It was an idea that had already gone through her mind.
Although she thought it extremely incorrect for the Countess to speak in such a manner because of her curiosity she could not help encouraging her.
“Do tell me about the Earl of Royston,” she begged, “I have seen him many times, but I have actually never met him.”
“You have never met him?” the Countess exclaimed. “Then I assure you, Miss Westbury, you are in for a surprise! He is different from other men, very, very different!”
“In what way?”
“I suppose, because he behaves as if he owns the world and everything in it, that one almost begins to believe it is true.”
The Countess paused before she went on:
“In the case of other men that would make them conceited and pompous, but with the Earl it seems so natural to him to have everything his own way that we just give in and treat him as omnipotent.”
She laughed as she spoke and it made her look very pretty.
At the same time there was a look in her eyes that was malicious, and Lydia knew she was longing to be spiteful, both about the Earl and his engagement.
“Have you known His Lordship for a very long time?” she asked.
“For years!” the Countess answered. “As I said, we are very old friends, so I shall be interested, very interested to meet your sister and find out what special attributes she has that have been so sadly lacking in all the other women who have in the past made themselves very much a part of Hunter’s life.”
The nickname slipped out by mistake, and immediately the Countess said firmly:
“Of course, as I have said, the Earl is a law unto himself, and therefore one cannot judge him by the same standards as one would judge other men.” Because she was fascinated and had never before been with somebody who knew the Earl and would talk to her about him, Lydia said very ingenuously: “Another old friend of the Earl’s was dining at my father’s house the other night, the Duchess of Dorchester.”
She saw by the expression in the Countess’s eyes that the name was very familiar and almost as if the words came to her lips before she considered them she said:
“Of course—Daisy! That might well be the reason—I would not be at all surprised! I heard the Duke was furious and swearing revenge!”
She talked as if she was speaking to herself. Then as she realized to whom she was talking, she said quickly:
“Oh, dear, I am talking nonsense! Yes, dear Daisy Dorchester is a friend of mine and of the Earl’s. We all love her!”
She then began to talk of other things deliberately avoiding, Lydia was sure, any further mention of the Earl.
But Lydia had learned what she had wanted to find out, that it might be something to do with the Duchess of Dorchester which had made the Earl propose to Heloise so precipitately and without any warning.
She had thought it strange from the very beginning.
Heloise, while she had been a fellow-guest at parties with him and had of course been introduced, had never spoken about him as having danced with her, or as having sat next to her at dinner.
Had he done so, Lydia was quite certain she would have talked about him and boasted of her success.
When Heloise was in London during the Season every morning she had reiterated over and over again what a success she had been the night before, and had told Lydia of the compliments she had received and the names of the men who had paid them.
There had never been a mention of the Earl of Royston until suddenly out of the blue he was there, asking her to marry him.
‘I wonder what really happened?’ Lydia thought now and felt a little dismally that she would never know.
At the same time, ever since she had learned that she was to go to Honolulu with Heloise she had felt as though she was in a dream.
How could it be possible that she would at least be in the same party as the Earl, and even if he never spoke to her she could look at him and perhaps listen to him.
She had no idea, because her father did not know either, if they were to be just a party of four or if there would be a number of others with them travelling on the Queen’s instructions.
‘Perhaps Papa will know more now,’ Lydia thought.
After she had said goodbye to the Countess and was driving home from the station in the carriage that was waiting for her, she found herself putting what she had heard about the Earl together.
Recalling what she had overheard at the dinner party, she realised now that it all fitted together like a jig-saw puzzle, and almost made a pattern.
She walked into the house to be told that her father wished to see her in the Study immediately upon her arrival.
Without even taking off her travelling-cape she hurried down the passage, wondering what could have happened.
She opened the door and her father looked up from the desk where he was writing to say sharply:
“You are back, and about time too!”
“What is the matter? What is wrong, Papa?”
Lydia pulled off her gloves as she spoke, then unclasped her fur-lined cape and put it down on one of the chairs.
“I did not say that anything was wrong!” Sir Robert replied. “It is just that your sister is impossible to manage when you are not here.”
“I am sorry about that, Papa. What is the difficulty?”
“She keeps asking me to send for Royston as if he was a servant who must obey my command! The man is busy—of course he is busy at this time of the year! He is taking her to Honolulu with him. What more can she expect?”
“She came back from London because she wanted to see him.”
“Well, I told her he is busy,” Sir Robert said, “and Heloise’s having hysterics about it, is not going to make him any more anxious to give up a day’s hunting or shooting, to dance attendance on her!”
Lydia sat down on a chair beside the desk.
“Are you saying, Papa, that Heloise has not seen the Earl since she came home from London?’
“No, she has not! I told you, he is busy!” Sir Robert snapped.
