Little White Doves of Love

Chapter One 1883-1

Chapter One 1883“You are quite certain that is all the money your father has left?” Lady Katherine Kennington asked sharply.

“I am – afraid that is everything – except of course, for the house.”

Lady Katherine looked around her contemptuously.

“I cannot imagine this will fetch very much, even if you find anyone willing to buy it.”

She paused to look at her niece’s face and added even more scornfully,

“I never knew why your father and I presume with your mother’s approval, wished to live in a ‘dead-and-alive hole’ like this.”

“They were very – happy here,” Nolita Walford said.

She spoke in a soft, musical, rather frightened little voice that was very unlike her aunt’s positive self-assured tones.

The fact that she was so deprecating did nothing to appease Lady Katherine’s somewhat aggressive manner, as if she was forced to face a problem she disliked, which was in fact, a considerable inconvenience.

She walked across the small but attractive sitting room with its threadbare carpet and faded curtains to stand looking out on the garden, which was a riot of flowers and, surprisingly enough, well kept.

“Have you thought about your future, Nolita?” she asked.

“I wondered, Aunt Katherine – if I might– stay here.”

“Alone and unchaperoned?” Lady Katherine questioned, “I could hardly be expected to agree to that!”

“I thought if Johnson and his wife were here I could manage on the one hundred pounds a year – which is what I shall have left – after all the bills are paid.”

“My dear child, you may be stupid, but not so stupid as to think that as my niece and, of course, the niece of your Uncle Robert, you could live here alone at your age.”

“How old would I have to be, Aunt Katherine – before I could – do so?”

“A great deal older than you are now!” Lady Katherine snapped, “And by that time, who knows, you might find a husband!”

The way Lady Katherine spoke made it quite apparent that she thought this unlikely and Nolita asked herself humbly who would wish to take on a wife of no Social consequence except for a few very grand relations and with only one hundred pounds a year between her and starvation?

She had known before her aunt arrived for the funeral that she would be made to feel ‘the poor relation’ which, as her mother had laughingly said often enough, was the way they thought of her.

“Your grandparents and, of course, my sisters and brother were appalled,” she had told her daughter, “that I should want to marry anyone as poor and unimportant as your father. But, dearest, I fell in love with him as soon as we met!”

“I expect it was because Papa looked so dashing in his Regimental uniform,” Nolita had said to her once.

“He was the best looking man I had ever seen,” her mother had replied softly. “Of course as a soldier he could not afford a wife, so he left the Grenadier Guards and has always sworn that he never regretted it.”

“I am sure that is true, Mama, but there would have been no need for you to be so poor if your father had been kinder. After all as the Earl of Lowestoft he was a very rich man.”

Her mother had laughed.

“In every English titled family the money always goes to the oldest son and that was my brother Robert. The girls are expected to find themselves rich husbands.”

However, money had never seemed to matter, Nolita thought now.

The house had always been full of sunshine and laughter and she could not imagine any two people who could be as happy as her father and mother.

The only consolation she had was that they had been killed together when the half-broken horse her father was driving had run into a train at the level crossing on a dark night when they were returning home from a dinner party.

To Nolita it was as if her whole world had come to an end and she had known when dutifully she had sat down and written to her mother’s brother and sisters to tell them when the funeral was to be that there would be trouble.

Actually Lady Katherine had been the only one to attend, but her brother, the Earl of Lowestoft, had sent a wreath and so had her sister, Lady Anne Brora.

They both wrote saying that they were unavoidably prevented from attending the funeral and Nolita could not help wishing that her Aunt Katherine had sent the same message.

But she was here and Nolita knew that, when she stayed behind after the other mourners had left, she would have something unpleasant to say.

‘What do I have in common with someone so smart and who lives in a very different world from mine?’ Nolita asked herself.

That Lady Katherine was dressed in the very latest and most expensive fashion, that she was an acknowledged beauty and that her picture appeared regularly in the women’s fashion magazines captioned as one of the most beautiful leaders of London Society, made her all the more formidable.

As she moved across the drawing room, Nolita had been aware of an exotic fragrance and the rustle of her silk skirts gave her an aura of extravagance and glamour that she had never known before.

The sun streaming in through the window glittered on the diamonds that surrounded her pearl earrings and on the rings that she wore on her thin white fingers.

‘She is very beautiful,’ Nolita thought, ‘but she frightens me. I can understand why Mama wanted to run away from her home and be happy alone with Papa.’

“I have been thinking about your predicament,” Lady Katherine said, “and actually I thought of a solution before I came here.”

“What is – it?” Nolita asked, expecting that she would not have any choice or say in the matter.

“First I want to make it quite clear that neither I nor your Aunt Anne find it possible to chaperone you or introduce you to Society.”

Nolita did not speak and Lady Katherine went on,

“To begin with, it would be ridiculous for me to have to trail about with a young girl and I can assure you at thirty-five I have no intention of sitting on the dais at balls.”

She was thirty-nine, as they both knew, and Nolita had no wish to argue as Lady Katherine continued,

“Your Aunt Anne will be living abroad again as her husband has been appointed Ambassador to Paris and that is certainly no place for someone as young as you are.”

