Horizons of Love (eBook)

Barbara Cartland (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2019 | 1. Auflage
298 Seiten
Barbara Cartland eBooks Ltd (Verlag)
978-1-78213-951-5 (ISBN)

Infos

Lucy, Lady Wymonde, reluctantly agrees to her husband's request that she would chaperone his innocent orphaned young niece, Ina, for her first Season as a debutante.It was infuriating to have to take another guest with her to Chale Hall, the Marquis of Chale's majestic stately home in the country, but that it should be a lovely young girl made it worse. It was not a question of her being a rival, that was not what Lucy feared. It was that Ina would be completely out of place in what was to be her party given her by the Marquis, whom Lucy has become infatuated with and it is only a matter of time before they begin an affaire-de-coeur.Little does she know what an innocent threat the beautiful Ina will soon become! Having reluctantly left her Bohemian background and a family friend's villa near Nice with her devoted lady's maid, Ina is bewildered by the sophisticated Society world of London and rather in awe of the handsome Marquis. But soon, to Lucy's fury, the Marquis is smitten by Ina's untainted beauty and the almost clairvoyant perceptiveness by which she seems to see deep into his soul. Ina too is entranced and, despite her aunt's attempts to pair her off with over-eager and unattractive suitors, she too is falling in love

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Chapter Two

Lord Wymonde, watching the passengers alight from the train, thought that the tall, rather attractive young woman wearing brown would be Ina.

Then he saw following her from the carriage that there was a man and knew that it was unlikely.

He was just considering whether he should speak to another woman who was, he thought with dismay, decidedly plain, when a lilting voice beside him came,

“I am sure you are Uncle George!”

He looked down and saw what he thought must be a child and then realised that the girl speaking to him was older, but still looked almost incredibly young.

She only reached to his shoulder and she had pale blue eyes that had a decided look of excitement in them and her round hat set back on her head haloed very fair hair, the colour of corn.

Because for a moment Lord Wymonde seemed tongue-tied, Ina said,

“I am Ina and you do look very much like Papa as he told me you would.”

“You are Ina!” Lord Wymonde exclaimed rather heavily. “My dear child, I should never have recognised you.”

Ina gave a little laugh.

“You were not likely to, as you have never seen me, except perhaps in my cradle.”

“No, that is true,” Lord Wymonde admitted, “but I expected you to look older.”

“And, of course, taller,” Ina added smiling. “It’s very regrettable, but it does not seem likely that I shall ever grow any higher than I am now.”

She said it with a note of mock dismay in her voice and Lord Wymonde was forced to laugh.

At the same time he told himself that she was extraordinarily pretty, in fact lovely, and certainly unlike anything he had expected.

“Well, welcome home to England,” he said in a genial manner. “And now we must see to your luggage.”

“I think my maid, Hannah, has gone to the guard’s van,” Ina replied.

Looking round she saw Hannah’s black bonnet bobbing up and down as she pointed out their trunks to a porter.

“Good!” Lord Wymonde said. “Then we can leave that to her. I suppose she knows that you are staying at Wymonde House?”

“I will just tell her that I am going ahead with you,” Ina replied, “or she might worry.”

She dipped away as she spoke and ran in a way along the platform that Lord Wymonde vaguely thought Lucy would think reprehensible,

He could see her in the distance with her face turned up to the elderly woman and talking animatedly.

‘She is damned attractive,’ he said to himself. ‘Roland, being an artist, would produce something that might have stepped out of a portrait!’

Then he remembered how Lucy had decried his brother’s way of life, finding it incredible that he should wish to wander about the world rather than live in the Social world that the Wymondes had adorned for many generations.

As Lord Wymonde thought of it, he felt uncomfortably that Lucy would also disapprove of Ina, not for anything she had done, but for the way she looked.

Then he told himself that Lucy’s position as a beauty was unassailable.

She could not be so stupid as to be jealous of a girl who had only just left the schoolroom, and would obviously have none of the sophistications that were essential to the circle that Lucy embellished so brilliantly.

Girls of no interest until they were married were expected to be quiet when older people were present and, as their parents found them unmitigated bores, the sooner they were married off to somebody suitable the better.

‘Lucy will find Ina a husband,’ Lord Wymonde told himself consolingly as he fancied that there might be storms ahead.

When she came running back to him smiling and with a look of excitement in her eyes, he was sure of it.

As they climbed into the comfortable carriage, which was drawn by two horses and had two liveried servants on the box, Ina cried,

“This is thrilling, Uncle George. I have been so looking forward to seeing England and, of course, you.”

