The Eternal Collection

CHAPTER ONE ~ 1898-1

Colonel Ashurst put down the letter he was reading with a smile of triumph.

“I have won!” he exclaimed.

His daughter, Oletha, looked up from the other side of the table to say,

“I did not know that you had a horse racing this week, Papa.”

“Not a horse,” the Colonel replied, “but something far more important.”

Oletha waited.

She knew that her father liked to tell a story in his own time and she was well aware that it was something very pleasant by the expression on his face.

Colonel Ashurst was still an extremely good-looking man and in his youth he had been so handsome that, as her mother had told Oletha, every girl had fallen in love with him.

“When I arrived in England from America,” she had said in her soft musical voice that only very occasionally held the touch of an accent, “I was expecting Englishmen to be good-looking, but, when I saw your father, I was overwhelmed.”

“Where did you first see him, Mama?” Oletha had asked.

“At the first ball I had ever been to in England,” her mother had replied. “It actually was a Hunt Ball and it was fascinating for me to see all the gentlemen in their pink tail-coats with lapels in the colour of the Hunt they belonged to. But I was a little shocked at how boisterous they were.”

Oletha laughed.

She had always heard, although she had never been to one, that at Hunt Balls in the early hours of the morning the lancers, the polka and the gallop became a little out of hand.

“But you enjoyed yourself, Mama?” she asked.

“Immensely! But, when I met your father, I knew that something had happened to me. I had never expected to fall in love with an Englishman.”

“Was it such a terrible thing to do?”

“My father and mother thought so. They brought me to England because they themselves were curious about the country that their ancestors had originated from, but they had no wish to leave me here and they did everything they could to persuade me to return to America.”

“But once you fell in love with Papa it was impossible for you to go away,” Oletha said, haying heard the story many times before.

“He has always sworn that he would never have let me go and, even if I tried to do so, he would have kidnapped me and forced me to marry him however much I protested.”

Oletha thought this was very much in line with her father’s rather buccaneering attitude towards anything he wanted.

He was always determined to be the victor and it was this characteristic that had made him first a very good soldier and secondly a most successful Racehorse owner.

She thought now that it must have been one of his horses that made him look so pleased.

As she waited, he began,

“You know that I have always had great ambitions for you, Oletha.”

“What sort of ambitions, Papa?”

She thought then it must have something to do with her education, because unlike most English fathers, he had always wanted her to be clever.

She knew that it was partly the fact that she was an only child.

Although he would seldom admit it, the Colonel had been desperately disappointed that he had not produced a son to carry on the Ashurst name in the house and estate, which had belonged to the family for four hundred years.

But, because he would never be defeated, he had brought Oletha up to excel in many activities that were generally the perquisite of men.

Under his tuition she became not only an outstanding rider but also an excellent game-shot.

In the hunting field she was invariably ‘in at the kill’ and, although it would have been far too outrageous for her to shoot with the guns when her father had a party, he would often arrange a special shoot just for her, himself, the estate Agent and one of his old and trusted comrades.

Sometimes Oletha knew that when, because her eye was so accurate, she brought down a particularly high pheasant or a partridge at long range, the old gentlemen were quite annoyed.

Apart from this she had the best tutors in all the subjects at which any intelligent man would have wanted his son to excel.

Oletha had therefore learnt Greek and Latin and her father would sometimes say almost wistfully that it was a pity that she could not go to Oxford University where it was certain that she would have been an outstanding success.

When she told him that there was a women’s College at the University sacred to men, her father had told her in no uncertain terms that no daughter of his would be anything but a feminine woman.

This was a contradiction that he had introduced her to as soon as she was old enough to understand serious subjects and strangely enough she had indeed achieved the impossible and surprised him by being exactly as he wanted her to be.

She certainly looked very feminine now from the other side of the breakfast table.

Slim, graceful, at the same time with an athletic and coordinated body from the amount of exercise she took, Oletha was unusually lovely.

She had huge eyes which, when she was angry or emotionally aroused, seemed almost the colour of pansies.

They were a complement to the colour of her hair which, thanks to some far-off Swedish ancestor who had made his way into America centuries earlier, was the gold of ripening corn.

Also from the other side of the Atlantic had come the strong little chin that could at times make her as determined as her father!

