21 The Mysterious Maid-Servant (The Eternal Collection) by Cartland Barbara

Author:Cartland, Barbara [Cartland, Barbara]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781782130833
Publisher: Barbara Cartland.Ebooks ltd
Published: 2012-07-30T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIVE

The sunshine came in through the open windows of the breakfast room and glittered blindingly on the silver coffee pot.

There was, Giselda noticed as she sat down, a new honeycomb and a pat of golden Jersey butter from Colonel Berkeley’s farms at the Castle.

It was a thrill to realise as the Earl sat opposite her, how well he looked. Even in the bright morning light the pallor on his face was much less noticeable, in fact his skin seemed quite brown against the whiteness of his cravat.

“I am actually hungry this morning,” the Earl remarked as he helped himself to veal chops cooked with fresh mushrooms.

“That is a good sign,” Giselda smiled.

“But not as hungry as I shall be when I return home,” he went on. “There I always ride before breakfast and come in ready to do justice to the many dishes waiting for me.”

“You have fine horses at Lynd Park, my Lord?”.

“Very fine,” the Earl replied, “but I intend to buy a great many more. My father was not interested in racing, which I am, and as soon as I am well enough I intend to ride in the local steeplechases.”

There was an enthusiasm in the Earl’s voice that was almost boyish and Giselda felt a pain in her heart as she realised that while he was planning all these things in the future she would not be there.

She wondered if, when he was riding across his Park and over his big estate, he would ever think of her and she knew with a sudden sense of inevitability that she would never be able to forget him even for a moment.

He seemed to be ever in her thoughts and in her mind, part of her consciousness from which she could never be free and, as she envisaged a future without him, she knew suddenly and unmistakably that she loved him.

She had not realised before that what she felt for him was love, in fact until he was up and dressed she had not really thought of him as a man.

But now it was impossible to think of him in any other way and she knew that he filled her whole life.

‘How strange to realise at breakfast, of all times, that one is in love,’ she thought to herself.

But she knew that the love that lived in her heart had been there for a long time.

It was simply that she had been afraid to acknowledge it.

‘Whatever happens,’ she told herself, ‘he must never know – never have the least idea that I feel like this.’

Because perhaps she was in some ways the actress the Colonel thought her to be, she managed to enquire in quite a normal voice,

“What plans have you for today, my Lord?”

“I have not really decided,” the Earl replied.

As he spoke, a footman came into the room with a letter on a silver salver.

The man walked towards the table and the Earl waited, obviously expecting the letter to be for him, but instead the footman offered it to Giselda.

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