The Outrageous Lady Read online

  Pictures, furniture, objets d’art, some very valuable, were despatched from the house in London with a letter from Galatea in her own writing saying that she was sure they would like to have this ‘in memory of dear George’.

  Sometimes she thought, as she wrote each letter and directed where the object was to be sent, that George would be grinding his teeth in fury at the knowledge that his relatives, to whom he had paid so little attention for so many years, should now benefit by his decease.

  But Galatea knew that it was the right thing to do, she had made that the standard for her behaviour and had no intention of deviating from it.

  No one had protested except Roland and he, she knew, not only had an affection for her but was genuinely overwhelmed by her generosity.

  “It is too much that you should give up your jewellery as well as everything else,” he said now. “If you would be kind enough to let Juliet wear the diamond tiara when she goes to Court, she would be very grateful, but as to handing it over, you may need it yourself.”

  “I think it unlikely,” Galatea replied, “and anyway there is a bandeau with emeralds that I can wear in my hair.”

  “But the rubies – the sapphires – the pearls?”

  ‘They are all for Juliet and don’t forget that your son will need them for his wife.”

  “I don’t know what to say,” Lord Roysdon murmured.

  “Then say nothing,” Galatea told him with a smile. “As it is, I am very grateful to you for giving Hannah a cottage on the estate. She will retire there very happily with her sister.”

  “You asked me also to find one for Hancocks,” Lord Roysdon said, “but he tells me that he would rather carry on for a few years and quite frankly I shall be glad of him.”

  “He is very reliable,” Galatea replied.

  She was thinking that Hancocks would much prefer to be in the country rather than being kept up late night after night as he had been compelled to do in London.

  “And Fulton will come with me too,” Lord Roysdon went on, “but surely, Galatea, you will need some servants?”

  “I am keeping Jake, as I told you,” she answered, “the travelling carriage and four horses.”

  “There is a whole stable of others, if you need them.”

  “I will send for Ladybird within the next month,” Galatea said, “but, if you will keep her at Roysdon Park until then, I know she will be well looked after.”

  “There must be something more I can do for you,” Lord Roysdon answered.

  He had the expression of a small boy who feels that he is being selfish but has no idea what to do about it.

  “You can wish me happiness,” Galatea suggested unexpectedly.

  “You know I wish you that. I am well aware how difficult life has been for you ever since you married.”

  “It is kind of you to understand.”

  “Juliet and I have always felt very sorry for you,” he said. “I know the rest of the family said unpleasant things, but we in fact were shocked when we heard that Uncle George intended to marry again a girl who was so very young when he was getting on for sixty.”

  Galatea walked to the window and looked out onto the square.

  The grass was just beginning to show green and she thought, although she was not certain, that there was a touch of gold under some of the trees as if the daffodils were coming into bud.

  “It is all over now,” she said softly. “Spring is here.”

  “Yes, the weather is warmer,” Lord Roysdon agreed, not really understanding what she was saying.

  *

  “Spring is here!” she told herself as she and Jake set off the next morning.

  There was a new footman beside Jake on the box, a young man whom Galatea had engaged because she had no wish to take with her any of the servants she had employed previously.

  She had a last minute argument with Roland about the fact that she was travelling without outriders.

  “I don’t know where you are going,” he said, “but it is dangerous to drive about the country unprotected when you might be held up by highwaymen.”

  He had looked surprised when Galatea had smiled and replied,

  “They say that lightning never strikes at the same tree twice.”

  She knew Jake would protect her. He carried a pistol in his pocket and the new man who was to travel with them was, she was told, very handy with a blunderbuss.

  As a precaution she placed her emeralds, which were the only valuable possession she had with her, not in the secret chamber under the seat but in a pocket behind the cushioned padding of the carriage.

  It was unlikely that even the most experienced highwayman would look there.

  They travelled swiftly, although because they had to rest the horses they arrived at the inns where they were staying in the afternoon and therefore there were many hours to wait before they could press on again the next day.

  Galatea felt as if she were setting out on a voyage to El Dorado.

  Although the hours she must pass in reaching it were frustrating, at least she was moving in the right direction and it was only a question of time before she reached Journey’s End.

  Before she left she discarded the mourning that she had worn for the last five months and with it a large number of her gowns, which had scandalised Society in the same way that her behaviour had done.

  She shopped carefully, choosing gowns that were much plainer than she had worn before.

  She found that they accentuated rather than detracted from her beauty and made her at the same time look very young and very like the young bride who had astounded London five years earlier.

  But while her looks had changed very little, she knew that her mind and indeed her whole personality had grown older and in these last few months very much wiser.

  She found the peace that Just had brought her did not vanish as the days went by, but rather seemed to deepen and intensify.

  It was now so much a part of herself that she could not remember her restlessness or the feelings of rebellion that had animated her before.

