The Unwanted Wedding Read online

  Honora did not speak for a moment and then as if she was working it out for herself, she asked,

  “Is that love, Papa?”

  “I suppose you could call it that,” her father answered, “but love, my darling, is something that cannot be turned on like a tap. Either it is there, or it is not, and no amount of tears, words or pleas can produce it.”

  Honora thought over what he had said when she was alone and had been sure that he was right.

  ‘Our feelings are something that cannot be forced,’ she thought, ‘and love must be the same.’

  She thought now as she drove in a carriage towards Grosvenor Square that it was going to be very difficult to love Aunt Aline.

  ‘I must try to love her,’ she reasoned with herself, ‘because she and Uncle George are all I have left to remind me of Papa.’

  When she said goodbye to Sister Benedict, who had brought her to London, and to the other pupils who were being carried on to their homes, she felt as if she was saying goodbye to everything that was safe and familiar and embarking on an unknown sea that was rough and very unpredictable.

  Dalton the butler, however, welcomed her as she entered the hall.

  “Nice to see you home, Miss Honora!” he said. “I hope you’ve had a good journey.”

  “Yes, thank you,” Honora replied. “Is my uncle here?”

  “He’ll be back shortly, miss, but her Ladyship’s waiting for you in the drawing room.”

  He preceded Honora up the elegantly carved staircase and opened the double mahogany doors of the drawing room with a flourish.

  “Miss Honora, my Lady!” he announced.

  Honora saw that her aunt was sitting at the far end of the room.

  There was a fire burning in the grate although it was a warm spring day and the room was fragrant with the scent of hothouse flowers.

  Her aunt, dazzlingly beautiful in a crimson silk gown, watched Honora’s approach.

  There was no welcome in her dark eyes and, as her niece drew nearer to her, there was a sudden tightening of her lips.

  Although Honora was not aware of it, she was far lovelier than the Countess remembered or had expected.

  “So you have arrived!” she said in a tone that did not sound very pleased.

  Honora curtseyed.

  “I am afraid I am a little late, Aunt Aline, but it has been a long journey and it was very rough crossing the Channel.”

  The Countess seemed to look her up and down before she said,

  “I expect you want to change, but as I am going out I want to talk to you before you do so. You had better sit down and listen to what I have to say.”

  “Yes, of course, Aunt Aline,” Honora said obediently and seated herself in a chair opposite her aunt’s.

  Her eyes were full of admiration as she looked at the picture her aunt made, posed in effect – for it could hardly have been an accident – in a high-backed chair covered in petit-point.

  It picked out the colour of her gown, while her dark hair was silhouetted against a huge vase of Madonna lilies.

  “You look, Aunt Aline, as if you ought to be hanging in the Uffizi Gallery!” Honora said impulsively, and just for an instant the hard look in Aline Langstone’s eyes softened.

  Then she said, glancing at the clock,

  “I have to leave in five minutes and what I have to tell you will not take long.”

  “What is it, Aunt Aline?”

  She had the uncomfortable feeling that her aunt was going to say something momentous that concerned herself.

  She wondered if she was to be sent away somewhere else rather than be allowed to stay with her uncle and aunt. And, if so, she had the idea that it might be unpleasant.

  There was a little pause as if the Countess was feeling for words.

  Then she said in a voice that had no warmth in it,

  “You are an extremely fortunate young woman! In fact, I don’t know of any girl who on coming from school could hear anything as marvellous and miraculous as what I am about to tell you.”

  Honora looked puzzled.

  She was very sensitive and perceptive and, while her aunt’s words sounded almost triumphant, the tone in which she spoke them gave her the feeling that what she was to learn from her aunt would be disagreeable.

  She therefore did not make any answer, but only waited. Her eyes, which unexpectedly were grey, seemed to hold the sunshine, as did her hair, which was golden.

  Because she had been travelling for so long little curls had escaped from under her bonnet onto her oval forehead.

  There was a hard note in Aline Langstone’s voice as she said as if the words were jerked from between her lips,

  “It may come as a surprise, but you are to be married to the Duke of Tynemouth!”

  For a moment Honora thought that she could not have heard her aright and she must have misunderstood. Her aunt surely could not have said what she thought she had.

  Then, as the Countess did not speak again, she asked in bewilderment,

  “D-did you – say I am to – marry somebody?”

  “The Duke of Tynemouth, the most eligible, the most wealthy and the most important bachelor in the whole of England! No young girl as unimportant as you has ever been honoured in such a way before.”

  “But – but I do not – know him!”

  “What has that to do with it?” her aunt asked sharply. “He will call to see you in two hours’ time when I shall have returned and your engagement will be announced tomorrow.”

  Honora made a little helpless gesture with her hands.

  “I find it difficult to understand what you are – saying to me. I had hoped – of course to – marry someday, but I could not – possibly marry – a man I have never – seen and about whom I know – nothing.”

  “That is the sort of idiotic remark I would expect from a girl of your age,” the Countess snapped. “Try to get it into your stupid head that the Duke is the greatest catch in the whole country. Every parent with a marriageable daughter has been down on their knees begging him to become their son-in-law and now you have been lucky enough to be chosen as his wife.”

