The Goddess Of Love Read online

  “What is it?” Charles enquired.

  “It’s a statue of Aphrodite that archaeologists have been seeking for years and which so far has eluded the French, the Germans and before them the Romans.”

  “I should have thought that Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love, was very inappropriate for you!”

  “Not if she is made of marble,” Lord Warburton replied.

  “I must admit that I would feel much happier,” Charles said, “if you had told me that you were going to Paris to search for an Aphrodite made of flesh and blood. As you well know, it is something you should be doing.”

  “What do you mean, I should be doing?”

  “Don’t be obtuse, Orion,” his friend replied. “You know as well as I do that you have to get married sooner or later and produce an heir. What otherwise is to happen to all this?”

  He threw out his arms in a gesture as he spoke.

  It embraced the magnificent pictures and two exceptional statues that stood one on either side of the fireplace.

  They were both of men, naked in the characteristic athletic pose, with the victor’s ribbon in their hair.

  Lord Warburton did not answer for a moment.

  Then he said,

  “You have said this to me before, but there is plenty of time.”

  “At thirty-two, if you get much older, it will be impossible for you to marry a young and beautiful Aphrodite and you will have to make do with a widow who will undoubtedly be only too eager to marry you for your wealth and position.”

  Lord Warburton laughed.

  “A gloomy picture! But I am not convinced that a gauche young woman without a brain in her head would be any better!”

  Charles stretched out his legs and lay back in his chair scrutinising his friend.

  “You worry me,” he said. “For the last two years you have grown more and more cynical and it seems impossible for any woman, however attractive she may be, to hold your attention.”

  He thought that Lord Warburton would laugh.

  Instead he rose from the fire-stool and walked restlessly across the room.

  He stood at the window looking out at the green lawns sloping down to the lake at the far side of which was an exquisite white Temple that he had brought back from Greece.

  Charles waited and after a definite pause, Lord Warburton said,

  “The truth is I find women, all women, disappointing!”

  “That is impossible!” Charles expostulated.

  “It’s true,” Lord Warburton replied. “They may look lovely, but as soon as I get to know them I find them stupid, trivial and in many ways uncivilised.”

  “I think you must be mad!”

  “No, I am sane and I find it so much easier to talk to men older than myself who have lived their lives fully or else are interested in the glories of the past.”

  “Especially those of Greece!” Charles Bruton said beneath his breath.

  “Yes, Greece!” Lord Warburton said firmly. “I only wish to God that I could have sat at the feet of Socrates and Plato or listened to Homer, finding everything they said stimulating and inspiring.”

  “But they are dead and it is ridiculous for you, of all people, to spend your time in longing for the unattainable and searching for dead bones.”

  “What is the alternative?” Lord Warburton asked. “To dance attendance on the ageing Prince of Wales and to listen to those bores who surround Queen Victoria, drooling on about the Empire?”

  “London has other attractions.”

  “By which you mean,” Lord Warburton said mockingly, “that I should be obsessed by the Gaiety Girls and think myself privileged to take one of them to supper? Good God, Charles, have you ever talked to one of those much-extolled ‘beauties’ of the Gaiety Theatre?”

  “Of course I have,” Charles replied, “and have found them very amusing!”

  “To drink champagne out of a silk slipper and drive them home in a hansom cab when dawn breaks?” Lord Warburton asked sarcastically.

  “I can think of more intimate pleasures,” Charles murmured.

  “On those occasions,” Lord Warburton replied, “one does not have to listen or talk!”

  Charles laughed.

  “All right, Orion, you win! Go to Greece, find your Aphrodite! All I can say is that marble is very cold in bed and stone lips are not particularly responsive!”

  Lord Warburton did not answer. He only walked back to where he had been sitting before.

  Then in a different tone of voice he said,

  “Now let’s talk and I want to hear every detail about my horses before I leave.”

  Charles obliged him.

  At the same time he could not help thinking that, despite all his great possessions, his friend was not a particularly happy man.

  He had admired Orion ever since they were together at Eton and they had both then gone on to Oxford University.

  Charles had concentrated on sport and the companionship of those who enjoyed the same pursuits as he did.

  Orion, however, had taken a degree in archaeology and he was acclaimed as being the best student of Oriental languages that Oxford had ever produced.

  However they had remained friends.

  When they went into the Lifeguards together, Charles was still admiring a man who could ride better and look more handsome than anybody else in the Regiment.

  Then they had served together in India as aides-de-camp to the Viceroy.

  Charles knew that on several occasions Orion had been in dangerous situations and he survived only by the quickness of his brain and an intuition that at times could be uncannily perceptive.

  When they returned to England, Orion had come into his title and, having left the Regiment, was concerned with his estates.

  For the following year the friends saw very little of each other.

  Then Charles took over the Warburton racing stable.

  Now, whenever his employer was in England they were together most of the time.