  She left London on the last day of March and now it was April and, as she drew nearer to Cornwall, the weather was warm and mellow and the skies were as blue as a thrush’s egg.

  It was then that the green of the fields were more vivid and more verdant.

  The trees were covered with leaves and there was a freshness and a youthfulness about everything, as if Persephone had come back from the bowels of the earth to sweep away the age of winter with the youth of spring.

  Primroses grew in the hedgerows, violets peeped beneath their green leaves, the woods were filled with white anemones and kingcups grew golden by the rivers.

  Every day Galatea felt a new excitement rising within her like the sap rising in the trees and every night it was hard to sleep because her lips ached and her body yearned for the man she was hurrying to see.

  She had not heard from him since he had kissed her goodbye in the smugglers’ hut and ridden away with Denzil.

  She hoped and longed for a letter but instead when her husband’s death was reported in the newspapers a bouquet of lilies had been delivered to the house.

  She held them in her arms and remembered he had said that the first time he saw her was at Tom King’s where she had looked like a lily growing on a dung heap’.

  But there was no letter, no card with them although she knew exactly who had sent them.

  After that the lilies arrived every month – she knew the message they brought and waited for them breathless with fear in case he should forget.

  Always they had come and she thought that they had been brought to London all the way from Cornwall.

  But she was never certain of this except that they were a different species from the lilies that could be purchased in the shops and they were never full-blown but always in bud.

  ‘He will be waiting for me, I know he will be waiting as he said he would,’ she told herself.

  Yet there was alwa
ys the fear that something might have gone wrong or perhaps he no longer cared.

  She told herself that she trusted him as she could never trust another man and yet she was woman enough to be afraid that her love exceeded his and he might have grown bored or perhaps found someone to take her place.

  Then she realised that she was decrying their love, which was too great, too Divine to change with time or to wither away however long they were apart.

  She knew that he would not expect her to rush to him the moment George was dead – for that would cause a great deal of comment and would be to start their life off on the wrong foot.

  No. She must pay a proper respect to the man who was dead and mourn him publicly.

  But now she had fulfilled every obligation that might be expected of her and was free to lead her own life, to go to the man she loved above and beyond everything else in the whole world.

  It was Jake who planned their journey and Jake who, as they reached the last inn, explained to Galatea that the following day would be a short one.

  “We should, if all goes well, my Lady, arrive at The Priory at about three o’clock in the afternoon.”

  He told her, as Just had, that the house was called Trevena Priory, although most of the actual building that had housed the monks had long since fallen into ruins.

  The lake where the monks had caught their fish was still there, she learnt, and the gardens were famous in that part of the world.

  ‘I shall see it tomorrow!’ Galatea told herself as she went to bed in the oak-beamed, low-ceilinged inn.

  ‘I shall see him tomorrow!’

  *

  ‘I shall see him today!’ Galatea cried in her heart as they set off the next morning and suddenly she felt as gay and excited as a child.

  The wind was blowing the horses’ manes and she pulled off her bonnet to let it blow through her hair, laughing as she did so.

  Jake and the new groom grinned as if they were infected by her happiness.

  It seemed to Galatea as if the horses moved quicker and with an unusual friskiness as if they too sensed that they were reaching the end of their journey.

  They would soon be in comfortable stables and there would be fields of new grass waiting for them so they could roll.

  As she looked from the carriage windows, everything had a new beauty and a new freshness and some of the trees and shrubs were almost tropical.

  For the first time since they had left London Galatea saw red and yellow tulips, narcissus and irises, both purple and white.

  Because she did not wish to miss any of the beauties of this new-found land she sat forward in the carriage seat looking out of the window, letting the breeze blow her hair around her face and feeling the softness of it on her skin.

  They stopped at midday for something to eat in what was little more than a village inn.

  But there were pasties, home-cured ham, fresh-baked bread and yellow butter to eat with a local cheese made with cream that was more delicious than any cheese Galatea had ever eaten before.

  She drank cider from a pewter mug and joked with the yokels who stared at her admiringly and waved when she set off again on her journey.

  Now her laughter was still and instead she felt as if there was something tight within her breast that made it hard to breathe.

  The wind carried a touch of salt on it and she remembered how Just had told her that one part of his estate went down to the sea.

  She wondered what he was doing and if, in some perceptive way he had always known what she was thinking, he was now aware that she was near to him and coming nearer with every heartbeat.

  A few minutes before three o’clock in the afternoon the horses turned in at a stone gateway.

  There was a long drive of ancient trees growing on either side of it and, as they travelled down it, Galatea had her first sight of the house and knew it was as she had dreamt it would be.

  It was long and low, of grey stone with diamond-paned windows iridescent in the sunshine.

  It was encircled by green lawns, which sloped down to a lake. At the sides of the lawn and against the house was a mass of golden daffodils.

