Equally Imeldra was intelligent enough to know that under the Duchess’s patronage she would be accepted everywhere in the Social world that her father thought so necessary for her.
She knew too that the Duchess was a Lady-of-the-Bedchamber to Queen Adelaide.
She was also aware that, while her father’s raffish reputation as a roué had been easily acceptable during the reign of George IV. King William and his prim little German wife had changed the whole attitude of Society towards morality.
This meant that the Earl, whose amorous indiscretions had been admired and envied by the Georgian bucks and beaux, now evoked upraised hands and gasps of horror from those who wished to ingratiate themselves at Court.
Because the Earl was so handsome and because, as Imeldra knew, women gravitated to him like rats to the Pied Piper, he was always engaged in one love affair after another.
It was what prevented him from mourning the one woman in his life he had really loved, her mother.
He was also a keen sportsman and his racehorses romped home regularly to take the most treasured prizes of the Turf.
He had when young been an acknowledged pugilist and a champion swordsman.
Men admired, envied and fêted him, but those of them who prized their wives kept them away from a man who was too fascinating to be anything but a danger.
After her mother’s death, when she had gone everywhere with him, Imeldra had noticed the gleam that came into many women’s eyes the moment they saw him.
She knew that long before he was aware of them they were yearning after him in a way that she found sometimes amusing and sometimes irritating.
“I want to see Papa,” she had said once to one of her Governesses, who had kept her in the schoolroom when she had wished to go downstairs.
“Then you will just have to wait for your turn,” the Governess had answered somewhat brusquely.
The only consolation was that her father grew bored very quickly in every love affair and his invariable habit when this happened was to move somewhere else.
Imeldra could remember when they had packed up and left a Palace that he had rented in Rome at only twenty-four hours’ notice as the dark-eyed and passionate beauty who had been constantly with them had suddenly become no longer welcome.
Her father in leaving so precipitately avoided the floods of tears and recriminations that inevitably followed one of his swift changes of mood.
He and Imeldra had journeyed often to Greece, but while the Acropolis and Delphi had entranced Imeldra, her father’s dalliance with a Maid of Athens did not last much longer than Lord Byron’s and they had both moved on.
Egypt had been such a wonderful place for Imeldra because her father found no modern Cleopatra there and the women depicted on the Temple walls were very much more attractive than those who lived and breathed.
The Earl was a very well-educated man and Imeldra had often thought recently that she had learnt so much more from him than from her teachers and books at school.
Yet because it pleased him she had worked at her lessons until, as she had said, she was top in everything and there was really nothing more that they could teach her.
She had been so sure that she would be with her father at least for a little time that she could hardly believe now that she was to be separated from him and the mere idea of it made her want to cry.
The Earl disliked tears, having endured too many of them from the women he had loved and left.
So Imeldra bit her lips to stop herself from sobbing and said in a voice that only trembled a little,
“Can I not – stay with you for – just a little time – Papa? I have dreamt of you and – longed to be with – you and to talk to you.”
“That was what I too have wanted,” the Earl answered, “but because I have been a fool, Imeldra, it is now impossible.”
“Must you – really run away with – this lady?”
“It is something I have to do,” he replied, “and you must expect me, as your father, to do the honourable thing.”
“Not if you don’t love her.”
“Love? What is love?”
Then, as he saw the expression on his daughter’s face, he said in a very different voice,
“You know as well as I do that I have only loved once in my life and that sort of love never comes again.”
“Is that true of everyone, Papa? That they love only one person with ‒ a real love, which is what you had for Mama?”
“It was the way I loved your mother and she loved me,” the Earl replied, “and, because we were the other part of each other, it would be impossible for any other woman to mean the same to me.”
He spoke simply and to Imeldra his words were very moving.
“At the same time,” he said as if he must tell the truth, “you know there have been times when I have been infatuated, beguiled and bemused by women, but because I have known the best, I am not prepared to accept second best in my heart whatever my lips may say.”
“I understand, Papa,” Imeldra answered, “and I hope that one day I shall love in the same way.”
“That is the whole point,” the Earl said as if she had played into his hands. “That is what I want for you and that is what I am determined, if it is at all possible, you shall find.”
Imeldra did not speak and he went on,
“But as I have already said told you, you will not find it in the gutters or in the sort of places where I reign as King, albeit over a very scruffy little Kingdom.”
He laughed, but the sound had very little humour in it.
“Yes, a real King, because I am rich and because in a foreign land I am accepted by the noblest families who excuse anything I do since I am an English ‘Milord’! But you, dearest child, are not concerned with the French, the Italians, the Austrians or the Spanish but with English ladies. Their Society is the most snobbish and the most critical in the world.”
“Then why must I mix with them?”
“Because, my precious, only from the heights to which they can take you will you marry into the life that I wish you to lead and then meet the right sort of man who will offer you marriage.”
There was a sudden sharpening of the Earl’s voice as he went on,
“Make no mistake, from now on you will find it a great handicap that I should be your father. But your beauty, your wealth and the fact that your aunt is a Duchess of impeccable respectability will make you acceptable.”
“But, Papa, do you imagine I would agree to marry any man who thought of me in those terms?”
The Earl’s voice softened and he declared,
“He will also love you, my darling, love you passionately and with his whole heart. But his mind and his critical sense must assure him that in making you his wife he is doing the right thing.”
Because Imeldra was perceptive and so closely attuned to her father, she knew exactly what he was trying to say to her.
She would have been very stupid if she had not been aware that many of the people he entertained in foreign Capitals would not have been acceptable in the aristocratic houses of England when ladies were present.
There had often been times when she had been told not to come downstairs and she had known the following morning that the party that went on until dawn had been rowdy and very far from respectable.
She accepted it because she loved her father deeply and because