“I was thinking,” Nolita said before her aunt could say any more, “that perhaps it would be – possible for me to find someone – respectable who would live here with me. I am sure there must be a retired Governess or lady in – reduced circumstances who would be – glad of a roof over her head.”

“I think you are most unlikely to find one,” Lady Katherine replied, “but, as you speak of a Governess, that is actually something like the idea I have in mind for you.”

“To be a – Governess?” Nolita asked.

“Not exactly,” Lady Katherine answered, “but I have a friend, the Dowager Marchioness of Sarle who wrote to me only the other week to ask if I knew of anyone to act as companion to her granddaughter.”

“A – companion?” Nolita murmured.

“Do not keep repeating what I have said in that stupid fashion,” Lady Katherine said. “I am trying to explain to you that this is a unique position and one that I consider would be ideal, if you have enough intelligence to keep it.”

Again her tone showed that she thought it was most unlikely.

“The whole trouble,” Lady Katherine went on, “is that you look too young and, although you are over eighteen, no one would ever think so.”

“I shall grow – older,” Nolita ventured.

“I doubt if you will grow any taller, although I suppose you will lose that foolish baby-like face.”

Nolita said nothing.

She had the idea that one of the reasons why her aunt spoke to her so unpleasantly was that she had been surprised by her appearance when she arrived for the funeral.

Because Nolita resembled her mother, she was aware that, whatever her aunt might insinuate, she looked at least pretty, if not, as her father had thought, lovely.

“It is a privilege,” he had said only the week before he died, “to be able to sit down to meals with two of the loveliest women it would be possible to find anywhere in the length and breadth of England.”

“You flatter us, darling,” her mother had replied, “but I love it, so go on saying such nice things.”

“You bowled me over the first moment I saw you,” Captain Walford said to his wife, “but you have grown even more beautiful as you have grown older and I think that Nolita will do the same.”

“There is plenty of time for that,” her mother smiled, “but I am glad I have such a beautiful daughter. I am very very proud of her!”

Nolita had known from the expression in her aunt’s eyes that her appearance did not please her.

She had thought it was perhaps because, although Aunt Katherine was still beautiful, there were little tell-tale lines of age around her eyes and mouth which had not been on her mother’s face.

“Nevertheless,” she was saying, “it is the opportunity of a lifetime for you to be with the Marchioness’s granddaughter because she not only belongs to the Sarle family, who I imagine you have heard of even in this backwater, but she is a great heiress.”

“How old is she?” Nolita asked.

“I believe that she is nearly twelve. Her grandmother said to me, ‘she needs a more refined and cultured person with her than Governesses who can hardly be classed as ladies’.”

“But surely Aunt Katherine, I am rather – old to be a companion to a child of twelve,” Nolita said hesitatingly.

“You will have some authority over her, of course,” Lady Katherine answered. “I imagine that she will have other teachers, but it will be your duty to try to guide and influence her.”

Nolita must have looked doubtful and Lady Katherine said angrily,

“Oh, use your intelligence! I know exactly what the Marchioness wants. Apparently the child is being difficult and Millicent Sarle of all people would not wish to waste her time with a difficult granddaughter.”

“Is her mother dead?” Nolita enquired.

“She died years ago and left her enormous fortune, which increases, I believe, year by year, to this one tiresome girl. I have often said to the Marchioness that it is such a pity there is not a son to inherit the title.”

“Her father is still alive?” Nolita asked,

“Of course he is. Heavens! Do you never read the newspapers? I suppose you could not afford one.”

Nolita flushed.

She could hardly explain to her aunt that neither her father nor her mother were the least interested in The Court Circular or the reports of the balls and parties that took place in London.

Usually when the newspaper arrived her father turned to the sporting pages and they would all be engrossed in the reports of the horse racing.

Every penny they could save went to buying horses, which her father would break in, train and sell at a profit.

It was the only way they had of augmenting their minute income.

Sometimes when he had been successful they would feel rich and he would buy presents and new gowns for his wife and daughter and there would be special food and very occasionally a bottle of champagne.

It was the sort of life Nolita was aware would have horrified her aunt and yet it had all been such fun.

Then suddenly she remembered where she had heard of the Marquis of Sarle and realised why, when her aunt had mentioned his name, it had seemed to ring a bell.

Of course, he owned racehorses and her father had pointed out his racing colours at one of the nearby race meetings they had attended a year ago.

“That is the favourite,” he had said. “It belongs to the Marquis of Sarle, but I don’t think it will win,”

“Why not, Papa?”

“I rather fancy the outsider and, if he romps home, we shall really be in luck.”

“Please, dearest,” Nolita had heard her mother say pleadingly, “don’t wager too much money. You know how hard up we are at the moment.”

But her father had backed his ‘hunch’, as he called it, and the outsider had won. Not until this moment had Nolita given a thought to the favourite, which had come in third.

“All you have to do,” her aunt was saying, “Is to ingratiate yourself with this child and make her happy and who knows what she might do for you in the future.”