A Steeplechase For Love

by Barbara Cartland

  He sent the Duke round first.

  Helsa thought with a smile that he was challenging the other riders to beat what she was quite sure would be an almost unbeatable time.

  Certainly Masterpiece deserved his name and she was sure that the Duke who seemed to go faster with each round would be impossible to equal let alone surpass.

  She watched the other competitors and there were cheers when one gentleman on an exceptional horse, who was obviously an experienced jumper, tied with the Duke.

  It was then that the two of them rode together for a deciding round. While Helsa held her breath, the Duke won by just half a length.

  By this time quite a crowd had gathered from the village and she was glad she had been sensible enough not to go into the paddock.

  It was quite certain they would speak to her politely as ‘Miss Helsa’ and if Lady Basset heard them, she would undoubtedly be curious. It was nearly teatime when the Duke won the final competition amid applause from all those present.

  He raised his hand to acknowledge the cheers and, although Helsa could not hear what she was saying, Lady Basset appeared to be gushing at him.

  She stood beside him patting his horse and looking up at him in a way that Helsa felt he must find somewhat embarrassing.

  Then at last the Duke moved towards the stables followed by the rest of the riders.

  They left their horses and walked into the house for tea.

  Helsa climbed down from the tower and went to Lady Basset’s bedroom as she was sure that her Ladyship would want to tidy herself before tea.

  She was not mistaken as a few minutes later Lady Basset came bustling in through the bedroom door.

  “His Grace won,” she said, “as I was sure he would. I have a beautiful prize for him that I know he will enjoy.”

  “I thought that the prizes were in money,” Helsa commented coyly.

  “Yes, for the other riders, but as I was quite certain that the Duke would win, I was astute enough to provide a different prize that I know he will appreciate.”

  She spoke with satisfaction as if she could not keep the good news to herself.

  Helsa poured out warm water for her to wash her hands and then she tidied her hair.

  “After tea they are all going to a different sort of racing,” Lady Basset remarked. “That should keep them happy. Personally I find horses such a bore, but gentlemen appear to enjoy them more than anything else.”

  There was a note in her voice that told Helsa she was thinking they should be concerning themselves with her and not with mere animals.

  Helsa had, however, been wise enough since she had taken Mary’s place to say as little as possible.

  And having viewed the jumping competition Helsa thought it was unnecessary to climb the tower again.

  Instead she decided to hurry back home to see if her father was alright as she was sure Lady Basset would not require her again until dinnertime.

  So she walked slowly across the Park, enjoying its beauty with the sun streaming through the branches of the trees and the stags lying quietly beneath them.

  However, when she reached the Vicarage she found her father was not there and Bessie had no idea when he would return.

  She went to see Golden Arrow and when she was leaving, having made a fuss of him, she ran into George.

  “What that there ’orse needs, Miss Helsa, be a bit of exercise,” he said. “’E misses you takin’ him out in the mornin’ and if you leaves ’im too long, ’e’ll get too fat to carry you!”

  He was joking and Helsa laughed, but she realised that she must not neglect Golden Arrow.

  “I’ll surely come back and ride him early tomorrow morning,” she promised. “So put him into his stall tonight, George, so that I need not waste time bringing him in from the field.”

  “I’ll do that, Miss Helsa, and you can be sure ’e’ll enjoy ’avin’ you with ’im again.”

  Helsa smiled at him and then she retraced her steps back to The Hall.

  She had heard that they were to dance tonight and she wondered how that was possible when apart from Lady Basset there were only the two elderly ladies for the nine gentlemen.

  Then she learnt from Robinson that her Ladyship had heard of an orchestra in the nearest town, which not only played for people to dance but brought with them, if required, six girls who gave an exhibition of dancing.

  “I hears that they dance as we would if we could,” Robinson commented, “and then they gives the gentlemen as admires them a lesson, so to speak.”

  “How clever of Lady Basset to find anything quite so original here in the country!” exclaimed Helsa. Robinson looked over his shoulder in case someone was listening and then he said in a whisper,

  “I hears that she sent some of her staff down from London to find out what entertainment could be supplied here in the country. She were determined that the party should be kept amused if they had to stay longer than they expected.”

  Helsa stared at him.

  “Why should she think, even before she had arrived here,” she asked, “that they would have to stay longer than intended? After all the steeplechase was meant to be run today.”

  Robinson smiled.

  Then once again he looked over his shoulder.

  “If you asks me, Miss Helsa, she intended to keep the Duke here as long as she can!”

  As he finished speaking, there came the sound of footsteps approaching and Helsa hurried away.

  She now recognised that the postponement of the steeplechase had been in Lady Basset’s mind from the very beginning.

  Of course it would have been disappointing for her if the Duke had left first thing on Sunday morning, or even perhaps late this afternoon when the steeplechase ended.

  Was the whole convoluted story about the fallen trees and Watson’s worry over the course being dangerous simply fictitious?

  Had it been a trick to keep the Duke at The Hall?

