103. She Wanted Love (6 page)

Eleta then laughed as it sounded so funny and Betty continued,

“It’s said in Mayfair among the grand hostesses that no one’s safe when that Marquis is prowlin’ about.”

Eleta laughed again.

“I suppose it’s what you might expect if he is as good-looking as you say he is and very rich too.”

“I am sure of that at any rate,” Betty said. “He has horses that win races and a big house in Hertfordshire.”

“That is where I have to go tomorrow.”

“Over my dead body! I’m not havin’ you run after by someone who’s whispered about by every respectable Lady in the country. You go straight back to Mrs. Hill and tell her to find somewhere else. You’re far too pretty, my Lady, to be under the same roof as that man!”

Betty was speaking very seriously and Eleta knew that she was worried because she loved her.

She put out her hand and laid it over Betty’s.

“Now listen to me, Betty. I love you for caring for me and being worried, as I know Mama would worry.”

“Your dear mother wouldn’t allow you to go to the home of a roué and a man who’s talked about as much as that Marquis is and that’s the truth.”

“If Mama was here,” Eleta replied, “she would not allow Step-papa to marry me to an old decrepit Duke who only wants me because I have money.

“But I have to escape and I have to do it quickly. You know how determined Step-papa is when he wants anything and I will find myself married before I know it.”

Betty wanted to speak, but Eleta went on quickly,

“I love you for worrying about me, but you must realise, as you have said, that the Marquis is determined not to marry again.”

“He’s not likely to ask you anyway, my Lady, as you’re only a Governess, to marry him,” Betty conceded.

“I know that,” Eleta replied, “but I am also aware from what you have said that he is so frightened of being married again that he never even looks at young girls, only married women, whom he cannot marry.”

She thought that she had not put it very clearly, but Betty understood what she was saying and relaxed a little.

“That be true,” she said. “But my friend says he’s never taken any girl to his house in the country nor even to his house in London.”

“That is just what I was saying, Betty.”

“But you’re so pretty like your mother, there must be dozens of other houses you can go to rather than his.”

“There may be dozens of them, but the only one on Mrs. Hill’s books was the Marquis’s and they don’t really expect me to stay there more than a few days.”

“I’ve heard about that. The child’s unmanageable and my friend says she’s had more Governesses than any other child she’d ever heard of.”

“Did she say what was wrong with her, Betty?”

“She didn’t think there were anythin’ wrong except that she be very naughty. Perhaps the first Governess she had upset her, but she just refuses to learn.”

“Nothing?” Eleta asked.

“Nothin’ at all. She screams and cries if they try to make her do her lessons and the last Governess my friend heard of says she’s a child of Satan and un-teachable!”

Eleta laughed.

“She certainly sounds most unusual. So how old is the little monster?”

As she asked the question, she remembered Mrs. Hill saying that she was only nine years of age and before Betty could reply, she went on,

“It’s just ridiculous to say that a child of nine is un-teachable and, if you ask me, the Governesses must have been very stupid women.”

“Now you really don’t want to put yourself in an unpleasant position to then get the sack,” Betty suggested. “From what I’ve heard, some of the Governesses walked out even before they’d met the Marquis.”

“It all sounds absurd, like something in a book. If I only stay there two days, it will be a new experience and different from anything I have ever encountered before.”

She was thinking of the Convent, where the girls automatically always obeyed the nuns and were in awe of the Mother Superior.

“How is it possible,” she asked, “that one small child could defeat properly trained Governesses?”

“Whatever you may say or think,” Betty persisted, “I’m not happy about your goin’ there.”

“I am not happy about going anywhere, but I have to hide from my stepfather and I cannot imagine it would enter his head that I should want to become a Governess or a servant of any sort.”

“Perhaps he’ll send for the Police when he finds you’re not in the house,” Betty murmured.

“I doubt it. The one thing he will not want is a scandal of any sort. It would certainly set Mayfair talking if they knew I had run away the day after I had returned from school.”

