A Very Special Love Read online

  It was too long for Martha, but they hitched it up with a belt.

  Then Zia started to arrange Martha’s hair, which she thought could look attractive if it was washed and curled.

  She then placed on top of her head a hat that had also been bought for her at Falmouth.

  Picking up the one that she had brought to wear herself and that matched her gown, she ran down the stairs with Martha.

  The carriage was waiting for them and Zia told the coachman to take them to the large Emporium that she had visited yesterday with the Dowager Marchioness.

  While they had been shown around, she had noticed that there were a number of gowns for young girls that the Dowager Marchioness had not considered smart enough for her.

  Zia was, however, well aware that Martha would look odd in anything too smart.

  If she was to teach, as the Marquis had suggested, at the village school on his estate she must not wear anything that would surprise or shock the villagers.

  A footman had opened the door of the closed carriage.

  The two girls climbed in, but he waited for a moment after Zia had given him the address of the Emporium and looked back at the house.

  “There is no one coming with us!” she exclaimed.

  “You’re goin’ alone, miss?”

  “Just to the Emporium,” Zia replied, “and it will not take long.”

  The footman closed the carriage door and they drove away.

  “Are you quite sure you should do this?” Martha asked a little nervously. “I feel very strange dressed as I am now.”

  “You look very nice,” Zia observed, “and, when you have clothes that really fit you, you will be surprised how attractive you will look.”

  She knew as Martha looked away from her that she was feeling self-conscious about her plainness and Zia told herself that she had to try and give her confidence.

  But it was definitely something that she would gain amongst the children at the school who would not mind what she looked like as long as she was loving and understanding.

  To take Martha’s mind off herself Zia started to tell her about the ball last night.

  “What did the gentlemen say who danced with you?” Martha asked.

  “They paid me a lot of compliments and some of them looked at me with a ‘swimmy’ look in their eyes that I thought was rather ridiculous!”

  “Did you dance with his Lordship?”

  “He danced with me first and he dances very well,” Zia replied.

  Then she added,

  “There was no one as handsome or smart as he was in the whole ballroom. Quite a lot of the lovely ladies in diamonds spoke to him in what I am sure my mother would have thought was an over-gushing manner.”

  “I expect they are in love with him!” Martha said.

  Zia looked at her in surprise.

  “Do you think so? But they are all married! I cannot remember their names, but one of them was a Countess, another was a Duchess and a third, who was very beautiful, was ‘Lady Something-or-Other’ and she said,

  “‘Rayburn, darling, when are you coming to see me?’”

  “Did she really say that?” Martha asked.

  Zia nodded.

  “I thought at first that she must be one of his Lordship’s relatives, but, as he moved away from her, he just said,

  “‘That is Lady Something-or-Other and a great number of people believe that she is the most beautiful woman in the whole of London!”’

  “And was she?” Martha asked.

  “I suppose she was,” Zia replied. “She certainly made me feel rather plain and ordinary.”

  “Oh, she couldn’t have!” Martha exclaimed. “You’re lovely and the maids say you are the most beautiful girl who has ever been at Oke House!”

  “Did they really say that?” Zia asked with interest.

  “They did. But they also said that the Lady Yasmin his Lordship’s been meeting up to now is very beautiful.”

  Zia thought and then she said,

  “I don’t think that anyone called ‘Yasmin’ was there last night.”

  “No, she’s in France,” Martha explained. “I heard the housekeeper tell Amy, the maid who looks after me, that her husband was very ill.”

  She thought for a moment and then she said,

  “Lady Caton, that is what her name is, Yasmin Caton! And the way that they talked it sounded as if his Lordship is infatuated with her.”

  Zia looked at her.

  She had not until now thought of the Marquis as being infatuated with anybody.

  Now she told herself that she must be very stupid.

  Of course, seeing how handsome he was and how the lovely ladies had clustered round him last night, should have made her aware that they were all enamoured with him.

  It was the same way, she thought now, that her mother had told her that the ladies would sometimes pursue her father.

  “You are too good-looking, darling,” she had said to him once, “and I am always afraid I shall lose you.”

  “How could you possibly think anything like that?” the Colonel had replied. “There is not another woman as lovely as you in the world. From the moment I first saw you, you stole my heart away and I can assure you that it is yours from now to Eternity.”

  Her mother had laughed and Zia remembered the expression of happiness that there had been in her eyes.

  She could picture now the way she had lifted her lips so that her father could kiss her.

  ‘I want someone to love me like that,’ she thought.

  She knew that it was something that she could never feel towards any of the young men who had asked last night if they could call on her this afternoon.

  At the same time she knew that she would have been very foolish not to realise how handsome, attractive and fascinating the Marquis was.

  ‘When I talked to him in the yacht,’ she mused, ‘I was not thinking of him as a man, but as if he was the Archangel Michael who had come down from Heaven to save me from the wickedness of Father Proteus.’

  She wondered what Lady Caton would have done if she had been in her place on The Unicorn.

