The housekeeper and the two maids were opening the boxes.
As they took out the contents, Devona could only stare as if entranced.
There were two evening gowns. One was of a pale blue, the colour of her eyes and the other was white.
Both were very very different from any gown that she had ever seen before. They were exquisitely designed and undoubtedly made by a Master hand.
The other boxes held two day gowns that Devona felt she would be reticent to wear.
But, when they opened the last box, she gave a cry of delight.
It was a riding habit in what she knew was the latest fashion. Piqué had been declared by Paris to be smart for the French women who paraded in the Bois de Boulogne and London had just come round to copying his designs.
The one the Earl had ordered was in a deep blue trimmed with white braid and it had a smart and pretty muslin blouse to wear with it.
The footmen had by now come back again and this time they were carrying hat boxes.
When the housekeeper opened them, Devona saw bonnets that she had never imagined could be so pretty and there was also a riding hat in the very latest fashion with a high crown and it was trimmed with a gauze of the same blue as the habit and floated down behind.
“They are lovely! Lovely!” Devona said excitedly.
“I suggest, miss,” the housekeeper said, “you wear the blue tonight and, if it doesn’t fit you, I’ll be surprised. It comes from a shop in Bond Street which be famous for turnin’ out the ladies who patronises them as if they were Princesses.”
“That is who I shall feel I am,” Devona laughed.
She had not exaggerated.
The blue gown totally transformed her and, when she looked in the mirror, it was hard to believe that she was herself.
As was the fashion at the moment, the gown had quite an amount of ornamentation at the bottom of the skirt and on the short sleeves.
It was also made of soft material that clung to her figure.
”Now, miss, you looks as you ought to look,” the housekeeper commented.
“I find it difficult to believe it’s me,” she replied.
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” the housekeeper went on, “if his Lordship finds it difficult to recognise you.”
She was joking, but Devona felt that she might be speaking the truth.
She was well aware how different she looked in these lovely up to date gowns instead of the darned and faded clothes that were all she had had for all these years.
The housekeeper put the finishing touches to her hair and then, as Devona rose from the stool in front of the dressing table, she stood back to admire her.
“All you wants now, miss,” she said, “is a diamond necklace and earrings and you’d look like a Queen.”
Devona laughed.
“I feel like one without the necklace. I only hope his Lordship will not be disappointed.”
She smiled at the housekeeper and the two maids before she walked towards the door.
“Thank you, thank you,” she said. “I am so grateful to you for transforming me.”
She did not wait for them to answer, but ran down the stairs.
The housekeeper looked at the housemaids.
“Now there’s a nice young lady for you,” she said. “And as pretty as a picture if you asks me.”
The butler pulled open the drawing room doors for Devona.
She straightened herself and managed to walk in slowly and sedately.
The Earl was standing in front of the fireplace.
She walked towards him carefully and sank down in a low curtsey.
“Thank you! Thank you!” she sighed. “How could you have been so wonderful as to buy all these beautiful clothes for me?”
“Let me look at you,” the Earl asked.
Devona smiled, then twirled round so that her full skirt flew out.
“Now you look exactly as I expected,” he said. “I promise you that you will take London by storm.”
“I am quite happy to be here,” Devona answered quickly. “And, if you make this house look as glorious as my new gowns, it will be like living in Fairyland.”
The Earl was thinking that, as he had expected, she certainly blossomed in the right clothes and still she had been surprisingly beautiful even in her rags and tatters.
Now he had to admit that she would undoubtedly outshine any of the beauties with whom he was familiar in the Mayfair ballrooms and then the Prince Regent himself would certainly invite her to Carlton House.
Next the butler in a stentorian voice announced that dinner was served.
The Earl offered Devona his arm.
“Tonight,” he said, “we must live up to your gown and I expect that our conversation will be as witty and as scintillating as you look.”
Devona laughed.
“Now you are asking too much. I must start with one step forward at a time and your marvellous, wonderful gowns are the first step. But before I go any further I have to be taught what to do.”
It passed through the Earl’s mind that it would be interesting and perhaps exciting to teach Devona a great number of things.
He realised that, despite her intelligence, she was completely ignorant of the world.
Most of all she was ignorant about men.
As they had dinner, he thought it was years since he had dined with a woman who was not flirting with him.
Devona was asking him excitedly about the War, Paris and inevitably about his horses.
“You have done so much and seen so much,” she enthused with a little sigh. “All I have done is read.”
“That was using your brain,” the Earl replied, “and a great number of women however successful and popular they are, don’t use their brains.”
“But they must have done to shine at the top of the Social world,” Devona remarked.
“Is that what you want to do?” the Earl asked.
