Who Can Deny Love Read online

  It was then that Cyrilla had known that ‘being together’ would not be enough for her. She wanted everything else as well – security, propriety, respectability and marriage!

  Chapter Five

  The Marquis drove towards Islington with a smile on his lips.

  He had the same triumphant feeling as when he had won a race or beaten his opponent at boxing.

  He had, in fact, achieved what his secretary had told him was impossible and he was quite justifiably pleased with himself.

  When yesterday afternoon he had gone back to Fane House to send for Mr. Ashworth, his secretary, whose duties were similar to those of a Royal Comptroller, he had felt that planning a home for Cyrilla was the most exciting thing he had ever done in his whole life.

  It would be impossible, he realised, to provide her immediately with everything he wanted for her.

  But already, as he drove away from Islington, he had been thinking of the paintings with which he would embellish her house, the carpets that would cover the floors and the furniture that would give her the type of background that was worthy of her beauty.

  He had already decided that she should be surrounded by paintings that would make her loveliness even more pronounced than Lochner had managed to do and he decided that a Boucher and a Botticelli which hung at Fane Park should be moved to her house when he found it for her.

  When he said to his secretary,

  “I want you to buy, today, a house near here which is architecturally outstanding and also has a garden”, Mr. Ashworth had stared at him in astonishment.

  “Today, my Lord?”

  “Today!” the Marquis said firmly.

  “But it’s not possible.”

  “Nothing is impossible!” the Marquis replied. “Not where I am concerned.”

  He smiled as he spoke and Mr. Ashworth thought that something had obviously pleased his Master, for he had never seen him look so happy or indeed so sure of himself.

  He wondered what could have happened.

  There had been no race meeting in which the Marquis’s horses would have come in first as usual and that was the only sporting event he was actively engaged in.

  And yet he undoubtedly had the appearance of a winner.

  Mr. Ashworth was, however, far too tactful to make personal remarks. Instead he said,

  “I will do my best, my Lord, to find the house you require, but I cannot be over-optimistic, for the Season has just started and houses that were unoccupied have now been let for at least the next two months.”

  “Look, Ashworth! Look!” the Marquis ordered.

  “I have two letters here for you to sign, my Lord,” Mr. Ashworth said, as if he was relieved to change the subject, “and also I think you should know that your cousin, the Dowager Lady Bletchley, died last night.”

  “Send a wreath,” the Marquis said automatically as he was signing the letters which his secretary had handed to him.

  “Of course, my Lord. The funeral is to take place in the country, as her Ladyship died at her son’s house.”

  The Marquis raised his head.

  “Am I mistaken in thinking that her Ladyship had a house in London near here?”

  “Indeed she had, my Lord. In South Street, to be precise. Number 19, you will recall, looks different from the other houses.”

  The Marquis looked at his secretary and, as the eyes of the two men met, Mr. Ashworth gave an exclamation,

  “It’s certainly a possibility, my Lord!”

  “I think I am right in saying that her Ladyship has not been in residence there this past year.”

  “I would not know the answer to that, my Lord.”

  “I remember hearing,” the Marquis remarked, “that she left for the country because she was ill and her eldest son arranged for her to stay in the family house.”

  Mr. Ashworth was silent, knowing that the Marquis was thinking out loud rather than trying to have a conversation.

  “I am also certain,” he went on, “that she will leave her house in Mayfair to her second son, a young man who has quite a propensity for gambling. I have often seen him at White’s. If I go there at once, I may find him before he leaves for the country.”

  “The funeral is not until the day after tomorrow, my Lord.”

  “Then undoubtedly Charlie Bletchley will be at White’s,” the Marquis said, rising to his feet.

  As he hurried from the room, almost running in his eagerness, Mr. Ashworth stared after him in astonishment.

  What had happened? What could have caused this sudden outburst of energy?

  It was something, he decided, which had also swept away the indolent often cynical manner with which the Marquis regarded the world – a manner that Mr. Ashworth had often deprecated in so young a man.

  There was certainly nothing cynical about the Marquis now as he drove towards Islington.

  Lady Bletchley’s house was everything he wanted for Cyrilla.

  Of course the whole place would have to be redecorated from top to bottom, but her Ladyship had inherited from her side of the family some very attractive furniture which, the Marquis thought, would certainly be acceptable until he could find better pieces to replace them.

  The house itself had been built in the last century by Robert Adam and had the attraction of large airy rooms, fine cornices, exquisite fireplaces and parquet floors,

  The curtains and carpets, while not good enough for what the Marquis required, were unobtrusive but in excellent taste and he thought that after the property and privation of Islington, Cyrilla would be overjoyed with her new home.

  There was a small but attractive garden, which had been well kept and was now filled with tulips and daffodils and several fruit trees that were just coming into blossom.

  As the Marquis was thinking about them, he felt he could almost see them framing and enhancing Cyrilla’s dream-like loveliness and he felt a sudden violent urge to be with her, to hold her in his arms and most of all to kiss her lips.

