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  “You allow people in to see it?” Melita asked.

  “Only on special occasions, but of course they long to see the pictures and all the other historical emblems of which the house abounds.”

  “I think you are very lucky,” Melita smiled.

  “We were very lucky when we met your father. He transformed what was almost an ancient relic into one of the great sights of England, but only a comparatively few people have seen it.”

  “I am longing to see it,” Melita enthused. “I would much rather go now to the country than stay in London, even though I am sure that I will find London fascinating when I have the time to explore it.”

  Sir John did not answer and after a moment she added,

  “You do realise that coming from a Convent where I have lived all my life, it is almost like stepping into a dream to feel free in a great City like London and to go with you to the country, which again I have never seen but heard so much about.”

  “I suppose in a way I keep forgetting that,” Sir John replied, “simply because you are so intelligent and so well read.”

  “If it had not been for books and, of course, my father’s frequent visits,” Melita explained, “I would not have known what I was missing.”

  She laughed as she said,

  “But now the doors are open and I am no longer confined. I promise you it is the most thrilling thing I have ever thought of or dreamt about to be in England and know I am free, free, free!”

  As she spoke, she threw out her hands and gazed up at the sky.

  ‘She is certainly entrancing,’ Sir John thought. ‘At the same time I must be careful that she is not disillusioned and that everything that seems so wonderful at the moment can be lost as well as found.’

  As they reached his house, the servants were told that they were leaving as soon as possible for the country.

  “The best thing you can do,” Sir John said quickly, “is to tell the servants what you want to take with you and they will follow in a carriage while we go ahead.”

  “That seems a very good idea,” she replied. “Are your servants in the country expecting us?”

  Sir John smiled.

  “I have thought of that and I have told them that we will be there for dinner and it must be a very special meal.”

  He paused before he went on,

  “I think we must both be grateful that there will not be a grand Wedding Reception with a hundred people who wish to shake us by the hand. Mostly, of course, because they can say that they have met you, but at the same time calculating how many millions of pounds you are actually worth.”

  To his surprise Melita did not laugh.

  Instead she turned her head to gaze at him and said very quietly,

  “I think it would be a mistake for us both to keep remembering how much money we have. Many people will remember it for us and I think that the best thing we can do is to try and forget it, except that we both know we can, as my father did, help others in desperate need.”

  Sir John realised that she was speaking good sense and he had been unnecessarily obtuse.

  He put his hand over hers.

  “You are quite right,” he said. “Forgive me. You must prevent me from making stupid mistakes which might spoil our very exciting adventure together.”

  “That is what it really is,” she said, “an exciting adventure which we must try to enjoy even though at times the going will be rocky to say the least of it.”

  “That makes me remember that I want to show you my horses,” Sir John remarked. “I cannot believe, because you have lived in a Convent, that you can ride.”

  “How else do you think we managed to take any exercise or to visit other parts of the country around us?” Melita questioned.

  She laughed as she went on,

  “We rode, although the horses were not very fine ones. But occasionally someone was kind enough to leave us in his will some favourite horse simply because he knew that girls like myself would make a great fuss of it.”

  She paused before she went on,

  “In fact we were known as being kind to animals as the people near the Convent invariably sent their dogs, cats and horses to the nuns whenever the animal was ill and there was no one else to treat it.”

  “Then, if you do want to ride my horses which are particularly fine ones,” Sir John said, “I know that you will enjoy every moment in what I must now call ‘our home’.”

  He was thinking as he spoke that it was only right that Melita should enjoy the house which had been made perfect by her father.

  He was quite sure from what he had found out since they had been travelling that she had a great knowledge of pictures and furniture and she would therefore be proud of the treasures she would find at Gilmour Hall.

  *

  They ate their luncheon as quickly as possible as it was already getting late.

  And then they set off for the country.

  Owing to Sir John’s skill and the excellence of the four horses pulling them, they were making good time.

  Then Melita said that she was thirsty because it was so hot.

  “Only another half-an-hour,” Sir John told her.

  Because he spoke in such an enthusiastic way, she said,

  “I believe you are thrilled at coming home and, as I have heard you talk so much about it and also Papa gave me a vivid description of how much it had been altered, it will be very sad if I find it disappointing.”

  “I am quite sure you will not feel disappointed,” he replied. “And, if you had seen the house before your father waved his magic wand, you would be excused for thinking it dark, dismal and greatly in need of repair.”

  He smiled before he added,

  “But now it is perfection itself and I defy any house in England to better it or for that matter to have an owner as beautiful as you.”

  “Do you really mean that?” Melita asked him. “Or are you just cheering me up? I should feel miserable if I let you down and looked out of place.”