Lydia could understand how annoying it must be for her sister, having returned especially to see the Earl to find there was nobody there to amuse her.
If she had stayed in London there would always have been admirers who could be invited to dinner or hostesses who would have been delighted to entertain her as the fiancée of the Earl of Royston.
She knew how difficult Heloise could be in such circumstances, and taking her cape and gloves from the chair she said:
“I will go and talk to Heloise, Papa. I presume she will see the Earl tonight as you are dining with the Marquess before the Ball?”
“Of course she will see him!” Sir Robert said. “And you had better tell her not to make a scene. Royston will not stand for any woman ranting at him—I am quite certain of that!”
Lydia was certain of it too.
She went upstairs to her sister’s bedroom and found her resting.
She was looking exquisitely beautiful with her hair which had been washed earlier in the day falling over her shoulders, and wearing a negligee.
She was lying on a chaise longue in front of the fire, an ermine rug over her legs.
“So you are back!” she said in the same aggressive tone that her father had used. “I wasted my time coming home. I might just as well have stayed in London with you.”
“You would have found it very tiring,” Lydia replied. “I must have had nearly a hundred fittings on your behalf, but the gowns are lovely!”
“What is the point of having lovely gowns with nobody to admire them?” Heloise pouted.
“I have brought the white lace with me and it looks absolutely wonderful!” Lydia said. “If you wear your mother’s diamond necklace with it you will undoubtedly be the best dressed and loveliest woman in the Ball room!”
“I shall be very angry if I am anything else!” Heloise replied sulkily.
Lydia looked at the clock.
/>
“You should have your bath in another hour-and-a-half,” she said. “I will just go and take off my bonnet and be ready to do your hair.”
As she walked along to her own bedroom she thought she was very tired and what she would really like was a cup of tea.
She found one of the housemaids unpacking her trunk and asked her to order it from the kitchen.
She then sat down in front of her mirror, thinking it was a good thing that she was not going to the Ball tonight.
“I would be much too tired to enjoy myself,” she told her reflection.
Then she wondered if that was true.
She was tired of being fitted for gowns she would never wear, tired of trying to keep her sister in a good mood.
If only she could be allowed just for once to be herself, to be an individual, who was not just a shadow in her sister’s life, she was sure she could enjoy herself.
Then almost as if the sun was shining through the window or the lights all suddenly came on at once, she remembered she was going to travel across the world to an exotic land.
And she would be accompanying, whether he was aware of it or not, the Earl of Royston.
The following day Heloise when she awoke was all smiles.
It was not difficult for Lydia to know that the Earl had been charming and very apologetic for being so neglectful.
“He said he had thought that I was going to be in London until yesterday,” Heloise said, “and as he was going away so soon he had planned every minute of his time and would have found it difficult to make so many cancellations, even though he was longing to see me.”
Lydia smiled to herself and thought the Earl had certainly been very tactful.
Her father too told her that the Ball had been a great success.
“Your sister outshone everybody!” he said proudly. “There was no doubt that Royston thought so too.” “I am glad about that, Papa.”
“She cannot expect him to follow her about like a tame poodle,” Sir Robert growled. “Not his style at all! You had better put some sense into her head before she gets married.”
“I will do my best, Papa,” Lydia replied, “but Heloise feels she had a right to a great deal of his attention.”
“Of course! Of course!” Sir Robert agreed. “The trouble is that Royston has had too much attention himself in the past!”
“I met a lady on the train,” Lydia said, “who told me she knew him very well. She was the Countess of Milbourne.”
Sir Robert laughed.
“She certainly knows him well!” he said with a note in his voice that conveyed far more than his actual words.
Then his mood changed and he said angrily:
“You do not want to go chit-chatting to other women about Royston, and certainly not to repeat anything you hear to your sister. Do you understand?”
“Yes, of course I understand. Papa, and I would not think of doing anything unkind. But Heloise can be very demanding.”
Sir Robert knew this was true and as if he had no solution to the problem he merely said ominously: “Keep her away from women like the Countess, and that is an order where you also are concerned!” Lydia did not bother to say that she was never likely to meet the Countess or any of the other social personalities who were friends with the Earl, except in unusual circumstances.
Then she remembered that if she was to travel with her sister and her father to Hawaii, that would certainly be ‘unusual circumstances.’
There was however so much to do over Christmas and so many arrangements to be made before they could leave in early January that Lydia had no time to think of her own social problems.
She had to plan for Heloise’s gowns, trunks, bonnet-boxes and Heloise herself.
It was only at the last minute that she realised she had had no time to think of what she herself should wear on the trip and that she had not even considered what would be necessary for her to pack.
It was fortunate that she could wear some of Heloise’s old clothes, and there were a number of summer dresses that her sister would never look at again and which she thought had been thrown away.
