She thought it might be a good idea to ask the Dowager what they had eaten when she visited Singora, but she rather shrank from the thought of bringing up the subject of Dipa. She knew his grandmother’s feelings about him only too well.
Carina had just finished her breakfast and Dipa an orange when a footman appeared in the doorway.
“His Lordship’s compliments, miss, but would you and the Prince like to ride with him this morning?”
Carina’s eyes lit up.
“To ride – ?” she began and then remembered Dipa. “I am afraid that His Highness has never ridden a horse.”
“His Lordship thought of that,” the footman answered. “He suggested that he take the little boy in the front of his saddle. He said his father used to do that when he was a child.”
“It would be rather exciting,” Carina said.
She hesitated a moment and then impulsively made up her mind.
“Tell his Lordship that we would like to come very much. What time will he be ready?”
“He is ready now, if it comes to that,” the footman answered. “He was just goin’ through the hall when he told me to come up here and ask you if you would accompany him.”
“Tell his Lordship we will be down in ten minutes,” Carina said, “and – tell him that I have ridden all my life, so he need not worry about what sort of horse he chooses for me.”
She paused and felt that that did not sound very respectful.
“No, no – !” she cried, but it was too late, the footman had already gone.
Feeling like a child who had been promised a special treat, she hurried into her bedroom and flung open the wardrobe door.
Her clothes, which had been unpacked the day before, were hung up there together with her mother’s beautiful gowns. They fluttered as the door opened as if they were almost alive and wanted somehow to end their imprisonment in the dark wardrobe.
Her habit was hanging in the far corner and she snatched it down eagerly.
How long it was since she had last ridden, galloping over the fields at Claverly, the morning sun on her face, the birds singing above her, the scent of field flowers and her horse moving in perfect unison with her will and at the command of her little hands!
She had wanted to ride when they had been in London, but there had been no money.
“You will miss your horses, darling,” she could hear her mother’s voice, soft and tired, saying from the sofa where she had lain.
“I would much rather be with you,” Carina had told her.
“I wish – ” but her mother had shaken her head and bitten back the words that had come to her pale lips.
She had never criticised anyone and never complained at the unhappiness that had come upon them.
“Where we go?” Dipa was asking, scampering about the nursery.
“You are going to ride a big horse,” Carina called through the half-open door as she slipped into her habit.
He did not seem to understand and she contented herself with changing at lightning speed and then putting Dipa into the long trousers of his sailor suit and the tightly buttoned little red coat, which really became him better than anything else.
Carina pulled her hard riding hat onto her head and tidied her hair beneath it until it was neat without a curl out of place. Then, scrabbling wildly through one of the drawers she found her riding gloves.
She grabbed Dipa by the hand and ran downstairs.
It was still not yet nine o’clock as they reached the big hall.
Outside on the steps she saw Lord Lynche waiting, very elegant in his well-cut riding coat with his top hat set at an angle.
There were two horses in the courtyard and Carina saw with delight that both were thoroughbred and spirited.
“Good morning.”
Lord Lynche swept off his hat. He looked white and strained and there were deep lines under his eyes.
Carina wondered for a moment if he was ill.
“This is very kind of you – my Lord.” she said, a little incoherently.
“I thought perhaps you needed a ride as much as I do,” Lord Lynche replied.
She did not know what he meant by this, but let herself be helped into the saddle.
She arranged her skirts over the pommel as the groom lifted Dipa high in his arms to set him down in front of Lord Lynche.
The child was delighted, chattering away for a moment in Javanese as he always did when he was particularly moved about anything and then bending forward to pat the horse’s neck with his tiny brown hand.
“He obviously has some sporting instincts hidden somewhere,” Lord Lynche commented, as they moved away from the front door.
‘He is holding the child confidently,’ Carina thought and wondered if in time he would come to love his son. Perhaps they could mean something to each other.
But Carina knew it was really wishful thinking and at the back of her mind she was sure that Lord Lynche would never look at Dipa except with distaste.
For the moment, though, Carina could not worry her head with the problems or difficulties of Lord Lynche’s life or anyone else’s.
It was sheer unalloyed delight for her to be holding the reins between her fingers again and to feel the horse moving slowly and rhythmically beneath her body.
“I knew you could ride,” Lord Lynche remarked from behind her.
Carina found that, without in any way meaning to, she had forged ahead.
She looked back over her shoulder, her eyes dancing in the sunshine.
“If you could only know what this means to me,” she said. “It is two years – nearly three – since I have been on a horse. Oh, it’s wonderful and I had forgotten how superb it could be!”
She spoke impulsively and without choosing her words and then she realised how sombre Lord Lynche was looking. There was something near to exhaustion in the expression in his eyes.
“Are you ill?” she asked, suddenly solicitous.
“Only tired,” he replied, “I did not go to bed last night.”
She reined in her horse so they could trot side by side and conversation was easier.
“But why, my Lord?” she asked. “What kept you up?”
