The Lioness and the Lily Page 8

  “There are a lot of things I want to teach you. But first, as you must realise, I must get well.”

  “Of course,” Purilla agreed. “Dr. Jenkins gave both Nanny and me a long lecture this morning, saying that you were not to do too much or you might have a relapse.”

  “That is something I have no intention of having,” the Earl said, “and it is common sense not to run before you can walk.”

  It all sounded very reasonable, but as they drove from the Church the five miles to Rock Castle, the Earl was aware as they drew near the great house that he was feeling very tired.

  He told himself it was because he was weak and he knew too that apart from his accident the anxiety he had felt about Louise and the fact that he had not been able to sleep the night before for worrying about his Wedding had all taken their toll.

  He must have looked pale because Purilla suddenly asked anxiously,

  “Are you all right?”

  The Earl found it difficult to answer.

  She put her hand in his and said to reassure him,

  “The journey will not take long.”

  His fingers closed over hers and he felt himself clinging on to her as if she was a lifeline that he needed at this particular moment.

  Then the carriage drew up in front of the steps, the red carpet was down and the servants in their Livery and powdered wigs stood waiting.

  With an effort, almost as if he was going into battle, the Earl drew himself up and the carriage door opened.

  Then with Purilla at his side they were walking up the steps and into the hall where a long line of servants was waiting for them.

  The Earl and Purilla shook hands with everyone present before they moved across the hall and into the great salon with its silk brocade walls and painted ceiling.

  It was decorated with white flowers and Purilla gave a cry of delight at the beauty of it.

  Then she heard the Earl saying beside her,

  “For God’s sake get me a drink and make it a brandy!”

  She heard the urgency in his voice and looking at him she realised that his face was white and drawn.

  She looked around her wildly, but fortunately the butler who had been just behind them heard what the Earl had said.

  “The brandy’s here, my Lord,” he said. “Sit down, your Lordship’ll soon be all right.”

  Because he was too weak to do anything but obey, the Earl sank down in the nearest chair and, although it seemed to him a long time, it was in fact only a few seconds before a glass of brandy was put in his hand and he lifted it to his lips.

  He then felt the fiery liquid coursing down his throat to disperse the darkness that had swept over him and for a moment it was almost a joy because he had been afraid of falling down and not being able to move any further.

  He drank a little more and then he saw that Purilla was kneeling beside him, her eyes wide and frightened as she looked up at him.

  He told himself that he must reassure her.

  Then, as he prepared to do so, he realised that not only was she looking at him with anxiety but that her blue eyes held an unmistakable look of love.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Earl was sitting in the Orangery with a number of papers in front of him when Purilla joined him.

  She hesitated before speaking and he looked up and realised that she was a little shy because she was wearing one of the new gowns that he had ordered for her from London.

  It was exceedingly becoming and looked what it was extremely expensive.

  He knew by the expression in her eyes that she very much wanted his approval and he said as was expected of him,

  “You look charming. Bates told me that a carriage-load of gowns had arrived this morning and I do hope that they please you.”

  “They are wonderful, more wonderful than anything I have ever had before, but I feel a little strange – ”

  She paused before she added,

  “You do really – like me in this – gown?”

  “You look very lovely,” the Earl said. “Is that what you want me to say?”

  He saw by the way her face lit up that she had been anxious in case she did not please him and he thought how vulnerable she was and how much more difficult than he had expected his marriage was likely to be.

  For the last two days he had felt too tired and weak to worry about anything except regaining his strength after he had almost collapsed on his arrival at Rock Castle.

  Bates had sent a groom post haste for Dr. Jenkins who scolded the Earl more or less in the same way that Nanny had.

  “I warned you, my Lord, against overdoin’ it too quickly,” he said. “Concussion is somethin’ we know little about, except that the patient should rest and not do too much. You disobeyed the rules and now you ’ave to pay for it.”

  “All right, all right,” the Earl said irritably. “You have made your point. I will take things easy, but nothing infuriates me more than to feel as I do now.”

  “Physical injuries are one thing, mental ones another,” Dr. Jenkins said, “and I have the feeling that you have not only to cure your body, my Lord, but also your mind.”

  The Earl did not acknowledge that he was right, but he knew that in fact for a local doctor, Dr .Jenkins was unusually perceptive.

  He had been very worried – worried about Louise, worried about his marriage to Purilla, even though it seemed such plain-sailing, and worried too about the future with a young girl who did not now seem to him as simple and amenable as he had expected her to be.

  The Earl was not at all conceited, but he was well aware that women found him exceedingly attractive and he had expected any woman he married would, of course, love him and be content with the affection that he would give her as a husband.

  What he had not anticipated was that Purilla would, although she had not said so, demand not affection but love.

  He could see by the expression in her eyes when she had knelt at his feet that she had fallen overwhelmingly in love with him and that what she was giving him was not only her heart but her soul.

