The Marquis Who Hated Women (Bantam Series No. 62) Read online

  THE MARQUIS WHO HATED WOMEN

  Barbara Cartland

  As the ship rocked violently Shikara clung to the Marquis’ lapel with a frantic grip.

  “I am afraid,” she said. “I cannot help it—I have always been afraid in a storm.”

  “It’s all right,” he said soothingly. “It’s quite understandable in—a woman!”

  Then he felt her body stiffen, and with an effort she released her grip.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. For suddenly she knew that she should never have allowed herself to be weak in his presence.

  Now that he had seen that she was just like any other frail woman, Shikara despairingly wondered if he could ever love her as she so desperately wished.

  Auguste Mariette was the first person to organise and supervise Egyptian Archaeology. He was appointed Director of the Science of Antiquity, a position which was held by Frenchmen until 1952.

  Mariette’s accomplishments represented a milestone in Egyptian Archaeology. He exhumed fifteen thousand objects from Abydos, the site of the Royal Cemetery. He discovered the Second Pyramid and the Tomb of Ti, which is a show-place for tourists today.

  He himself regarded his founding of the Bulak Museum as his most important work.

  CHAPTER ONE

  1853

  “It is getting late. I must go.”

  The Marquis turned over as he spoke and started to rise from the bed.

  Inez Shangarry gave a little cry of protest “Oh, no, Osborne, no! You cannot leave me so soon. I want you!”

  The Marquis shook himself free of her clinging arms and started to put on his discarded clothes.

  Lying back against the pillows with her dark hair falling over her naked body, Lady Shangarry made an enticing picture.

  “You cannot leave me, you cannot!” she said. “It is still very early and there are so few evenings when we can be together like this.”

  There was a glint of fire in her eyes and her red lips pouted provocatively.

  “You are very persuasive, Inez,” the Marquis said as he moved across the room to the dressing-table to pick up his discarded cravat

  “I want to be persuasive, and I want to be with you—you know that,” Lady Shangarry said in a low, seductive voice, “but it is difficult sometimes. When we are alone together I know that you are the most attractive and the most perfect lover any woman could desire.”

  The Marquis tied his black cravat with experienced fingers. Then as he reached for his evening-coat he turned to look back at the silk-draped bed and its attractive occupant.

  “I am going to the country tomorrow,” he said, “and as I wish to leave early I think it important for me to have my ‘beauty sleep’ just as you will need yours.”

  “That is far from a compliment,” Inez Shangarry said petulantly. “I want you to stay with me. Surely, Osborne, after all we have meant to each other, you can grant me just a few more minutes of your time?”

  ‘I hardly think it would be just a few minutes,” the Marquis said in an amused voice.

  It was in fact difficult to believe that any man could resist the allurements of Lady Shangarry, who was recognised as having the most perfect figure in the whole of London.

  She was acclaimed by all the connoisseurs of beauty, including Rakes and men like the Marquis who were noted as being extremely particular in their choice of female companionship.

  The Marquis was well aware not only of his reputation for being fastidious, but also that almost every woman at whom he looked with any favour was only too willing to fall into his arms.

  He had however resisted the allurements of Lady Shangarry for some time, although he knew that she was manoeuvring for him with the confidence of a woman who has found that few men can resist her.

  Finally, because she was not only beautiful but also because she amused him, he had succumbed to the invitation she expressed in every look in her eyes, in every movement of her voluptuously curvy body.

  Now, because she was so insistent on his staying longer than he wished, he wondered if in fact she was not becoming somewhat of a bore and if the end of their liaison was already in sight.

  The Marquis was noted for being completely ruthless where his love-affairs were concerned.

  He preferred to do his own hunting, but unfortunately the chase was always brief, since the objects of his attention made little effort to escape him.

  All too quickly any woman in whom he was interested settled into a familiar pattern of becoming clinging and demanding.

  At thirty-three the Marquis had resisted every possible trick and trap to entice him up the aisle into respectable matrimony, and preferred women already married, who relieved the boredom of their lives with a continuous succession of lovers.

  The result was of course that he was disliked violently and aggressively by a large number of husbands, and as one wag put it: “The Marquis has only to appear in any Assembly to raise the blood-pressure to apoplectic intensity of half the men present!”

  Although various threats had been made against him, no-one so far had managed to catch the Marquis red-handed.

  He was so discreet and so careful in public that rumours concerning his love-affairs rested only on conjecture and surmise rather than on any actual proof to betray him.

  “Darling—you are the most handsome man I have ever seen!” Inez Shangarry said from the bed.

  “I am flattered, Inez,” the Marquis said, but his tone was cynical.

  “I mean it,” she said insistently, “and that is why I want to kiss you. Come here! You cannot refuse me one last kiss.”

  She held out her white arms as she spoke, but the Marquis laughed and shook his head.

  “I have been caught that way before!”

