Read Online The Wheel of Fortune by Susan Howatch - Free Book Online

wanted to marry me was Timothy. I knew I’d still have to spend part of the year at All-Hallows but at least I would have been my own mistress instead of Aunt Maud’s prisoner and at least I would have been able to spend most of the year in London where I would have met all sorts of exciting people and had a simply heavenly time.
    So that was why I decided to marry Tim. I had no way of communicating with Conor and (thanks to Aunt Maud) I’d given up all hope of hearing from him.
    And then — just after my engagement had been announced — Conor finally managed to outwit my jailer! He sent over from Ireland the most extraordinary gentleman called Mr. O’Flaherty w ho posed as a jobbing gardener and managed to smuggle a letter to me by seducing the second housemaid — my dear, I can’t tell you how romantic it was and the housemaid had a thrilling time too — and then I told Mr. O’Flaherty about the ball at Oxmoon and Conor sent word that I was to leave a packed bag beforehand with the second housemaid who would take it to Mr. O’Flaherty who would be waiting in the grounds of All-Hallows by the ruined oratory — my dear, I was simply ravished by excitement, in fact when the orchestra was playing “The Blue Danube” and I saw Conor had finally arrived I’m only surprised I didn’t swoon in your arms! At least when I die I’ll be able to say: well, never mind, I’ve lived. Oh, but what a nightmare it was before Conor came, thank God I’ve escaped, thank God the ghastly old past can’t touch me anymore. …
    Years afterwards when she and Kinsella paid their first and last visit to England I said to her, “If All-Hallows was such hell, why didn’t you come back to Oxmoon?”
    “But my dear!” she exclaimed as if astonished that I could be so obtuse. “Margaret would have been just as bad as Aunt Maud! Can’t you imagine all the homilies on drawing the line and doing the done thing?” And we laughed together, just two platonic friends, just first cousins once removed, just two strangers who had been childhood playmates long ago in a little Welsh country house in the back of beyond, but I wanted her then as strongly as I had ever wanted her and although I concealed my feelings I knew that they had remained unchanged. It was as if they had been frozen in time by the shock of her sudden desertion; it was as if, so far as my deepest emotions were concerned, I was still dancing beneath the chandeliers at Oxmoon while the orchestra played “The Blue Danube.”
    This should have been romantic. However in reality—the reality I had to master when I was sixteen—it was both inconvenient and bewildering. I had read enough novels by that time to know that a hero in my position had to yearn for his lost love in impeccable chastity and perhaps hunt big game in Africa to relieve his feelings, but I had no interest in game hunting and no interest, as I presently discovered to my horror, in being chaste.
    It took me a few months to realize this, but when I returned home for the summer holidays I found I finally had to face the prospect of Ginette’s permanent absence. In other words, for the first time in my life I had to live with the concept of losing.
    I did not know where to begin. Then I gradually became aware that I wanted to conquer this new world of carnality and prove I was still capable of coming first. At that point I should have confided in my father but two factors inhibited me. The first was that I was so obsessed with acting my charade of indifference towards Ginette that I shied away from any conversation which would have betrayed my true feelings, and the second was that I could so clearly remember my father talking of the dangerous sea of carnality and telling me a good marriage was the only answer.
    I struggled on in silence, utterly confused, utterly miserable, but then one morning I got up early and on wandering downstairs I found a very junior housemaid polishing the floor of the drawing room.