Paradise Found Read online

  “You said a young lady, Newman. Is she a Lady?”

  “Definitely, my Lord!”

  “How did she come here?”

  “She rode, my Lord, and alone!”

  “Alone?”

  The Earl’s voice expressed his surprise.

  It was unheard of for a lady, and he knew that Newman would never make a mistake about someone’s social status, to ride unaccompanied by a groom.

  He looked at Charles, who was obviously as interested and surprised as he was.

  Then the Earl said,

  “I expect she has come to ask for money for some local charity or other or perhaps she wishes to sell me a horse.”

  “I don’t think it’s that, my Lord,” Newman volunteered.

  “Did she tell you anything else?”

  “No, except that it’s very important that she should see your Lordship.”

  The Earl sighed.

  “We were just going riding.”

  “I daresay it will not take long,” Lord Charles suggested, “and it would be extremely irritating if we send her away to find ourselves wondering for the rest of the day what it was all about.”

  “You are right, Charlie. I will see her in the library, Newman.”

  “I’ve already shown her in there, my Lord.”

  Newman went towards the door and the Earl deliberately finished his brandy before he rose.

  “I had hoped,” he said as he put down his glass, “that we would be able to stay here undisturbed.”

  “Bees round a honeypot,” Lord Charles teased him.

  The Earl, raising his fist, punched him lightly on the side of his head as he walked past him to the door.

  “You had better come with me, Charlie,” he said. “I feel if our lady visitor does not need a chaperone, I do!”

  Lord Charles laughed and rising followed the Earl slowly as he walked ahead of him down the corridor.

  He had the feeling that his friend, despite his outward reluctance, was quite pleased that something was happening they had not expected.

  ‘Let’s hope,’ Lord Charles said to himself, ‘that whatever this woman has to say is worth listening to!’

  Chapter 2

  Lord Milborne, reading the newspaper with his leg raised on a stool in front of him, heard a door open and turned his head expectantly.

  There was the sound of footsteps coming across the hall and then his daughter, Salrina, came into the room.

  Her eyes looked worried and one glance told him that she was bringing bad news.

  “Well?” he asked uncompromisingly.

  “Hewitt cannot do it, Papa,” Salrina said. “He is nearly crippled with rheumatism this time and could hardly let me into the cottage.”

  “Damnation!” Lord Milborne exclaimed. “That means I lose three hundred guineas!”

  “Oh, not as much as that, Papa!” Salrina exclaimed.

  She ran across the room to kneel down beside her father’s armchair.

  “Did you really sell Orion for three hundred guineas?”

  “He is worth every penny of it,” Lord Milborne said gruffly, “and I am quite certain that Carstairs would have won the steeplechase on him!”

  “Of course he would! But now I suppose we cannot get him there on time.”

  “How can we?” Lord Milborne asked testily. “Here am I, laid up with this accursed leg, and Hewitt with rheumatism. There is no one else I would trust with Orion, as you well know, Salrina.”

  “Except me!”

  Her father turned to look at his daughter as if he had never seen her before.

  She was very lovely with a small heart-shaped face that seemed to be filled by two large blue eyes.

  She had a tiny, straight aristocratic nose and her mouth, although not a Cupid’s bow, had something irresistibly impish about it.

  It was perhaps because she was always laughing and, when she did so, there were two dimples in her soft cheeks.

  Now, however, her expression was serious as she looked at her father.

  “You know I can manage Orion, he is always good with me and you cannot afford to lose all that money, Papa.”

  “That is true,” Lord Milborne said almost as if he was speaking to himself. “At the same time I cannot have you riding all that way alone.”

  “It’s not more than ten miles cross-country,” Salrina said, “and if I start out early I can be back before dark or very nearly.”

  “It’s impossible!” her father insisted firmly.

  Salrina rose from the side of his chair to walk to the window and stare out onto the unkempt garden, which had grown wild since her mother’s death.

  Lady Milborne had loved flowers and, while her husband was breaking in and training horses which he sold at a profit, she was quite content to make her house as comfortable and the garden as beautiful as she could for him.

  They had been what everybody who knew them called ‘an ideally happy couple’ and, when she died two winters ago when it was very cold and they could not afford to keep the house properly heated, only Salrina had prevented her father from killing himself because he could not bear to live without the woman he loved.

  But Salrina in trying to take her mother’s place had found it almost impossible to prevent themselves from running into debt.

  The horses brought in quite a lot of money because her father was very skilled at training them.

  But they sometimes had their failures and at the moment everything seemed to have gone wrong.

  Lord Milborne had had a bad fall when he was taking a new and wild young horse over the jumps. While he had not broken his leg, he had sprained it very badly and it would be impossible for him to ride for at least another two weeks.

  The only person he had to help him was Hewitt, who before he became a groom had been a jockey.

  He was exceedingly good with horses, but he was growing old and had bouts of what he called his ‘rheumatics’, which gave him not only excruciating pain but also prevented him from moving about, let alone ride.