  Then, before she could find a satisfactory answer, they had arrived at the Emporium.

  Zia had learnt quite a lot from the way that the Dowager Marchioness had behaved.

  She sent for the Manageress and said to her,

  “I am Miss Zia Langley who came in here yesterday with the Dowager Marchioness of Okehampton.”

  “Yes, yes, miss, I remember it well,” the Manageress replied.

  “I have brought this young lady with me who is a friend of mine,” Zia said indicating Martha, “and I want her dressed completely from head to foot. Her clothes have all been lost in an accident and she has therefore nothing to wear but the dress I have lent her, which, as you can see, does not fit her.”

  “Oh, dear, what a catastrophe!” the Manageress exclaimed. “But I am sure we can find what the young lady desires.”

  “Now what she wants,” Zia said firmly, “are clothes that she can wear in the country that will not be ostentatious, if you understand what I mean. She is going to live very quietly helping a friend of his Lordship’s to run a school.”

  As she spoke, she saw by the expression on the Manageress’s face that she understood exactly what she was trying to say to her.

  “We have not much time,” Zia went on, “and, if we can have my friend fitted out with one or two gowns that she can wear immediately, then the rest of the things can be sent as quickly as possible to Oke House.”

  It was an order that was exactly after the Manageress’s heart.

  In a very short while Martha was fitted out in a slimmer gown that was pretty but much plainer and less voluminous than the one that Zia was wearing.

  There was a hat to match it and even shoes and stockings, which came from another part of the Emporium.

  Zia kept an eye on the clock, thinking perhaps that the Dowager Marchioness might wish to do somethi
ng with her before luncheon.

  It was, however, getting on towards noon when they went outside to where the carriage was waiting.

  Before they left the Manageress promised to pack up everything that they had chosen and send it round to Oke House.

  “Thank you very much,” Zia said to her as the footman jumped down from the box to open the door for her.

  “It has been a real pleasure, miss, and I hope I shall see you here again,” the Manageress replied.

  “I am sure you will,” Zia smiled.

  As she went through the Emporium door and out onto the pavement, there was a strong wind blowing down the street and she put up her hand to hold onto her hat.

  It prevented her from seeing anything but her way to the carriage and then she stepped inside it.

  As she did so, the door was slammed to.

  She looked back in astonishment to see Martha staggering and then falling down on the pavement as if somebody had struck her.

  But before she could see clearly what had occurred the horses started off and she was aware that the footman who had slammed the door had now jumped up onto the box.

  She could not understand what was happening.

  Then she looked through the glass window over the small seat that faced her.

  She could see the coachman who was driving the carriage and the footman sitting beside him.

  She raised her hand to knock urgently on the window to let them know that they had left Martha behind.

  As she did so, the footman, wearing what she saw was the livery of the Marquis, turned round to look down at her.

  It was then that she saw his face and there was a scar that ran from his forehead into his eyebrow.

  At the sight of him she gave a scream of horror and collapsed onto the back seat of the carriage.

  Her heart was beating frantically with fear.

  The footman looking at her was somebody she could not fail to recognise!

  He was Father Proteus’s man from the Convent, Saul!

  Chapter Six

  The Marquis, who had been riding in Hyde Park with Harry, left him at the end of Park Lane.

  “I will see you tonight,” Harry said, “but now I have to hurry as I am having luncheon with the Duchess.”

  “She will be annoyed if you are late,” the Marquis remarked.

  “1 know,” Harry replied ruefully, “but it will be worth it to have had the best ride I have had for many a month.”

  The Marquis was smiling as he trotted slowly up Park Lane towards his own house.

  He found himself looking forward to seeing Zia and hearing if she had enjoyed the ball last night.

  As his grandmother had related, she had been an undoubted success.

  He thought it extraordinary that a girl who had lived such a sheltered life should step into the most sophisticated Society in Europe and manage to captivate everyone who saw her.

  She was not shy, gauche or anything else that he might have expected a young girl to be.

  ‘She is certainly original,’ he told himself and knew that quite a few men were envying him for being her Guardian.

  A groom was waiting for him outside the front door of Oke House and he dismounted and patted his horse as if to thank him for a good ride.

  Then he walked in through the front door, which had been opened for him by a footman.

  To his amazement he found that the hall was filled with people.

  There was his secretary Mr. Barrett, the housekeeper, his coachman and the footman peculiarly dressed and several maidservants.

  There was also a young woman in a pretty gown whom he did not recognise at once as being Sister Martha.

  As he appeared, they all stopped and stared at him in a way that told him without words that something was very wrong.

  “What is it? What has happened?” he asked. “Why are you all here?”

  He spoke to Mr. Barrett who exclaimed,

  “Thank goodness you have returned, my Lord!”

  “What can be the matter?” the Marquis asked.

  “Miss Zia has been kidnapped!”

  For a moment the Marquis was too astonished to speak.

  Then he demanded,

  “When and by whom?”

  He knew the answer, but it was something he wanted to hear from the people staring at him.

