Free The Island of Love (Camfield Series No. 15) by Barbara Cartland Page B

for the rest of the morning she would be kept busy helping her to dress.

chapter four
    Owing to the bad weather there were frequent delays on the journey by train which actually Lydia enjoyed.
    Instead of stopping for only a short time at the wayside stations they would be held up for perhaps two or even three hours.
    When this happened the Earl and Sir Robert said they must have some exercise, and they would walk off into the countryside having instructed the guard to signal them by bursts on the engine’s whistle when it was time for them to return.
    Whenever it was possible and Heloise would allow it, Lydia went with them.
    She had been sensible enough knowing where they were going, to pack the thick boots she wore at home, and since it was so cold her father had bought her, at one of the stations, a fur coat made from white goatskins.
    He had given Heloise a sable coat at Christmas when Lydia’s present had been just two books.
    The goat-skin was the warmest coat she had ever owned and when she wore it she looked part of the snow scene as she tramped beside the two men, finding it hard at times to keep up with the pace set by the Earl.
    It was wildly exciting not only because she had stepped into a world she had never known before, but also because she was with him.
    As her father walked with them she did not join much in the conversation but listened, knowing that every day she was falling more and more in love.
    While she admitted to herself that it was hopeless to love a man who belonged to her sister, she knew that the Earl had captured her heart and she would never love anybody else.
    She found it difficult not to be angry with Heloise because she wasted so many opportunities of being with the man to whom she was engaged.
    “Come with us, Heloise,” Lydia pleaded. “You will feel much better in the fresh air, and it is so enchanting to see everything white with snow. The beauty of the mountains in the distance will make you feel as if you had stepped onto another Planet.”
    “I am quite content with this one,” Heloise replied sharply, “and if you think I am going to trudge about in the snow ruining my skin with the wind, you are very much mistaken!”
    She would therefore either lie in bed or else sit in the Drawing-Room, looking when they returned exquisitely lovely in one of her expensive and elaborate gowns.
    The Earl and Sir Robert on their walks would have been talking animatedly on all sorts of different subjects—Politics, horses, international finance, or the ever-expanding British Empire.
    Yet when they entered the Rail Road Car to find Heloise waiting for them, Lydia knew that the Earl suddenly fell silent and she thought it must be because he was overwhelmed by her beauty and words were superfluous.
    She then hurried to her own room, forcing herself not to feel jealous because she had known from the very beginning that it was impossible for her to compete in any way with Heloise.
    “I will just have to be thankful to God that I have met anybody so wonderful,” she whispered to herself, “and have come on this exciting journey where I can be near him. How could I possibly be greedy enough to ask for more?”
    Her body told her there was a great deal more she wanted, but her mind which she had disciplined for so many years made her think what she called ‘sensibly.’
    Because she felt guilty at being in love with her sister’s fiancé she waited on Heloise, if it was possible, even more arduously and tried every morning to find a way of making her look even more lovely than she was already, by arranging her hair in different styles.
    Not that she got any thanks for it.
    Heloise, bored with the journey, took it out on Lydia because there was nobody else.
    “I am sick of this train!” she said a thousand times when they were alone together. “I want to go to Balls. I cannot think why we did not stay in New York for the one which Mrs. Vanderbilt was giving, and I am sure when we do arrive