  He was only too well aware that if a man bent over a woman in bed and she pulled him down upon her, he was helpless. He was sure that that was Inez Shangarry’s intention and it made him all the more determined to escape.

  She was insatiable, he thought. She did not seem tired after the fierceness of their love-making, while he himself felt a definite reaction that made him wish to be free of the warm, scented room.

  There was the heavy fragrance of flowers mingled with an exotic perfume which Inez Shangarry always used, and which her lovers found lingered on their clothes long after they had left her presence.

  There was no doubt, the Marquis thought, that she was exceptionally beautiful. At the same time, there was something lacking to which he could not put a name.

  She could make him laugh by the sharpness of her wit, which most other women failed to do; but although their association was fiery and tempestuous he knew that he was not in the least in love with her.

  In fact, as usual his heart was completely untouched, so that if he never saw her again it would have not troubled him in the slightest.

  ‘I must go, Inez,” he said. “Thank you for an enchanting evening, and I hope we shall be able to dine together very soon in the near future.”

  He took her hand as he spoke and lifted it to his so her fingers tightened on his.

  “Kiss me, Osborne, stay with me a little longer! I want you—I need you! I cannot let you leave me!”

  There was such a passionate note in her voice, together with an almost frantic determination to keep him, that the Marquis looked at her in surprise.

  As he did so he heard a faint sound from the room below them. It was very faint, but he knew that Inez Shangarry had heard it too. Then she held on to him even more tightly and her voice rose a little as she said:

  “I love you, Osborne! I love you! Kiss me! Please kiss me.”

 
The Marquis freed himself from her, and moving swiftly across the room went not to the door which led to the landing but through another, which opened into a dressing-room occupied by Lord Shangarry when he was at home.

  The room was in darkness but the Marquis crossed it in a few steps and pulled back the curtains over the window.

  It was a starlit night with the moon appearing fitfully between drifting clouds.

  The Marquis flung up the window to look out.

  As he expected, there was a drop of about twelve feet onto a roof below and again a long drop from there to the Mews.

  Without wasting any time he let himself down by his arms, and then with his body fully outstretched he dropped lightly and with athletic expertise onto the floor beneath him.

  Once there he climbed over the edge, and this time with the help of a drainpipe descended onto the rough cobbles of the Mews.

  He heard the sleeves of his evening-coat splitting at the armholes as he did so, but then his tailor had never envisaged his indulging in such acrobatic feats when he was dressed for dinner.

  The shadows in the deserted Mews were dark and the Marquis moved quickly from where he was standing into the darkness created by one of the stable doors. Then he looked up at the window he had left behind him.

  He did not have to wait more than a few seconds.

  At the open aperture the head of a man, who leant out and looked searchingly at the roof beneath the window, then into the Mews.

  The Marquis kept very still. He recognised Lord Shangarry quite clearly and he knew that he had just escaped from a cleverly and well-baited trap.

  It must have been some sixth sense, he thought, that had made him feel that Inez’s insistence on his staying longer had been over-acted, and perhaps he had a special perception where women were concerned.

  He had thought for some time that Inez’s desire to possess him was growing to the point where it could be dangerous.

  He well knew that if, as she had intended, her husband had found them making love, there were only two courses open.

  The first was that Shangarry should divorce her, in which case she would eventually become the Marchioness of Linwood, and however great the penalties of scandal and social ostracism the ultimate result would justify them.

  Alternatively, and the Marquis could not help thinking this might be more likely, Lord Shangarry would demand a very large sum of money to assuage his outraged feelings and soothe his pride.

  Watching him staring from the open window, the Marquis was quite certain that the plot had been concocted between them.

  Now, when he thought of it, he remembered someone at the Club saying that Shangarry was deeply in debt, and from things that Inez had told him he was certain that they were finding it hard to make ends meet.

  What then could be better from their standpoint than to be in a position to blackmail—discreetly, of course—someone as rich as himself?

  They knew he would not wish to be involved in anything so unsavoury as a Court Case, and he could certainly afford to pay handsomely for his misdemeanours.

  “I have been a fool!” the Marquis told himself.

  Then, as Lord Shangarry, cheated of his prey, slammed the window shut, he cursed beneath his breath.

  “Damn the woman! Damn all women! I hate them all—I always have!”

  The violence he felt surprised even himself, and yet it was in part true. He did dislike women as a sex.

  Although he used them for his own ends, finding a fleeting and very transitory pleasure in their company when they surrendered themselves to his desires, he had never met a woman whose companionship he preferred to that of a man or whom he left with any sense of regret.

  The way Inez had behaved tonight, he thought, was typical of the female of the species.

  Looking back, he could see how she had gradually inveigled her way into his consciousness, and how the mere fact that all other men sang her praises had made him feel that she was more desirable than in fact she was.

