Love is Heaven

Chapter One ~ 1824-1

Chapter One ~ 1824Delysia Langford stepped down from the post-chaise that had brought her from the country and could not help looking up somewhat apprehensively at the large gaunt house, which she had not visited for quite some time.

She was certain that she would find a thousand issues that needed her attention as soon as she walked through the front door, but for the moment she felt so worn out that all she really wanted to do was to rest.

She told herself sharply that it was ridiculous to feel like this. She was certain that her sister Fleur really needed her and, lacking her supervision, the London house would undoubtedly be in a mess.

It was over a year since her father, an outstanding horseman, had suffered an accident out riding with the result that he had demanded her attention and care twenty-four hours of the day.

Sir Kendrick Langford was a very intelligent man, an outstanding breeder of horses and greatly admired in the County where he lived, but no one, however much they loved him, could claim that he was a good patient.

The riding accident had resulted in a broken leg, cracked ribs and a number of other minor injuries, which had taken a long time to heal.

Since it had been impossible to find reliable nurses, apart from the village midwives who kept themselves awake on tots of gin, it had fallen on his elder daughter, Delysia, to wait on Sir Kendrick hand and foot and to earn no thanks for doing so.

As he had to have someone to curse when he was in pain, it was Delysia who heard not only his oaths but his continual complaints that neither she nor the doctors seemed capable of getting him back on his feet.

At the same time Delysia was devoted to her father. When he was well, she had enjoyed not only riding with him and all the other activities that they had enjoyed together but also listening to him.

Sir Kendrick had considerable knowledge on many varied and fascinating subjects and, because he had no son, which had been a deep disappointment to him, he had brought Delysia up as if she was a boy.

He consulted her about his horses and she was always ready to ride even the wildest of them.

He taught her to shoot and, although she was never allowed to take part in what was essentially a masculine sport when he had invited guests, they often went out together after partridges, pheasants, pigeons and rabbits and she had become almost as good a shot as he was.

However all these activities ceased when Sir Kendrick was laid up and his demands on Delysia were so excessive that finally the family doctor had intervened.

“You are better now, Sir Kendrick,” he had said firmly, “and I am going to insist that you go to one of the Spas like Cheltenham or Harrogate. This should ensure that the last traces of your injuries disappear under a regime which consists of massage, warm baths and other special treatments that I know you will find beneficial.”

Sir Kendrick at first had refused to consider such an idea, but finally he had agreed somewhat grudgingly,

“Perhaps you are right. I don’t want to be left crippled for the rest of my life.”

“There is no likelihood of that,” the doctor replied. “But equally you need the right sort of treatment, which you are unable to procure here, to put you back in the saddle again.”

“Very well, have it your own way,” Sir Kendrick replied. “I suppose Delysia will be able to see to it that I do not become too bored surrounded by a lot of invalids.”

“Miss Delysia is not going with you.”

Sir Kendrick looked at him in astonishment.

“What did you say?”

“I am going to be very frank with you, Sir Kendrick, because I have known you a long time and I have not only treated your whole family but respect and admire them all.”

He paused and, when Sir Kendrick started to speak, he interrupted,

“I don’t want to have another invalid on my hands, which is inevitable if Miss Delysia does not have a complete rest.”

“What are you talking about?” Sir Kendrick growled.

“I am telling you quite frankly that you have overworked your daughter to the point where I am half-afraid that she will break down.”

“I have never heard such nonsense!”

“Have you any idea how many hours a day she has been waiting on you for over a year?” the doctor asked. “Sit back and count the times that you have had her out of bed just this past week.”

Sir Kendrick looked somewhat guilty and the doctor persisted,

“When you go to Cheltenham, which I think you will find has better facilities for what you need than anywhere else, I am sending Miss Delysia to London to enjoy herself as she should have been doing instead of acting as an unpaid and unthanked nurse.”

Sir Kendrick looked as though he was about to protest, but the doctor added,

“I think also that, while you can now manage very well without Miss Delysia, your other daughter, Miss Fleur, needs her.”

Now Sir Kendrick knew exactly what the doctor was insinuating.

Even in the depths of the country stories about Fleur had come back to them either from their relatives, who called from time to time to see how Sir Kendrick was improving, or in a more guarded manner from their friends.

“What the Devil is Fleur up to?” Sir Kendrick had actually asked Delysia only two days ago.

“I have no idea, Papa. You know that she is a very bad letter-writer and I was thinking only last night that it has been a very long time since she came home.”

“Write and tell her I want to see her.”

Delysia had agreed that it was what she would do, but, when she sat down at her desk and picked up her pen, she told herself that it was a waste of time.

She knew that Fleur was bored by the country and even more bored by her father’s illness and complaints.

