107. Soft, Sweet & Gentle Read online

  Unexpectedly Alister smiled.

  “Now I think you are being reasonable so as to make me see that I really have no chance of escaping from this unwelcome and quite horrifying burden.”

  “If you feel like that, I am quite sure you will find some way of preventing yourself from being involved,” Georgina told him.

  “How can I do that?” Alister enquired.

  “For the moment I don’t know the answer, but I imagine that there is one. Perhaps you could give your responsibilities to a man who is trained for such a position. Then you could go back to the other side of the world where you have just come from.”

  “Are you telling me if I did so that I could forget you all?” Alister enquired.

  “You could try to do so, but, if you ask me to tell you the truth, I don’t think you would succeed.”

  She felt as if the words were put into her mouth.

  Once again Alister walked to the open window and he stood there without moving.

  But she had an idea that the moon was talking to him.

  He was also moved, although he did not wish to be, with the beauty of the gardens and the stars coming out over the tops of the trees.

  It was a vista that had always appealed to her until she felt that the moonlight and the stars were moving from the Heavens into herself – or perhaps she was even moving towards them.

  Yet always the beauty of it swept away anything that was trivial and unimportant.

  Georgina had always gone to her bed thinking only how happy she was and how much she loved her home and her father.

  Alister stood at the window without moving.

  Then again, as if she was being told exactly what to do, Georgina rose very quietly from the sofa where she had been sitting and slipped out of the room.

  She did not speak and was quite certain that Alister did not hear her go.

  As she ran up the stairs to her room, she thought that the moonlight and the stars would tell him better than she had done where his duty lay.

  What was more, he would find it difficult to forget not only the beauty that lay in front of him but The Castle he was seeing it from.

  All the Langfields who had lived there had left an impression in The Castle that was impossible to ignore and Georgina had been aware of ever since she had been born.

  She knew now that if she did have to leave The Castle she would leave something of herself behind, just as those who had lived there for centuries had, each of them, left something when they passed on to another world.

  ‘It is The Castle who will tell him what he must do,’ she reflected. ‘He will know if he stays here for long enough that it is impossible not to listen to what it says.’

  When she finally climbed into bed and blew out the candles, she was desperately afraid in case she had failed to convince Alister that he had a very vital part to play in the future and however much he tried he could not slip away from it.

  *

  It was early in the morning when Georgina awoke and she found that, despite going to bed feeling worried and anxious, she had slept dreamlessly.

  The sun was shining although it was not yet high in the Heavens and she could hear the birds singing in the garden.

  She jumped out of bed and, because she was in a hurry, she found it difficult to remember that she must put on her female riding dress rather than her breeches and she must wear a soft cotton blouse instead of a shirt.

  There was no need for her to wear anything round her neck and a hat was really unnecessary.

  Then she remembered that last night she had been wearing her wig and without it she would certainly look strange.

  So she put on a cap that she had sometimes worn when she was racing or steeplechasing. At least it hid the majority of her curls and the fact that there were practically none at the back of her head.

  Then she ran down the stairs and, going out of The Castle, she reached the stables without seeing anyone.

  A sleepy young groom who was in charge touched his forelock when she appeared and, without being told, he hurried to put a bridle on one of the horses she loved better than all the rest.

  It was one her father had given her two years ago for her birthday and she found that Sunlight was one of the finest and fastest horses she had ever ridden.

  Thanking the young groom for his help, she rode out of the back of the stables onto the flat land that led to her father’s Racecourse.

  He had erected it originally as an amusement for himself and his daughter and what had been a small race meeting to entertain themselves and those who worked on the estate had grown into a very much larger one.

  Because he had such excellent horses and they were well known for their brilliance on other Racecourses, it had soon become a yearly event.

  For one day of the year at least The Castle was full with the owners of racehorses and their wives who came to see them win, also a number of the family who felt it polite if nothing else to appear at Langfield Castle on the day when it was at its most popular.

  At first her father had not allowed Georgina to take part in the races because she had been too young and later it was because professional jockeys rode and he thought that she should not become associated with them.

  Then, as she had pleaded with him, she had finally been allowed to ride his horses and then, because she was dressed as a boy, few onlookers, unless they were members of the family, had the slightest idea that she was a girl.

  Now, as she took her horse round the Racecourse, she was thinking what excitement there had been the first time she had won a race.

  After that her father was quite upset if she was not the winner of at least two or three races at each meeting.

  She was just taking one of the most difficult jumps in style when she realised that she was not alone on the Racecourse.

  She had for the moment forgotten about Alister and all the difficulties he was causing. She was thinking only of how well her horse jumped and how pleased her father would have been with her.

