Desire in the Desert Page 3

  He had said to Mr. Turner,

  “Well, that should be pretty easy. I have three orphanages on the estate and I have always believed that they were good ones.”

  “They are indeed, my Lord,” Mr. Turner replied, “but I think I should ask you how old you would expect your Ward to be.”

  The Marquis thought.

  Then in his mind’s eye he saw a pretty fair-haired child with a pink-and-white complexion and bright blue eyes who looked like an English rose or perhaps a small angel.

  That was the sort of Ward who would definitely impress his nephews.

  She could live with him at Peverell Park and in Park Lane.

  He could give parties for her with children of her own age to which Lady Leverton and other beauties in whom he was interested could bring their own children.

  No one after that would think it in the least surprising that he should provide for her on his death.

  In answer to Mr. Turner’s question, he said,

  “I suppose a girl of about fourteen or fifteen.”

  He thought as he spoke that it would be tiresome to have a younger child who he could not produce at luncheon parties.

  She would be far too unsophisticated to attend the Receptions that his family gave from time to time.

  To his surprise Mr. Turner was frowning.

  “This makes it more difficult, my Lord.”

  “Why?” the Marquis enquired.

  “Because it is usual in orphanages, when the boys and girls reach the age of twelve, for them to be sent out to work.”

  The Marquis realised, although he had forgotten it, that this would obviously be the case and Mr. Turner went on,

  “Her Ladyship, your mother, took a considerable interest in the orphanages at Peverell Park and required that the factories and shops that the orphans were sent to should be clean decent places and the children paid a proper wage.”

  The Marquis nodded because that was what he expected and Mr. Turner continued,

  “In fact her Ladyship gave instructions that, if the orphans, when they reached twelve years of age, were not in good health, they should be allowed to stay on until they became stronger. But I would doubt if your Lordship could find one as old as fifteen.”

  This was a setback that the Marquis had not anticipated.

  Yet now he thought about it, he knew that it would be a great mistake to visit any orphanages except for his own.

  He knew, because he was treated with the greatest respect on his own property, that he could order what he was doing not to be talked about and be almost certain that he would be obeyed.

  If it was to be chattered about in London that he was suddenly visiting orphanages in other parts of the country, Julius and Nigel might also hear about it.

  ‘I shall visit my own orphanages,’ he decided, ‘and if I draw a blank, we may have to look further afield or think of another idea.’

  The Marquis therefore set off, hoping optimistically that he would not be disappointed.

  He was so deep in thought over his idea, which he was sure was a direct gift from the Gods in his hour of need, that he knew he would be extremely reluctant to have to think of some other way of frightening his cousins.

  The first orphanage he visited was exemplary in every way.

  The orphans who were very small looked fit and well fed and those who were older seemed to be bright and would doubtless be an asset to anyone who employed them.

  They were, however, with no exceptions at all, the children of labourers.

  They not only spoke with a broad accent, but, while they were pleasant-looking, their parents obviously came from the soil.

  After congratulating the woman in charge and promising that he would arrange for the playroom to be somewhat enlarged, as it seemed very congested, the Marquis left.

  The children waved and cheered him on his way.

  The next orphanage was very much the same. It was in the village not too far away from the first and the children were mostly boys.

  The oldest was hoping to be taken into one of the Marquis’s houses as a knife-boy, another wanted to be a scullion also in his Lordship’s employment.

  The third begged that he might be considered if there was a place in the gardens.

  The Marquis good-humouredly made a note of their names and told them he would certainly enquire if there were vacancies.

  They were all thrilled and again he drove away amid cheers and good wishes from the orphans.

  Some even ran along beside the curricle until the horses went too fast for them to keep up.

  The Marquis looked at the list that Mr. Turner had given him and found that he owned two more orphanages.

  Against one was written,

  “This one is predominantly for babies or very small children. I do not think any of them would be over six years old.”

  This left only one orphanage, which was at the very end of the estate and it was already late in the afternoon.

  The Marquis therefore returned home deciding that he would inspect the last one tomorrow morning.

  If that proved a failure, he would have to start thinking again.

  He had not been in his study for more than just a few minutes when Mr. Turner came into the room.

  “I am afraid, my Lord, you are disappointed,” he said before the Marquis could speak.

  “You are right, Turner,” the Marquis agreed crossly, “but I will visit the last one on your list tomorrow morning.”

  “Very good, my Lord, and actually I have ascertained in your absence that there is one orphan there who is the age you require.”

  “Why?” the Marquis asked abruptly.

  He thought as he spoke that, if it was a child who was sickly and in such ill-health she could not work, he was not interested.

  He was also sure after what he had seen this afternoon that he would never be able to pass off any of the orphans as his Ward.

  He was quite sure that in London orphanages there would be children born to a far better class of mother and some of the fathers would have been gentlemen.