There were also several evening gowns she did not like and which she refused to wear.
Lydia picked out the most simple of them and had the seamstress in the house remove some of the decoration from the evening-gowns.
She not only knew that she must in no way try to attract attention to herself, but she was also aware because she was, as she admitted, a shadowy figure, she looked best in things that were very simple.
This meant gowns made either in white or the soft pastel shades which as a general rule did not particularly suit Heloise.
She preferred to wear the bright blue of her eyes, the pink of her cheeks or white evening gowns which were elaborately embroidered with diamante or decorated with flowers.
She also wore gowns ornamented with feathers or row upon row of expensive lace.
Because Lydia seldom appeared at any of the social parties in the neighbourhood and only occasionally at those which took place in her father’s house, she had very few gowns of her own.
Those she had were home-made or else had been discarded by Heloise and re-fashioned to suit her by the seamstress.
“I shall certainly look like the beggar-maid at His Majesty’s Court!” Lydia told herself remembering what Heloise had said.
Then she thought it was very unlikely that she would attend the Coronation as her sister would do, but perhaps would be able to see it by standing in the crowd.
At any rate nobody could prevent her from seeing Hawaii, and whenever she had a minute to herself she ran to the Library to thumb through the Encyclopaedias for references and looked daily along the crowded bookshelves for anything which might tell her more about the islands.
All she could find out was that they had been discovered by Captain Cook who, while at first he had been given an overwhelming welcome, was later killed by the Hawaiian warriors.
The bones of the greatest navigator m the world had been scattered so that it had been impossible to find and bury them all completely.
This had all happened a century ago, and by all accounts Hawaii which was an independent native Kingdom, was now very friendly towards the British, although the Americans were encroaching upon the islands, determined to annexe their territory to their own country.
Lydia stored everything she learned about Hawaii in her mind, only wishing she had more time and when she was in London could have visited the British Museum, or perhaps one of the big Libraries to find out more.
‘There must be somebody who can tell me about them,’ she thought despairingly.
As if somebody had whispered the answer to her, she suddenly knew that the person who would undoubtedly know more about them than anybody else would be the Earl.
It was only the day before they were actually leaving that the Earl came to the house to make the last-minute arrangements with her father.
“If he is coming here I want to see him alone,” Heloise said, “so do not monopolise him, Papa! You know that once you start talking about horses it is impossible for anybody else to get a word in edgeways!”
She spoke in an impertinent manner which always made Lydia feel uncomfortable, and Sir Robert said sharply:
“He says in the note he sent me that he wants to talk about the journey. You will have plenty of time with eight days on the ship across the Atlantic, and God knows how many in the train across America, to talk your head off!”
Heloise suddenly veered round like a weather-vane and said plaintively:
“I have no wish to travel all that way! Why can we not stay at home and get married?”
“You will do that when you return,” Lydia said, “and you know you want a Spring wedding with your bridesmaids all carrying Spring flowers.”
“I have changed my mind,” Heloise said. “I think it would be far more appropriate to carry orchids.”
“They are not so colourful,” Lydia answer
ed, “but we can talk about it on the trip.”
She felt with a little throb of her heart that it was unlikely her sister would talk about anything else except her wedding, and it would therefore be difficult to twist the conversation round to the subjects she wanted to learn about.
About America, of which she knew very little, and of course, especially about Hawaii.
Already she was seeing it in her mind’s eye as an El Dorado of sunshine, palm-trees, a blue sea with waves breaking on golden sands, and the vivid colours of the flowers.
All this she felt would make it seem like a fairytale land.
“I am so lucky, so very, very lucky,” she told herself.
She found it hard to believe, after being pushed into the background for so long and told by Heloise not to appear unless it was absolutely necessary, that she was actually to go with her on this fascinating journey.
Heloise, she soon learnt was not at all pleased by the idea.
“I cannot think why I could not have my lady’s-maid with me,” she complained. “It is quite ridiculous to suggest that Jones would make trouble on the ship with the sailors. She is too old, for one thing!”
“It is very exciting for me to be able to come in her place,” Lydia said, “and you know, if you are honest, that I can do your hair far better than Jones can!”
“Well, you are not to push yourself forward, just because you are my sister,” Heloise warned crossly. “I do not want another woman with me. I would have much preferred to be the only one.”
Lydia stared at her for a moment before she said: “Are there to be no other members of the party except you and Papa?”
“No, of course not!” Heloise said. “The Earl said it was his idea that I should go with him when the Queen asked him to represent her at the King’s Coronation, because he was frightened that in his absence I might fall in love with somebody else.”
She preened herself a little before she went on:
The Island of Love (Camfield Series No. 15) Page 4
