Love Finds The Way

CHAPTER ONE 1880-1

CHAPTER ONE

1880It was almost time for HMS Liverpool to dock at Marseilles. From his view on the bridge John Chester watched the port grow nearer.

Captain Hallam clapped him on the shoulder.

"I am going to the shore office to find if there are any letters. Are you coming with me, or are you leaving me to find yours for you?"

John laughed.

"I'll be very surprised if there is a letter for me."

"Oh, come on now," Hallam said. "You must have pretty girls longing for you to return."

It was a reasonable question. John Chester was nearly thirty, well set-up, with dark brown curly hair and a twinkle in his eye that might easily capture a maiden's fancy.

"What about you?" he asked, skilfully side-stepping the question. "Did you leave any broken hearts behind?"

"If I did I just hope my wife never learns of them. She was expecting a child when I left and it may have been born by now."

"Congratulations. Your first?"

"No, the third. To tell the truth, we can't really afford any more."

"So you find children expensive?" John asked.

"Endlessly. Luckily my eldest daughter is very pretty, so she may marry a millionaire and save the family."

"I am sure you can find her one," John said with a grin. "Plenty of millionaires must travel in your ship, but I have always found that pretty girls are few and far between."

Hallam regarded him with good natured cynicism.

"That is probably because their careful fathers are keeping them well out of your path," he observed.

John roared with laughter and did not deny it.

"But I would be surprised if you really suffered from a shortage of female company, anywhere you go" Hallam added, not without a touch of envy. "There seems to be a lack of unmarried Englishmen, and I have been told many times that a man with a female at home is a man to be avoided."

"I should have thought out of sight, out of mind," John replied coolly. "Who's to know what you're doing on a trip round the Mediterranean, or, as I have been travelling, far away on distant oceans, where an Englishman is as rare as a glass of cool champagne?"

"At least you can get that here," said Hallam. "If you can afford it."

"That's the problem," John said. "I often can't. What little I have has been spent on travelling. It isn't comfortable to do that when you haven't much cash, but I prefer travelling uncomfortably to not travelling at all."

"Then how will you manage at home?" Hallam asked.

"By doing what I have always done, staying clear of women with marriage in their eyes."

"But every woman has marriage in her eyes," Hallam pointed out. "Unless she is married already and then she has a husband under her heel."

"Where no woman will ever have me," John declared firmly.

"Then you will be a bachelor all your days," Hallam predicted.

"Not at all. I know exactly the kind of girl I want and when the time comes I shall choose her – sweet-natured, kind, docile –"

"Women are not docile any more," said Hallam, aghast at this lack of realism. "They have advanced ideas. They want to be emancipated."

"That kind of girl would not suit me at all," John said. "What man wants a wife who is always arguing with him?"

"No man wants that, but it's what they get," added Hallam gloomily. "My friend, you have been away from England too long. You know nothing about the New Woman."

"And you do?" John asked with a grin.

"Yes, from my wife's sister, a terrifying spinster. She could have married well, but no! It's all liberation and argument. According to her, one day women will have the vote."

"Never!"

"Just as long as I'm not alive to see it. Now I must get back to my duties. We're nearly there."

As he turned away another young man who had been standing just behind them, listening to their conversation, came closer to John.

"To listen to you talk, you're a heartless devil," he observed.

"I am not heartless at all," John objected. "I am just attracted to a certain kind of lady –"

"Dolls who never speak except to say 'Oh, how wonderful you are!' and 'I'll never understand how you clever men think of such things'."

John grinned.

"It makes for very engaging company."

"For a short time," Benedict expostulated. "But for life? Think of the boredom!"

"The trouble with you is that you come from a family of educated women," John responded gravely.

"It's true that my mother and sisters are extremely learned. Don't worry, old fellow. You will never be asked to meet them. Once I have told them about your ideas they wouldn't have you in the house."

"But Ben, don't they terrify you?"

"No, I grew up with women who talk good sense, so it seems natural to me. You have been spoilt by eastern women, with nothing to do but think of a man's comfort and agree with him."

"What's wrong with that?" John asked with an air of innocence.

"Oh, to blazes with you!" exclaimed Benedict. "I don't believe that you are as bad as you pretend."

"Maybe not," said John with a grin. "But almost!"

He led the way off the bridge and down to the deck, where he leaned against the ship's rail with easy grace, watching the harbour growing nearer.

Benedict Kenly, his friend who had accompanied him on part of his travels, thought that John was ungrateful as well as heartless.

He seemed oblivious to the advantages conferred by his long, lithe figure and handsome face, thought Benedict, who was sadly conscious of his own lack of height. His face was round and cherubic. Some girls were attracted by his kind heart, but they did not fall in love with him, he reflected sadly.

But John Chester, who could have his pick of pretty females, cared only for his freedom.

"Heartless," Benedict repeated.

"Let me tell you something, Ben," said John, "A man has to be a little heartless if he means to stay free of entanglements."

