A Train to Love

CHAPTER ONE ~ 1884-1

CHAPTER ONE ~ 1884“What do you intend to do about the house?” the Earl of Kencombe asked.

There was a distinct pause before Lola answered,

“I thought maybe, Uncle Arthur, I could stay here.”

“Stay here alone?” the Earl exclaimed, “of course not! You know as well as I do a girl of eighteen cannot live alone, unless you can find someone to chaperone you.”

Lola had already thought of this and she had to say rather weakly,

“I cannot think of anyone I would not have to pay.”

That she knew was the crucial point.

She had known when she saw the expression on her uncle’s face that their discussion, when they did have one, was going to be very difficult.

She had just buried her father and mother.

It seemed incredible that only a few days ago they were all so happy in the small village in Worcestershire.

They had few neighbours, but that had not worried them and Lola could not imagine any two people being as happy as her father and mother.

Granted that all her mother’s family had violently disapproved of her marriage.

Lady Cecilia Combe had been very beautiful and her parents were looking forward to presenting her at Court and giving her a Season in London.

To their horror, just before they were packing up to leave their house in Norfolk, Lady Cecilia had announced that she wished to marry her brother’s Tutor.

Neville Fenton was a gentleman, but apart from that he had little to recommend him to the family.

He was very clever and had had a good education and he had started to write books after they were married. These were acclaimed as being brilliant, but did not bring in a great deal of money.

His books were usually on rather obscure subjects that few people found especially interesting, but to his wife they were everything she wanted to read and hear.

Lady Cecilia’s father was furious at her persisting that Neville Fenton was the only man she would marry.

He threatened to cut her off without a penny, but, when they were actually married, he relented to give her Government Stock that brought her in fifty pounds a year.

This, Lola knew, was all that she had now to live on, dress and feed herself and keep a roof over her head.

She suspected that if anyone from the family did come to the funeral it would be her uncle, who had recently inherited the title.

She was well aware that her mother had never been very fond of him and they had not got on well.

Her younger brother, to whom Neville Fenton had been Tutor, had sadly died when he was only eighteen.

Even as Lola was watching the two coffins being lowered into the grave, she had found it difficult to believe that her father and mother had really left her.

They had only gone on a short railway journey to Worcester.

Her father had wanted more manuscript paper and to explore the bookshops, as he always hoped to find books of reference for his next book.

That they had been involved in a railway accident on their return journey seemed incredible.

It was not as though it was a very serious accident, with only three people having been killed.

But two of them had been her father and mother.

It was one of those accidents that were inevitably taking place on the new railways that were being built all over England and the Companies boasted that there were very few accidents and if they did they were not serious.

Nothing could be more serious to Lola, however, than to lose her adored father and mother.

She suddenly found herself an orphan with no one to turn to for help except her mother’s family, which meant the fifth Earl of Kencombe.

She had notified him of her parents’ deaths.

When he had actually appeared in the small village Church, she felt her heart sink.

He was looking just as supercilious as she expected he would and he was, in his own way, very overpowering.

They had come back after the Service to the pretty Elizabethan cottage which was her home.

Lola felt that he looked disdainfully at the small rooms, the ancient casements and the sparse furniture.

No one could have said that Meadow Cottage was anything but attractive, but Lola knew instinctively that to her uncle size counted more than beauty.

He had found it hard to believe that his sister could prefer a cottage to the mansions that had been inhabited by the Earls of Kencombe for five generations.

He walked across the room now in a few strides and stood looking out at the garden.

Lady Cecilia had made it a picture of beauty every spring and summer and she had tended it all herself, just as she had the Herb Garden and everyone admired it.

Lola knew that her uncle was thinking of his broad acres, a huge Park with stags and the pastures her mother had ridden high-spirited horses over as a girl.

Lady Cecilia had described it all to her daughter so often that Lola felt that she had lived there herself and she could picture everything her mother had done until she lost her head to the most attractive man she had ever seen.

Neville Fenton was certainly that, but unfortunately his handsome looks could not provide him with money and the only way he could make any was to tutor for Oxford and Cambridge examinations.

As he often boasted, his students always succeeded, thanks to the coaching they had received from him.

Between the two, who ordinarily would never have met each other, there was an instant affinity and they both acknowledged that it was love at first sight.

All they had to live on was Lady Cecilia’s fifty pounds a year and what Neville Fenton could make out of the books he now began to write as well as his tuition fees.

He fortunately inherited Meadow Cottage from his grandmother, who had retired there when she was a widow and to him and his wife it was a little Paradise of their own and they asked for nothing more.

They could only afford one horse between them, but, as Lady Cecilia was such a good rider, she was often mounted by the local Master of Foxhounds because, as he often boasted, he had known her father.

