The Star of Love Page 3

  “Splendid!” he said with hearty pleasure as the butler took his coat and retired. “Ah, my dear!” His wife was hurriedly descending the stairs, taking his arm and urging him into the drawing room.

  “Quick, Cliona will be down in a moment,” she said. “And I want to talk to you first.”

  “Is something wrong.”

  “Not at all. Everything is going wonderfully well. She’s so sweet and unspoilt. And so beautiful. Such a season she’s had, so many offers of marriage, but she’s refused them all.”

  Sir Kenton’s bluff, good natured face showed bewilderment. “Hang it, Martha! I’ve only just arrived home. I want my dinner. Can’t we discuss Cliona’s prospects later?”

  “Yes of course we will. But I wanted you to understand the position before you see her. She isn’t engaged, and she isn’t in love with anyone.” Lady Arnfield finished with an air of triumph.

  Sir Kenton’s wits were sound but not sharp and this pronouncement left him floundering.

  “Am I expected to do something about this now?” he wanted to know. “Before dinner?”

  “Oh, don’t be so provoking. You know exactly what I mean.”

  “Yes, I’m beginning to have a worrying feeling that I do.”

  “She saw the turrets of Hartley Castle through her window, asked about them and seemed so interested –”

  “Martha, admit the truth. You’re planning to throw her into Charles’s path, aren’t you?”

  “Not at all,” Lady Arnfield said haughtily. Then her proud manner collapsed and she giggled. “Well, it won’t hurt for them to meet. He’s such a good looking young man, and so delightful. And an Earl. Think of it, my dear! And she will be the Countess of Hartley of Hartley Castle.”

  “Will be?” echoed her alarmed spouse. “Might be!”

  “Oh, will be, might be! What does it matter?”

  “A great deal if she turns him down as she has all the others.”

  “Nonsense, why should she?” she replied. “I’m sure he is the handsomest young man for miles around. Almost as handsome as you were, my love, when you were his age.”

  Sir Kenton accepted this flattery with a grin that revealed a great deal of husbandly cynicism.

  “My dear,” he said, “please don’t let your ambitions run away with your common sense.”

  “I have no common sense,” Lady Arnfield said stoutly.

  “You’re always saying so.”

  “But it is entirely unnecessary for you to prove me right. I’m not at all sure that this marriage would be a good thing. There are some very ugly rumours –”

  “Oh pooh, take no notice! Lord Hartley is a good friend. You and he enjoy your rivalry about your horses.”

  “But this is quite different, my dear. I like Charles personally, but I would think twice about seeing Cliona married to him. If only half of what I’ve heard is true – of course the family does its best to keep the whole thing quiet, but talk gets out.”

  He sighed. “It’s not Charles’s fault, of course. We can’t choose our relations, and he’s been dashed unlucky. But there it is. Any uncle who cared for a girl’s welfare would be concerned at the prospect of such a marriage.”

  “But Charles is such a splendid young man.”

  “I will agree to that. I will allow him to be all a man should be, well born, courteous, of a good character –”

  “And good looks!”

  “If you must, although personally I would not have rated his looks as of major importance.” Lady Arnfield sniffed. “Much you know.”

  “Very well, good looks, distinguished manners, and from a family that has played a noble part in our country’s history. But – ”

  They exchanged significant glances.

  “But – ” his wife agreed reluctantly and sighed. “Yet don’t you think Cliona might be just the girl he needs to solve his biggest problem?”

  “Martha, that’s enough, if you mean what I think you do. Do you expect me to help my friend at the expense of my niece? What man of honour could do so?”

  “Of course you couldn’t. But she must meet him, surely?”

  “Of course she must. We’re probably worrying about nothing. I dare say she won’t take to him at all.”

  They moved out of the drawing room into the hall.

  A moment later Cliona came slowly through the French windows. She did not make a habit of eavesdropping, but no young lady, however well brought up, could have resisted what she had just heard.

