109. Stars In My Heart - The Eternal Collection

Barbara Cartland

Description

Soon to be twenty-one years old, the lovely red-haired Gisela Musgrave is tormented and oppressed by her cruel and jealous stepmother until one day riding with the local hunt, Gisela rushes to the aid of a beautiful woman who has fallen from her horse. Everyone but Gisela notices her striking resemblance to this Noblewoman, who reveals herself to be none other than the exquisite Elizabeth, Empress of Austria, whose beauty is renowned throughout Europe and who is staying incognito in the English countryside for the hunting season. And then suddenly Gisela’s life is transformed by two pieces of shocking news. First, that she is not truly her father’s daughter, but the daughter of her mother’s lover before she married and secondly that her true father’s identity makes her the Empress’s half-sister! Groomed in her new-found status, Gisela agrees to exploit her likeness by pretending to be the Empress at an invitation to stay with an ageing Lord, while the Empress herself continues to indulge her love of hunting. But on arriving at the Lord’s most impressive Castle, Gisela is greeted by his dashingly handsome yet imperious heir, Lord Quenby. And so begins an all-powerful love that seems doomed to oblivion even before it sprang so unexpectantly into being – "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 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781782136408
• Langue: English

Extrait

CHAPTER ONE 1876
Gisela pushed open the door of the saddler’s shop.
Although she had been there often enough, she always felt a sense of embarrassment and shyness in having to go into what seemed a peculiarly masculine domain.
It was invariably the same, that strange sinking feeling in her heart and the hesitation that made her long to find some excuse for putting off the moment when she must cross the threshold and encounter the curious eyes of possibly half a dozen strangers.
Old Fred Tyler, the saddler, knew her well enough and she was certainly not afraid of him. She had come there on errands for her father since she was old enough to walk. Reins to be mended, a girth to be repaired, a saddle-strap to be replaced.
There was never an occasion when she was about to take the trap to Towcester when her father, the Squire, did not make the same remark,
“Going to Towcester? I have something you can take to Tyler for repair.”
But Fred Tyler was not only a saddler, he was, it seemed to Gisela, the centre and the meeting ground for all the gossip that went on in the County.
Invariably there would be a group of men standing in front of the roaring log fire that occupied one wall of the shop.
Men in boots and breeches, bespattered with mud and wearing with their pink coats the coloured collars that denoted whether they were members of the Pytchley, the Bicester or the Duke of Grafton’s Hunt. Their hands deep in their pockets, they would be roaring with laughter or swilling a pint of ale in the deep pewter pots that Fred Tyler’s boy had fetched from the neighbouring inn.
It seemed to Gisela that, when she entered the shop, their laughter would stop abruptly. There would come a sudden silence as the gentlemen round the fire eyed her speculatively.
Then, when she had left, their laughter would ring out again, echoing in her ears long after she had left the shop.
She would long to know what Fred Tyler said about her, for often enough before the door had closed behind her she would hear the question,
“Who is she?”
What did he say? Was it simple? Like, “her be Squire Musgrave’s daughter.”
That would be an easy explanation. Or did he go into details, adding,
“Her be Squire Musgrave’s daughter by his first wife, that fancy foreign woman what died some ten years ago, before he married that Lady Harriet.”
“Good God! Has Harriet Musgrave got a stepdaughter? She won’t care for that. Women aren’t Harriet’s partiality.”
There would be gales of laughter at that, laughter that would make Gisela tremble and hurry her steps a little quicker along the cobbled street.
But perhaps she was exaggerating.
Perhaps, as she had been told often enough when she was a child, she was letting her imagination run away with her. Perhaps the gentlemen round the fireplace were not in the slightest interested in her or who she might be.
And, indeed, why should they be? She looked insignificant and shabby enough in her old threadbare brown dress, which had been darned and repaired until there was nothing more that she could do to it. Her bonnet too was sadly out of fashion.
Why should they look at her, slinking nervously into the shop on some paltry errand that the groom could easily have executed if her father had seen fit to spare him?
‘Why am I such a coward?’ Gisela asked. And told herself that it was only because she was confined by the walls of a house that she must suffer from this sense of inferiority.
It was so different when she was riding.
Then she felt the equal of any man and the superior to most. She knew that she could outride them – she knew that, however shabby her habit might be, she need not be ashamed of her seat or of her hands.
‘I am not afraid! I am not afraid!’ she said to herself now and walked into the shop.
It was not so bad as she had anticipated. There were only two men in front of the fire today and she knew them both by sight. They were farmers, one from Northampton way, the other from the South of the County, an elderly man who had once caught her horse for her after she had taken a toss over a particularly bad fence.
