CHAPTER ONE 1890-1
2004 Words
CHAPTER ONE
1890Henrietta Radford stifled the urge to yawn.
Straight above the head of Count Majstorovic, who was kneeling passionately in front of her, she could see her reflection in the mirror across the room.
An eighteen-year old girl with long blonde tresses and sea-green eyes in a grey dress and pretty red boots.
She gave a start as the Count suddenly grasped her hand and dragged it to his fervid lips.
His minute kisses made her think of mosquito bites and she disengaged her hand with a barely disguised flinch.
The Count looked at her questioningly.
“You do not like me?”
Henrietta swallowed.
There was nothing at all particularly wrong with the Count, but there was nothing particularly right either. His jowls quivered when he became heated and his hands were large and ungainly and the colour of smoked ham.
And she did think that large sword he insisted on wearing as part of his Bulgarian Army costume was rather preposterous.
He looked so like a figure from feudal Europe when this was Boston, United States of America, 1890!
“Miss Radford, my cherub, won’t you answer me?”
Henrietta sighed.
“I’m so sorry, Count, but you see you are suitor number four this week and I get rather muddled!”
The Count bridled.
“There are others?”
“Oh, yes,” replied Henrietta mournfully. “Many.”
The Count rose majestically.
“Then I salute you and withdraw. When a young lady does not see the virtue of a Bulgarian, she is blind!”
The Count bowed, clicked his heels and was gone.
Henrietta had been living in America for two and a half years, but it was only in the last months that she had been able to purchase some superb items for her wardrobe.
She gave another sigh and leaned back in her chair.
Despite the pleasure of such luxuries as handmade boots, she had grown tired of life in Boston.
She missed England and her home there, Lushwood Manor, even though she and father had left it under very sad circumstances.
Lushwood had once been a beacon for elegance and gaiety. Many lavish balls were held there when old Lord Radford Henrietta’s grandfather was alive.
She recalled creeping out of the nursery in order to gaze down through the banisters of the great stairway at the guests arriving. Lords and Ladies, Dukes and Duchesses, Counts and Countesses.
She remembered one night in particular.
Her mother was playing French airs on the piano in the drawing room and the sound drifted into the hall where a young man had just arrived late and was in the process of removing his cape.
He was very tall with raven black hair and a strong profile. He looked every inch a Prince out of a storybook.
Catching sight of the little girl peering breathlessly down at him, the young man gave a conspiratorial wink.
“What, are you not dancing this evening?” he asked mischievously.
Henrietta shook her head.
“I am not allowed into the parlour at this hour,” she explained shyly.
The young man thought for a moment.
“But you are allowed into the hall at this hour?”
Henrietta considered gravely.
“I think so. Nobody has ever said I shouldn’t!”
The young man held out his hand.
“Then why not come down and waltz with me?”
The housemaid in the hall looked disapproving, but Henrietta did not care.
She tripped lightly down the stairs, holding up her night shift as if it was the most beautiful ball gown.
“It isn’t quite a waltz that is being played,” said the young man. “We will have to improvise!”
Henrietta did not know what the word ‘improvise’ meant, but she said nothing.
She just placed her hand in her partner’s and they were away.
The housemaid watched with pursed lips, throwing anxious glances at her, but she did not notice.
She felt like a feather, drifting here and there over the floor.
So this was what it was like to be grown-up!
When the dance finished, the young man bowed.
“Thank you, Miss Radford. I presume you are Miss Radford and not some changeling?”
Henrietta, unsure of ‘changeling’, but being certain of who she was, nodded proudly.
“And how old are you, Miss Radford?”
“Seven,” replied Henrietta gravely. “And a half.”
Her partner’s eyes twinkled.
“Well, when you are seventeen and a half, we will hopefully dance again.”
Henrietta had often thought since of the handsome young man who had danced so gracefully with her, but she never saw him again.
Perhaps it was because those days of splendour at Lushwood had ended soon after, when her grandfather died and it was discovered that he had squandered a large part of the family fortunes.
For years the new young Lord Radford and his wife struggled to maintain the house and its extensive estate.
Then Lady Radford died and Lord Radford lost all heart for the task. Day after day, Henrietta would find her father in his study, a glass of wine in his hand, as he stared disconsolately at the lovely portrait of his late wife.
Henrietta blinked away her own tears whenever she looked at the portrait.
Her mother had been regarded as something of a Saint. She had weathered the vicissitudes of her husband’s wealth with equanimity. She neither admonished him for his generosity to impoverished relations, nor pilloried him when that generosity was not returned in his hour of need.
Henrietta had always believed her mother to be the prettiest woman in the world with her thick dark hair and warm hazel eyes.
One morning, looking up at her portrait, Henrietta thought she could see something else in those eyes. There seemed to be an expression of deep concern in them as she
gazed down upon her grieving husband.
She followed her mother’s gaze to where her father slumped in his chair, his glass of wine at such an angle that it seemed it must spill on the carpet.
Gently Henrietta reached out and took the glass out of her father’s hand.
“Papa. Please don’t be so sad. Mama would not be happy to see you like this.”
