203. Love Wins Page 7

  “I gather you did not like her.”

  “Like ’er?” Carter asked, “’er’s the sort I wouldn’t trust on a dark night with a blind man!”

  Then, as if he suddenly realised who he was speaking to, he added quickly,

  “It’s not the sort of thing, miss, I should be a-sayin’ to you and I’ve some washin’ up to do.”

  He walked off swiftly towards the kitchen, but Lalita was looking serious as she turned towards the writing room.

  It struck her when she saw the newspapers from the day before lying untidily on the floor and an empty glass that Lord Heywood had brought from the dining room that the place was empty and lonely without him.

  She began to tidy the room and thinking how unexpectedly happy she had been the last few days.

  She had never known before what it was like to be alone with a young man she could talk to, squabble with and tease.

  She had been happy with her grandfather after her father and mother had died, but he was old and used to always having his own way, so he seldom listened to her opinions.

  She thought now that it had been very exciting to be able to express herself, to be aware that Lord Heywood was listening to her and then try to defeat him in an argument.

  They had discussed many subjects when they were not going over his problems or she was putting obstacles in his way when he tried to find out more about her.

  Even that was thrilling, knowing that she was staying on in his house simply because he was too decent and too much of a gentleman to turn her out.

  ‘He seems to like having me here,’ Lalita told herself cautiously.

  Then she wondered if he would have preferred to have somebody like Lady Irene, who loved him and who he could ‘make love’ to.

  She was not certain what that implied, but she had the idea that it might be very exciting to be made love to by Lord Heywood.

  This inevitably made her remember her cousin whom her uncle had tried to make her marry.

  Because the thought of him was so horrifying and in a way disgusting, she hurriedly picked up the glass and carried it to the kitchen so that she could talk to Carter and not be alone with her thoughts.

  He was busy skinning a rabbit.

  “Did you catch that in one of your snares?” she asked him.

  “This be the second rabbit I’ve caught in that there snare,” Carter replied.

  “Poor little thing,” Lalita sighed. “I feel it’s rather cruel to catch them unawares, at the same time there are so many of them and we are hungry.”

  “’Tis no use you worryin’ ’bout rabbits, miss,” Carter replied. “It’s ’is Lordship you and me ’ave to think about.”

  ‘As if I could think of anybody else,’ Lalita thought and remembered that she had promised to pray that he would be successful in obtaining a loan from the Bank.

  *

  Lord Heywood reached London without much trouble with his horses.

  After they had settled down to a comfortable pace he had been able to think of a plan of action once he had reached his destination and especially how he should approach the Bank.

  He had calculated that he should be at Heywood House by about twelve o’clock and, when he arrived, he put the horses in the empty stable in the Mews and managed, by tipping a groom of an adjacent stable, to procure some oats for them.

  He then went round to the front door of Heywood House and rang the bell.

  He could hear it clanging away in the distance and he took several more pulls at it and used the knocker as well until finally the door was opened by a very old and bowed man.

  It took Lord Heywood a second or two to recognise Johnson, who had been the butler, and whom he had not seen for many years.

  Johnson was not only deaf but going blind and it took some time for Lord Heywood to explain who he was.

  “Mr. Romney,” the old man said at length. “I never expected to see you, sir.”

  “Well, here I am, Johnson, and I learned from Mr. Crosswaith that you and your wife are looking after the house.”

  “Things aren’t what they used to be, Mr. Romney, and that’s a fact,” Johnson said dolefully.

  Lord Heywood thought the same as he walked around to find the furniture in the rooms shrouded in Holland dust sheets just as it had been in the country.

  The house also seemed dark and smelt stuffy and dusty, but that was inevitable.

  What interested him were the items of furniture that Mr. Crosswaith had said were not covered by the Trust.

  He found them as he had expected in his mother's rooms and he knew that each one was part of his childhood memories. It seemed sacrilege to sell them, but there was no possible alternative.

  He then looked around that part of the house which was less formal, hoping that by some lucky chance he would see a picture or a piece of furniture that had escaped the eyes of his grandfather.

  He found two pieces which he thought might fetch a little money and there were also hanging in the passages three or four pictures that might, if they were cleaned, prove to be, if not valuable, at least saleable.

  He was aware that, ever since the Prince Regent had shown such an interest in art, it had become fashionable to appreciate pictures that in the past were dismissed as uninteresting.

  Lord Heywood had taken the trouble when he was in Paris to visit the Palaces and Museums where Napoleon had stored the treasures that he had stolen from the countries he had conquered.

  It made him appreciate more than he did already the old Italian and Dutch Masters.

  He hoped now that there might be in the house some pictures that had not been considered interesting when his grandfather had entailed everything onto the future generations, but which in the meantime had come into fashion.

  What he saw made him decide that he would find an expert to examine what was here and not just rely entirely on the gloomy findings of Crosswaith and his partners.

