Love Drives In

Dorina Radford eyed the tennis net, then concentrated on the ball as she prepared to serve.

The mixed doubles match had been very finely balanced. The first set had gone to Dorina and her partner, Pierre Laforge. The second set had gone to their opponents.

Now Dorina was serving for the match.

She paused a long time, until she was sure she had the stroke exactly right.

It might only be a private match in the grounds of the Laforge mansion, just north of Paris. Her opponents and audience might only be guests of the house party arranged by Monsieur and Madame Laforge, and her partner might only be their son.

But none of this would deter her from giving the serve everything she had. It was Dorina's way to throw her whole self into whatever she did. Even the most inconsequential action was performed with total concentration and determination.

It was the only way to achieve success.

Dorina swung her arm and watched with satisfaction as the ball flew over the net and straight between the other two.

An ace!

"Game, set and match to Monsieur Laforge and
Mademoiselle Radford."

Cheers and applause from the spectators. Pierre and Dorina shook hands before advancing to the net to shake hands with their opponents.

One of the spectators regarded Dorina judiciously.

"An excellent tennis player," he observed. "An athlete, tall, slim, strong. In short, the new woman."

"Hmm!" said his companion. "To my mind, the new woman is too much like a man. Where is her femininity? Where is her grace? Where is the interest in fashion, without which no woman is truly a woman? Where is her – ?"

His hands described a figure eight.

"True," his friend conceded. "She has none of these qualities."

They exchanged shrugs.

"But her father is very rich," one of them conceded.

They nodded.

Dorina, passing close by, saw both the shrugs and the nods, and understood them.

She was used to being regarded as a bit of an oddity. In fact, she supposed that she
was
one.

Because her father had no son he had been determined that his daughter should follow him when he retired.

That made things far more difficult for her than they would have been to an ordinary girl.

John Radford had become one of the wealthiest and most important men in the business and industrial world in the whole of England.

He had, unlike many of his contemporaries, concentrated not only on England, but also on the countries abroad, to which he hoped to export the goods he made.

Since he saw Dorina as the future of the firm, he had made her start learning foreign languages when she was ten.

As she grew up she learned more and more, sometimes residing in England, but often travelling abroad to perfect her languages.

She was very proud of the fact that she could speak and be understood in France, Spain, Italy, Germany and Holland.

She knew that her father was proud of her, but she would have liked to spend more time with him. Sometimes he would come abroad to visit her, but even then his mind seemed to be on the work he had left behind at home.

Last year, while they were together in Rome, he had said,

"I made up my mind, when I was very young that I would not only be very rich but, if possible, the richest man in the whole country."

"Papa!" she had exclaimed.

"It's no use looking shocked, my dear. In business the amount of money you make is the gauge of how successful you are. I wanted to be the richest man in England, and now I think that's what I have become."

"But you have nothing else in your life but your work," she had protested. "Mama has been dead for more than ten years now, and I think you should have married again. Then you might have had a son to train up for your empire."

"No," he said firmly. "That could never be. I gave my heart to your mother and she gave her heart to me. No one can ever take her place in my life, even if it was an angel from Heaven."

For a moment his face was sad. But then he smiled at her.

"Besides, why should I need a son? I've got you."

Most men would not have regarded a daughter in such a light, and the knowledge that he valued her so highly warmed Dorina's heart.

But soon after that, he had left her to return to London. When she protested he said,

"No one can do what I do, as well as I do, although, in time, I'm sure you'll give me plenty of competition. Therefore you understand, my dearest, that I have to go home. I have to make the people I employ do it my way and not theirs."

Dorina had laughed and kissed him.

"You are doing too much, Papa," she had chided him. "When I finish here I'm going to learn the business so well that you can put your feet up and rest."

On her trips home he would take her around his factories and foundries, showing her the iron and steel works with which he created the goods that he supplied to the railways.

He made tracks, girders, carriages and engines. From the first moment Dorina was thrilled with everything, the size, the noise, the blaze of the furnaces. It might be 'unfeminine', but there was something about this bellowing, controlled ferocity that excited her.

She learned everything she could, and because she was truly interested she learned quickly. Her father was delighted with her progress, although he said,

but when you really concentrate you'll find out that there are a hundred more things to learn."

"I can't wait to start," she had told him firmly.

Now she was on her way home for the last time, ready to take her place beside her father, as they had both dreamed for so long.

She had returned through Germany, Italy and France on a trip that was, in a way, her farewell to a life of leisure.

She was entertained by the parents of girls who were more or less her own age, whose fathers had been negotiating with Mr. Radford.

