”

  “On Friday,” Lord Hanford replied. “I will call here at about two o’clock after you have finished luncheon.”

  Ivana did not wait to listen any more.

  On tiptoe she crept away from the door of the study, hearing, as she did so, Lord Hanford saying,

  “Now we have settled all that, let’s have a drink on it.”

  She well knew that he was a hard drinker and wondered if there was anything left in the decanters for them to drink.

  She was afraid that her stepfather might emerge from the study and then see her.

  She started to move as quickly as she could. She crossed the narrow hall and then ran up the stairs.

  Since her mother had died, Nanny had slept in the room next to hers and now she burst in through the door.

  As she expected, Nanny had taken off her bonnet and the shawl she had worn when they had gone for a walk in the Park.

  She was sitting as usual at the table by the window and sewing something.

  Ivana closed the door behind her and then stood still for a moment with her back against it.

  “Nanny! Nanny!”

  It was a desperate cry of anguish, the like of which Nanny had not heard since Ivana was a little girl.

  She put down her sewing and rose to her feet.

  “What's happened? What’s upset you, dearie?” she asked.

  Ivana ran across the room and, kneeling beside Nanny’s chair, hid her face against her.

  “Nanny! Nanny!” she cried again. “What am – I to – do? What – am I to – do?”

  Nanny held her close.

  She had loved Ivana ever since she was born and the doctor, ignoring the midwife, had put the baby into her arms.

  “Whatever’s upset you now, dearie?” she asked Ivana again.

  Hesitatingly, her words tumbling over themselves, Ivana repeated to Nanny what she had just heard through the study door.

  “I hate – Lord Hanford – I hate him, Nanny!” she cried. “When he – stares at me with that – look in his eyes, it – makes me feel sick! He has – only to – touch my hand to make me want to – scream!”

  “It’s the most disgraceful thing I’ve ever heard!” Nanny exclaimed. “And your poor dear mother’d turn in her grave, that’s what she’d do.”

  “I know – but Step-Papa is – my Guardian.”

  “He’s a wicked man. He’s no right to think of acceptin’ anythin’ just so horrible and so degradin’!” Nanny snapped.

  “It’s – the money – you well know it’s – the money,” Ivana said. “He spends everything we possess – and now there is little left – to sell.”

  Nanny knew that this only too true.

  Just yesterday she had ruminated tartly,

  “If much more goes from this house, I’ll wake up to find my bed’s been taken from under me!”

  All the pretty objet d’arts that Ivana’s mother had collected so diligently over the years had been sold off long ago and the pictures, the Dresden china and even the Persian rugs on the floor had gone as well.

  Ivana knew that for weeks the Bank had been demanding that something must be done about the overdraft, which was continuing to grow week after week and month after month and the Bank was becoming more an
d more aggressive.

  The tradesmen’s bills came in regularly with endless urgent messages attached to them demanding payment at once.

  Ivana raised her head.

  “I know what you are – thinking Nanny,” she said, “and I will – die rather – than become the m-mistress – of any man, let alone Lord Hanford.”

  She stumbled over the word ‘mistress’ and then burst into floods of tears.

  Nanny held her close.

  “We’ll find some way out of this,” she said soothingly, “but only God knows what it can possibly be.”

  “How can God – let this – happen to me?” Ivana asked. “How – can He?”

  Nanny was silent for a moment and and then she suggested,

  “You’ll have to run away, that’s what you’ll have to do!”

  Ivana raised her head again.

  She was so surprised at Nanny’s advice that she had stopped crying, but the tears were still wet on her cheeks.

  Her eyes widened as she asked,

  “R-run away? But – where to – Nanny?”

  “That’s what I’m tryin’ to figure out,” Nanny answered. “You knows as well as I do that there’s no money for us to travel North to what relatives you have left and there’s few enough of them at any rate.”

  Ivana knew only too well that what Nanny was saying was indeed true.

  She had known when her mother had died that there were practically no relatives at the funeral.

  Now that she was an orphan, she was very much alone.

  Her beloved father, the Honourable Hugo Sherard, had been tragically killed at the Battle of Salamanca fighting against Napoleon in the Peninsula.

  Her mother had been broken-hearted and for a year she had hardly spoken to anyone or taken any interest in anything that was going on around her.

  Then Keith Waring had come into her life.

  Although Ivana despised him, she had to admit to herself that he had made her mother, if not happy, comparatively content.

  The Sherards came from Penrith in the North of England and her father’s brother, who was a good deal older than Hugo, had succeeded to the title of Lord Sherard.

  He had written her mother a letter when her father had been killed and he had written to Ivana when he had learned of her mother’s death.

  He had not, however, suggested that she should go to the North and live with him and his family.

  She knew that he had a wife and children of his own and he doubtless had no wish to house an impoverished relative, besides which, it was a very long way to drive up to Penrith in the County of Cumberland.

