His dark hair was awry, as if he had been running an exasperated hand through it time and time again.
Then she could not help noticing his long legs that looked even longer in dungarees.
He might not be as large as Lord Taverner, but she thought he was the most handsome man she had ever met.
More than that, he was the kindest.
“Have you any idea what it is?” he asked, waving a hand towards the structure he was painting.
It still looked to Selena like a magnified version of something very like a child’s toy. She spread her hands in a gesture of surrender.
“A kite?” she finally tried.
“Bravo!”
He seemed genuinely pleased with her suggestion.
“You are nearly correct in that my invention has been designed on the principles of a kite. It is known as a glider and soon it will enable me to take to the air.”
To Selena it was as though someone had punched her in the stomach, leaving her no way to breathe.
“You mean – to fly?”
The Earl stepped back and admired his machine.
“At present I have no means of powering it. But all round the world there are people working on this problem. When I met you on the Channel ferry, I was returning from a meeting with a German enthusiast who knew the famous Otto Lilienthal.
“Herr Lilienthal published a splendid book on aerodynamics, which I have. He was inspired by the designs of Leonardo da Vinci and studied the flight of birds so that he could build a heavier-than-air flying machine. He made hundreds of flights in the various gliders he built. Unfortunately, he crashed in one of them a few years ago and was killed.”
“How dreadful!” cried Selena as she looked at the machine in horror, “and yet you mean to try and fly in that yourself?”
“Indeed, and quite soon I hope. This is the latest in a long line of models I have built and test flown. Each has been an improvement on the previous one.”
The Earl looked at her in a kindly way.
“People have been working on these machines for a long time. In 1853, Sir George Cayley constructed a glider that would carry a human. He had experimented with wing design for years and worked out ways of controlling the glider with such ideas as rudders and tail elevators, like this one here – ”
The Earl gently touched the end of the long tail.
“Sam and I have been working really hard on this design, haven’t we, Sam?”
Selena suddenly realised that at the back of the barn was a young man dressed in similar dungarees to the Earl.
“Ay, sir,” agreed Sam. “That we have.”
“He’s a genius,” the Earl said enthusiastically. “He has fingers that can fit the tiniest pieces of strut or canvas into place, not to mention nuts and bolts.”
Sam blushed and muttered incomprehensibly.
Selena looked again at the machine.
“What did you call it – a glider?”
“That’s right. I hope that if it flies well, I can make an engine that will provide the power to take it into the air and make it fly. There’s a chap in Chard in Somerset who has flown a small model machine with a steam engine.”
“Is that what you will use?”
The Earl shook his head.
“I’m looking at the kinds of motors that are used to propel motor cars.”
He took Selena to the other part of the barn, where she saw there were various engines on benches.
“Do you possess a motor car?” she asked him. “Mr. Anstruther has one and it is quite exciting to ride in. But I know nothing about the car’s engine. I do know that every time we drove out the machine kept on having to have its tyres changed because they punctured!”
The Earl laughed.
“No, unfortunately I cannot afford a motor car.”
Selena looked again at the glider.
“How do you get it into the air without any sort of power?”
The Earl looked delighted at her question.
“I knew that you were an intelligent girl. What will happen is that Sam and I will put the glider on a cart and – come with me.”
He led Selena to the door of the barn.
Whilst they were talking, the hail had passed over and the clouds had moved away. The air now had a pearly clarity that gave the garden a lovely freshness.
He took her round to the back of the barn.
“There,” he called and pointed to a hill in the near distance. “That is part of the Wakefield estate. Sam and I can drive the cart with the glider to its top and on the other side of the hill is a sheer drop, which makes it the perfect launching place. I will mount the machine and take hold of the wires that control the rudder. Sam and Joe will push the glider off the top of the hill and – well, I shall be flying or I suppose I should call it gliding!”
Selena listened to him with rising distress.
“It sounds terribly dangerous! Are you not worried you will crash like the German you just told me about?”
The Earl shrugged his shoulders.
“As I said, I have already flown a number of gliders we have built and I am still here!”
Selena was impressed by his casual approach.
“What is it about these flying machines that could have made you so dedicated?”
They were standing by a low wall. The Earl leaned against it and looked at his hands for a few moments.
“When I was eight years old, I was climbing a tree and fell. As I crashed to the ground all I could think of was – wouldn’t it be wonderful if I was a bird and could soar up in the air rather than crash down to earth.
“I broke my leg in two places and Mama cried a lot. I told her not to worry and that one of these days I would be able to fly. I do think she thought I was mad and later my wife did too!”
“Did you try flying your gliders whilst you were married?”
“I was experimenting with gliders when we became engaged, but, after our wedding, Caroline persuaded me to stop. She insisted that she did not want to become a widow too soon!”
A painful expression crossed his face.
