A Fall from Grace, Maggie Ford [best english novels to read txt] 📗

A Fall from Grace

Cover

Title Page

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

About the Author

Also by Maggie Ford

Copyright

Cover

Table of Contents

Start of Content

One

Eight thirty – November’s early morning sunlight beginning to peep above the tall houses on the far side of Holland Park, West London more open here, giving space to breathe. Hers was a lovely house, one of rows of similar high-class three-storied homes with attic and basement, steps down to the street, protective railings at the front and long narrow gardens at the rear.

Some three and a half years ago she’d bought this huge house out of a need to prove her independence. Instead she had found herself rattling around in it, refusing the comfort of staff apart from a daily woman who came in to cook and clean before returning home in the evening. Until recently she’d had plenty of friends but since October they had deserted her, or more likely she had driven them away, no longer able to face them.

The sun had begun to light up the room, reflecting off the big mirror on to the central chandelier, its crystals scattering a myriad of bright splashes around the walls of the huge reception room. She’d been up all night unable to sleep, and now she gazed up at the chandelier as she had done so many times before, except on this occasion not in admiration.

Madeleine Ingleton’s gaze was thoughtful. This was where it would happen. It would be swift – over in seconds – and the heartache, the grinding sense of anguish, the lonely recriminations would be no more, a thing of the past.

No friends, her money already gone, she was now deeply in debt; soon the house too would be lost. Wasn’t it well known that rats always desert a sinking ship? Well she was a sinking ship right enough, no denying that. In fact it had already sunk.

Madeleine found herself thinking back on her life as she stood in the middle of the room where so many uproarious parties had been held: such wonderful parties, every room overflowing with joyous party goers and hangers-on, most of them sozzled to the eyebrows on champagne or whatever else they could down, some making idiotic attempts to dance, seeing themselves as experts at the Black Bottom, the Charleston, Tango, One-Step or the Turkey Trot; the place stifling, filled with music and laughter and cigarette smoke.

A far cry from the quiet Buckinghamshire house she’d once known, where her parents had lived. Only her miserable sod of a father there now, rattling around in that mausoleum of a place, her mother dead these last thirteen years.

She couldn’t recall the last time she’d laid eyes on him and as far as he was concerned, she could have been as dead as her mother. It didn’t matter. Before long she’d probably join her to haunt the life out of him and serve him right, if he cared at all.

He’d always wanted a son to carry on the family name, but she had remained an only child. He therefore looked to her to marry well and have a son of her own who’d one day take up his grandfather’s name of Wyndham at the same time as inheriting under his will.

He had even made it known that he’d added this into his will and as soon as she turned eighteen, an age when girls of good families were expected to think of finding a future husband of equally good background, he had pinned all his expectations on that wish.

Her mother had been in total agreement with her husband as women usually were prior to 1914. So why had she expected her to be otherwise? Even so it had hurt, left with no support or sympathy from either of them.

She was twenty when her mother died – tuberculosis, a disease that usually struck poorer families. She was now thirty-three but even had her mother been alive now, the hostility would still be there, neither parent ever forgiving her for what she’d done. To this day her father would still see her as having been the cause of her mother’s death.

She could still recall that vile argument nearly fifteen years ago when they’d sprung the news of their plans for her future. Until then they’d looked on her as a model daughter, dutifully doing as she was told.

How wrong they were.

Two

She had enjoyed every minute of her two years at the Swiss finishing school for young ladies. Now Madeleine was home having just turned eighteen, her parents were already planning to attend her first social engagement of the London Season, her coming out ball, along with a host of other debutants in white ball gowns.

Each family looked to their daughter meeting some likely young suitor of equal good standing and, even better, heir to a vaster fortune, with a view to eventual marriage. But just in case, Madeleine’s own parents already had their eye on one young man.

She and Hamilton Bramwell had already met at two or three social gatherings long before she’d gone to Switzerland so they weren’t exactly strangers. With this in mind, Mummy and Father had approached his wealthy parents just prior to her return home, fully expecting her to be thrilled at renewing their acquaintance with a view to marriage.

It seemed they were taken with the idea, her father’s standing being pretty high and the prospects of her bringing a fine dowry to the marriage, she being an only child, was most tempting. The drawback for her was that he wasn’t the sort of husband she’d dreamed of while in Switzerland though of course she’d so far kept her thoughts to herself. Back then she and her friends had fantasized constantly about the man each would marry. Someone special; someone tall and strong and handsome, with smouldering eyes of whatever colour each preferred and gleaming blonde or glossy brown hair according to each girl’s particular taste.

The drawback with Hamilton was that there was nothing, nor had there ever been anything, special