203. Love Wins Read online

  Lord Heywood wanted to remark that this was the spoils of victory, but thought it would seem a cheap expression, which he had heard so often from other people. And so he said nothing.

  Then, as Mr. Crosswaith closed his briefcase, he said,

  “I only wish, my Lord, that I had been able to bring you happier tidings. My partners and I will have another look, if it is your wish, at the house in London, but the only person who appears to be buying anything these days is His Royal Highness the Prince Regent and, as he never pays his debts, most gentlemen are not anxious to sell him their possessions.”

  Lord Heywood rose to his feet.

  “What I intend to do, Mr. Crosswaith is to ride from here to The Abbey. When I have inspected the conditions I find there and come to some conclusion as to what could be done in the future, I will, of course, communicate with you.”

  “Thank you, my Lord.”

  “I am extremely grateful for the way that you have administered the estates in my absence and I know that I can trust you to carry on in the future.”

  “We are deeply grateful for your Lordship’s patronage.”

  Lord Heywood did not mention that it was doubtful if the firm would ever be paid their fees, but he realised that one person who was well aware of that scenario was Mr. Crosswaith himself.

  The Solicitor bowed himself from the office and Lord Heywood sat for some minutes with unseeing eyes.

  He wondered what the devil he was going to do and then he told himself in a practical manner that there was no use in planning anything until he had seen the condition of The Abbey and the estate.

  He realised as he looked down at the table that Mr. Crosswaith had left behind a large stack of papers and that the most bulky of them was the Inventory of Heywood Abbey and another entitled The Contents of Heywood House.

  ‘There must be something’ he murmured to himself.

  At the same time he did not feel very optimistic, but it was some consolation to realise that he had about twenty pounds in cash on him.

  It came from the sale at a ridiculously small price to an avaricious French dealer, of the possessions he had accumulated in Paris during the time he had been there at Wellington’s beck and call.

  Lord Heywood thought that he would have preferred to be camping in a tent with his men or in the Barracks that they had commandeered on the outskirts of Paris.

  He had actually divided his time between several different places and now he thought that for all he had been able to do he should have returned home earlier.

  In fact if he had sold out the moment the news of his father's death had reached him, he might have been in a better position now to salvage some of the farms on the estate.

  But it was too late for regrets. All he could do was to return home and see the difficulties for himself.

  *

  It was very early the next morning before Lord Heywood and his batman, Carter, rode onto the Heywood Estate

  It had been so difficult to get away from Dover that, although they travelled as fast as their horses could carry them, they had finally been overtaken by darkness and been forced to put up at a wayside inn.

  It had been rough and uncomfortable and Lord Heywood’s charger had seemed out of place in the small broken-down stables where there was hardly room for the horse that Carter rode.

  They persuaded the innkeeper to find them some fresh straw and as dawn broke Lord Heywood thought that the horses would doubtless have been more comfortable than he had been.

  He had, however, not complained because bivouacking on a barren mountain in Portugal had taught him that there were indeed varying degrees of comfort.

  He had, however, no wish to linger on a mattress that seemed to be composed of hard rocks and he had risen at first light to find that Carter was already up and grooming the horses.

  Breakfast consisted of some stale bread, a lump of hard cheese and some butter that smelled rancid.

  “I will wait until I get home,” Lord Heywood remarked, pushing it aside and, having paid the innkeeper, they were on their way.

  As he rode on the land that was familiar to him, Lord Heywood remembered once again the thrill that he had tried to deny when he set foot on British soil at Dover.

  Now the soil was his, part of his blood, his heritage and part too of his childhood and of so many memories that he thought he had forgotten.

  He found himself remembering isolated incidents almost as if they were pictures in front of his eyes.

  He could see the first trout he had ever caught in the lake fighting at the end of his line, he could feel the cold of the water as he swam, though forbidden to do so, amongst the swans who swept away disdainfully because he was disturbing their serenity.

  He remembered the first pigeon he had shot and how he had carried it home in pride to show his father.

  After that there had been his first rabbit and his first partridge, his first pheasant and, more exciting than anything else, his first pony when he was almost too small to walk and later a larger pony and horses, always horses that he thought carried him swifter than the wind.

  These memories, like the land he was riding on, were in his breathing and living and he knew that whatever happened in the future it was his and he could not lose it, nor would he ever leave it.

  He had said to Carter the previous day,

  “If you come with me, life is going to be uncomfortable. England is not the same as when we left it and for all I know at the moment I may not even be able to afford to eat let alone feed you.”

  He paused before he added,

  “Quite frankly I have not the faintest idea where your wages are to come from!”

  “Don’t you worry about that, sir,” Carter replied “We managed some’ow when we was a-fightin’ and, as for food, I daresay as ’ow I can forage some.”

  Lord Heywood laughed.

