Little White Doves of Love

Chapter One 1883-2

There was a note of envy in her voice as she went on,

“Someone was saying the other day that her grandfather’s fortune, which she will inherit as well as her mother’s, is one of the greatest in America.”

“Was her mother an American?” Nolita asked.

“That is what I am trying to tell you,” Lady Katherine replied. “She married when she was very young and was delighted, as naturally all Americans are, to buy themselves into the British aristocracy,”

“I thought the Marquis was very rich.”

“He is, but who ever has enough money?” Lady Katherine asked petulantly. “Anyway the Marquis certainly benefitted from her dollars and so has his estate in Buckinghamshire where you will live.”

Nolita drew in her breath.

“Please, Aunt Katherine – I don’t wish to – annoy you, but I would much – rather not go to this place.”

“Why not?”

“I have never had very much to do with children and, if I have to be a Governess or a nursemaid, I would prefer babies of two or three.”

“I might have guessed that you would be as perverse and stupid as your mother was, when she ran away in that ridiculous fashion,” Lady Katherine replied angrily. “Surely you can get into your head that I cannot have you take a menial post when you are my niece?”

She did not sound proud of the relationship and went on,

“This is not the position of a Governess or a nursemaid. You will merely be with the child because you are connected with a distinguished family. It is a marvellous opportunity, if you exploit it, that you may never have again.”

Nolita wanted to say that she did not wish to exploit anything or anybody, but before she could speak Lady Katherine continued,

“Don’t go on arguing, Nolita. Your mother and father are both dead. Your Uncle Robert is now your official Guardian and you have to do as he says. He has left this in my hands and you will obey me.”

She picked up her black gloves from the arm of the chair where she had laid them when she came into the room and started to put them on.

“I am going back to London now and I suppose, although it will be an extreme inconvenience, I must send one of my own carriages for you the day after tomorrow. That will give you time to pack everything up and to bring what clothes you possess with you.”

She looked her niece up and down before she added,

“I imagine, if that is the best you own, I shall have to provide you with something decent to wear before you go to Sarle Park,”

She did up the last of the pearl buttons on her suede glove before she went on,

“You will stay with me for one night in London and I will ask the Marchioness to have you collected the following day. I have already told her about you and I expect that I shall find a letter expressing her satisfaction when I return home tonight.”

Lady Katherine buttoned her other glove before she asked sharply,

“Is that quite clear?”

“Yes – Aunt Katherine.”

“And you can make what arrangements you like about this house. Personally, I should let it fall to the ground. I cannot think there is anything in it worth saving.”

As Lady Katherine finished speaking, she walked towards the door and waited automatically for Nolita to hurry to open it for her.

She stepped into the tiny hall, looked around her with disdain and then hurried as if she was anxious to get away to where her comfortable travelling carriage drawn by two well bred horses was waiting outside.

She paused for one moment outside to say,

“Goodbye, Nolita. Do exactly as I have told you and, when the carriage comes on Thursday, you are not to keep the horses waiting.”

“No, Aunt Katherine.”

A footman wearing a cockaded hat was holding the door open.

As Lady Katherine swept into the carriage, he arranged a satin cushion behind her back and placed a light rug over her knees.

The door was closed, the footman jumped up onto the box, the coachman touched the horses with his long whip and they were off.

Lady Katherine did not bend forward to wave to her niece and Nolita did not expect it.

She only stood watching until the carriage was out of sight hidden by the shrubs and trees that bordered the twisting drive.

She did not go back into the house, but ran in the direction of the stable, which was a long low building, surprisingly in better repair than the house.

The cobbled yard had been weeded and watered and the stalls themselves were painted yellow in a somewhat amateurish fashion.

As Nolita ran towards the stable door, there was the sound of a horse whinnying and the stamping of hoofs.

In a second she had the door open and had stepped inside.

Then the horse was nuzzling against her shoulder and she had her arms round his neck.

“Oh – Eros – Eros,” she said and her voice broke. “I have to go – away. What am I to do without – you?”

The tears were running down her face.

She heard the sound of footsteps behind her, but she did not look round.

She was aware that it was only old Johnson, who had looked after her father’s horses and had always seemed to be one of the family.

He came now to stand beside her.

“What did ’er Ladyship say to you, miss?”

“What do you expect?” Nolita answered brokenly. “I have to – go away.”

“’Tis just what I feared, miss.”

“Yes, I know,” Nolita answered. “She had it all arranged before she came. Oh, Johnson – what shall I do?”

“Nothin’ much you can do, Miss Nolita, seein’ as ’ow you be under twenty-one.”

“Three years,” Nolita whispered. “Three years – without Eros.”

“P’raps it’ll not be as bad as you think,” Johnson said, “if I could look after ’im for you.”

Nolita gave a little start and raised her face, wet with tears, which she had hidden in Eros’s neck,

“Would you – would you do that for me? Would you –really do it?”

“Of course, miss, if you wants me to. ’Tis just a question of money.”

“Could you and Mrs. Johnson manage on one hundred pounds a year if you stayed here?”

Johnson considered for a moment. He was not an impulsive man and was given to thinking slowly.