“This place is like a morgue,” she had said the last time she had come home. “At least before Papa had his accident there were men dropping in to see him about his horses or I could ride with him to a Meet and know that there would be some congenial company there. But now – ”

She had finished the sentence with an expressive gesture with her hands and looking at her Delysia could understand that after the bright lights of London she must find the wilds of Buckinghamshire very boring.

She herself missed the rides that she had enjoyed so much, hunting in the winter and, of course, her father’s many friends. They had at first made definite efforts to call and enquire after him, but, as the months went by, the visits became fewer and fewer.

Delysia suspected that when her father did see them they found it not very enlivening to sit by his bedside and listen to his unending grumbling about his injuries.

She knew now that while she had escaped from one problem, thanks to the family doctor, she was quite certain that another one in the shape of Fleur was waiting for her in London.

*

It was difficult to imagine that two sisters could be so different while each in her own way was very lovely.

Delysia had a beauty that was not sensational at first sight, but when people, especially the men, first saw Fleur, they gasped and felt that their eyes were deceiving them and went on looking until they made sure that she was real.

It was their mother, Lady Langford, who had chosen her daughters’ somewhat fantastic names because they were both so attractive as babies.

“Delysia means ‘delightful’,” she had said to her eldest daughter, “and you were not only delightful but a delirious baby in every way. I was so thrilled with you, my dearest, I felt that ‘Delysia’ was just the right name for you.”

“It’s rather unusual, Mama, and people look surprised when they hear it.”

Lady Langford laughed.

“People like being surprised and not only has your father often surprised the Social world that we live in, so have I!”

This was true for Lady Langford had been an acknowledged beauty, who had actually been secretly engaged to a foreign Prince.

He had come to England on a visit and had fallen head over heels in love with the most beautiful girl he had ever seen.

Whilst delicate negotiations were taking place to make it possible for a foreigner and a Member of a European Royal Family to take an English bride, she had met Sir Kendrick.

Extremely handsome and dashing and with a reputation for breaking hearts, he had taken one look at her and she at him and they had both known that there was no one else of consequence in the whole world.

Because it saved a great deal of disagreeableness and argument, they had run away together and been married before anyone realised what was happening and had time to object.

The foreign Prince was desolate. The family of Lady Langford, who were persona grata at Court, were furious at her behaviour and insisted that there would be no good in a young woman who could behave in such an impulsive manner.

Regardless of what everyone said the Langfords were extremely happy until, after fifteen years of what seemed to them sheer bliss, Lady Langford had died whilst having another child which was stillborn.

At first her husband, extremely distraught at losing her, had behaved in such a wild and unconstrained manner that his friends were afraid that his brain had been affected.

Then, strangely enough, he settled down in the country to concentrate on his horses and his two daughters.

It was, however, Delysia, who was now fourteen, who realised that she must look after her father and try to make up to him for the loss of her mother.

She also felt that she ought to try to mother Fleur, but this was actually much more difficult than coping with her father.

If her mother had been impetuous, impulsive and determined to have her own way, Fleur inherited the same characteristics, but was a thousand times more wilful and, Delysia thought, almost uncontrollable.

All she wanted to do was to enjoy herself and that meant, even from a very early age, having every man in the vicinity at her feet.

As she was quite the most beautiful girl who had ever been seen in Buckinghamshire, it was not difficult.

Then by the time she was seventeen Fleur was determined to go to London and dazzle Society’s Beau Ton that she had heard a great deal about.

King George IV was growing older and from all accounts Society was not as gay and amusing as it had been when he was the Prince Regent.

But Fleur had met a few bucks and beaux when they came to stay in Buckinghamshire in the few large houses near their own and they had made her sure that the world that they played a large part in was just waiting for her.

It was Fleur who had found Lady Barlow, one of their Langford relations, who was delighted to chaperone her in London.

Fleur had arranged, without her father and Delysia even being aware of it, that Lady Barlow would present her at Court as soon as the King returned to London.

This ensured that she would be known and noticed and once that had happened she was supremely confident of her own success.

Sir Kendrick found it hard to refuse Fleur anything because she looked so like her mother and gave her, it seemed to Delysia, an astronomical amount of money to spend on clothes.

He conveniently forgot that his elder daughter should have made her debut over two years earlier.

“I want you here with me now,” he had said, “and later perhaps we will open the house in London.”

Delysia had agreed, because she always agreed with whatever her father asked of her.

She was not particularly interested in the Social life and did not begrudge or feel the least bit envious of Fleur setting out on what her sister was sure would be a great adventure.

Then three months later, when it had seemed that Sir Kendrick might think of going to London, disaster struck.