Love is Mine (eBook)

Barbara Cartland (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025
311 Seiten
Barbara Cartland eBooks Ltd (Verlag)
978-1-78867-879-7 (ISBN)

Infos

Lovely Lady Toria had longed to marry for love. But with their home in bad need of repair and the family in financial ruin, she makes a reckless decision to marry a man she doesn't love, to save the man she does.  But now, on their much-publicised wedding day, a cruel twist of fate spells disaster - could she take back her reluctant vows and return to the beseeching arms of her waiting love?

Torn between her all-consuming love for temperamental and turbulent Michael, and her duty to her new and kindly husband, she reluctantly travels on her honeymoon to the fashionable Monte Carlo. But onboard the super-yacht the 'Enigma' she overhears a conversation that was to change everything.

How she overcomes a threat to her life and how she makes a realisation that solves the ache in her heart is all told in this breathtaking, love-triangle romance by Barbara Cartland.

Textauszug

1

Charles Drayton was bored. He yawned as the Air Ministry car carried him swiftly through Barnet and Potters Bar, and he yawned again as they turned off the main thoroughfare through winding, twisting lanes leading to a small patch of country that was still surprisingly rural although within easy reach of London.

It was Saturday and Charles had planned to spend the weekend at his own home in Worcestershire. There he would have been riding round his estate or walking over the fields with his bailiff. Instead, he had been forced to make arrangements to have luncheon at Lynbrooke Castle and inspect an invention that he was already certain in his mind would not be of the slightest use.

He had protested at this change in his plans, and with no avail. His Chief was adamant.

“The Minister has asked personally that you go yourself, Drayton. I know it’s inconvenient, but what do the ‘powers that be’ care about our inconvenience? It need not take you long.”

However short the time he must spend at Lynbrooke Castle, Charles knew it had ruined his weekend. It would be too late, by the time he left, for him to get down to Worcestershire till the evening, and it would not be worthwhile going at all under the circumstances, for he had to be back in London on Sunday night.

Charles told himself that he loathed Ministers who were asked special favours by their friends. If the Earl of Lynbrooke wanted his nephew’s invention vetted, why couldn’t he let it go through the ordinary and proper channels for such matters? Why should he, Charles Drayton, be brought into it?

Actually, he knew the answer to that, although he was too modest to admit it himself. His own career in the Royal Air Force had been meteoric. The youngest Air Vice-Marshal in the Service, he owed his success not only to his brilliant leadership and daring exploits in the War, but also to the fact that peace had found him to be equally successful in another branch of the R.A.F.

It was his desire for efficiency that had made him design his first improvement to a fighter plane, and it was the realisation that he could see a fault and know how to correct it that made him eventually Number Two in the Department of Aeronautical Research.

Three of Charles’ inventions were already in production as standardised parts of the new Fighters. Unfortunately from his point of view, the newspapers had got to know of this. The public were accordingly informed that “One of the Heroes of the Air” – as he was called to his disgust – “has now turned inventor”. And there was nothing he could do to stop his picture from appearing in every national newspaper with paragraph after paragraph of inaccurate information beneath it.

Once his name was before the public, Charles found it difficult to withdraw into obscurity, and although he was given a ‘window-dressing’ job in the Air Ministry to hide his real and more secret activities, there were of course a number of people who were well aware on what he was working at the moment.

It was for this reason that one of his few days of relaxation had been taken from him and he had been sent off on what he was already convinced was a fool’s errand.

The car twisted and turned and then unexpectedly drove in through some high lodge gates. Charles looked around him. The park on a bleak February afternoon was not particularly prepossessing. The ground looked sodden from the recent rains and the trees, bleak and leafless, made it hard to believe that spring would soon be hack again in all its verdant beauty.

The car bumped uncomfortably, and Charles was forced to crouch down to prevent his head being bashed against the roof. The driver took his foot off the accelerator, but not before another bump caused Charles to swear softly beneath his breath as he put out his hand to steady himself.

The drive was undoubtedly in a disgraceful state of repair. There were potholes everywhere and as they were filled with water it was difficult to know how deep they were. But one thing was certain, it was quite impossible to avoid them, and even with the car going at the slowest speed possible, Charles found himself pitched and tossed about as if he were on a rough sea.

With a sense of relief he saw the house in front of them, noting at the same time that it was quite one of the ugliest buildings he had ever seen.