Because it was an unusually warm day the carriage was open and, as they left the Station, Lord Wymonde was aware that his niece was sitting forward on the edge of her seat as if she was afraid that she might miss something and looking around her with an enthusiasm that he had not seen for years.

“You might have come back when your father died,” he remarked.

“As I wrote to tell you,” Ina answered, “Mrs. Harvester, who lived in the next villa to us, asked me to stay with her and, as I had not finished my various classes and the Tutors were excellent, I thought that it would be a mistake to leave Nice.”

Lord Wymonde looked surprised before he said,

“It sounds as though you have had a very extensive education.”

“I like to think so,” Ina replied. “The trouble is Papa moved so often that by the time I had found myself teachers and settled down to learn all they could teach me we were off again!”

“That was just like Roland,” Lord Wymonde remarked. “He was always restless, always looking out for something new.”

For the first time he thought that he could see something of his brother, of whom he had been very fond when they were young, in Ina.

Looking back he could remember how it was always Roland who had thought up new interests for them both, new adventures in which to take part and, of course, new pranks that they were often severely punished for.

It was Roland who had made things exciting and Lord Wymonde realised now that, when he had married and Roland had gone away to live abroad, he had taken with him a joy of living that no one else had been able to replace.

“You must tell me about your life with your father,” he said aloud.

“It will take a long time,” Ina warned him. “We did so many things and we went to so many places. It was always such fun and I miss him – terribly!”

There was just a little tremor in her voice that Lord Wymonde noticed and he wondered if his son would ever speak of him like that. He had a feeling that he was failing Rupert in a way that it was difficult to formulate.

“Do you live in a very large house?” Ina asked.

“It is certainly large for a London house,” Lord Wymonde replied. “Your father used to laugh at it and say that it was dark and stuffy and he much preferred living in the country.”

“He has told me so much about Wymonde Park,” Ina said. “He loved it and I think it was the one thing he missed really terribly when he lived abroad.”

“Then why did he not come home?” Lord Wymonde asked.

Ina considered this for a moment.

Then she said,

“I think for one reason because, as you were married he would not have been able to live in the big house and secondly, as I expect you know, Papa was bored by Society.”

She gave one of her entrancing little laughs.

“The parties he went to were very different from the ones he described to me as taking place in my grandfather’s time.”

Lord Wymonde was listening intently.

Now he thought that he understood why immediately he married Lucy, Roland had gone abroad for a year and then returned unexpectedly.

For six months he had drifted about London, having a series of love affairs, which were obviously of no particular enchantment and then he had vanished again.

Lord Wymonde remembered thinking that he was too young to be throwing up the traditional way of living of his class for a life that was obviously Bohemian and as such would be censured and frowned upon.

Yet he knew that there was no point in arguing with Roland once he had made up his mind and, although Lord Wymonde had remonstrated with him whenever they met, Roland had gone off for longer and longer periods of time until finally eighteen years ago, after Ina had been born, England saw him no more.

Lord Wymonde remembered going to Italy to tell his brother about their mother’s death and to convey the messages that she had insisted he should give to his younger brother.

He found Roland in a very attractive studio with every possible comfort, but which was situated in a part of Rome that fashionable people would not have dreamed of visiting.

Lord Wymonde had first been appalled by the narrow streets that surrounded it with its noisy half-naked children and large-breasted mothers sitting on doorsteps unashamedly feeding their babies.

If the place was picturesque, he thought, it certainly smelt and, when he entered the house where he had learned that his brother lived, he was determined to persuade him to return to England.

Alternatively to find a more savoury neighbourhood to live in when he was in Rome.

Then inside the house, which was unexpectedly comfortable, he had found what he had not expected, that his brother was supremely happy.

When he had been announced, it had been just like old times to hear Roland say without any preliminaries,

“Come and look at this, George! Have you ever seen anything so fantastic? Or indeed so beautiful?”

The rather pompous words of greeting George had been about to utter died on his lips as his brother, taking him by the arm, drew him across the room to where on a throne was, Lord Wymonde realised, a model.

She was a child of about ten, an Italian, but with Moorish blood in her. Her jet-black hair fell over her naked shoulders while the rags she wore only half-covered her body.

Surrounding her were flowers of every colour, which she had obviously been selling when Roland had seen her and had brought not only her wares but also herself into the studio so that he could paint them.

“Look at the colour of her skin against those camellias!” he exclaimed. “It’s fantastic, but...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 6.2.2019
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Historische Romane
• ISBN-10: 1-78213-951-6 / 1782139516
• ISBN-13: 978-1-78213-951-5 / 9781782139515