Chapter One ~ I883

Sir Robert Westbury came into the morning room where his two daughters were arguing.

This was nothing unusual because, whatever Lydia said, her sister Heloise always contradicted it.

After years of trying to placate Heloise, Lydia had found it was simplest to agree to what she said and thereby prevent what, she often thought, was an undignified and rather vulgar exchange of words.

Heloise Westbury was so beautiful that from the moment she became aware of her own face she felt that the world was made for her to walk on.

She was about fifteen when she realised that she had only to look at a man from under her long eyelashes for him to talk to her in a different tone from the one he had been using before and to have what she often described to Lydia as a ‘swimming look in his eyes’.

Last year when she had appeared in London as a debutante, she had been acclaimed, fêted and extolled by everybody except the girls of her own age who were trying to compete with her.

She had come back reluctantly to the country for Christmas only slightly appeased by the certainty that she would be the belle of every Hunt Ball and that a great number of her admirers in London contrived to stay either at Westbury Park if Heloise could arrange an invitation for them or at other houses in the neighbourhood.

All this meant a great deal more work for Lydia who, since her father had become a widower for the second time, had run the house for him besides being expected to dance attendance on her half-sister.

Lydia’s mother had died soon after she was born and Sir Robert had quickly married again, hoping for an heir to the Baronetcy.

He would have been even more disappointed if Heloise had not been so lovely even when she was in the cradle, but it had been a compensation to know when he learnt that his wife unfortunately could give him no more children that at least he had an exceptional and outstandingly lovely daughter.

Although it was very unfair, he vented his anger and disappointment on his elder daughter rather than on his second child.

“Why could you not have been a son?” he would ask furiously. “It would have simplified everything!”

“I am sorry, Papa,” was all Lydia could say meekly.

She thought at times that he looked at her with positive dislike because she would not be able to follow, in his footsteps and become the fifth Baronet.

Although she tried to tell herself sensibly that this was something she could not help, it often preyed on her mind.

When two years ago her stepmother had died after a long lingering illness during which time she would ordinarily have made her own debut, she hoped that her father would marry for the third time.

He had, however, last year when mourning was over, seemed to be obsessed with presenting Heloise to the Social world.

Lydia thought that perhaps once Heloise was safely married she would have another stepmother and then there might be a chance of escape from what had become a monotonous treadmill.

All day long it was, ‘tell Lydia to do that!’ – ‘why does not Lydia see to the arrangements as she should do?’ – ‘Send for Lydia!’

If the food was not appetising enough, if the gardeners had neglected part of the garden, if the footmen failed in their duties, it was Lydia who had to cope with it.

It was Lydia who had to soothe down ruffled feelings and especially to keep her father from losing his temper.

It was not surprising that she was very thin and there was a permanently worried expression in her large eyes.

She never had time to think about herself and, if she did, she merely shrugged her shoulders and said truthfully that nobody would look at her when Heloise was there.

Heloise was every man’s ideal of what a young English girl should look like.

“She is a perfect ‘English Rose’,” was how her admirers described her and it was indeed an accurate description.

She had hair the colour of ripening corn, eyes as blue as a summer sky and her complexion was the perfect pink and white that every artist aspired to put on canvas.

It was unfortunate that, when the fairies bestowed their gifts on her at her Christening, two qualities had been inexplicably missing.

Nobody who lived with Heloise for long could have failed to realise that she was not very intelligent.

She never read a book and her conversation was limited to one subject – herself.

What was more, ‘unselfishness’ was a word that could not be found in her vocabulary and certainly not in her heart.

“I am tired, Heloise,” Lydia had said to her once, having run up and down the stairs for what seemed like a hundred times before Heloise was finally ready to attend a ball.

“Tired?” her half-sister had repeated. “Why should you be tired? Anyway it’s your duty to look after me and do as I want.”

