A Flight To Heaven by Barbara Cartland Page A

does.”
    “Oh, Tom! Promise me that you are not going to go away just yet! If I grow any fonder of you, I think I shall not be able to bear it!” Lady Fairfax cried and put her head on his shoulder.
    Lord Darley sat back on the sofa and smiled, as if he had no intention of leaving Rensham Hall ever again.

CHAPTER SIX
    Every single day Chiara visited Erebus in the small paddock where he was recovering from his fall, bringing him pocketfuls of sugar lumps, peppermints and carrots to cheer him up.
    One afternoon, about a week after the accident, she noticed that he no longer flinched when he stepped on his sprained leg.
    “You are getting better now. Is it all the treats I have been giving you?” she asked, patting him. Then she noticed that someone had tied a poultice of dark leaves around the pony’s fetlock.
    “That’s my doing, my Lady. I put it on his leg,” Jonah said, when she asked him if he knew anything about the poultice.
    “But whatever is it?”
    “Boneset, my Lady. My grandmother grows it in her garden.”
    “Boneset?”
    Chiara had never heard of it.
    Jonah nodded.
    “Grandma says it can help any broken bone or bad sprain to heal. There isn’t much growin’ this early in the year, but I found a few plants in the kitchen garden.”
    He went into the harness room and came out with a handful of pointed leaves.
    “Careful, Lady Chiara,” he said, as she reached out to take them. “Best not to touch. See, those little hairs that grow on the leaf might irritate your hand. But it’s a real powerful healer. ‘Russian comfrey’ the gardener calls it, but I always likes to call it ‘boneset’.”
    “How very extraordinary, it certainly seems to have helped poor Erebus. His lameness is almost gone.”
    Jonah nodded.
    “You’ll be ridin’ him again before too long, your Ladyship.”
    Chiara sighed.
    “I hope so. Mama is worried that he will take off with me again. I think Mr. Hunter has turned her against him.”
    Jonah’s face darkened and Chiara could tell that the mention of that gentleman’s name upset him.
    “You don’t like him, do you Jonah? But at least he has not visited us again since the accident. Mama says he is away at the races.”
    The groom nodded, but said nothing and Chiara did not pursue the subject.
    Mervyn Hunter was much on her mind today, as he would be attending the ball at Sandringham tonight. Lord and Lady Duckett had arranged an invitation for him along with Lord Darley.
    There was no doubt that he would ask her to dance with him and how could she then refuse without seeming foolish and very impolite?
    What if he should try to kiss her again?
    A little shudder passed over her and she felt once more the hot pressure of his lips against hers. Even the memory of that moment was enough to make her blush.
    “Your Ladyship!” A maid came running over to the paddock gate, her white apron flapping around her. “Lady Fairfax is askin’ for you.”
    It was time to go in.
    Chiara’s mother would need help with her toilette and would insist on seeing and approving her daughter’s gown and accessories.
    Chiara sighed and sent up a fervent little prayer that Mervyn Hunter might have met another girl at the races and forgotten all about her.
    *
    Arkady shook a few drops from the silver bottle of hair dressing his mother, the Dowager Countess, had given him before he left Russia.
    He held the drops in his palm for a moment and let the exotic scent of spices and green limes fill his nose.
    He was filled with a sudden longing for his home.
    The ice would be melting now on the river and the snow disappearing from the roof of his Palace in a gurgling torrent of melting water.
    He should be there now. If it was not for this ball tonight that the King and Queen had so kindly decided to honour him with, he would have left already and would be on board ship looking out over a wild tossing seascape.
    He had been down to the beach again many times, on the brand new bicycle His Majesty