Most people, however, found themselves noticing only the loveliness in her eyes and the straight classical little nose that lay between them.

It seemed to Oletha that her father looked at her in a strangely scrutinising manner before he said,

“My ambitions, my dearest one, concern your marriage.”

Oletha’s eyes widened and she could not have looked more astonished than if her father had dropped a bombshell on the table.

“My – marriage, Papa?”

“It is something I have not mentioned before,” the Colonel answered, “because you are so young and I was planning that next year you would have a Season in London and then be presented at Court. But something has happened now that has made me change my plans.”

“What is – that?” Oletha asked, because she knew that it was expected of her.

She was feeling as if her father had dealt her an unexpected blow and she was finding it difficult to think clearly.

She had expected that he would plan every other aspect of her life, especially since her mother’s death, but she had thought the possibility of marriage was so far in the future that she seldom even gave it a passing thought.

She was aware that he thought when she was only seventeen this last Season that she was too young to be a debutante and had been quite content to wait until next April when she would be nearly eighteen-and-a-half.

debutanteThere were so many things to do on their estate in Worcestershire and so many horses to ride that she was in no hurry to embark on the hectic round of balls, Receptions and other Festivities that were an inseparable part of a lady’s debut in London.

She had thought, however, that with her father beside her it would be fun, but now he had other ideas.

“You will remember, Oletha,” the Colonel was now saying, “that I have often spoken to you of my friendship with the Duke of Gorleston.

“Yes, of course, Papa. I remember how you told me that you met him some years ago at Epsom and that he was extremely grateful because you told him to back your horse, which was an outsider, and it won.”

“That is certainly true,” the Colonel answered, “and after that, whenever we met on the Racecourse the Duke would always come up to me and say,

“Have you a good tip for me today, Ashurst? I am relying on you to send me home with some guineas in my pocket.”

“I am sure you never failed him, Papa.”

“Not often,” the Colonel agreed, “and, as I was able to help the Duke when he needed it, we became friends, which needless to say I found very gratifying.”

Oletha looked surprised because she thought that it was a strange way for her father to speak and, because they were so close to each other’ he understood what she was feeling and explained,

“Dukes, my dearest child, are a race apart and yet I have always maintained that sport makes all men equal. That has certainly been true where I am concerned.”

“I don’t think I understand, Papa.”

Colonel Ashurst took a sip of coffee from the cup beside him before he replied,

“Let me explain and, as it happens, it is very pertinent to what I am going to say to you later.”

“I am listening, Papa.”

“The Ashursts, as you are aware, are a well-known family here in Worcestershire where our ancestors have lived in this house for generations. My father and my grandfather before him, served in the Worcestershire Yeomanry and we have filled many Official appointments in the County with the exception of that of Lord Lieutenant.”

“I have often wondered why that post was not offered to you, Papa.”

“I can answer that quite simply,” the Colonel replied. “I am not important enough! The Lord Lieutenant represents Her Majesty the Queen and, although we have every reason to be proud of our lineage and of being acknowledged as gentlefolk, we are not, in the real sense of the word, aristocrats.”

Oletha gave a little laugh and then she asked,

“Does it trouble you, Papa?”

“Not in the slightest where I am concerned.”

Her father paused, looking at her in a way that made her know instinctively that he was thinking about her.

Then he continued,

“My father was not a wealthy man, nor was I, but, when I married your mother because I loved her, I found long after I had proposed that she was by English standards a considerable heiress.”

“Mama has often told me how surprised you were,” Oletha smiled, “and she told me that because you were so proud it was hard to convince you that it did not matter if she had more money than you had.”

“Of course I minded,” the Colonel admitted, “but whether your mother was penniless or as rich as Croesus it was of no consequence beside the fact that we deeply loved each other.”

Oletha clasped her hands together.

“Oh, Papa, it is so romantic! I have always hoped that I would meet someone just like you and fall in love in the same way.”

She saw her father glance down at the letter that lay on the table.

Then he said,

“Perhaps that is asking too much, my dearest. Love at first sight happens perhaps only once in a million times and so I have always been exceedingly grateful that I was so fortunate enough to experience it.”

For a moment he sat staring across the room as if he was looking back into the past and the happiness that he had known with his American bride.