“Cards,” he answered, “and the fact that, like every fool gambler, I thought my luck would turn.”
“And it didn’t?”
He shook his head and, without answering her, suddenly dug his spurs into his horse and galloped away over the smooth turf, Dipa shrieking with delight and holding on with both hands.
A sudden suspicion shot through Carina, but she dismissed it as absurd. She knew that, however much Lord Lynche hated his child, he would not injure him – not in this way, at any rate.
She spurred on her own horse to catch them up, but it took some doing, for already Lord Lynche was far across the Park and making for the fields beyond and even further.
Finally, Carina caught them up, but only because Lord Lynche had brought his horse to a standstill and was standing on a little hillock looking down on the vale below.
Her cheeks were flushed and her breath was coming quickly as she came up to them.
“I am sorry to appear rude,” he said courteously. “I felt a sudden need to go fast, to try and forget, if it was possible.”
“To forget what you have lost?” Carina asked.
“I suppose so,” he said. “That and many other things. But you know as well as I do that forgetfulness of anything that directly concerns one’s life is impossible, in fact the penalty one pays for one’s crimes is that one always remembers.”
He sounded so unhappy that somehow, although she despised him, Carina’s heart was touched.
“Why don’t you give up gambling?” she asked. “Send your guests away. None of them can bring you any good.”
“Do you suppose I don’t know that?”
The question was sharp so that she looked up in surprise.
“I may be a fool,” he went on roughly, “but I am not a blind fool. Do you i
magine that I don’t know them for what they are – Sir Percy Rockley and his friends? They fawn on him for what they can get out of him,”
“Then, why, why?” Carina asked. “You have so many other things.”
“Have I?”
She saw the weary cynical twist of his lips and realised that there were undertones to this conversation that she did not understand.
She was silent, wondering what else she could say.
Suddenly he lifted up his hand and pointed to where, in the vale, there stood a house.
It was very beautiful. Georgian, with white pillars supporting a high portico and long gracious windows looking down on a wonderful sweep of terraces, lawns and gardens.
“What a lovely place!” Carina exclaimed. “Whom does it belong to?”
“It belongs to me,” Lord Lynche said. “It is my home, the house where I would have lived if – ”
He stopped suddenly and Carina understood.
He had come into the title on his brother’s death, and so The Castle was now his home, the big, awe-inspiring, tradition-bound Castle with his mother controlling everything in it, instead of this graceful gentle house where he might have found peace.
Without saying a word, Lord Lynche led the way down a small incline onto the broad drive that led to the house.
As they drew nearer, Carina could see that the shutters were closed behind the glittering panes of glass. Already there were signs of neglect in the ivy growing up the terrace, the paint peeling from the front door and the weeds growing luxuriantly in the garden.
Carina said nothing until they stopped directly outside the house. She looked up at the white pillars and then from the house across the undulating fields to where, in the far distance, she could see the rounded silhouette of the Malvern Hills.
“It’s so lovely,” she said, almost to herself.
“Yes,” he answered passionately. “Lovely and no one shall ever live here. It shall fall to the ground, it shall rot! It is mine and no one else shall have it, not if I have to pull it down brick by brick.”
She looked at him and saw that he was very tense and that his hands were clenched over the reins. She knew by the pain in his voice what had happened, without his having to tell her.
“How much did you lose?” she asked.
“Everything,” he answered. “Yes, everything!”
“To Sir Percy Rockley?”
There was really no need to ask the question, but somehow she had to be sure.
He nodded his reply.
“Who else?” he enquired.
Chapter 8
“What do you mean, everything?” Carina asked incredulously.
For a moment Lord Lynche did not answer.
She looked at him and thought that she had never seen a man’s face so white beneath a superficial tan.
Then, in a voice that seemed almost strangled, he answered.
“I cannot talk here. Let’s go into the house.”
They dismounted, tying the horses’ bridles to an iron gate near some long grass, which the animals bent their heads to crop greedily.
Lord Lynche set Dipa down onto the ground and he ran ahead of them, obviously delighted at the idea of what seemed to him yet another adventure.
Taking a key from the place where it was hidden underneath one of the window ledges Lord Lynche inserted it into the keyhole.
The door swung open and to her surprise, Carina found herself looking at an exquisitely furnished hall with a wrought iron balustrade to the staircase curving up several floors to a domed roof.
It was, with the exception of Claverly Court, the loveliest house she had ever seen. For a moment she forgot Lord Lynche’s troubles, noting only the inlaid polished furniture, the gilt mirrors hanging on the walls, the marble-topped tables with their elegantly carved legs and the blended colours of the Persian carpets.
“How beautiful!” she said, almost beneath her breath.
Lord Lynche opened the door of a room and led the way into the salon. It had long French windows overlooking the garden and Park and the ceiling was of raised plasterwork. The fireplace was of a delicately veined Italian marble.
Carina thought that here was a room that any woman would love to sit in. Then, with a start, she remembered her duties and looked round for Dipa.
