104. A Heart Finds Love Page 2

  Now Alnina was worrying, if she sold the house, what she would do with Brooks and his wife, as they were both growing older.

  It would be, she knew, very difficult for them to find another place after being here for so many years.

  She smiled at Brooks, whose hair – what remained of it – was white, and handed him the letter.

  He would give it to the postman, if he called later in the day. It was too far for the old man to go to the village.

  As the Brookses were so well known, any food Mrs. Brooks wanted was usually sent up from the shops to The Hermitage as the house was called.

  “What be you selling now, Miss Alnina?” Brooks asked when she handed him the letter.

  “Mama’s wedding dress,” Alnina answered. “I hate to let it go, but it should, because it is so unusual, fetch quite a good sum of money.”

  “Money! Money!” he muttered almost beneath his breath. “It’s all we has to think of nowadays.”

  “I know and you and Mrs. Brooks have been very kind to me. So you can be sure that I will find somewhere for you in the future.”

  “It ain’t right that you has to do all this for Master Charles,” Brooks said. “He always were a naughty boy even when he was very little. He never listened to anyone, not even your father when he was alive.”

  There was nothing Alnina could say that she had not said already, so she therefore merely smiled at Brooks and said,

  “We will win through in the end, you know that we will. You and Mrs. Brooks have been wonderful and I am very very grateful to you.”

  “It ain’t right, Miss Alnina, when you should be going to dances and meeting young gentlemen, that you be stuck here a-worrying over money day in and day out,”

  “I can think about dancing later when I have paid our debts,” Alnina replied. “Mind you don’t forget that letter. I just know that it will create an interest amongst the Curators of museums if no one else.”

  She thought a little wistfully, as she turned away, that her mother’s tiara had been almost the first thing she had sold, as well as the diamond necklace that she wore at balls and the pearls she wore every day.

  They had all gone very quickly and yet what she received for them was only a drop in the ocean of Charles’s debts.

  Now, as she went upstairs again she was wondering if she would ever get married.

  And if she did, what sort of gown she would wear. It certainly would not resemble her mother’s.

  She had been told that it had been a sensation at the time, but several older members of the family had thought that it was too fantastic and had disapproved.

  ‘Mama must have looked so beautiful in it,’ Alnina had often said to herself.

  She thought now as she walked past the mirror, which had not yet been sold, that she too would look very pretty at her wedding.

  ‘If anyone wants to marry me and I have to pay for my own dress, it will have to be a very cheap one,’ she told herself.

  Then, because it was too frivolous a thought when she had to concentrate on the house, she went into another room to see what else could be sold.

  It had never appealed to her to have a sale at the house and so she had only sold items one by one.

  She thought on the whole it had brought in more money that if she had put them one after another under the hammer at an auction house.

  At the same time it meant that raising money was much slower than a large sale would have achieved and yet she somehow could not bear to fill the house with strangers looking for a bargain.

  The Hermitage was a particularly beautiful house.

  It was first built in Elizabethan times and added to by various families until it fell into her great-grandfather’s hands and he had improved it out of all recognition.

  He made the garden beautiful and greatly admired by everyone in the County and it was still lovely but wild.

  Charles had dispensed with all the gardeners except for one who was too old to be moved and now the lawns were overgrown and the weeds thick in the flowerbeds.

  Yet it was still, in Alnina’s eyes, the enchanted haven she had found it when she was a child.

  Then the fountains had all been playing and, as she had watched them throwing their water up into the sky, she thought nothing could be more etherial.

  Now every room was gradually being emptied.

  As she went towards the front door, she missed the grandfather clock. It had always stood just inside the hall, but she had sold it for fifty pounds last week.

  It was a clock that had delighted her as a child and when it was working there was a man at the top of it bringing down a hammer every time it struck the hour.

  She had found it so fascinating when she was very small and she wondered if other children somewhere else in the country were finding it as fascinating now.

  Then she told herself that it was no use thinking of the past all the time.

  She had to concentrate on the future.

  The most immediate problem being what would she do and where would she go if the house was sold.

  She was hoping that whoever bought it would take on the Brookses, but she herself would have to leave.

  ‘Where can I go and what can I do?’ she asked and could find no answer.

  Then, as she walked across the lawn, she looked up at the sky and saw a bird flying high overhead.

  ‘Perhaps,’ she now told herself, ‘he will carry my thoughts into an enchanted land where everything I want will come true.’

  Then she laughed at herself.

  It was the sort of thought she had had when she was growing up and then the world seemed an intriguing place waiting for her to explore it.

  Because her father always talked of his travels, she wanted to travel too.

  She imagined herself visiting different places in the world which so far she had only read about in books and it was this yearning for something so different, something so exciting, that had made her concentrate on languages when she was at school.

