203. Love Wins Page 5

  Then she looked appealingly at Lord Heywood before she suggested hesitantly,

  “I-I have some – jewellery with me that – belonged to my mother. I was going to – suggest that you sold it for me anyway – but I s-suppose you would not consider – borrowing the proceeds from me until such time as I – need them?”

  For a moment Lord Heywood’s thoughts were diverted from his trouble on the estate and he looked at Lalita as if he was really seeing her for the first time since he came back to his home.

  She thought that he would snap at her, but he smiled.

  “I appreciate it that you are trying to find a solution to my problems,” he said, “but, my dear girl, you should be thinking of your own. Believe me, you will need every penny you possess unless you intend to return home.”

  “You know I cannot do that,” Lalita answered, “but if I do not – leave you, then I don’t – need the money.”

  “Now we are back where we started and you know my opinions on that subject.”

  “Only too well,” Lalita replied. “But if you had any common sense you would appreciate that my suggestion is a practical one.”

  “It is very impractical and, as you are aware, I may be poor, but I still have my pride.”

  “Pride comes before a fall sooner or later.”

  Lord Heywood walked across the room to stand gazing out of the window and Lalita sensed that he was asking himself what he could do about the people who were dependent upon him and who, with the rapidly rising prices after the War, could hardly manage to survive on their meagre pensions.

  There were admittedly workhouses of some sort in the County, perhaps several, but they were places that the poor shrank from and the stories of the way the inmates were treated had, before Lord Heywood left the country, been a subject of constant criticism.

  He asked himself how could he let the old men and women who had served his father and his grandfather, until they no longer had the strength to do any more, end their remaining years in such conditions.

  ‘I have to find some money,’ he murmured beneath his breath.

  “Supposing you did sell one of the pictures that are entailed,” Lalita asked, “and perhaps some of the china. What would happen?”

  “As soon as it was discovered, as it would be, sooner or later,” Lord Heywood replied without turning round, “the Trustees would take me before the Magistrates and I should be told I was more or less a thief. The scandal would be extremely unpleasant.”

  Lalita gave a sigh.

  She knew how much this would hurt him and he was too honourable and too upright to do such a thing.

  “You must be able to find something that would bring in – a little money,” she said despondently.

  “A little would not be enough,” Lord Heywood retorted. “But, as I have said, I will go to London tomorrow.”

  As if he could not bear to talk about it any longer, he walked out of the room and Lalita put her hand up to her forehead in an effort to think.

  For the three days that she had been at The Abbey since Lord Heywood came home she had felt as if the problem of money encroached more menacingly on them every day.

  She had taken the large inventory that Lord Heywood had obtained from Mr. Crosswaith and had gone round a number of the rooms looking to see if anything had been overlooked only to find there was practically nothing that had not been included.

  “How can your grandfather have been so tiresome,” she asked, “as to entail all this in such detail?”

  “My grandfather and my great-grandfather were great collectors,” Lord Heywood replied. “I think my father rather frightened them when he was a young man.”

  He was aware that Lalita was waiting for an explanation and went on,

  “At Oxford University he was very wild and in their opinion an inveterate spendthrift.”

  “So they were afraid that he might sell the things they had collected?”

  Lord Heywood nodded.

  “When he was sent down from the University, he went to London where his curricles, his phaetons and his horses were the joy of the caricaturists. He also managed in two years to lose a considerable fortune at the card tables.”

  “I can understand your grandfather thinking that he was not to be trusted with all the treasures here.”

  “My grandfather paid up for him dozens of times and lectured him day in, day out, but he continued to be extravagant until his dying day.”

  Lord Heywood’s voice sharpened as he added,

  “That is why I am in the position I am in now.”

  “But you can still live in a magnificent house filled with treasures.”

  “And starve as I do so! Not a very pleasant prospect.”

  “You would find it more unpleasant to have to live in a cottage or sleep under the trees.”

  Lord Heywood smiled.

  “I expect that I could find an empty house belonging to somebody else.”

  Lalita’s eyes twinkled.

  “You have to admit it was clever of me to come here. If you had not come home, nobody would have been any the wiser.”

  “You could hardly have stayed here for years talking only to the mice.”

  “That is what I thought I would have to do until you appeared unexpectedly in my bedroom. It was a considerable shock!”

  “It was a shock for me too,” Lord Heywood agreed.

  All the same Lalita was intuitive enough to realise that because she was there he was not finding his problem as depressing as he might have done otherwise, and Carter confirmed this.

  “If you asks me,” he said when Lalita was talking to him in the kitchen, “it’s a good thing the Colonel ’as you to grumble to so to speak.”

  “I thought that myself,” Lalita replied.

  “Seems stupid-like to me,” Carter went on. “’Ere’s this ’ouse filled with gold, so to speak, and none of us dares put a finger on it.”

  “It’s very frustrating for his Lordship, but he is worrying not about himself but about the people who are dependent on him.”