  Charles was worried because Orion seemed to get so little pleasure out of life, except when he was in Greece.

  He would only be excited when he brought back treasures from his last journey to Warburton Park.

  Charles enjoyed a pleasant succession of passionate love affairs and he found it hard to believe that his friend was happy without the delight of having a soft warm body in his arms and eager lips seeking his.

  Yet Lord Warburton appeared to be immune to the women who pursued him relentlessly.

  He found any woman’s attractions palled after a short space of time.

  Charles was aware that he had been disillusioned when he was very young during his first year at Oxford.

  It had been, he had thought at the time, quite unimportant, but looking back he was certain it was from that moment that his friend had seemed to avoid women.

  Alternatively, when he was with them, he regarded them cynically.

  He could understand that it was difficult for any woman, especially one with an ambitious mother, not to be aware that he was a tremendous ‘catch’, apart from being an extremely handsome and attractive man.

  Charles, who found that all women were like beautiful flowers waiting for him to pick them, wanted his friend to enjoy their proximity as much as he did.

  He found his preoccupation with what were, after all, only old pieces of marble inhuman and incomprehensible.

  They had talked over the horses and Charles had told him which races he hoped they would win.

  Then he said pleadingly,

  “Why do you not change your mind, Orion? Forget Greece for the moment and come and watch your colours first past the Winning Post at Newmarket and, of course, at Royal Ascot.”

  “I would like to do that,” Lord Warburton admitted, “but, if I lose Aphrodite, I may never have such an opportunity again!”

  “There are some very pretty Aphrodites in London,” Charles said temptingly, “one in particular whom I have been wanting you to meet for som
e time.”

  “I will meet her when I return and, if she is more beautiful than the Aphrodite I expect to bring back with me, perhaps I will marry her!”

  Charles laughed.

  Then he said seriously,

  “I hope you will do that, for actually she would make a very suitable wife, although she might find it somewhat irksome to have to share your affections with a lot of women made of marble, beautiful though they may be!”

  “If you are suggesting that to marry her I shall have to move my Goddesses into a museum or create one in the West wing,” Lord Warburton said, “then I shall refuse categorically to walk up the aisle!”

  Charles was about to make some flippant retort and then thought that it would be a mistake.

  He realised how proud his friend was of his Grecian antiquities.

  To suggest that any woman who married him might sweep away the lot would, he was quite certain, preclude his ever popping the question.

  ‘I must be tactful about this,’ he decided.

  Instead he said,

  “Very well, Orion, go to Greece and collect your Aphrodite! Then, as you have promised when you come home, seek for a Goddess young and alive who will make your heart beat faster and will provide you with half-a-dozen sons as handsome as you are yourself!”

  Lord Warburton laughed, but it was a little wryly.

  Charles was not the only person who was always begging him to marry and he thought irritably that his relations talked of little else.

  He knew only too well that they all disliked his heir presumptive, a cousin who was already middle-aged. He had, however, an unquenchable hope that he would somehow step into his shoes.

  It was he who was the most effusive about his collection for the simple reason that he hoped he would encounter some fatal danger on his journeys to the Mediterranean.

  Perhaps Lord Warburton’s yacht would sink and he would be drowned in a storm in the Bay of Biscay.

  Lord Warburton, who was well aware of other people’s feelings, knew what his cousin was hoping and praying would happen. And he felt more determined for that reason, if nothing else, to keep alive.

  At the same time he was honest enough to know that sooner or later he must marry. He would produce the longed-for heir to the title, although the idea appalled him.

  Charles was right in speculating that he had been disillusioned.

  He could still remember the way the girl he had admired and whom he was attracted to had laughed at his interest in Greece.

  She had sneered at the poems he found so beautiful and at the statues he took her to see in the British Museum.

  The Elgin Marbles had thrilled him ever since he had seen them when he was quite small.

  On his first vacation from Oxford he had gone to Paris to see the Grecian statues in the Louvre and the sculptures in Munich and because they meant so much to him, he had brought back for the girl drawings and photographs of what had thrilled him.

  She told him scathingly that she would have preferred a piece of jewellery and had no interest in ‘that old rubbish!’

  At first he could hardly credit what she was saying.

  Then, as she sniggered at his absorption in what to him was almost sacred, he learned that the poems he had written her in the Grecian style had been the cause of much laughter.

  She had shown them and ridiculed them not only to her own friends but his and he told himself that he would never again be deceived by a pretty face.

  There had been many women intermittently in his life.

  It had been impossible to avoid them when he was so good-looking and so distinguished.

  They had, however, never meant more to him than a physical enjoyment.

  It was much as a man enjoys a good meal and then forgets it immediately it is finished.

  He was well aware that even his friend Charles did not completely understand the beauty he found in Greece. The statues thrilled him as no woman had ever been able to do.

  At the same time they stimulated his mind and lifted his whole being towards the light of the stars.