  She had read all the books she could find on each country whose language she had been taught to speak.

  There were French books that she read avidly once she knew French. There were German books, which she did not find so delightful as she thought that German was an ugly language.

  But she had loved Italian, Greek and Spanish.

  Then, just when she was nearly eighteen and should have been leaving to have a Season in London, she found herself captivated by Russian.

  As Russian history books were so interesting, they helped her to overcome the difficulties of the language.

  ‘Now,’ she thought as she looked up at the sky, ‘I will never see the places I have read about and which Papa always found entrancing.’

  The one thing she was absolutely sure of was that she could not now afford to travel, unless, of course, she could become a teacher to the children of Diplomats.

  Or she could become a secretary at an Embassy, otherwise she would have to be content with books instead of reality.

  It was sad, but, because she did not want to feel unhappy about herself, she walked back into the house.

  She was thinking that there were still parts of it she had not fully explored where there might still be something saleable.

  *

  Her advertisement appeared in The Times four days later.

  Brooks brought the newspaper in with breakfast and he had opened it so that she could read at a glance what she had written.

  ‘If that does not attract people,’ she thought to herself, ‘then nothing will.’

  She hoped that she would obtain the one thousand pounds she was asking for and not have to reduce it.

  She had learnt that many people, who were buying anything, always expected to get it for less than the seller asked.

  So after the first two or three items she had sold, she always asked a price a little higher than she expected to receive.

  She had, in fact, at the very last moment, increased the pr
ice she was asking for the wedding dress and so she would be prepared to reduce it, but, of course, appear reluctant as she did so.

  “Well, I expects,” Brooks was saying, “you’ll have them knocking on the door to have a look at it. But if you asks me, you could have asked for even more than that.”

  “I don’t think anyone spends more on a wedding dress,” Alnina replied. “In fact, I have seen advertisements offering them with a veil and a wreath for half that price.”

  “Yes, but what they be selling ain’t a dress like your Mama’s,” Brooks insisted. “Your father always said it were the prettiest gown in the whole world.”

  Alnina laughed.

  “That is the sort of thing Papa would say. But one thousand pounds is a great deal of money these days and most brides have to buy their whole trousseau for less.”

  “There be brides and brides,” Brooks said. “If you asks me, Miss Alnina, you could have got more than that.”

  “I have not received anything yet,” Alnina replied. “But we will soon find out if you are right, Brooks, and I am wrong.”

  Brooks did not reply.

  But she heard him mutter to himself as he carried her empty tray out of the dining room towards the kitchen.

  *

  She would have been most interested if she had known that at the very moment when she was arguing with Brooks about her advertisement, the Duke of Burlingford was reading The Times in his London house.

  It had been put neatly down on his breakfast table on a silver stand, which had been used by his grandfather.

  He glanced at the headlines, but then he was really thinking how extraordinary it was that he should be seated in a beautiful carved chair at the head of the table.

  He was now ensconced in a house that he had only visited three or four times before it became his.

  In fact, he still felt as if he was in a dream from which he would not wake up.

  He found it quite impossible to believe that he was now actually the Head of the Family and he had never in his wildest dreams thought it would be possible.

  John Ford, as he had been born, had at an early age wanted to travel.

  When he left Eton, where he had a good education, he had rejected his father’s advice that he should go on to a University.

  Instead he had set off to explore the world and he had found it so much more fascinating and educational than any University could have been.

  He had travelled for four years and then he returned home because he learnt that his father was ill.

  His father owned a nice comfortable, medium-sized house in Worcestershire and he was not very interested in anything that took place outside his own County.

  He was, however, an ardent enthusiast for sporting activities. He rode to hounds, had a small but excellent shoot of his own and was a patron of a local cricket team and this he had founded and financed.

  He had only one son with his wife, who was not particularly strong.

  When she died, he was quite content to live on his own with only periodical news of his son.

  He saw very little of the Head of the Family, who was the Duke of Burlingford, the owner of an enormous estate in Sutherland in Scotland as well as a family house in Berkeley Square.

  Once a year the Duke expected his relations to visit him in the huge house which had been given to the first Duke by Charles II for his loyalty and support.

  When John Ford met his relatives there, the Duke entertained them lavishly and they would go home thinking what a charming man he was.

  It was obvious that his care for the family would be continued by his son who was very like him.

  His son, however, seemed to have no wish to marry and the older members of the family pressed him to choose a charming wife. But at thirty-one he was still a bachelor despite their protests.

  John Ford, however, was not particularly interested in the Dukedom or his cousin, who was five years older than he was.

  “You go, Papa,” he would say when a summons to a family get-together arrived.

  It was an order that few of his relations were brave enough to refuse.

  “You should take more of an interest in the family,” his father would reply.