"I think you must have been not only the cleverest man in Europe," Dorina wrote to him once, "but also the most charming, because I am overwhelmed with invitations wherever I go."

Her father wrote back saying he was very proud to have received letters from those who had entertained her, who said she was not only pretty and charming, but also as intelligent as they expected his daughter to be.

And brains mattered to Papa, she knew that. So it was lucky that she had some.

When she left here she would go first to the house her father owned in London, where he maintained his society and government connections that were sometimes useful to him. Then she would travel to their real home in Birmingham, where he had a house close to his main factories. There they would work together.

Dear Papa, she thought. They loved each other so much, but they had been parted too often. In future everything would be different.

"It will be a marvellous ball," the French girl said. "Papa is celebrating his horses winning three races last month."

"Then I must be very smart," Dorina replied. "To make quite certain, I plan to wear a dress I bought in Paris."

"Then you will certainly be smart," Sophie said, and the two girls laughed together.

As they went into the house, a servant appeared to say there was a gentleman from England in one of the sitting rooms who had asked to see Mademoiselle Radford.

Dorina looked at her in surprise.

Without saying anything to her friend, she hurried into the house.

As soon as she opened the door to the sitting room, she recognised Mr. Johnson, her father's second in command.

The elderly man stood up as she approached and took one of her hands in both of his.

"I am afraid, Miss Dorina," he said, "that I bring you bad news."

Dorina stared at him.

"Papa is not well?" she questioned.

There was a moment's pause before the man said,

"It is with the deepest regret I have come to tell you that your father died two nights ago. He had a heart attack. There was nothing the doctors could do."

Dorina felt herself turn cold inside.

For a moment it was impossible for her to answer him.

She sat down on the sofa.

"How could Papa have died so unexpectedly?" Dorina sighed, "when I was on my way to see him?"

"The doctors said his heart gave up because he insisted on overworking himself, as he had all his life," Mr. Johnson replied. "If he had lived, he would have been an invalid, unable to work."

"He would have hated to do nothing," Dorina said almost as if she was speaking to herself.

"Of course he would. And now I have to tell you what he said to me only a short while ago."

"What is that?" Dorina asked.

"I think he must have had some premonition of trouble, because, in a strange way, he was prepared for it."

"How do you mean?"

"He sent for me, and a few of the others who held responsible positions, and told us that if anything happened to him, we must carry on with his business as he would have done himself. The person who would inherit his money and, he said very positively, his position, was to be his daughter."

Dorina stared at him but she did not speak.

"We all agreed that we would support you in every way, and do our best to carry on as he would have wished."

"But how can I take my father's place? He was going to train me, but he never had the chance. I know nothing."

"But you will have all of us to help you. He never had any doubts that you could do it. If only you could have heard him talk. He was so proud of you."

Suddenly Dorina burst into tears. She had kept emotion at bay until then, but when Mr. Johnson spoke of her father's pride in her she could bear it no longer. She buried her face in her hands and sobbed.

There was the sound of the door opening, and they both looked up quickly to see their hostess standing before them.

Mr. Johnson rose quickly.

"Excuse me, madame. I have come from England to tell Miss Radford that her father is unwell, and she should return without delay."

There was an immediate flurry of sympathy and arrangements. Madame Laforge insisted that Mr. Johnson must have something to eat while Dorina's maid did her packing. He accepted gratefully.

Dorina hurried upstairs, wondering why Mr. Johnson had pretended that her father was still alive. She had not missed the slight shake of the head that he had given her, warning her to stick to the story.

She was too much in turmoil to feel the depth of her own grief, but she knew that soon she would have to confront it. The father she had loved despite their separations, whom she had longed to join, was gone for ever. Now the dream of working together was shattered, and she would never see his pride as she carried on his work.

But she could not allow herself to mourn just yet. That would come later, when there was nobody to see her.

She slipped downstairs to join Mr. Johnson, who was eating enthusiastically.

"I have been travelling for two days," he said. "I slipped away at once and went straight to Calais to come and find you."

"Why did you not tell them that Papa is dead?" she asked.

"By now his body will have been taken to the nearby Chapel of Rest, but the nurses will remain on duty as though he were in his own bed."

"But why the secrecy?"

"Your father was so important that the vultures will start circling when news of his death gets out."

"Yes, I see," Dorina murmured. "We must plan to defeat them, and not even be seen arriving in England together. You can tell people that I was too far away for you to reach me, but you have written to inform me of my father's death and I will doubtless return to England as soon as possible. But in the meantime you will carry on the business until I arrive."

"And then you will lead us," he said. "As your father did."

"Yes, but not at once. I want to learn about business first, so for the moment I will leave it to you to carry on exactly as if Papa was still alive."