  As she walked upstairs there was a mischievous smile on her lips.

  *

  It was a relief to Charles that his grandmother always breakfasted in her room, so that he and his mother could eat alone. It meant he could speak about his cousin more frankly. The Dowager Countess might berate John behind his back, but he was still her grandson and Charles was too kind to wound her feelings.

  The morning after the quarrel, his mother joined him in the breakfast room overlooking the garden.

  “You’re dressed for riding, dearest. I’m glad. It will blow the cobwebs away.”

  “That’s what I hope.”

  “And I suppose you’re going alone?” she asked in accents of disapproval.

  “Certainly I am.”

  Charles knew that both his father and grandfather had always ridden with one or two grooms bringing up the rear. They had felt it was part of the dignity of the family to present a sufficiently imposing appearance. But even when Charles was quite young he had always preferred to ride alone.

  “But why?” his mother asked him, not for the first time. “It’s so much nicer with someone to talk to.”

  “I don’t like to talk, I prefer to think. As I grow older, I have more and more to think about than I have ever had before.”

  “How true,” Lady Hester agreed. “But I would like you to have someone with whom you can share your troubles. Dearest boy, I am still waiting anxiously to hear of your wedding.”

  “There is no reason to hurry, Mama. Of course, I do realise that one day I’ll have to produce a son to carry on the line.”

  “Well yes, there’s family duty, and a son you certainly must have. But don’t be so absurd as to have two at once. Really, that was a most ill-managed business. I don’t know how your grandmother came to do anything so foolish.”

  This made him laugh. “It wasn’t her fault, Mama. I don’t suppose she intended it.”

  “Well it was very silly anyway,” Lady Hester said vaguely. “But I didn’t mean that. I meant that I would like to see you riding with some beautiful young woman, to whom you can give your heart.”

  Charles grimaced. “You ask too much, Mama. I have people worrying me all day for this and that and now you want to add another care.”

  “Then think of this. If anything happens to you, John will inherit the title and estate.” Charles groaned. “I know it only too well.”

  “Then do something about it,” his mother urged him severely. “Marry, have a son, cut him out.”

  “And have to endure even more of his tantrums when he sees his last hope vanish? No, I thank you.”

  Lady Hester sighed. “As you wish, my dear boy. I only hoped that you might give your old mother a grandson before she was too old to enjoy him. But I don’t want to be unreasonable.”

  “Mama!” he protested, half laughing. “Stop talking like that. It’s all fudge and you know it. Why you’ve only just passed your fiftieth birthday.”

  “How dare you!” she exclaimed in outrage. “I have not yet reached my fiftieth birthday.”

  “Strange, I thought you had. I’m thirty-two and –”

  “I was a mere child when I married your father. Everyone said I looked pathetically young at our wedding.”

  Charles grinned. Teasing was one of his pleasures in life. And in her life too, if the truth be told.

  “Very well, forty-nine,” he conceded. “So no more talking as though you were in your dotage. I have a little time yet to present you with a grandchild
. I want to fall in love first.”

  She regarded him with sympathy. “My poor boy! Have you never been in love?”

  He grinned. “Yes. Far too often.”

  “Oh, I see. You mean something horrid.”

  “No, of course not. I mean something very pleasant,” he said wickedly. “But not something that would lead to a Hartley heir.”

  “Good heavens, your father would faint if he could hear you say that. He was so rigidly virtuous. It was quite oppressive sometimes, and I really don’t feel I can be blamed if – ” she saw her son regarding her quizzically and added hastily, “well, never mind that.”

  “Too late, Mama! I’ve always known what a terrible flirt you were.”

  “Well, one has to do something to pass the time,” she said, exasperated.

  “Too true. I’ve found the same myself. But marriage is different. I want to marry a girl who is unique and quite different from the ordinary girls whom, to tell the truth, I find rather dull.”