  ‘She is certainly a very determined woman,’ Helsa mused as she walked slowly upstairs.

  Helsa felt sure the Duke would not be captivated by Lady Basset as she so wanted him to be – but she did not know exactly why she was so certain about this.

  The Duke exuded an air of tenacity and pride which gave him, she recognised, his strong personality.

  It would be difficult, she thought, to make him do anything he did not want to do and she knew too, almost instinctively, that he would not be attracted by someone like Lady Basset.

  Her Ladyship, she admitted, was indeed appealing in her own way and she was also immensely rich.

  But money did not concern the Duke as he was a very wealthy man.

  Helsa had a feeling, although she could not express it to herself, that, as the Duke had an instinct for horses, he would undoubtedly possess the same instinct for people.

  Lady Basset was not exceptional in any way, nor was she unusually alluring.

  Helsa could not quite put it into words and yet ever since she had been small, she had learnt to assess people when she met them and to tell even before they spoke to her what they were like.

  As her Papa would have said, she knew if they were ‘good or bad’.

  Lady Basset was obviously accustomed to getting her own way and this was probably due to her riches and yet her pursuit of the Duke had gone as far as deliberately postponing the running of the steeplechase.

  Helsa wondered if the Duke had guessed what was going on and if he minded being stalked as if he was a wild animal by a woman determined to take him captive.

  Then as she thought about it, she gave a little laugh.

  Perhaps she was making a huge drama out of what was quite an ordinary everyday occurrence.

  Women, whether they were young or old, always ran after a man who had a title and she could understand why, with all her possessions, Lady Basset wanted above all to be a Duchess.

  At the same time Helsa wondered if any marriage which resulted from such dubious methods could ever be a happy one.
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  ‘When I marry,’ she decided, ‘I want to be in love just as Mama and Papa were. They fell in love with each other the first moment they met.’ It had not mattered to them whether they were rich or poor as long as they were both together. Naturally they would have liked more money and her father would have been overjoyed if he could have lived at The Hall after he had inherited.

  Instead as their Vicar he had brought comfort and happiness to so many of the locals.

  She felt that he had worked even harder since he had lost her wonderful mother, simply because he did not want to think about himself and his own suffering but of the needs of others.

  ‘What they had was real love,’ Helsa told herself. ‘Papa now tries to give the love that he had for Mama to those who are lonely, unhappy and ill.’

  *

  She left a note for him on his desk to say she had come to see him and that she hoped he was not feeling too lonely.

  She ended by saying how much she loved him and added to the note a long row of kisses. She left it on the blotter, so that he could not fail to see it when he went to his desk.

  As she did so, she saw the long list of services that would take place tomorrow.

  She had hoped that there would be a chance of her going to Matins if Lady Basset did not require her, but now she saw that Matins would take place in one of the other Parishes her father had to look after.

  They did not have a Vicar of their own and for her Papa to apportion his time among three Parishes had been very difficult, but he managed to conduct one Service in each Church every Sunday.

  Tomorrow, Helsa found, in their own Church they were having Evensong.

  ‘I will find it difficult,’ she thought, ‘to go to that Service.’

  From seven o’clock onwards she had to help Lady Basset change for dinner.

  There was, however, a good chance she might see her father early in the morning when she came back to ride Golden Arrow, so she decided she would add a PS to her letter saying what she was intending to do.

  Then she hurried back to The Hall.

  On arrival she was to learn from Robinson that the orchestra had already arrived and they were in one of the rooms near the pantry where they were to change.

  The dancers, Robinson told her, were already in the music room where the dancing was to take place.

  There was a stately ballroom at The Hall, but it was very large and could in fact hold several hundred people.

  The music room was quite small and very beautiful with a polished floor and a piano on a small platform.

  “I do wish I could see them dance,” she confided to Robinson without thinking.

  “The girls are pretty enough to amuse all the young gentlemen here,” Robinson replied. “But them who plays the music I can only hope make a better sound than they look!”

  Helsa laughed as Robinson always had something funny to say about people.

  “I would still like to see and to hear them. Perhaps I could at least listen to them in the room above the music room.”

  “That’s a good idea, Miss Helsa. I’ll open all the windows and you do the same in the room upstairs. And if nothing else, music travels on the air.”

  “That is true, and thank you very much, Robinson. I don’t want to feel completely out of it.”

  “If you asks me,” added Robinson, “you ought to be in it and having a ball here of your own. That’s what you should have.”

  “You know as well as I do that we have not a penny to spare on such a frivolity as a ball.”

  “You’ll have one one day, Miss Helsa, you mark my words – and it’s what you deserves.”

  Helsa smiled at him and went upstairs.

  She thought it would be so lovely if there really was to be a ball at The Hall for her, but there had not been enough money even to live quietly as they did, let alone think of balls or being presented at Court.

  It was one of the privileges she was entitled to as her father’s daughter.

  ‘Maybe one day someone will wave a magic wand,’ she reflected, ‘and we will find a crock of gold at the end of the rainbow.’