  “I know, Papa, but you know how boring it is with all those old relations and the Duke lecturing us at almost every meal.”

  His father had laughed.

  “I will tell him you are in Timbuktu. I did that last year and he accepted it. But I cannot help thinking as I am getting old that just as he keeps telling your cousin that he should marry, I should be saying the same to you.”

  John had, however, refused.

  Then, when he was in South America, his father had died unexpectedly during an extremely cold winter.

  He thought perhaps that his father had been right and he should find a wife.

  As it happened, he fell in love quite unexpectedly with a young girl who was the beauty of the Season.

  One of his relatives had invited him to stay for a ball she was giving for her daughter, Marcia, who had just come out and John, who was twenty-three, had accepted because he could not think of a good enough excuse for refusing.

  He had gone to the ball, thinking that he would enjoy himself far more if he went to his Club and played bridge.

  Marcia was only eighteen, exceedingly pretty and undoubtedly one of the sensations of the Season.

  They had danced together and when John, a little later, asked her to marry him, she accepted.

  He was in a seventh Heaven of delight and indeed so apparently was his future wife.

  The wedding was announced and planned to take place in a month’s time.

  John was very busy redecorating his home and he wanted it to be a fitting background for the beauty of his future wife. His father had left it exactly as it was when he inherited and there was therefore a great deal to do to make it what John considered perfect for Marcia.

  She liked pink, so the bedroom was decorated for her in that colour and he bought new curtains and re-gilded the carved and gilt-canopied bed, which had been there since his ancestor had been given it by Charles II.

  It was not a large house and did not in any way compare with the Ducal residence, which was very big and very imposing.

  “We will be very happy,” John had told his pretty fiancée, “and there are so many places I want to show you in the world. So we will travel as much as we can.”

  Marcia agreed to everything.

  The wedding was finally fixed for the second week in May and it was then that John had a letter from the Duke telling him that he was unable to be present at the wedding.

  However, he would be giving John, as a member of the family, a picture of one of their ancestors and also a canteen of silver engraved with the family crest.

  John thanked him politely and then hurried back to Marcia, only to find what he had never expected in his wildest imagination.

  Waiting for him at his home was a letter and, when he opened it eagerly, it was to read that Marcia would not be marrying him as had been planned.

  She had fallen in love with a young man who was a Viscount and would, when his father died, become an Earl.

  To John it was a blow he had never anticipated.

  He realised cynically and with a bitterness he did not attempt to hide that Marcia had only become engaged to him because he was related to the Duke.

  There was no thought of his inheriting the title, so she had eagerly accepted the Viscount instead.

  Rather than face the sympathy of his friends, John had left England immediately.

  This time he went to Russia and spent some time in the Caucasus and when he finally returned home he was three years older and very cynical about women.

  “I have made a fool of myself once,” he told his friend William Armstrong, who had accompanied him on several of his trips, “but once bitten, twice shy and now I will never marry.”

  It was easy to say that when he was just John Ford and of no particular
consequence.

  Now it was very different.

  By what had seemed an impossibility, he became the Duke of Burlingford.

  The Duke and his son and heir had decided that they would go to Scotland in August to shoot grouse and to fish for salmon.

  In the previous year they had found it a long and tedious journey overland, so they had decided that this year they would go by sea.

  The Duke’s Scottish castle and estate lay a long way to the North and to travel by sea seemed a far more comfortable and more sensible way of getting there.

  Then there blew up, however, an unexpected and unusually violent storm in the North Sea and they had very nearly reached their destination when the ship they were travelling in was driven onto a rocky shore.

  There was no chance of saving anyone on board and both the Duke and his son were drowned.

  John Ford was informed with difficulty, because he was in Nepal at the time, that he was now the tenth Duke of Burlingford.

  To say that he was pleased was not entirely true.

  He was surprised, in fact astonished, and thought it would undoubtedly be rather a bore to become Head of a Family that he had paid very little attention to in the past.

  Then when his friend, William Armstrong, arrived to see him, almost the first thing he said was,

  “You will hardly believe me, William, but what I am thinking now is that we can buy that mountain in the Caucasus.”

  William stared at him.

  “We were certain that there was gold in it, but we did not have the money to bid for it at the time.”

  William gasped in astonishment.

  “Are you still thinking of the prospect?” he asked.

  “Indeed I am. You must remember how much we enjoyed that trip through Georgia and on to the Caucasus.”

  William nodded and the Duke went on,

  “We were both convinced that the mountain which we climbed and inspected so carefully contained gold.”

  “They say that about many of the mountains in the Caucasus,” William commented. “But, as it would have cost a fortune to make sure of it, we had to leave well alone.”

  “Of course we did then, but now I have plenty of money and there is nothing to stop us from buying that mountain.”