Love is the Key (eBook)

Barbara Cartland (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2019 | 1. Auflage
298 Seiten
Barbara Cartland eBooks Ltd (Verlag)
978-1-78213-903-4 (ISBN)

Infos

Keeping up appearances for her older brother, Lord Anthony (Tony) Linwood, and his Society lifestyle while also caring for their young brother and sister is becoming too much for the beautiful Minerva as they have very little money and the bills are mounting every day. So when Tony confesses that he owes the terrifying gambling debt of two thousand pounds to his friend, the Earl of Gorleston, with an unsavoury and raffish reputation, she is mortified. A gambling debt is always considered a debt of honour between gentlemen and Society expects it to be paid before any other debts or the loser is cut off everyone's invitation list.It seems that they will be forced to sell the family Manor House to pay the Earl, who lives in the adjacent Castle - unless Minerva can find a way to reply the debt. In utter desperation Minerva dresses herself up as a highwayman, creeps into The Castle and tries to blackmail the Earl at gunpoint. But, of course, she fails dismally. Disarmed and disheartened, she is left in a dark dungeon with rising water from the moat, little knowing that the Earl she hates is in a prison of his own and that for them both the one key to freedom is - Love.

Textauszug

Chapter Two

Strangely enough, the Earl did not leave the next day or the day after that.

Minerva had expected to hear that everyone in The Castle had left.

Instead rumours came back from the village of wild parties and of gentlemen who rode at what seemed impossibly high jumps after dinner.

A number of other things were also whispered about by the older women.

And Minerva tried not to listen.

At the same time she could not help feeling insatiably curious.

Then, unexpectedly, she received a note from Tony, which was carried to her by a young groom riding one of the Earl’s superb horses.

She opened it a little apprehensively.

Tony had written,

 

“The Earl is obsessed by The Castle and asks me a thousand questions that I cannot answer. Please send back by this groom, whom I hope I can trust, the book that Papa wrote. I will try to see you before we leave, although at the moment I have no idea when that will be.

Love,

Tony.”

 

Having read the note, Minerva went to the study to find the book that her father had written about The Castle.

He had catalogued everything it contained and their history.

It was actually of no interest to the general public and could therefore not be printed.

Her mother had copied it out in her beautiful writing. Then one of the old ladies in the village who had been a bookbinder for some years of her life had given it an impressive red leather cover.

As she took it from the shelf, Minerva hoped that Tony would handle it carefully.

Because her father had written the book, she had read it through several times.

She often referred to it when she went into The Castle and David and Lucy asked her about the pictures or the paintings on the ceilings.

She wrapped the book up, tied it with string and then took it out to the groom who was waiting outside.

“Please, will you be careful with this?” she said. “It is very valuable and it must not be lost or dirtied.”

“I’ll take care of it, miss,” the young groom replied, touching his cap.

Although she knew that the boy could not be more than seventeen or eighteen, she was aware that he was looking at her with admiration.

She only hoped that Tony had been right when he had said that he could trust him not to talk.

She thought then that it was rather touching that the Earl was so interested in his new possession.

She wished that she could be with Tony when he told him about the tapestries that depicted the French King Louis XIV and some of the beautiful women of his Court.

There were also some delightful murals that, like the ceilings, were of Goddesses surrounded by cupids.

As she thought over what she had found the most impressive treasures in the Castle, she was sure that the Earl would be sleeping in Red Velvet Bedchamber.

It was a room that their great-grandfather had spent an astronomical amount of money on.

The headboard of the red velvet bed, whose canopy almost touched the ceiling, was a silver cockleshell. And the velvet curtains that covered the windows had been specially woven for The Castle.

There was a painting of Goddesses on the ceiling that was by Kent and one of them was Minerva, the Goddess of Wisdom.

Her father had shown it to her when she was a little girl.

She had been thrilled to think that she was important enough to be part of the most beautiful bedroom that she could ever imagine.

The Brussels tapestries on the wall told the romantic story of Venus and Adonis.

Minerva often wondered if she would be lucky enough to find an Adonis one day who would love her as she would love him.

That was very unlikely living quietly and seeing no one but the people in the village and her small brother and sister!

She therefore forced herself to think of the other rooms in the house that would delight the Earl.

‘He could not help but be impressed by the salon,’ she decided.

There the pictures were by Sir Joshua Reynolds, in several of which, because they were of Linwood ancestors, she could see a resemblance to Lucy and, of course, to herself.

Then she wondered if the Earl would be curious enough to go down to the dungeons. These were below the Great Tower and had frightened her when she was a small child.

