Lights, Laughter and a Lady. Barbara Cartland

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      Alice Heywood’s cough had become worse and worse until finally, unexpectedly and without warning, it turned to pneumonia and within two weeks she was dead.

      To Minella it was as if her whole world had crashed about her ears and she knew that her father felt just the same.

      When the funeral was over, he had said violently in a voice she had never heard from him before,

      “I cannot stand it, I cannot stay here thinking your mother will walk into the room at any moment.”

      He had left that same evening and Minella knew that he had gone to London to try to erase the memory of her mother and the happiness they had known in the past, which haunted her as well.

      From that moment on her father had changed.

      Not that he had become morose, gloomy and introspective, as another man might have done. Instead he had gone back to the raffish, devil-may-care self that he had been before he married.

      Because he did not want to think of the wife he had lost, there were now inevitably other women in his life.

      He did not talk about them, but perceptively Minella was aware of them and there were letters, some of them scented and some of them written in a flowery, extravagant uneducated hand.

      Some he tore up and threw away as if they were of no interest to him, but others he read carefully.

      Then a little later, as if he did not want Minella to find him out, he would say casually,

      “I have some business to see to in London. I think I will catch the morning train. I will not be away for long – ”

      “I shall miss you, Papa.”

      “I shall miss you too, my poppet, but I will be back by the end of the week.”

      But at the end of the week there would be no sign of him and when he did return Minella had the feeling that it was not because he wanted to see her but because he did not dare spend any more money.

      Even so she did not realise until he had died that he had spent so much or had so many unpaid debts.

      Roy Heywood, who, as many of his friends often said, was as strong as a horse, had died by a quirk of fate that seemed quite inexplicable.

      He came home late one night and, as soon as she saw him, Minella realised that he had not only had an amusing time in London but a somewhat debauched one.

      She had grown to know by the lines under her father’s eyes and also his general air of dissipation that he had been to too many parties and had had far too little sleep.

      Alcohol in excess had never agreed with him and he was, she was sure, compared to his friends quite abstemious.

      But then when he had told her in his more expansive moments about the parties he went to, she had learnt that champagne flowed like water and the claret he drank with his friends at the Club was exceptionally good.

      The combination invariably somewhat affected his health until the fresh air, the exercise he took and the plain food they had at The Manor restored him to his natural buoyancy.

      On this occasion, as soon as he had walked into The Manor, looking, Minella thought, dashingly raffish but at the same time not well, he held out his hand to her and she saw that it was wrapped in a bloodstained handkerchief.

      “What has ‒ happened, Papa?”

      “I caught my hand by mistake on a piece of loose wire, or it was something like that, on the door of the railway carriage. It is damned painful and you had better do something about it.”

      “Of course, Papa.”

      Minella bathed his hand gently and saw that there was a nasty jagged cut going deep into the flesh.

      She could not help wondering if he had been a little unsteady when he had caught the train. Perhaps he had staggered or fallen in a way that he would never have done at other times.

      Her father was always so agile on his feet and he was usually so healthy that, if he hurt himself out riding or in any other way, she always expected him to heal quicker than anybody else would have done.

      So she was very perturbed the next morning when she saw that, despite her ministrations of the night before, his hand was now swollen and beginning to fester.

      Although her father said that it was all nonsense and quite unnecessary, she sent for the doctor.

      He had not thought it serious, but gave her a disinfectant salve to use on it, which she applied exactly following his instructions.

      However, Lord Heywood’s hand grew much worse and at the end of the week he was in excruciating pain.

      By the time he had seen a surgeon it was too late.

      The poison had spread all over his body and only the drugs that made him unconscious prevented him from screaming out with agony.

      It had all happened so quickly that it was difficult for Minella to realise that it was really true.

      Only when her father had been buried in the quiet little churchyard beside her mother did Minella realise that she was now completely alone.

      At first, having no idea of the financial mess that her father had left behind him, she had thought that she could stay on at The Manor and perhaps try to farm a part of the estate that was not already let to tenants.

      It was Mr. Mercer who disillusioned her and made her understand that such plans were only daydreams.

      The Manor itself was mortgaged and so was at least half the land.

      By the time that the mortgages had been paid and she had seen the huge accumulation of debts that her father owed in London, she faced the truth.

      She was not only alone but penniless.

      Now, looking across the desk at the Solicitor, she said,

      “I don’t know how to thank you, Mr. Mercer, for all your kindness. I have given you a great deal of work and I only hope you have paid yourself a proper fee as well as everybody else.”

      “Don’t worry about that, Miss Minella,” Mr. Mercer replied. “Both your father and your mother were very kind to me when they first came to live here and it was through your father that I acquired a great many new clients for my small and not very impressive family firm.”

      Minella smiled.

      “Papa always wanted to help everybody.”

      “That is right,” Mr. Mercer replied, “and I think that was one of the reasons why his creditors did not press him as hard as they might have done. Every one of them expressed deep and sincere regrets to me that he should have died so suddenly.”

      As this was such a moving tribute to her father, Minella felt the tears come into her eyes. Then she said, “Papa always told me that, when he could afford to take me off to London, perhaps next year, his friends would look after me and give me a wonderful time.”

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