It would have been a help to Kayla in the days to come if she had known the Duchess’s story.
She was the only daughter of the Duke of Bowminster who was not a rich man and he had a somewhat dilapidated house and a medium-sized estate in Gloucestershire.
He had a son, of whom he was very proud, who went into the family Regiment as soon as he was old enough. And then there was another son who was born when his daughter Margaret was five years old.
The boys went to Eton, but the Duke could not afford many servants or expensive Governesses, although Margaret had a daily Governess who came in from the village to teach her.
She was an elderly woman who had actually retired, but, because she lived in one of the estate cottages, the Duke persuaded her that it was her duty to teach his daughter.
When she was not actually having lessons, Margaret was more or less on her own.
The one joy she had was riding her father’s horses and, as there was no groom to accompany her and, as she grew older, her rides became more frequent for the simple reason that she had learnt all that the Governess could teach her and it was a waste of time to be sitting in the schoolroom.
It was on one of her rides through the woods that she encountered a young man called Henry, whose father owned a house and a small estate that bordered with the Duke’s.
Because he had met Henry’s father at some County meetings, the Duke occasionally asked the young man to join a pheasant shoot and he also played in the cricket match that the Duke’s sons arranged every year against the village.
It was inevitable that Margaret should meet Henry when she was riding in the woods.
As he was handsome and she was very pretty, they fell in love.
To Margaret, who had always been a lonely child, it was the most wonderful thing that could happen to her.
It was marvellous to have someone who really cared what she thought and listened attentively to everything she said.
Henry seemed to bring the sunshine with him into a world that had always been dull and dark.
When Margaret was eighteen, her father had informed her he was planning her marriage.
“My marriage, Papa, but why?” Margaret asked.
“Because, my dear, I cannot afford to take you to London to attend the balls and all the other fripperies that are arranged for debutantes.”
“I don’t want – ” Margaret began.
“So I have now been thinking,” the Duke interrupted, “whom amongst my friends has a son who would be pleased to be associated with our family.”
He paused before he finished with a smile,
“Which, as you well know, is extremely ancient and has been respected for centuries.”
Margaret was horrified.
“But I have no wish to be married to anyone Papa,” she expostulated.
The Duke laughed.
“I am delighted you are so happy at home. But you need a home of your own. It’s a great mistake to have to fear being ‘on the shelf’ and ‘an old maid’.
Margaret told Henry what had been planned and they clung to each other like two frightened children. “I cannot lose you,” Henry told her passionately.
“I love you, oh, Henry, I do love you,” Margaret had murmured.
He had kissed her until they were both breathless.
They both knew it was just a waste of time to tell her father she wanted to marry an unimportant young man. His father was a gentleman, but he had no claim to any Social pretentions.
Margaret also knew that if she told her father that she was in love with Henry, he would be barred from the estate.
He would not be allowed, as he was at the moment, to ride in the woods nor would he be asked to take part in the cricket matches and the shoots in the autumn.
So they just met every moment they could.
A month later the Duke said with satisfaction that he had arranged a marriage for Margaret.
It was with the son of the Duke of Barninforde.
“You are a very lucky girl,” he insisted. “Forde Hall is magnificent and its owner is a very rich man. You will have every comfort and a position at Court. What girl could ask for more?”
Margaret wanted to reply that she wanted Henry and no one else but Henry and that she would be happy with him if they had to live in a cottage.
She knew, however, that her father would not listen.
She then spent most of the night before her marriage sitting against a haystack with Henry, as their horses grazed beside them.
“I love you so much, my darling Henry,” Margaret sighed miserably, as it was time to return to the house.
“And I adore and worship you,” Henry breathed. “I shall never love anyone as I love you.”
When Margaret was married the next day, she was past tears.
She only knew the hard rather rough young man who was her husband was someone she could never like, even if she had not been married to him.
He was aggressive and self-opinionated and he would never listen to anyone else’s point of view and she realised, by the time their honeymoon was over, that he was not at all interested in her.
She was only there to provide him with the heir, who was essential to the Dukedom and that her family background would look well on his family tree.
After her first son was born, she had found it much easier to live with her thoughts and memories of Henry and so she more or less ignored what was going on around her.
It was difficult to put into words what she was doing, but it was like living in a dream and nothing real could hurt her while her mind was elsewhere.
It was perhaps because she was dreaming and always surrounded herself with flowers and anything beautiful, that Alastair, her second son, was so artistic.
He did not resemble in any way his father or his elder brother and just like his mother he was attached to things that really mattered and totally ignored those that were forced on him through circumstances.
Margaret saw Henry whenever she stayed with her father and She was home for her mother’s funeral, her brother’s wedding and finally when her father died.
