Music from the Heart

Chapter One ~ 1831-1

Chapter One ~ 1831Sir James Armstrong read the letter he held in his hand and, when he had finished, there was a smile of satisfaction on his face.

He looked across the breakfast table at his wife and said,

“Denton is coming. I thought he would not be able to resist a Steeplechase!”

Before Lady Armstrong could reply, her stepdaughter, Muriel, gave a cry of delight.

“Lord Denton has really accepted, Papa?” she asked. “That is wonderful!”

“I thought it would please you,” Sir James remarked.

“I am thrilled,” Muriel Armstrong replied. “He said he wanted to see me again.”

She looked down a little coyly, then, as she raised her eyes, she looked at her stepsister and the expression on her face changed.

“I am not having Ilouka here,” she asserted in a very different tone of voice.

Her father looked at his wife in some surprise, raising his eyebrows and there was an expression of concern on Lady Armstrong’s beautiful face.

Ever since she had married for the second time, she had been upset by the animosity with which her stepchild regarded her daughter by her previous marriage.

It was creating an atmosphere of tension in the house, which she very much deprecated.

“Ilouka will have to go away,” Muriel said insistently. “I will not have her spoiling my chance of attracting Lord Denton as she did with Frederick Holder.”

“That was not my fault,” Ilouka intervened quickly. “I promise you it was not.”

Her voice was soft and musical and very different from her stepsister’s aggressive tone.

There was a frown between Sir James’s eyes as he said slowly,

“I know that my sister, Agatha, would be only too pleased to have Ilouka to stay.”

“Then that is where she must go,” Muriel added quickly.

Ilouka parted her lips as if to protest, but before she could speak, she caught her mother’s warning glance and the words died on her lips.

She knew that her mother was pleading with her to be silent and it was only when they had left the breakfast room and mother and daughter walked up the stairs together that each knew without words what the other was thinking.

Lady Armstrong went into the sitting room that led off her bedroom and as Ilouka closed the door she said pleadingly,

“Oh, please, Mama, I just cannot go to stay with Mrs. Adolphus again. You know how terrible it was the last time. She never stopped saying nasty things about you in a rather subtle manner.”

Lady Armstrong sighed.

“I am afraid that your stepfather’s relations did not approve of his marrying a penniless widow who they thought would be too old to give him a son or indeed any more children.”

“How can they be so unkind when Step-Papa is so happy if it was not for Muriel?”

“Yes, I do know, dearest,” Lady Armstrong agreed in a soft voice, “but perhaps she will marry Lord Denton and then there will be no further problems. But you know as well as I do that, if you are here when he arrives, you will spoil her chances.”

Both mother and daughter were silent, knowing that Ilouka could not help attracting men and it was only too true that when she was there Muriel had little or no chance of holding the attention of a man for long.

Muriel was quite a good-looking girl with clear skin and brown hair complemented by brown eyes that could, when she wanted something, be soft and appealing, but were as hard as iron if she was crossed.

It did seem from her point of view most unfair that her father, after years of apparently being content to be a widower pursued by a great number of attractive women, had fallen in love with the widow of a near neighbour.

When Colonel Compton had died, his wife was so miserable and bereft without him that it would not have occurred to her as possible that she should marry again.

But the Colonel, who had been a distinguished soldier and had, as someone had once said, ‘more charm in his little finger than most men have in the whole of their bodies’, had never been a thrifty man.

His wife discovered a multitude of debts, which she thought despairingly would take her years to pay off and it meant that she and her daughter, Ilouka, would have to skimp and save every penny.

Of course there could be no new gowns and certainly no London Season where Ilouka would shine, as her mother had hoped for her, in the Social world she had known as a girl.

She was not at all interested in Sir James Armstrong, who, having called to commiserate with her on her bereavement, came again and again until it was quite obvious that he was courting her.

However it was impossible not to realise how very different life would be if she became his wife.

His impressive country house with a large estate was indeed a focal point in the County for those who liked to be invited to his luncheons and dinner parties. They also enjoyed the garden parties he gave in the summer and the two Hunt Balls that always took place at The Towers in the winter.

It was knowing the difference that it would make to Ilouka that persuaded Mrs. Compton finally to accept Sir James’s proposal after he had grown more ardent and insistent week by week and day by day.

Although she knew that nobody could ever take the place of her husband in her heart, she in fact grew very fond of Sir James.

Being a very feminine person, she longed once more to be protected and looked after and to feel that the burden of unpaid debts that her husband had left, together with her memories of him, would no longer feel as if it was crushing her.

Finally, after a year of mourning, she allowed Sir James to announce their Wedding after it had taken place very quietly and with nobody there except two of his closest friends.

When they came back from their honeymoon, the new Lady Armstrong looked not only radiant but exceedingly beautiful in expensive gowns such as she had never owned before and with jewellery that Sir James expressed his love with more eloquently than he could put into words.