  It was obviously useless to ask old Johnson to provide him with any sort of luncheon and Lord Heywood decided he would go to his Club. It was growing late and it was a long time since he had breakfasted.

  A Hackney carriage took him to White’s in St. James’s Street and the moment he walked in through the door he was hailed by a number of friends who were both surprised and delighted to see him after being away for so long.

  Not only were they anxious for him to drink with them but he also had several invitations for luncheon and thought that at least he was not dissipating his own limited resources.

  In fact he enjoyed himself so much that it was with difficulty that he tore himself away from White’s and, having dined with three old friends, went off to the Bank.

  He was in such high spirits that by the time he was shown into the Bank Manager’s office he had begun to feel as if his luck was changing and everything would now be smooth sailing.

  But the truth was unpalatable.

  When his father had died there was a large overdraft, which had been slightly reduced the first year after his death by the rents from the estate.

  In the last two years, however, this income had ceased completely owing to the poor economic conditions in the country, while the stocks and shares that he owned also paid very much reduced dividends.

  In fact gradually the shares themselves owing to economic conditions had become almost worthless.

  “You might find a buyer for them,” the Bank Manager said, “but I think, my Lord, it would be in your best interests to hold them for a year or so at least to see if things improve.”

  He saw the expression on Lord Heywood’s face and said quickly,

  “We are promised that prosperity is round the corner, now the Quadruple Alliance has put Europe back on its feet. So I am expecting that prospects will soon be better in this country.”

  “I only hope you are right,” Lord Heywood said dryly, “but for the moment that does not help me personally.”

  When he left the Bank an hour later, he had found that his pos
ition was no better than it had been before he left The Abbey.

  Actually, because now he knew the whole amount of his debts, he was more depressed than he had been before.

  And a visit to the Solicitors did nothing to reassure him.

  Mr. Crosswaith was very sympathetic, but, although under a great deal of pressure from Lord Heywood, he agreed to pay the pensioners for one more month, he made it absolutely clear that he and his partners, now that his Lordship had returned, could carry the burden of the Heywood properties no longer.

  There was nothing that Lord Heywood could do but thank them for their services and go from their office to Christie’s.

  These auctioneers were recognised as having the most fashionable and the most reliable sales room in London.

  Lord Heywood remembered they had handled the sell-up for poor George Brummell when he had been obliged to leave the country and had also disposed of Lord Byron’s effects when he left England.

  A partner he spoke to understood exactly what he wanted.

  “I will send one of my most reliable valuers, my Lord, to Heywood House,” he said. “I can assure you that if there is anything of value he will not miss it.”

  “I should be grateful if he would also come to the country,” Lord Heywood said. “The position there is the same, and my grandfather entailed everything possible before he died. But there have been some additions and I am hoping that perhaps in the passing years there may be a picture that has now become valuable although it was omitted from the Trust.”

  “That might easily have happened,” Lord Heywood was told and at least it was more encouraging than anything else he had heard in London.

  By the time he left Christie’s it was growing late and he went back to Heywood House to change into his evening clothes which Carter had packed and put in a valise in the curricle.

  As he dressed in the bedroom that had always been occupied by his father, Lord Heywood found himself thinking of the way that money had been spent over the years as if it came from an inexhaustible cornucopia.

  There were, of course, no horses now in the stables in the Mews where he had left Conqueror and the horse he had borrowed, but he had noted a great number of vehicles there.

  Just as in the country there were phaetons and curricles, travelling-carriages and chariots, all out of proportion for the needs of one man.

  Besides this he was aware that since he had been abroad his father had decorated a number of rooms in a most extravagant fashion.

  Heavy silk brocades on the walls of the drawing room matched the elaborate curtains. In the dining room the plasterwork was picked out in gold leaf and the painted ceiling by an Italian artist was most spectacular.

  His father had always demanded the best, but unfortunately he did not have to pay for it.

  Because he suddenly felt overwhelmed by the burden of it all, Lord Heywood wished that he could run away and disappear as Lalita had done.

  Then, as he thought of her, he found himself reflecting that she would laugh at him for letting what he had learnt today get him down.

  ‘There must be something you can do,’ she would say.

  There would be a note in her voice that made him want to believe her hope that, however much he might reason to the contrary, even at the last moment a miracle would save him.

  ‘She has certainly kept me more cheerful than I might otherwise have been,’ he admitted and decided that the sooner he went back to the country the better.

  Feeling smart in his evening clothes, although they were tight under the arms and across the shoulders, Lord Heywood walked down the staircase.

  Old Johnson was waiting in the hall.

  “I ought to ’ave told your Lordship that the carrier from Dover brought some luggage ’ere yesterday, but it went straight out of me mind.”

  “I was going to ask you about that,” Lord Heywood replied. “I had everything I brought back from France sent here and now it has arrived I will take it to the country with me tomorrow.”

  He had to repeat this several times before Johnson got it into his head.