Henry had never married.
“How could I,” he asked Margaret, “when you fill my life? It is quite impossible for me to find any other woman attractive, let alone lovable.”
“But, darling Henry, you should have a home of your own,” Margaret told him.
“I am just praying that one day that will happen, but it can only be with you,” he answered.
She looked at him in surprise.
“Do you really think it will?”
“If God is good and because we are still quite young, perhaps our last days will be together.”
She knew that he was referring to the fact that her husband was fifteen years older than she was.
Even so, he was still a strong and forceful man and she thought it unlikely that she would survive him.
Yet, as she clung on to Henry in the woods, she was ready to believe that nothing could make them closer to each other.
They were together in their minds, their hearts and their souls.
And then she went back to her husband’s great house, which seemed dark, empty and unwelcoming.
She was living with Henry in her dreams and nothing else that happened to her was of any significance.
She was kind to Kayla in her own way.
Equally Kayla had a keen intelligence and she fully recognised that nothing she said or did was ever of any real consequence to her grandmother.
The Duke snapped at her and was often almost cruel in the way he spoke and the Duchess did not seem to realise what was happening around her.
It was almost as if she was not there and she would occasionally come back with a start when someone addressed her. It was as if she was always in another world.
*
Kayla very quickly realised that the Duke hated her because of her mother.
Seldom a day passed when he did not find fault with her.
She could easily have been even unhappier than she was already, but she discovered something that made even her grandfather’s gross unpleasantness seem trivial.
The second day after her arrival at Forde Hall she had risen early, which she was used to doing at the Convent.
She had gone to the stables, as her father had told her that there had always been a large number of well-bred and outstanding horses there.
Kayla had therefore not been that surprised, but was thrilled by what she found.
During her travels with her father, she had learnt to ride almost as soon as she could walk and riding had been part of the curriculum at the Convent.
Kayla was so enthusiastic that the old groom, who remembered Lord Alastair, had allowed her to ride one of the most spirited horses around the paddock.
He watched the way she handled the animal and then told her that she was ‘a chip orf the old block’!
She could choose any mount in the stables she liked, but Kayla knew, however, that it all depended on the Duke.
She was certain, if he knew how happy it made her, that he would refuse to let her ride any of his horses.
So she had therefore risen every morning at half-past five and had repaired to the stables before anyone was awake except the groom in charge.
She would ride until seven o’clock and then she put the horse into its stall and slipped back into the house through a side door.
After she had been at Forde Hall for a month, she felt that her grandfather must realise what she was doing.
As he had not forbidden it, she thought thankfully that he had perhaps lost some of his dislike for her.
Because the Duke was suffering from asthma, he had no wish to entertain unless it was absolutely necessary.
Therefore at their meals there were only three people present, the Duke, the Duchess and Kayla.
His wife answered him in monosyllables and agreed with everything he said and therefore he directed most of his conversation at Kayla.
He would draw her, in fact almost provoke her, into expressing an opinion and then immediately he would blast it down as something absurd and idiotic – the sort of remark that could only be made by someone with no brain.
As she listened to him, Kayla could understand why her grandmother agreed with everything he said.
“Yes, John.”
“That’s quite right, John.”
“Of course, John.”
If she said it once, she said it a dozen times at every meal and she never added anything else to the conversation.
‘I must try to do the same,’ Kayla told herself.
She found it very difficult because she had always talked with her father on every subject they found of interest.
Lord Alastair had been a most interesting man and there were always people dropping in to see him whenever they were in Paris and abroad he seemed to attract visitors as if he was a magnet.
Kayla would have liked to go into the village and talk to the local people, but she knew it would not be considered correct for her to do so.
“It’s no use travelling,” her father would say, “unless you can understand the people. As far as I am concerned, I cannot paint a man and appreciate his background, if I don’t know what he is saying.”
Because she so wanted to be like her father, Kayla became an expert linguist.
As she was always used to chattering away, she found it difficult to wait for her grandfather to start on a subject and yet she knew, that if she made any comment whatsoever, he would immediately shout her down.
*
The days seemed to move very slowly.
She rode almost as soon as it was light and after she had explored the house and the gardens, there was little else for her to do.
When she had looked at the fountain in the formal garden and the lake, she would just slip round to the stables.
There she would pat the horses and talk to them, but it would be a mistake to draw attention to herself by riding later in the day.
‘There must be something I can do here,’ she mused.
Then she remembered how busy they used to be in every country she visited with her beloved mother and father.
They did not have to go out and find the people, the people came to them.
