He smiled as he added proudly,
“During that time she has never faltered nor tried to leave when it was impossible to give her any help in the kitchen. It is really sad that we cannot tell her it is your father who has made everything so happy here.”
“I think they are aware that he had a great deal to do with it,” Melita said. “I will certainly praise them after every good meal I enjoy. Also I think now they believe us to be married that we should increase their wages.”
Sir John hesitated for a moment and then he smiled at her,
“You are quite right. It is something I should have thought of but it will make them even happier than they are already because you have come here.”
“That is the sort of compliment that I was hoping to receive,” Melita said softly.
As they reached the hall, the butler told them that the Estate Manager and the other men who Sir John had ordered to come were now waiting patiently for him in his sitting room.
“I will go out into the garden,” Melita said. “When you have finished, you will find me amongst the flowers and blossoms.”
Actually the people he saw took far longer than Sir John expected.
When they left him, he went hurriedly first into the drawing room to see if Melita was there.
Then he went into the flower garden only to find that it too was empty.
‘I wonder where she can possibly be?’ he thought.
Then he decided that she would have gone to the stables.
She had loved Bracken in the morning and perhaps she had gone to ride him again.
This time he was right.
“’Er Ladyship came and wanted the same ’orse she ‘ad this mornin’,” the groom told him. “But then I tells ’er Bracken’d been given a long ride this mornin’. So she says she was only goin’ to the village.”
“To the village,” Sir John repeated. “How odd!”
However he thought it best that he should follow her and had a horse saddled for him.
He rode off wondering if perhaps she had gone to the Church to say a prayer, which she might easily have done.
Then to his surprise he saw halfway down the line of cottages that there was Bracken outside one of them. It was being held by two boys.
When he rode up to them, he realised that Melita was obviously inside the cottage.
He gave his horse to the older boy who promised to hold him carefully and then he walked up to the cottage door.
As he heard voices inside, he pushed it open.
To his surprise he saw Melita sitting in a chair in front of the fireplace holding a baby in her arms and the mother was sitting beside her.
They looked up when Sir John appeared and Melita said,
“Oh, John, I am so glad you have come here. This beautiful little baby was born only three days ago and his mother has called him ‘John’ after you. I know you will be proud she has done so.”
Sir John held out his hand to the woman who had risen when he came in.
“I think you are Mrs. Walters,” he said.
“That’s right, Sir John,” she answered, “and it be a real pleasure to see you.”
“I have only just come back and was told that you had another son,” Sir John said, “I can see he is very happy in my wife’s arms.”
“And ever so proud she be to be there, Sir John,” Mrs. Walters replied. “She’s a lovely lady and you’re real lucky to have her for a wife.”
“That is what I think myself,” Sir John answered, “and I will be most honoured to have your son called after me.”
He looked at Melita as he spoke and realised that she was not looking at him but at the child.
There was such a soft sweet and tender expression on her face.
She looked lovelier, he thought, than he had ever seen her look before.
It struck him that it was exactly how he wanted his wife to look when she had his child.
But it was a feeling that he could not possibly put into words.
Melita held the baby very close against her breast and then she handed him back to his mother.
“He is going to be a beautiful boy,” she said. “I know that Sir John will want to be told when you are having him Christened and we will send him a very special Christening present.”
“That’s very kind, my Lady,” Mrs. Walters sighed taking the baby from Melita’s arms. “It’s somethin’ we’ll be very thrilled to ’ave for the rest of our lives.”
“I will come and see you again,” Melita told her. “I hope he will be big and strong and you will soon be feeling yourself again.”
“It’s been wonderful ’avin’ you ’ere to see me, I know my husband’ll be ever so pleased when he gets ’ome and ’ears what’s ’appened.”
“Mr. Walters works at one of the farms,” Sir John explained, “and when I introduce you to him you must tell him what a splendid son he has.”
“I expect he knows that already,” Melita smiled.
“I believe that you have two other sons,” Sir John asked Mrs. Walters.
“Yes, I do, Sir John, and I says to my ’usband they’ll carry on ’is work when they gets older.”
“Your husband has been splendid in the work he has done,” Sir John told her. “I am sure that your boys will be able to take his place when he wants to stay at home in comfort with you.”
“That’ll be the day,” she laughed. “’Is ’eart’s in the farm and I always says it’s a rival I’ve never been able to challenge!”
They all laughed.
Then they said goodbye to Mrs. Walters and Melita took a last look at the baby.
“He is very handsome,” she said, “and all the girls will lose their hearts to him when he grows up.”
“Just like they lost them to Sir John,” she replied.
Melita laughed and so did Sir John.
When they rode away, having given the mother two shillings to buy the older boys some chocolate, Sir John said,
“Now I know where my admirers are!”