  This meant that for the moment Salrina had to look after the horses, feed them, exercise them and do what she could to school them, although her father had absolutely forbidden her to touch any of those that had as yet not been broken in.

  In addition to her father’s accident they were, she knew, in debt once again and three hundred guineas would be an absolute Godsend and allow them to enjoy a few luxuries for a change.

  “It’s quite impossible for you to go!” Lord Milborne declared again as if he was following her thoughts.

  “Travis has intimated, Papa, that he cannot allow us to have any more meat unless we settle his account and Higgs said very much the same yesterday when he delivered feed for the horses.”

  “Curse it! Why did you not tell me?” Lord Milborne asked angrily.

  “Because I knew it would upset you, Papa, and I thought that we could manage for a little longer until you are better.”

  Lord Milborne was silent.

  He knew better than anybody else that if the horses were not properly fed they would take longer to get fit and that would mean a delay in selling them.

  There was silence as Salrina turned from the window.

  Then she proposed,

  “I will leave at six o’clock tomorrow morning, Papa, riding Orion and leading Jupiter on a leading rein. If Orion is skittish, I know I can rely on Jupiter to follow me, even if I cannot lead him.”

  Lord Milborne was aware that this was true, for Jupiter was Salrina’s own special horse, which she loved and had brought up from the time he was a foal.

  It was Salrina who named all the horses that came into the ramshackle stables that adjoined the small Manor House where they lived.

  Because she loved mythology she always gave them the names of Gods and Goddesses and those who habitually dealt with Lord Milborne would laugh and say to him,

  “Have you anything especially divine for me today, Milborne? I prefer something as fast as Mercury, if you
have it!”

  Lord Milborne was still a comparatively young man, having disobeyed his parents and run away when he was at Oxford University with a beautiful girl who was engaged to a rich and well known Baronet.

  Her parents, like his, had been infuriated by their behaviour, but there was nothing they could do when the eloping couple returned South from Gretna Green.

  After five years of stiff silence between the families they were gradually reconciled to the position and accepted it with a bad grace.

  This meant as far as Lord Milborne was concerned, that, when he inherited the title, he found that his father had left most of his money, which was not a very large sum anyway, to his younger son, while his wife on her father’s death received only the capital from which her allowance was paid, which brought in about fifty pounds a year and no more.

  They therefore had to scrimp and save every possible penny, but actually Salrina’s parents had been blissfully happy together.

  Never once in the years that they were married had they regretted their elopement, which everybody else described as reckless and irresponsible.

  Salrina had been born ten months after their marriage at Gretna Green and while her father regretted that he had no son, she could not help thinking it was a blessing that she was, in fact, his only child.

  She was sensible enough to realise that while, with her mother’s help, she had educated herself from books, a brother would have expected to go to a Public School and perhaps even to University and it was impossible to imagine how they would have been able to afford it.

  “I am not having you riding over the countryside by yourself, whether it is ten miles or a hundred!” Lord Milborne said as if he was following his own train of thought. “You are too young and too pretty for one thing and it is something that no lady would do for another!”

  Salrina laughed.

  “It’s no use, Papa, talking to me as if I was an elegant young Lady of Fashion, having nothing more to do than embroider pretty samplers or occasionally paint a watercolour in the garden. There are six horses waiting for me to feed them at this moment and, as Hewitt cannot muck out the stables, you know I have to help. Poor Len is quite incapable of doing it by himself.”

  Len was the simpleton of the village who was perfectly happy to mess about in the stables for a few pence a week.

  Because he came from a bad home and was always hungry, Salrina fed him, and it was that more than the money which made him happy at The Manor.

  “I don’t know what your mother would say,” Lord Milborne now muttered.

  Salrina knew that he was weakening and like her he was well aware that they literally could not afford to lose three hundred guineas.

  “But I will not have you coming home in the dark,” he went on.

  Salrina gave a sudden cry.

  “I know what I will do, Papa, which is much more sensible.”

  “There is nothing whatever sensible about it,” Lord Milborne muttered, “but tell me.”

  “I will arrive at Mr. Carstairs’s house in the afternoon and then stay with old Mabel at Little Widicot for the night. I know she would be pleased to see me and then I can come home quietly the next morning without your worrying about me.”

  “I shall worry anyway!” Lord Milborne countered crossly. “Why I have to be a cursed crock at this particular moment, God only knows!”

  Salrina looked at him sympathetically.

  Her father seldom swore in front of her and she knew it infuriated him that he should be incapacitated.

  Equally he was clearly extremely worried about her riding alone even for a short distance.

  She was not so foolish or so innocent as not to realise that, because she was very like her mother, men were attracted by her.

  But up until now there had only been young farmers to look at her in admiration and the choir-men in the Church and just occasionally her father’s customers came to him instead of him going to them.

