This is Love Page 2

  Then there was an elderly couple. The woman had a red shawl over her shoulders and she guessed that they were staying in the inn and were not just travellers.

  She then started in her mind to make up stories about each of the guests as she often did when she saw strangers in the countryside and villages.

  Then at the other side of the fireplace she saw that there was a man who was obviously a gentleman. And with him was a small boy.

  She had not noticed them at first, but she was made aware of their presence when she could overhear the gentleman speaking sharply to the waiter.

  He had apparently brought him a bottle of wine that was different from the one that he had ordered and the gentleman cursed the waiter for being stupid.

  Looking at the gentleman without appearing to do so, she thought that he looked disagreeable and clearly bad-tempered. She suspected that he was also a heavy drinker.

  The little boy with him was obviously very young and she made a guess that he was about nine years of age.

  He had fair hair and seemed a rather delicate child and Athina thought that he also looked very tired.

  She wondered where they were going and what their relationship was.

  Her dinner arrived after only a short wait and she started to eat.

  As she did so, she heard the gentleman start complaining about the food and sending away one dish because in his view the meat was cut too thickly.

  She ruminated that, whoever he might be, her father would have disapproved of him.

  “I dislike men who shout at waiters,” he had said to her once.

  He himself had never shouted at his servants. If he rebuked them, it was in a cool quiet manner that was far more effective than if he had raged at them.

  The gentleman, who obviously had ordered a large meal, was still complaining as Athina finished hers.

  She felt that, while the food admittedly was not very exciting, it was edible and on the whole well cooked.

  She had also been attended to without there being any long waits.

  When she thanked the waiter for his excellent service, he said,

  “It’s bin a pleasure waitin’ on you, ma’am.”

  She smiled and left the dining room.

  She could still hear the gentleman’s voice blasting away by the time she had reached the foot of the stairs.

  A porter hurried to stop her before she went any further.

  “Your groom, ma’am,” he said, “’as told me to tell you that the wheels of your chaise ’as now bin repaired.”

  “Thank you,” Athina replied.

  Once in her bedroom she undressed and then found that she was unexpectedly tired.

  Listening to her aunt saying the same things over and over again that she had heard so often before was always exhausting.

  They had also come quite a long distance to where they were now.

  ‘I should sleep well,’ Athina told herself.

  She said her prayers and as she said them she felt, as she always did, that her father was close to her.

  Also her beloved mother, whom she had adored and who had died two years previously.

  They had both been, she recalled, charming and delightful people.

  The sad thing was that they did not get on and did not even like each other.

  Indeed it had taken Athina some years before she had realised just how divided her parents really were.

  It was all due to the fact that theirs, as with most aristocrats, had been an arranged marriage.

  When she was old enough to talk to her mother intelligently, the Countess had confided in her.

  When she was young she had fallen very much in love with the son of the neighbouring Squire.

  “We had known each other since we were children,” the Countess said. “Then, when I was seventeen and he was twenty-one, we realised that we were in love.”

  “How romantic, Mama!” Athina had exclaimed. “What did you do about it?”

  “We used to meet secretly,” the Countess said, “as William did not wish to approach my father until he had completed his degree at Oxford University and had seen a little of the world.”

  “So he went abroad, Mama?”

  “Only for a short time. When he came back we knew that we were more in love with each other than we had been before. William then decided that he would talk to my father.”

  There was a note in the Countess’s voice as she spoke that made Athina ask,

  “What happened then?”

  “It had all been arranged that I should go to London that spring to be presented at Court and to have a Season in which I was to enjoy the balls. William then asked me if I wanted to wait until after I had been presented before he asked Papa if we could be engaged. I stupidly said that perhaps I should be presented first.”

  She sighed before she went on,

  “I thought that it would make me seem more grown-up and more capable of knowing my own mind.”

  “Then you did suspect that your father would not really welcome William as a son-in-law,” Athina had suggested.

  “I was sure that my father would want me to make an important marriage.”

  “Because you were so beautiful,” Athina had finished.

  Her mother smiled.

  “I think that was the reason and also my father was an ambitious man who had somehow failed to become of any significance himself in the neibourhood.”

  “So what happened?” Athina had asked.

  “Foolishly I went to London. I was then presented at Buckingham Palace and, while I was there, your father saw me – ”

  Now there was a note in her mother’s voice that Athina could not help recognising was one of despair.

  “And Papa fell in love with you,” she murmured.

  “He wanted to marry me,” her mother replied, “mainly because he needed a young wife who would give him the son he wanted.”

  Athina just stared at her mother thinking that this was something that she had never realised before.

  “He talked to my father and mother,” the Countess went on, “and, of course, they were completely overjoyed that I should marry anyone as prestigious as the Earl of Murling. They had never aspired so high even though I was thought to be very pretty.”

