108. An Archangel Called Ivan Read online

  “At the same time, Papa, we want this country to be our ally and to support Queen Victoria rather than being antagonistic,” Arliva pointed out.

  “You are quite right,” her father agreed. “Equally the danger remains that they wish to extend their borders and they can only do so by invading the countries adjacent to them.”

  Looking back on that particular day, Arliva learnt what a brilliant diplomat her father was.

  How, just as she had used her brain and her instinct when she was dealing with such people, it was something she must do in a small way in the Social world.

  She had incredibly already received no less than five proposals of marriage since she had come to London.

  Whilst she had been outwardly flattered by their attention, she had known that the men in question did not love her for herself.

  ‘What I really want,’ she mused, ‘is to be loved for myself and not for all that I possess.’

  She had a strong feeling sometimes that her father’s enormous fortune was like a high mountain.

  It covered her so completely that it was impossible for anyone to see her as herself.

  Now, as she opened the door of her sitting room that had once been her father’s, she saw that there was only one lamp alight on the writing table.

  But glittering beside it was the gold handbag she had left in the dining room.

  She walked across the room and picked it up and then she sat down at the table to look in the small mirror of her compact to see if her hair was tidy.

  The last dance she had taken part in had been The Lancers and she had been swung around by enthusiastic young men whose undoubted strength had made her limp in their arms.

  She was relieved to see that her hair was unruffled and the beautiful pearls round her neck, which had been her mother’s, had not moved.

  Then, as she placed the compact back in her gold handbag, she heard a voice speak her name.

  “So then, do you really mean to propose to Arliva Ashdown?” a woman’s voice resonated round the room.

  Arliva stiffened.

  Then she realised that the voice came through one of the open windows that led onto a terrace overlooking the garden.

  She wondered who was speaking.

  Then on an impulse, before she heard the answer, she moved a little nearer to the window.

  “I have to ask her,” a man replied.

  Then to Arliva’s astonishment there was a note of almost desperation in his voice.

  “But, my darling one,” the woman said, “how can you marry someone else when we are so happy together? I have always believed that God would answer our prayers and somehow you would find enough money to carry on.”

  “It is hopeless, utterly hopeless,” the man sighed. “As you said, we thought things might improve, but the war took too much from the country and too many men. Two of my best farmers have lost everything they owned with the bad spring and it’s impossible for me to help them to replace what has gone.”

  “I realise that,” the woman said very softly, “and you have been really wonderful. You have almost starved yourself to help your people.”

  “But now I cannot pay the pensioners,” the man replied, “so they will definitely starve. As you well know yourself, there is no one working on the land and we have hardly a decent horse left to carry us over the estate.”

  “I know, I know,” the woman cried. “But I love you, Charles, and I know that you love me. How can we possibly go on without each other?”

  “That is just what I have been asking myself every night,” the man called Charles replied. “It will be an agony beyond words, my darling, to leave you, but I have no alternative than to marry Arliva as her aunt wants me to.”

  It was then that Arliva realised who was speaking.

  It was a young man called Charles Walton whose mother had been one of her aunt’s bridesmaids and her greatest friend.

  She had heard them talk before of the family estate that he had inherited from his father.

  It had been doing pretty well until the Crimean War had taken a great number of men who were in the County Yeomanry into the British Army fighting the Russians and indeed the British casualties had been very high.

  “I hate wars,” Arliva’s father had said at the time, “and it has been extremely poor diplomacy on our part for us to become so entangled in this one.”

  Arliva knew he was right when in the following years the countryside suffered by the loss of the men who had died so bravely in the Crimea.

  She knew now that the young man she had been listening to was a near neighbour of hers in the country.

  Her father, who had been a friend of his father, had always said that Charles was a very bright young man who would go far if he had the chance.

  Now Arliva realised that his only chance had been to try to save his family home and estate.

  And, as he had failed, he was to lose the girl he loved as well.

  She had a suspicion who she was, but she was not certain. Then, when a few minutes later he said her name, she recognised her.

  “You do have to be brave about all this, Betty, my precious,” Charles said. “But I just cannot allow any more deaths in the village. Apart from that, you know as well as I do that the roof is leaking badly and, unless it is repaired, it will undoubtedly collapse and cost a fortune to replace.”

  There was silence for a moment.

  Then Betty asked,

  “Is there anything you can sell?”

  “Do you imagine,” Charles replied, “that I have not walked round the house a thousand times to find something to sell if it is only a piece of china? But the only things left of any value are entailed onto the son I will never be able to afford to have, although I have often dreamt of how wonderful it would be to see him in your arms.”

  “I have dreamt of that too,” Betty said softly, “but I feel that we are giving in too easily.”

  “I wish I could think the same,” Charles went on. “I have thought about selling the pictures even though it’s illegal for me to do so.”