“That’s true,” Betty agreed.

“Also, what could Step-papa say if people asked him why I had disappeared in such a strange manner?”

There was no answer to this and, after a moment’s silence, Eleta said,

“No, what he will do perhaps is to engage a Private Detective to try to find me or just make enquiries himself amongst my friends. There’s a list of them, as he knows, in Mama’s address book. But even so he will have to be very careful or they will talk and wonder where I can be.”

“I still don’t like your goin’ to that man, whatever you may say,” Betty muttered.

“I know, Betty, but I have to get away at once and I cannot think of any better way of disappearing than going to a grand house in the country where Step-papa has never been invited.”

Betty gave a deep sigh as she was, as Eleta knew, defeated. She was aware that whatever she might say Eleta would still do what she wanted to do.

“Now you have to be helpful and we both have to be very clever, Betty. I have to leave home early tomorrow morning and be waiting outside the Agency at six o’clock.

“What about your luggage, my Lady?”

“That is where you have to help me tonight.”

“Tonight?” she questioned. “What do you mean?”

“I am going home to pack up everything I require and I want you to take it round to the Agency and put it on the stairs just inside the front door.”

“That’s clever of you, I grant you that.”

“I thought you would, Betty, and of course I must take enough clothes with me to last me for perhaps a long time before Step-papa sees sense.”

“And you expect me to tell you when he does.”

“Of course. You know, dearest Betty, I will tell you exactly what I am doing and, if I do leave the Marquis’s house, you will have to help me find another position.”

“You know I’ll do that, my Lady, but I don’t like your goin’ there in the first place.”

“I have no alternative, so we just have to accept things as they are and not as we want them to be.”

Eleta rose from the bench and proposed,

“Now we will go home and start packing, but be very careful what you say to me just in case any of the housemaids are listening.

“There is just one other thing I want you to do for me now, Betty. I want you to go to my bank in Dover Street. It will only take you a very short time to get there.”

“I suppose you want me to draw out some money,” Betty said, “and that’s real sensible of you.”

“It will be quite a large sum and you must explain, if they query it, that I am going on a long journey abroad and that is why I need so much.”

“They’ll not ask the Master before they give it to you?” Betty enquired.

“No, it’s my own money in my own name, but I think it would be a mistake to go myself to the bank”

They were now walking back through Grosvenor Square and Eleta was thinking of what she must do.

‘I must be practical about this,’ she told herself. ‘I must not do something stupid which might result in Step-papa finding me.’

At the house Eleta went up to her room, found her chequebook and wrote a cheque for five hundred pounds.

Then she put it in an envelope and gave it to Betty.

“If I need more money,” she said, “I will have my chequebook with me. But to make sure that the bank does not know where it has come from, I will send the cheque to you to cash it for me.”

“I think this should last you for some time,” Betty commented. “It’s a lot of money and don’t you waste it or get it stolen.”

“I promise to do neither, Betty. As you know I’ve always tried to keep my promise.”

“That be true enough, but you’re going to live a very different life from the one you’ve lived before.”

“I know that, which is why, Betty dear, I need your help. It’s a great comfort to me to know that whatever occurs you are here and will let me know what happens.”

“I’ll do that,” Betty promised. “But I wish you was goin’ to any other house rather than that man’s.”

“Now you are making it sound even more exciting than it already is!”

“You must promise me one thing,” Betty said. “If he makes advances to you, you then come straight home. You’ll be better off with the Duke, old though he may be, than with that Marquis.”

“I have my doubts about that for the simple reason that the Duke is offering marriage, while it’s obvious that is the last thing I am likely to get from the Marquis!”

Eleta waited until Betty had slipped out to go to the bank and then she went to her father’s room.

When her mother had married Cyril Warner, she had arranged for him to sleep in the room next to hers, but it was on the other side of the corridor.