He had disappeared, but they could hear his voice, high and excited in the distance as he romped through the empty house.
“Leave him,” Lord Lynche said. “He can come to no harm.”
They walked across the room to stand in front of a mirror carved with cupids and surmounted by a crown, which Carina knew must have been made in the days of King Charles II.
“It’s all so enchanting!” she exclaimed. “If I were you, I should want to live here – not in The Castle.”
“Do you suppose I don’t want that?” Lord Lynche asked roughly. “I have told you that it was mine, but now – now I don’t know who it belongs to.”
He was suffering so acutely that Carina could not but feel sorry for him.
“Won’t you tell me about it?” she asked quietly but a little timidly, wondering if she was risking yet another rebuke.
“There is little to tell,” he answered, “save that I was drunk and mad to stake The Castle and its grounds on the turn of a card.”
“And you lost?” Carina said.
“I lost,” he echoed. “It seems incredible now that I should have been such a fool and yet at the time it appeared almost a certainty that I would be the winner.”
“And what were the stakes?” Carina asked.
“A hundred thousand pounds, his horses, they are the winning stud at Newmarket, and one or two other things, I forget what. It was not that I wanted anything that he offered, but because he forced me into it and got me into a corner where I would have seemed yellow-hearted and a coward had I backed out at the last moment.”
“It sounds the sort of way that Sir Percy would behave,” Carina remarked.
“Nevertheless, I should have been man enough to refuse him.”
Lord Lynche walked up and down the soft carpet, his hands clenched until the knuckles showed white.
“I was drunk, I tell you. I had been drinking all the evening, but I was not so drunk as not to realise what Percy was doing. He was pushing me, laughing at me, making the others back him up until it was just a duel between the two of us. My God, why did I let him do it?”
Lord Lynche walked across to the window and leaned against it, his head on his arm in a gesture of utter despair.
Carina sat down on a chair by the fireplace. She felt a sense of helplessness, not knowing what to say or how to comfort him. There was, indeed, nothing she could say. How inadequate words were on an occasion like this!
Lord Lynche swung round.
“Can you tell me what I should say to my mother?” he asked and obviously expected no answer as he continued, “because The Castle and the estate have been her whole life. She has lived for it, worked for it, schemed for it – ‘the heritage of the Lynches’. How sick I have been at times of hearing the very word and yet now I am beginning to understand that it is part of our blood.”
“Have you nothing left?” Carina asked. “Could you not manage somehow to keep The Castle itself?”
“I don’t know,” Lord Lynche said helplessly. “I honestly don’t know. I have sent for my lawyer. He will be able to tell me better than anyone what all this means.”
“I am so sorry,” Carina said and, to her surprise, she meant it.
She was sorry to see what, in its way, was a great Empire fall to someone like Sir Percy Rockley. As she said the words, she knew that, for the first time, she was speaking to Lord Lynche as an ordinary man and not as a tyrant she hated and despised because of his attitude to Dipa and his mother.
“What is more it is a debt of honour,” Lord Lynche went on, almost as if he were speaking to himself. “That means it must be paid at once and no doubt Percy will extract his pound of flesh. There wi
ll be no time to notify the tenants, no time to let the pensioners and the old retainers know that I can no longer support them.”
“Surely,” Carina protested, “Sir Percy will – ”
Lord Lynche held up his hand to stop her.
“You have met Percy Rockley,” and his voice was sarcastic and bitter. “Can you imagine him making any concessions or showing any kindness of heart to me or to anyone else?”
“I thought he was your friend,” Carina said in a bewildered voice.
“Friend!” Lord Lynche repeated. “People like Percy have no friends. They have acquaintances and they are all fools like me who think that he is amusing because he helps to pass an idle hour.”
“Is that why you had him here?” Carina asked.
“I had him because he helped me to forget,” Lord Lynche replied.
There was silence and Carina wondered what it was that he had to forget. Was it Chi-Yun, the dancing girl he had once loved so passionately? Or were there other and far more sinister things from which he had sought oblivion by drinking, gambling and keeping company with rakes and libertines?
Lord Lynche was striding up and down the carpet, talking half to himself and half to Carina.
She realised that the pain he was enduring was almost unbearable.
“Perhaps too I brought them here to infuriate my mother,” Lord Lynche was saying. “She has always despised me. She has always told me that I am spineless and a fool. Well, now I have proved her right.”
“I am sure she did not mean those unkind things,” Carina protested, thinking it was too bad that at this moment of tragedy he should feel that even his own flesh and blood were against him.
“No, she never cared for me,” he replied. “She loved my brother to the point of distraction. I was always unwanted. That is why I dreamed of being able to get away, to have a life of my own, unshadowed by The Castle and all it has meant to the Lynches.”
Carina could hear from the note of resignation in his voice that his dream had died, And because, despite herself, she was now really sorry for him, she rose to her feet, and crossing the room put her hand on his arm.
The Fire of Love Page 13