Actually it was because she was so pretty and so charming that she graced any hunting field just by being present.

When she and her husband were riding together, it was said that no two people could look more attractive. It was as if they came from some abode of the Gods.

‘Lola’ was an abbreviation of the Spanish name, Dolores, and, when she was born, her father was writing a book about Spanish customs.

She was small, slim and very lovely. And she had the same fair hair as Lady Cecilia and the very dark blue eyes of her father.

Neville Fenton had often been told that his eyes were like a tempestuous sea, but on Lola they looked more like the Madonna’s robe and they accentuated the fairness of her skin and her exquisitely chiselled classical features.

“You are so very lovely, my darling,” Lady Cecilia said to her daughter on her eighteenth birthday. “I wish that Papa and I could give a ball for you.”

“I am more than happy to dance with Papa while you play the piano,” Lola had answered her.

Her mother smiled, but Lola realised that she was disappointed, as she really wanted her daughter to have the same advantages that she had enjoyed and her family had declared that she had thrown those advantages away.

“If only we had a little more money,” she had said once when they could not afford to buy something that she particularly wanted.

Then, before Lola could speak, she had added,

“What a silly thing to say! I have everything in the world, in fact no woman is richer than I am.”

She kissed her daughter and then on an impulse she had gone into the study and kissed her husband. She told him that she loved him even though she was disturbing him when he was working.

‘How can they have left me?’ Lola silently asked again for the hundredth time.

“I suppose,” the Earl said in a harsh voice, “I shall have to look after you and you will have to come and live with me at Kencombe Hall.”

“That is very kind – of you,” Lola replied faintly.

At the same time every single nerve in her body was crying out that she had no wish to go there.

It was what she would have to do, but she wanted to stay here in this lovely cottage that was so filled with sunshine and love.

Her mother had often spoken of her family home, but she had, however, always been reserved when talking about her elder brother.

Now that Lola had seen him, she realised that her instinct in guessing that he was unpleasant was right.

“Of course you can make yourself useful about the house,” the Earl was saying, “and I daresay your aunt will find quite a number of tasks to keep you busy.”

Lola pressed her lips together.

She could imagine all too well how, because she was unwanted, that she would be made a jack-of-all-trades and every task that no one else was willing to do would be assigned to her.

“Well, that’s settled,” the Earl said, “I suppose you have enough money to bring you to London.”

He hesitated a moment before he went on,

“There is no one here to travel with you, so you will have to do that part of the journey alone. But I will arrange for one of the housemaids at Kencombe House in Park Lane to accompany you to my house in the country. I am not certain of the train service, but, if you have to stay one night in London, the servants will look after you.”

“Thank you, Uncle Arthur,” Lola said demurely.

She was thinking that, if he could keep up the large house in London and an even larger one in the country, he could easily afford to give her a small allowance.

Then she could stay here and engage a chaperone to look after her and she was sure she could find an elderly retired Governess and so she would not have to continually hear her relations telling her what a mistake her mother had made in marrying her father.

Lady Cecilia had only received a few letters from her family and they had always hinted that she had made a terrible mistake in her life.

Lady Cecilia had read the letters and laughed.

“They really don’t understand,” she had said to her husband. “If I was offered Buckingham Palace, the Shah of Persia’s Palace and the Taj Mahal, I would still choose Meadow Cottage as long as you were with me.”

Neville Fenton kissed his wife and declared,

“I love and adore you, my darling, and nothing else is of any consequence.”

”Nothing,” Lady Cecilia agreed, “except our little angel who is going to grow up just as clever as you are.”

“And as long as she is as beautiful as you,” Neville Fenton said, “no one will bother about her brains!”

Now Lola told herself,

‘If I really had any brains, I would manage to stay here at Meadow Cottage.’

She was only too well aware, however, that, even if she could afford to do so, her uncle would never allow it. Not that he wanted her to be with him and his family, but he would worry about what ‘people would say’.

Lady Cecilia had been well known and liked in the County and they would certainly disapprove if her only child was to be neglected by the Kencombes.

“That means I shall expect you on Wednesday,” the Earl was saying.

He was speaking rather louder than necessary as if he was determined to make sure that she would obey him and Lola could only reply weakly,

“I will pack everything up and bring with me what I wish to keep.”

“Then you had better put the house up for sale,” the Earl asserted.

Lola hesitated and then told him the truth.

“Well actually, Uncle Arthur, a very good friend of Papa’s, who is a retired Don from his College at Oxford, has asked if I would rent it to him.”

“You did not tell me that before,” the Earl said angrily. “You said that you wished to stay here yourself.”