Paradise In Penang. Barbara Cartland
would never part with it,” he told Maisie’s father. “It is comfortable and quiet and I know we shall not be disturbed on our honeymoon.”
It was during the train journey that Maisie thought that her husband was looking rather flushed.
She had been enjoying the train ride as she had never been in a private carriage before.
“Are you not feeling well?” she asked in a concerned voice, which pleased him.
“I am quite all right,” he replied to his wife. “It was so very hot in the Church and even hotter at the Reception.”
She poured him out a glass of champagne and he drank it thirstily.
“You are a credit to me,” he said with satisfaction, “and you looked exactly as I wanted you to, beautiful and enchanting.”
“I hoped you would like my gown,” Maisie replied. “It was very expensive.”
“You need not worry about that in the future,” Lord Brambury answered in a thick voice.
He drank some more champagne, which seemed to make his voice even thicker.
Maisie had described to Lord Selwyn what had happened when they arrived at Brambury Hall.
“We had dinner,” she said, “and I thought Arthur – looked a little strange. He ate very – little but drank rather a lot.”
Her voice trembled and at this stage was almost inaudible, but Lord Selwyn was listening to her intently.
At the same time he was thinking how lovely Maisie’s pink-and-white skin was.
And he noticed that her eyelashes curled up like a child’s, dark at the roots and fading into gold.
“After dinner we – went up to – bed,” Maisie went on in a hesitating voice.
She stopped speaking and clasped her hands together.
Lord Selwyn then urged her gently,
“I really don’t want you to upset yourself, Maisie.”
“But I wish you to – know. I have never – told this before to anybody.”
She looked away from him and he thought because she was shy that it was very alluring.
“I-I climbed into – bed,” she related in a voice that he could hardly hear, “then – Arthur came into my room.”
She drew in her breath as if she could see it all happening again in her mind.
“He – he walked towards me and then – just before he – reached the bed – he made a strange sound in his throat.”
She gave a little sob.
“As I put out my – hands – towards him, he – collapsed and fell forward.”
There was silence until Lord Selwyn said,
“He had suffered a stroke.”
Maisie nodded.
“It was – terrible! I cannot tell you – how terrible it was! And the doctors could do – nothing to – help him.”
The tragedy was, Lord Selwyn thought, that Lord Brambury did not die at once.
He remained a helpless cripple for five years – five years when there was nothing Maisie could do but be near him and listen to the doctors as they came and went.
The doctors tried to give her some hope, but they spoke in a way which made her know that her husband’s recovery was increasingly unlikely.
“It is difficult to put into words how sorry I am for you,” Lord Selwyn sympathised.
“I knew – you would – understand,” Maisie replied simply.
As she spoke, he wanted to make it up to her for all the years she had wasted her beauty.
She had seen no one but doctors and nurses and the Brambury relatives visited the house occasionally, feeling that it was their duty to enquire after the Head of the Family.
Then, when Lord Brambury finally died, Maisie was now free.
At the same time, because the years had passed her by, she had no idea what to do with herself.
“My father suggested that I should come to London,” she said. “At first I was rather – frightened because I knew – nobody and was afraid of being alone.”
She went on to tell him that it was Lord Brambury’s sister, herself a widow as well, who chaperoned her.
Lady Elton, who was five years older than her brother, moved into Grosvenor Square.
The house had been shut up for five years, but it was soon a busy hive of activity.
The Brambury relations were only too willing to let a rich young widow entertain them and anybody else they wanted to introduce as a suitable friend.
There was no need for Maisie to exert herself in any way.
Her relatives were prepared to engage servants for her and Lord Brambury’s secretary had run his Master’s houses and properties extremely well while he lay unconscious.
“What makes me afraid,” Maisie confided to Lord Selwyn, “is that I may make a second mistake.”
She paused a moment before continuing,
“I know now that it was – wrong of me to marry anyone so much – older than myself, but if I had said ‘no’, nobody would have – listened to me.”
Lord Selwyn understood.
He was also astute enough to realise that Maisie was wooing him and wanted him as her second husband.
It did not occur to him that there would be any disadvantage.
Lord Brambury had left her a fortune and the Dower House in Huntingdonshire and the house in Grosvenor Square as well.
The ancestral home had gone to the new holder of the title, a nephew.
He made it quite clear that he was not interested in his uncle’s widow. He required her only to vacate the house as quickly as possible.
As it happened, she was only too eager to leave what had seemed to her a morgue ever since her Wedding Day.
She had been living in London for six months before she met Lord Selwyn.
He had heard about her before, but had not been particularly interested.
He was told that she was very lovely, but so were a number of other women, especially the one in whom he was interested at that moment.
When they did meet, however, he found himself amused and intrigued by the story of her marriage.
A great number of people were talking about it and he was also told that she was hailed as an important hostess.
When he first saw her, he was inclined to laugh at the idea.
She was so small and so childlike, standing at the top of the stairs receiving her guests. He thought for a moment that it must be a joke.
Then, when she looked at him closely with her baby blue eyes, he found himself at first interested and then captivated.
‘She is certainly original,’ he thought.
Several people had a great deal to say as the marriage had never been consummated.
“A widow and a virgin!” they laughed. “That, if nothing else, is certainly unusual.”
Lord Selwyn received invitation after invitation to the house in Grosvenor Square.
He realised then that he was now on Lady Brambury’s favoured guest list.
Only when she asked him to dine with just two other guests present