The Island of Love (Camfield Series No. 15) Read Online Free PDF Page A

the other side of the world.”
    “I will look after them, Papa,” Lydia smiled.
    “You will be unable to do that,” Sir Robert replied, “because you are coming with us.”
    Lydia stared at him, not understanding. Then she said in a voice that did not sound like her own:
    “Did you say that I am to ... come with you, Papa?”
    “Has not Heloise told you?” Sir Robert asked. “Oh, I suppose she was not listening, but Royston said a battleship would be taking us from San Francisco to Honolulu.”
    Lydia was listening intently as he went on:
    “He said it would be impossible for us to take a female servant on the ship who would upset the Crew. He therefore suggested that Heloise took on the journey instead of a lady’s-maid, a companion who would be prepared to look after her and help her with her clothes.”
    “A companion!” Lydia repeated rather stupidly.
    “It is quite obvious that will have to be you,” Sir Robert said. “You are used to looking after Heloise, and you will keep her in good temper during any difficulties that are bound to arise at sea.”
    He paused before he added:
    “Personally, I think it is a mistake for the Earl to insist on our accompanying him, but as he said, since he has just become engaged to Heloise, he has no wish to leave her behind.”
    “I can understand that, Papa,” Lydia said. “At the same time, it seems a little strange for him to arrive not with a wife, which would be understandable, but with a fiancée and her father.”
    She did not mention her membership of the party knowing she would be kept very much in the background.
    “I expect Royston has some very good reason of his own for this decision,” Sir Robert answered.
    The way her father spoke and the fact that he immediately changed the subject made Lydia suspicious.
    From that moment she was quite certain in her own mind that the Earl had some ulterior reason for taking Heloise with him, apart from the fact that she was to be his wife.
    It was something which she pondered and wondered about, but there were so many other things to occupy her mind that she had no time to think of anything but Heloise and her unceasing demands upon her time.
    It was Lydia who took her sister to London and, while Heloise lay in bed resting, arranged for all the best dressmakers to come to her father’s house at different hours.
    It was Lydia who made it quite clear that either the gowns were completed in record time or else they would not be purchased.
    It was Lydia who had to rush around to all the other shops finding shoes and gloves to match the gowns, bonnets that completed and complemented the morning and afternoon dresses which Heloise would be wearing.
    She had to find a thousand-and-one other things, also, including sunshades, shawls, scarves and accessories which Heloise insisted must be new, as nothing she already had was good enough.
    Sir Robert was a rich man and adored his beautiful daughter, but even he began to expostulate at her wild extravagance.
    “I can hardly marry the Earl and let him be ashamed of me!” Heloise replied petulantly.
    “He is not likely to be that,” Sir Robert remarked. “At the same time, he will hardly expect you to take so much with you on the journey. Surely the majority of the things could wait until you return?”
    “I am not going looking like a beggar-maid!” Heloise protested.
    She began to get into one of her tantrums and Sir Robert hurriedly left the room leaving Lydia to soothe her sister down in a way that only she could manage to do, and to cancel one or two of the gowns that Heloise had ordered without her being aware of it.
    At the same time, after five days in London Lydia began to think that any ship would sink under the weight of Heloise’s trunks.
    The fact that she looked ravishingly lovely in everything she put on certainly placated her father.
    Lydia herself felt that no man, even the sophisticated Earl, would be able to resist anybody who looked so overwhelmingly