  Because his mother had been a great lover of poetry she had christened him ‘Orion’.

  In deference to the family tradition his other names were ‘George Frederick’.

  It was only when he was old enough to decide such things for himself that he dropped his first two names and insisted on using the one that was Greek.

  Because he looked so romantic, people thought it appropriate and there were few of his friends except Charles brave enough to tease him about it.

  The two men were still talking animatedly when the door of the study opened.

  “Excuse me, my Lord,” the butler, who had been at The Park for over thirty years, said apologetically, “but there’s a young lady here who insists on seeing your Lordship.”

  “What does she want, McGregor?” Lord Warburton asked.

  “She asks if you’ll see her, my Lord, and says it’s a matter of life and death!”

  Lord Warburton looked surprised and Charles Bruton laughed.

  “That is certainly a change from the Vicar begging for a contribution towards the orphanage!”

  “I suppose I had better see her,” Lord Warburton said a little wearily.

  He was aware as soon as he had come to live at The Park that there was always somebody to bore him with their complaints or to ask for money for some local charity.

  “I’ve shown the young lady into the silver salon, my Lord.”

  “Very well,” Lord Warburton said, “I will join her there.”

  “A matter of life and death!” Charles echoed as the butler closed the door. “It sounds exciting!”

  “I doubt it,” Lord Warburton replied. “My guess is that it is a collection for a Missionary in Africa. They are always requiring funds to convert the natives, who much prefer their own religions.”

  “You are not only cynical,” Charles said accusingly, “but unromantic. I can think of much better reasons for a young woman to call on you.”

  Lord Warburton was, however, walking towards the door.

  “If I am too long,” he suggested, “come and rescue me.”

  “Very well,” Charles answered, “but if she is pretty, it would not hurt you to give her a fiver.”

  He was not certain that Lord Warburton heard the last words.

  He had shut the door before he finished speaking.

  Then, as Charles picked up the newspaper, he felt what a pity it was that his friend could not find somebody who attracted him as much as the Aphrodite he was seeking in Greece.

  ‘If she was alive now,’ Charles thought, ‘Orion would doubtless find her a prosaic bore. It is only because she is unattainable that he continues to search for what he will never find.’

  He sighed and, opening up the newspaper, turned to the sporting page.

  *

  Corena had woken in the morning feeling that what had happened the day before must have been a dream.

  And yet, when she remembered the Greek’s dark eyes and the way he had spoken to her, she knew that it was only too real.

  To save her father she had to visit Lord Warburton.

  She could hardly credit even to herself that she was faced with such a dilemma.

  The horror of it made her sit up in bed shivering, although the warm sun was streaming through the drawn-back curtains.

  She had not told her old Governess, Miss Davis, last night about her visitor.

  Nor did she intend to inform her of where she was going today.

  Although Miss Davis had a keen intelligence, Corena felt that she would never understand.

  Whatever it might cost her personally, she had to save her father’s life.

  Somehow it was impossible to believe that, if she did not follow his instructions, Mr. Thespidos would actually murder him.

  ‘How can there be men like that in the world?’ she asked herself despairingly.

  She climbed out of bed and began to dress.

/>   She had the uncomfortable feeling that what Mr. Thespidos had said was no idle threat and, if she did not do as he said, she would never see her father again.

  The whole scenario was so terrifying that she felt herself beginning to pray to her mother for help. She felt like a child who runs instinctively when there is danger to its parent where it will find security.

  She wondered if there was anyone she could contact and explain to him or her the position that she was now in.

  She thought it unlikely that they would believe her anyway.

  What was more, Mr. Thespidos had not left her an address.

  There was no way that she could contact him.

  The only person who knew where he was was the man he had left waiting to hear the result of her visit to Lord Warburton.

  Finally, because there was nothing else she could do, she ordered the carriage.

  Drawn by two horses it was to be brought round to the front door in half-an-hour’s time.

  As her maid hurried downstairs to obey her instructions, she stood at her wardrobe wondering what she should wear.

  The weather was very warm for the beginning of May and she looked at a pretty gown that she had bought recently to please her father. It was well cut with a skirt swelling out from her tiny waist.

  Then she remembered that Mr. Thespidos had said that the only possible way she could save her father was ‘on her knees or in his Lordship’s bed.’

  She had been shocked at the time.

  Even more shocked when at night she thought over what Mr. Thespidos had implied.

  She was very innocent and completely unsophisticated because she had lived such a quiet life in the country.

  Corena was aware that men did have illicit relationships with women, but she had little idea of what this entailed.

  She only knew it was wrong and wicked.

  Something that her mother never discussed with her or her father never mentioned.

  Because they were so happy together, Corena had always believed that one day she would find a man as attractive and intelligent as her father.

  They would fall in love with each other.

  They would be married.

  They would share a common interest in Greece, in their horses and in their children.