She smiled at him shyly as she crossed the wooden floor and he raised his hat as Fred Tyler came from behind the wooden counter, rubbing his hands on his leather apron.
Fred Tyler looked almost like a bit of his own saddlery. It was impossible to imagine him except with a background of saddles and bridles, reins and girths, whips and traces. His skin was the colour of leather and his back was bowed with long hours of bending over his work.
There was a twinkle in his eye and a sly humour on his tongue that made him the character that he was, so that men of all classes and all types called to see old Fred whenever they were in Towcester.
“Good mornin’, missie! And what can I do for you?”
“Good morning, Fred! The Squire asked me to bring you this rein. He says it’s rough beneath his fingers.”
Gisela handed it to the old man as she spoke.
He took it from her, examining the length of it and tut-tutting between his teeth as he found a broken stitch.
“Tell the Squire it’ll be repaired – he shall have it within four and twenty hours.”
“There was something else he asked me to tell you – ” Gisela began.
It was at that moment that the door of the shop was thrown open.
“Saddler!” a peremptory voice called out.
It was a servant who stood there, but a very superior and resplendent servant, wearing breeches and boots that were polished so that they seemed almost to reflect like mirrors, a livery coat adorned with crested buttons, a yellow and black striped waistcoat and cockaded top hat, which sat on his head at such a jaunty angle that it was almost an impertinence in itself.
“Hallo there, saddler!” this apparition called again in a voice that echoed and re-echoed round the small shop.
“Would you be wantin’ me?” Fred Tyler asked, going forward slowly.
“Who else, if you’re the saddler?” was the reply. “His Lordship wishes to speak to you. Outside with you and be quick about it. We don’t want to hang about in this benighted hole all day.”
There was a moment’s silence.
The farmers in front of the fireplace had stopped talking and were staring at the flunkey. Gisela was staring too and for a moment it seemed as if Fred Tyler hesitated.
He was used to gentry who treated him, if not with respect, at least with a certain amount of politeness. Perhaps for a moment he felt a certain resentment, an impulse to revolt against such scurvy treatment.
But tradition was too strong for him.
“I be a-comin’ to his Lordship,” he said and hurried through the open door, which slammed noisily behind him.
Gisela waited patiently.
At the same time she felt herself shiver as if the March winds had driven away the warmth of the shop.
The new year of 1876 had come in with bitter cold and deep snow. February had been damp and foggy and now March was filled with blustery winds driving across the countryside uprooting the trees and bringing the chimney pots tumbling down into the streets.
It seemed as if the winter had been unusually long and Gisela had a sudden longing for the spring sunshine, for the first daffodils and then the long warm days of summer.
Content in her own thoughts she did not at first hear what the two farmers were saying and then gradually the sense of their conversation percolated her consciousness.
“Her took that big fence down by the brook just like a bird, her did,” the older man was saying. “I tell you, Jim, I’ve n’er seen the like of it all me born days.”
“I know, I’ve seen her with my own eyes,” the younger man remarked. “There’ve been women enough in the Duke’s country who could ride – and as well as any man. But she seems part of the horse.”
“That’s it, boy! That’s just what I were a-sayin’,” the other farmer agreed. “Her seems a part of the horse. I thought we could teach these foreigners summat, but maybe there’s a bit as we can learn.”
Gisela wondered who they were talking about.
She had not been hunting these past ten days because one of her father’s mares had sprained a fetlock and he had wanted all the horses for himself.
Obviously someone new had appeared in the hunting field.
She felt curious and at the same time envious. It was agony for her not to be able to ride, to be kept at home to listen to the scoldings of her stepmother and to be made to help with all the most invidious tasks in the household that no one else would do, when she might be galloping across the fields, leaping the hedges, being in for the kill.
She drew a deep breath at the very thought.
At that moment the door opened.
“If you’ll step this way, my Lord, I’ll show your Lordship the bridle I’d in mind. ’Tis the very latest design and the same pattern as one I made for His Grace. And yet I’ve improved on it, if I may be permitted to say so.”
Fred Tyler hobbled across the floor and was followed by a gentleman.
Gisela moved quickly so as to be out of his way, squeezing herself almost apologetically against the wall on the opposite side to that of the fireplace, a wall that, being overhung with saddles, was in the deepest shadow.
Not that the gentleman entering the shop was likely to pay the slightest attention to her. He walked slowly, but with an arrogance and a pride that made him dominate and overshadow everything and everyone else.
He was very tall, hatless, his dark hair shining in the firelight. He had square shoulders beneath his blue whipcord coat and an exquisitely tied cravat, which threw into prominence the squareness of his jaw.
He betrayed not by the flicker of an eye his awareness that there were other occupants of the shop. He ignored t