“One ’undred pounds a year be two pounds a week, Miss Nolita. I could cope with vegetables from the garden and there’ll be chickens and rabbits. Aye, miss. We’d manage on that and Eros’ll ’ave ’is oats in the winter.”

Nolita gave a little cry.

“Oh, Johnson, thank you! Thank you! For one terrifying moment I thought – I should have to sell him. If he had to go – I think I should die!”

“Now, Miss Nolita, you mustn’t be talkin’ like that. You’re young. You’ve your life in front of you and you’re pretty! As I were sayin’ to the wife only this mornin’, there’ll be a gentleman comin’ along sooner or later, you mark me words!”

“I don’t want a gentleman,” Nolita answered. “I just want Eros and to stay here with him and you.”

“I fancies ’er Ladyship’d ’ave sommat to say about that,” Johnson remarked.

“I did not even mention to her that Eros existed,” Nolita admitted. “Otherwise I am quite certain that she would try to say he was not mine but Papa’s and must be sold as we had to sell the other horses.”

“I’Il miss ’em, Miss Nolita, They worked me ’ard at times, but I’ll real miss ’em,”

“You will have Eros and he is more important and finer than all the other horses put together!”

“That be true enough, miss, and I might ’ave guessed when the Captain brought ’im back for you on your birthday, ’e’d turn out to be the best of the lot.”

“He certainly is and please, Johnson, saddle him for me while I go and change,”

“You’re goin’ riding, miss?”

“It is what I have been longing to do all day,” Nolita answered. “I thought people might think it was wrong before the funeral, but Papa would have understood.”

“Aye, that ’e would!” Johnson agreed. “The Captain always said, ‘there’s nothin’ so wrong or so right that wouldn’t be better if one thought about it a-ridin’ an ’orse’.”

There were tears in Nolita’s eyes, but she gave a little laugh.

“I can hear Papa saying that, Johnson, and I want to ride and think. They will be happy thoughts, because you have solved my problem for me. I was so afraid you would not think that one hundred pounds was enough money.”

“I’ll manage,” Johnson said stoically.

As he carried Nolita’s side saddle towards Eros, she ran from the stables and back towards the house.

Ten minutes later riding over the rough infertile fields that lay at the back of the house she felt the depression that had lain over her all day like a deep dark cloud moving away.

It was not only the agony of knowing that she had lost her mother and father whom she had adored, but it was also that she must leave Eros,

He had meant so much in her life that it was almost impossible to contemplate the future without him.

Because her father had sensed that she needed companionship, he had bought Eros for her five years ago on her thirteenth birthday.

They had been going through a rather straitened period when the horses that Captain Walford had trained had not fetched as much as he had expected.

What was more, the racehorses he backed, despite his wife’s pleadings to be more careful, had been ‘pipped at the post’ or fallen at a fence he had anticipated they would take easily.

Then at a horse fair he had seen a foal that he had instinctively known was a good one being sold for a few pounds.

The man who had bought the mother had wanted her to pull a Post chaise and was not interested in anything else.

Captain Walford had brought the foal home and given it to Nolita and from that moment she knew a delight and happiness that was inexpressible.

She had trained Eros not only to come when she called but also to do fantastic tricks at her command.

He would stand up on his hind legs and waltz while she hummed to him, bow his head when she said ‘yes’ and shake it when she said ‘no’.

Every year she taught him new things until her father said laughingly,

“He is more human than most human beings and certainly more intelligent!”

The idea of losing Eros, or having to sell him, had been like a dagger in Nolita’s heart from the moment her father and mother had died.

She had known how little money they had and she had half-expected that when everything was settled that there would be nothing left.

Fortunately the small amount her grandfather had settled on her mother had increased in value until it brought in nearly fifty pounds a year and her father had the same income from a trust of which he had been unable to touch the capital.

Now it was hers and, although it was little enough, it would at least prevent her from having to part with Eros.

That night when she went to bed in the small bedroom she had occupied since she was a child, she thanked God that she could still keep him and she also prayed that she would not have to stay for very long at Sarle Park.

‘If they think I am unsatisfactory,’ she reasoned to herself, ‘they will soon dispense with my services. Then perhaps Aunt Katherine will be so angry that she will let me stay at home.’

She knew, however, that she dare not actually bank on it.

Although Lady Katherine had no wish to have her orphaned niece with her, she was very conscious of the family connections.

Nolita remembered that her mother had often laughed at how her relatives worried as to ‘what people would say’.

“The reason why they were so angry that I ran away with Papa,” she had said to Nolita once, “was because of ‘what people would say’. If he had been rich and important, of course they would have said that it was a very good thing, but, as he was poor and had to leave his Regiment, they were prepared to be extremely disagreeable about my marriage.”

“Why should they worry?” Nolita asked, wide-eyed, “and what people?”

“The people they admired, their friends and a whole circle of acquaintances,” her mother explained. “When you are older, Nolita, you will find that Society has hedged itself around with a whole lot of unwritten rules and laws, many of which seem quite nonsensical, but they are there.”

“What sort of rules?”

Her mother had looked at her father who had a twinkle in his eye and he had said,