David and Lucy, however, were insatiably curious as to how many prisoners had been kept there below the water level and how long it was before they had died.

“You are not to be so gruesome!” Minerva had chided them.

But David had merely laughed and replied,

“If they were bad Danes who came over the sea to steal our horses, our sheep and our cows, then they deserved to die!”

She did not tell the children that the more important prisoners were drowned by letting the water from the moat slowly fill the dungeon.

As Minerva was cooking the luncheon, she was planning a treat for them all.

Once the Earl had returned to London, they would go up to The Castle and see it in all its glory.

There had to be no Holland covers now over the furniture nor shutters covering the windows.

Perhaps as a special treat she would light what was left of the tapers in the chandeliers for Lucy and herself.

That night, when she went to bed, Minerva told herself a story in which in some magical way Tony came into an enormous amount of money.

He could then buy back the Castle from the Earl.

They would go and live there, surrounded by the beautiful things that were all part of their own history.

She felt that they could never belong in the same way to anybody else.

‘They are ours,’ she told herself before she fell asleep, ‘and even if the Earl owns them legally, they will always remain in our hearts.’

*

The next morning Mrs. Briggs arrived from the village.

She came in to clean the floors and the kitchen twice a week and inevitably could only talk about what was going on at The Castle.

“There were ever such a big party last night, miss,” she started off. “’Is Lordship asks friends from as far away as Lowestoft and Yarmouth and they sits down fifty to dinner!”

“Fifty!” Minerva exclaimed.

She could imagine the huge banqueting hall filled with smart gentlemen and elegant ladies.

She could not help wishing that she could have crept into the Minstrels’ Gallery and watched what was going on below her.

It was something that she had never thought of doing until this moment, but guessed that it would have been very exciting.

At the same time Tony would have been furious with her.

She asked Mrs. Briggs, who was scrubbing the kitchen floor,

“Have you ever seen his Lordship – the Earl?”

“Oh, yes, miss. I sees ’im ridin’ past on an ’uge black ’orse and a fine upstandin’ man ’e be!”

She sat back on her heels before she added,

“But there be stories about ’im that ain’t fit for your ears, Miss Minerva!”

Nevertheless Mrs. Briggs, whose son was working at The Castle, was determined to tell Minerva what had happened.

“That foreign lady, Spanish they says she be, was a-dancin’ with ’em clickin’ things in her ’ands.”

“Castanets,” Minerva murmured.

“And swingin’ ’er skirts high above ’er knees. I don’t know what your mother would say, that I don’t.”

Minerva thought that it all sounded very unusual in an English drawing room, but Mrs. Briggs was still talking,

“That ain’t all ’er does for ’is Lordship and ’er a married woman.  Disgustin’ I calls it.”

Minerva did not listen to any more.

“I must get on with my work,” she said. “I have a lot to do before luncheon.”

Equally, as she dusted the drawing room and the sitting room where she always sat, she found herself thinking about the Earl.

One thing was very obvious.

He enjoyed being at The Castle, for, if he had been bored, he would have left before now.

Then she wondered if it was The Castle that was keeping him amused or perhaps the Spanish Ambassadress who Tony and Mrs. Briggs had spoken about.

She thought that the Ambassadress must be very beautiful if she could keep a man as difficult and as frightening as the Earl interested in her.

Minerva paused in front of one of the mirrors that her father had brought from The Castle. It was a very pretty mirror, not very large, and the gold frame was carved with birds and flowers.

It had been one of her mother’s favourites.

Minerva, looking at her own reflection, saw that her eyes seemed to fill her small, pointed face.

They were blue, but unlike Lucy’s, not the pale blue of a summer sky.

They were deeper, perhaps more vivid, and rather, she thought, like the sea when the sunshine touches the waves and there was a secret depth beneath the glitter of it.

Minerva stared at herself for some seconds and then she turned away.

There was so much to do and, although Tony had said that she was very pretty, she was still doubtful that he was telling the truth.

Of one thing she was quite certain.

It would be absurd for him to be frightened that the Earl might admire her.

Why should he when he had some of the most beautiful women in London staying with him at The Castle?

She polished a little silver snuffbox.

Her father had given it to her mother for one of the anniversaries of their wedding.

Suddenly she heard the unmistakable sound of a horse’s hoofs.

Because it had been a hot day, the front door was open and so was the door of the sitting...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 6.2.2019
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Historische Romane
• ISBN-10: 1-78213-903-6 / 1782139036
• ISBN-13: 978-1-78213-903-4 / 9781782139034