This meant that her father’s room remained very much his and his possessions were still there.

She entered the room and it somehow smelt musty and was just the same as it had been when she was a child, when she used to run in to talk to her father while he was dressing for dinner or getting ready to go riding.

What she was looking for and which she found at the back of a chest of drawers was a small revolver that he always carried when he went abroad.

“Is it dangerous where you go, Papa?” she recalled asking him.

“Sometimes,” he replied. “But it’s always best to be prepared for the worst. Therefore, because I carry what you would call a gun, I know I can protect myself however dangerous the enemy might be.”

She remembered thinking at the time of her father shooting people instead of birds and she knew now that it was what she might want to do but for a different reason.

She found that the bullets were also in the drawer and took them and the revolver to her bedroom and put it right at the bottom of the case she was packing.

She had no wish to discuss the reason why she was taking it with Betty and then she began to pile on top of it the clothes she thought were most suitable for a Governess.

Fortunately those she had worn at school had been more or less plain, but she had no wish to leave behind all the pretty dresses she had bought in Paris, so she put them in another case.

She thought if she kept it locked, they would not be criticised by the Marquis’s staff as being unsuitable for a Governess.

What was far more difficult was to pack her hats, as she could not bear to leave all the pretty ones behind.

She was thinking as she packed them that she might not stay long anyway with the obstreperous daughter of the Marquis. In which case she might have to go somewhere to find an entirely different position where her best dresses would be appreciated.

‘I have to be practical about this,’ she kept telling herself as she looked in the wardrobe.

Then she suddenly remembered that her mother had an enormous number of dresses of every sort and Eleta was certain that they had remained untouched since her death.

She went to her mother’s room to find that she was not mistaken. The wardrobe was full, also the cupboards in the small dressing room opening out of the bedroom.

As she opened all the cupboard doors, there was a blaze of colour and the sweet scent of white violets.

Eleta was sure that it would please her Mama if she wore her dresses and, as she had always favoured rather classical designs, they were still in fashion.

Eleta took two of the prettiest and most elaborate of the evening gowns as well as a cape for travelling and a smart day dress she was sure her mother had never worn.

‘One day perhaps I will need a great many more of them,’ she mused.

Nothing could make her feel more protected than to be wearing her Mama’s clothes and she had nearly finished packing when Betty came back from the bank.

“Here’s the money, my Lady,” she said, “and be extra careful it’s not stolen from you.”

“I will lock it away carefully, Betty, and the same with my jewel-case. I am not taking many jewels, for it would be a mistake for a Governess to appear in emeralds and diamonds!”

Betty laughed.

“It would indeed and, if you give your other jewels to me, I’ll put them away in the safe in your mother’s room and I have the only key.”

Eleta thought this was a good idea, but at the same time she took with her the pearl necklace her father had given to her on her tenth birthday and a pair of earrings.

“You seem to have packed a great deal,” Betty said, looking round the room. “I only hopes it means you’ll stay there in peace and not come rushin’ back after a week.”

“I am not coming back,” Eleta replied, “until my stepfather is convinced that he cannot succeed in making me marry the old Duke or until I am twenty-one and he no longer has any legal power over me.”

Betty sighed.

“It may take just as long and, if you asks me, you’ll soon be leavin’ that terrible man’s house and lookin’ for somewhere quieter and safer.”

“Well, do keep your eyes open in case something turns up where my stepfather would not find me, Make no mistake, I have no wish to be tied to anywhere, but as Papa once said, ‘
needs must when the Devil drives
’.”

Betty put up her hands in horror.

“Don’t say such things, my Lady, as they frighten me. So take care and, if it’s difficult, come on home.”

“To the Duke who might be waiting for me? It will have to be very very difficult before I do that.”

She thought to herself that she had done her best, but she could not insist that Eleta should stay here under the present circumstances.

Tea had been brought upstairs to Eleta while she was packing, but she had been very careful not to let the footman realise what she was doing.