The Incredible Honeymoon (Bantam Series No. 46) (3 page)

“I want to marry Harry! I love him! I will never love anyone else!” Felicity was saying.

When she raised her face, looking lovely despite the tears which ran down her cheeks, Antonia felt desperately sorry for her.

“I think you have to face facts, dearest,” she said. “Papa would never permit you to marry Harry when you could be a Duchess.”

“I have no wish to be a Duchess,” Felicity said. “I just wish to live quietly with Harry. I have much enjoyed the Season and the Balls, Antonia, but I kept thinking of him and how much more fun it would all have been at home.”

Antonia knew this was the truth, and she thought apprehensively that there was no doubt that Felicity would be unhappy living a life of pomp and circumstance.

She also knew a great deal more about the Duke than anyone else in the family did; she could in fact have answered her father’s queries about the Duke’s motives for his proposal very nearly as competently as the old crony he was going to consult at the Club.

As their estates marched with each other, the Duke owning some 10,000 acres, Antonia had always been extremely curious, not so much about him as about his horses.

The one love of her life was horse-flesh and while she had ridden since she was a small child she had always been allotted the worst and oldest horses to ride which neither her father nor her sister required.

Nevertheless it was Antonia who managed by some magic of her own to enthuse the laziest and sometimes the most aged beast into action, and who was invariably in front of the field out hunting and in at the kill.

But it was impossible for her not to realise almost since she could walk that just over the boundary hedge were the most magnificent thoroughbreds that any lover of horses could desire.

What was known as The Chase was a long gallop which ended abruptly at the Earl of Lemsford’s boundary.

The part of Hertfordshire where Doncaster Park and The Towers, in the Earl’s estate, were situated was undulating, wooded and a large part of it was cultivated.

But only a mile from the Duke’s mansion The Chase provided a flat, perfect stretch of parkland which had once extended for another quarter of a mile into what was now owned by the Earl of Lemsford.

Ives, the Duke’s head groom who had lived in Hertfordshire all his life, soon became aware that there was always a small girl staring wistfully over the fence as he and the stable
-
lads took the horses for their morning gallop.

As the small girl grew older her friendship with the elderly man meant a great deal to both of them.

He even came to say himself:

“Ye knows as much about horses, M’Lady, as Oi knows meself!”

“I wish that was true,” Antonia would answer. “Now tell me about the day the Duke’s horse won the Derby.”

There is no man who does not enjoy an attractive audience and Ives was no exception.

He had no children of his own and the tales he used to relate to Antonia would hold her spell-bound, her eyes fixed flatteringly upon him until he would describe so vividly the races he had attended that she felt as though she had been there herself.

It was only a question of time before Antonia was introduced to other members of the Duke’s household.

Mrs. Mellish, the Housekeeper, who often found that time lay heavy on her hands, was prepared to guide the very appreciative young lady from next door round the great mansion.

But it was the Curator, Mr. Lowry, who taught her the most.

The Earl had no appreciation of the arts and if his ancestors had ever possessed pictures or furniture of any value they had long since been sold.

Only rather badly executed portraits of the Wyndhams remained, because they were unsaleable rather than because they were appreciated.

But Doncaster Park was filled with pictures, furniture and
objets d'art
and treasures which had been collected over the centuries, each one contributed by a member of the Casterton family and having a history that Antonia found absorbing.

Because Mr. Lowry taught her far more than did the inadequate Governesses provided by the Earl, Antonia, after she was fifteen, spent more time at Doncaster Park than she did in the School-room at The Towers.

The Governesses, realising that she counted the least in the family, were not concerned by her absence and concentrated on trying to instill the very meagre knowledge they themselves possessed into Felicity’s mind.

Because she was very pretty they decided, like her parents, that she would not require many talents, and education was therefore not important.

There was only one thing that the Countess did insist upon and that was that both her daughters should speak fluent French.

“All ladies of good breeding can speak French,” she said loftily, “and as people are going abroad more and more, just in the same way as foreigners come here, it is essential that you should both speak with a Parisian accent.”

The fact that she and her husband were invited to a large party given when Louis Napoleon and the Empress Eugenie came to England in 1857 accentuated her determination that her daughters should not be lacking in this accomplishment even if they possessed few others.

Antonia found French easy and she liked the old retired
Mademoiselle
who came to The Towers from St. Albans twice a week to give her and Felicity lessons.

“I cannot remember all those tiresome verbs,” Felicity would cry despairingly.

But Antonia had not only mastered the verbs but was soon chattering away to
Mademoiselle
finding out many things she wanted to know about France and especially Paris.

Unlike the other Governesses who concentrated on Felicity and ignored Antonia,
Mademoiselle
reversed the procedure.

Because Antonia had a natural ear she taught her and let Felicity sit silent, deep in her own thoughts, which certainly did not concern French.

“There are two things anyway I know a lot about,” Antonia told herself once. “The first is horses, and that is thanks to Ives, and the second is French, thanks to
Mademoiselle
!”

Mr. Lowry found some books at Doncaster Park which satisfied both interests, and because they seldom conversed with their younger daughter the Earl and Countess would have been surprised if they had known how knowledgeable she was, or how widely and extensively she read.

As soon as the Earl could do so he dispensed with the services of the Governesses, thereby saving their meagre salary and keep. Despite the fact that the family was in mourning Felicity was considered now to be grown up and no longer in need of lessons.

