Cast the First Stone: A stunning wartime story Read online

  The ship’s doctor had cast a cursory eye over her during one of her worst bouts of sickness. ‘You’ll be all right on terra firma,’ was his diagnosis before dashing off to see to his other patients. He was too busy to spend time with a pregnant woman who, in his opinion, should never have been allowed on the hospital ship anyway, even if she was a countess. He had enough to do with the wounded American soldiers who were crammed like sardines into every square inch.

  By the time Liana felt well enough to open her eyes, the heavy steel hawsers were securely looped around the bollards, and two of the gangplanks had already been lowered.

  The ship’s captain suddenly materialized at her side and saluted. ‘You are free to leave whenever you wish, Your Ladyship,’ he said. ‘Your luggage is already being removed from the hold. I understand you are being met.’

  Liana drew in a deep breath, and, straightening her back, forced a smile to her lips. Although now five months pregnant, her figure was still slim, and the loose summer dress gave no hint of her pregnancy. Which is just as well, she reflected grimly that morning when surveying herself in the cabin mirror, because officially I am only three months into my pregnancy.

  ‘Thank you, Captain Anderson,’ she said, extending her hand graciously. ‘Thank you for making my journey as pleasant as possible, and please convey my thanks to your crew for taking such good care of me.’

  ‘It was a pleasure for us all, madam.’

  He spoke the truth. The beautiful young countess had captured the hearts of all the men. They knew she was pregnant, because that was the reason she was being rushed back to England, and they also knew she had been far from well. But she had never complained, and had always taken the trouble to personally thank anyone who did anything for her, as well as finding time to comfort the wounded. When he had asked them how she had helped, they had all said the same thing; that somehow she radiated a strength, a fierce, shimmering strength, which in turn gave them strength too.

  I wonder how old she is, he thought now, eyeing the graceful woman standing before him. Impossible to tell. Her type of beauty was as ageless as time itself. The flawless bone structure, the dark, deep eyes set in heavy, almond-shaped lids ensured that she would look as striking at ninety years as she did now. He caught her gaze and looked away again quickly. Those eyes, so dark and mysterious, and so full of pain. He did not look again because he had an absurd notion that if he looked too hard he would surely drown in their depths. But he would have sworn on oath that it was pain he could see.

  ‘It was a pleasure, madam.’ He heard himself repeating the words woodenly and hastily dropped her hand as soon as he realized he was still holding it. ‘Please, God, this damned – sorry, I mean wretched – war is soon over, and your husband can join you in England.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Liana briefly.

  She did not echo his ‘please, God’. In her opinion God had nothing to do with it. Men had caused the war, and men would finish it when they decided they had had enough of killing each other. Your husband can join you in England. The words had a strange, remote sound. My husband, Nicholas, my husband! Already in the short time they had been separated his memory had faded. The few weeks they had shared together now seemed unreal; but he is real, she reminded herself, more real than Raul. Despair threatened to engulf her. In spite of her determined efforts to be sensible and realistic, it always did whenever she thought of Raul. It was wrong, she knew it was wrong. Raul was the past, and Nicholas the future. Nicholas should be uppermost in her mind; but Liana had found she was unable to change her emotions – the power of Raul’s memory was too intense. Maybe it would lessen after the birth of his child. It was the only faintly comforting thought, and Liana hung on to it with tenacious determination and concentrated on the present.

  There were more immediate problems to think about, traversing the gangplank being the first. Liana realized after one quick glance that it was precipitously steep, and, although she would have dearly liked a helping hand, she was too proud to ask. Stubbornly bent on starting off in England in the way she intended to continue, she held her head high and swept down the gangplank with a confident air of assurance, as if she did such a thing every day of her life.

  As Liana approached, Margaret Hamilton-Howard moved forward, trying to reconcile the conflicting emotions her daughter-in-law immediately aroused within her – intimidation at the sight of the haughty beauty striding down the gangplank, and relief as she realized that although she was foreign, she was a woman of good breeding. Of that, there was not the slightest shadow of doubt in Margaret’s mind. Liana’s classical bone structure and elegant poise convinced her that she possessed good breeding and a certain strength of character. Thank God. She almost said the words out loud in her relief.