"Your life is full of entanglements," Benedict observed with perfect truth.

"Flirtations. I am talking about serious entanglements, the kind that lead to domesticity, like that poor devil, Captain Hallam."

"But you are going to be a Duke," Benedict noted. "You cannot stay unmarried all your life. What about your heir?"

John's eyes, as they turned on him, were so aghast that Benedict could not contain a laugh.

"What an appalling thought!" John exclaimed. "My uncle is not yet sixty. He might still marry and have an heir of his own, thus sparing me the draughty castle and the dreary inheritance."

They joined Hallam in going ashore and headed for the office where the letters of those who were travelling awaited collection.

John knew that there would be nothing for him, but it was as well to check before he and Benedict went to sample Marseilles hospitality.

But to his astonishment the man behind the desk said,

"There's been one waiting here for the last six weeks, sir."

It was not a letter, but a telegram that he handed to John. It bore his name and the name of the ship.

"It must be urgent," observed Benedict.

"I don't see how it can be. Heavens, I hope it's not that girl I dined with on my last night ashore."

"Did you behave like a gentleman?"

"Of course I did. Well, one kiss." Benedict frowned and John added defensively, "She was very pretty."

He opened the telegram and became very still as he read,

"Mr. John Chester, aboard HMS Liverpool. It is with regret that we inform you that your uncle, the Duke of Chesterton, died yesterday.

It is important that you should return immediately.

James Wentworth."

John read it over twice before he could believe it. He felt he had been hit by a bombshell.

As his uncle, who had never married, was now dead, John would become the Duke, inheriting not only the title, but also the house he occupied, which had been in the family for eight hundred years.

His whole life had been turned upside down and for a moment he could not think clearly.

"Is it bad news, old man?" Benedict asked sympathetically.

"The worst," replied John, very pale. "Come on, I need a drink, urgently."

He swept his friend out of the office and into the nearest tavern and ordered a bottle of brandy in a terse voice that made the landlord scuttle. Only when he had managed to take the first drink could he recover himself enough to toss the telegram across the table at Benedict.

Benedict read it and exclaimed,

"How sad. Were you close to him, John?"

"My uncle? No, we were never on cordial terms. And now it seems I am not to be reprieved after all. I will inherit a title that I do not want and a draughty great castle that's in a very bad state of repair."

He drained his brandy in one gulp, trying to come to terms with the calamity that had fallen on him.

"A title is useless without the money to keep it up," he added. "My uncle spent his money very strangely. He became religious in his old age and filled his home with poor people who had nowhere else to go."

"I don't call that strange," commented Benedict. "I call it noble."

"You come from a family of clergy," John pointed out. "It's understandable that you sympathise, but my uncle's family never did.

"Why any man wished to spend his time helping those who were too stupid to help themselves, I cannot understand. They not only gave him a great deal of trouble and when they died he paid for their burial. Then he had to contend with their weeping relatives who did nothing for them while they were alive."

"That's a very hard thing you are saying."

"Dash it all, Benedict, don't look at me like that. I don't mean to sound callous but I have had a bad shock, and I don't know which way to turn."

"Of course," said his friend loyally, "you are saying things you don't mean."

"Yes, well, don't get sentimental about me. I don't have a soft heart. All I can see at the moment is that I have been landed in a nasty position. Goodbye my freedom, goodbye my way of life!"

"But of course you will wish to do your duty to your family now," Benedict began to say and was silenced by a look from John.

He thought his friend looked shockingly pale, like a man in a nightmare. Which was exactly how it felt to John.

John had seen little of his uncle in recent years. He had always found other appointments to keep when his family thought it their duty to visit the Duke. He had no wish to suffer the boredom and discomfort he found at the castle.

Yet now it was his.

And he had no idea of what to do with it. Or how to solve any of the multitude of problems that were about to descend on him.

"I had planned to stop off at Marseilles for a while," he mused, "and maybe take another ship home. But now –"

"But now we must rejoin the ship," said Benedict at once.

"There is no need to spoil your trip, Ben."

"Of course I am coming with you. I will have to spend a few days with my family near Portsmouth, but then I am coming on to you. Do you think I would desert a friend when he's in trouble?"

John flashed him a grateful glance, downed another brandy and they headed back to the ship.

That night they began the journey to Portsmouth. John leaned against the railing, looking out at the choppy sea.

"My father once said Uncle Rupert was as mad as a hatter," he told Benedict.

"Because he helped the poor and oppressed?"

"Because he put them before his own family. When he inherited the title there was a reasonable amount of family money and a home which most sensible people would rejoice at owning. It had pictures, furniture, a library, in fact everything a man could want. He spent it all on his lost sheep.

"There were endless family squabbles and it was one of the reasons I felt the need to travel. I could just afford one journey, but I used it to make some money, so that I could give something to my mother and sisters and have a little over to pay for the next journey. That way I managed to explore much of the Orient, while still doing my duty to them."