  How he knew this he was not certain and he told himself he was not an imaginative person. But he was well aware that he was now part of Purilla’s dreams and that the material advantages in their marriage were of very little importance beside the fact that she loved him as a man.

  ‘Perhaps I am exaggerating what she is feeling,’ he tried to tell himself when he thought about it at night.

  But he knew with an instinct he had seldom used before, where women were concerned, that her love was an idealised emotion for which she sought, as Jason had sought for the Golden Fleece.

  For the first time in his life the Earl found himself thinking of a woman’s reactions to him rather than his to her.

  Always before when he desired a woman he had made love to her and knew as he satisfied her passion that little else was of any consequence.

  But with Purilla it was different and he had the uncomfortable feeling that if he attempted to make her his wife without the love she demanded of him, she would be both shocked and frightened.

  ‘I am imagining things,’ he said to himself over and over again.

  And yet the idea still persisted and everything that she said and did seemed to strengthen his conviction that what he had to offer would not satisfy her.

  Now with her eyes shining she came closer to him to say,

  “How can I thank you? How can I begin to tell you what it means to have such beautiful clothes and to feel that after all I am not a – beggar maid in the Palace of Prince – Charming.”

  “Is that how you have been feeling?” he enquired.

  “Of course,” she answered, “even though I have walked about with my eyes shut.”

  He looked at her not understanding and she explained,

  “I thought that you would want to show me your treasures yourself. So I have deliberately not looked at the pictures or anything else until you are well enough to tell me about them.”

&n
bsp; It was the sort of sensitivity he might have expected of Purilla, the Earl thought, but aloud he said,

  “But, of course, I want to be your guide the first time you inspect Rock Castle and see if it is really the Palace of your dreams.”

  “It is – I am sure it is!”

  Her eyes met his as she spoke and he knew that what she was really saying was that it was he who made the Fairy story real and the place in which he lived was unimportant except that it was a background for himself.

  “Come and sit down,” the Earl suggested. “I feel I should apologise for being so tiresomely indisposed immediately after our marriage.”

  “It is understandable,” Purilla said, “and Dr. Jenkins has been angry with me for letting you do too much too quickly.”

  “It was what I wished to do,” the Earl said, “and therefore I cannot complain or put the blame on anyone except myself.”

  “But you must be very careful,” she replied in an earnest little voice. “Dr. Jenkins told me how dangerous it can be for people who fall on their heads and even the smallest amount of brain damage may affect one for years.”

  “I assure you there is nothing wrong with my brain,” the Earl said sharply. “In fact I am busy at the moment making plans to improve the estate so perhaps you would like to hear about them.”

  He told himself that it might be a mistake to dwell for too long on the subject of their personal relationship.

  He therefore picked up the papers he had been reading when she joined him and she saw that one of them was an advertisement for a threshing machine.

  “Are you really thinking of buying that?” she asked.

  “Do you know what it is?” the Earl enquired.

  “Yes, of course I do,” she replied. “It is a threshing machine.”

  “I believe that every up to date estate has one.”

  “I suppose so, but at the same time you must be very careful how you install it.”

  The Earl looked at her in surprise.

  “Perhaps you were abroad,” she said, “when ten years ago there was so much trouble over the installation of threshing machines that there was a rebellion amongst the farm labourers.”

  “I have heard about it, of course,” the Earl replied. “But now the labourers have accepted them.”

  “There are none in this part of the world,” Purilla stated, “and so they will be very frightened if you introduce one unless you make it very clear that it will not affect their wages.”

  The Earl looked at her in astonishment.

  “How do you know all this?”

  “There are farms all round Little Stanton and wherever I walk I am always welcome.”

  “It surprises me, Purilla,” he said, “that you should be interested in threshing machines and the labourers’ reaction to them.”

  “But, of course, I am interested,” Purilla replied. “I have been told so often of how the labourers fired the stacks and broke up the machines and how many of them were transported or – hanged.”

  There was a little sob in her voice as she said,

  “It was a losing battle, but most employers compensated their workmen for the wages they lost when the threshing was taken away from them and I think now in many parts of England there is not so much suffering or starvation as there was.”

  The Earl put down his papers.

  “I see from what you are saying that I shall have to study the improvements I wish to make from a different point of view. I suppose I was just thinking that machines would be more efficient.”

  “I am sure they are.” Purilla said. “At the same time the farm labourers rely on the money they earn during the harvest to keep them through the lean months of the year – and on many farms they are very very poorly paid.”

  The Earl looked at her sitting in the chair beside him and thought that this was certainly not the sort of conversation that he had expected to have with anyone who looked so young and who he had suspected until now had a head filled only with Fairy stories.

