CHAPTER ONE - 1865
1789 Words
CHAPTER ONE - 1865The theatre was abuzz. The performance of Twelfth Night was magnificent and soon it would be time for the lights to go down for the last act.
From her place in a box near the stage, fourteen-year old Carina Denton sighed with delight. Her first visit to London had proved to be everything she had hoped and tonight was the best of all.
When her school friend, Alice Grade, had invited her for a visit, her parents had been a little uncertain. But Alice’s family were respectable, old-fashioned people and permission was soon given.
“Alice, who is that?” Carina whispered to her friend, indicating a young man in the box immediately opposite.
He was in his early twenties, and incredibly handsome, Carina thought. Tall, elegant, striking and attired in full evening-dress, with cuff-links that must have been real diamonds from the way they sparkled.
But there was something else about him that drew her attention. His dark eyes were fierce and turbulent. His curved mouth hinted at a darkly sensual nature.
Not that Carina understood this. She only knew that there was a wildness and a drama about him that made it impossible for her to turn away.
“I don’t know him,” Alice whispered back.
“What are you girls whispering about?” asked Miss Ferrars, her governess.
“We are wondering who that young man is,” Alice told her.
Miss Ferrars gave a little gasp and averted her eyes modestly.
“That is Lord Thornhill and you must not look at him.”
“Why?” Carina wanted to know.
“Because he is not a proper person.”
“Why?” Alice demanded.
Miss Ferrars was in an awkward position. As a governess she was expected to be prim, proper and puritanical at all times. Yet beneath the severe bodice of her dark dress beat the heart of a romantic.
Normally her employer, Alice’s mother, would have answered these questions. But at the last minute Mrs. Grade had been stricken with a headache, and Miss Ferrars alone had accompanied the girls to the theatre.
“He is improper because – he does improper things,” she said lamely.
“What sort of things?” Alice persisted. “Oh, do tell us please.”
“He has a bad reputation,” Miss Ferrars replied. “People say he is – dissolute.”
“But what does he do?” Carina wanted to know.
Poor Miss Ferrars could not have answered that question in a million years. At forty she was as innocent and sheltered as a young girl. She knew that Lord Thornhill was dissolute because she had been told that he was. But precisely how a man went about being dissolute she had only the vaguest idea.
“Never mind,” she said hastily. “Thank goodness he has gone now.”
Lord Thornhill had slipped away through the curtains at the back of his box. Miss Ferrars gave a sigh of relief.
But her relief was to be short-lived. A moment later he appeared in the box immediately next to theirs.
Now Carina could see him better.
He was little more than a boy, although his face was already marked by experience. He had the air and grace of a prince who knew that the world was his to be enjoyed as he pleased.
Carina gazed at him, awed by his aura of glamour and romance, thinking that he was exactly what a hero ought to be.
The box beside them contained three ladies who, from their family resemblance, might have been a mother and two daughters.
He courted them all, kissing their hands, giving them practised, flirtatious smiles. The girls looked at him with yearning, the mother with knowing anticipation.
The door at the back of the box opened and a middle aged man came in. As soon as he saw Lord Thornhill, Carina could sense the tension.
‘He does not like him,’ she thought, watching the man’s suspicious eyes flicker from his wife to his daughters. ‘I wonder why?’
But however deep his dislike, the man evidently lacked the courage to order Lord Thornhill out of his box. As the lights went down for the last act, the young man settled himself audaciously between the daughters.
The curtain went up. In moments Carina was absorbed by what was happening on the stage, believing in the characters, loving every moment of it.
“Fiend!”
The voice rang out from the stage and everyone sat up, alert. There was something different about the man who had entered and was standing in the spotlight.
“Foul fiend! Vile seducer!”
A buzz went round the audience as people began to realise that this was not part of the play. The man who had rushed onto the stage was thin, gaunt and unshaven. His clothes were expensive but he looked as though he had slept in them.
He was pointing at Lord Thornhill as he screamed,
“Villain! Wretch! The world shall know you for what you are. No decent house should receive you. No woman is safe.”
The young Lord had risen and come to the front of the box. Clearly he recognised himself in the accusation and was ready to brazen it out.
“Girls, it’s time we were going,” Miss Ferrars declared, all a-flutter.
“Oh no!” they protested in unison.
Lord Thornhill, standing just on the other side of the low divide, heard this and turned his blazing grin onto them.
“Ignore him, ladies,” he said. “It is all over now. The performance can continue.”
He turned back to the stage and called back,
“Be off with you, sir. You have now had your say and should retire.”
He gave an elegant bow in the direction of the stage, where the man was tramping about clutching his head. His hair fell over his forehead, giving him a look of wild disorder, almost of madness.
“You mock me!” he shrieked. “But I will rid the world of you!”