Her father would say,
“I think I will climb up to the top of that hill. I am sure there is a view there that will inspire me. Or shall we go down to the river?”
He was always looking for new subjects to paint and when he found them, he would sit completely absorbed until he could put all that he saw on canvas in his own way.
‘What can I do? What on earth can I do?’ Kayla asked herself over and over again.
She thought how depressing it was to have no one else to talk to except her cantankerous grandfather, but that was hardly conversation.
Whatever he was talking about, she knew it was an expression of his dislike for her and her mother.
*
She had an excellent ride one morning on a new horse that really needed breaking in.
“I wouldn’t let anyone else go on ’im, my Lady, but you” the Head Groom said. “I don’t know what ’is Grace’d say if ’e knew.”
“I must ride on him, I must!” Kayla persisted. “You know I can handle him and I can break him in far better than any of your young grooms can.”
“That be true, my Lady,” the Head Groom agreed. “But don’t you go gettin’ I into trouble with ’is Grace.”
“He is fast asleep and I will not say a word as to where I have been,” Kayla promised him.
She took the new horse round the paddock and then they had a long gallop over the flat land. He jumped two hedges better than any of the other horses had done.
So Kayla galloped him again until he was almost too exhausted to go on resisting her and she took him back to the stable.
She then told the Head Groom that it was the most exciting morning she had ever had.
“He is beginning to obey me,” she boasted. “You will see in a week or so he will be as good as gold.”
“I believes you, my Lady,” he replied. “I thinks you ’as a magic way with ’orses and, seein’ how pretty you be, I expects you’ve a magic with – people as well.”
There was a little hesitation before he said ‘people’ and Kayla knew he had been intending to say ‘men.’
She wanted to remark that she had had no opportunity to prove whether he was right or wrong.
The only men who had come to Forde Hall since she had been there had been old friends of her grandfather, who were passing by or men who had some ulterior motive for seeing him.
She went upstairs to her bedroom.
She quickly changed from her riding habit into one of the plain frocks she had worn at the Convent.
Then she went downstairs to breakfast at eight-thirty as if she had just got out of bed.
Her grandfather was already in the breakfast room and her grandmother hurried in just ahead of her.
“Good morning, Grandpapa,” Kayla piped up and then dropped a respectful curtsy.
He had never made any show of affection towards her and, in point of fact, he had never touched her hand since she the day she had arrived.
He did not reply, but helped himself from one of the silver entrée dishes on the sideboard and then he walked to the top of the table.
The breakfast room was a small room and so different to the large and imposing dining room where they had dinner.
There were no servants waiting at breakfast and this was usual in large country houses as her father had told her.
He had always liked to talk about his home and so she had learnt most of the old customs and traditions of country houses years before she had actually lived in one.
Having helped herself to eggs and bacon, Kayla sat down in her usual seat at the bottom of the table.
Her grandmother sat on her grandfather’s right, while he was opening a large pile of letters in f
ront of him and he grunted somewhat disdainfully at one or two of them.
Kayla thought that they must be bills.
Then he opened a large one and Kayla could see from the bottom of the table that it had a crest on the back of the envelope.
The Duke drew out the letter and then he suddenly exclaimed in a violent tone,
“I have never heard of such damned impertinence! I will see him dead first!”
He spoke so fiercely that even the Duchess seemed to come back from her dreams to enquire,
“What has happened, John? What has upset you?”
“Upset me!” he spluttered. “Is it surprising when I receive a letter from Rothwoode?”
The Duchess did not say anything and he continued sharply.
“You know only too well who that Rothwoode is. The Earl of Rothwoode, who lives not far over the boundary of the County in Sussex.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever met him,” the Duchess said vaguely.
“Why should you? He bullied me when we were at Eton and prevented me from playing as I should have done in the First Eleven at Lords. He has always boasted that his Earldom is older than mine and now the damned fella has the impertinence to ask if one of my granddaughters can marry his son!”
He looked at the letter again before he threw it down on the table, screaming,
“I’ll see both of them in hell first and that’s my final answer.”
The Duchess did not reply.
Kayla wondered why her grandfather disliked the Earl so much and then she mused that if he was as bad as the Duke was making out, she might on the contrary find him quite a pleasant person!
Then, as she looked down the table, she caught her grandfather’s eye.
In another tone of voice, almost as if he was speaking to himself, he declared,
“I have an idea!”
He then rose from the table, picked up his letters and stalked out of the the room.
He closed the door harshly behind him, so that it was almost a slam.
Kayla turned to her grandmother,
“Why does Grandpapa hate the Earl of Rothwoode so much? He cannot still be resenting whatever happened so many years ago when they were at school together.”
The Mountain of Love Page 4