The Lovely Liar

Chapter One ~ 1835-1

Chapter One ~ 1835Noella looked around the room with a despairing expression in her eyes.

It was horrifying to think of how much it had altered since she could first remember it.

There were marks on the walls where the pictures had once hung and the mirror over the mantelpiece had gone.

So had the pretty French desk where her mother had always sat to write her letters.

All that was left was a sofa where the springs were broken, two armchairs that were very shabby and a carpet that was so threadbare it would not be worth taking off the floor.

Everything else had been sold and Noella knew that there was nothing left in the room nowthat would fetch even a few shillings.

She walked to the window to gaze out at the untidy overgrown garden.

There were still the flowers that her mother had planted coming into bud in the spring.

There were daffodils, golden under the trees, but because there was no one to tend the lawn, it was not the smooth green that she remembered so vividly.

Brambles had grown over the shrubs and their spring blossom was struggling for life against them.

‘What am I to do?’ she asked herself.

Then, as there was no answer to her question, she said with a little sob,

“Oh, Mama – help me – please ‒ help me!”

It seemed just incredible that everything should have happened quite so quickly and that she was, almost before she realised it, completely alone in the world.

When her father had retired from his Regiment after a long and distinguished career in which he had been awarded a medal for gallantry, he had been granted a generous pension.

He had died from more than one of the wounds he had received in battle, although the enemies had taken a long time to kill him.

His widow had then received half the pension that he had enjoyed during his lifetime.

Because the house had always seemed carefree and very full of love, Noella had never thought of asking what would happen to her if her mother died.

At the back of her mind she had expected long before her mother had grown old, to be married and have a husband to protect and look after her.

After the first shock of losing the husband she had adored, Mrs. Wakefield had tried to make her daughter happy.

She was also determined to make sure that she should be well educated.

Every single penny that could be spared during her husband’s lifetime had been spent on Noella who had in consequence been taught that many more subjects than was considered necessary for girls of her age.

She was extremely intelligent and benefited directly from everything she had learnt.

Her teachers were the Vicar who was a very erudite man, a retired schoolmaster and a Governess who had been for many years with an aristocratic family.

Noella loved reading and, as her mother often said, ‘travelled in her mind’ to all sorts of strange places in every part of the world.

There was practically no social life in the country village in Worcestershire, where on his retirement, her father had bought a house very cheaply.

It was an ancient black-and-white timbered house and Noella had always thought it beautiful and it had always seemed to her full of sunshine and laughter.

Even after her mother had become a widow they would laugh together in the evenings when Noella had finished her lessons.

They would tell each other stories in which, having found a fabulous treasure in the garden, they were able to travel to the places that Noella had read about and that had captured her imagination.

Then, a year ago, when she was seventeen, her mother’s cousin, Caroline Ravensdale, had arrived unexpectedly with her daughter.

Mrs. Wakefield had often talked to Noella about her cousin who she was very fond of as they were the same age and had grown up together.

Mrs. Wakefield had told Noella about their childhood, but she was sixteen before she learnt the truth about Caroline Ravensdale.

Caroline, it so appeared, whose father was much richer than her mother’s family, had been taken to London for the Season.

There because she was just so beautiful, she had been an instantaneous success.

“She had hair the same colour as yours, my dearest,” Mrs. Wakefield said to Noella, “which comes from a Swedish ancestor far back in our history and recurs from time to time in succeeding generations.”

Noella’s hair was the very pale gold of the sun when it first appears over the horizon, but her eyes were not the sky-blue that might have been expected. They were the deep blue of a stormy sea.

“Caroline was so much acclaimed in London,” Mrs. Wakefield went on, “that nobody was surprised when she made a brilliant marriage.”

“Who did she marry, Mama?” Noella had asked the first time she had heard the story.

“The Earl of Ravensdale,” her mother replied. “He was much older than she was, but had a huge estate in Yorkshire besides a house in London and another at Newmarket where he trained his racehorses.”

Noella had listened to the story enthralled.

“He was a strange man,” Mrs. Wakefield said, “and I thought when I met him rather frightening.”

“You met him, Mama?”

“Of course I met him,” her mother replied, “first when Caroline became engaged to him and he came to stay with her parents and then very soon after she was married I visited Caroline in Yorkshire.”

“Tell me more about it, Mama,”

Mrs. Wakefield hesitated a moment before she answered,

“I think it was then that I realised for the first time that Caroline’s husband was nearly old enough to be her father!”

She paused before she went on,

“He was handsome, at the same time authoritative, and I thought he treated Caroline rather as if she was a schoolgirl.”

“Did she mind that, Mama?” Noella enquired.

“She did not say very much,” Mrs. Wakefield replied, “but I thought that she seemed a little restless and not as happy as I would have wanted her to be.”

She sighed and continued,

“As Yorkshire is so far away, that was the only time I stayed with her there, although I was their guest on several occasions after the Earl opened Raven House in London. Caroline and I had a marvellous time attending balls and, of course, endless shopping.”