“I expect because you are so good-looking there will always be women who will fall in love with you,” Melita said. “You are very lucky to be able to choose from a great number rather than being grateful for small mercies as so many men have to be.”
“Now you are flattering me,” Sir John laughed.
“Are you surprised?” Melita asked. “When I met your relations in London, I was surprised that many of the men were very much shorter than you, while the women, although lovely, could hardly be called beautiful.”
“Now you are being rather severe on your family and mine,” Sir John replied. “But I have always been very proud of being over six feet tall and I think a small man always suffers in this life.”
“You certainly need not worry about that!” Melita retorted.
There was a brief silence before she asked him,
“What do we do now?”
“It’s up to you. There are a number of farms for you to look at and for you to be introduced to the farmer’s wife and in most cases his children. Or we can go home and go on exploring the house.”
He paused for a moment before he went on,
“I want to take you up to the Tower so that you can see for many miles on either side of it. There are still quite a number of rooms you have not inspected. In fact more than a dozen of them.”
Melita glanced up at him.
“It really is a Fairy Palace and that is how I will always think of it. When I was in the Convent, I used to wonder what English houses were like. Especially the sort of stately home that Mama had come from.”
“I will show you your mother’s house one day,” Sir John promised. “You will find it beautiful. Although it is older than mine, it is very much inferior.”
Melita laughed.
“Why are you laughing?” Sir John asked.
“Because you said it in such a proud way and I knew that because this house means so much to you that every time you see it you feel you
rself growing taller and more illustrious.”
“I think you are very unkind to me,” he protested. “At the same time perhaps you are telling the truth.”
“Of course it’s the truth,” she replied. “How could you be anything but proud of this house? I know what agony it must have been for you and your father when, as you have told me often enough, it went into decay and was saved entirely by our Fairy Godfather as that is definitely what he has been.”
Sir John did not answer and they rode on in silence.
When the house came into sight, he said,
“Of course I am proud of the house now that it has been changed completely and I want to stay here and now you have fitted into it in a manner that I could not believe any other woman could have done.”
“It is lovely! Lovely!” Melita cried. “I cannot bear to think of it falling into decay and you not having enough money to keep it as it is now.”
The rode on until they reached the front door.
He dismounted and handed his horse to the groom who came forward and then he went to Melita’s horse and lifted her to the ground.
“You are very light,” he said. “I almost feel that you could fly from the saddle if you wanted to!”
He put her down on the ground and she looked up at him.
“I don’t want to fly anywhere,” she replied. “I am so happy here and everything is so beautiful.”
She looked up into Sir John’s eyes.
Just for a moment it was as if neither of them could move.
Then without saying anything more, Melita turned and walked past the two stone lions and through the front door.
As he followed her, Sir John was thinking of her with the baby in her arms.
‘She is right,’ he told himself. ‘What I want is a large family. They will fill the house with their noise and laughter.’
As he followed Melita, he found himself thinking, almost as if it was something new, that to have what he required he needed a wife who would be the mother of his children.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The following morning Sir John was down first for breakfast.
He was actually pouring out his coffee when Melita came in.
She was wearing the same riding habit that she had worn the previous day.
Her hair was golden in the sunshine and, when she smiled at him, it seemed as if the whole room lit up.
“Good morning, Melita,” Sir John greeted her. “I hope you slept well.”
“Like a log,” she replied. “And I am ready for any spectacle which I feel sure you have waiting for me in your pocket.”
“As a matter of fact and it is very tiresome, I have to go and see the Lord Lieutenant this morning, but only for a short while.”
“Oh, I thought we were going to ride,” Melita said in a disappointed voice.
“We are and I will not be more than an hour or so with his Lordship. We are discussing if we will allow a certain man to put up a construction in the County which I think will be rather ugly. His Lordship feels the same and wants my support.”
Melita smiled and answered,
“I expect he will want you to pay for it, whether they will take it away or keep it!”
Sir John laughed.
“I am afraid so. Equally it is good for me to have a finger in every pie in the County.”
“Of course it is,” she agreed, “and, as your house is the most important one in this part of the world, you ought to have a finger in lots of pies.”
Sir John groaned.
“I have too many already. For goodness sake don’t force me into taking on any more. I find them very tiring and usually people have different ideas from mine and that can be tedious.”
“Then you must always win every battle,” Melita replied. “You know that is what we must both try to do.”
“I am sure as you are looking so pretty you will win any battle that comes your way!”
“Thank you kindly, sir, for the compliment. But to get back to us, how long will you actually be?”
“I hope not to be more than an hour,” Sir John said, “which is quite long enough with the Lord Lieutenant, I can assure you. If you are riding through the woods or down by the stream, I will find you as soon as I can get back.”
“That is just what I will do,” Melita said. “I will take Bracken, as at the moment I have more control over him than any of the others. But I hope soon to be able to manage all of them!”