Before everyone’s horrified gaze he thrust his hand into his jacket, pulled out a pistol and fired.
There was a loud crack. Then another.
Suddenly everyone was screaming. Lord Thornhill staggered back, clutching his shoulder. The next moment he had toppled over the low divide, straight into Carina’s lap.
Her hands flew to her face and she let out a gasp. There was an ugly red stain on the snowy white of his evening shirt.
He began to slide onto the floor and she instinctively put out her arms to save him.
His eyes, which had been closed, opened suddenly. He was looking directly at her.
Carina had the strangest sensation that the world had stopped. She could hear the shouts and screams about her, but they seemed to be coming from a long way away.
The world was suddenly unreal. The only reality was the handsome young man whose head was lying in her lap.
There was blood on his face where the first bullet had grazed his cheekbone before the second bullet caught him in the chest.
He saw her gazing at him, and managed a faint smile.
“Good evening, madam,” he said faintly. “My – apologies for – inconveniencing you.”
“No – no – ” she stammered, too distracted to know what she was saying. “Oh, if only I could help you. Please don’t die.”
“Certainly not,” he murmured. “I would never wish to distress a lady. I think – if a way could be found to stop the bleeding –”
He broke off with a groan.
“Yes, yes,” said Carina, looking around her and thinking quickly.
Seizing her reticule, she pulled out a handkerchief. It seemed such a tiny object for such a mighty job, but she screwed it up and thrust it beneath his jacket over the horrible wound.
The man from the next box was leaning over, his face full of horror.
“If you please sir,” Carina said, speaking with a calm she was far from feeling, “may I have your handkerchief?”
“I – yes, of course. Well done!”
He handed her a large handkerchief, which Carina pressed into place on the young man’s chest, fighting to staunch the flow of blood.
Lord Thornhill was almost unconscious, his eyes fast closing, but still he kept his gaze on her.
“If I live,” he whispered, “you will have saved me.”
“Oh please don’t talk like that,” she begged. “You must live. The doctor will be here soon.”
“Whatever he does – it is you who has saved me. May I not know your name?”
“Carina,” she said.
“Carina. A lovely name. It’s Italian, did you know that?”
Tearfully she shook her head.
“In Italian it means ‘beloved’. That is how I shall always remember you – my beloved. You are so pretty – I know that one day you will be another man’s beloved. But you will always be mine too. I shall never forget you.”
“And I shall never forget you,” she said, knowing it to be true.
“Kiss me,” he whispered.
She gasped at such an outrageous request, but he said,
“It might be my last kiss on earth. I beg you –”
She could not deny him. Dropping her head, she laid her virginal lips briefly on his. For a moment she felt his mouth move against hers. Then he was still.
Horrified she drew back to gaze into his face. Suddenly she became aware of the world again. There were shouts and commotion. The box was filled with people. The doctor had arrived.
The young man was laid out on the floor and the doctor was examining him.
“Come girls,” commanded a shaken Miss Ferrars. “We must leave at once.”
“Oh no,” Carina cried.
“What did you say?”
“I cannot go without knowing if he’s dead.”
“Do as I tell you and come at once.”
Carina’s mouth set in a stubbornness that was rare in her.
“No,” she said again.
Miss Ferrars gave a little scream of horror. Alice regarded her friend with admiration, but she almost did not recognise her. This was a new Carina, almost a young woman, with strength and determination clearly marked on her brow.
The doctor had found the handkerchiefs.
“Who put these here?”
“I did,” Carina faltered.
“Well, you have saved his life.”
Carina gave a gasp of joy.
“Then he will live?”
“You have managed to staunch the blood. I see no reason why he should not live now.”
“Oh thank you, thank you!”
Carina was swept by violent feeling, too great for her to control. She dropped to her knees, her eyes closed, her lips moving in a prayer of passionate gratitude.
Aghast, Miss Ferrars hauled her to her feet and hurried the two girls out of the box. Carina went in a dream.
All the way home Miss Ferrars was in a flutter. She communicated the terrible deeds to her employers in a voice that suggested the heavens would fall because the two girls had witnessed such things.
Luckily Mr. and Mrs. Grade, although horrified, were people of great common sense and insisted on playing the matter down, forbidding any further mention of it.
There was a brief reference to the shooting in the next day’s newspaper, although, to Carina’s disappointment, it made no mention of Lord Thornhill’s ultimate fate. So she was still left in uncertainty about whether he had lived or died.
On the following day she was sent back to her parents’ home in the quiet Worcestershire countryside.
She never told anyone of the words that had passed between her and the young Lord. She never spoke of his kiss or the way he had whispered her name.
But she never forgot him, or the sound of his voice saying, ‘Carina – my beloved.’ Those words would live in her heart forever.
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- Writer