  At the moment anyway it would be impossible for her and Nanny to pay the fares they would be charged by one Post-chaise after another on the way North.

  Ivana could think of none of her father’s friends who would wish to take her into their homes.

  After her mother had married Keith Waring, she had not kept in touch with those friends she had known when they had lived in the country. Instead she knew only those people who her husband had introduced to her in London.

  It was with her money that they had rented the house in Islington.

  It was the furniture that had belonged to Hugo Sherard which was arranged in the small and, Ivana thought, rather pokey rooms.

  Because they were in London, it enabled Ivana to attend a Seminary for young ladies to complete her education

  She and her mother had also visited Museums and Art Galleries, which she had enjoyed a great deal.

  Now that she thought of it, the only people they entertained had been the rather raffish friends of her stepfather.

  And the majority of them were men.

  “Where can we – go, Nanny?” she asked again this time in a whisper.

  “I’m just thinkin’,” Nanny answered.

  “Perhaps – as we have – no money at all,” Ivana proposed, “I ought to – try and find some – work to do.”

  “I’m not havin’ you doin’ menial tasks,” Nanny countered, “not while I’m alive!”

  “But we have to eat – and food costs money,” Ivana pointed out in a practical tone.

  She sat back on her heels and then crossed her arms over Nanny’s knees.

  “Now let’s think this out carefully,” she said. “We have to think quickly, because it is now Tuesday and that leaves only – two days before that – ghastly man will take me away in his – phaeton.”

  The terror in her voice was very obvious and Nanny was aware that she was trembling.

  She was not surprised.

  Lord Hanford, she knew, was well over forty and he had already had two wives.

  Although she had no intention of telling Ivana, it was rumoured that he was responsible for his second wife being certified as a lunatic.

  The servants had gossiped that it was because he treated her in the same cruel way as he did his horses.

  “There must be – something that I – can do,” Ivana was saying. “After all I have had an extensive education and – ”

  She stopped and gave a little cry.

  “But, of course!” she exclaimed. “I did the accounts in the country when Papa was in the War and, after he was killed, Mama left everything to me. I could be a secretary!”

  Looking at her, Nanny thought it was very unlikely that anyone who looked as lovely as Ivana would be employed by a woman.

  And if a man should do so, it would undoubtedly be dangerous.

  “Perhaps,” she said after a moment, “you could be a reader to an elderly lady. After all they needs someone to read to them when they’re gettin’ old and goin’ blind and you have a really lovely reading voice.”

  “That is what Mama used to say,” Ivana answered. “I would read the Collects to her on a Sunday and then the poems of Lord Byron. They made her cry because they reminded her of Papa.”

  She sighed deeply and recalled how happy she had been reading to her mother before Keith Waring came into her life.

  Then, as if forcing herself to be practical, she asked Nanny,

  “How can I find out if there is a position out there waiting for me? Would there be an advertisement for a reader in the newspapers perhaps?”

  “You have to go to an Employment Agency, dearie,” Nanny replied. “I’ll try and find out from Mrs. Bell downstairs which is the best one in London.”

  When they first came to London, Mrs. Bell had been engaged to clean the house and help Nanny with the cooking.

  Nanny was a very good cook and had started to cook when they had been in the country.

  After she was bereaved, Mrs. Sherard had to be tempted to eat anything and, after they came to London, Nanny had continued cooking because she enjoyed it so much.

  What was more she was far cheaper than anyone else they could have employed.

  Mrs. Bell charged very little for coming to the house for only two or three hours every morning. She cleaned out the fireplaces, scrubbed the floors and made the beds.

  “Yes, ask Mrs. Bell,” Ivana said, “and ask her quickly, Nanny, because there is no time to lose.”

  She felt a sense of terror surging through her body and it was making her feel incredibly agitaed.

  Every minute was drawing her closer and closer to the moment when Lord Hanford, with his red face and his swimming eyes, would pull her roughly into his phaeton beside him and drive her away to unmitigated hell.

  He would carry her away to the country where she would be imprisoned and never have any chance of escape.

  Nanny rose from her chair.

  “Now, you sit here,” she said, speaking as if Ivana was three years old, “and be careful, if your stepfather comes in here not to let him know what you have overheard him talkin’ to Lord Hanford.”

  “No, of course – not,” Ivana said, “but hurry – do hurry – Nanny, I am frightened – I am terribly – frightened!”

  Nanny went from the room and Ivana sat down in the chair that she had vacated and put her hands over her eyes.

  How can this have happened?

  How could the future be so degrading and so utterly abominable and menacing?

  It was like being a dark room that she would never be able to escape from.

  She knew well that her stepfather was a weak character and he was quite incapable of making money, only of losing it at the gaming tables.

  He had, however, she had to admit even now at this time of terror, been really in love with her mother.

  That was not so surprising since Mrs. Sherard had been exceedingly beautiful and lovely in every sense of the words.