This is Love

CHAPTER ONE ~ 1885-1

CHAPTER ONE ~ 1885Lady Athina Ling turned her horses off the main road and drove down a narrow lane.

She resented having to slacken their pace because it was growing late and she was still a long way from home.

The hedges were high and so she drove ahead with considerable care.

At the first bend of the lane, however, she was forced hastily to pull sharply at the reins as to the front of her and coming out of a field was a farm wagon.

The wagon’s horse was right across the lane and the farm yokel driving it realised somewhat belatedly that there was other traffic on the road besides himself.

He managed to turn his horse as Lady Athina was pulling in hers as hard as she could.

The chaise would just have had room to pass the farm wagon if the wagon had been pointing straight up the lane.

As it was, the lighter wheel of the chaise then crashed against that of the wagon.

The horses came to a standstill and the groom with Lady Athina jumped out.

The wheels were fortunately not locked together as they might easily have been.

But at the same time the wheel of the chaise, being the lighter of the two, was somewhat damaged.

“You was a-comin’ along too fast!” the yokel said aggressively, fearing that someone would blame him for what had happened.

“I am afraid I was,” Lady Athina replied in a soft voice, “and this lane is very narrow.”

“Folks’ve said that afore,” the yokel remarked.

Her groom came to the side of the chaise to report,

“I’m afraid, my Lady, the wheel’s been damaged. Not badly, but it’d be a mistake to try and get ’ome on it.”

“You mean we must have it mended first?” Lady Athina asked. “If we can find someone to do it.”

The yokel was listening to their conversation.

“There be a blacksmith up at The Crown and Feathers,” he said, “and ’e be good ’un, if ’e ain’t gorn ’ome.”

“And where is The Crown and Feathers?” Lady Athina enquired.

He pointed down the lane that she had just come along.

“It be down thar,” he said, “’tis the best Posting inn in these parts and it be on the left.”

“Thank you,” Lady Athina replied, “now please tell me where I can turn.”

He indicated ahead and the groom jumped into the chaise. Very carefully, Lady Athina tooled her two well-bred horses to where there was a wide entrance into a field. She then carefully turned the chaise round.

As they drove back past the farm wagon, the wheel of the chaise was bumping and felt somewhat unsteady.

“You are quite right, Gauntlet,” she said. “We could not reach home with it like this.”

“I’m afraid it’ll take a good hour to mend, my Lady,” Gauntlet replied.

“Well, if it does, we will just have to stay the night at the Posting inn.”

There was then a poignant silence and Lady Athina knew that he disapproved of the idea.

Gauntlet had been with her father since she was a child and now that he had died, Gauntlet looked after her almost possessively as if she was one of his own children.

“It’s no use being disapproving,” she said after a moment when he did not speak. “I know that I should have a chaperone, but then you are far more effective than even Mrs. Beckwith could be.”

“People’d be shocked, my Lady, if they knowed you was a-stayin’ in a public inn without Mrs. Beckwith in attendance.”

Athina laughed and it was a very pretty sound.

“You are making me seem as if I was Royalty, Gauntlet! It will be only for one night and, if you think it might cause a scandal, I will not use my own name.”

She paused before she added,

“I will be ‘Mrs. Beckwith’ – and why not?”

Gauntlet made a strange sound that signified neither approval nor disapproval.

As she drove on, Athina thought just how lucky she was to have him with her.

She could always rely on him in an emergency and, if there were drunken young men at the inn who insulted or tried to be familiar with her, Gauntlet would deal with them.

The wheel was decidedly more wobbly by the time The Crown and Feathers came into view.

It was indeed, as the yokel had informed her, a large impressive Posting inn for such a sparsely inhabited part of the country.

Lady Athina was aware that there were no stately houses nearby where she might have found friends.

However, to have gone back to where she had come from would have been almost as far as going home.

She had been staying the night with an ancient aunt who had been on the verge of death for the last five years.

Athina was quite certain that she would last for at least another five before she finally arrived at the Heaven that she was convinced was waiting for her.

In the meantime she enjoyed more or less compelling her relatives to visit her.

When they arrived she tantalised them with promises of benefiting from her will and such promises were usually rescinded almost before they left.

As far as Athina herself was concerned, she wanted nothing from her aunt. However, she felt it was her duty to go when she received one of her plaintive letters starting,

“This may be the last time that I am able to invite you to

visit me.”

Athina had enjoyed the drive.

She had been extremely firm when her chaperone, Mrs. Beckwith, had suggested accompanying her.

“You know long drives give you a headache,” she said, “and that Aunt Muriel will treat you as if you are dust beneath her feet. She has never had any time for what she always calls ‘superfluous additions to the household’ and that I am afraid, is the category that you come into.”

They both laughed.

“Well, I know that Gauntlet will look after you,” Mrs. Beckwith commented, “and you will be away for only the one night.”

“I will be back home in good time for dinner on Tuesday,” Athina promised.

She kissed Mrs. Beckwith affectionately and, when she left, she had waved to her as she went down the drive.

Athina’s father, the Earl of Murling, had died last year.

