Brook brought tea into the room a few minutes later. He had found a tea-table which the Earl’s mother had always used and a lace tablecloth to go over it.
“I must apologise, my Lord,” Brook said in his usual respectful voice, “that I have not yet had time to clean all the silver. Your Lordship has some very fine pieces of early Georgian, if I may say so, but it’ll take me a little time to make them look as they should.”
“I am afraid everything has been very much neglected, so engage all the help you can, although I think you will find it hard to find anyone locally who is experienced.”
“I shall be able to manage, my Lord,” Brook said confidently. “However I am afraid there’s very little to eat for tea and your Lordship will have to wait for dinner.”
“It is my fault,” the Earl confessed, “I should have thought of buying something on the way and of course you had no one to send to the village.”
“I brought with me what my wife planned to cook for your Lordship’s dinner,” Brook replied, “but I must admit I forgot that her Ladyship would require tea and that your Lordship might have enjoyed a hot scone or a slice of fruit cake.”
The Earl laughed.
“I have not had such delicacies for a very long time. I cannot even remember what they taste like!”
“Things will be different tomorrow, my Lord.”
He looked at what he had placed on the table disparagingly before adding,
“I will inform her Ladyship that tea is served.”
Brook left the room and the Earl walked towards the window and outside he could see the garden overgrown with weeds, remembering how different it had looked years ago before his mother died.
Then he heard the door behind him opening and thought it must be his wife.
He turned round but it was Brook who entered the room.
“Her Ladyship’s compliments, my Lord, and she hopes your Lordship will understand that she doesn’t feel well enough to join your Lordship at tea or for dinner.”
“I understand,” the Earl answered, “and of course her Ladyship must rest until she feels better. I suppose she has everything she requires.”
“The woman we brought down with us, my Lord, whose name is Martha, will find her everything that’s available, and tomorrow it will all be different.”
“Thank you, Brook.”
When Brook had withdrawn he looked at the tea. He saw there were some small sandwiches and a plate of biscuits.
He could understand that Brook thought there should be cakes and scones and many other delicacies to complete a proper English tea.
That was what Mr. Randon must have enjoyed all the time he was in America. Brook would doubtless have forced the Yankees to accept English ways even when they ventured out in the wilds or wherever Mr. Randon journeyed in his search for money.
Then as if he could not keep still, the Earl strode out of the house and into the garden.
He had been more concerned during the past few years with the agricultural parts of the estate and had therefore forgotten that not only was the flower garden a disgrace but so was the kitchen garden – all three acres of it.
It was just a riot of weeds and the glass in the greenhouses was broken and the flowers, peaches and grapes were all dead.
He walked round, calculating how quickly he could put back the clock. He wanted to make everything look exactly as it had been when he was a boy.
Now he could not see a square yard of soil that did not require attention so he decided that he would need six or more gardeners even to begin the task of clearing and replanting.
‘I can do it,’ he thought, ‘but first I must look after the farmers. I will see to them first thing tomorrow morning.’
He would have liked to jump on the one horse that was left in the stables and ride round this evening.
Then he had to consider two points.
First that the horse in question had brought Jim back from London and it could obviously not be taken out again.
Secondly that he now had a wife. Although she apparently had no wish to eat with him, he felt he would have to see her sometime this evening.
‘She is your wife,’ a voice seemed to say inside his brain. ‘Although she is tired she will doubtless expect you to behave on your wedding night as a bridegroom should.’
He shrank away from the thought but it persisted in his mind.
When he returned to the house he wondered if it would be polite to go to her room and ask her how she felt – at least if she felt too ill to see him she could say so.
She had managed to avoid having luncheon and tea with him and had now declined dinner.
He remembered how quickly she had managed to spring in and out of the chaise and how she had hurried up the stairs as soon as they had arrived.
He did not believe that she was feeling ill. In fact he suspected that she felt a revulsion, as he had, at being married.
She was therefore avoiding her bridegroom as long as it was possible to do so.
If so, it was a new experience for him as he had never met a woman who tried to avoid him, nor had he known one who had not sought every opportunity possible of sharing his company.
‘Whatever it is, at least I am free for the moment,’ the Earl thought as he headed for the stables.
He wanted to see if the new team that he had driven down from London were settled and cared for.
He found the groom in charge had certainly seen to their comfort, as there was fresh hay in each of their stalls and food which must have come from London was in the mangers. And although the buckets were dilapidated, the water was fresh.
There was accommodation for a number of grooms at the end of the stables in a building which had been built a hundred years ago.
The Earl thought he should go and find out if the new groom was properly accommodated.