That Antonia was a year younger did not perturb either her father or her mother.

The Countess had already stated categorically that she was not going to have two unmarried daughters ‘out’ at the same time.

She said it in a way which made Antonia sure that she thought it unlikely that her younger daughter would ever get married, and even if she did it would be to no-one of any importance.

As Antonia regarded herself in the mirror she was not surprised.

Unlike Felicity’s her hair was dark, or very nearly so. It was not, unfortunately, the jet black tresses beloved by romantic novelists.

Instead it was an indecisive colour, dark enough to give her dark eye-lashes for her grey-green eyes, but not, she thought, enough to make her skin seem the dazzling white that was so fashionable amongst the young ladies of fashion.

“It is shadowy,” Antonia said to herself disparagingly. “I wish it were red and my eyes a vivid green
...
then perhaps someone would notice me!”

It was difficult to look outstanding in the clothes she wore as they were always those which had been discarded by Felicity, and Antonia knew that the colours which suited Felicity’s Dresden-china appearance did nothing to flatter her.

But she was too inexperienced and not interested enough to worry about it.

The only thing that did concern her about clothes was her riding habit.

While she was not allowed to be fitted as Felicity was by a London tailor, the local man in St. Albans did his best because he liked Antonia and she was so pleasant to him.

She took him a pot of honey because his wife had a persistent cough during the winter, and she talked to him about his children.

She was also considerate when he told her that he had not finished her habit because a fox-hunting gentleman was wanting a pair of breeches who was a good customer and a better payer than the Earl.

“I understand, Mr. Jenkins,” Antonia said. “But do try to make me have a small waist and see that the jacket fits really well over the shoulders. I am not worrying about myself so much, but it does show off to advantage the horse I am riding.”

“That’s true, M’Lady,” Mr. Jenkins replied.

Antonia found later that he had spent far more hours on her habit than the small amount of money he received for it justified.

What she did not tell Mr. Jenkins, and what she certainly would not have told her father, was that Ives occasionally permitted her to ride the Duke’s horses.

She exercised them with him and the stable-boys and found it impossible to say how thrilled and delighted she was at the opportunity.

“It’s a real pity, M’Lady,” Ives remarked, “that ye can’t ride one of these horses out hunting. Then ye’d give ’em something to talk about!”

“I would indeed!” Antonia agreed. “And think how jealous everyone would be! But they would be certain to tell His Grace and then I would be back on the other side of the boundary where you first found me.”

This was a joke between them and Ives laughed.

“That’s true, M’Lady. Oi’ve never forgotten how ye looked with yer big eyes peeping at me from between the branches. It annoyed me at first to think ye were spying on us, until Oi realised it was a real interest ye were showing and we got to know each other.”

“We did indeed, Ives,” Antonia replied, “and it was the luckiest day of my life.”

She used to think she could put up with any disagreeableness at home so long as she could get away and be with Ives and the horses.

It compensated her for the unhappiness she often felt at being unwanted.

When she had been very young and she had first realised that she was a constant irritation to her father because she was not a boy, she had cried bitterly because she could not please him by changing her sex.

As she had grown older and learnt from the Nurses and other servants that the Countess in bringing her into the world had suffered so badly that the doctors said it was impossible for her to have another child. Antonia began to understand how deeply disappointed her father had been.

“The Earl was convinced he would have a son,” the old Nanny told her. “The cot and everything else was decorated with blue ribbons, and he was to be called Anthony, which is a family name as you well know.”

“So that is why I was called Antonia!”

“Nobody had thought you would be a girl. Then as they expected both you and your mother to die, you were christened a few hours after you were born.

“ ‘What name is she to be given?’ the doctor asked me. “ ‘The baby was to have been called Anthony, Sir,’ I replied, seeing that your poor mother was incapable of speech. “ ‘Then it had better be Antonia,’ he remarked.” Antonia had tried to make up for her unavoidable deficiency by being a son to her father.

She would ask if she could go out shooting with him. She would beg him to take her riding.

But she soon realised that even to look at her annoyed him and reminded him of the son he would never have. So instead she kept out of his way, and soon no-one in the house worried about her unless she was late for meals.

Then she was severely punished.

So she soon learnt to tear herself away from Ives, however absorbed she was in his stories. Or to run into the house after she had been riding, giving herself just time enough to change into a suitable gown and walk breathlessly but demurely into the Dining-Room before the Earl was aware of her absence.

Now, Antonia thought as Felicity sobbed against her shoulder, the attractive and undoubtedly, if she ever met him, irresistible Duke was likely to become her brother-in
-
law.

It was impossible for her, spending so much time at Doncaster Park, not to hear the servants gossiping, and it was not only the servants who talked of their master but also her mother’s friends.

Because the Duke was the most important and certainly the most interesting person in that part of Hertfordshire, he was an endless topic of conversation to everyone in the vicinity of Doncaster Park.

The fact that he never concerned himself with local people when he was in residence did not stop their tongues wagging or their learning in one way or another of his various love-affairs.

Antonia was so insignificant and made herself so quiet and unobtrusive that it was easy for the ladies talking around the tea-table to forget that she was there.

She would hand round the sandwiches and cakes, pass the cups of tea, and then retire into a corner of the Drawing
-
Room, out of sight, out of mind, but listening with rapt attention to everything that was said when it concerned the Duke.