  Although she had never for one moment admitted it to anyone, and never would have done because it would have been disloyal to Nicholas, she shared the misgivings of the locals, and those of her own class, who had voiced doubts over the wisdom of Nicholas’s marrying a foreigner. Clara Maltravers, a long-time acquaintance and neighbour, had summed it up over tea and scones in Winchester only last week, leaving Margaret in no doubt where her opinion lay. ‘Foreigners are all right, my dear, in their own countries, but they are not quite right for England. After all, they have such mixed blood. I’m afraid this marchesa will never fit in.’

  But now, watching Liana, Lady Margaret felt reassured. The young woman looked as though she would fit in, fit in very well indeed. She also looked very determined. It was hard to imagine the bitchiness of Clara’s tongue causing the new countess any particular consternation: in fact, Liana looked as though she had the capability of frightening Clara Maltravers, and her ilk, to death. The thought gave Margaret a certain amount of malicious pleasure.

  Donald and Dorothy Ramsay got out of the car and approached as Liana alighted from the gangplank. Margaret Hamilton-Howard rushed forward, stuttering in her anxiety to get the introductions over.

  ‘Liana – yes, I know I’ve got to call you that. Nicholas told me. This is Doctor Donald Ramsay and his wife, Dorothy. They very kindly brought me in their car because I have no petrol. It’s the rationing, you see. I do get some for the farm, but there never seems to be enough for the car, and the doctor is allowed more.’ All this was uttered abruptly without taking a breath. Then she stopped, pale grey eyes anxious, mouth puckered nervously. What should she do next? She held out her hand, wondering whether or not she ought to kiss her new daughter-in-law, then decided against it.

  Liana grasped her hand firmly and smiled. She was in no doubt about what was necessary, and, leaning forward, she planted a gentle kiss on the leathery skin of her mother-in-law. ‘I’m so happy to meet Nicholas’s mother,’ she said softly before turning to Dr Ramsay.

  Perfect English, Margaret noted with relief, just as Nicholas had written. There was the faintest trace of a foreign accent, but that was all. Of course, she looked Italian. Margaret was very conscious of the striking difference between Liana’s dark, olive-skinned beauty and the rather washed-out colouring of the three Anglo-Saxons greeting her. In that respect she would stand out; her beauty was quite breath-taking.

  Donald Ramsay came forward and smiled. ‘My extra petrol is one of the perks of being a country doctor,’ he said. ‘We were glad to come and welcome you to your new country. This is my wife, Dorothy.’ While Margaret saw only her beauty, the doctor’s astute eyes were sizing up Liana as the introductions ensued. He could see she needed rest and good, wholesome food. He also deduced that, unless he was very much mistaken, she was more than three months pregnant. ‘I’ll be delivering your baby when it arrives. Nicholas wrote and told me it is due in February,’ he said casually, ‘so I’d like to give you a check-up as soon as possible.’

  Liana swallowed; it was her own guilty conscience making her go cold. There was no way he could know, no way, no way! ‘Thank you, Doctor Ramsay. I’ll let you know when I am ready.’ The words were flat, expressionless and absolutely f
inal, effectively terminating any conversation concerning her pregnancy.

  ‘Of course. I’ll wait to hear from you.’ Donald Ramsay held his peace.

  Liana’s voice might have been expressionless, but Donald Ramsay’s practised eye had seen a flicker of something in her face although for the life of him he could not decide what it was. What beautiful eyes, he thought, watching her graciously incline her head towards his wife as she spoke, but what a strange expression he had glimpsed. Was it pain, bitterness, and infinite weariness as well as an extraordinary resoluteness of character? Was it even possible to see all those things in one glance? If it were true that the soul was mirrored in one’s eyes, then the new Countess of Wessex had a very complex soul indeed. He shrugged; he was being a silly old fool. Flinging open the doors of the old Austin, he indicated that they should get in ready for the journey back to Longford. What was the matter with him? Was he getting visionary in his old age? Mirror of the soul indeed!

