She was, in fact, rather frightened of this large and imposing man whose hair was turning grey.
She wondered vaguely what he would expect of her when she was his wife.
She knew of no one who she could ask.
Her mother had always treated her as if she was a very young child and her father made no secret of the fact that he was disappointed that she was not a boy.
She had been educated by a series of Governesses who never stayed in their job for long.
They had found it boring living in the depths of the country when they had no chance of going to London or to any other large town.
“I am sorry,” they would say at the end of a year, “but I do feel as if I am buried here.”
Maisie’s parents could not understand at all.
“After all the woman has a very nice bedroom,” Maisie’s mother said indignantly. “And the schoolroom gets all the sunshine.”
Governesses for ever came and went. Each one started their history lessons with Hengist and Horsa so that Maisie never went beyond Richard Coeur de Lion.
She found history boring and Geography even worse. She learnt, however, not to make any protests but to look as if she was listening wide-eyed to all that they were saying to her.
Nine times out of ten she got away with it.
It was the same expression on her face that she put on when Lord Brambury talked to her before they were married.
It was indeed the same expression she assumed when they set off amid a shower of rose petals and rice to the Station.
They were to travel in Lord Brambury’s private coach to Huntingdonshire and he had planned to spend the first week of their honeymoon at his ancestral home near to the town of March.
Then they would go to his Hunting Lodge in Leicestershire, which he had not used for a long time and he had, in fact, given up hunting ten years ago.
The house was partly Jacobean and partly Tudor and stood on five hundred acres of good Leicestershire soil.
Maisie learnt that it had been in his family for three generations.
“I 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
