Barbara Cartland - Desire of the Heart

She experienced the stabbing pang of anguish that always came to her when she thought of her real age. Thirty-eight! In another two years she would be forty.

‘I am getting old.’

She felt herself shiver with sudden cold and then she threw up her golden head with an air of defiance.

She was not old yet and she could still drive men crazy with love of her. Because he loved her, Drogo was prepared to marry a girl he had never seen and because he loved her, she would not have to be a Dowager on the dais.

She heard a bell ring and a door open downstairs. George must have returned. Lily gave a last look at herself and turned to the door. She went down the stairs slowly, the froufrou of her silk petticoats rustling as she moved.

The servants were bringing in the luggage. The door of the library was open and she knew that George would be waiting for her in there and with him, his niece.

She walked quickly across the marble hall and into the library.

George was standing with his back to the fireplace and beside him was a girl.

For a minute Lily could only see an old-fashioned grey travelling coat and an ugly green felt hat trimmed with a feather but, as George spoke, the girl turned towards the door and Lily could see her face.

Then she laughed, a little light laugh of relief and at the same time of surprise, for the girl was wearing darkened glasses and there was nothing about her that was in the very least distinguished let alone attractive.

When Cornelia learned that she must travel to England, she had felt that the end of the world had come.

At first she tried to argue, to protest and to refuse and then, when she realised that nothing was to be gained by defying the Solicitor, she went in search of Jimmy.

She found him where she expected he would be, cleaning out the stables and whistling between his teeth. He was grey-haired, ugly as sin and there was not a bone in his body that had not been broken at some time or another by the horses he served.

Cornelia loved him.

“They are sending me away, Jimmy,” she said in a low voice and he knew by one look at her white face just what she was suffering.

“I was expecting it, mavourneen . You can’t stay here now Miss Withington, God rest her soul, has gone to Heaven.”

“Why not?” Cornelia asked passionately. This is my home, this is where I belong. These grand relations of Papa’s have never wanted me before, why should they want me now?”

“You know the answer to that as well as I do meself,” Jimmy replied.

“Of course I do,” Cornelia retorted scornfully. “It’s my money – money I did not want and that came a year too late to be of any use.”

Jimmy sighed.

He had heard this many times and the expression on his face made Cornelia recall how bitterly she had cried when she had first learned of the great fortune that her Godmother in America had left her.

It seemed so senseless and so pointless for her to be rich when she wanted nothing that Rosaril could not give her. She remembered how her father had cried out against his poverty and how her mother had yearned for pretty dresses. And too late, a year after they were both dead, money poured in on her when she wanted nothing.

It was a long time before she was able to laugh at the way Jimmy had taken the news of her fortune. She told him about it in a deliberately unemotional voice that denied the tears she had shed but a few hours earlier.

“I am rich, Jimmy,” she had said. “My Godmother has died in America and has left me a great fortune in oil shares. It comes to thousands of pounds in English money.”

“Begorra and what will you be doin’ with all that gold?” Jimmy asked.

Cornelia shrugged her shoulders.

“I have not the slightest idea.”

“Maybe we’ll be takin’ yet another peep at that dainty little lady that Captain Fitzpatrick was showin’ us only last Wednesday,” Jimmy suggested slyly.

In the end they paid twenty-five pounds for the mare after days of haggling and Jimmy had asked for nothing else.

Cousin Aline too had taken the news of Cornelia’s inheritance characteristically.

“It’s a great responsibility, dear child,” she said gently, “and you must pray for God’s guidance for you will find such responsibility hard to carry on your own shoulders.”

“I don’t want the money or the responsibility,” Cornelia said sulkily.

It was a week later that Cousin Aline had suggested that, if they could afford to employ Mrs. O’Hagan four mornings a week instead of two, it would be a great help.

For herself Cornelia had wanted nothing. In fact she had done her best to forget that the money was there. Letters came to her from the Bank in Dublin, but these she left unanswered on the untidy desk that had once been her father’s.

But it was good to know that she did not have to worry about the tradesmen’s accounts and that their bills could be paid as soon as they were presented. That in itself was the only benefit her fortune brought her and it made no difference in her life until with Cousin Aline’s death everything was changed.

Cornelia had never dreamt that the death of the elderly woman, who had lived at Rosaril ever since she could remember, was going to mean a revolution as far as she was concerned.

She had never imagined that old Mr. Musgrave, who came down from Dublin for the funeral, would write to her uncle, Lord Bedlington, in London to tell him that his niece was now living alone and unchaperoned in the middle of Ireland and that something should be done about it.

It was only when Mr. Musgrave arrived with Lord Bedlington’s instructions to bring her over to England as if she was a parcel that she realised what was happening to her and railed at him for interfering.

“It was my duty, Miss Bedlington,” Mr. Musgrave said quietly. “You are a young lady of importance. And if you will forgive my saying so, I have thought for a long time that you should take your place in the Social world that you belong to.”

“I belong here,” she cried and knew, even while she said it, that it was no longer true.

“You’ve grown up and we’ve been after forgettin’ it,” Jimmy said when she told him in the stables. “You were eighteen six months ago and though it seems only yesterday that you were so small I had to lift you up onto old Sergeant’s back and hold you there for fear you should fall off, time has passed by right enough. You’re a young lady, mavourneen , and ’tis ‘miss’ I should be callin’ you and touchin’ me hat.”

“And if you ever do so I shall hit you!” Cornelia cried. “Oh, Jimmy! Jimmy ! Why must I go away? I love Rosaril. It is a part of me – I cannot live without you and the horses and the dogs and the rain blowing from the hills and the clouds driving in from the Atlantic.”

Tears were running down her cheeks as she spoke and she saw Jimmy turn away from her because there were tears in his eyes too.

From then on everything was a nightmare.

More than once she thought of running away and hiding herself in the hills and refusing to go back. But she knew that if she did they would easily punish her by selling the horses or refusing to pay Jimmy.

It would not be the first time he had gone without his wages, but she could not let him suffer now.

So she left him in charge and drove off with Mr. Musgrave to the Station with her eyes so blinded with misery that the whole world seemed grey and utterly desolate.

She was indeed as helpless as a child those last few days at Rosaril. It was Jimmy who thought of everything even of her clothes.

“You won’t be goin’ to London in breeches, mavourneen ?” he asked.