  The 1938 Austin Cambridge was hardly big enough for four people. Lady Margaret and Dorothy Ramsay sat in the back. On account of her height, Margaret was forced to fold her long body in half, and now sat with her knees hunched up beneath her chin.

  ‘I will sit in the back,’ offered Liana politely, seeing Lady Margaret’s discomfort.

  ‘No, no. You sit in the front so that you can have a better view.’

  Better view of what, Liana thought, gazing around in amazed horror at the utter devastation they were driving past. In the city of Southampton not one complete building was standing for as far as she could see. Street after street was the same. The road had been repaired, but either side of the highway lay the cavernous black mouths of bomb craters. An attempt at tidiness had been made by stacking the piles of rubble behind makeshift wooden barricades so that every now and then they passed a mountain of broken bricks and concrete.

  As usual Donald Ramsay did not miss a thing. His training had taught him not to, and now his discerning eyes noticed her distress at the scenes of destruction. He guessed she was not prepared for such sights in England. ‘We were badly bombed in nineteen forty and forty-one,’ he said quietly.

  Liana shuddered visibly; in spite of her rigid attempt at self-control, she could not help it. She had never imagined that this part of England had also been laid waste by war. London, of course; she knew that. But not here, not southern England. In her mind she had confined devastation on such a scale to Europe, and mostly to her own small world around Naples. Nicholas had never mentioned it, and so she had never even contemplated the fact that she was likely to come face to face with such sights in Hampshire.

  I thought I was coming to peace and beauty, she wanted to shout. Suddenly the old familiar panic rose in her throat, the panic she was so sure she had banished. Peace and beauty? In this horrible place? Choking back tears of anger and frustration, she stared silently out of the window. How ironic that the thought which had kept her going was fallacious. She had clung tenaciously to the idea of the peace awaiting her on arrival in England – doggedly, day after day, gritting her teeth and disciplining her mind and body to accept the sickness during the long sea voyage from Naples because in the end she was sure it would be worth it. On the worst days she had lain in her cabin repeating the words out loud, ‘Peace, peace, peace,’ and drew succour from the mere sound. She forced herself to think about the tranquillity and beauty of the green countryside. Nicholas had described it so vividly it had seemed real. Peace and beauty were what she had expected; and now her disappointment at the reality was too intense, too shattering to attempt to put into words. No-one could possibly understand.

  Liana slumped down in the uncomfortable bucket seat of the battered Austin. What a hateful place this was; she could not even see any green. She remembered standing at the ship’s rail as they had steamed up Southampton water, anxious for her first close glimpse of her adopted country. Then, as she had looked through the warm heat haze of the Solent, England had seemed green and misty. But now, when she was on dry land, she could see only too clearly it was not green at all. The greenness must have been a mirage, mere wishful thinking, because there was no green. Grey was the predominant colour. Everything was grey, grey, grey: gaunt, double-decker grey trams rattling along grey and dusty streets; even the people looked grey, their clothes, their faces. Everyone was drab, their expressions unsmiling. Was this really a peaceful land she had come to?

  ‘We’ve had a bad war, too, my dear,’ said Donald Ramsay, apprehensively watching her dark, brooding expression. He cursed Nicholas. Why couldn’t he have told her what to expect, damn it? She was disappointed. No, more than disappointed, she was distraught. What was it she had expected, for heaven’s sake? ‘The countryside is quite different. You’ll be living miles away from here,’ he said in what he hoped was a firm and comforting voice. ‘Wait and see.’

