Sailing To Love

CHAPTER ONE - 1879-1

CHAPTER ONE

- 1879“The trouble with this house is that it was built for a family. Now there’s only Miss Venetia.”

The man’s voice came from within the kitchen, and was answered at once by a female voice.

“It’s her home. She wants it to be just as it was when her mother and father were alive. If you ask me, what she really needs is a husband.”

Miss Venetia Baydon walked away quickly, fearful lest her servants should discover her outside the kitchen door and think she was eaves-dropping. She hurried to the drawing room, but found it as lonely as everywhere else.

It was late summer, the leaves were beginning to fall and a fine rain was drizzling down, lending a dull, bleak aspect to the grounds of Baydon Grange. Soon it would be winter, almost a year since her parents had died suddenly of pneumonia within days of each other.

The house was quiet and lonely, the more so because she was short of money and now had to make do with a bare minimum of servants. Johnson, the butler, his wife the cook and two housemaids were all she could afford. Most of her horses were sold and still she had less than she needed.

‘How long before I have to sell the house itself?’ she thought. ‘I couldn’t bear that, yet I may soon have no choice.’

Mrs Johnson had mentioned a husband in a way that made it clear she thought of Venetia as an old maid.

‘I suppose that’s what I am,’ she thought wryly.

Twenty-four, unmarried with almost no money, she had little chance of marrying well now. Her only asset was her beauty. Her hair was a rich blonde, set off by eyes of sapphire blue and men had been known to sigh over her. But she knew that a sensible man cared more for a good dowry than a pretty face.

She was well-born. Her mother had been the daughter of a Viscount and her father the son of a Baronet, but a third son with no hope of the title.

As she grew up, she and her parents had travelled a great deal together and it had been a happy life, even though they never had enough money for people in their position.

They had worried about her marriage prospects, introducing her to eligible young men whenever they could. At nineteen she had received a proposal from an extremely handsome young man and had accepted it, believing herself to be love with him. But the man had cried off when he realised how very small her dowry was. He was in debt and needed a bride with a large fortune.

Venetia had wept briefly, and then forgotten him so quickly that she supposed she could not have been really in love at all.

Four years later she had accepted another proposal under her parents’ urging.

“Darling I know he isn’t handsome,” her mother had argued, “but he’s well-off and will give you a home. Besides, you’re twenty-three and not getting any younger.”

Reluctantly she had become engaged and stayed that way for three weeks. Then she had broken off the engagement, unable to endure her fiancé’s long, dull speeches about himself.

“I’d die of boredom,” she said to her outraged parents. “There has to be a more exciting way to live.”

“Exciting?” her Mama echoed. “Marriage isn’t supposed to be exciting. What will happen to you when we are no longer here?”

That had been last year and now they truly were no longer here. She faced a dispiriting future, yet even so, she did not regret breaking her engagement.

‘I will wait for true love,’ she told herself. ‘And if it never happens, then I won’t marry at all.’

She knew that she was unlucky in that her family had not exerted themselves to help her. But her Uncle Edward, the Baronet, had daughters of his own to marry off. He contented himself by inviting her to visit his London home occasionally.

She enjoyed these visits, as they broke the monotony of her normal routine, and enabled her to see something of her cousin Mary, who was only a year younger than herself.

It was the attraction of opposites. Venetia was cool, collected, intelligent. Mary was forgetful, scatter brained, slightly irresponsible but utterly charming in a childlike way.

Sir Edward Wenmore Baronet, had managed to secure a minor position at court, and was intent on climbing the social scale as far as he could. He had inherited wealth from his father, married more with his wife, and purchased for himself a large, elegant property just outside the town of Windsor, near Windsor Castle, in Berkshire. He had explained this choice as being necessary for a man who must continually be ready to serve the Queen.

He had married two of his daughters well, and was putting all his efforts into securing an advantageous match for Mary.

Now the family was spending the summer in the country, at Wenmore Priory, and Venetia saw them now and then, but not often enough to stop her feeling lonely and isolated. She had often felt that she was not really welcome at The Priory. Mama had told her that it was because she was so much more beautiful than Mary, but then dearest Mama was biased.

Lost in these thoughts, Venetia failed to hear a carriage draw up outside and did not realise that she had a visitor until Johnson entered, saying,

“Miss Wenmore to see you, miss.”

“Mary!” Venetia exclaimed. “How lovely to see you. I had no idea you were coming.”

Mary ran forward and threw herself into Venetia’s arms. Like her cousin she was fair, but whereas there was a richness in Venetia’s looks, Mary’s were pale, almost pallid. Her admirers called her fairy-like. Others called her insipid.

“Oh, Venetia,” she cried, “I’m in such trouble and I don’t know what to do about it.”

Venetia stared at her with surprise.

Mary had never been a very emotional person. But now there was a note in her voice and an expression in her eyes which she had never seen before.

“What has happened?” she asked.

“I hardly know how to tell you,” Mary said. “It’s terrifying.”

She was twisting her hands together as if they were somehow giving her the strength to speak.

“Papa has been to see the Queen at Windsor Castle.”