  “I promise you, you will fit in perfectly,” Sir John said reassuringly. “It is actually what the house has needed for a long time. It is always a woman who makes the best finishing touches to a house, which, however magnificent, must still be a home for people to live in and that is your business entirely.”

  Melita laughed.

  “I do find things very strange, at the same time very exciting,” she admitted. “I often pinch myself and feel that I am dreaming and that this cannot be happening to me.”

  “But it is,” he replied, “and so far we have been brilliant in making things work exactly as we want them to and no one has the least idea we are not a properly married couple.”

  As he finished speaking, he realised that Melita’s eyes were twinkling.

  Then she said,

  “I suppose you realise that you are an irresistible romantic. It is what men always think they are, but you are definitely out of a Fairytale and it is impossible for you to be real.”

  “I wish that was true and I hope it is something you will go on thinking. I can only say one more thing. My house, for which I remain eternally grateful to your father, needs you more than it needs anything else.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Melita asked.

  “It is a woman who makes things perfect. At the same time she creates the atmosphere of a house in which she lives. My house was a dying block of stone until your father brought it to life. Now you have been sent to add the ultimate finishing touch to what is already magnificent in its own way.”

  He paused before he added,

  “I cannot help thinking that you will be even more of a success than I am expecting you to be.”

  “Now you are really frightening me,” Melita said. “Suppose I fail you.”

  Sir John shook his head.

  “Neither of us must fail in this exciting adventure,” he replied. “We have already covered the first mile, now, as we go on deeper into the involvement of it all, we will succee
d, I am certain of that.”

  He smiled.

  “The one person who has sent us into this amazing adventure would, I am sure, be quite certain that we would not fail him or ourselves.”

  There was silence before Melita said,

  “I love it when you talk to me like that. You make me believe in all the things I want to believe, but which, of course, I could not find in the Convent.”

  She clapped her hands as she went on,

  “This is all so exciting. So different from anything I have ever known and I am only afraid of one thing and that is I might fail you.”

  “I am quite certain you will never do so, but now you are entering my land, or should I say ‘our land’. In about half-a-mile there is the village and I am certain that there will be the greatest excitement amongst the villagers there has ever been when they see you.”

  “Now you scare me again,” Melita said. “They will be so upset if they are disappointed.”

  “They will not be,” John assured her, “of that I am really sure.”

  As he was speaking, the horses took them past the first cottages of the village where his home had been built many centuries previously.

  He was well aware that, since Gavron Murillo had given his father such a large amount of money, the cottages that had once looked dilapidated were now painted in blue and white.

  The thatch on the roofs was new and the gardens in front of the door were massed with flowers. There was no doubt that the village looked prosperous and extremely attractive.

  John gazed at it proudly as they drove past.

  Then there were shops with brightly coloured tiled roofs and a Church which was very old and it had been repaired until it was as strong and as well-built as it had been four hundred years ago.

  Just to the side of them were two attractive lodges for the gate-keepers and the gates were open.

  As they drove through them, Melita saw that there was a long drive ahead with huge oak trees on either side of it.

  It was exactly as she had expected a stately home in England to look.

  As they drove on, she could see ahead the sunlight on the windows of a great house and a flag fluttering on the chimney tops.

  When they drew nearer she could see that the house seemed to be standing in a bed of flowers and to reach it they passed over a narrow bridge, beneath which there was a silver stream glittering in the sunlight.

  The house itself was magnificent.

  When Sir John drew up his horses outside the main door, Melita saw that on the side of the steps there were two large stone lions.

  As the horses stopped, she said excitedly.

  “It’s so lovely! It’s just what I expected it to be and a perfect background for you, John.”

  He gazed at her questioningly, but she was looking up at the windows and the Gilmour flag waving proudly in the breeze.

  “If it is a Fairy Castle,” he replied, “then you are the Fairy Queen. Come with me and explore what is now your home and what you have to make as delightful as you want it to be.”

  “I will! I will!” Melita cried out excitedly as she stepped out of the carriage.

  Then as she ran to the steps to touch the stone lions on either side of them, Sir John thought that, with the sun shining on her fair hair and her blue eyes, she looked just like the Fairy Queen herself.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Sir John came down to breakfast feeling that he had slept for at least a hundred years.

  He had been very tired when finally they had gone upstairs to bed.

  They had sat up late because there was so much to talk about and so much to explain to Melita of what she had inherited by coming to this magnificent house.

  Sir John could not help feeling that he was glad that his father had done so much work on it already, due to the way Gavron Murillo had made him rich.

  He would have been ashamed for her to have seen it when it was literally falling down and every room was more unkempt than the last.

  He had shown her proudly the main sitting rooms after they had finished dinner.

  He was as thrilled as she was at the pictures, the statues, the armoury and the library full of the books that had been collected over the centuries.

  He was thankful that none of them had been sold when they were so poor and he pointed out antique books that any museum would have been delighted to acquire or borrow from him.

