Desire of the Heart. Barbara CartlandЧитать онлайн книгу.
not hear of it,” her uncle responded sharply.
“I can go back when I am twenty-one.”
“If you wish, but long before that you will be married.”
“Married?” Cornelia uttered the word in surprise.
Then she shook her head.
“But of course,” Lord Bedlington said jovially. “All the young ladies should get married sooner or later. But it will be time enough to think of that after you have settled down. You will find London very gay and your aunt will introduce you to all the right people.”
“Thank you.”
Cornelia wondered what he would think if she spoke her thoughts aloud and retorted that she did not want to meet the “right people”. She only wanted Jimmy and the men like him who could talk about horses. Yet how could she say so? It was going to be difficult from now on to speak frankly and openly as she had always done since she was a child.
In London she would be only a girl who had just left the schoolroom, who should be respectful to her elders and who should be grateful for any kindnesses shown to her, whose main interest should be to attract young men so that among them she could find a husband.
No, there was nothing she could say, she could only feel herself hating everything and everybody. She hated her uncle, who was a pompous bore just as her father had described him, she hated her aunt whom she had not yet seen, she hated the brougham with its soft padded seats and elegant gaberdine rug, the coachman on the box in his crested top hat and the liveried footman beside him who had sprung up so agilely after he had closed the door.
It was all hatefully rich and luxurious, it was part of a world she did not understand and that instinctively she shrank from.
Her uncle cleared his throat and spoke after a long silence,
“We are passing through Grosvenor Square now, my dear. You will see that the houses are finely built.”
“Yes, I see,” Cornelia replied.
Again there was silence, broken only by the jingle of the harness and the horses’ hoofs.
“Upper Grosvenor Street” her uncle murmured. “In a moment we come to Park Lane.”
There was a congestion in the traffic ahead of them and the brougham came almost to a standstill while some carriages turned out of the Park.
Cornelia could see their occupants. The women were all resplendent with feathered boas and wide hats trimmed with flowers and carried gracefully decorated sunshades.
‘I must look ridiculous beside them,’ Cornelia thought to herself with a sinking heart.
The brougham was moving slowly forward again.
Suddenly she heard her uncle mutter a smothered oath beneath his breath and then stare intently out of the window.
She looked and then saw that on the other side of the road a yellow-and-black dashing phaeton had just rounded the corner from Park Lane.
It was the horses that held her attention for they were both chestnuts with an Arab strain showing in their arched necks and sensitive nostrils.
And then she realised that, fiery and over-excited, they were being superbly handled by the man who was driving, a dark broad-shouldered young man wearing a top hat at a dashing angle on the side of his head and sporting a large red carnation in his buttonhole.
He was good-looking, Cornelia thought, in fact better-looking and more handsome than any man she had ever seen in her life. She had not realised that a man could look so elegant, so exquisitely dressed and yet at the same time seem so utterly at home in a phaeton, driving his tandem with a skill that she instinctively paid homage to.
Cornelia and Lord Bedlington were not the only people staring at the young man whose horses were tossing and plunging about and looked at any moment as if they might upset the fragile vehicle that they were harnessed to.
Passers-by were stopping to watch the age-old battle between horse and man and then, as suddenly as it had begun, the fight was ended, the driver had won.
With a superb bit of horsemanship he drove the horses forward so that they settled again into the correct trot that was expected of them and the phaeton moved swiftly forward and out of sight.
“That was well done!” Cornelia cried a little breathlessly and then, as she glanced at her uncle’s face, she wished that she had not spoken.
There was a frown between his heavy brows and his lips were tight with anger. Cornelia might be inexperienced in many things, but she knew when a man was incensed to the point of explosion and she remembered the oath she had heard him mutter when the phaeton was first sighted. There was something about the driver that had annoyed him, she thought, and as there was tact in her make-up as well as many other qualities, she said quickly,
“Is that the Park ahead? How pretty it is.”
She saw the anger clear from her uncle’s eyes.
“Yes, that is Hyde Park,” he answered. “Our windows overlook it, so you will not feel homesick for the country.”
Cornelia had her own ideas about that, but she answered him politely and a few minutes later they drew up outside a porticoed front door.
The footman sprang from the box and then opened the door. No sooner had the carriage stopped than a butler appeared at the top of the steps leading into the house. There were two liveried and powdered footmen behind him, bowing to her uncle and taking his hat and stick.
“Come to the library, my dear,” Lord Bedlington said. “Your aunt will be down to greet you in a moment or two.”
The room was luxurious and grand beyond anything that Cornelia had imagined a room could be. Heavy velvet curtains were draped across the high windows. There were sofas and chairs of brocade and great gilt mirrors interspersed between bookshelves.
Cornelia wondered if it was correct to express her admiration or to say nothing when Lady Bedlington came into the room.
Cornelia stared at her in astonishment. She had not expected anyone so lovely, so pink and white, so elegantly dressed, so perfectly poised or indeed anyone who looked so young.
“So this is your niece, George. Will you please introduce me?” she heard a sweet rather affected voice ask.
“This is Cornelia, Lily,” Lord Bedlington remarked abruptly.
“How do you do?” Cornelia said quietly as she took her aunt’s hand.
“Well, now I can leave Cornelia with you, Lily,” Lord Bedlington said pompously but with relief as if he was glad to be rid of something exceedingly tiresome.
“Yes, of course, George. You had better go to The Palace, see the Lord Chamberlain and arrange for me to take Cornelia to the next Court. The lists were supposed to be closed months ago, but I am quite sure you can manage to pull strings. If not I can speak to the King myself. I shall see him at Londonderry House on Tuesday night.”
“Better do it officially.”
“Yes, of course, my dear, if it is possible,” Lily agreed.
“Do you mean I am to be presented to the King and Queen?” Cornelia asked in sudden horror. “Must I do that? I would much rather not.”
She had a vision of herself at Court, gauche and inexperienced, doing the wrong thing, being laughed at by hundreds of Courtiers as elegant and as awe-inspiring as her aunt
“But, of course, you must be presented,” Lady Bedlington said emphatically. “It will be a tremendous rush to get you a dress, but I daresay it can be managed. I expect you want lots of new clothes anyway.”
Her eyes flickered over Cornelia’s old-fashioned coat and hat that had been fashionable five years earlier.
“Yes, I am sure I shall want a lot of new