195. Moon Over Eden

Ceylon born and bred, yet English through and though thanks to their stern father, who is the local Vicar, beautiful young Dominica Radford and her five sisters are excited when one Sunday a very handsome English gentleman comes calling on their father in their rundown Vicarage in Colombo. But excitement turns to shock when Lord Hawkston out of the blue asks for Dominica’s hand in marriage for his twenty-four year old nephew Gerald Warren, who is running Lord Hawkston’s estate in Northern Ceylon. Having discovered that Gerald, recently spurned by a previous fiancée, is drinking heavily, letting the Hawkston tea estate go to wrack and ruin and treating his native lover cruelly, Lord Hawkston is desperate to see him married and settled and so sees the intelligent and sensible Dominica as the perfect bride for him. Overwhelmed by his Lordship’s generosity in giving her a glorious trousseau of pretty clothes, Dominica initially agrees, but soon she realises not only that she does not love Gerald she is repelled by him and the ugliness and coarseness he brings to the new Garden of Eden where she now finds herself. Nevertheless the lovely Dominica is happier than she has ever been in her entire life. And the reason suddenly comes to her in a blinding light. She is in love with Lord Hawkston!