  Then the butler said,

  “And there’s some letters too, my Lord. They’ve been arrivin’ almost every day for your Lordship.”

  One glance at the letters that reposed on a silver salver told Lord Heywood whom they were from.

  There was no mistaking Irene Dawlish’s flowery and elaborate handwriting and he thought with a sinking of his heart that she must be back in England.

  This made him say hastily,

  “I will look at them when I come back, Johnson. Please ask your wife if she will give me breakfast at eight o’clock tomorrow morning as I wish to leave early.”

  “What hour did you say, my Lord?”

  “Eight o’clock,” Lord Heywood repeated.

  Then, ignoring the letters, he hurried out of the house to his Club.

  Once again he enjoyed himself until a little later in the evening one of his friends said,

  “Somebody was asking after you, Heywood, and when I told her you were in London she was extremely interested.”

  “Who was that?” Lord Heywood managed to ask with a very convincing air of indifference.

  “Irene Dawlish! I gather you saw a great deal of her when you were both in Paris.”

  There was a note of undoubted jealousy in his informant’s voice and Lord Heywood replied,

  “I can assure you I was not the only one. Lady Irene was a huge success with, I might say, almost the whole Army of Occupation!”

  There was laughter at this and another member of the Club remarked,

  “The Army would just about satisfy the beautiful Irene! We should send her as an emissary to the next conference. She would undoubtedly invigorate the delegates and prove a very able Ambassador!”

  “Why do you not make the suggestion to the Foreign Secretary and perhaps it should come before Parliament,” somebody joked.

  “Personally I am against the export of beautiful women,” another man quipped.

  Thinking over later what had been said, Lord Heywood told himself that it was the sort of discussion he would not like to hear about his wife if he had one.

  When he went up to bed, he opened two of the letters from Lady Irene and found, as he had expected, that she was not only very insistent on seeing him but was also extremely possessive.

  He was forced to accept the awkward fact that she intended to marry him and their having been apart appeared to have made her more determined and certainly more ardent in her pursuit of him than she had been before.

  Her letters were passionate and flattering. At the same time Lord Heywood wondered how many times before she had used the same flowery phrases and the same inciting words to a man she thought herself to be in love with.

  ‘I am only one of many men she has tried to tie to herself,’ he reflected.

  Equally he was not so foolish as not to be aware that what should have been a light and enjoyable affaire de coeur was now of hand.

  Most of the women he had made love to had remained friends with him when theirs affair were over.

  But their feelings were inevitably more deeply involved than his and, although he was uncomfortably aware that one or two of them had believed their hearts to be broken, he had not tried to avoid them or forget the happiness that they had found together.

  With Lady Irene it was different.

  He was sure that she was aware that as far as he was concerned their liaison, for that was what it had been, had come to an end, but she was determined not to let him go.

  He thought, as he had before, that never in his wildest dreams had he imagined that she would wish to marry him.

  She had made no secret of the fact that she had had a large number of lovers in her life and if he considered it at all, which he had not, he would have thought that if she remarried it would have been to somebody of higher social standing than himself.

  That she had appreciated him as a lover was not unusual. But
that she should be satisfied with marrying a mere Baron, even though he had a magnificent house, was somehow out of character.

  It was then, as he thought about it, that Lord Heywood had the uncomfortable thought that perhaps for the first time in her life Lady Irene was really in love.

  Not love as he thought of it and which he never expected to find, but a love that was almost entirely physical and as such violent with something primitive and animal about it.

  All of a sudden he was aware that Lady Irene would fight like a tiger to capture and hold her prey, which was himself.

  He hoped that he was exaggerating the whole situation and being absurdly imaginative.

  Then, as he undressed, he saw that the note lying on the top of the chest of drawers was open and words and phrases seemed to leap out at him as if they were written in letters of fire.

  After such a long day he had expected that he would fall asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow, but he found himself instead lying awake, thinking of Irene and wondering how he could escape from her.

  He had hoped when he left Paris that she would forget about him.

  At the balls that were given every night she had undoubtedly shone like a star and easily eclipsed the other beauties whether they were French or English.

  There were numbers of men ready to squire her and several who, to Lord Heywood’s knowledge, had fancied themselves in love with her.

  Yet when she clung to him the night before he left she had said,

  “We belong to each other, Romney, and this is true. I want you and I know that I cannot live without you.”

  “You certainly cannot live with me,” Lord Heywood had replied lightly, “I am going back to a house without servants, an estate that is heavily in debt and a future that is so problematical that I am scared of it myself!”

  “What does any of that matter except that I love you?” Lady Irene asked. “I have enough money for us both at the moment and because Richard is dead Papa will leave everything to me.”

  The way she had spoken about her brother, who had been killed in action two years earlier, shocked Lord Heywood.

  He remembered that the Marquess of Mortlake had been broken-hearted at losing his only son.