  But Liana was hardly listening. Homesickness for Italy was striking at her with a gut-tearing intensity. It was something she had never expected to happen. True, she had looked back with nostalgia at the Amalfi coast as it had receded slowly, first blue and then purple, before finally merging indistinctly with the horizon. Then she had put it out of her mind and thought only of the future. But now she suddenly longed for Italy, and most of all for its colour. Conquered and vanquished, bombed and battered, every inch of soil fought over, Italy had survived, never succumbing to this terrible drab greyness. In the unreliable mists of memory, the dreadful black days were forgotten. Only the vivid blue of the sky remained; and the colour of the sea, the way it was always changing, fluctuating from shades of green to purple; and the bright red, pink and purple of the flowers – always, always the blaze of colour from the hibiscus, geraniums and bougainvillaea, which not even the most persistent bombing could ever totally destroy. But here, in England, it looked as if the Germans had succeeded in extinguishing life. Everything was pale, washed out and exhausted-looking. It all had a terrible, depressing sameness. Liana closed her eyes; she could not bear to look.

  *

  The crunch of the gravel as the Austin drove in from the road awoke Liana. They drove through the stone triumphal arch, erected by one of Nicholas’s forefathers, into an enormous forecourt, the centre of which was dominated by a formal garden of clipped box-yew with a fountain in the middle. Dr Ramsay stopped the engine and cranked up the handbrake.

  Liana sat up and stared, hardly able to believe her eyes.

  The great square, honey-coloured house shimmered in the warmth of an August evening sunset. It stood, as if planted by some giant hand, firmly amongst a vast expanse of green lawns that swept away down a slight incline towards a distant lake. On either side rose ancient cedar trees, their dark branches stretching protectively towards the house. The house itself was a glowing jewel, a topaz set with a hundred windows surrounded by jade.

  ‘It is the most beautiful house I have ever seen,’ Liana whispered.

  ‘This is your new home,’ said Donald Ramsay.

  Sunlight filtered through the horizontal branches of the cedars, casting long dark shadows on the lawns. The turrets on the wings either side of the house were slowly turning pink as the sun changed from yellow to a glowing red orb, and in the far distance a horse whinnied at the sound of voices. Liana turned and could see a huge chestnut stallion kicking up his heels in the long grass of a field on the far right-hand side of the house, away from the manicured lawns. His whinnying disturbed a barn owl which flapped its wings slowly and majestically as it rose from a hawthorn bush at the edge of the field then, drifting silently, it sailed smoothly in front of the house before disappearing into the dense darkness of the cedar tree on the left.

  Lady Margaret carefully unfolded her long legs and got out of the car. ‘That field ought to have been cut for hay long ago. Rufus gorges himself on the grass,’ she said, looking over to where the horse stood waiting expectantly for his mistress to greet him. She sighed, even her beloved Rufus momentarily forgotten. ‘But nobody ever seems to have any time.�
� Her permanently worried expression deepened as she spoke. ‘I’ve already told William that when Nicholas comes home we shall have to sell the house. We shall never be able to afford to stay on here. It will be an impossibility, the way things are going.’

  ‘Never,’ said Liana abruptly, her mouth tightening into a grim line.

  Since deciding to make Nicholas one of the richest earls of England, she had often wondered how and where she would start. Now she knew. Suddenly it was so obvious what her first task was to be. Her mission would be to secure the future of Broadacres. Everything else suddenly dwindled into unimportance. There was no point in Nicholas’s being wealthy if the family lost Broadacres. That was why she needed to earn money. By the time I’ve finished, Liana vowed, Broadacres will be the most glorious house in the whole land, even more glorious than it is today. She gazed at the house with a passion so great it was almost a pain. This beautiful house would never be sold, not while she had any breath left in her body. ‘Never,’ she repeated.

  Margaret Hamilton-Howard turned slowly and looked at her daughter-in-law in astonishment. Liana had climbed out of the car and was standing quite still, as if transfixed. She was staring at the house with great intensity. For a moment Margaret felt afraid. The setting sun highlighted Liana’s profile, illuminating her indescribable beauty. Fascinated, Margaret watched, for behind that beauty she could almost see Liana marshalling up secret forces of determination. She was really serious. She meant what she had said.

  For the first time in months the creases on Margaret’s face changed from a frown into a slow, incredulous smile. She began to believe that the house would not be sold, would never be sold, and that she would be able to stay there until she died, just as she had always wanted. All this was going to happen because this slender girl standing beside her had said so. With the utterance of those two emphatic words, Liana was guaranteeing that four hundred years of history would not be lost.