  Aline Langstone drew in her breath before she added,

  “You can thank God for such a blessing. I presume at the Convent you were taught to do that when your prayers were answered?”

  Honora drew in her breath.

  “I hoped to marry, sometime, and of course I have – thought about it, Aunt Aline, but I imagined it would be to – somebody I loved, as Mama loved Papa.”

  “I should have thought you were old enough by now,” the Countess replied, “to realise that your father should never in any circumstances have married your mother.”

  “Why should you say that?”

  “Because, you foolish child, your father with his looks and his family background should have married a girl with money. Your mother was very pretty, I am not denying that, but she had nothing else to recommend her!”

  The Countess’s voice was scornful as she went on,

  “That was why, as you must have been aware, your parents lived from hand to mouth and your father owed thousands of pounds when he died for which your uncle made himself responsible.”

  “I only wish,” Honora said in a low voice, “that I could have paid back that money – myself. I did thank Uncle George – at the time and I will thank him again – just as I am very – grateful to him for paying my – school fees.”

  “You can express your gratitude in a far better way than by words, for as for paying him back, that is exactly what you will be able to do in a hundred different ways when you are married to the Duke.”

  Honora was very pale and said in a voice that seemed to be strangled in her throat,

  “H-how can I – marry him?”

  “It will all be arranged,” her aunt answered. “Leave everything to me and if you have any doubts and wish to make a lot of foolish remarks about it, you are not to make them to your uncle.”

  Honora lo
oked at her aunt wide-eyed and the Countess went on,

  “All you have to do is exactly what I tell you and the first thing is to go upstairs and take off your travelling clothes and change into something respectable. I suppose you have a decent gown of some sort?”

  She paused.

  Then, as if it was difficult to say the words pleasantly, she added,

  “We shall be concentrating on your trousseau as soon as the engagement is announced and you must certainly have something fashionable to wear before you meet anybody.”

  The Countess glanced at the clock again and rose to her feet.

  “That is all I have to say for the moment and I can only repeat that you are very very fortunate. But don’t try to draw a parallel between your life and your parents’, for there has not been and will not be in the future any resemblance whatsoever!”

  With that, like a ship in full sail, her red skirts rustling as she moved, the Countess swept across the room.

  She opened the door and the butler must have been standing outside for Honora heard her say,

  “See that somebody shows Miss Honora to her room, Dalton, and I suppose the carriage is waiting for me?”

  “Yes, my Lady.”

  “I shall be back in about an hour’s time. I am expecting His Grace the Duke of Tynemouth to call at six o’clock.”

  “Very good, my Lady.”

  She must now have been walking down the stairs, but Honora did not move from where she was standing.

  She felt as though she had been hit on the head and it was hard to think.

  It was almost as if the room was whirling around her and the floor was as unsteady as it had been in the ship crossing the Channel.

  ‘Married! How can I be – married?’

  She felt as if she had asked the question out loud, but her lips had not moved.

  Then a woman came into the drawing room whose face she recognised. It was Mrs. Morton, the housekeeper, whom she had known in the past.

  “Good afternoon, Miss Honora,” Mrs. Morton said. “Nice to see you back and, my, how you’ve grown!”

  “Quite a lot, I think,” Honora smiled, “and I am very glad you are still here.”

  “Of course I’m still here,” Mrs. Morton replied. “Thirty-one years I’ve been with his Lordship and I like to think he’d find it hard to do without me.”

  “I am sure he would,” Honora replied.

  “Come upstairs, Miss Honora. Her Ladyship wants you changed and dressed before she returns and the footmen have brought up your luggage.”

  Mrs. Morton led the way from the drawing room and up the stairs that led to the next floor.

  It was only later that Honora realised she was not in the small single room that she had occupied before when she had stayed with her uncle and aunt in Grosvenor Square, but in one of the best guest rooms that overlooked the garden in the square.

  “You’ll be comfortable here, miss,” Mrs. Morton was saying, smiling affably.

  Honora’s two small trunks had been unstrapped and opened by the footmen and now two housemaids were taking out the clothes she had brought with her from Florence.

  They were simple, but one of them was a very pretty day gown, which she had bought from a friend who had grown out of it and which originally had come from an expensive dressmaker in Paris.

  It was a young girl’s gown of very pale blue silk, the skirt was very full and the waist tiny and a bodice of soft material had a tiny edging of lace that was exceedingly becoming.

  When Honora had it on, Mrs. Morton looked at her with admiration.

  “You’re as lovely as your mother, miss, and that’s a fact! When I first sees her with your father after they was married, I thought she was the prettiest lady I’d seen in my life!”

  “I thought that too,” Honora said, “and if I am only a little like her I will be very proud.”

  “You’re very like her and that’s somethin’ nobody would dispute,” Mrs. Morton replied, “only your hair’s a bit fairer.”

  “Perhaps it will darken when I grow older,” Honora suggested.