  The Marquis had kissed many women in his life, but he knew that never had he known such enchantment, such an indescribable rapture, as he felt when he kissed Cyrilla and knew that she was feeling as he did.

  ‘I love her!’ he told himself. ‘I had not the slightest conception that I could ever feel like this and discover it was love.’

  He wanted to laugh at the intensity of his feelings, then he knew that it was impossible to feel anything but grateful that he had found perfection in love, just as he had found it in art and in sport.

  He was fortunate in finding Charlie Bletchley only too willing to sell for a very generous sum the house he had inherited from his mother.

  As the Marquis had anticipated, Charlie’s debts were astronomical and there was little chance of his repaying them except from what he had hoped to inherit.

  The Marquis did not stay long at White’s and, when he left he had bought the house in South Street with its contents and had obtained the previous owner’s permission to move in without waiting for the bills of sale to be signed formally.

  “I must say, you don’t waste much time, Cousin Virgo!” Charlie Bletchley said. “I expected to have this house on my hands for several months before I found a buyer and that meant I would have to pay caretakers and Heaven knows what else!”

  “It was obviously Fate that everything should happen as it has,” the Marquis replied lightly.

  As he drove away from White’s, he was thinking that Fate was certainly on his side.

  It was fate that had made Frans Wyntack offer his second fake to Isaacs, who undoubtedly was under the influence of Fate when he had taken it to the Prince of Wales.

  ‘I suppose I shall have to tell him one day that the picture is not what it purports to be,’ the Marquis thought, but he knew this was something he would not mention at the moment, for fear that the Prince would learn about Cyrilla.

  ‘She is mine, only mine!’ the Marquis told himself again and again.

  He felt a thrill as he thoug
ht how exciting it would be to enter the house in South Street and know that once they had closed the door, they would be alone and no one could intrude upon them.

  He went to bed late, for there were so many things he had to think about and plan, but he rose early as usual.

  He would have left for Islington as soon as he had returned from his ride in the Park if Mr. Ashworth had not been waiting for him.

  The surveyor, who had been looking over the house on his instructions, had found certain shortcomings that had to be seen to at once.

  Although on other occasions the Marquis might have left it entirely to his secretary, where Cyrilla was concerned, he felt that nothing was too small to warrant his own personal attention.

  He also found it easier to inspect in person what had to be done before giving orders.

  He therefore went with the surveyor and his secretary to the house in South Street and, while he was there, he found innumerable other details on which he needed to exercise his authority.

  However, he went up the stairs alone to a large bedroom with a bow window overlooking the garden.

  It had a bed with an exquisitely carved and gilded headboard of mermaids and dolphins. It also had a quilted satin cover of Nile blue, which he knew was a colour which would go perfectly with Cyrilla’s strangely beautiful hair.

  He stood for a moment imagining her in the bed, knowing that because it was so big she would look very small and ethereal with that delicate dreamy quality that Lochner had portrayed so accurately.

  ‘I love her and I will make her happy,’ the Marquis swore to himself.

  At the same time just for a moment he almost felt as if the ghosts of all the other women to whom he had made love stood between him and the purity and innocence of Cyrilla.

  Then, as if he forced the thought away from him, he walked to the window to stand looking out into the garden.

  He had the strange feeling that Cyrilla was like a snowdrop, enchanting and delicate when it grew in the ground under the shade of the trees, but which never seemed the same when one picked it.

  He wondered if making love to Cyrilla would spoil something flower-like and vulnerable about her, something that was so pure and holy that perhaps it should remain a spiritual aspiration just out of reach.

  Then he told himself that their love would not be spoilt, but would become more intense, more ecstatic, because she would be a part of him and therefore human.

  ‘I worship her!’ he told himself. ‘I will never do anything to hurt her in any way.’

  With all the details to be settled, it was getting on for noon when finally he set out for Islington.

  He thought Cyrilla might be anxious, but he knew that she would understand when he told her that she could leave immediately.

  He had instructed Mr. Ashworth to send a closed carriage for Hannah and the luggage, having decided that Cyrilla would drive with him in his phaeton because he knew that she would appreciate his team of magnificent chestnuts which were unequalled in the whole of London.

  His horses carried him so swiftly to Islington that he realised he would reach Queen Anne Terrace sooner than he had planned and it would be quite a time before the closed carriage caught up with him.

  When they arrived, the groom ran to the head of the leading horse and the Marquis stepped down to strike what was almost a tattoo with the brass knocker on the unpainted door of number 17.

  ‘She will know who is knocking,’ he told himself with a smile.

  He looked up at the window, half-expecting to see Cyrilla peeping out at him.

  He listened for footsteps in the passage, but there was only silence and after a while he knocked again, this time so loudly that several passers-by turned round in surprise at the noise he was making.

  ‘She must be expecting me,’ he thought.

  He was sure that she would not be annoyed or sulking as another woman might have been.

  There was still no answer and now there was a frown between the Marquis’s eyes.

  It seemed strange that both Cyrilla and Hannah should have gone out shopping when they were well aware that he had said he would be back first thing in the morning.