  He was- quick enough to follow exactly what Purilla was saying and he remembered reading of the labourers’ rebellion in Kent and Sussex and the other Southern Counties and how the Government had sent troops in to confront the rioters who were fighting to save themselves and their families from starvation.

  He realised that Purilla was looking at him with a pleading expression in her eyes and after a moment he said,

  “I promise you that any machinery that I introduce on my estate will not bring any harm to my employees financially.”

  She gave a sigh of relief as if it meant a great deal to her.

  Then she said,

  “When you have time I think you should – visit some of your – cottages, especially those on the North side.”

  The Earl knew that these were the nearest to Little Stanton and, knowing the answer, he asked,

  “Why?”

  “Because they need a lot of repairs done to them and also if there are to be innovations surely you could spare a little money to improve and modernise the homes of those who work for you?”

  The Earl gave a laugh.

  Then, as he saw the question in Purilla’s eyes, he explained,

  “I am laughing because I never expected for even one moment I should find that I had married a Reformer!”

  As the colour came into Purilla’s cheeks, she said,

  “You told me that we should speak frankly with each other – and I have wanted to tell you this for some time – but I waited until I thought that you were well enough.”

  “1 am surely well enough now,” the Earl said firmly, “so tell me everything you know about my estate.”

  Purilla took him at his word and she told him of the families she had visited and how some of them were forced to have boys and girls of all ages sleeping in one room while in others young children had to sleep with their grandparents.

  She told him too of the cesspools that were broken down, roofs that needed mending and wells that the doctor felt were contaminated but nothing was done to cleanse them.

  She spoke quickly and a little breathlessly as if she was afraid that the Earl would be bored before she could finish all that she had to say.

  Only when she paused did he reply,

  “I am glad you have told me this, Purilla. At the same time I am wondering why I have to learn the truth from a stranger rather than from my Estate Manager.”

  “I don’t think it is actually Mr. Anstruther’s fault.”

  “Why should you say that?”

  “Because I understand from all I have heard that your uncle, the late Earl, was not interested and neither was his son in the people on the estate. Actually they did not think of them as individuals but only as a means of providing what they required.”

  The Earl thought that this was very likely true.

  He had known that his uncle spent most of his time in London, performing his duties either in the Royal Household or in the House of Lords.

  His cousin, the Viscount, for whom he had never had any great liking, had always been intent on enjoying himself either on a Racecourse or else in the company of lovely women.

  It was his love affairs, and there had been a great number of them, that had prevented him from marrying as he should have done and providing an heir to the title.

  It had, of course, been to the present Earl’s advantage that this neglect of duty had resulted in his inheriting.

  But he saw now that the task ahead of him was not to be as easy as he might have anticipated.

  As if she sensed what he was thinking, Purilla said,

  “Only you can change everything. Only you can put right what has been wrong for a very long time.”

  The Earl rose to his feet and walked across the flagged floor of the Orangery to stand at the open door looking out onto the garden.

  The sunshine was warm and the air mellow and the last few days had brought all the flowers into bloom.

  Already there was a glorious profusio
n of lilac and syringa, of daffodils and narcissi and the trees covered in pink and white blossom gave the garden a young, Fairytale-like quality that made him think it was a perfect background for Purilla.

  And yet instead of the beauty that he had always associated with Rock Castle and which he had carried with him wherever he went in the world, he thought now it was like a drop curtain at a theatre, hiding a lot of ugliness behind it.

  For the first time since he had inherited he saw it not as a magnificent enviable possession but as an obligation to which he must dedicate himself both mentally and physically to achieve the perfection it deserved.

  He felt as he had in the past on being handed a company of raw recruits and knowing it was entirely up to him to make them into an efficient fighting force that would be worthy of the Regiment that they belonged to.

  When this happened, he had always looked on it not only as a challenge that was part of his duty but as something that brought out his fighting spirit. And that was what now was unexpectedly required of him at Rock Castle.

  Purilla had not moved and, although he did not turn round he had a feeling that she was waiting apprehensively to know what his intentions were for the future.

  It struck him as odd that this girl should have showed him where his duty lay and who, although younger than any woman he had ever shown any interest in, should have sympathy for the underdog and not be concerned only with herself.

  He turned round again.

  “Why does it matter to you if these people are not as well looked after as they should have been?”

  Purilla smiled.

  “Of course I had no idea that I should ever have a personal relationship with them, but they are people, just like you and me and it – hurts me that they should not be happy.”

  “I can see, Purilla,” he said, “that you must help me to cope with my obligations and, as you know so much more about the countryside than I do, you must work with me to change things for the better.”

  He saw the delight in her face and thought that it might have been aroused by the gift of a diamond bracelet rather than a promise of what would undoubtedly be quite hard work.

  “What else have you to tell me?” he enquired.

  Purilla was about to tell him about some other matters that required his attention and then she stopped.