Venetia nodded, remembering how Mary’s father had always been very proud of being invited to Windsor Castle.

It was known to everyone that the Queen liked having men around her. She had a court of interesting and handsome men which, they all knew, helped to take her mind off the loss of her beloved husband, Albert. She had never recovered from his death.

“And did something happen there?” Venetia asked.

“Yes. I’m desperate, absolutely desperate. Perhaps the only thing I can do is to drown myself.”

Venetia stiffened and stared at her.

“Nothing can be so bad as to make you want to die,” Venetia told her.

“When Papa came back from Windsor Castle yesterday, he told me that the Queen wants me to marry her godson.”

Mary’s voice seemed to break on the last words and the tears were running down her cheeks.

“That must have been a surprise,” Venetia replied. “But why are you so upset by it? Is he a terrible person?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never met him. And it doesn’t matter what he’s like. I love – David.”

“Who is he?” Venetia asked. “I cannot, at the moment, remember anyone called David.”

“He is – the doctor’s son at Coalville,” Mary managed to gasp.

Coalville was a small town not far from her home.

Venetia now remembered a rather good-looking young man she had seen with Mary at one of the garden parties she had attended last year.

“He wants to marry me,” Mary answered. “But he has only just passed his medical examinations. He has no money and not even a position at the moment. Papa wouldn’t think him very important, while the man the Queen has chosen is the Earl of Mountwood.”

Venetia drew in her breath, understanding at once.

As it happened she had heard of the Earl. A friend of her father, with a place at court, he had visited them once, full of news of the latest scandal.

“It’s Mountwood,” he had said. “Decent fellow, always pays up when he loses at cards – not that he loses often. The trouble is he’s too handsome for his own good, and can have any woman he wants far too easily. That is why he’s never married, doesn’t want to be burdened with a wife and so on. The Queen chides him for his disgraceful ways, but he can reduce her to jelly with a smile.”

“But surely he needs an heir?” Venetia’s mother had said.

“Of course, but I’ve heard him say that one day he’ll marry anyone at all, just to have an heir. I don’t think he means to give up his other activities, if you see what I mean.”

And now the choice had fallen on poor Mary, who was crying helplessly. Venetia felt desperately sorry for her, as she suspected her situation was hopeless.

“I am sorry, darling,” she said, “but I can’t see how you can escape this marriage if the Queen is set on it.”

“I have to escape it,” Mary replied in a whisper. “Not just because I love David, but also because I think – I’m almost certain – that I am having his baby.”

Venetia gasped. For a moment she could not believe what she had just heard. Her arms tightened round Mary. Then she said,

“How could you do that?”

“I love him,” Mary sobbed. “I love him and he loves me.”

Venetia drew in her breath.

She now knew that Mary truly loved David, but how he could have given her a child was beyond Venetia’s comprehension.

Where could they have been that such a thing could happen?

Almost as if she had asked the question aloud, Mary said in a broken whisper,

“We meet in a little house in the woods when it is cold and then he wants to kiss me. He makes it very comfortable with cushions and rugs and we are always so, so happy there.”

‘So happy,’ Venetia thought, ‘that Mary had surrendered to him. Now she was having his child.’

It all passed through her mind so that she felt almost breathless with the horror of it.

‘How could she do such a terrible thing?’ she asked herself.

Then almost as if she was being given the answer to her question she thought,

‘Love is what every woman hopes to find. Love from a man whom she loves is something almost divine. After all, it was that knowledge that made me choose a single life rather than the wrong marriage.’

“Papa has everything arranged so that I have no chance to say no,” Mary sobbed. “The Earl is coming to the house tomorrow night and the wedding will be the next day.”

“The next day?” Venetia gasped.

“Yes, I’m trapped. Look – ” Mary put her hand in her pocket and produced an envelope.

Opening it, Venetia saw that it was an invitation to the marriage of the Earl of Mountwood and Miss Mary Wenmore, two days ahead. It was true that Sir Edward was rushing his daughter into this before she had time to think.

It was monstrous.

“What am I to say? What can I do?” Venetia asked herself as Mary went on crying.

Then quite suddenly she knew the answer.

It was almost, she thought later, as if it came from Heaven itself.

In some strange way she could not put into words, she felt it was an answer which flew from the sky and touched her heart.

Her arms tightened around her cousin. Then she said,

“Now stop crying, we will find a solution to this problem. But we have to be very, very clever. One mistake and we’ll all be beheaded or whatever punishment the Queen thinks appropriate for us.

“Now listen to me, Mary. We’re going to save you from marrying a man you haven’t even met and make it possible for you to marry the man you love, whose child you may already have in your body.”

She thought as she said the last words that this was something she had never expected to happen to anyone she knew.

She would never have considered it possible for herself.

But as it had happened, and she was very fond of Mary however difficult it might be, she had to save her.

‘And if she’s carrying David’s child,’ she thought, ‘how could she pretend to her unwanted husband it was his child?’

She took her handkerchief and wiped Mary’s eyes.

“You need not marry this man,” she said, “because I’m going to take your place.”

Mary stared at her.