  “That’s ’im all over,” Carter agreed. “There weren’t an Officer like ’im in the Regiment. Looked after ’is men, ’e did, with never a thought for ’imself and there weren’t nothin’ they wouldn’t do for ’im.”

  “That is how you feel too, is it not, Carter?” Lalita asked.

  Yesterday when Lord Heywood was out she had gone to the kitchen and found that Carter was just about to walk up to the nearest farm to buy them some food.

  She saw him counting the money that he had taken from a drawer in the kitchen and she said,

  “Carter, if I suggest something to you, will you promise not to tell his Lordship?”

  “Depends what it be, miss,” Carter replied.

  “When I ran away, I took quite a lot of money with me because I was not so foolish as to think that I could manage without it.”

  She saw that Carter was listening attentively and went on,

  “I told his Lordship I would pay my way, but, of course, he refused as I am a woman. Yet even women have to eat and eating has to be paid for.”

  “I’m not goin’ to argue with that,” Carter smiled.

  “That is why,” Lalita went on, “I intend to pay my way without his Lordship’s knowing about it.”

  She thought that Carter was about to refuse and she added quickly,

  “It is a case of either I go out and buy some food, which would be dangerous because then people will know I am here, or you buy it for me.”

  “’Is Lordship’d skin me alive if ’e gets to ’ear of it.”

  “Then we must be clever and not let him know.”

  Lalita put three sovereigns down on the kitchen table.

  “When you have spent these, I will give you some more. I think it important that his Lordship is properly fed and I am quite sure that meat is expensive.”

  Carter was looking at the sovereigns and there was a glint in his eyes.

  “Please say
nothing to his Lordship,” Lalita insisted. “He is a strong man, but he takes a great deal out of himself. You know as well as I do that like Waterloo and Conqueror he needs proper feeding.”

  “I were a-thinkin’ I could steal some oats for them ’orses,” Carter said, “but they at the farms be as poor as us.”

  “Most farmers are in the same state all over the country,” Lalita replied. “But, as his Lordship said, we have to pay our way and that is what I intend we shall do and as I have money – it is not really difficult.”

  Swiftly, as if he felt that he must do it surreptitiously, Carter swept up the sovereigns and slipped them into his pocket.

  “God ’elp me if ’is Lordship finds out,” he said, “but if ’e does I shall tell ’im as ’twas Eve as tempted me!”

  “The age-old excuse of every man,” Lalita laughed.

  At the same time she was delighted to have had her own way.

  She knew that Lord Heywood, like most men, would accept food when it was there and not ask too many questions as to what it had cost and she was right.

  At dinner that evening Lord Heywood had eaten several slices of a prime sirloin of beef and merely said when he had finished,

  “That was excellent, Carter. I always said you were the best cook in the Regiment. I was afraid they would take you from me to cook for the Officers’ Mess.”

  “I’d soon ’ave got out of there, my Lord,” Carter said. “Two meals’d be enough with what I’d serve them up!”

  Lord Heywood laughed.

  “I know how your mind works. At the same time Miss Lalita and I would like to thank you for being so proficient, the beef was delicious.”

  Carter had removed what was left from the table and as he did so he winked at Lalita.

  She thought it was somewhat reprehensible behaviour on the part of Lord Heywood’s manservant. But she thought that good food downed with a bottle of wine from the cellar had put his Lordship in a mellow mood.

  He had sat in the writing room after dinner not talking of how she must leave but instead planning how they could make the room more comfortable with extra chairs and cushions from the salons.

  He had even been ready to exchange one of the pictures for one that Lalita particularly liked in a room that they had no intention of using.

  “Tomorrow I am going to choose some different ornaments for the mantelshelf,” she said, “and bring in some of those exquisite pieces of Dresden china from the Grand Salon to stand on the gilt table in the corner.”

  He did not protest, but merely smiled at her indulgently and she thought once again that his agreeable mood was due to the fact that he felt well fed.

  “I have something to ask you,” she began at breakfast the next day.

  “What is it?”

  Lord Heywood asked the question, but he was in fact reading the newspaper as he ate his eggs and bacon.

  It was a day old, but Carter had brought it from the village and Lord Heywood realised how out of touch he was with all the current news both political and social.

  “You know, because I told you so,” Lalita said in a small voice, “that I was only able to bring three gowns away with me – two in the valise I carried and the one I was wearing?”

  “Yes, you told me,” Lord Heywood answered vaguely.

  “I was wondering if you would – think it very – wrong and perhaps almost – insulting if I asked you if I could wear your – mother’s riding habit.”

  She spoke hesitatingly and now Lord Heywood raised his head to look at her in surprise.

  “My mother’s riding habit?” he questioned.

  “There are plenty of her clothes in the wardrobe of the bedroom where I am sleeping.”

  “I never thought of it, but I suppose there would be,” Lord Heywood said, “just as I have been thinking that not only the clothes I left behind fortunately still fit me but also my father’s.”

  “You – you may dislike my wearing your mother’s – clothes,” Lalita said, “but it does not – improve my own to ride in them.”