  “If you do, you will find yourself being hanged or transported for stealing anything over a shilling in value. It is not an enemy we have to cope with now, but English Law!”

  Carter had grinned in a manner that was an impudence in itself.

  “I always thought ’twere a blessin’ them Frenchy farmers was such bad shots!”

  Lord Heywood did not reply because he thought it undignified to do so.

  If he had told Carter once, he had told him a dozen times that the English, unlike the French, always paid for anything they took from the inhabitants of the country they were fighting over.

  On many occasions he had gone back to a farm that Carter had purloined a couple of hens or a young lamb from to pay an infuriated and extremely hostile farmer.

  But they had on the whole been so surprised at the honesty of the British that they had accepted the money with alacrity but were suspicious of an ulterior motive behind the offer.

  “You will, I hope, find plenty of rabbits and game on the estate,” Lord Heywood said aloud, “which are mine and yours if you can catch or shoot them, provided we are able to afford cartridges.”

  He thought, however, as they rode on that they did not see as many rabbits and hares as he expected, nor was there any sign of the pheasants which had once bred profusely in the woods.

  He suspected that since there were no gamekeepers to keep a watch there had been plenty of locals who were prepared to risk the heavy penalties of being caught rather than remain hungry.

  ‘Surely things cannot be so bad in the countryside?’ Lord Heywood asked himself and knew that this was yet another question that he must find an answer to.

  It was still very early and the mist was hanging over the lake when finally they came in sight of the house.

  Heywood Abbey had been built originally by Cistercian monks, but practically nothing of the original Abbey remained.

  It was the second Lord Heywood who had commissioned Robert Adam when he was still a young man to build him a house that he considered was the right background for his considerable pretensions.

  It was therefore an extr
emely impressive building with a centre block rising to a roof decorated with urns and statues and with two wings stretching out on either side.

  It had an exquisite artistic symmetry, which in the years to come was to make Robert Adam the most famous architect of the period.

  Now in the pale sunshine it looked so lovely and at the same time so magnificent that it was impossible for Lord Heywood to realise that it was not only empty but he could not afford to pay even one servant to attend to his needs.

  Almost instinctively he had drawn in his horse and Carter had done the same.

  There was a poignant silence.

  Then Carter said,

  “Be that yours, sir?”

  “That is my home, Carter.”

  Carter scratched the side of his head.

  “Looks like a Barracks to me!”

  Lord Heywood laughed.

  He was aware that Carter was a Cockney by birth and, when he had joined the Army, ostensibly because he was born with a sense of adventure, he would never have imagined that one man would require such a large building to house him.

  Then Lord Heywood knew that, if this was where he intended to live, he needed Carter more than he had ever needed anybody before.

  It was not only his ability to make the best of any situation they found themselves in and his gift of procuring food like manna from Heaven from the most unlikely places that made him such an asset.

  It was his cheerfulness and his sense of humour and Lord Heywood would have been very stupid if he had not realised that Carter in his own way almost worshipped him.

  An orphan, brought up in a charity school, apprenticed to a man who had ill-treated him and he had run away and then was pitch-forked into the War, he looked upon Lord Heywood since they had been together in the Army as a Providence round whom his whole existence was centred.

  “Barracks or not,” he said aloud, “this is where you and I are going to live for the moment and I promise you we shall be more comfortable than we were last night.”

  “Well, sir, I suppose we can make the best of it,” Carter said cheerfully, but we’ll doubtless wear out our boots walkin’ from one end of it t’other! And there won’t be no ordnance to go to for replacements!”

  Lord Heywood laughed and then he touched his horse to make him move quicker towards his old home

  It was very quiet in the stables and in the cottage where he knew that Merrivale and his wife lived the curtains were still drawn over the windows.

  Having put the horses in stalls that needed sweeping out, Lord Heywood and Carter, having unharnessed them and provided them with a bucket of water, walked towards the back door of the house

  “We may not be able to get in,” Lord Heywood said, “in which case we shall have to wake up Merrivale. He is a very old man and I would rather wait to approach him when he is dressed, as it may give him a shock to see me.”

  “I’ll find a way in, sir – I mean, my Lord.”

  He kept forgetting that his Master should be addressed by his new title.

  The back door was locked, but a window was half-open and Carter climbed in through it to find a larger and easier window that his Master could follow him through.

  Lord Heywood felt that it was a somewhat undignified way to enter his own home.

  Equally he rather wanted to be alone for the first exploration of the house and not have to listen to long-winded chatter about what had and had not been done.

  He left Carter inspecting the kitchens to see if there was anything for breakfast and walked away along the passage, which was shut off by a baize door from the best part of the house.

  All the curtains were drawn and there was a faint light percolating at the sides of them from a sun that had not yet fully risen.