  In other words, love-children, who were notoriously beautiful with an excellent ancestry on one side at least.

  The girl would be able with some tuition to deceive anyone into believing that she came from a good family.

  When he thought about it, he could remember tales of young Governesses who had been seduced by their employers.

  Even of girls who, while they themselves were blue-blooded, had ‘got into trouble’.

  They had been seduced by their music teacher or their riding master or even a married man who should have known better.

  When this happened, it was most expedient for the baby to be disposed of in some way.

  An orphanage was the obvious place where it could be left and forgotten and the Marquis was already turning over in his mind how he could find such an orphanage.

  In the meantime Mr. Turner was saying,

  “I must therefore apologise, my Lord, for forgetting about it, but actually I was away at the time because my father had died and it was my assistant who coped with the situation.”

  “Coped with what situation?” the Marquis asked.

  “It was just three years ago,” Mr. Turner replied, “when the Archbishop of Canterbury asked if we would take three orphans, who had been sent back to England after an earthquake in Turkey.”

  The Marquis was now listening as Mr. Turner continued,

  “Apparently there was great devastation from this particular earthquake and the Missionary Society discovered that one of their members and his wife had been killed. However, after having been buried in the rubble for some time, their daughter survived.”

  The Marquis made an exclamation, but did not interrupt.

  “There were two other English children,” Mr. Turner went on, “from other families among the casualties and the Missionary Society therefore sent one of their members to collect all three and bring them back to this country.”

/>   “So the Archbishop of Canterbury sent them all to me?” the Marquis queried.

  “Yes, my Lord, but I remember now that your Lordship was in Paris then and, although I mentioned it to you on your return, I daresay you were not particularly interested as by that time it had been arranged that they should go to the orphanage at Appledon.”

  The Marquis knew that this was the name of the village on his estate where the orphanage was situated.

  “And the older girl is still there?” he asked.

  “Yes, my Lord.”

  The Marquis thought that she was certainly worth looking at, although he was not optimistic about what she would be like.

  From what he remembered of Missionaries abroad, they were usually gaunt and somewhat aggressive men.

  They were disillusioned by the results of their teaching that in most cases were sparse.

  They were therefore obliged to be concerned with obtaining from those who listened to them enough money to enable them to travel on to yet another place.

  There they would try to convert the heathen who were quite happy with their own religions and had no wish to listen to them.

  He did not, however, bother to say all this to Mr. Turner. He merely handed him the names of the three boys who had wished to enter his service.

  He then went up to his bedroom to change for dinner.

  He ate alone, thinking that it infinitely preferable to having his cousins on either side of him.

  As he ate, he continued to plan how he could confound them with his pretty Ward once he had found her.

  He would have to concoct a very convincing story as to why she had been left in his charge and also why he had not mentioned her before.

  This meant, he thought, that she might have to be taken into his confidence.

  He might somehow be clever enough to persuade her that he had in fact known her father or mother when they were alive and given his promise that he would take care of her on their deaths.

  He thought with a slight twist of his lips that if the child of the Missionary was eligible, which he thought most unlikely, it would be easier to say that he had known her mother.

  When dinner was finished, he went to his study thinking that he was telling himself Fairytales.

  More than likely his plan would have to be completely altered and he would have to start again at the beginning.

  Almost as if he wished to prompt the Marquis into action. Mr. Turner had left a note on his desk.

  It showed the exact amount of money his cousins Julius and Nigel had obtained from him in the last five years.

  The Marquis studied it and was appalled to discover that the total was far more than he imagined it could possibly be.

  It infuriated him to think that every penny of it had been spent on riotous living and scarlet women.

  He might be rich, he might be generous, but at the same time to deliberately throw money down the drain that could have been spent in far better ways was sheer madness.

  The Marquis was keenly interested in a number of brand new inventions.

  They were being put in hand in the towns and Cities that had sprung into prosperity in the course of what was now known as ‘The Industrial Revolution’.

  Every new invention required plenty of money and he had already invested in trains, in electricity and quite a number of other smaller inventions.

  He had made it possible for many of these to be brought to the attention of the public.

  “Dammit!” he swore as he looked at the list lying on his table. “I will not give those spendthrifts another penny!”

  In some ways the Marquis could be a very ruthless man.

  There was a cold expression now in his grey eyes and the tightness of his lips boded ill for Julius and Nigel.

  He had, the Marquis, thought, given them enough licence and allowed them to sow enough ‘wild oats’ to placate any qualms he might have about abandoning his responsibilities.

  They were both now quite old enough to stand on their own two feet and that was what he intended they should do.

  If he cut off supplies, then they would have to do something better than come pleading that he must get them out of a mess for the sake of the family name.

