Sword to the Heart (Bantam Series No. 13) (5 page)

The Knight who walked beside her through the woods. The Knight with whom she had raced over the fields when she rode Crusader, allowing him in her imagination to beat her because, as a Knight, he must excel at everything, even at the games they played together.

Then finally as they drove round the Malvern Hills they had their first view of the Castle.

Natalia drew in her breath.

She did not believe it possible for any place to be so magnificent! Or indeed so dream-like.

The last leaves of October were still russet and golden on the trees which surrounded it. The great towers emerged above them, grey and stalwart, and the afternoon sunlight seemed to touch the stone walls with a shimmer of fairy gold.

“Look, Papa. The Castle!”

Natalia could hardly breathe the words, and the Reverend Adolphus, who had been sleeping in a corner of the carriage, raised himself to look out of the window.

“Yes, indeed, the Castle!” he exclaimed. “It is a very fine building, Natalia.”

“It is wonderful! Glorious! I had imagined it, but it is far, far more magnificent than I thought any place could be!”

There was a river running through the valley below and the Castle, visible for miles away, had been built to stand sentinel over the lush and undulating countryside which surrounded it.

Far away in the distance there were the Welsh Mountains, their barren peaks high in Heaven, purple and mysterious as the mountains at Ullswater.

Now that the moment when she would meet Lord Colwall was near, Natalia for the first time felt nervous.

Supposing, after all, he did not like her? Supposing he had changed his mind in the three years since he decided that she should be his wife, and had found someone else he loved more?

Then she told herself she was being ridiculous.

After all, if he had found someone else, he would not have sent for her. The summons had come immediately after her eighteenth birthday, so perhaps, like her, he had been counting the days until he considered her old enough to be his Bride.

“Do I look ... all right, Papa?”

The words were a little frightened and the large grey-green eyes in the small face which was lifted towards the Reverend Adolphus were troubled.

“You look very beautiful,” her father replied. “Not as beautiful as your mother was when I first saw her! No-one could be as beautiful as that! But lovely in your own way.”

“Thank you, Papa,” Natalia gave him a little smile, and then bending forward she laid her cheek for a moment against his arm.

“I shall miss you, Papa, and I shall miss more than I can tell you, our talks, our discussions and the clever way you explain everything to me.”

“Your husband will talk to you now,” the Reverend Adolphus said. “You are not only beautiful, my dearest, but you are very intelligent. It is unusual amongst women, and because God has blessed you, especially as regarding your talents, you must not hide them under a bushel.”

“I will try not to do that, Papa.”

“At the same time,” the Reverend Adolphus said quickly, “no man wants a woman to be assertive, dictatorial, or—shall we say?—bossy. You must be subservient to your husband in everything and do what he says.

“But I would not wish you, Natalia, to waste your powers of intellectual perception, and I feel sure that in the life that lies ahead of you, such qualities can be utilised.”

“If in no other way,” Natalia replied with a smile, “I should have to be intelligent before I could run a place as big as the Castle!”

“I am sure His Lordship has a very adequate staff,” her father replied.

Then he added:

“But you are right, my dear. There will be many things you can do to help your husband to keep the background of his life running smoothly. At the same time, I am sure you can persuade him to use his influence to help those unfortunates about whom we have so often spoken.”

“The children, the labourers, the chimney boys,” Natalia exclaimed. “There are so many of them!”

She gave a little sigh.

“You cannot expect to work miracles overnight,” her father warned. “But a man who loves his wife listens to her. I cannot help feeling that the more people speak out, especially in the House of Lords, against the many injustices and indeed the atrocities that are perpetrated in this country at the present moment, the sooner we can bring to those who suffer both mercy and justice.”

“I will do my best, Papa,” Natalia murmured in a soft voice.

“I know you will, dear Child,” her father answered.

As if he knew Natalia was feeling nervous, he took her hand in his and held it.

Now the horses had reached the valley behind the Malvern Hills and they were proceeding to climb again up the hill on which the Castle was situated.

Because the leaves were still on some of the trees, they only had glimpses of its magnificence through the branches.

They passed through the impressive wrought-iron gates with great heraldic stone lions on either side, and drove up a long avenue of ancient oak trees rising all the time until finally, when they reached the top, there stood the Castle in front of them, a truly awe-inspiring sight.

Built originally on the site of an older Castle which had been erected soon after the Norman Conquest, it had been the focal point of defence for the West of England against the onslaughts of the Welsh.

Its towers and thirty-foot-high Keep stood dramatically on a great conical mound of earth which had been part of the original plan, while other towers had been erected in the succeeding centuries.

For a moment Natalia felt that it was too magnificent, too over
-
powering! Then she remembered it was in fact the perfect background for her Knight.

‘Where else should a Knight live except in a Castle?’ she asked herself. ‘How many deeds of chivalry, how many great battles against injustice have been planned within these walls?’

It seemed to her that there was an army of servants waiting to assist her and her father from the carriage.

A Major-Domo in resplendent livery stepped forward to say:

“May I welcome you, Miss Graystoke, on behalf of His Lordship, to Colwall Castle, and you too, Sir.”

“Thank you,” Natalia replied in a shy voice.

She had expected Lord Colwall to be waiting for them in the Hall which, with its Grand Staircase and high Gothic ceiling, was extremely impressive.