  Mrs. Morton laughed.

  “I think that’s unlikely and most young ladies would be very pleased to have hair that looked like the sunshine or spring flowers. Let Emily arrange it for you, miss. She’s very good with hair.”

  Emily arranged ringlets on either side of Honora’s cheeks and when she had finished both she and the other housemaid stared at Honora with admiration.

  “You look like a piece of Dresden china, Miss Honora, and that’s the truth!” Emily said.

  As she spoke, Honora looked at the other maid and knew they were both thinking that her Ladyship would not be pleased.

  When the two maids had carried the two empty trunks outside the room, Mrs. Morton stood behind Honora, who was sitting in front of the mirror on the dressing table and said,

  “You look worried, Miss Honora. What’s troublin’ you?”

  “I suppose it is coming back to England and knowing that I cannot see – Papa and I have been – away for such a long time,” Honora replied.

  “You mustn’t feel like that, miss,” Mrs. Morton said kindly. “Her Ladyship has big plans for you and I’m sure you’ll be a great success lookin’ as you do.”

  From the way she spoke, Honora was sure that Mrs. Morton was aware that she was to marry the Duke.

  She thought that even if the servants had not been told they would listen at the keyholes or when they were waiting at table and would be aware of what was to take place.

  She would have felt more apprehensive than she was already if she had known that the previous evening after the Duke had left, her uncle and aunt had had what might be described as a ‘stand-up fight’.

  “You have agreed to what?” the Earl had thundered in a voice that could be heard through the closed door by the footman on duty outside.

  “Don’t shout at me, George!” the Countess replied. “I told you quite clearly that Ulric Tynemouth has agreed to marry Honora.”

  “He has never seen the girl!”

  “No, but he has seen the Princess and that is quite enough for him!”

  “Are you telling me you hatched up this plot for him to marry my niece so that he will not be compelled to take Prince Albert’s cousin as his wife?”

  “That is exactly what I told you, George, if you had been listening,” his wife answered, “and, whatever Honora is like now after being two years in Florence, at least she could not be as plain as Princess Sophie or so incredibly dull.”

  “You had no right to tell Tynemouth in the first place what I told you in confidence,” the Earl retorted, “and I have never heard such a ridiculous idea in my life and I will have no part in it!”

  “What will you do?”

  “What will I do?” the Earl repeated. “I will tell Tynemouth firmly and categorically that I will not give him my permission to marry Honora and, if he wants a decoy to avert the Queen’s attention from him, he can find somebody else’s niece!”

  The Countess laughed and it was not a very pleasant sound.

  “Really, George, how can you make such a fool of yourself? You know as well as I do that any of our acquaintances would go down on their knees and lick the floor if it ensured that the Duke would be their son-in-law!”

  Her voice was deliberately sad as she went on,

  “We have not unfortunately a daughter we can offer him, but he has agreed, actually agreed to marry Honora! You must realise what that will mean!”

  There was silence before the Earl said slowly,

  “I imagine from your point of view it means you will see more of Tynemouth than you do already and that is too much!”

  As if the note in her husband’s voice was a warning to the Countess, she changed her tactics.

  She knew only too well how to manage her husband, as she managed other men.

  She gave a little laugh and moved towards him.

  “George, darling, you are jealous! How adorable of you a
nd it makes me very happy!”

  She put her arms round his neck and turned her beautiful face up to his as she said,

  “Nobody knows better than you do that it amuses me to flirt with the Duke and it is certainly a feather in my cap that he is so attentive, but no man has ever found me anything but cold and unresponsive.”

  She moved a little closer as she added,

  “It is something you have often accused me of yourself and you know how much I love you.”

  Aline was pulling his head down to hers and her body was very soft. The Earl somewhat reluctantly put his arms around her.

  The exotic French perfume she used seemed somehow to dull his senses.

  “It’s all very well, Aline – ” he began.

  Then his wife’s lips were on his and he was unable to say any more.

  Only when she released him did he say,

  “We have to talk about this, you know.”

  “There is nothing to say, dearest George,” the Countess replied. “The Duke has promised to marry Honora and, because he must be a step ahead of the Queen, the engagement will be announced tomorrow. So you and I must tell everybody that it was arranged a year ago when she was too young to be married.”

  “I doubt if anybody will believe that.”

  His tone was reluctant, but the Countess knew that she had won the battle and she merely replied,

  “All those women who have tried to catch him either for their daughters or for themselves will be grinding their teeth with envy. Just leave everything to me, George, and all you have to do is to buy Honora a trousseau which will cost a great deal of money that you can well afford.”

  “You are going too fast, Aline,” the Earl expostulated. “I have not given my consent to this ridiculous scheme and I do not intend – ”

  He stopped because he realised that his wife was not listening but was, in fact, leaving the room.

  “We must go and dress for dinner, George,” she said. “Have you forgotten that we are dining with the Devonshires? Of course do not breathe a word about the engagement until Honora has actually arrived in the country.”

  The Earl had a great deal more to say, but, as the room was empty, he would have been talking to himself.