  His coachman, Dobson, a middle-aged man who had been in service with his father and was excellent with horses, came from among the crowd.

  “It were like this, my Lord,” he began, “it weren’t my fault, nor Ben’s – ”

  “Suppose you start at the beginning,” the Marquis suggested quietly.

  His voice was under control and he appeared to be outwardly at ease.

  At the same time his anger was rising as he realised that this was something he should have anticipated and prevented.

  “I think you should know,” Mr. Barrett interrupted, “that Miss Zia left the house soon after nine o’clock this morning taking Sister Martha with her.”

  He glanced at Martha, who was standing near him with a handkerchief held to her eyes.

  “Who else went with you?” the Marquis asked her.

  “No one ‒ my Lord.”

  “Where did you go?”

  She took the handkerchief from her eyes to say,

  “Zia came into my bedroom and ‒ when I told her that I was not really a nun, she said that she would find me ‒ the right clothes so that I-I could teach in the school your Lordship ‒ spoke about.”

  As she was sobbing, her words were almost incoherent, but the Marquis understood.

  “So you went shopping alone in one of my carriages?”

  “Y-yes, my Lord, and then Saul took her away!”

  As if the Marquis did not quite follow the sequence of events, he looked at Dobson for a further explanation and he reported,

  “When we reached the Emporium, my Lord, Miss Zia said as she’d be about an hour and an ’alf, so I takes the horses under the shade of the trees in the square that’s just behind Bond Street.”

  The Marquis nodded and Dobson went on,

  “Ben and I were just sittin’ talkin’ in the shade when we was suddenly hauled off the box by two men, one of them with a big scar on ’is face.”

  “That was Saul!” Martha cried. “And he hit me when I tried to get into the carriage with Zia.”

  The Marquis ignored the interruption and said to Dobson,

  “After they had pulled you from the carriage, what did they do?”

  “They took our coats and ’ats, my Lord, and tied us up to a tree and then drove off with the carriage.”

  It seemed so incredible that for a moment the Marquis could only stare at his coachman.

  Then Martha, as if she realised that she must tell him the rest of the story, moved a little nearer to him and said,

  “We came out of the shop and Zia climbed into the carriage, but, when I would have joined her, Saul hit me so that I fell down onto the pavement and then ‒ he jumped up on the box and they drove off at speed.”

  She burst into tears as she sobbed,

  “Father Proteus has her again! Oh – save her, my Lord, save her!”

  The Marquis turned and looked at the other people in the hall.

  “Has anybody anything to add to this story?” he asked them.

  There was no answer and Mr. Barrett said,

  “I think that is everything we know, my Lord.”

  “Very well,” the Marquis murmured. “Come with me, Barrett, and we will see what can be done. Everybody else can go back to their duties.”

  He walked towards the study and Mr. Barrett followed him.

  When his secretary had closed the door, the Marquis enquired,

  “Has her Ladyship been told about this?”

  “Yes, my Lord, and she is very upset and so has stayed in bed.”

  “That is sensible at any rate,” the Marquis commented.

  He sat down at his desk.

  “Now, Ba
rrett, what are we going to do?”

  “I really have no idea, my Lord,” Mr. Barrett replied, “except to send for the Police.”

  “If we do,” the Marquis said after a moment’s pause, “the whole story will undoubtedly get into the newspapers.”

  Mr. Barrett said nothing.

  The Marquis stared in front of him thinking furiously that Zia was again in the power of a dangerous man and somehow he had to save her.

  He rose to walk slowly to the window while he was thinking.

  As he looked out with unseeing eyes at the sunshine in the garden, he felt as if his whole comfortable world had unexpectedly fallen about his ears.

  Why had he not anticipated that Proteus instead of acknowledging defeat as he might have expected, would not give up until he had Zia’s money in his greedy hands?

  The Marquis was quite certain that this would now be a case of ransom and Proteus was in a strong position to demand an outrageously large sum of money for the return of Zia.

  He knew that what he had to do now was to wait until the ransom note arrived.

  Yet every nerve in his body was crying out for him to save Zia before she suffered any more than she was already.

  ‘Why did I not know? Why did I not guess,’ he asked himself, ‘that this might happen?’

  He was furiously angry that he should have been so foolish as not to anticipate the way a criminal’s mind would work.

  ‘I have to do something!’ the Marquis insisted to himself.

  But the only thing he could think was that London was a very large place.

  And if, as he suspected, Proteus intended to hide Zia until the money was in his hands, it would be completely impossible for anyone to find her.

  He assumed that the fake Priest would not play the same game of hiding in a Convent or any other Religious institution.

  And yet he might have access to one whose doors were closed to the surveillance of the public.

  What it all amounted to, the Marquis acknowledged to himself, was that he had no clue and no idea where Zia might be.

  Later the horses and carriage might turn up, but Proteus would take very good care that they were found far away from any secret place where he held Zia.

  There was a note of despair in the Marquis’s voice when, after being silent for a long time, he said,