“Instead it was you who became a widower and that must have seemed ironic.”
The Earl ignored her remark.
“So then, left on my own, I thought I might as well return to my first ambitions. That’s when I began to study aerodynamics and methods of controlling flight seriously.”
To Selena it seemed that he had poured his distress at losing his wife and child into his interest in flying.
Her heart ached for his pain.
“I hope you will be really careful now,” she said in a rallying tone. “We are going to be working very hard on your gardens and it would be such a shame if you were not alive to see the result!”
“So that is all you care about, is it? That you and Jemima should have your efforts properly appreciated?”
Selena wanted to say that, no, she wanted above all for him to keep alive so that she could enjoy spending time with him – even if he did not care a jot for her.
“That’s it exactly.”
“Then I will certainly try to keep alive!”
There was a short silence while he looked through the arch in the yew hedge to where she and Joe had been working. Already the pattern made by the little box hedges was beginning to emerge from the clogging weeds.
“How wonderful it would be if I could fly over the garden and see your work from on high. It would look so different – a veritable bird’s eye view.”
Selena clapped her hands together.
“That sounds wonderful!”
He looked at her.
“Let’s make a pact. You and Jemima make my gardens the loveliest in the Kingdom and I will take you up in the first powered flying machine I design.”
“A pact,” Selena agreed solemnly.
She spat into her hand and held it up high. The Earl immediately spat into his hand and put it against hers, then gripped it tightly.
“Cros
s my heart if I lie,” added Selena, crossing her breast with her free hand.
Then they laughed together.
“That’s what I used to do with my girlfriends when I was young. It was a very solemn promise.”
The Earl became serious.
“Would you really not be afraid to fly with me?”
“Up towards Heaven? I would trust you to take me there and bring me back again.”
Their eyes now met and for a moment Selena felt a delicious sense of closeness to him.
Suddenly something in the Earl’s face changed.
“I have bothered you long enough with my stupid activities,” he stated and there was a dismissive remoteness in his voice that stung Selena.
“Now that the hail has gone I must get back to the digging or the garden will never be finished,” she mumbled and walked swiftly away from him.
When it grew dark, Selena and Joe looked through the gloom at what they had achieved and agreed that it was impressive.
“We will soon put this place to rights,” she told the boy.
“If you don’t mind my sayin’ so, you’s works that mighty well for a girl,” he commented solemnly.
Selena laughed and stretched her back.
“I am going to be so stiff in the morning, it’s a long time since I did this much digging.”
“Shall I ask me Mam for some embrocation?”
She wrinkled her nose at the mere thought of the smell of turpentine in the liniment oil.
“It’s very sweet of you, Joe, but I think it will be all right.”
Back at the cottage she told Jemima what they had managed to complete and Jemima showed Selena the plans she had been working on.
“Oh, I nearly forgot, a letter has come for you?”
“It must be from my stepfather,” Selena said as she took the envelope Jemima gave her.
It was quite curt.
“Mr. Anstruther sounds rather upset, but he accepts that it is better if I don’t return to him until after Beatrice has had her baby. But he adds that he is not at all sure of the propriety of my staying on the Earl’s estate.”
“Write back and stress that you are living with me and hardly ever see the Earl,” suggested Jemima.
*
Over the next few weeks it was nearly true.
Selena and Joe worked hard at clearing the ground in several of the garden rooms so that they could be planted up before the summer weather arrived.
Every now and then, Selena would pause and look towards the barn. She longed to go and see how the Earl was progressing with his glider, but without an invitation she did not like to.
She wanted to experience again the closeness she had felt to him when she had first seen his flying machine.
But during firstly the days and then the weeks that followed, although they talked in a friendly way, she did not feel that same contact.
It was almost as though he was deliberately keeping their relationship on a very superficial level.
Days would go by without seeing him at all.
Then he would suddenly appear and walk over to see how the gardening was going. He would exchange a few words with them and then walk back to the barn.
Selena would stare after him longingly.
Gradually he tended to stay talking a little longer.
One day Selena asked the Earl about the two little square buildings that stood at the corners of the garden.
“They are meant to be where diners repair for the last course of a festive dinner for banqueting sweets, which are elaborate dainties handed round as they enjoy the views from the windows, drink and converse – come and see.”
Selena followed him to one of the little buildings.
The roofs were graceful shallow domes rising to a decorative point. Inside on the ground floor a stone bench ran round the walls and a spiral staircase rose to the upper floor, where leaded windows flooded the single room with light and offered views over the surrounding countryside.
“You could not throw a very large party in here – ” commented Selena, pausing to look round.
The stonework was badly damaged in many places and the staircase required careful negotiating.
“– but it would be a lovely place for a small affair.”
“Perhaps one day we will try it,” the Earl said, “but I think that the building would require a lot of work first.”