  When that happened they paid her compliments and, when they left, usually said in her hearing,

  “When your daughter grows up, Milborne, you will have to take her to London. I predict that she will be the toast of St James’s the moment she appears!”

  Lord Milborne had either laughed or not listened.

  But this time last year, when she was eighteen, Salrina had been aware that, when any gentlemen of the Beau Ton called at The Manor, her father either told her to keep out of sight or sent her on an errand to the village.

  Those were his orders and what usually happened if the visitor stayed for a meal was that Salrina had to help old Nanny in the kitchen with the cooking.

  There was no one else in the house except for her old Nanny, who was now nearly seventy and had been in her grandparents’ house when her mother was a girl.

  When Salrina was born, she had come to The Manor to look after her.

  She was another one, Salrina knew, who would be horrified at the idea of her riding alone and she would argue about it more fiercely than her father had done.

  Nanny was, however, well aware that if they did not obtain some money soon they would be on the verge of starvation.

  What invariably happened was that, because he had to buy the horses to train, cheap though they were, Lord Milborne always spent well in advance the miserable income he received from his few shares before it was due.

  The bank had now limited his overdraft to the point where it was a permanent debt.

  And he knew when he died that it would be passed on like a millstone to Salrina.

  ‘Three hundred guineas!’ Salrina was saying wordlessly a little later when Nanny was repeating over and over again that it was impossible for her to go such a long distance without someone to accompany her.

  “The best thing you can do, Nanny, is to come with me yourself!” she said at length.

  “There’s no use jokin’ about it, Miss Salrina,” Nanny answered sharply. “I knows what’s right and what your mother’d think was right. You’re a young Lady, not some hobbledehoy stable lad!”

  “I cannot see much difference at the moment,” Salrina replied, “and you know as well as I do, Nanny, that we need those three hundred guineas. If Mr. Carstairs does not have Orion in time for the steeplechase he will not buy him.”

  Nanny pressed her lips together and Salrina knew that she was trying hard to find an alternative to what she was doing.

  But there was none.

  To save herself from continual arguments from either Nanny or her father, Salrina went to the stables and brushed Orion down again.

  He was a fine-looking bay who Salrina thought was well worth the three hundred guineas her father was being paid for him, but it was a much bigger sum than he usually obtained.

  But Mr. Carstairs, a pushing, arrogant young man, who had as Nanny said ‘jumped up in the world’, was determined to beat the ‘toffs’ who had inaugurated the steeplechase to which he was invited only because it took place on the land he farmed.

  Steeplechases were sometimes local events that took place annually, but often they were an entertaining pastime for the bucks and beaux.

  They would come down from London to stay with one of their kind in his ancestral home and think up amusing ways to pass the time.

  Salrina had heard talk of wild parties at which beautiful women were often present.

  After dinner the gentlemen would race against each other in the moonlight, sometimes so ‘foxed’ that they fell off their horses at the first fence, injuring themselves because they were in no fit condition to ride.

  She had been shocked at such stories and then told herself that they were probably exaggerated simply because there was nothing much to talk about in the country.

  Gossip that was passed from person to person therefore became a very different tale by the time it reached her father or her.

  Nevertheless, while she did not like Mr. Carstairs and thought him rather coarse, she recognised that he was a good rider and that the horses in his
stables were well looked after.

  “You must never, Papa,” she had often said to her father, “sell our horses to anyone who is not kind to them. Because you are never cruel, they would not understand any other treatment and I could not bear that any of them should be unhappy.”

  “I know exactly what you mean,” her father replied, “and quite frankly, my dearest, if I was a rich man, I would never sell any of my horses.”

  He was silent for a moment before he went on,

  “When one has ridden a horse, even for a short time, it becomes part of oneself and I care for all mine as if they were my children.”

  Salrina had understood and had flung her arms around his neck.

  “I love you, Papa, and I am sure that no other man could be as wonderful or as kind as you! I pray every night that by some miracle you will become a millionaire!”

  Her father had laughed.

  “That is as likely as that I should own a racing stable or jump over the moon!”

  They had laughed together and, watching her father’s patience as he trained the horses with kindness knowing that they were timid and did not understand what was expected of them, she knew that she could never tolerate any man who did not understand animals and most especially horses.

  *

  The next morning Salrina groomed Orion again and then went into the house to find her father just finishing his breakfast.

  He had dressed himself with difficulty and, because he had been restless during the night, his leg was extremely painful.

  He looked at his daughter as she came into the room, thinking how very like her mother she was.

  She was lovely in the same heartbreaking way that had made him fall in love so completely with her mother at first sight and he had known then that nothing and nobody could ever prevent him from making her his wife.

  They must have been meant for each other by Fate or perhaps a benign Providence for Elizabeth Layton had felt exactly the same about him.

  From the moment she looked at his handsome face she had known that no other man should ever touch her.

  “If the Prince of Wales had gone down on his knees before me,” she had told Gavin Borne, “I would not have hesitated for one moment, if you had wanted me to.”