  When it came down to it, she was very like every other woman to whom he had made love, and there was nothing at all unique about her.

  Now he could only curse himself for being as brainless as any unfledged youth in letting himself nearly be caught in a situation from which it would have been impossible to extricate himself with any dignity.

  “Curse them—curse them both!” the Marquis swore.

  Then after waiting until he was quite certain Lord Shangarry was no longer peering through the window, he turned and started to walk up the Mews.

  In the stables as he passed them he could hear the sound of horses moving restlessly in their stalls, and occasionally the whistling of a groom who had been kept out late and was rubbing down his animals before he himself went to bed.

  There were the smells of leather, hay, and horseflesh, which the Marquis knew well.

  It made him think of the country and conjured up in him a sudden longing to be free of London and the social gossip and intrigue, which he disliked, especially if it concerned himself.

  He had walked quite a little way before he stopped suddenly as it came to his mind that however skilfully he had escaped from the Shangarry house he had left two pieces of incriminating evidence behind—his hat and his evening-cloak.

  He had not thought of them until the January wind blowing down the Mews made him shiver and he felt the frost in the air against his bare forehead.

  Shangarry would have seen both objects in the Hall, and undoubtedly he would be discussing with his wife at the moment how they could be turned to their advantage.

  The Marquis gritted his teeth angrily.

  Why, he asked himself, had he not been more suspicious when Inez Shangarry had told him so glibly that her husband would be away from London that evening?

  “Patrick is going to visit some friends at Epsom” she had said. “He wants to look at their horses and it will be too late for him to return tonight since it is dark so early.”

  It had seemed quite a plausible story at the time. But now the Marquis told himself he must have been extremely stupid to think that any man who cared for his wife would leave her alone in London when he must have been aware who her escort would be in his absence.

  “I underestimated my own reputation,” he told himself, “which is something I do not do as a rule.”

  There was nothing he could do about it now, but as he walked on he thought with fury of his hat and evening-cloak with its red satin lining reposing on a mahogany chair in the narrow, unimpressive Hall.

  He remembered how, when they came back from the Restaurant where they had dined in a private room so that they would not be seen together, their desire for each other leaping like a flame had made Inez hurry him upstairs without even stopping in the Drawing-Room for the usual glass of wine.

  Now he thought he could distinctly remember her saying, “Leave your things there,” and almost automatically he had put down his hat and swung his cloak from his shoulders.

  Then she had led the way upstairs, her full skirts moving seductively against the bannisters, her neck and shoulders gleaming white in the dim, lowered gas-lights.

  “I deserve everything that comes to me!” the Marquis said savagely to himself. “At my age, with my experience, I should have learnt to trust no-one—let alone a woman!”

  His self-accusation did not make him feel any warmer and he moved more briskly, coming to the end of the Mews and turning into another street where the houses faced onto the pavement.

  He had not gone more than a few yards when suddenly something fell at his feet with a thud and instinctively he jumped backwards, knowing that if it had hit him on the head it would have laid him out.

  He looked down and saw that it was a valise, an elegant, expensive valise such as ladies carried when they travelled in a coach or a railway-carriage.

  The Marquis stared at it in surprise. Then as he raised his head to look from where it had come he heard a voice crying: “Help! Help!”
/>   He looked up and saw to his astonishment that just above his head a woman was swinging on a rope.

  Her full skirts billowed out and they seemed to keep her suspended in mid-air.

  Then he realised that her predicament lay in the fact that the rope was not long enough. It did not reach the ground and was short by at least six feet. “Help!” she called again. “Help!”

  Without thinking what he was doing, the Marquis stepped forward to reach up his arms, and clasping her above the ankles he held her steady.

  He realised she was very light, and having a firm grip on her he said:

  "You can let go now, I will not let you fall.”

  She must have obeyed him, for he felt her bend over to try to put her hands on his shoulders and he let her slide slowly down, holding her finally round the waist until her feet were on the ground.

  As he did so he realised that she was dressed expensively in silk, and she had a faint fresh scent which reminded him of spring flowers.

  Then as he released her she started to smooth her skirts into place and pull down the sleeves of the tight-fitting jacket she wore.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I was afraid the rope would not be long enough, but I had to take a chance.”

  “What has happened to the gentleman who should be assisting you to elope?” the Marquis asked with an amused note in his voice. “Surely he should be here by now?”

  “It is nothing like that!” the woman replied sharply.

  Now by the light of the moon he could see that she was very young, only a girl, and when the wind lifted the brim of her bonnet he could see a small, pointed face and what he thought were very large eyes.

  “You are not eloping?” he enquired.

  “No, of course not! I am running away from a man, not to one!” she said. “If you want to know the truth, I hate men! I hate all of them!”

  The Marquis laughed and when she looked at him in surprise he explained:

  “That is a sentiment I have just been expressing to myself, except that in my case I was hating women!”