Kiss from a Stranger Read online

  He then began to explain to his friend the history of everybody who was to be in the party and after they had travelled for nearly two miles the Earl exclaimed,

  “Does no one in London ever give a thought to the war?”

  “Not if they can help it!” Perry answered truthfully. “Damn it all, it has gone on too long and we can only pray that by some miracle we shall defeat Napoleon sooner than is expected.”

  The Earl thought that was improbable and he told himself it was unlikely that he could ever contribute to Bonaparte’s defeat in the way that Lord Barham was expecting.

  Therefore, sooner or later, he must find something better to do than sleep with beautiful women and enjoy himself with good friends like Perry.

  He did not, however, say this aloud.

  He had to act the part of a carefree gentleman whose only aim in life was to seek amusement.

  It was certainly a thrill when he saw The Castle ahead of him.

  It was extraordinary that he was now the possessor of it in his father’s place and it had never crossed his mind, whilst he was at sea, that George would be killed and he could become the eleventh Earl instead of his brother.

  Now he was determined not to let the family down.

  George had been groomed for the part since he was a small boy, while Durwin had to take second place and be of little consequence in the family hierarchy.

  He remembered once asking his father for a little more money just before he was appointed to a new ship in the rank of Midshipman, but his father had explained to him very seriously that anything that could be spared must be given to George.

  “He will take my place as the Head of the Family,” the old Earl had said, “and if his inheritance is frittered away extravagantly, he will be unable to grace the position as he should or look after those who depend on him.”

  It had been hard to understand at the time, but now the Earl knew that, as head of the Arrow family, there would be innumerable calls on his time and his purse.

  He recognised that he must be just and not pay one relative more than another.

  As he might have expected, the hostesses he had met this last week before he left London had all asked him archly when he intended to get married.

  “Not for a very long time,” he had replied to Lady Holland.

  She was the only one of them who said,

  “Quite right. Take your time, and when you do find a woman you love, make sure that she will not only embellish your bed, your table and the family jewels, but be a good mother to your children.”

  It was refreshingly different from what the other hostesses who had marriageable daughters had told him.

  They thought all that mattered was that the Countess of Arrow should be blue-blooded.

  The young girls he had seen so far appeared both shy and gauche and it was easy to say firmly that he had no intention of marrying and could not consider it until the war was at an end.

  It was, of course, Perry who had advised him to be careful of the most ambitious mothers.

  “Do not forget, Durwin,” he said, “you are more of a catch these days than you were as a sailor with no prospects!”

  The Earl had laughed.

  “I promise you I will not be caught however persuasive the bait may be!”

  “Don’t boast!” Perry warned him. “Better men than you have been marched up the aisle before they realised what was happening to them!”

  “I am not a fool,” the Earl said, “and when I do marry, I have no intention of being forced to listen to banal conversation from breakfast until dinner from a woman whose only asset is that her father wears a coronet!”

  Perry laughed.

  “What is so attractive about you now is that you wear one yourself.”

  “If you talk like that,” the Earl threatened, “I shall return to sea tomorrow! I find the French less terrifying than some of the Dowagers I have met this week!”

  As they drew nearer to The Castle, the Earl was thinking how much, as a small boy, he had enjoyed playing in the ancient tower and running through the great State rooms.

  One day he must have a son who would ride the rocking horse in the nursery and later have a pony kept for him in the stables until he was old enough to mount a horse.

  He would never forget the thrill of jumping a hedge for the first time and he could remember as vividly as if it was yesterday catching his first trout in the stream near the lake.

  “I must say, Durwin,” Perry exclaimed, “The Castle certainly looks magnificent! I quite expect to see a number of Knights in chain mail pouring out of the front door at any moment!”

  “I shall be annoyed if there are not a few well-dressed footmen doing that!” the Earl exclaimed.

  Because Bates could always be relied on, he was not disappointed.

  There was an open bottle of champagne in the ice cooler in the study, and paté sandwiches in case they felt hungry after their journey.

  “We were late leaving so we had luncheon on the way,” the Earl told Bates.

  “I thought you might, my Lord, but the food at the Posting inns is not very appetising.”

  “You are quite right,” the Earl agreed, “and in future I will take my own food with me.”

  “That’s certainly wise, my Lord,” Bates replied, “and it’s what his Lordship your father always did.”

  As he went to the study, the Earl laughed.

  “With Bates to bully me it will be difficult for me to do anything different from what my father always did, the Earl before him and the Earl before him! In fact, the whole series of them back to the first!”

  “And a good thing too!” Perry said. “Far too many of the ancient customs and traditions have been pushed aside. People blame the war, but I actually think it’s because they have become sloppy and incompetent.”

  That at least was something the Earl had never been.

  He told himself he would run The Castle as he ran his ship, with an efficiency and a punctiliousness that no one could find fault with.

  He took Perry over The Castle, not only because he wanted to show it to his friend, but also because he wanted to see it for himself.