“That will take time, but, of course, as you are so experienced with horses, you will be the winner every time.”
“I hope so,” Melita said.
They smiled at each other and ate their breakfast.
“I promise you I will be back as quickly as I can,” he told her. “But the Lord Lieutenant enjoys talking and it is not easy for me to get a word in or to prevent him droning on.”
“I know exactly what you mean,” Melita agreed. “A lot of old men are like that.”
“I hope I will be the exception, otherwise you will undoubtedly make me feel very uncomfortable.”
He did not wait for her answer, but waved his hand and went out through the door.
Melita laughed as she finished her coffee.
She thought that Sir John was in a particularly good mood and not like many people who are disagreeable in the morning.
However, she wished that he had stayed with her and did not have to go and visit the Lord Lieutenant.
‘I suppose,’ she thought, ‘that now we are living here they will expect John to be on numerous committees and me to open endless Flower Shows.’
Then she told herself that whatever it was it would be more fulfilling than life had been at the Convent.
If it had not been for the books that her father had supplied her with, she would have been frustrated and felt almost imprisoned.
Instead she had travelled happily through her books to almost every country in the world.
She knew that now they had the yacht it would be superb if John would take her to the different countries she had read about but thought she would never see.
She also remembered that he had promised her a dog and she wondered how soon she would be able to go riding with him with her dog beside her and, of course, he must sleep on her bed at night.
‘John is very kind,’ she told herself. ‘So kind that I feel embarrassed at having to say ‘thank you, thank you’ to him all the time. I must be very careful to pay him back by being an outstanding hostess to his friends and make him happy when he and I are alone together.’
She finished her breakfast and then she went to the stables.
There were three grooms cleaning out the horses in their stalls.
She then went from one to the other saying ‘good morning’ and asking about the horses and how Sir John had acquired them.
By the time she had spoken to all the grooms and looked into the stalls where the other horses were, Bracken was ready for her outside.
“It be a lovely day, my Lady,” one of the grooms said. “I’m real sure you’ll give Bracken all the exercise he needs.”
“We are going out to the woods,” Melita told him, “and I am quite certain that I will see that the fairies have been dancing there last night and have left their mark near the pool.”
The groom laughed.
“That’s what I used to think when I were a boy,” he replied. “I waited night after night to see the fairies dancin’, but they never came. All I got were a good spankin’ when I got ’ome ’cos I’d stayed out so late!”
“Perhaps you will see them now because I am quite sure they have been there,” she suggested.
“You looks so like a fairy yourself,” the groom told her, “and I’m content with that for a moment!”
Melita smiled at him and rode away.
She was not wearing a hat because she had found it a nuisance if there was a wind and she liked feeling free in the fresh air.
‘I suppose when I join the Hunt,’ she told
herself, ‘I will have to buy myself a top hat and I will certainly need a smart suit. As John told me there are some very grand members of the Hunt due to the fact that so many distinguished people live in this part of the County.’
She was glad, however, that they were not too near to Gilmour Hall as she liked seeing the land in the distance with no buildings on it.
The village was tucked away lower than the house so that the roofs did not interfere with the majestic view.
‘It’s so enchanting,’ she thought as she rode on. ‘I am so lucky that John has such superb horses. All I want now is one or maybe two dogs and I will feel complete.’
Then just as if the thought suddenly interrupted her, she remembered how sweet the baby had been when she had held it in her arms yesterday.
She had known then, as she knew now, that she wanted children of her own.
‘What could be a more perfect place for them than this house so full of beauty that they would be intensely proud of it? What I would like to have is ten sons and five daughters!’
Then she laughed at herself.
It was distinctly unlikely that she would have such a large family or, as it seemed at the moment, any family at all.
She had to face the fact that if John found someone he loved, then, as they had arranged, they would separate without any fuss about it.
Then she would be alone except for her family who would doubtless say that they were delighted to have her because she was so rich.
‘That is not what I want,’ she thought as she rode through the orchard. ‘I want my own home. I want my own children, my own horses and my own dogs.’
Then she laughed again as she was quite certain if anyone was listening to her they would say that she was greedy and asking too much of life.
‘I am fortunate as things are at the moment,’ she thought. ‘John is so kind to me. He is the right sort of person to have Gavron Murillo’s money and any woman who marries him will find that he considers it his duty to prevent her from being unhappy.’
As if she could not help it, she then found herself wondering if the Lord Lieutenant had a pretty daughter.
If, like so many women, she would flirt with John hoping, because he was so rich, he would ask her to marry him.
‘I am sure if we go to London,’ Melita thought to herself, ‘there will be hundreds of women pursuing John. And more so now when they realise how wealthy he is.’
Their Search for Real Love Page 11