Love and The Marquis. Barbara Cartland

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      Instead she put her hands over her ears and stopped herself from hearing him go.

      Only when she was quite certain that he had driven away in his smart phaeton drawn by four horses did she take her hands away and lie back against the pillows, feeling as if she was exhausted by the conflict seething within her.

      Finding it impossible to stay in bed, she climbed out and dressed without ringing for the housemaid and went downstairs.

      Everything in the house looked so beautiful and so attractive that she could not bear the thought of it being left empty and unloved.

      She knew that, as soon as she had left the house, the Holland covers would be put over the furniture, the flowers thrown out and the windows shuttered and barred.

      The garden would come into full bloom with no one to appreciate it or enjoy its beauty.

      She did not walk into the salon where she had sat with her father last night, because for the moment to remember the things they had said to each other then was upsetting, but into the library.

      She had only just reached it when Mr. Dutton, her father’s secretary, who he had said would manage the house when they had left, followed her.

      “Good morning, my Lady,” he said. “I was wondering at what time you wish the carriage brought round. Your father has given me a letter to her Ladyship to explain your unexpected arrival.”

      Imeldra hesitated for a moment.

      “Shall I think about it after breakfast, Mr. Dutton? As I am sure you are aware, I have no wish to arrive before I have to.”

      She had known Mr. Dutton since she was a child and now his kind middle-aged face was filled with sympathy and an expression that told her that he knew how she was feeling.

      “There’s no hurry, my Lady,” he said. “And while you are here I suggest you have a look round and see if there is anything you wish to take with you.”

      “Thank you, Mr. Dutton.”

      He left her as if he sensed that she wished to be alone and after spending a little time in the library she walked to the breakfast room where the old butler, who had been at Kingsclere with her mother, was waiting to serve her.

      He bowed respectfully and since her father was not present he arranged the newspapers, which had just arrived, on a silver stand in front of her plate so that she could read while she was eating.

      Because she thought it would please him she glanced at The Morning Post while playing with the food she had chosen from half-a-dozen silver entrée dishes engraved with the family Crest.

      Inevitably she remembered how when she and her father were in France they had been quite content with a French breakfast of croissants and coffee. But in England to have refused the innumerable dishes that had been cooked by the chef would most certainly have upset the household.

      As her father had always said laughingly,

      “When in Rome we must do as the Romans do.”

      The butler moved discreetly from the room and Imeldra, feeling as if food would choke her, pushed aside her plate and picked up the newspaper.

      The headlines, as she had expected, told her that there had been innumerable speeches in Parliament for and against the Reform Bill.

      Then she looked further down the page and an item caught her eye and she read it with interest,

      “The Marquis of Marizon has engaged Mr. William Gladwin to rebuild the orangery at Marizon his country seat, which was recently destroyed by fire.

       Mr. Gladwin, who is an expert on orangeries, is, it is understood, following the famous Regency architect, Mr. Humphrey Repton, who was the first builder to include top-lighting in conservatories and glasshouses. He has also in many mansions incorporated the orangery, or the winter garden, with the house rather than make it a separate building.”

      Imeldra read the report twice.

      She knew William Gladwin because for three years he had worked at Kingsclere to add the orangery that for some unknown reason had never been erected before, to the house that had existed since the sixteenth century.

      When William Gladwin had finished, it was a most impressive sight and, in Imeldra’s opinion, very beautiful.

      She had read of how Humphrey Repton had come to believe that light was important for plants and had introduced top-lighting, instead of providing light only through the sides of the buildings.

      “I wish we had one here, Papa,” Imeldra had said to her father.

      “I am quite content with the building as it is,” he replied, “and whatever people may say, not only our orange trees but also the orchids and azaleas and all those other unusual plants we brought from Africa are flourishing extremely well.”

      “Yes, they are,” Imeldra agreed, “so why should we be envious of anybody?”

      “I never am,” the Earl had replied and she knew that it was the truth.

      ‘William Gladwin,’ she said to herself now. ‘He was such a kind man.’

      She remembered the hours when she used to sit watching him work and supervising the bricklayers, then the carpenters and the glaziers, checking everything they did with his plans.

      It suddenly struck her that the Marquis of Marizon lived not very far away.

      She had never met him because her father had once said that he was a very serious young man who did not approve either of him or, as he described it, of the ‘goings on of the King’.

      Imeldra had been too young at the time to understand what her father had meant by that.

      She was quite certain, however, that the Marquis must be a bore if he did not approve of her father and therefore dismissed him from her mind,

      Now she thought perhaps she had missed something not as regards the Marquis but in not seeing Marizon.

      She was well aware that it was reputed to be one of the finest houses in the country and often there were references in the newspapers and magazines to the pictures in the Gallery at Marizon and the furniture and silver.

      ‘I ought to have persuaded Papa to invite the Marquis here,’ she thought now.

      She then remembered with a little pang of her heart that, when her father married Lady Bullington, she would be the hostess at Kingsclere and not herself.

      It was then for the first time that it swept over her what it would mean to have her father married and a woman in the place of her mother. And the realisation made her angry.

      ‘How dare any woman aspire to being Papa’s wife?’ she asked herself and knew that a good number of women had done just that, but had then failed in their aspirations while Lady Bullington had succeeded.

      The anger that now seemed to invade her whole body made her feel suddenly defiant and rebellious.

      Because СКАЧАТЬ