  There was a cynical twist to his lips as he then wondered if, as Julius had said, they would really try to murder him.

  Then he was certain that they would not even have the guts to do that.

  He was therefore not physically frightened of the two men he despised and, if he was truthful, disliked.

  ‘I will find my orphan,’ he swore to himself as he went up the stairs, ‘and that will convince them that I am in earnest and intend to leave her my money when I die.’

  He was quite certain as he undressed with the help of his valet that she would not last as long as that.

  If she was pretty and if she had the unique position of being his Ward, she would undoubtedly marry well.

  And what was more, when she had outlived her usefulness, he would see that she did.

  When he was alone in the darkness, the Marquis told himself that he had thought it all out very astutely.

  If nothing else, he should thank God that he had been born with a brain.

  He knew that, if he had ever been in the same position as his two cousins or had been born penniless, he would have then made something definite of his life by now.

  *

  When morning came, the Marquis then found himself looking forward with unexpected eagerness to his search for the mythical orphan who was a part of his Fairy story.

  He was laughing to himself as he rode out, as he always did, before breakfast.

  He thought that he would teach her to ride and, when she was dressed for the part, flaunt her in Rotten Row.

  At fifteen, she would be old enough to ride a horse, but still young enough to look like a child on horseback and it was always a very appealing sight.

  It was only when he was driving his curricle after breakfast away from the ‘Big House’ to the orphanage at Appledon that he told himself that the orphan he had in mind was a pretty girl with not much brain.

  ‘Supposing she has ideas of her own?’ he asked himself.

  Then he was certain that if she was an orphan and had spent several years in an institution, she would be humbly grateful and ecstatically thrilled to be his Ward.

  She would find that the world, which had not been very kind to her until now, was unexpectedly at her feet.

  ‘Now this could definitely happen only in a wild Fairytale!’ the Marquis said to himself.

  It flashed through his mind that he was Prince Charming as he drove his horses with such brilliance which made every groom in his employ look at him with admiration.

  It was a long way to Appledon because the Marquis owned no less than fifteen thousand acres around Peverell Park.

  His keen eyes noted how well his land was cultivated by the tenant farmers, for the farms had been in their families for three generations or in some cases even longer.

  There was in fact not a field he passed that he was not proud to call his own.

  It was certainly a lovely spring day.

  There were primroses in all the hedgerows, cuckoo-pint in the meadow grass and buds on every tree were bursting into bloom.

  Passing through what was known as ‘The Orchard of Kent’ he thought the blossom on the fruit trees, pink and white, was a picture to thrill any artist.

  ‘I am a very lucky man,’ the Marquis told himself as he had often done before, ‘and thanks to God, I don’t have to share it with anybody.’

  He thought with satisfaction that, if he stayed at home tonight, he would be alone and, if tomorrow he decided to go to London, Lady Leverton would be waiting for him.

  If it was not Lady Leverton, it would be some other beauty and there had indeed been many of them before he had met her.

  They were all flowers, he thought, that he would enjoy to his heart’s content.

  When they faded, he cou
ld throw them away without remorse and, better still, without feeling guilty.

  Yet if he was to be honest, he had to admit that there were occasionally tears and plaintive questions such as,

  “Why do you no longer love me?”

  It was impossible to explain to any woman that, when he had finished with her, he could not tolerate that the excitement or was it the magic of their relationship was finished.

  It was something entirely physical and when it died there was no reviving it.

  Also, when he looked back on the past, it was hard for him to remember what he had felt.

  Or even to recall in some cases moments that should have remained in his memory like pictures in a scrapbook.

  Instead there was always the gripping adventure of pursuing something new.

  Yet he was aware at the back of his mind that it was only transitory and sooner or later he would be as bored as he had been before with the others.

  Nevertheless, it was impossible not to enjoy the chase or the hunt, which inevitably was not prolonged long enough to make him exert himself.

  He was so deep in his thoughts that it was a surprise when he found, after driving for one-and-a-half hours, that he had reached Appledon.

  It was a pretty little village with thatched cottages and small gardens filled with crocuses and daffodils.

  Behind them were several acres of fruit trees, their blossom making the whole place look as if it had stepped out of a picture.

  The orphanage, which had been built by the Marquis’s father, was just beyond the Greystone Norman Church.

  It was a long building, which he saw at a glance was in good repair and there was a playground at the back of it in which there was a number of trees.

  He noted with satisfaction that the flowerbeds that bordered the stone pathway to the front door were well-tended and cared for.

  Because he was feeling impatient now that he had arrived, the Marquis, instead of letting his groom knock on the door, gave him the reins.

  Then he alighted from the curricle.

  He walked up the stone path and as he did so was aware that there was a face at one of the windows peeping at him from behind the curtains.

  He had a quick impression of two very large eyes which he was sure had widened in surprise.