“You know I don’t want to go away from here. I want to help you as you have asked me to. Nothing could be more challenging than to rebuild The Hall so that it is as resplendent as the gowns you have bought for me.”
“Do you really think it would be enough for you?” the Earl asked. “If you are honest, you know that you want to fall in love, get married and to have children.”
“Of course I want children,” Devona said. “Being an only child myself was very lonely and – ”
She stopped herself abruptly.
She was just about to say that her father had been disappointed not to have a son and that the doctors had said after she was born that it was unlikely her mother would have another child.
Devona had remembered just in time that she was thinking of her real father and not the ghastly man who had made her life a misery.
‘I must be careful, very careful,’ she said to herself. ‘Otherwise, because I am so excited by what is happening, the Earl might be suspicious.’
She was suddenly terrified.
If he ever found out the truth that she had lied and deceived him, he might take her money from her and throw her out.
Not only from the house, but from his life.
He was at the moment the only friend she had and the only person she could talk to.
The only person who was protecting her from the world she knew nothing about and was afraid of.
Quickly, because the Earl was looking at her and waiting for her to finish what she was saying, she said,
“Tonight of all nights we must talk of everything that is happy and everything that will be successful in the future.”
The Earl did not reply and she asked,
“Now tell me what you are planning to do about the paintings? They are so lovely and as I know very valuable and only the greatest experts must clean and restore them.”
“You are quite right about that,” the Earl said.
He was fully aware that Devona had changed the conversation.
He was wondering why and he was curi
ous.
She had no idea how very revealing her eyes were and the Earl watched the expression on her face change swiftly from one emotion to another.
He was trying hard to read her thoughts behind the varying expressions.
He had been noted, when he was in the Army, for using his intuition and he had always prided himself that he knew more about a man he interviewed by talking to him than by reading the credentials he had produced.
He was aware that Devona was continually thinking thoughts that she did not express in words.
She intrigued him.
It seemed to him extraordinary that, having lived a solitary isolated life, she was much more difficult for him to understand than any other woman he had ever met.
He thought he knew only too well every movement they made, every word they said and every expression in their eyes as they looked at him.
Although it seemed to him absurd, Devona, young though she was and with such an extraordinary upbringing, kept him guessing.
She was, in many ways, mysterious.
To the Earl it was a challenge and one that was impossible for him to refuse.
He wanted to know more about her.
He wanted to know why, although it seemed just impossible, she was related to the man he so loathed and despised. A man who had ruined the lives of so many of his relations.
It was quite impossible to think of Devona ruining anyone’s life.
He was certain the moment she appeared in public that there would be dozens of men who would lose their hearts to her.
The point was that she was very different to other women and, as he knew, completely unspoilt.
If he had been told there was a woman as beautiful as Devona, who had lived a life as isolated as a nun and who could dine with him without trying to attract him as a man, he would not have thought it possible.
He was aware that Devona admired and respected him and she was, he thought, prepared to obey him.
And yet she was not behaving as any other woman would have done.
Although he could not really explain it, there was a barrier between them which he could not climb over.
‘What is it?’ he asked himself many times. ‘What could it possibly be?’
He could not find the answer.
When they had finished their excellent dinner, they went back into the drawing room.
Devona stopped in front of one of the gold-framed mirrors to look at herself.
“Can this really be me?” she asked innocently.
“I think that is a question that you should be asking the first man you meet,” the Earl said, “and that is me. Shall I tell you all the flattering things I am thinking?”
“I suppose it is not really a fair test,” Devona said. “You have known me such a short time that you have no idea what I was like before I was completely transformed by your magic wand into someone quite different.”
“What do you mean exactly? So how do you feel quite different?” the Earl asked in an amused voice.
“I think in a way this gown has given me courage and a bravery I have not had before.”
“What do you mean by that?” the Earl asked.
“I suppose I have always felt rather crushed and of no importance as I walked about in my rags and there was no one to notice me.”
She paused before she went on,
“Now I feel that I can hold my head high and I will not be afraid of what happens in the future.”
“In other words you are ready to conquer the world with your beauty?”
“I don’t think beauty can do that,” Devona said. “I think it has to be an instinct which comes from the brain, the heart and the soul. They all three work together to make one what one should be or perhaps what one tries to be rather than what one is.”
He knew quite well the way her brain was working and he was astounded that she should have thought it all out so logically.
It was the sort of conversation he had with some of his friends who were as intelligent as he was and it was something he had certainly not expected from a girl.
“I can see, Devona,” he said, “that you are going to frighten a number of your admirers by being too clever. Men like women to look invitingly with their eyes, listen to them with their ears and give polite replies to the things they say.”