He had left his only child a large fortune, a large house and a large estate.

What relatives there were in the vicinity had, immediately after the funeral, asked Athina which of them she intended to reside with.

Alternatively whom she would wish to come to live with her as her chaperone.

“When I looked at their faces,” Athina related to Mrs. Beckwith, “I knew that what they were really thinking was how much money Papa had left me and that it must be kept in the family.”

“That was actually very sensible of them,” Mrs. Beckwith replied.

“Not at all,” Athina retorted. “It was just sheer greed. They were afraid that I would be pursued by endless fortune-hunters who would somehow contrive to get their hands on money that might otherwise have been theirs.”

“Now you are being cynical,” Mrs. Beckwith demurred. “You are too young, dearest, and far too beautiful to look at the world through anything except for rose-coloured glasses.”

During that time she taught Athina as if she was a Governess and he lessons had proved an enormous success.

Mrs. Beckwith was an extraordinarily clever Teacher and Athina enjoyed travelling with her in thought and imagination as she hoped one day to travel in reality.

Athina’s father had died just before she was eighteen and she was now a very well-educated and intelligent young woman.

The Earl had arranged for her to be presented at Court to Queen Victoria and to have her first Season in London.

But, as she was plunged immediately into deep mourning, it was obviously impossible that summer.

This year, however, the family had agitated her and arranged that she should go to London at the beginning of May.

This was now just about two weeks ahead and Athina was already wondering if she really wished to leave the beautiful countryside.

“I love being here when there are primroses in the hedgerows and daffodils in the Park,” she told Mrs. Beckwith. “I cannot believe that anything in London could be any more entrancing.”

“You know just as well as I do,” Mrs. Beckwith replied, “that you have to meet charming young gentlemen, dance every night at a ball and fulfil your dear father’s dream that you will be the ‘Belle of the Season’.”

Athina laughed.

“Papa wanted me to be that because it would be a compliment to him. He always behaved as if he had created me.”

“Which, of course, he indeed had!” Mrs. Beckwith smiled. “If he was here now, I would certainly congratulate him!”

Athina laughed again.

“I have the uncomfortable feeling that both you and my Papa are going to be disappointed. What will happen is that the young men I meet will think I am a ‘blue stocking’ and avoid me like the plague!”

Mrs. Beckwith put her head on one side and contemplated her pupil.

“I have actually wondered about it myself,” she confessed. “You must, Athina, be intelligent enough to let the man always know best, especially when he is wrong.”

Athina threw up her hands.

“I refuse! I absolutely refuse! If they will say something stupid, as some of Papa’s friends used to do, I shall just find it impossible not to correct them.”

“In which case you will have to come back home and talk to the primroses and the daffodils,” Mrs. Beckwith warned her.

“And, of course, you, dearest Becky,” Athina then added. “I love talking to you and that reminds me that the new book on the Universe has just arrived and we must both read it tonight.”

The library at Murling Park was already packed with new books and Athina was far more interested in them than in the clothes that she had been buying to take to London with her.

She had wanted to rent a house in Mayfair and stay there on her own with Mrs. Beckwith.

But there was such an outcry from her relations at the idea that she agreed instead to stay with one of her more amenable aunts.

This particular aunt of hers was married to one of the Gentlemen-in-Waiting at Buckingham Palace and so she had the right entrée to all the important functions there.

Mrs. Beckwith had agreed that she would stay in the country at Murling Park and Athina knew that she would miss her dreadfully.

She was still feeling rather dubious as to what she would find in the Social world.

How could it compare with the joy of owning the finest stables in the country?

There were her father’s finest horses still stabled at Newmarket and it had been impossible while she was in mourning to attend Race Meetings or indeed any public gathering or any sort.

Queen Victoria had set the fashion for long-drawn-out and over-emphasised black mourning after she lost had her most beloved Prince Albert in 1861.

Athina had therefore been confined to Murling Park and it had not troubled her in the slightest.

She missed her father so much, it would have been impossible for her not to do so.

But Mrs. Beckwith was an amusing and delightful companion.

The many horses, Athina often thought to herself, compensated for having no young men to talk to.

She looked so lovely as she rode off on some spirited stallion that she quickly had under her control that Mrs. Beckwith would watch her and sigh.

Athina was exquisite with her golden curls that had a touch of red in them.

Her grey eyes were unusual.

In fact she had a unique beauty that made her different from all other girls of her age.

It was, Mrs. Beckwith knew well, the reason why she had been Christened Athina after the Greek Goddess.

From the moment she was born she acquired a loveliness that few other babies had.

‘I wonder what will happen to her?’ Mrs. Beckwith asked herself as Athina trotted off down the drive, her sylph-like figure silhouetted against the darkness of the trees.

The way she rode reminded her of Diana the Huntress.

Now Athina drove her horses into a large courtyard of the Posting inn where there were several carriages of different styles parked at one end.

This meant that the horses had already been taken into the stables and their owners had gone into the inn.

“Don’t forget that I am ‘Mrs. Beckwith’,” Athina warned Gauntlet as she drew the horses to a standstill. Gauntlet then opened the door of the chaise.