When he drew near, he could hear him and Jim talking and laughing and as they were obviously quite content, he thought it would be a mistake to interrupt them.
‘I will talk to them tomorrow,’ he decided, ‘and if I am to buy more horses, I shall require more grooms and they will be perhaps easier to find than the staff Brook needs in the house.’
He walked back to the house as the light was fading and now he must go upstairs to change for dinner.
It was something he never did when he was alone.
He had always been too tired and the dinner, which consisted usually of one course, was hardly worthy of the name.
Now he recognised that Brook would expect him to behave like a gentleman as he walked upstairs to his room.
He was not mistaken.
His clothes had been laid out for him and there was a bath set down in front of the fireplace and there was a large brass can of hot water standing beside the bath and another containing cold water.
The Earl smiled to himself.
This was indeed luxury.
As he sat in the bath he only hoped that Mr. Randon could appreciate how much he appreciated the difference he had made to his life.
When he had dressed himself in his evening clothes, he wondered once again if he should knock on his wife’s door.
She was in the next room which had once belonged to his mother. He had meant, if he had been asked, to put her somewhere else.
The Earl thought it must have been Brook who had insisted she should occupy the Countess’s room.
The Hunts, on his instructions, would have unlocked the door and done what they could to dust and tidy the room.
Actually because it belonged to his mother, the Earl had taken more care of that room than any other.
When he had been alone and fighting desperately a losing battle against his debts he had often gone into her room on his way to bed.
He could almost see his mother sitting in her favourite armchair.
When he was small she would smile and hold out her arms and he would run towards her and sit on her lap. He told her everything he had been doing. What he had learned from his
governess or where he had been with his nanny.
Everything she had said to him and the love in her eyes and in her voice, he could never forget, but he now hated the thought of anyone else using her room.
It never struck him for one moment that the Countess’s room was where his wife was expected to sleep, or that the servants would instinctively take her there.
‘She will spoil it,’ he told himself.
He wanted to turn her out and make her choose any of the other bedrooms in the house, but not that one.
‘Perhaps I will be able to move her tomorrow,’ he mused as he walked past the room and down the stairs.
At the same time he was angry.
Once again he had not been consulted and everything was happening too fast for him.
‘I will be Master in my own house,’ he told himself, ‘and I will not permit any interference from the servants nor from my wife.’
He walked to his study to find that Brook had lit the fire, which made the room feel cosy and took away the slight feeling of damp.
The walls were dry at the moment, but during the winter some of the external bricks had cracked and they all needed repointing.
Now the fire made the room feel inviting and the setting sun was shining through the window.
“Dinner is served, my Lord,” Brook announced from the doorway.
The Earl strode alone into the dining room.
It was very much as he had left it two days ago except that the table had been polished and the four silver candlesticks had been cleaned.
When dinner arrived the Earl realised that Mrs. Brook was an excellent cook.
Although the food must have come down from London, every dish tasted fresh and delicious and was totally different from anything that the Earl had eaten in this room for a long time.
Brook served him wine which he knew had not come from his own cellar, which was practically empty.
When the Earl had finished, he said,
“Will you thank your wife for an excellent dinner and see that she has every possible help she requires in the kitchen.”
“Very good, my Lord. But Mrs. Hunt has been very helpful tonight and I know your Lordship will be pleased to know that we are getting on well with the old couple.”
The Earl retired to his study.
He sat down in the chair beside the fire with a writing-pad in his hands and started to make a list of the calls he must make tomorrow morning.
It was important he should go first to the farmer who had been on the estate the longest.
He was also making notes of what he would promise to provide for them immediately and he could imagine their joy and delight after so many years of misery.
For the first time in what seemed years he could visit them eagerly as lately he had been reluctant to listen helplessly to their endless complaints and despair.
He completed a long list of what he must do.
Then Brook came in to ask if there was anything further he needed and bade him goodnight.
The Earl thanked him once again.
“It has been a pleasure, my Lord, and I am looking forward to seeing Cariston Hall looking as fine as in the past.”
Then because he had had very little sleep last night and the night before, he felt his eyes closing.
In fact he must have dozed for a little while.
When he roused himself with a start, he realised that the fire had sunk low and had almost gone out.
‘I must go to bed,’ he thought.
Then he remembered his wife.
However late it might be, out of sheer good manners if she was not asleep, he must ask her if she was comfortable and if there was anything he could do for her.
He placed his notes on the writing table, blew out the oil lamp by which he had been working and he walked towards the door.
Brook had left a lamp burning in the hall and the Earl could see its light at the end of the passage.
He wondered if later he might be able to afford to install gas or perhaps even the new electric light which everyone was talking about it since it had been seen in one of the theatres in London.
