160. A Miracle In Music - The Eternal Collection

Barbara Cartland

Description

A much-admired patron of the arts and something of a ‘ladies’ man, the Duke of Arkholme, a very rich and celebrated aristocrat, is as passionate about music as he is bored by the attentions of predatory Society ladies. He decides to launch at his own expense a competition to encourage talented new composers, but he finds that the entrants he has to listen to are insipid and uninspiring.So when he hears the sparkling brilliant music he has been searching for being played on his own piano in a room next to his bedroom in his own home in the middle of the night, he is bewitched. Even more so when the pianist proves to be a pale, elfin, auburn-haired beauty called Vanola. She forces the Duke at gunpoint to listen longer to her music and she relates the story of her Hungarian father and his failure to attract any interest in his superb and innovative compositions in England.He is also horrified to be told by Vanola that his employees are corrupt and taking bribes from entrants to his auditions, so that the real talent, such as her father’s, is excluded. Realising that she is half-starved and that her father is at death’s door, he is determined to make amends, despite her implacable contempt for him for employing crooked Managers. Soon the Duke realises that he has fallen in love – but too late. Vanola’s father is dead and in her grief and fury she has fled to who knows where and it seems that he has lost her and his one chance of happiness forever. "Barbara Cartland was the world’s most prolific novelist who wrote an amazing 723 books in her lifetime, of which no less than 644 were romantic novels with worldwide sales of over 1 billion copies and her books were translated into 36 different languages.As well as romantic novels, she wrote historical biographies, 6 autobiographies, theatrical plays and books of advice on life, love, vitamins and cookery.She wrote her first book at the age of 21 and it was called Jigsaw. It became an immediate bestseller and sold 100,000 copies in hardback in England and all over Europe in translation.Between the ages of 77 and 97 she increased her output and wrote an incredible 400 romances as the demand for her romances was so strong all over the world.She wrote her last book at the age of 97 and it was entitled perhaps prophetically The Way to Heaven. Her books have always been immensely popular in the United States where in 1976 her current books were at numbers 1 & 2 in the B. Dalton bestsellers list, a feat never achieved before or since by any author.Barbara Cartland became a legend in her own lifetime and will be best remembered for her wonderful romantic novels so loved by her millions of readers throughout the world, who have always collected her books to read again and again, especially when they feel miserable or depressed.Her books will always be treasured for their moral message, her pure and innocent heroines, her handsome and dashing heroes, her blissful happy endings and above all for her belief that the power of love is more important than anything else in everyone’s life."

Informations

• Publié par: M-Y Books
• Date de parution: 01 décembre 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781782139058
• Langue: English