Lynbrooke Castle was mentioned in the Domesday Book ­– but the eighth Earl had fancied himself as an architect and in 1890 had destroyed the last remnants of the Queen Anne house that had been built on the site of the original castle and had erected instead a red brick building in excruciating taste. It stood squarely facing an avenue of oak trees, which, having been planted four hundred years earlier, were resolute enough not to faint away at sight of the new edifice.

There was no sacrilege against art and architecture that the Earl had not committed. He had liked ornamentation, and in consequence the house was adorned with columns, porticoes and pediments. Battlements, spires and turrets peppered the roofs and there were even a dozen Victorian statues perched in niches between the first-floor windows.

It was with a sense of stupefaction that Charles surveyed the castle. It was farcical that such an outrage against good taste should have survived the war. The house was in almost as bad repair as the drive. The paint on the windows had long since peeled and blistered into a dirty grey uniformity, several panes were missing from a horrifying mosaic of coloured glass over the front door, and a large clump of creeper, which someone had endeavoured to grow up the side of the portico, had fallen down and lay sprawled in untidy abandonment across the doorstep.

Charles pulled the front door bell with the conviction, which was obviously not unfounded, that it would not work. After some minutes’ wait a dog began to bark and after a further delay there was the sound of slow, shuffling footsteps approaching the door. Charles turned to his chauffeur.

“You had better try to get some food in the village if there is one,” he said, “and be back here at 2.30 sharp.”

“Very good, Sir.”

The man saluted and got back into the car as the front door opened slowly and wheezily. An old man with grey hair and a brown, weather-beaten face stood there wearing a shabby uniform coat trimmed with silver buttons.

“I’m sorry if I’ve kept you waiting, Sir,” he said, “but the bell’s been broke these last three months.”

“Wouldn’t it be a good idea to have it mended?” Charles asked as he stepped into the hall.

“We’ll get round to it in time,” the old man said cheerily as he took Charles’ cap. “We ain’t had time recently for such things.”

Charles nearly retorted that that was obvious. The hall, dark and cheerless, was as untidy and uncared-for as the outside of the castle. Tables and oak chests were littered with a miscellaneous collection of caps, hats, whips, gloves, pieces of string, old magazines, tennis racquets and rubber balls. In one corner wellingtons and galoshes rested beside two dog-baskets and a bowl of water. In another a golf bag thick with dust had fallen to the floor beside a gardening basket on wheels and a deck-chair, which must have been brought in from the garden the previous summer. The old servant led the way across the hall and into a large room on the other side of it.

The room was unexpectedly pleasing. It was shabby and the chintz covers were almost white with innumerable cleanings, but the walls were half-hidden by books, and where there were no books there were windows opening on to a view that stretched across the parkland – beyond there were lakes and woods and a green valley running as far as the eye could see.

Charles had not imagined there could be such a magnificent view so near to London and instinctively his feet carried him towards the window. Then, as he stood looking out, he heard a breezy young voice beside him say,

“I suppose you are admiring our view. Everyone does!”

He turned quickly, not having realised that anyone had come into the room. To his astonishment he found himself looking at one of the loveliest children he had ever seen in his life. She could not, he thought, be much more than twelve or thirteen. Her hair, naturally wavy, was the pale gold of jasmine blossom, and her eyes were the deep, vivid blue of the Mediterranean Sea. She was small and delicately made with a tiny, pointed chin, and the fingers of the hand she held out to him were long and sensitive.

“You are Air Vice-Marshal Drayton, aren’t you?” she said. I am Xandra Gale. I am sorry my father is not here to meet you. He has gone down to the stables as we are rather worried about one of the cows.”

Her self-possession and grown-up air of assurance made Charles feel almost at a loss.

“How do you do?” he said a little stiffly. “Perhaps I am early! I was not sure how long it would take me to get here.”

“I think it is only a quarter to one,” Xandra told him, “but all the clocks in the house are broken and we have to rely on Mrs. Fergusson’s wireless for the right time. As she is cooking the luncheon, I can’t ask her now.”

“No, of course not!” Charles said. “And it doesn’t matter much as I am here, does it? It would have been much worse if I had been late.”

“Much worse,” Xandra informed him solemnly. “We are having a very special luncheon today because of you. We have even killed one of the hens and as we have only got ten left, it makes it quite an occasion.”

“I am indeed...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 1.11.2025
• Reihe/Serie: The Eternal Collection
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• Schlagworte: enemies to lovers • Love Triangle • Romantic Thriller • threesome
• ISBN-10: 1-78867-879-6 / 1788678796
• ISBN-13: 978-1-78867-879-7 / 9781788678797