  “I can appreciate that,” Lord Heywood remarked. “And I imagine that your gowns may have to last you for a long time.”

  He smiled before he added,

  “Take anything of my mother’s you like – I have a feeling that, if she knew what was happening, it would amuse her.”

  He saw Lalita’s eyes light up.

  “Thank you, thank you,” she cried, “and it’s strange that you should say that. Sleeping in her bedroom I sometimes feel as if she is there and she is not in the least disapproving because I have run away, as you try to be!”

  “That is something you cannot prove, but I imagine you wish to come riding with me, in which case you had better go and change.”

  “I will be very quick,” Lalita promised and she sped from the dining room as if there were wings on her heels.

  Lord Heywood had to admit to himself that she amused him.

  There was never a moment in the day when he did not find that she had something unusual and invariably intelligent to say. And she certainly kept him from feeling as depressed and despondent about the future as he would have been otherwise.

  She had set herself the task of cleaning the rooms that they used.

  Housework was something he was sure she had never done before, but the way she applied herself to the task was very commendable.

  He was well aware that the ladies who pursued him in Paris and those he remembered at home in the past would never have demeaned themselves by doing anything so unpleasant as brushing and dusting.

  While Carter swept the worst of the dust off the carpets, Lalita brushed down the furniture and dusted the ornaments, the tables and the mirrors.

  Lord Heywood found that his bed was made up with the best sheets, which he was sure was Lalita’s doing, and every day the furniture was dusted and polished and looking more as it had been when he was a boy.

  It was obviously impossible for them to tackle the whole of the house, but Lalita polished the balustrade so that they did not get their hands dirty when they touched it and Carter cleaned the dining room until everything shone in the sunlight.

  Even so Lord Heywood could not help remembering the six tall footmen dressed in the family livery of green and yellow who stood in the hall in the past and how impressive old Merrivale had looked before he shrunk with old age when he had received their guests with almost pontifical dignity.

  There had been at least seven housemaids in their mob caps bustling in and out of the bedrooms and a housekeeper in rustling black taffeta and with a silver chatelaine at her waist supervising everything with an eagle eye.

  Now, as he saw Lalita look a little ruefully at her hands, he felt guilty.

  “There is no need for you to do this,” he said sharply an hour later when he came back into the writing room to find her still dusting books.

  “We cannot get as black as a chimneysweep every time we take a book from the shelves,” she replied. “Besides they deteriorate if they are not looked after.”

  “There is no need for you to worry about them,” he asserted without thinking.

  Lalita sat back on her heels and looked up at him.

  “Are you feeling disagreeable?” she asked. “Because I was going to suggest that you might like to do some work in the peach house.”

  “The peach house?” Lord Heywood exclaimed.

  “I know you have not had much time to look at the Kitchen Garden,” Lalita went on, “but the peaches are beginning to ripen and Carter thinks that the nectarines should be ready to eat in another week. Also, if you are very good, you shall have strawberries for dinner.”

  Lord Heywood laughed.

  “You are making me feel as if I had just come back from school and all those things are a special treat.”

  “That is exactly what they are, but, of course, if you are unkind, I shall punish you by eating them all myself.

  Lord Heywood laughed again

  “Carter has sa
id that luncheon will be ready in exactly five minutes, and you know how punctual he is. It will take you all that time to get your hands clean.”

  “Whether they are clean or not, I am very hungry!” Lalita insisted.

  Jumping up from the floor and holding up her apron so that she could move quicker, she ran from the room.

  Lord Heywood watched her go and thought to himself that she was an amusing child and, although he admitted that he liked having her here he recognised that he should definitely make plans for her to leave.

  ‘As soon as I come back from London I must do something about it,’ he thought.

  He was sure that it was only a question of time before various of his acquaintances in the County would be aware that he was home and would call out of curiosity if nothing else.

  He could not imagine anything more disastrous than for them to find that he had a young unchaperoned woman staying with him and he did not even know her name.

  ‘She will have to leave,’ Lord Heywood decided.

  But he had no idea how he could persuade her to go or where he could send her.

  He found himself puzzling every night over who she could be and how it had been possible for her to disappear in such a strange manner without there being a hue and cry.

  He almost expected to find a description of her in the newspapers.

  He had decided from what she had said and her knowledge of The Abbey and the conditions surrounding it that she must live somewhere locally.

  He could, of course, ask Carter to make enquiries at the village inn or at the nearby farms as to whether they had heard of anybody missing in the vicinity.

  Then he told himself that it would be unfair. Lalita trusted him and he could not betray that trust by taking any action that might jeopardise her freedom.

  Nevertheless what would happen to her?

  She was far too young and too beautiful to move about the world alone and it made him shudder to think of the dangers she would encounter.

  He was still thinking of Lalita when she came back looking very much cleaner and without the housemaid’s apron that had protected her gown.

  He noticed, although he did not say so, that her small hands were distinctly pink and he knew that it must have been from the way that she had to scrub them to be rid of the dirt and dust.