  “If you did, would anyone really be aware of it?” Betty quizzed him.

  “They would know immediately. Every month the Trustees make some excuse to visit me. I know it’s to see that I have not sold, as they expect me to do, one of the pictures that were the joy and delight of my grandfather or the silver he inherited as a young man and was determined should remain in the family as long as it existed.”

  Charles spoke with such bitterness that Arliva was not surprised when Betty sighed,

  “I am sorry, darling Charles. It’s just that I feel like you do that something must be done. But it would be an agony for me to watch you marrying someone else.”

  “I have to marry Arliva even though she is quite obviously not in love with me and she will appreciate the fact that her father and mine were close to each other. I am quite certain that, if he was alive, Lord Ashdown would have helped Papa when he knew how bad the situation was.”

  ”Could you not just ask Arliva to help you?” Betty enquired.

  “You don’t suppose her Solicitors and those who control her fortune would encourage her to give it away in large quantities. To get straight, Betty, my dearest one, we need twenty thousand pounds, which is a fortune by any man’s calculations.”

  There was an ominous silence.

  Then Betty said in a trembling voice,

  “Do you think she will accept you?”

  “Because our fathers were so friendly she at least will be more interested in me than in those over-dressed, stuck-up young London bloods, who flutter round her and who she must realise would make, if they married her, very poor husbands.”

  “And you think you would be a good one?” Betty asked in a voice that Arliva could hardly hear.

  “I would behave to her like a gentleman and be a man of my word. At the same time to marry anyone but you, Betty, would be an agony beyond words. It has made me miserable for the past two weeks to even
think about it.”

  “I wondered what was upsetting you. I thought it was just the death of the two old pensioners and the fact that they had died for want of food.”

  “I know, I know!” Charles exclaimed. “That is exactly what has brought home to me the horror of what is happening on my land and I feel that I am responsible.”

  “Of course not,” Betty said. “How could you help things going so wrong while you were away? I knew how bad it was before you returned, but what on earth was the point of saying so? There was nothing you could do.”

  “I know,” Charles sighed, “and you were wonderful to many of the people especially those who had babies and were not well enough to feed them.”

  “I would have done much more if I could,” Betty murmured, “but, as you know, my Papa is feeling the pinch just like everyone else and we have a struggle to keep our heads above water.”

  There was a silence and then Betty said,

  “I will pray for your happiness and you do know, Charles, that whatever happens, even if we never see each other again, I will never love anyone but you.”

  “I can say exactly the same,” Charles replied in a deep voice. “I love you, Betty, and you belong to me as no one else will ever be able to do. You are part of me, not only my body but my brain, my heart and my soul. They are all yours and no one else could ever take your place.”

  Again there was silence.

  Then Charles said,

  “I want to kiss you, darling. I want to kiss you and for a moment at least we can think of each other and no one else. Let’s go into the garden so that you can be in my arms and nobody will be able to see us.”

  He must have risen as he spoke.

  Listening, Arliva heard the chairs scrape as they moved away.

  As she gave out a deep sigh realising that she had been holding her breath listening to what the two people were saying, Arliva heard a voice outside the door.

  However, she did not wish to speak to anyone at the moment.

  There were tears in her eyes because what Charles had said had been so moving.

  Without really thinking but just because she wanted to be alone for a moment, she slipped down behind the sofa and was sure that if anyone came into the room they would not be able to see her.

  It was then she heard a woman’s voice say,

  “Now this room is empty and I want to speak to you, Simon. There is no point in you not listening to me.”

  “I think I know what you are going to say,” a man’s voice replied.

  Arliva recognised it as belonging to the young Earl of Sturton.

  He had asked her to dance with him several times this evening and she had managed to avoid him.

  She had thought him a rather dull young man and had been delighted to find that she was already promised to someone more interesting.

  “Shut the door, Simon,” his mother, the Countess of Sturton, was saying, “and listen to what I have to say to you.”

  “I know what you are going to say, Mama,” the Earl replied, “and I am quite certain that Miss Ashdown has no wish to marry me.”

  “Then you have to persuade her to accept you,” his mother replied sharply. “I have noticed that you have not danced with her and only asked to do so once or twice.”

  “She refused me,” the Earl said, “just as she would refuse me if I offered her marriage.”

  “How do you know that?” the Countess asked him. “After all you have an excellent title and I noticed there were not many amongst those men she was dancing with, as you failed to do.”

  There was silence as if the Earl could not think of anything to say.

  “You must realise that we need the money,” the Countess continued, “and there is no one else, no one in the whole of London who has more. Wake up, Simon, and be a man for a change!”

  The Earl made a sound which was hardly a word but one of disgust.

  “You must be aware that we are in debt, you silly boy, and your marriage to that Ashdown girl will solve all our problems. Now you hurry up and propose to her this evening as I have told you to do and for Heaven’s sake make your proposal sound attractive.”