  He had forgotten how magnificent the State rooms were. The Holland covers had been removed from the furniture and the windows polished until they shone like diamonds.

  They were as magnificent as they had been when the Earl was a small boy.

  He showed Perry the Long Gallery, the ballroom, the Chapel, and the bedrooms, which were mostly named after the Kings and Queens who had slept in them.

  When they returned to the study, Perry threw himself down in a chair and sighed,

  “Well, all I can say is, Durwin, that you are a damned lucky chap!”

  “There is still a lot to be done,” the Earl replied, “and I must instruct Marlow to find me painters and carpenters as quickly as possible.”

  “It looks perfect to me as it is,” Perry said, “but what about the stables?”

  “There I shall certainly need your help,” the Earl replied. “Let me see – we bought a dozen horses at Tattersalls and they should have arrived here by now. But I shall want a great many more.”

  “I suppose you have remembered that you have a house at Newmarket?”

  “I had forgotten it until the Prince Regent reminded me. I shall certainly need racehorses and I want the best!”

  “Of course – what else?” Perry laughed mockingly.

  The Earl did not reply.

  He walked to the window of the study and was thinking as he looked out into the garden how lucky, how incredibly lucky he was.

  But before he bought racehorses, he had every intention of seeing that his estate was properly looked after and the repairs that were long overdue were put in hand.

  He had seen the preliminary list Marlow had made out.

  He was horrified to read of the dilapidation of the almshouses and the pensioners’ cottages, the lack of a school and, more important, the unemployment o
f men who had returned from the war.

  ‘There is a great deal to do,’ he told himself.

  Actually it lifted his heart to know that he was not going to be idle now that he was no longer at sea.

  There was quite a long silence before the door opened and Bates announced,

  “The first of your Lordship’s guests have just arrived, and I’ve shown them, my Lord, into the blue drawing room.”

  “Who is here?” Perry asked before the Earl could speak.

  “Lady Evelyn Ashby and Lady Gratton with two gentlemen, sir.”

  Perry looked at the Earl.

  “Lucille!” he exclaimed with a knowing note in his voice.

  The Earl did not bother to reply, he was moving quickly from the study, eager to reach the drawing room and Lucille.

  *

  Upstairs, Shenda had been intrigued by the fuss and commotion that had galvanised the whole castle because the Earl was giving a party.

  “It’ll be just like the old times,” Mrs. Davison said over and over again.

  She showed Shenda the list of the rooms the guests were to occupy.

  “There’s Lady Evelyn Ashby in the Charles II room,” she explained, “another lady in the Queen Anne Room, a third occupies a room called the Duchess of Northumberland’s room and finally, Lady Gratton will occupy the Queen Elizabeth Room. That’s the lady his Lordship fancies!”

  “How do you know that?” Shenda asked.

  Mrs. Davison smiled.

  “My niece was fortunate enough to be engaged at Arrow House in Berkeley Square some years earlier, when the old Earl was alive. She loved being there and was real sad when the house was closed.”

  Shenda nodded to show she understood, and Mrs. Davison went on,

  “When she hears his Lordship’s back from the sea, she asks if there’s a vacancy and, because she comes from the village, she was taken on right away!”

  “That was lucky for her,” Shenda smiled.

  “She wrote to me at once and I got the letter yesterday, telling me how charming his Lordship is and as how who she describes as ‘the most beautiful Lady in England’ is already in his arms, so to speak!”

  “Do you think he is going to marry her?” Shenda asked.

  “Oh, no, Miss Shenda!” Mrs. Davison answered. “Nothing like that! Lady Gratton is married, according to my niece, to a gentleman who is with his Regiment abroad.”

  Shenda looked puzzled and Mrs. Davison, realising that she had made a mistake, said quickly,

  “The ladies in London have a good time even if their husbands are away from home. There’s no use ‘wearing your heart on your sleeve’ as my mother used to say.”

  “Yes – of course,” Shenda agreed rather doubtfully.

  At the same time she wondered if she had a husband whether she would feel like going to parties alone and being entertained in the country by Earls.

  ‘There must be many things these ladies could do to help the troops and the seamen,’ she argued to herself.

  Then she thought that it would be a great mistake to be critical.

  She was so lucky to be at The Castle and, although they seemed so far from the war, she had not forgotten the men in the village who were wounded or those families who had sons serving either in the Army or the Navy.

  She remembered how sympathetic her father had always been and, when her mother had gone to the village, the women used to cry because they had not heard of them for months on end.

  Or, if a ship had been sunk, it would be a very long time before they knew if there were any survivors.

  ‘I wonder if the Earl misses being at sea?’ she asked herself as she went back to her room.

  She sat down to continue mending the lace on a sheet that had been torn when it was washed.

  As she did so, she thought of the extraordinary stories of the Earl’s bravery and courage which had reached the village just before he came to The Castle.

  Whenever the women went shopping in the butcher’s, the baker’s, the grocer’s or anywhere else, they would congregate round the counter and talk about the war and the latest tales they had heard.