  His mother sighed.

  “Oh, how like you! You’ve always been very particular, darling. Or do I mean perverse? Yes, I think I do. Forever wanting something different from what you have. It’s been the same since you were a baby.”

  “Yes, it has,” he agreed, much struck. For all her feather-headed ways, Lady Hester had a habit of hitting on a truth that had occurred to nobody else. “Now I remember I was a difficult child, wanting something until Nanny had produced it, and then wanting the opposite.”

  He stopped suddenly, disturbed by the recollection that Nanny was one of the pensioners who depended on him now. He was still very fond of her, and often called on her in the little cottage on the estate where she lived in retirement.

  He forced himself to speak brightly again.

  “I think I had the idea that if I was perverse for long enough I would find perfection.” His mother nodded. But in the next moment she shook her head. “If you’re looking for perfection in your wife, it’s impossible, and you’ll have to settle for much less.” Charles set his chin in a stubborn manner that she recognised and sighed.

  “Even you won’t find the perfect woman by being mulish about it,” she scolded.

  “Will I find her anyway? Perhaps I’m condemned to be an old bachelor.”

  She gave a little scream. “Not that. Think of your duty. Besides, why shouldn’t you find a nice girl who will love you? I remember when you were very young the girls were running after you. And you enjoyed being admired. Don’t deny it.”

  “I don’t deny it,” he replied.

  “There were quite a few pretty girls I remember you dancing with and spending quite a lot of time with. I quite expected you to marry one of them.”

  “You were arranging my marriage as far back as that?”

  “These things have to be planned ahead. And when you were at Oxford you were a terrible flirt –”

  “I get that from my mother,” he said wickedly.

  She ignored this with dignity. “I did have hopes of several of them, but they all came to nothing.”

  Charles gave a rueful smile.

  “I suppose now I look back, I was somehow disillusioned or disappointed. As you said – too particular.”

  “Too intent on enjoying the bachelor life.”

  “That too,” he admitted shamelessly.

  “But now the time has come to think of the future. With John behaving like this, there’s simply only one answer. You will have to marry money.”

  There was a shocked silence and then Charles rose violently and began to stride about the room.

  “Money! Money! Money!” he said contemptuously. “Does anyone ever want anything else?”

  “It happens to be exactly what you want,” his mother replied.

  “No, it’s what I need. What I want is love,” he answered sharply. “The love I read about in books which as far as I can find out is only found in books and not in reality.”

  “This sort of talk is all very fine,” his mother said crossly, “but you have to marry money. John isn’t going to stop, and unless you crush him he will always be there asking for more, more, more, until you don’t have a penny left.”

  Charles stopped pacing and resumed his seat. His face was very pale.

  “You’re right, of course,” he admitted. “Hard and miserable though it is, it’s the truth. But how do you suggest I ‘crush’ him?”

  Lady Hester sighed. “It’s a problem, isn’t it? Oh, how I wish this was the eighteenth century, when it was easier to have people assassinated.”

  Charles choked slightly into his coffee.

  “Mama please, I beg you not to say things like that. I know you’re only joking –”

  “Am I? Well, yes I suppose I am. But sometimes I feel quite murderous towards him for his wicked selfishness. And then I cheer myself up by thinking of him being set upon by footpads and cudgelled to death. It makes me feel so much better.”

  Her sweet smile and her blue eyes were angelic as she spoke.

  Charles had always suspected that beneath her fairy-tale fragility his mother was a much more robust character than anyone suspected. Now he regarded her cautiously, not quite knowing how to take her last remarks. She smiled and patted his hand.

  “I say things I don’t mean. Sometimes it helps. But then the problem is still there.”

  He nodded and rose to his feet, longing for the ride that would briefly set his troubles aside.

  She came with him as far as the front door. Suddenly he said,

  “Pray for me, Mama, that I will find the right way to handle this. Don’t worry yourself, there must be a way out.