  In the dimness the Duke felt that he was walking back in time and now he was a little boy thinking how large the rooms were and listening to the deepness of his father’s voice and the soft tones of his mother’s.

  He looked into the huge dining room where there was a long table in the centre where it was easy to seat fifty people at once.

  There was a thick layer of dust on everything and, because the thought that he would never be able to entertain here was depressing, he walked on.

  He avoided the larger rooms and came to the small drawing room that his father and mother had used every day, while the State Rooms were kept for special occasions.

  Here the curtains were closed and he could make out only the outline of the furniture covered in Holland dust sheets.

  He walked on again and now he had reached the door of the library with its enormous array of books and the balcony that as a child he would climb a twisting ladder to.

  But instead of entering it he turned back to walk up the gilded and carved staircase to the first floor.

  In front of him was the Grand Salon, where he remembered his father and mother would entertain the Prince of Wales and give parties that the whole County had flocked to as if in obedience to an Imperial command.

  Here also everything was shrouded in dust sheets and he told himself that later he would come back and open the heavy curtains and let in the sunlight.

  It was almost like being at a funeral to see everything shrouded and dark and he walked on down the wide corridor seeking the suite of rooms that had always been occupied by his parents.

  He felt, as if by going to the bedroom where his father had died and where the Head of the Family had slept for generations, he was paying his last respects to the parent he had loved.

  He had not been aware of his father’s death until two months after it had happened.

  He had been fighting his way across France towards Belgium when the letter that had followed him for countless miles had finally reached his hand.

  He had thought, as he took it from the messenger, that it was a despatch and then, when he realised that it was a letter from England, he had at first placed it into a pocket of his tunic to read later.

  Because it had been very late before he went to bed that night, it was by the flickering light of the candle lantern in his tent that he had learnt of his father’s death and that he was now the fifth Lord Heywood.

  The title had seemed of no significance at the time and he had deliberately continued to be known to his men, to his superiors and even to the Duke of Wellington as Colonel Wood.

  Lord Heywood opened the door of his father’s bedroom, which seemed to him now as large as he remembered it and walked to one of the windows to pull back the curtains.

  The vast four-poster bed was still hung with crimson brocade and at its head the family Coat of Arms had been embroidered more than a century earlier by the wife of the second Baron after he had left her to go to the Wars with Marlborough.

  Lord Heywood could remember all the furniture and the pictures. He recalled too as a little boy thinking,

  ‘One day I shall sleep here and it will be like being in a big ship with crimson sails.’

  He looked around him, feeling as if the spirit of his father was welcoming him home.

  Then he went towards the communicating door that led into the next room which had always been his mother’s.

  She too had died while he was serving in Portugal and there had been no chance of his returning home.

  He thought now how lovely she had been and how even now he still missed her.

  It was a pain that he had not expected to find that the house brought her back so vividly that he longed for her in a way that had something child-like about it.

  He remembered somebody saying to him once,

  “You are never grown up until your parents are both dead and you are on your own. Then you know you have become a man.”

  The communicating door would not open and Lord Heywood thought that perhaps his father had locked it after his mother’s death.

  He walked back into the passage and tried the outer door, but that too was locked.

  He felt somehow annoyed that he was debarred from entering his mot
her’s room as he wished to do and supposed that he would have to ask Merrivale for the key.

  Then he remembered that there was another way into the bedroom through his mother’s boudoir.

  He walked a little further down the passageway until he came to the door of the boudoir and when he turned the handle it opened.

  The curtains were drawn, but the room unexpectedly felt fresh and fragrant.

  However, without pausing to investigate the reason, he opened the communicating door and moved immediately towards one of the long windows hung with silk brocade curtains of a soft blue that had been one of his mother’s favourite colours.

  He pulled back one of the heavy curtains and saw to his surprise that the window was open and he felt the soft warm air on his face.

  There was sunshine too, for while he had been inside the house the sun had risen and was now casting a golden glow over the gardens and dispersing the mist over the lake.

  As Lord Heywood pulled back the other curtain, the sunlight flooded into the room and he turned to look at the large and beautiful bed that he remembered well with its gilded posts carved with flowers and silk curtains draped from a canopy ornamented with doves and small fat cupids circling round a crown.

  Even as he looked at the bed feeling that it was part of the happiness of his childhood, something stirred.

  For a moment he could hardly believe his eyes.

  Then, as the bedcovering moved, he was aware that there was a head against the pillow and the next minute that moved too and somebody sat up.

  And there was a small oval-shaped face with the faintly pink cheeks of a child who has been asleep.

  There was long fair hair falling in disarray over a white diaphanous nightgown.

  Then two large, very deep blue eyes were staring at Lord Heywood. and a voice asked,

  “Who are – you? What are you doing – here?”

  CHAPTER TWO