Slightly to her surprise, she was immediately escorted up the stairs past the coloured heraldic beasts on each turn of the marble stairway to a bed-chamber on the first floor.

There an elderly woman whom Natalia felt sure was the Housekeeper, and two other maids were waiting for her. They curtsied and explained that they had prepared a bath and a change of clothing after her journey.

“Thank you. That will be very pleasant,” Natalia said gratefully.

It was consistent, she thought, with the consideration she and her father had been shown ever since they left home, and she was glad that she was not to see His Lordship until she looked her best for him.

‘He thinks of everything!’ she told herself once again.

She allowed the Maids to help her undress and enjoyed her bath which had been placed in front of a warm fire. She was aware that the bathwater was scented with roses and the soft towels with which she dried herself smelt of lavender.

The bed-chamber was a fine room. There was a huge four-poster bed hung with embroidered curtains which Natalia learnt had been worked by the ladies who lived in the Castle during the reign of Queen Anne.

There were French Commodes which she knew were priceless and the ceiling had a cornice of brilliantly painted heraldic devices. The carved Medieval fireplace was surmounted by a huge Coat of Arms picked out in gold.

It was difficult to take in everything at once and Natalia was at the moment concerned only with looking her best for Lord Colwall.

There was no need to unpack the bags that had come with her on the journey, for when the Housekeeper opened the wardrobe, it was filled with gowns of every possible material and colour.

“These all came from London, Miss,” she explained.

“They are lovely, very lovely!” Natalia said in awe-struck tones. “What must I wear now?”

‘It will soon be time for dinner, Miss. I have chosen, if it meets with your approval, a white gown trimmed with Venetian lace.”

“You are sure that is the most becoming?” Natalia asked, a worried expression in her eyes.

“I am sure you would look lovely in anything, Miss,” the Housekeeper replied. “But I felt that this particular gown was most suitable for this evening. There will be His Lordship and Sir James Parke to dinner besides yourself and your Reverend father.”

Natalia smiled. It was perfect that they should be such a small party and she was sure that the reason Lord Colwall had arranged it this way was so that they could have a chance to get to know each other.

But then the Housekeeper went on:

“After dinner, there will be a number of people from the Estate arriving whom His Lordship will present to you. The Agent, the farm managers and some of the more important tenants.”

“Of course I should like to meet them,” Natalia answered.

She suppressed a feeling of regret that she would not after all be able to talk alone with her future husband.

“Your wedding, Miss, will be exactly the same as the one which took place here in Medieval times,” the Housekeeper continued. “His Lordship discovered the details in a book. The food will be the same, the Orchestra will use the same type of instruments that were played here in the Castle hundreds of years ago.”

She looked at Natalia’s surprised face and said:

“His Lordship is a great one for tradition, Miss. I heard him say that he had searched through all the archives of the family history to find a previous occasion on which a marriage of an owner of the Castle had taken place here.”

Natalia did not know why, but the idea that it was all being copied from the past and was not something planned just for her was a little depressing.

Then she told herself she was being nonsensical.

This is why Lord Colwall had wished her to journey to the Castle. It was unthinkable that with his vast possessions and great importance he should be married at Pooley Bridge!

It was completely right and fitting that she should come to him, that their marriage should be traditional and would become in the years that lay ahead another item in the history of the Colwall family.

‘I must get His Lordship to tell me all about the previous weddings that took place here,’ Natalia thought.

Then with a feeling almost of dismay, she found herself unable to prevent the question which she knew she should not ask.

“Was His Lordship
...
married from here
...
before?”

“No indeed, Miss, of course not,” the Housekeeper replied. “He was married from Lady Claris’s own home. ’Tis not far away. Only the other side of the hills.”

Then as if she felt she had said too much, the Housekeeper turned away abruptly to give an almost sharp order to one of the housemaids to hurry up and remove the bath.

With her hair arranged once again in the more sophisticated manner that Ellen had tried out for the first time that morning, and with her full skirts rustling silkily, Natalia descended the stairs.

Now for the first time she could appreciate the exquisitely moulded arches of the staircase, although the marble itself felt cold beneath the touch of her hand.

The huge tapestries hanging on the walls she knew must be of great antiquity and she realised that they depicted battles. Battles in which, she told herself, the Lord Colwall of the day had fought as a Knight.

There were also faded flags hanging on either side of the chimney piece and swords and shields on two walls.

There were a number of footmen on duty in the hall. Their claret-coloured livery seemed very ornate in Natalia’s eyes, and their powdered wigs were splotches of white against the dark panelling.

The Major-Domo was waiting to take her down a long Gothic
-
arched corridor which was lined with suits of armour, some early English and some French. He threw open the door of a large Salon.

Natalia had a quick glimpse of walls covered with pictures, of a ceiling of carved mahogany, of gilded furniture, of sofas and chairs in tapestry and damask.

There were three Gentlemen standing by the great carved mantel-piece but she had eyes for only one!

A Gentleman so outstanding, so handsome, that he seemed, even as he had done in her mother’s small Drawing-Room, to dominate the whole room.

Lord Colwall had not changed!

If anything, she thought, he was more handsome than she remembered.

And because she was so pleased to see him, because everything in her life had seemed to move towards this dramatic climax, she forgot everything, formality, good manners and even her own shyness as she ran towards him.

Her voice seemed to ring out in the silent room.