  Sooner or later Shenda had heard them too, mostly from Martha when she came in the morning and from anyone else she met during the day.

  “You’ll never believe it, Miss Lynd – ” they would begin.

  Then she knew that, although Arrowhead seemed a very long way from France, the stories of what was occurring lost nothing in the telling and everybody vied with each other to have something new to relate.

  She could not remember ever seeing the Earl, although she felt that she must have done so when she was a child.

  She imagined that he would be tall and handsome like most of the Bows.

  There were enough pictures of them in The Castle for her to realise that there was a family resemblance going all down the ages.

  One of part of The Castle that had thrilled her since she had arrived had been the Picture Gallery.

  It contained not only portraits but some very fine works by great artists that had been collected by each successive generation of Arrows since the first.

  She was enthralled by the beauty of those that came from Italy and there was a Fragonard and a Boucher from France that she particularly liked.

  There were family portraits on the stairs and along the corridors, and in many of the bedrooms and it seemed to Shenda that they were watching over the house and the Bow family and it would have been impossible for the New Earl not to have felt their influence.

  In a way it was strange that he should have a large house party before he had come home and inspected his estate and met those who served him.

  He should visit the farmers who had, she knew, a long list of requests for improvements to their farms.

  ‘He may refuse because of the war,’ she told herself, ‘but he can at least repair the roofs and help them build up their stock.’

  ‘There are so many things for him to do!’ she added as she finished mending the lace.

  In fact, she had done it so skilfully that it was impossible to see where it had been torn.

  Then with a sigh she told herself it was none of her business and what was most important was that the Earl should not be aware that she was employed in The Castle.

  She had a feeling that he would disapprove of a Vicar’s daughter being one of his servants.

  She felt a little shiver as she thought of how terrible it would be if she had to go away and try to find somewhere else to live.

  “We are so happy here,” she told Rufus, who wagged his tail in agreement.

  She decided she would keep well out of sight until the Earl returned to London and she could have the woods and the garden to herself again.

  Rufus was restless and looking at the clock and she thought that she should take him out for a walk before there was any chance of the Earl arriving.

  She knew that Bates was expecting his Lordship early in the afternoon.

  She therefore hurried down a side staircase with Rufus at her heels and opened the door that led directly into the garden.

  Ever since it had been known that the Earl was back from the sea the gardeners had been working overtime to make everything even more beautiful than it had been before.

  Because the weather had been warm, the blossom on the trees and shrubs was out and spring flowers filled the flowerbeds and the grass was as green as a billiard table.

  Shenda took a secret path behind the box-hedges, which led up to the cascade.

  It was the place she loved more than anywhere else and she would watch the water that came from the wood tumbling over the rocks.

  There were rock-plants, pink, yellow, and white, to add colour to the grey stones and make it look even more beautiful.

  The stone bowl at the bottom of the cascade was now refilled with goldfish and they were swimming lazily in and out of the water lily leaves.

  There were buds on the flowers, and she knew they would soon be in bloom. />
  “It is lovely, lovely, lovely!” Shenda exclaimed aloud.

  Then, because she was frightened that she might be sent away, she prayed that the Earl would not discover her.

  As she did so, she found herself thinking of the gentleman who had saved Rufus from the trap in the woods.

  He had kissed her and even now she still found it difficult to believe that it had really happened.

  How could she have let a total stranger kiss her on the lips?

  She could explain it away only by saying that she had been so bemused by Rufus being in such a predicament and by the stranger because he looked so different from anybody she had ever seen before.

  ‘It was wrong, but rather wonderful!’ she whispered to herself.

  Then, because the time was passing and she was afraid she might be seen, she hurried back to The Castle.

  “His Lordship’s guests have arrived!” Mrs. Davison said, bustling into the room where Shenda was once again sewing.

  “Do they look very beautiful?” she asked.

  “They certainly does!” Mrs. Davison answered. “And dressed in the height of fashion! If the crowns of their bonnets was any higher, they’d touch the sky!”

  Shenda laughed.

  Since she had come to The Castle, she had found that Mrs. Davison pored over the ladies’ magazines and she had found them not only interesting but also amusing.

  The caricatures done of the fashionable world were so funny that she wondered if the ladies and gentlemen Rowlandson and Cruikshank depicted and, of course, the Prince Regent, minded being made to look foolish.

  The caricaturists made the Society women grotesquely fat or else as slim as lathes and they poked fun at the fashionable transparent gowns and huge over-decorated bonnets and they were also very insulting to those who gave themselves airs and graces.

  “It’s a shame, that’s what it be,” Mrs. Davison exclaimed, “but all the same, one has to laugh!”

  Because she thought it would amuse Shenda, she showed her where in the library were some actual prints by the caricaturists.

  “His late Lordship ordered them first years ago,” Mrs. Davison told her. “As soon as they appeared in the shop in St. James’s Street, a copy would be sent here.”