Selena then returned to her gardening.
Every so often she would gaze at the buildings and remember how pleasant it had been talking with him in that intimate little room.
One night the Earl came again to dine at the cottage and it was another lovely evening of laughter and fun.
Selena wanted to know more about his experiments with gliders and then the conversation moved to travels, starting with his visits to Continental gliding enthusiasts.
Jemima told them about visiting Italian and French gardens and finally, the Earl asked Selena about her visit to Belgium and the Countess’s château.
Selena went to bed feeling very contented.
Nothing the Earl had said suggested to her that he was still mourning his wife and baby.
But he had to be, she told herself, as a deep sleep overcame her.
The next day, however, the happiness Selena had found at Wakefield was badly shaken.
CHAPTER SIX
Selena came back to the cottage following another full day’s gardening to find that a letter was waiting for her from Mr. Anstruther.
She hurried to open it, certain that it would contain news that Beatrice had given birth to her baby.
And indeed it did.
“My dear Selena, the letter read,
Beatrice has just given birth to a splendid son and we are calling him Bernard, which was my father’s name, and Arthur, the name of Beatrice’s father. Beatrice is very weak, but very happy and you can be assured that the new father is extremely proud of his son and heir.
We both hope you are happy at Wakefield. I was glad to hear from you that you have had very little contact with the Earl. A friend at my Club, where I have spent much time during the last few months, has confided that Lord Wakefield is not at all a suitable person for a young and innocent girl to consort with.
Lord Taverner’s family seat is not far distant from Wakefield and I have asked him to call in to check your position next time he is in the area. I can rely on his discretion and I would urge you to take any advice he might give you to heart.
Beatrice joins me in sending you our best wishes. She is arranging for your wardrobe to be sent down to you,
Yours, etc, etc,”
Selena gave a cry of distress.
“Bad news?” asked Jemima, putting down the local newspaper she was reading.
Selena gave her the letter.
“What am I to do?”
Jemima quickly scanned the couple of pages.
“Write to Beatrice and congratulate her on the birth and say you look forward to the day when you can see him. You could add that you will always view him as a brother and that may go some way towards reassuring her that you have no designs on her husband.”
“But what about Lord Taverner?”
Jemima looked sad.
“In that matter, I am afraid, you are helpless. What a nuisance that your stepfather shares the same Club, but, cheer up, I don’t think Lord Taverner will dare to come here. If he tries to see you, Alex will deal with him.”
“But if Lord Taverner tells him that he is a friend of my stepfather and has a message from him, surely he could not stop him seeing me?”
“He would not allow you to remain alone with him – now, it says here in the local newspaper that a circus and menagerie are visiting Stallden. I thought it might be fun if we took an afternoon off and went to have a look.”
At that moment Martha came in with a tray of tea.
“My sister says the clowns are a real laugh.”
“That settles it. We shall go tomorrow afternoon. Now that we
have managed to transform such a lot of the garden, Alex won’t mind us taking a little break.”
Three of the rooms they had designed had by now been created – the Parterre, its box hedges filled with herbs – the rose garden with an elegant statue still to be found for the centre, but everything else in place – and a new rill garden, where a long rill of water led out of a pond in an arched alcove, the whole enclosed by grey stone walls.
“Do you think that the Earl might like to come with us?” asked Selena, thinking how little she had seen of him lately and how nice it would be if he did accompany them.
“Unlikely. He’s working so hard on his glider.”
“When do you think he’ll have it ready to fly?”
“Quite soon. Unless something else goes wrong.”
“Have things gone wrong?”
“Oh, my dear, all the time. I think he’s just making everything up as he goes along.”
Selena felt cold as she contemplated all the terrible eventualities that could happen when the Earl took to the air.
“Aren’t you afraid he will have an awful accident?”
Jemima gave her a penetrating look.
“You mustn’t think like that. After all, he has been in the air in one several times before without coming to any harm. Anyway there is nothing you can do. If Caroline was still alive – but that is a stupid thing to say. It was only after Caroline’s death that he started building his gliders again. It’s as though he has been using it to bury grief.”
Which was exactly what Selena thought.
Jemima stared at the fire – though it was April, the weather was still cold.
“It’s very strange, they never seemed that devoted a couple – no billing and cooing, no constant touching.”
Selena flushed.
“Some people don’t like to display their affection in public.”
Jemima gave her a sideways look.
“You are right,” she muttered and then changed the subject.
*
The morning was spent in planting the herbaceous borders in the rill garden. Then they went to change before setting out in the trap for Stallden.
It was not Morland who brought the conveyance to the cottage – handling the reins was the Earl.
“The circus sounded all such fun, I thought I would join you,” he called. “That is, if you don’t mind?”
Love Came From Heaven Page 7