Personally the Earl missed the silver sconces which had held the candles, but they burned down very quickly and candles were more expensive than the small amount of oil which was necessary for the lamps.
The Earl walked along the passage and decided he would pick up the lamp and take it with him upstairs.
As he entered the hall he saw to his surprise there was someone at the front door reaching up towards the bolt and it took him only a second to realise that it was a woman.
She was having trouble as she was too short to reach the bolt. Even standing on tiptoe she could only just touch it with her fingers.
The Earl stared at her back and then became aware of who she was.
When he reached her, as if she had not heard him approach, she screamed and moved to one side.
“Why do you want to open the door?” the Earl asked.
She did not answer but shrank even further away from him, turning her head as if she did not want him to see her face.
“Where are thinking of going, Kristina?”
“A-away,” she replied stammering over the word.
“Where to?”
There was silence until he said,
“I think if you are running away you should tell me where you are going.”
“To – the – Convent,” Kristina replied.
The Earl was astonished.
“The Convent?”
“I – want – to – go. Please – let me – go.”
Now her voice was pleading as she looked up at him.
By the light of the lamp which the Earl carried in his hand he could see her face for the first time.
He thought he must be dreaming.
She was not in the least what he had expected, which was a hard-faced, plain woman who resembled her father.
Instead he was looking at what seemed to be no more than a child.
Very large blue eyes were looking up at him with an expression of fear he had never seen in any woman’s face.
They seemed to completely dominate her small nose, her pointed chin and the golden hair which curled on her oval forehead.
She might, the Earl thought, have been a child of no more than ten or twelve years old.
She was looking at him like a little girl who was terrified of being punished for something she had done.
“If you want to run away,” he said after a moment, speaking very quietly, “it is impossible for you to do so in the middle of the night, unless you have someone meeting you.”
It suddenly struck him that perhaps that was the reason why she was so reluctant to have anything to do with him.
She was in love with someone else.
“It – is not – that. It – is just that I – have to go back to the – Convent. I want – to be – a nun.”
The words seemed to tumble out of her perfectly shaped lips.
The Earl stared at her in amazement.
“A nun!” he exclaimed. “But that is impossible!”
“Perhaps they will just let me stay for a while,” she replied.
Her words were almost inaudible.
“I think,” the Earl said quietly, “we should talk about this and we can hardly stand here in the hall doing so. Let us go into my study and you can tell me why you want to run away. I promise I will listen to everything you have to say.”
“I thought – as it was so quiet,” Kristina said almost beneath her breath, “that – you were – asleep.”
“I admit I was for a short time, but it was in a chair and not in my bed. Come along, Kristina, let us go into the study.”
He put out his hand as if to help her.
She shrank from him in a way which made it quite clear that she was terrified of him.
The Earl started to walk ahead, hoping she would follow him. He found it difficult to understand what was happening or why she fel
t as she did.
He thought now that he should have talked to her on the journey down from London.
As he reached the study he found she was just behind him.
When he walked into the room he lit the lamp on his desk and threw two logs of wood onto the fire.
The bottle of champagne that Brook had opened for him was still there, so he poured a little into two glasses and walked back to Kristina.
She had not sat down as he expected but was standing by a chair looking at the fire.
“I think,” he ventured, “you have been deprived of the champagne which was provided for us on our wedding day.”
He saw her give a little shiver and her hand holding the glass was trembling.
“Please sit down, Kristina. Do not be frightened, but tell me why you are so upset and why you want to go to the Convent.”
He spoke in a very gentle, quiet voice.
He had found in his varied life that it was often effective with men who had committed some crime or women on the verge of hysterics.
For a moment he thought that Kristina was going to refuse him.
Then she moved very slowly forward to sit down on the end of the armchair.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Earl moved to sit down in a chair next to Kristina.
Then he noticed that her hand was trembling so much that the champagne in her glass was spilling over, so he picked up a small table from the other side of the fireplace and put it down beside her.
He was aware as he did so that she moved backwards as if she was afraid he might touch her.
He also saw that the light from the lamp on the writing-table was behind him, so he picked out a spill from the vase on the mantelpiece and held it down to the flames just beginning to leap in the fireplace and lit two candles.
Now he could see Kristina far more clearly and noted that she was wearing a cape over her shoulders and a hood covered the back of her hair.
She placed the glass of champagne which she had not touched on the table beside her.
“I think,” the Earl suggested, “you will find it quite warm by the fire, so I should take off your cape.”
She did so, undoing it at the neck and letting it slip down beside her.
He realised that the only luggage she had been carrying was a handbag.
Learning to Love Page 6