  As Alister came to join her, he began,

  “I remember hearing about this Racecourse before I left England. I did not think then I would have a chance of riding on it.”

  Georgina smiled at him.

  “As you are doing so now, I will race you round it and I can assure you that you will have every chance of winning on that particular mount.”

  “I was told his name is Firefly,” Alister said, “and I think it’s an appropriate name for him.”

  “I am certain that if you speak to him positively,” Georgina replied, “he will realise that you are a guest at the moment. Therefore he will not be so afraid as he might be if he learnt that you are his owner!”

  Alister’s eyes twinkled.

  “Now I know that you are using another handcuff on me very discreetly so that I cannot escape.”

  “When you have ridden Firefly, I don’t think you will want to escape,” Georgina assured him. “Shall we start from here?”

  Alister pulled Firefly into place alongside her and, as she obviously expected him to start the race, he called out,

  “One, two three, go!”

  They both started off at the same moment and both horses took the first and second jumps in style and Alister realised that his mount was outstanding.

  It was a delight he had not experienced while he had been abroad.

  When they came to the finishing post, Georgina, although she had never done it before, deliberately pulled in Sunlight so that Alister won the race by a length.

  “You have won and I salute you,” she laughed as she trotted up to him.

  “I am very pleased with myself,” Alister responded. “Equally I have a suspicion, although I am reticent to put it into words, that Sunlight could have overtaken me.”

  “You must never argue when the credit is yours,” Georgina answered coyly.

  “Then I merely thank you for a delightful race. I must ask you to tell me how often the races which your father initiat
ed take place here and when is the next one to be expected?”

  “In two months’ time,” Georgina informed him. “If you don’t win every race as Papa was capable of doing, everyone in the stables will be disappointed.”

  Alister chuckled.

  “What about the other contenders?”

  “To excuse themselves they say that they would not like to upset his Lordship by preventing him from winning so many races.”

  Alister chuckled again.

  “Are you expecting to say the same of me?”

  “But of course. When I saw you riding just now for the first time, I should have known that you were one of the family even if we had not been introduced!”

  Alister thought this amusing.

  “Now that is a real compliment,” he said. “I am sure that it is something I must always cherish.”

  They rode on and Georgina showed him the wood nearest the house, which she had loved ever since she had been a child.

  Without thinking about it, she told him how she had always believed that there were goblins under the trees and that fairies lived along the edge of the stream which ran through that part of the wood.

  Then to her surprise Alister remarked,

  “Just as you believe there are fairies in the garden.”

  “How did you know that?” Georgina asked him.

  “I am sure, as you live here, that is what you were bound to feel,” he answered. “I suppose many years ago when I was a little boy I too believed in fairies.”

  “Whether you believe in them or not, you will find them here and I have always thought, although I may be wrong, that they have also invaded The Castle itself!”

  She spoke seriously as she would have done to her father and she was suddenly aware that she was talking to Alister, who had been very different last night.

  She had almost hated him because she thought that he was going to upset everything that was important to the family and that he would not care for The Castle and the estate as she did.

  But now, seeing him riding on a horse, she was impressed even though she had not intended to be.

  He was indeed an excellent rider and again, as if he realised what she was thinking, he said,

  “I have ridden a great deal while I have been away exploring. Not, of course, horses like this, but very strange ones. Some of them were very weird and had odd ways of ridding themselves of a rider that could be very painful!”

  Georgina giggled.

  “I thought you were going to tell me that you had ridden nearly every sort of animal besides a horse!”

  “It’s true,” Alister replied. “I did have a favourite elephant and a very un-favourite mule!”

  “Did it unseat you?”

  “It had a terrible habit of turning round and biting my legs, while my elephant was slow but trustworthy.”

  “You know I am longing to hear all about your travels,” Georgina remarked. “But I have been too polite to press you into talking about them until you wished to.”

  “I don’t think you would be particularly interested,” Alister told her, “as they were sometimes long distances and a great amount of discomfort, which all women would find distasteful.”

  “Except me,” she said. “I think, when everything goes too smoothly, it’s boring. It is always the unexpected and perhaps the most uncomfortable moments of a journey or a ride that one remembers afterwards and laughs about.”

  Alister turned to look at her before he asked,

  “Is that the truth? I have never met a woman yet who did not make a fuss over everything that went wrong on a journey and complained forcibly if not tearfully at being uncomfortable.”

  “Perhaps you have been unlucky. You know as well as I do that if everything in our lives moved smoothly and without any ups and downs, we would soon be bored. It is the downs that bring out the best in us.”

  “In men but not women,” Alister parried.