Lord Radford repressed a sob as he replied,
“Ah, my dear, how can I not be sad? I have lost the dearest sweetest companion. She was always delicate, but to be stolen from me by a fever just a fever! How can I ever recover? No marriage was ever so content as mine. Now I have no one. No one!”
“You have me, Papa,” whispered Henrietta.
Lord Radford put his hand over his face in remorse.
“Child, how can I be so insensitive! Of course, I have you, but one day you will marry and leave me.”
“Everybody leaves in the end, Papa, so that there is always somebody who is left behind.”
He twisted in his chair to regard his daughter with astonishment.
“Those are sad but wise words for one so young!”
Henrietta was fifteen and a half, but, as she looked back at her father now, she felt much older.
“Papa,” she said, “let’s go out and prune the roses in Mama’s garden. They look so terribly overgrown.”
Her father roused himself to do as she suggested, realising that he had somewhat neglected her in his allconsuming grief.
He could not lose his air of dejection, however, and Henrietta despaired as summer waned and the trees began to shed their leaves.
A long sad winter lay ahead.
*
Then one autumn morning a letter arrived bearing a very unfamiliar postmark.
“The United States of America,” Henrietta read out with surprise before handing the letter to her father.
“My goodness,” he exclaimed, “it must be from my old uncle Harold. He emigrated some thirty years ago and has not been heard of since.”
The letter was not from Uncle Harold, but from his lawyer.
Uncle Harold had died, bequeathing his nephew a large tract of land in Texas.
To Lord Radford, this seemed like a sign, a chance to leave the sadness of Lushwood behind for a while.
He decided he must travel to Texas and attempt to establish a farm there.
“Many people make fortunes in America!” he cried. “Think of how Lushwood would benefit if I was to return with loads of money!”
Henrietta begged to go with him and not to be left behind in a boarding school.
Too fond of his daughter to thwart her, he agreed.
Lushwood was closed and most of what remained of the staff, a cook and two scullery maids, were dismissed.
Henrietta’s old nanny, however, was recalled from retirement to travel to America with them.
Nanny readily assented, for she had been missing young Henrietta a great deal.
Lord Radford, Henrietta and Nanny left Lushwood on a grey autumnal morning.
Henrietta leaned out of the carriage window for a last glimpse of her beloved home, which bore a dilapidated and abandoned air.
‘We’ll be back,’ she whispered. ‘I promise we’ll be back. And then you’ll be restored to all your former glory
just as Mama would have wished!’
At first it had not seemed that her promise would ever be fulfilled.
The land in Texas turned out to be dry and thorny. All efforts to farm the land successfully had failed.
Lord Radford and the local Mexicans he employed toiled day and night, but neither crop nor cattle flourished.
Henrietta and Nanny did their best to keep order in the house, a big rambling adobe, ranch-style building, but the heat and flies seemed to affect everyone.
Henrietta’s one consolation was that her father had to work so hard on the farm that his mind could not dwell very often on the loss of his adored wife.
Then, one evening, one of the Mexican farmhands, Pablo, came running to the house in great excitement. He must speak to the ‘Meester’.
Lord Radford had left Pablo sinking a new well to the North of the farm.
“I dig deeper and deeper and stop to wipe my face,” babbled Pablo, “and when I take up my spade again, what is coming out of the earth at my feet but plenty water!
“Plenty. Only it ees thick. And black. Black as my kettle. It bubbles up, Meester, as if eet has no end!”
Lord Radford had leaped up in an instant. He knew what that meant.
Oil!
He was now a wealthy man!
The fortunes of the Radfords had turned at last.
Too late, alas, to save his wife! But not too late to save Lushwood and to ensure a comfortable future for his darling daughter.
Henrietta was sent North to Boston, where she was lodged with Nanny and attended a finishing school. She was sorry to leave her father, but not dusty Texas.
She made good friends among her schoolmates, but after six months she felt ‘finished’ enough.
She had learned posture and etiquette and how to sit with her hands in her lap, but her mind hungered for more substantial fare.
Left to her own devices in the big house on Boston Common, she read all she could lay her hands on, and even taught herself to speak French.
Her father visited when he could, but she knew that he was busy sinking wells and building up his business and she would have dearly loved to see more of him.
Meanwhile, as news of the oil find on the Radford land spread North, Henrietta found herself besieged by a growing number of suitors.
Most were from impoverished European Royalty or aristocracy come to America to marry into money.
There just seemed to be a virtual epidemic of these men offering some title or other in return for a fat dowry.
One day she was beginning to dream wistfully of a man who would love her for something other than the large number of gold nuggets stacking up in her father’s account in the Bank of North America.
She started from her reveries when the door of the drawing room opened and Nanny put her head round.
“It’s a lovely bright day, my dear. Would you care to go skating?”
Henrietta jumped up in delight.
“Oh yes, Poody!”
Poody was her chidhood pet name for Nanny.
It had been snowing all morning, but now the sun was out and the frozen pond was shining like pewter.
She sailed gaily onto the ice, her hands enveloped in a thick white muff. Soon her cheeks were rosy red and her eyes sparkling.
Blonde curls fluttered about her face though most of her hair was tucked into a soft white fur hat.
- Writer