  At least there should be some benefits from Lady Basset renting The Hall, but Helsa knew any money that was spare her father would spend not on her but on the locals, who had been in want for so long and some of them were almost on the verge of starvation.

  As she went upstairs she thought how magnificent The Hall looked with the afternoon sun shining on the many windows of the great house.

  She wondered if it would ever be possible to live in it and it was one of her dreams that was most unlikely to ever come true.

  Yet it would, she reckoned, make her father very happy, but he would not wish to live there unless he could help the villagers, which meant employing more men on the estate in the same way as they had been employed in the old days when his grandfather lived there.

  Upstairs in Lady Basset’s bedroom she laid out all the items her Ladyship would need when she changed for dinner.

  She helped the maids to arrange the bath which her Ladyship always took in the evening. It meant the footmen carrying hot water up from the kitchen in brass cans and it took three maids to carry the bath into the bedroom.

  They would set it down on the hearthrug in front of the fireplace and in the winter the fire warmed whoever was having a bath there.

  But now because it was so warm the fireplace was filled with flowering plants.

  It was Helsa who had told Cosnet that was what she wanted, when she begged him for flowers for every room.

  Lady Basset came upstairs a little later than Helsa had expected her.

  “I will have to hurry,” she announced as she walked into the bedroom, “because I want to have a word with the dancers before they perform tonight and make it clear to them that they are expected to stay afterwards and dance with the gentlemen in the party.”

  “As there are only six of them, my Lady,” Helsa came in, “the nine gentlemen who I understand are your guests will have to take turns.”

  Lady Basset laughed.

  “Lord Miller and Sir James are too old to dance, but the other gentlemen are looking forward to it and naturally the Duke will be dancing with me.”

  She said the words with a note of triumph in her voice.

  Then she looked at herself in the mirror as if to confirm that he would admire her as much as she admired herself.

  Helsa said nothing.

  She was wondering if any man especially the Duke, would really be attracted to a woman as bossy as Lady Basset.

  However there was no doubt that she had organised the house magnificently and everything had gone smoothly so far without any unfortunate mishaps.

  Helsa had to admit it was her Ladyship’s hand on the wheel that had made everything go well, and yet there was a hard note in her voice when she was determined to have her own way and she could not help feeling that any man who was a man would resent it.

  Lady Basset gave her orders almost like an Officer commanding troops who were not fully trained and had to be shouted at to make them understand what was required – there would be a stern frown on her forehead and her voice shuddered if everything was not exactly to her liking.

  ‘She could run a school or a ship,’ Helsa thought. ‘But would any man, especially the Duke, want someone controlling, as it were, the very air he breathed?’

  Then she told herself that she should be grateful to the Duke as all this display was very obviously an effort to please him and without that urgent desire of Lady Basset’s, they would not be receiving a large rent for The Hall – and employing so many local people.

  ‘I must be grateful, very grateful,’ she told herself.

  She wondered vaguely if finally Lady Basset would win and the Duke would succumb to her charms.

  After dinner, when she heard the orchestra starting to play in the music room, she hurried up to the bedroom above.

  She opened all the windows and, as she did so, she realised that Rob
inson had been true to his word and had opened the windows of the music room.

  Now the music was very clear and seemed to merge into the darkness outside and then create a mystic aura that spread over the garden.

  Helsa leaned on the windowsill, wishing she could see the dancers perform.

  From the applause the audience gave at the end of one of the dances, she was quite certain that the girls had danced beautifully.

  Lady Basset had indeed clocked up another winner!

  Then the orchestra began to play a popular dance tune that Helsa instantly recognised and this meant that the young gentlemen would now be dancing with the dancers who had just performed.

  Helsa was convinced that they would be enjoying themselves, as she leaned out of the window wishing again she could see what they were doing now.

  Then one of the French windows which were on each side of the platform was opened.

  To her surprise the Duke stepped out.

  He stood for a moment looking at the garden and then he walked quickly over the lawn and disappeared into the shrubbery on the far side of it.

  Helsa watched him until he was out of sight.

  A moment later Lady Basset came out through the French window and stood gazing round her.

  She was obviously searching for the Duke and as there was no sign of him, she walked a little further onto the lawn.

  She stood there irresolute.

  The moon was rising in the clear sky and the stars were coming out one by one.

  In the shimmering light Lady Basset looked, Helsa thought, quite pretty and there was certainly no doubt that her evening gown, obviously a very expensive one, was exceedingly elegant.

  As she stood there under the stars, she might have been a Goddess come down from Mount Olympus.

  Yet romantic as she appeared in such surroundings she was alone and as far as Helsa could make out from the window there was still no sign of the Duke.

  She felt that he had escaped deliberately and had no intention of returning until it suited him.

  Almost as if her thoughts had been communicated to Lady Basset, she stamped her foot on the grass.

  Then turning round, she walked briskly and rather aggressively back into the music room.