  “Then you must have been unlucky,” Georgina said again.

  She did not say any more and, as they trotted out of the wood, she allowed Sunlight to gallop ahead and for the moment any further conversation was impossible.

  As she turned towards The Castle, as it was almost time for breakfast, she thought however much he might fight against it, undoubtedly Alister’s blood was pulsating in the right places.

  Sooner or later it would guide him into the right way for a Langfield to behave.

  Breakfast was waiting for them, as Georgina had expected, when they reached The Castle.

  Dawson told the new Earl that there was a manager and a number of other men who ran the estate waiting to see him.

  When they then went into the dining room and the servants had withdrawn, Alister enquired,

  “What is all this about? Why are there a number of men waiting to talk to me?”

  “They want to meet you and they want to show you how brilliantly they have worked to make the estate known and admired all over this part of England.”

  “Is that true?” Alister asked her. “Or are you just saying it for effect.”

  “I never tell a lie if I can help it. Papa always inferred that lies are only spoken by thieves and cowards.”

  Alister laughed.

  “I am sure your father was right. At the same time people boast because they want to seem important. I want to learn the truth about the estate now that it is mine.”

  “You don’t have to be told that the Racecourse is a good one,” Georgina smiled.

  “No, that’s true!” Alister replied. “I realised, just as soon as I saw it, that it is well laid out and the jumps are fantastic.”

  “Papa expected perfection in everything,” Georgina told him, “not just for his own satisfaction but because The Castle and the estate represented the family to the world. He wanted the Langs to be better than anyone else.”

  “Of course you are pointing out to me in a very clever way that I am a Lang,” Alister declared.

  “But of course you are! Even if you had been in parts of the world where the people have never heard of us, you must have known at the back of your mind that you were successful in everything you did because you were one of the family.”

  “How did you know that I have been successful?” he asked sharply.

  “I think if you had not been or if you had been unhappy, you would have come home,” Georgina replied. “It is what everyone does when things go wrong. As you stayed away, everything must have been right for you.”

  Almost despite himself Alister laughed.

  “You really do have an amusing way of expressing yourself,” he told her. “Of course you are right although I hate to admit it.”

  “When you are out today and can see what you now own, remember that the men showing it all to you will be waiting anxiously for your praise.”

  She smiled at him before continuing,

  “If you congratulate them on what they have done, they will work for you even harder in the future than they have worked in the past for my father.”

  “How can you be sure of that?” Alister enquired.

  “I am sure because it is human nature and because I know the people here. Whether they admit it or not, they are intensely proud of being employed on this estate.”

  Alister was listening intently, so she went on,

  “They will each be worrying quietly to themselves whether you will be satisfied with them and expect them to carry on, as they have done in the past or make frightening changes that they will not understand.”

  Then in a very small voice Georgina added,

  “What is more frightening still is if you don’t need them. Then they will have nowhere to go and nothing to look forward to.”

  As she finished speaking, there was a silence and then Alister asked,

  “Are you thinking at the back of your mind that I might shut up The Castle and go abroad?”

  “I had occurred to me,” Georgina replied honestly. “Equally I think it very unlikely.”
r />   “Why?” he asked abruptly.

  “Because overnight you have become the Monarch of all you survey. You are important, in fact as important as a King, because this Kingdom is yours. Every man and woman in it admires and serves you not only because of the money you give to them but because their home, their family and their energy is all yours.”

  Alister did not speak and, finishing his breakfast, he pushed his chair back from the table and walked, as he had done the night before, to the window.

  Now he was looking out at the garden, which was a mass of flowers and the sunshine that was making his new world very beautiful was shining in on him.

  On his way home when he knew the tenth Earl was dead, he had disliked the idea of coming back to England, of meeting the relatives he remembered and being bored at the thought of those he had not yet met.

  When he had left England, he had hated not only his wife but his father and everyone who had forced him into marrying a woman who had made his life a hell.

  She had fought against him with every breath that she drew and every word she spoke. She wanted to be top dog and she wanted to beat him at everything he did.

  He found himself not only loathing her but feeling that every English woman was like her in that they wanted to win because they were women.

  They wanted to take away from men the strength and authority they had had ever since the world began.

  He had found that women were so very different in other countries, especially in the East and he had enjoyed being in Japan more than anywhere else.

  Japanese women had pandered to him and flattered him. They had made him feel, as the Englishwomen had failed to do, that he was not only a man but in every way their superior.

  Yet now, even though he was fighting against it, for some reason he could not understand he was beginning to feel that this was his world.

  Although he still had no wish to admit it, he was King of The Castle.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  After breakfast they went to the stables and once again Georgina found herself riding Sunlight.