Barbara Cartland - An Introduction to the Pink Collection

“I shut my eyes when I am undressing, and look out of the window when I am dressing,” the Earl said drolly.

“Very ingenious, but we couldn’t count on your visitors to do the same. You really must not let them stay.”

There was silence for a moment, and she wondered if she’d offended him.

Then he said slowly, “I think I should be honest and tell you that the man who is coming here is exceedingly rich. I met him when I was in India and when he heard – I suppose from the newspapers – that I had come into the Earldom, he looked me up and told me that he was very anxious to see my ancestral home.”

“To see your – ancestral – home?” she echoed in a stunned voice.

In silence they both looked around them. They looked up at the grimy ceilings, around at the peeling walls, and down at the shabby furniture.

“He’s going to get a shock, isn’t he?” she said at last.

“A considerable shock,” John said grimly. “I only wish I thought it would scare him off.”

“Why do you want to scare him off?”

“Because I have a horrid feeling I know what he wants of me. We met when I was a penniless sailor and he asked me to a dance he was giving for his daughter, to make up the numbers, I believe. Well, I’m still penniless, but now I have a title.”

“You mean – ?”

“What this man really wants – and I am quite certain it is what he will say when he gets here, is for me to marry his daughter!”

Rena gave a little gasp. “Why should you do that,” she asked, “unless you have fallen in love with her?”

He was silent for a moment, and she felt a strange chill come over her heart.

“No, I’m not in love with her,” he said. “But if her father’s money can restore The Grange and make the people here prosperous again, it couldn’t possibly be my duty, could it? No!”

He checked himself, turned sharply and strode back into the kitchen. Rena stayed where she was for a moment. She was glad that he hadn’t waited for her reply to that question, because she was not sure that she would have known how to answer.

After a minute she followed him into the kitchen, and began making his breakfast.

“Why was I even thinking like that?” he asked. “Of course I shan’t marry where I do not love. If I marry, it will be to a woman I love, who will make me happy, even if we are not particularly rich.”

“I think you’re right,” she said, concentrating on what she was doing, and not looking at him.

“But you don’t think I’ll keep to my resolution?” he asked, shooting her a look.

“I think it could be hard for you if he says he’ll restore The Grange. Suppose he gives you enough money to repair it and bring the estate to life again. You could spend your life, in future, as a country gentleman, with of course, horses and dogs to verify it.”

There was silence for a moment. Then the Earl walked to the window in the kitchen and stood looking out. Rena thought he was looking at the part of the kitchen garden which was desperately untidy.

There were a few cabbages and onions, but for each one of them, there were at least a dozen weeds.

“I suppose,” she mused, “if she loved you, you would perhaps, in time, come to love her.”

She wanted to add ‘and her money’, but thought that sounded rude.

John turned from the window and said in a very positive tone, which seemed somehow to echo round the kitchen:

“I will not sell myself for what they call in the Bible, ‘a mess of pottage.’ Although it might now be thousands of pounds.”

“Well done.”

“I would rather starve than find myself married to a woman for whom I have no feelings, and be subservient to a man with whom I have nothing in common.”

He spoke almost violently.

“But what else can you do?” Rena asked.

“What did you say?”

“Perhaps you should think hard before saying no.” She didn’t know why she was urging him to a course of action that she would hate, but there seemed to be a little demon inside her playing Devil’s Advocate.

“You must remember how dilapidated the house is already. The villagers thought the roof would fall in last Christmas when we had a great deal of snow. By a miracle, it survived, but I doubt if it will next winter.”

He gave her a strange smile.

“Rena, are you urging me to marry for money?”

“No, not exactly, but – are you wise to make a grand gesture, if you might regret it afterwards? This place already means a lot to you. Maybe it will come to mean everything. If you turn down the chance to restore this estate, maybe one day you will regret it.”

She found she was holding her breath for his answer. And for some reason it was desperately important.

“The only thing I will regret,” he said at last, “is putting money before everything. Rena, I’ve learned to trust in fortune. I inherited this property after everyone had been quite certain there was no heir to the Earldom. I found you, and you found the hidden glories beneath the ancient cross.”

“Yes,” she said, glowing with happiness. “Yes!”

He took her hands. “Don’t you see, there is more to come. Much more. The future is full of surprises that we can’t imagine, but which are waiting for us.”

His fervent tone convinced her. This was something he really felt, just as she would feel the same in his position.

“Do I sound like a madman to you?” he asked anxiously.

“Not at all. I know just what you mean?”

“I knew you’d understand. Anyone else would have me put under restraint for such wild talk, but not you. We’ve only known each other a few hours, and yet already you’re the best friend I have. I can tell you things I could tell nobody else. So, keep your hand in mine, my dear friend, and nothing can defeat us.”

With only time to clean one room they settled on the drawing room. John helped her, and proved more adept than she had feared.

“It’s being in the Navy,” he said. “A man develops certain domestic skills.”

He joined her for tea in the kitchen, while she worked out the refreshments she would serve their guests.

“Tell me more about Mr Wyngate,” she said.

“He’s a bit of a mystery man. Nobody knows exactly where he came from, or how he got the money he started with. There’s a rumour that his name isn’t even Wyngate, but nobody knows the truth about that either. However he started, he made a vast fortune in American railroads.”

“You mean he’s American?”

“Not necessarily. That’s just the first place anybody heard of him. He turned up in America, with money that he invested in railroads, and made a fortune, helped, it is said, by marrying an American lady who had money. She died over there a few years ago.

“Then he came to England and started investing in railways here. He might have been looking for fresh fields to conquer, or he might have been English to start with and returned to his roots, but – ”

“Nobody knows,” she finished with him.

“Exactly right. He made another fortune here, then took his daughter and went travelling. I met him in India eighteen months ago, when my ship docked at Bombay. He’d taken over the entire Hotel Raj, and was busy competing with the local Maharajah to see who could spend the most money, the most ostentatiously.

“He gave a ball for his daughter Matilda. I did hear that he’d invited the Viceroy as well, but received a polite refusal, which incensed him. In fact it was rather thin of European guests because nobody liked him very much. He made up the numbers by issuing an invitation to the senior officers of my ship, The Achilles, and that’s how I came to be there.