  “And what happened to William?” Athina had asked.

  Her mother made a helpless gesture.

  “I was forced to say ‘goodbye’ to him and it broke his heart as it broke mine.”

  “Was there nothing you could do to persuade your father that you loved him?”

  “I tried to tell him,” the Countess said, “but he would not listen to me. Everybody thought that I was the luckiest girl in the world to have captured an Earl before I was even launched onto the Social world! So we were married.”

  Her mother did not say anything more.

  Athina, however, knew that she had never loved the man who she had been forced to marry.

  What is more he had been seriously disappointed in her.

  It might have been Fate, or it might have simply been because she was unhappy, that the Countess had produced only one child and that was a daughter.

  The doctors had said that they thought it was impossible for her to bear any more children.

  At first the Earl would not listen to them, saying that he had never heard such nonsense. His wife was young and beautiful and so it was only a question of time.

  But the longed-for son did not arrive.

  He was therefore forced to accept the fact that Athina would be his only child. So he was determined to make her exceptional.

  It was his way of hiding the truth that he was bitterly disappointed that the son he wanted so desperately would never materialise.

  Loving both her parents, Athina found it very hard not to be aware every day and every hour how much they resented each other.

  She would often talk animatedly and excitedly to her father on a number of different subjects

  But, when her mother came into the
room, it seemed suddenly as if the temperature had dropped. There was a restriction over whatever they said that she could not ignore.

  Then Athina’s mother had died in one very cold winter when she contracted pneumonia.

  It had passed through Athina’s mind that maybe her father would marry again, but he was very obviously too old.

  Over sixty years old, he had made the best of his life by making his daughter his companion instead of the son he craved for.

  He therefore carried on, Athina thought with some relief without a wife who he had always felt frustrated with.

  When he had taken a nasty fall when out hunting, the doctors had claimed that it was nothing serious.

  But he died a week later.

  It seemed unbelievable to Athina that she should then suddenly find herself all alone.

  The one thing she had learnt from her parents’ marriage was that never in any circumstances would she marry a man who she did not love.

  ‘Never, never,’ she told herself, ‘will I live like Papa and Mama – both so very charming in themselves and still both so unhappy as apart from me they had nothing in common.”

  She was not certain what sort of man she really wanted to have in her life.

  But one thing in her life she did realise – she would never allow anybody, whoever they might be, to choose her husband for her.

  Almost as soon as the funeral was over, that was exactly what her relations had wanted to do.

  They swept into the house, one after another and the conversation was always the same.

  “You cannot live alone, Athina dear, and the sooner we find you a suitable husband the better!”

  “I have no wish to be married,” Athina always answered firmly.

  “That is quite ridiculous,” would be the answer. “You are already eighteen and, if you are not careful, you will be on the shelf and an old maid.”

  They would laugh at the idea, but Athina knew that it was what they believed was the truth.

  “You will meet plenty of gentlemen in London,” one relative after another had insisted.

  Even before she had finished her last months of mourning, they began to bring men into the house to meet her.

  “Lord Newcomb is staying with us for two days,” an aunt would say, “and it seems a pity, as he is here in the country, for you not to meet him.”

  Or else the plan might be,

  “I know that Sir Willoughby would be thrilled to see your father’s horses. Take him round the stables, Athina dear, while I sit in front of the fire.”

  As soon as they arrived, Athina felt that every nerve of hers was on edge.

  Her whole self rebelled at the thought that the newcomer was just there for one reason only.

  To look her over as if she was on show at a fashionable Spring Horse Fair.

  ‘No! No! No!’ she wanted to scream out. ‘Go away and leave me alone. I don’t want to marry you or anybody else.’

  However, one of the many things her father had taught her was self-control.

  She was always charming and polite and no one had the slightest idea of what she was really feeling inside.

  One man, more importunate than the rest, returned unexpectedly and alone the next day.

  When he had actually proposed to her, she replied with what was in her mind,

  “I am, of course, honoured, my Lord,” she said in a cold voice, that after such a very short acquaintance you should ask me to be your wife, but I must make it very clear that I have no intention of marrying anyone.”

  “That is ridiculous!” he had replied. “Of course you will have to be married. No woman should live alone and certainly no one quite as beautiful as you.”

  “I have plenty of people to look after me and, although you may think it rather strange, I like being alone with, of course, my horses, my friends and my estate.”

  She saw a look in his eyes, which told her that her estate was as desirable to him as she was herself. In fact without it it was doubtful if he would have been so eager.

  She held out her hand.

  “Goodbye, my Lord, and I thank you for calling, but I think that you will understand when I tell you that it would be a mistake for you to come here again.”