Lydia wanted to ask why, but she knew it would only annoy Heloise, who would then be very rude and fly into one of her tantrums, which upset everybody except herself.

Now, as Sir Robert came into the morning room, the girls’ voices faded away.

Lydia’s cheeks were a little flushed with the argument, Heloise was looking sulky and her cupid’s bow lips were turned down at the corners.

Sir Robert walked across to where they were sitting in the window and said,

“A note has just been brought to me by a groom. You have pulled it off, Heloise!”

“I have, Papa?”

Heloise gave a scream of excitement and jumped up from the table.

“Tell me what he says!”

“The Earl has asked for my permission to pay his addresses to you,” Sir Robert replied, “and hopes that he may call this afternoon to discuss a very important matter with me.”

Heloise gave another scream.

“Oh, Papa, I was so afraid, even after what he said at the ball last night, that he would not come up to scratch!”

“Well, he has and I am delighted, my dearest,” Sir Robert said, “and very very proud of you!”

He put his arm round his daughter and kissed her cheek.

Lydia, who was watching, realised that Heloise stiffened in case he should crease her gown or untidy her hair.

Then she asked quietly,

“Are you saying, Papa, that the Earl of Royston has proposed to Heloise?”

“He has asked my permission to do so,” Sir Robert replied.

“It’s wonderful! I am so happy!” Heloise cried. “I shall be a Countess with a traditional position at Court, besides being hostess at Royston Park and all the other houses the Earl owns.”

She spoke with a lilt in her voice that made it sound almost an exaltation.

“I am so glad, Heloise, that you will be happy,” Lydia said.

“Happy? Of course I shall be happy!” Heloise retorted. “This is what I have been working on for a long time. Of course I was quite certain that I would get him in the end.”

She did not notice Lydia wince as if the way she spoke jarred on her.

Sir Robert glanced down at the note in his hand.

“I am going to answer this,” he said, “and tell Royston we shall look forward to seeing him at teatime. We must certainly have a bottle of champagne ready on ice to celebrate!”

“Yes, of course, Papa,” Heloise agreed. “But mind that you leave him alone with me first. He has not asked me formally and that is what I want to hear.”

“It is formal enough for me to announce your engagement in The Gazette,” Sir Robert replied in a tone of satisfaction.

He walked out of the room as he spoke and, when the door had closed behind him, Heloise crowed,

“There! I told you that I would marry the most prestigious man in England, and that is what I am going to do!”

“Do you love him, Heloise?”

There was just a little pause before Heloise replied,

“Where marriage is concerned, it’s important to marry a man in the right position.”

Lydia looked at her half-sister searchingly before she commented,

“You did not think of that yourself. It’s something Lady Burton taught you.”

“It is something I have always thought,” Heloise said defiantly.

Lydia however, knew that she was lying.

Heloise wanted to be important, but she would not have put it in those words.

Lydia thought, as she had thought before, that it had been a mistake for her father to ask Lady Burton, who was a distant cousin, to present Heloise at Court and chaperone her during her Season in London.

She knew, if she was honest, that she had disliked Lady Burton from the first moment she had met her.

Worldly-wise, avaricious, greedy for anything she could gain personally by chaperoning Heloise and as hard as nails, she had, Lydia was convinced, entirely the wrong attitude to life.

Lady Burton, like her father, had taken for granted that Lydia should run the house in London as an unpaid housekeeper where she was at everybody’s beck and call for anything that was required.

It was assumed that so demanding a responsibility made it out of the question for her to take part in any of the social activities that occupied Heloise from dawn until dusk.

She, of course, had luncheon and dined with the family unless the party consisted of an odd number of guests, in which case she was expected to eat elsewhere.

Lady Burton seldom addressed her unless it was to demand something or give her an order and she could hear her indoctrinating Heloise with the idea that the only thing that mattered in life was a social position.

She also heard her say that Heloise was so beautiful that she could pick and choose amongst the gentlemen who admired...