  He knocked again, then walked up and down the pavement outside the house.

  If they had been so inconsiderate as to go to the shops, then they could not intend to be long.

  He told himself that perhaps there was nothing to eat in the house and Cyrilla had felt hungry and decided that, as he was so late, he would not now arrive until after luncheon.

  ‘I gave Hannah some money,’ he said to himself. ‘She should have had the sense to get some food in without waiting until this late hour.’

  After he had knocked several times more, he saw his closed carriage coming down the road.

  For a second he thought what excellent horseflesh was drawing it and that their silver harness glittering in the sunshine was very impressive.

  Then it annoyed him that when everything was ready to convey Cyrilla and Hannah to South Street, they were missing.

  All sorts of possibilities came to his mind, until, as the carriage drew up and the footman stepped down from the box, it struck him that perhaps they were ill.

  He beckoned the footman to him.

  “Go round to the back of the house, Henry,” he said, “and see if there is a window which is conveniently open so that you can get in. If not, smash one, but do as little damage as possible.”

  “Yes, my Lord,” Henry replied.

  He did not look too astonished at such a strange request and the Marquis added,

  “When you get inside, open the front door for me,”

  “Very good, my Lord.”

  Henry hurried round to the back of the house and about two minutes later, while the Marquis waited impatiently, he heard a tugging at the door before Henry shouted,

  “It’s locked, my Lord, but I’ve got the back one open.”

  The Marquis made no reply. He merely walked round the house as Henry had done and saw that the back door was open.

  There was also a smashed window pane in the kitchen window.

  “This door was only bolted, my Lord, but the front one has been locked and there’s no key.”

  “I understand.”

  This meant, the Marquis thought, that Hannah and Cyrilla had gone out the front way and locked the door behind them.

  But why? What was happening?

  He walked into the sitting room hoping to find a clue to their extraordinary behaviour.

  Then he went up to the studio, which told him nothing.

  He stared round it, looking at the finished and unfinished canvases and the sofa on which he had sat and kissed Cyrilla.

  The place gave him a feeling of emptiness,

  Quickly, because he had no wish to stay there, he crossed the passage and found that there were three bedrooms, one with a double bed, which he was sure was where Frans Wyntack had died and there was no doubt that the one next door was Cyrilla’s.

  It was very small and very simple, and yet there were little touches that reminded him irresistibly of her – a frilled muslin flounce on the dressing table and small inexpensive ornaments such as a child might collect.

  When he opened the wardrobe, there was a faint fragrance of flowers and he saw a few, a very few, gowns hanging neatly in a row.

  A sense of relief swept away some of his tensions.

  She had certainly not left the house for long, as her clothes were still there.

  Then for some reason that he could not afterwards recall, he went into the room next door.

  It was small, smaller than Cyrilla’s, and he knew that this must be where Hannah slept

  It was severe, almost like a nun’s cell that he felt was characteristic of her.

  His instinct made him open the wardrobe.

  It was empty!

  The Marquis drew in his breath and opened the drawers of a chest. They were empty too!

  There was not one piece of clothing or even a pa
ir of shoes left in this room.

  He stood very still, at the same time there was an expression on his face that was frightening.

  *

  Late that night, after Cyrilla had gone to bed, Hannah had asked to see the Duke.

  He was sitting in his favourite chair by the fireplace and, when he told Burton he would see her, she came slowly towards him and curtseyed.

  “I understand,” he said, “I have to thank you, Hannah, for bringing Lady Cyrilla back to me. I only wish you had done so sooner.”

  “I wanted to do so, Your Grace.”

  “I understand. At the same time, now that she is home with me, I want everything forgotten. The past eight years are to be wiped out completely. They are not to be talked about to anyone in the household, nor to her Ladyship. Do you understand?”

  “I understand, Your Grace.”

  “I am grateful to you, Hannah, for your care of my daughter. I hope you will continue to give her the same devoted attention in the future as you have done in the past.”

  “I’ll do my best, Your Grace.”

  The Duke waited, aware that Hannah had something more to say.

  ‘There’s just one thing, Your Grace.”

  “What is it?”

  “I’m going back to the house first thing in the morning to fetch my own clothes. I’m thankful there’ll be no need to fetch Lady Cyrilla’s. What I want to know is, what does Your Grace want done about the house?

  As if she felt that the Duke did not understand, Hannah explained,

  “It belongs to her Ladyship now and I have the deeds in my keeping.”

  The Duke thought for a moment, then said,

  “Burn them and let the house fall to the ground!”

  “Fall to the ground, Your Grace?”

  “It will make a suitable funeral pyre, Hannah, and we will not speak of it again.”

  Hannah drew in her breath.

  “Very good, Your Grace.”

  She had hurried to Islington while Cyrilla was still asleep and returned within the hour.

  She had packed her own clothes but nothing of Cyrilla’s and only when she reached the top of the stairs had she hesitated outside the studio.

  Then she had gone in and taken from the drawer where Cyrilla had replaced it the sketch done by Frans Wyntack of her mother.