  There was nothing that her ardent suitor could do but leave and she told herself with a little smile that it was with his tail between his legs.

  Athina stretched herself out on the goose feather mattress, which was very comfortable and closed her eyes.

  Tomorrow, she thought, she would be home and that was where she wanted to be.

  It was then, as she was just about falling asleep, that she heard a scream.

  CHAPTER TWO

  It was the high scream of something small that was frightened.

  As Athina listened, she heard a harsh voice say,

  “I have been waiting for you! Where the devil have you been?”

  It was easy to recognise the voice of the gentleman who had dined opposite her and who had been so offensive to the waiters.

  He was speaking to the little boy who had been with him and she heard the boy stammering his reply,

  “I – went to – the stables. I thought – Ladybird was – unhappy because you – had whipped her.”

  “It has nothing to do with you whether I whip my horses or not,” the gentleman said angrily, “and you will not go out of the inn unless I tell you to. It is time you learnt how to behave yourself.”

  He must have made a threatening gesture for the boy cried out.

  “Please – I am – sorry. Don’t – beat me – again!”

  “I am going to teach you to obey me!” the gentleman thundered.

  There was another scream and Athina thought that the child must be trying to escape.

  There was a noise as if two people were scuffling.

  Then there was a thud as if the boy had been thrown onto the bed.

  He was screaming again, screaming so that if was unbearable to hear him.

  With hands that trembled Athina relit the candle that she had just blown out.

  When there was a light in the room, she realised exactly why she was hearing what was happening so clearly.

  It was because there was a communicating door between her and the boy’s bedroom and she had not noticed it before.

  The screams were gradually growing weaker and now the child was mumbling and she thought that he was mumbling,

  “Mum-ma! Mum-ma!”

  “That will teach you not to disobey me again,” the gentleman said in the same aggressive voice. “I will beat obedience into you if it is the last thing I do.”

  Athina heard him walk across the room and open the door to slam it shut behind him. She also thought that she heard him turn the key in the lock.

  She climbed out of bed and, putting on her dressing gown, went to the communicating door.

  Now the boy was just sobbing away piteously as if he had not the strength to make any loud sound.

  Athina knew that she had to help him.

  She looked at the door and saw that there was a key on her side of it. She turned it in the lock and then opened the door cautiously.

  She did this just in case she had been mistaken and the gentleman was still there in the boy’s room.

  By the light of two candles she could see that the room was much smaller than hers and there was just a single bed on which the boy was lying face down.

  His coat must have been pulled off him because it was lying in a heap on the floor and he was wearing only his shirt and trousers.

  She went into the room.

  As she drew nearer to him, she could see blood from the weals on his back beginning to stain the whiteness of his shirt.

  He was sobbing convulsively, while at the same time murmuring, ‘Mum-ma! Mum-ma!’ in a broken little voice.

  She sat down on the bed and put her hand very gently on his fair head,

  “It’s all right,” she said in a soft voice. “It’s all over now and he will not h
urt you anymore.”

  For a moment the boy was still.

  Then he raised himself up on his arms as if to look at her, but his eyes were swollen and blinded by his tears.

  “It’s all right now,” Athina said again. “I will not let him hurt you anymore.”

  It was then that the small boy flung himself against her.

  He clung onto her, saying, ‘Mum-ma! Mum-ma!’ as if he thought that she really was his mother.

  She wanted to take him in her arms, but was afraid of hurting his back. Instead she held him by his shoulders and then continued to say quietly,

  “It’s all right. It’s all over.”

  It was some time before his tears ceased.

  When they did stop, Athina suggested,

  “Now come into my room and I will put something on your back that will take away the pain.”

  The boy held onto her for a moment as if he was afraid that she was going to leave him.

  Then, as she rose slowly to her feet, she helped him to the ground.

  His small face was wet with tears and she had to guide him round the bed and out of the room into hers.

  Only when she had closed the door behind her and locked it did she say in a normal tone of voice,

  “No one can hear us now and I am going to make you feel very much better than you do at the moment.”

  She made him sit down on her bed.

  Going over to the washstand she then brought back a sponge and a linen towel.

  Gently she washed his face, holding the sponge against his eyes to cool them. He sat still as she did so and while she dried his face with a white towel.

  Now that she could see him clearly she realised that he was a very god-looking little boy.

  There was no doubt that he was suffering from shock and was, she thought, not quite certain about what was happening.

  “I am going to put some cream on your back,” she said quietly, “so take off your shirt.”

  He fumbled with the buttons and in the end she had to help him.

  When she then took the shirt away from him, she gave a gasp of horror.

  His whole back was covered with weals from the whip that the gentleman had used so brutally on him and she could see that there were many other weals from previous whippings.

  She thought that it would be a mistake to try to make him give her an explanation.