Mrs. Wakefield’s eyes were very tender as she related,

“Caroline loved me and we were in fact like sisters. She shared her clothes with me just as when we were children we shared our toys.”

“It must have been wonderful for you, Mama,” Noella exclaimed.

“It was indeed,” Mrs. Wakefield agreed. “For the very first time in my life I wore expensive and very beautiful gowns and, without being conceited, I can tell you, my dearest, I was a considerable social success.”

“How could you be anything else, Mama, when you are so beautiful?”

“Not as beautiful as Caroline, but when your father saw me for the first time at a ball given at Raven House, he said he knew at once that I was the girl he wanted to marry.”

“That was very romantic, Mama!” Noella exclaimed.

“It was the most glorious thing that ever happened to me,” Mrs. Wakefield replied, “and I wish I could describe to you how handsome your father looked in his uniform.”

“So you fell in love with him, Mama?”

“How could I do anything else? Unfortunately, however, it was just impossible for us to be married as soon as we would have liked because he was leaving almost at once with a Battalion of his Regiment for India.”

Noella gave a little cry.

“Oh, Mama, that must have been heart-breaking for you both.”

“He only had the time to tell me how much he loved me,” Mrs. Wakefield said, “and asked me to wait for him, which I promised to do.”

“Then he was – gone,” Noella murmured.

“I went back to the country after he had left,” Mrs. Wakefield related, “and knew that no other man had ever seemed so attractive or meant so much to me.”

“But I am sure there were other men who wanted to marry you,” Noella suggested.

“There were two or three,” she admitted, “and there would have been more if I had encouraged them.”

“But you had to wait a very long time for Papa.”

“Nearly eight years,” she said, “and when he did come home, I was desperately afraid that he would no longer wish to marry me.”

“He had written to you.”

“He wrote to me two or three times a week,” Mrs. Wakefield said proudly, “telling me that I was always in his thoughts and that he was praying that his Regiment would soon be sent home.”

“Did you never think of going to India to join him?” Noella asked.

“It was a journey that took nearly six months,” Mrs. Wakefield explained, “and even if my father and mother could have afforded it, they would not have wanted me to travel so far away from home.”

“Oh, poor Mama! So you had to wait all that time?” Noella cried.

“In a way I was quite happy and, when finally your father returned, we were married immediately even though he had been wounded and the doctors advised him to rest.”

Mrs. Wakefield gave a little laugh as she went on,

“But you know what your father was like when he made up his mind to do something. As he was determined to marry me and all the doctors in the world could not have prevented his doing so. We were married in the little village Church with only a few friends to drink our health.”

“You must have felt that it was very unlike the grand Wedding your Cousin Caroline had,” Noella said reflectively.

“Caroline’s Wedding was sensational and she had seven bridesmaids beside myself.”

Mrs. Wakefield’s eyes were dreamy as she carried on,

“I had no bridesmaids and no pages, but I felt as I married your father that the angels were singing overhead and we were enveloped by a Divine Light.”

There was a little tremor in her voice as she continued,

“Three months later I found that I was having a baby – and that was you, my darling.”

“Were you happy, Mama?”

“I was so thrilled and excited, and so was your father, that we thought no two people in the world could be as deliriously happy as we were.”

“And you told your Cousin Caroline,” Noella prompted, knowing what came next.

“Yes, I wrote to Caroline,” Mrs. Wakefield agreed, “and she wrote back saying that by a strange coincidence she was having another baby. She already had a son who was born nine months after she was married. ”

Looking back again into the past Mrs. Wakefield went on to describe how she and her Cousin Caroline had written to each other every week.

They described how they were feeling and what they were thinking.

Then a strange thing happened,

Their letters crossed and, as the Countess of Ravensdale opened hers in Yorkshire, Mrs. Wakefield was opening hers in Worcestershire.

They found that they had both written exactly the same words to each other.

“My baby will be born, the doctors think, either on or around Christmas Day, and I am sure, dearest, it will be the same for you. I suggest therefore that if it is a boy, we call him ‘Noel’ and, if it is a girl, ‘Noella’.”

“It was not really so extraordinary that we each had had the same idea and had written to the other to say so,” she said to her daughter, “because Caroline and I have always been so close to each other.”

She smiled as she added,

“We not only thought alike, but we were alike in looks and I think we both expected that our babies also would look alike, although they had different fathers.”

Noella, as she grew up, had always been intensely curious about Noella Raven, who like herself had been born on Christmas Day, but they had never met.

She did not understand the reason for this.

Eventually however, her mother had explained in a low rather shocked voice what had happened.

Two years after the Countess of Ravensdale had produced her daughter she had fallen wildly and crazily in love.

She and her husband had met him at Newmarket while attending a Race Meeting.

Captain D’Arcy Fairburn was a dashing and handsome rake who had left behind him a trail of broken hearts wherever he went.