Extrait

Author’s Note
The theatre built on the same site in Bow Street, Covent Garden, and which is the present Royal
thOpera House, was opened on May I5 1858. The first was built in 1732.
The present theatre saw the establishment of Verdi, Wagner, Puccini and Strauss – also the
debut of eighteen year old Adelina Patti.
Since the last war the Covent Garden Opera Company has joined with the Sadler’s Wells
Theatre Ballet, which in 1956 received a Royal Charter from the Queen and became known as the
Royal Ballet.
The descriptions of Kate Hamilton’s Saloon are correct and she was the Queen of London’s
nightlife from the eighteen-fifties until she died at the beginning of the sixties.
The Salon, however, carried on and the Shah of Persia patronised it on his first visit to London
in 1872. He was reputed to have been an embarrassing guest when at Buckingham Palace he executed
a member of his staff with a bowstring.
When this was done, the body was buried at night in the Palace grounds.Chapter One ~ 1860
The Duke of Arkholme ceased to listen to the rather indifferent performance of an Italian Prima
Donna singing an aria from Faust.
As a patron of music he found the second rate almost intolerable and he was continually
surprised at the people who had good taste in other directions but were extraordinarily
undiscriminating where music was concerned.
He was in fact thinking of whether he should accept the invitation of his hostess. Lady Lawson,
to stay after the other guests at her evening reception had departed.
He was well aware of what this entailed.
Lord Lawson was at the moment in the North of England and the Duke suspected that the
reception, which had been hastily arranged in the last two days, had been entirely for his benefit.
When he arrived to find a small but distinguished dinner party in the large house in Berkeley
Square, the way that his hostess greeted him and the expression in her eyes when she talked to him
made what she intended and hoped for very obvious.
The Duke would have been extremely stupid, which he was not, if he had been unaware that, as
one of the most distinguished men in England, enormously wealthy and a bachelor, he was not only
an exceptional catch from a matrimonial point of view, but undoubtedly ‘a feather in the cap’ of any
lady who could hold his attention and make him her lover.
That he excelled in the art of love just as he excelled in the hunting field and on the Racecourse
went without saying, but over the years he had not only grown surprisingly more fastidious but also
undoubtedly cynical about his own attractions.
When he sat next to Lady Lawson at dinner, she had said in a soft melodious voice that the Duke
had a suspicion was assumed,
“I am hoping, Your Grace, that you will give me your invaluable advice.”
“About what?” the Duke enquired knowing what the answer would be.
“I have just persuaded my husband to give me as a present a new Steinway and, as he has
complained of its being such an expensive gift, I want to be quite certain that I have the best and it
will make the right music to please you.”
The way she spoke with a flutter of her eyelashes and an invitation on her curved lips told the
Duke only too clearly that she was not thinking so much of the music pleasing him but of her own
expertise in another field.
He was also quite certain that the Steinway in question would not be in any of the reception
rooms, but in Lady Lawson’s boudoir.
A short time ago he had inadvertently allowed it to be known that he had a piano in the sitting
room that adjoined his bedroom in his house in Park Lane.
“When I cannot sleep, which is not often,” he had confessed with what he thought later was an
unfortunate frankness, “I play to myself the melodies that soothe my mind and, while they are still
ringing in my head, I find it easy to fall asleep.”
Because everything about the Duke was of interest, the story flew from one drawing room to
another of the fashionable world as if on the wind and was published in one of the gossipy
newspapers.
After that every beauty who aspired to attract the Duke told him that she had a piano in her
boudoir and invited him to inspect it.
It was amusing to see how each instrument had obviously been newly installed in a room that
had been decorated without any thought of music.
In most cases the Duke suspected that the owner of a Steinway or Broadwood was no more
accomplished than they had been when they left the schoolroom still doing five-finger exercises.
Now, as the Prima Donna trilled on, occasionally slightly off-key on her top notes, which would
have made the Duke wince had he been listening, he was wondering whether Lady Lawson’s
attractions were enough to make him begin a new affaire de coeur when he had only just endedanother.
He had found as he grew older, having now reached the august age of thirty-three, that his love
affairs were fiery and tempestuous, quickly ignited and just as quickly extinguished.
He could not explain even to himself why, after a very short time of finding a woman alluring or
intriguing, he suddenly became restless and knew that it was the first stage of boredom.
At the back of his mind and on the tongues of every one of his relations was the question of
when, and to whom, he should be married.
Because he had been an only son, there were no other direct heirs to the Dukedom and he was
well aware that it was his duty to a long line of noble ancestors to produce an heir.
He kept telling himself that there was no hurry and as it happened he never came in contact with
young girls.
He was far too astute to accept the invitations, of which he had hundreds, of ambitious fathers
and mothers who thought both his title and his wealth would be an agreeable adjunct to their
aristocratic lineage.
His interest therefore was always in married women with complacent husbands and even if they
were not complacent they found it best to suppress their jealousy where the Duke was concerned.
They were uncomfortably aware that he could not only outride and outdrive them, but he was
also a dead shot with a duelling pistol, should they be foolish enough to call him out.
Although duelling was forbidden by law and certainly frowned upon by Queen Victoria, the
Duke had, as it happened, fought quite a number of duels both in England and in France.
He was always the victor and invariably remained unscathed while his opponent spent a
miserable two or three months with his arm in a sling.
He was far too expert a shot to wound a man mortally. At the same time it was extremely
humiliating for a gentleman who had a real grievance against the Duke to find himself an object of
pity to his wife and a figure of fun to his contemporaries.
Lord Lawson was, as the Duke knew, not likely to kick up a fuss if his wife took him as her
lover, as long as she was discreet about it.
Lord Lawson was a good deal older than the very beautiful young girl he had married
immediately she had made her debut and, because his own main interest was in horses, he continually
left her alone while he journeyed North, South, East and West in order to attend Race Meetings
where he won a considerable number of prizes.
It was inevitable that Eileen Lawson should sooner or later lose her heart, which had not at all
been involved in the spectacular and brilliant marriage she had made from a social point of view.
Equally, because she was rather frightened of her husband, she was very discreet and the Duke
thought that it was a point in her favour that, although inevitably she would fall in love with him, she
would be careful not to cause more gossip than was necessary.
It was impossible to claim that they would not be talked about.
Because they were seen together, there would be knowing smiles and a certain amount of
sniggering amongst the habitués of the Clubs, who had nothing else to do but gossip about the latest
scandal and could ferret out a new love affair like a terrier at a fox’s hole.
However, recently the Duke had been very careful not to involve himself with women, who not
only lost their hearts where he was concerned but also their heads.
Because he was invariably by far the most attractive man who had ever come into their lives,
they found it difficult to think of anything but love and the fact that he aroused in them new
sensations and new emotions they never before knew existed.
The Duke often wondered why other men left their women not only frustrated but also
unawakened to the fires of passion.
Because the women he made love to always told him that he was different from any man they
had ever known before and it was obvious that he excited them almost to the point of madness, he
could not help knowing that he was exceptional.
At the same time it made him all the more cautious when it was a question of starting a new love
affair.
As usual he was not swept off his feet by Lady Lawson.He only knew that she was a very attractive woman and that if he touched her the desire he
would see in her eyes would arouse a response in him which made it inevitable what the end of the
story would be.
‘What shall I do?’ he wondered. ‘Shall I stay as she expects? Or shall I make some excuse and say
that I have to leave with the other guests?’
It was all too obvious, he tho