A New Dream, Maggie Ford [books to read romance txt] 📗

she was in some ways a bit stubborn. Martha felt herself relax as the excited flow of words calmed a little.

‘All I know is that he’ll be a perfect husband to me. He’s kind and mild-tempered and generous. His parents approve of the match and so do Mummy and Daddy. They like him very much and I do too. And we do love each other.’

Martha yearned to enquire if Julia had ever ached for him, for his touch, for him to make love to her, but shrank from plying such a direct question. Yet she needed to say something.

‘I might be getting on a bit, dear, but I hope I keep up with modern times. It just seems to me that if a girl isn’t sure about, as you said, what love is, especially with the man her family expects her to be getting engaged to, she ought to speak up before it’s too late, or at least wait a little longer.’

She paused a moment to judge the effect of her words, but when Julia seemed suddenly very intent on toying with the jelly molds, she dared just a little more.

‘In this day and age no girl has to do what her parents tell her when it comes to marriage; something that, good or bad, is going to have to last the rest of her life. And if it feels wrong at the start…’

‘It doesn’t!’ Julia cut in sharply, looking up at her questioner to hold her gaze until Martha was forced to look away.

‘All I want to make clear, Julia, is just for you to think carefully about it, about love. That’s all I have to say on the matter’.

And with these words, containing more than a tinge of warning, Martha Granby turned her attention firmly back to sifting flour ready to add to the fairy cake mixture.

In her bedroom Julia should have been dressing for dinner. Instead, still in her underclothes, she stood at the window staring pensively out across the Park, her eyebrows drawn in vague indecision.

The way Mrs Granby had alluded to her marrying for money worried her. Did she truly love Chester or was she bowing yet again to her father’s will, knowing that he saw his business as benefiting from his daughter’s marriage to the son of a family whose business was larger than his own?

He had inherited his own father’s prosperous import/export concern, and at the time had invested well. Everything had been rosy until four years of war had robbed him of much of his trade.

What profit there had once been dealing in spices and silks from India as well as fine Porcelain, ivory artefacts and other similar commodities from abroad had been done for, enemy submarines attacking shipping throughout those four years of utter stagnation. While men fought in trenches, with very little ground ever gained on either side, Britain needed food not spices.

The armistice had seen Germany brought to its knees, with Britain not far behind. While some businesses had profited from war, others hadn’t. Many had been left struggling to regain lost ground. But three years on, Julia was sure that her father’s affairs were sound enough.

He never discussed business with his family, not even with his wife. To his mind women had no understanding of business and financial matters, nor needed to concern themselves with such. In his view, a wife’s job was to run her husband’s home, care for his children and see that they were taught good manners and respect for their elders.

Julia’s brother James, sixteen, was away at public school and hardly ever came home, sometimes staying with friends during the odd term holiday. He would follow his father into the business. Julia’s sisters, Stephanie, almost eighteen, and Virginia, fourteen, would be bound to marry well in time – there would be no cause for them to involve themselves in the brash business world of men. But Julia was fully expected to marry Chester, whose father’s concern was larger than her own father’s. And this fact made her wonder about true love, as she remembered Mrs Granby’s words.

Did her mother really love her father? He was not a man to smile easily and was somewhat quick to anger. Lately he’d become even sterner, almost morose. What did he have to be worried about? Not his family. He saw them all as happy and content, looked after by well-paid domestic staff. He’d never stinted them; her mother was provided with an adequate clothing allowance, she too now she’d come of age. Stephanie and Virginia had no allowance as yet, but were clothed by their mother from good-class department stores like Dickins & Jones and Bond Street boutiques.

But recently Julia had noticed a certain strained look on her father’s face that had begun to worry her somewhat. He seemed preoccupied with her marrying into the Morrison family with their country estate in Berkshire and their London mansion in Chelsea. She hoped that once she was married he might become more amiable.

Mrs Granby’s words still played on her mind. She was unsettled by the way in which she had seemed to question Julia’s feelings for her fiancé. But she did love Chester. True they were seldom alone together, mostly attending parties or gatherings with friends, which allowed them very little opportunity to express their feelings for one another beyond a tender kiss or two.

But the wedding was to be in the autumn and she was excited. Her wedding dress would be white satin under a straight tunic falling in points from waist to ankles, with wide sleeves; her veil a circlet of orange blossom worn well forward on her brow, the very height of fashion. On her feet she planned to wear white, pointed court shoes.

Her thoughts were interrupted by Stephanie coming into her room.

‘Aren’t you ready yet?’ She was already dressed to go down to dinner, her long auburn hair tied back in a ribbon, the way Mummy liked it.

Julia turned from the window and went