  Somehow, by some miracle, I have to find it.”

  There were tears in his mother’s eyes as she kissed him goodbye.

  He headed eagerly for the stables, where the head groom was waiting for him. Charles managed to smile at the man who was a good, faithful worker.

  “Lightning’s been waiting for you, my Lord. Getting impatient.”

  “What he wants is a good gallop to take some of the energy out of him,” he replied. “Well, I intend to give him the fastest gallop he’s ever had.”

  He mounted Lightning, a gleaming black stallion and his favourite. As though tired of waiting, the animal began moving at once, out of the stable and into the paddock. As Charles tightened his reins, he had difficulty in preventing Lightning from living up to his name. The horse wanted to be given his head, but it was not until they were well into the fields which lay beyond the garden that he could have it.

  For a while he galloped as fast as his legs would let him, with Charles controlling him as lightly as possible. They knew and trusted each other.

  At last Lightning found it easier to settle down to a slower place. Having taken the field at an almost breathless speed, they reached the big wood. Now the horse slowed again to take the path through the trees.

  For a moment Charles forgot his own troubles. The sun coming through the trees made the wood as beautiful and as mystical as he had always found it. Ever since he had been a small boy and believed there were wizards and goblins in the wood, he had always found that to ride there gave him a strange happiness which he never found anywhere else.

  Even today, he never came here without half expecting some magical apparition.

  ‘You’re a fool,’ he told himself. ‘There’s no such thing as magic. There are no spells, and no fairies.’

  And then, just ahead of him, he saw a young woman.

  CHAPTER THREE

  For a moment Charles stared, unable to believe what he was seeing. He closed his eyes, shook his head, and then opened them again.

  The apparition had vanished.

  ‘Am I going mad?’ he asked himself.

  All around him the air of the woods seemed to be singing, as if to tell him that something special was happening.

  Then he saw her again, riding a white horse. As he watched she disappeared between the trees, but then emerged again, straight into a shaft
of sunlight that seemed to be slanting down on her directly from Heaven.

  Was she real?

  And if so, how had she come to be in his wood, when the entire neighbourhood knew that it was forbidden territory? Nobody was allowed here without his express permission.

  ‘Perhaps she’s a visitor in these parts,’ he thought, ‘and doesn’t know my rules. I must tell her to go.’

  But he lingered for a moment to admire the horse she was riding, as fine an animal as he had ever seen.

  The young woman, too, provoked his admiration. She was young and pretty and as she moved in and out of the sunbeams, he saw the gleam of gold in her hair.

  She rode out of sight and he felt a sudden fear that she would leave before he could discover who she was. He urged Lightning forward, reaching her just as she stopped by the river. Swiftly dismounting, she tied her horse’s reins to a tree and bent down to admire the kingcups, which made a golden picture.

  ‘As golden as herself,’ he thought involuntarily.

  She seemed unaware of him as he rode nearer, absorbed in the beauty of the flowers and the water. He thought he had never witnessed a more delightful scene.

  Then suddenly she became aware of his presence and raised her head. He saw that she was not only very pretty, but undoubtedly a lady, dressed in an exquisite grey riding habit. As she rose to her feet, he could see that the habit looked as if it had been tailored especially for her elegant figure.

  “Good morning,” Charles ventured. “I am afraid you are trespassing.”

  “Oh dear, am I?” she asked. “I’m a stranger here.”

  “I thought you must be.”

  He dismounted and came closer. Now he could see that her eyes were the blue of the sky.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, “but the gate was open and the river was shining in the sun, so I was curious.” Charles smiled.

  “I can understand that,” he said. “I also find the river is very beautiful where one least expects it.”

  She chuckled, and to his enchanted ear it was like the rippling of the water.

  “That’s just how it should be,” she said. “Beautiful where one least expects it. Don’t you think the unexpected is always nicer?”

  “Not always,” he said, “but sometimes, yes.”