  She felt that they trumpeted a welcome.

  It was so beautiful, so exactly as she had pictured Just’s house would be. The grey stone even reminded her of his eyes.

  When they reached the bottom of the drive, there was a narrow bridge spanning the lake and dividing it into two parts.

  The horses were almost at a standstill so that they could take the bridge slowly and she called to Jake to draw them to a halt.

  She stepped out.

  “Wait here for five minutes” she ordered. “I wish to arrive alone.”

  Jake smiled as if he understood and she walked across the bridge, pushing back her hair from her forehead because she had left her bonnet in the carriage.

  The sunshine glimmered on the water and seemed to dazzle her eyes.

  She was very conscious of the gold of the daffodils as she drew nearer to them, the house looming up above her, the sunshine flashing on the glass in the windows as if they smiled at her.

  She saw the door was shut and wondered if she should walk up the three steps to knock on it.

  Then, on an impulse, she walked across the lawn and around the side of the house towards where she thought that the gardens would be.

  She was not mistaken.

  There were yew hedges, flower beds already bright with blossom, a stone fountain throwing its water up into the sky and a rose garden in the centre of which was an ancient sundial.

  She stood looking at what she saw and felt that it was so familiar because it had been part of her dreams.

  Then she saw him coming down through the garden with three dogs at his heels.

  He was hatless as she was and his head was raised, as if he too looked at the windows of his house and thought that they smiled at him.

  It was the dogs who saw her first. They came bounding towards her, not barking as if she was a stranger, but jumping up and greeting her like a friend.

  She and Just drew nearer to each other.

  Now her eyes were on his face waiting for that look of recognition and the smile on his lips that had been in her heart ever since she left him.

  They reached each other and for a moment he did not touch her.

  She thought the sunshine moved into his eyes and was blinding her with its radiance.

  “You have come!”

  His voice was deep and low and moved the tightness in her breast so that she felt as if the happiness that had been checked there burst like the spray of the fountain over her whole body.

  “You were – expecting – me?”

  “I was waiting, knowing that you might come yesterday, tomorrow – ”

  “But as it – happens – today!”

  She put out her hands.

  He took them and she felt his lips on first one and then the other and knew it was as impossible for him to express his gladness as it was for her.

  He put his arm about her shoulder and they walked side by side back towards the house.

  He opened a door and there was the smell of age, beeswax and potpourri, and quite suddenly she wanted to cry because it was the scent of home, a fragrance she had always longed for.

  He led her into a long low-ceilinged room with windows opening out into the garden and there were comfortable sofas, armchairs and chintz curtains.

  The sense of comfort and informality made everything seem as if it had been designed as one whole by love.

  The dogs flung themselves down on the hearthrug as if it was their right.

  Then Just said gently,

  “Welcome home, my darling!” and took her in his arms.

  He kissed her and she knew that all the waiting and all the unhappiness had been worth this moment when she was his and there were no barriers and nothing to separate them ever again.

  As usual he knew what she was thinking.

  Raising his head he said,
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  “We will be married this evening in the Chapel which is part of this house and once belonged to The Priory.”

  “You have – arranged it?”

  “I made my plans a long time ago,” he said with a smile, “and I have only to send a message to the Vicar. Then, my precious, you shall become my wife as I have always intended you to be.”

  She gave a sigh of utter happiness and hid her face against his shoulder as he kissed her hair.

  Then he turned her face up to his and kissed her lips as if he could never let her go.

  Later they laughed together over tea with scones, Cornish cream and strawberry jam, which he told her was the pride of the still room.

  Afterwards she went upstairs to her bedroom, which overlooked the lake, where an aged housekeeper and a young girl with bright eyes and rosy apple cheeks were unpacking her luggage.

  “The Master says I’m to look after you, my Lady, and I hopes it’ll be to your Ladyship’s satisfaction,” the housekeeper told her.

  “I am sure it will,” Galatea answered.

  She bathed in water scented with the oil of roses, which also came from the still room.

  She then selected a gown from her wardrobe for her wedding, although she was not certain that Just would understand her choice.

  It was a very simple gown of white gauze and, because she was afraid that for a widow he would think white was unsuitable, it was embroidered round the hem with silver and there was a touch of silver at the neck.

  She was wondering what she should wear on her head when the housekeeper brought her a veil so fine that it seemed as if it had been made by fairy fingers.

  “A veil?” she questioned.

  “’Twas always worn by the Trevena brides, my Lady, since the family first lived here.”

  With the veil there was a wreath not of orange blossom, but of white lilies still in bud and, as Galatea looked at them in surprise, the housekeeper explained,

  “They come from the Master’s conservatory where he grows a number of rare and foreign flowers, especially lilies, my Lady. He’s been a-nurturin’ these ever since he returned home and I feels sure he intended ’em for some very special purpose.”