  “It’s just a complete waste of time, Mama,” Simon persisted sullenly.

  “Nonsense! You have a lot to offer with Sturton Castle even though a huge amount of it needs repairing, but then our family goes back for over a thousand years and that is more than most people here tonight can say.”

  The Countess spoke with a harshness and edge to her voice which seemed to vibrate around the room.

  Then Arliva was aware that she had risen from the chair she had been sitting on.

  “Now come along, Simon,” she urged. “You must insist on Arliva Ashdown dancing with you. Then take her out into the garden and ask her to be your wife. And for goodness sake make her realise how serious this is to you.”

  Simon could not answer this.

  His mother made a sound that Arliva thought was half anger and half frustration.

  Then she heard the Countess walk to the door.

  “Now do as I have told you!” she repeated sharply.

  Her son made no reply, but Arliva heard him close the door.

  Then she stood up from behind the sofa feeling that what she had overheard this evening had been in a way degrading and mortifying.

  ‘All they think about is my money,’ she reflected. ‘It’s not a question to them of whether I would be happy or unhappy.’

  It was then that it suddenly struck her that it would be her fate – never to find anyone who loved her because she was just herself.

  Her father had often told her how he had fallen in love with her mother.

  They had become friends from the first moment they had talked together.

  “It was when I had left her,” he reminisced, “that I knew I had to see her again. There was something about her that made her different from every other woman I had ever met.”

  He had smiled before he added,

  “And I assure you, my darling, I have met a great number in my life.”

  “I know that, Papa,” Arliva had said. “And what did Mama feel about you?”

  “She told me afterwards that from the moment she first saw me she thought I was one of the most handsome men that she had ever seen. But she never for a moment dreamt that I would be interested in her because she was so much younger and she dared to say much stupider than the other women surrounding me!”

  Arliva laughed.

  “I am sure that was not true, Papa.”

  “No, indeed it was not! Your mother always had something the Scots call ‘fey’ that tells them instinctively in their hearts what they don’t know in their minds.”

  “What you are really saying,” Arliva said, “is that Mama fell in love with you, Papa!”

  “So she always told me and I loved her from the first moment I set eyes on her and believed that she was far too young to be interested in an old man like me.”

  “But she was and you were so very very happy together,” Arliva said softly.

  “Happier than it is possible to put into words, but we loved each other with our hearts and I have always believed that your mother would have felt exactly the same about me if I had not a penny to my name and just been ‘Mr. No One of Nowhere’.” “I am sure that’s true,” Arliva sighed.

  She remembered kissing her father and saying,

  “That is how I love you, Papa. Just as you are and not because you are rich and successful.”

  Her father had laughed and put his arms around her.

  “That is how I want you to feel,” he said. “And one day you must find someone who loves you for yourself and not for anything you possess.”

  Arliva could almost hear him saying it.

  She knew that so far she had not met anyone who had felt like that about her.

  She could hardly believe that what she had listened to had not been part of a dream. Charles wanting to marry her despite the fact that he adored
Betty and Simon being ordered by his mother to ask her for her hand in marriage, although she was certain that he did not find her at all lovable.

  It then suddenly struck Arliva with a feeling of horror that maybe she would never find anyone who would love her for herself.

  She wanted the love her father and mother had had for each other which was why he had never married again, although at times he must have been very lonely.

  ‘I just want to be loved for myself,’ she thought. ‘I don’t want anyone who pretends to care for me because they want my money or anything else I possess.’

  Yet she could not stop herself worrying that it was something she might never find.

  She could hear the band playing and knew that her guests would be wondering why she was not with them.

  Perhaps they would think she was sitting in some secluded corner listening to a man offering her his heart and he was only really giving her his brain which told him that she was very rich.

  She felt as if her money was encircling her with tight cords that would prevent her from ever knowing the meaning of real love, the love that everyone wanted, the love of a man and a woman simply because he was the other half of herself.

  ‘That is what I want,’ Arliva said to herself, ‘but because I am so rich it is a gem I will never find. Even if I want to believe a man loves me I will be quite certain that he will be grasping for that great fortune which exists in my name. Oh, please God, what shall I do?’

  The prayer came directly from her heart.

  Now that Charles and Betty had gone, she went to the window as if to look up at the sky.

  There was a half moon and all the bright stars were twinkling.

  “Help me, please help me!”Arliva cried. “I have to find love, but for the moment it’s impossible to believe that any man will ever love me for myself.”

  She was staring at the moon as she spoke.

  Then, as the light from it seemed to descend upon the earth beneath, an idea came to her, an idea so strange and so outrageous that she could not believe it possible.

  Yet she knew it was what she had asked for in her prayers.

  This was the answer.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Arliva slept well that night despite the fact that she had been very late going to bed.