Devona grinned.
“I don’t believe you. Any man who had any brain would only want to talk to someone who could understand what he was saying and perhaps argue with him. Until he had to make himself think even more intelligently than the woman who was confronting him.”
“I know you are thinking of the ancient Greeks to whom we owe the beginning of thought.”
“Of course I am. They started the questioning mind which made people try to understand them and, of course, argue with them.”
“I have just told you,” the Earl said, “that men do not like women who argue.”
Devona sighed.
“In which case I shall just have to go on talking to the horses who never contradict me. The flowers and the trees also listen and always understand what I am saying.”
“What you are going to do,” the Earl said firmly, “is to stay with one of my relations in London and let her introduce you to the Social world that I think you will find amusing and interesting if not particularly inspiring.”
“I was thinking of something entirely different last night,” Devona smiled.
“What was that?” the Earl asked.
“If I can afford it as I can now, I will ask someone, preferably a man, to take me to Greece, Egypt and perhaps to India or China. They are the places I have read about and the places where I could learn a great deal.”
“And when you have learned all that they can teach you,” the Earl asked, “what are you going to do with it?”
Devona threw up her hands.
“Perhaps in some way I don’t yet understand, I can make a contribution to the world that will make it happier than it is already.”
The Earl stared at her.
He knew that she was speaking with all sincerity and yet he thought it extraordinary that she should have such ideas.
They were the sort of ambitions young students at Oxford and Cambridge might develop or perhaps an older man than himself who had seen the devastation that can be caused by war.
He would want to give those who had suffered a peace that would be spiritual and therefore less agonising than the humdrum world they lived in.
“I think that you are now frightening me, Devona,” he said aloud.
“Frightening you? Why should you be frightened?”
“What will happen to you in the outside world of which you know nothing? I am beginning to think that you have two alternatives, either to lead a Revolution or to be dismally disappointed by everything you find.”
“And, if I was to lead a Revolution, what would it be against?” Devona asked.
“I would think the real answer to that is stupidity and ignorance,” the Earl replied.
Devona thought for a moment and then she said,
“I think you are right. I am sure more people suffer from those than from anything else.”
It passed through the Earl’s mind that it was stupid of his uncle to become a miser. He had punished himself by not enjoying the comforts his money could buy.
His ignorance was in not realising at the end of his life that he had achieved nothing but a grave over which no one would mourn.
Then he gazed at Devona.
She was so lovely with her fair hair shining in the candlelight and her new gown framed her as her beauty had clearly never been framed before.
As he had thought so often in the last few hours, she was unique and so different in every way from any woman he had ever come across.
‘I find her,’ he thought, ‘almost hypnotic and the sooner I let her find her own feet for herself in her own way the better.’
CHAPTER SIX
Devona and the Earl were dr
iving quickly back to the house.
They had set out earlier after breakfast to explore more of the estate and it had taken them longer than they expected.
Their horses were instinctively racing each other and it was a dead heat as they drew up at the entrance to the stables.
“That was a wonderful ride,” Devona enthused.
As she spoke, she wondered if perhaps she was not being very tactful.
The Earl had been horrified at the state of the land they had been inspecting, but he was, however, smiling as they rode into the stable yard.
The grooms came hurrying out to take their horses.
“You ’ave guests, my Lord,” the Head Groom said.
“Guests?” the Earl quizzed. “Who are they?”
“Lord Walton, the Lord Lieutenant.”
The Earl wondered why he was calling and then he knew that it was to be expected now that he had come into the title and taken over The Hall.
As they walked towards the house, he was so glad that Devona was wearing the new riding habit he had given her and she certainly looked entrancing.
He wondered if she would be a surprise to Lord Walton.
Then, as they reached the steps leading to the front door, they saw a most impressive carriage drawn by four horses.
Devona said nothing because she was hoping that this visit would not spoil the afternoon.
She had already planned to take the Earl in another direction where there was a large wood, which would at least not have been ruined by so much neglect.
They walked into the hall and the butler said,
“There be guests waiting for your Lordship in the drawing room.”
“I hope you have given them something to drink.”
“A bottle of champagne, my Lord.”
Devona would have gone upstairs and she actually had her foot on the bottom step when the Earl demanded,
“Come with me!”
She did as she was told and wondered if the Lord Lieutenant would stay for luncheon.
Then, as they went into the drawing room, she saw that there was not one man but two and also a woman.
Lord Walton, the Lord Lieutenant, came forward with his hand outstretched.
“I should have welcomed you, Narbrooke, to the neighbourhood before now,” he said, “but I only heard yesterday that your uncle was dead and that the funeral had already taken place.”
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