  “It’s wonderful! Wonderful!” Melita exclaimed not once but a dozen times, “and I had no idea that you lived in a Fairy Palace.”

  “There is one more thing which I know will thrill you,” Sir John said, “and that is the family jewels, which are all entailed and have been for centuries.”

  He took her into a small room where there was a safe and also a large cabinet with glass doors.

  Inside was all the jewellery and regalia worn by the Baronets down the centuries and a number of jewels also belonging to their wives.

  There were many necklaces, earrings and rings and to Melita’s delight a coronet which was made of diamonds, which Sir John explained had been worn at the Opening of Parliament by every Baronet’s wife up to the last century.

  “It was then that they decided,” Sir John told her, “that it was too heavy and had made a more delicate one which was kept in a very special safe. My mother said that those who wore it must have been in agony and personally she was quite happy to look at it rather than to have to wear it.”

  “It’s lovely! Lovely,” Melita said, “and when we have time I will ask you if I can borrow it when I attend Church or The House of Commons at the State Opening of Parliament. I suppose I am allowed to go to it?”

  “Of course you will be,” Sir John said, “when I am sure you will be more comfortable in the other one I will show you when you are presented to Queen Victoria.”

  Melita gasped and he knew it was a new excitement for her.

  He let her take some of the jewellery out of the locked cabinet and she tried the rings on her fingers and made him wear one of the men’s decorations.

  “Perhaps they will give you one like this,” she said as she pinned it on his chest.

  “I am afraid that I do not do anything to deserve it,” Sir John said, “and then you will always look at them in here in the safe and sigh because your husband is not grand enough!”

  Melita laughed.

  “Jewels or not, I think that you are exactly the right person to be the owner of these treasures in this magical house.”

  “That is what we must make it. There is still a great deal to do especially outside. But tomorrow I will show you everything else I now own, which, of course, I share with you.”

  She then looked at him and he thought that she was really saying.

  ‘For as long as I stay.’

  Although the words may have trembled on her lips, she did not say them.

  Now, in the breakfast room, he was thinking that if she had been any other woman he would have rapped on her door and told her that he was going downstairs.

  But he did not want the servants to be aware of why they were sleeping in separate rooms.

  Melita had said to him just before they went to bed,

  “I have told the maids looking after me that I am not sleeping in your room for the simple reason that you snore and I am a very light sleeper.”

  “Did they believe you?” Sir John asked.

  “Of course they did,” she replied.

  “We must be affectionate in front of them so that they will think that the mere fact that we are sleeping in separate rooms is not of any particular relevance,” Sir John suggested.

  “Of course that is what we must do,” Melita agreed.

  They went up to bed and he showed her the room that his mother had always used as a dressing room, while she slept in the Master suite with her husband.

  That room was reached only by a boudoir between two bedrooms.

  Melita had been thrilled with the French writing table and the comfortable s
ofa. There were also pictures on the walls by a French artist she had always loved.

  “It is only right,” she then said, “that we should be united by France when France was where my father lived when he was not in the East.”

  “I think that he enjoyed France more than any of the other countries where he became famous,” Sir John replied. “He was so kind to everyone and there must be hundreds of men and women all over the world now he is dead praying for him and thanking him in their hearts for what he did for them.”

  “He was indeed a very wonderful person,” Melita agreed. “I feel guilty that we are not directly obeying his wishes and his instructions.”

  “I think above everything else that he wanted you to be happy. That is what I want too so that we must not keep looking back and regretting the step we have agreed to take.”

  He had said this to Melita last night when she had exclaimed over and over again how thrilled she was with the contents of his house.

  “Tomorrow I will show you my horses,” Sir John told her.

  “Horses!” Melita exclaimed. “How very exciting! I would love to ride with you in the morning which I know is the right way to start the day.”

  Sir John looked at her in surprise.

  “I told you that I can ride,” she said. “Papa gave me a pony at the Convent almost as soon as I had left the cradle. Every year he sent larger horses until I was riding the finest and the swiftest horses that he could import into Thailand.”

  Sir John was astonished.

  “At the Convent!” he exclaimed.

  “They were thrilled,” Melita explained, “because they all longed to ride, but, of course, could not afford to have horses until Papa sent them.”

  She smiled before she added,

  “Then they used them when they went to outlying places where people were ill or dying and had to be taken to the Convent for help. In the past they had had to walk and when they could ride it made all the difference. Papa gave them two carriages as well.”

  “He was such a generous man,” Sir John sighed. He was always thinking of other people.”

  “He was always thinking of me,” Melita said. “I cannot tell you what a difference it made to my life when I could ride with the nuns or the grooms. We were able to ride before breakfast or in the afternoon and I enjoyed it more than anything else I ever did.”