Ilouka joined her at The Towers and then unfortunately a month later Muriel, Sir James’s only child by his first marriage, also arrived.

It was impossible for anyone not to realise the contrast between the two girls, although they were almost the same age.

Ilouka was lovely with a beauty that owed a lot to her Hungarian grandmother, as did the colour of her hair.

The very soft dark red that the Hungarians all through the centuries have made their own was complemented by two enormous eyes, which dominated her face and which were green flecked with gold.

She was small and delicately made and it was impossible for a man having once looked at her not to look again and, unfortunately as far as Muriel was concerned, to forget that there was any other woman in the room.

In some ways she resembled her mother, but it was her father who had told her stories of his grandmother after whom she had been named.

She had been a very famous beauty in Hungary and she had run away with an obscure, unimportant young English Diplomat named Compton when it was all arranged that she should marry a rich aristocrat.

As a child Ilouka wanted to hear the story over and over again and her father had said,

“Your name means ‘she who gives life’ and, although I knew her only when she was old, my grandmother still seemed to give life to everyone round her. It was nothing she especially did or said, it was that she inspired people and gave them a vibration of the Life Force just by being herself.”

“How did she do that, Papa?” Ilouka had asked.

Her father had laughed and said that, when she grew up, she would have to read books on Hungary and visit the country to understand what he meant.

As Mrs. Compton watched her daughter grow up and become more and more beautiful every day and having, she thought, a quality about her that English girls did not possess, she realised it was unlikely that the more stolid and prosaic County people would appreciate the rare and un-English quality about her.

“We must see that she is presented to the King and Queen,” she had said to her husband.

“I agree,” he answered, “but God knows where the money is going to come from!”

Sir James was, of course, able to find the money, but unfortunately there was Muriel like a stumbling block between Ilouka and her mother’s ambitions.

“One cannot blame Muriel,” Lady Armstrong said now with a sigh, “when you turn the head of every young man who comes to the house.”

“I don’t want them!” Ilouka replied. “As you well know, Mama, most of them are dull and unimaginative and I could no more marry any of them than fly to the moon.”

“I know, darling, but as things are how are you to meet the right sort of man unless I can take you to London for a Season and that would mean that Muriel would have to come too.”

Ilouka gave a little cry.

“I could not bear it, Mama! She is so terribly jealous and, because she hates me, it makes me feel not only unhappy but nervous and ill at ease.”

She gave a little laugh, but there was no humour in it as she said,

“In fact I am afraid even to speak to a man if she is present.”

Lady Armstrong knew without her adding it that any man present would want to speak to Ilouka.

Looking at her daughter now, she thought as she had so often thought before that it was not only her beauty that was so arresting but the fact that there was something ethereal and almost mystical about her.

“She is like a ‘fairy child’,” she had once said to Colonel Compton and he had replied,

“Seeing how much we love each other and how happy we are together, my darling, is it surprising that we have produced someone so unusual who might actually have come out of a Fairytale?”

He himself was very handsome and wherever they went they were stared at.

It was unfortunate from their point of view that, because of limited resources, they were restricted to their small Manor House in Oxfordshire and it was only occasionally that they could afford a brief visit to London.

Mrs. Compton wanted so much more for her daughter but now, when as Lady Armstrong she could afford it, there was Muriel.

“If I am to go away,” Ilouka asked, “why should I have to stay with Mrs. Adolphus?”

Her mother made a helpless little gesture with her hands.

“She is the only member of your stepfather’s family who is willing to do exactly as he asks,” she replied, “and I think too, although he would not admit it, he feels rather ashamed of having to send you away. He therefore wishes to send you where nobody would talk about it and in consequence disparage Muriel.”

Ilouka drew in her breath, but did not reply and after a moment her mother went on,

“Actually your stepfather is very fond of you, Ilouka dearest, but naturally his first thought must be for his own child and, you know just as well as I do, that Muriel has always resented him marrying again.”

“How can she be so selfish, Mama, when you know how happy you have made Step-Papa? He loves you with all his heart.”

“Yes, I know,” Lady Armstrong agreed. “At the same time he has a great sense of family and he must do what is right and best for Muriel.”

Ilouka pressed her soft lips together in case she should say anything to hurt her mother, but she was thinking how they both knew that Muriel had raged at her father furiously when she first learnt that he had married again.

Unfortunately she had written a lot of extremely derogatory and unkind letters, which Sir James very foolishly had shown to his wife after he had married her.

He had done so not to distress her, but because he thought it right that she should know the problems awaiting them both when their honeymoon was over.

Lady Armstrong had tried by every means in her power to make Muriel like her and she might have succeeded if Muriel had not been eaten up with jealousy, spite and malice from the moment she had first set eyes on Ilouka.