Love and the Marquis Page 10
Imeldra drew her by the hand into the house and then to the drawing room and, as Lady Marsden sat down, she exclaimed,
“How beautiful you have grown, Imeldra. I always knew that you would be as lovely as your mother.”
“I wish that was true,” Imeldra answered. “But, if I look even a little like her, I shall be happy.”
“‘You are very like her,” Lady Marsden replied. “But do tell me about your father. I am only so thankful that he is alive after what I heard was a very bad carriage accident.”
Imeldra told her what she had heard from Mr. Dutton and also a little more that she had learned from Danvers, her father’s valet, who had returned with him.
However she was very careful not to mention that there was anybody with him when the accident occurred for she knew that it was something they must try to keep from everybody else.
Mr. Dutton had in fact joined her in the sitting room that adjoined her father’s bedroom while the doctor was examining him.
“I have told Jason and the others not to tell anybody that your father was accompanied by a lady at the time of the accident and that she was killed.”
Imeldra looked at him gratefully.
“I am sure that it is what Papa would want. But will they keep silent?”
She knew only too well how much servants talked and was certain that if they followed their usual inclination every detail of what had occurred would not only be repeated often but magnified and exaggerated.
Mr. Dutton’s lips tightened.
“I made it clear that the penalty for talking would be instant dismissal. Since those who were with your father have been employed by him for many years, I think it unlikely that they will risk their very comfortable positions here.”
“I hope you are right,” Imeldra said doubtfully.
She knew that, if on top of what her father had suffered already, there was to be a public scandal of his running away with a famous beauty like Lady Bullington it would be almost too cruel to contemplate.
“I understand that your father was going to Dover,” Lady Marsden said now.
“My father was making a short visit to Paris,” Imeldra replied, “but now all that matters is to make him – well again.”
There was a little throb in the last word, which made Lady Marsden stretch out her hand to take Imeldra’s.
“I know what you are feeling, dearest,” she said, “and please let me help you.”
Imeldra looked at her in surprise and then Lady Marsden added,
“I do not know whether or not you are aware of it, but my husband died two years ago. He was very ill for five years before his death and could not bear anyone to nurse him except for me.”
It was then that Imeldra recalled that Lady Marsden, whose father had been a neighbour of her father and mother, had married a man very much older than herself.
She also had a vague idea that somebody had told her that she had not been very happy.
Looking at her now, Imeldra’s instinct told her that she had suffered and because of it her character, which had always been sweet and kind, had deepened and become even finer than it had been before.
Thinking back into the past she could remember her mother saying how fond she was of Beryl Sinclair as she had been then,
She also recalled Beryl’s father, who was a most possessive man, had kept her at home and refused to allow her to marry until she was nearly twenty-four.
Then as it suited him he had forced his daughter to accept one of his own contemporaries and she had little say in the matter.
It occurred to Imeldra that for Lady Marsden to come back into her life at this moment was exactly what she needed.
Having seen her father lying unconscious upstairs, looking still exceedingly handsome but with his face very pale and drawn, she was aware that it was going to take a long time to get him well again.
It was what she was determined to do, but she was wise enough not to underestimate the magnitude of the task and was aware that she needed all the help she could find.
“Do you really mean that?” she asked.
“Of course I mean it,” Lady Marsden answered, “and you know I will be very tactful and not intrude in any way. If you think I am useless or a bother, you have only to say so.”
She spoke quite humbly and Imeldra impulsively bent forward and kissed her.
“I know if Mama was in my place, she would want you,” she said, “and I need you very very much.”
Beryl, she refused to allow Imeldra to use her title, fitted into the household so smoothly and with such charm that even the servants welcomed her.
Danvers sat up with his Master at night and Imeldra and Beryl agreed to take it in turns to be with him continually during the day.
When the laudanum wore off, the Earl ran a high fever and they had to restrain him from moving about and making the wounds on his leg bleed.
His body was also badly bruised and he was in considerable pain all the time.
It was Beryl who suggested that too much laudanum was bad for him and persuaded first Dr. Emmerson and then Sir George Lawson to agree that he should be given herbs if the pain became unbearable.
It was better, she urged, for him to be clear headed and to be able to talk to Imeldra or whoever was with him, even if it involved a little suffering.
“I hate the drugs the doctors give one,” she said. “They gave my poor husband so many that in the end his brain was affected and it was impossible for him even to recognise me.”
She gave a little sigh before she added,
“When he died, I could not help feeling that it was a merciful release.”
Imeldra gave a cry.
“That must not happen to Papa! You remember how witty and amusing he is. I could not bear it if he became like a vegetable.”
“I agree with you,” Beryl said, “and that is why we have to keep him from the doctors’ drugs. I know only too well the disasters that they can cause in the long run.”
It was, however, not very easy, but Beryl not only knew that herbs were efficacious and less dangerous but she also made some healing salve, which helped to cure the wounds on the Earl’s leg far quicker than anything that the doctor had prescribed.
“If you ever want a job, Lady Marsden, you can have mine,” Dr. Emmerson joked.
But because he was an intelligent and understanding man, he was not in the least jealous that Lady Marsden’s prescriptions were more effective than his.
At first the Earl was much too ill when Imeldra sat with him to talk, but because he had amazing resilience and was, as the doctor had said, a very strong man, on about the fifth day after coming home he appeared not only to look but to sound more like himself.
Beryl had been with him in the morning and, when he awoke after sleeping for a short while after luncheon, Imeldra was at his side.
He put his hand out towards her and she took it and knelt beside the bed to say,
“Darling Papa. You look better and my prayers are answered.”
“I felt you were praying,” the Earl said in a slow voice. “And once or twice, when I came back to sanity from a kind of delirium, I thought that you were your mother.”
“I am sure that Mama was here looking after you.”
Imeldra thought that there was a faint smile on her father’s lips as if he thought the same thing.
Then he said,
“Lady Bullington was killed. I hope nobody here is aware of it.”
“Nobody here knows she was with you, Papa, and Mr. Dutton has sworn all the grooms to secrecy.”
Her father gave a little sigh as if of relief before he said,
“Poor woman! It is something that should never have happened.”
“It was not your fault, Papa. Everybody has said that.”
“I am not thinking of the accident, but then she should not have been with me in the first place.”
Imeldra’s fingers tightened on his.
“What is done can
not be undone, Papa.”
The Earl was trying to recall what had happened. After a long silence he said, as if he was talking to himself,
“I told them to take her body to the house of one of her relations who she had told me lived near Dover. The doctor said he would explain that I had been giving her a lift from London.”
He spoke slowly as if it was difficult to put into words exactly what had happened and Imeldra said,
“That was very clever of you, Papa, and I am sure your instructions were carried out. There has been nothing in the newspapers about the accident.”
“That was another thing I was going to ask you,” the Earl said. “You are quite sure it has not been reported?”
“No, Papa, and Mr. Dutton has bought all the newspapers since we were quite certain it was something you would ask about as soon as you were well enough.”
“Good girl,” the Earl smiled. “I am so glad you are here.”
He closed his eyes as if his mind was at rest and a few minutes later Imeldra knew that he was asleep.
It was just impossible when she was sitting with her father not to keep thinking of the Marquis.
Although she was tired when she went to bed, she never slept without first praying for him and wondering frantically what she could do to save him.
The more she thought of it, the more impossible his situation appeared to be.
She remembered how Madame Jolie had spoken of papers lodged in her Bank and she was sure she meant a Marriage Certificate and perhaps letters from the previous Marquis that would prove very incriminating.
Unless those papers were destroyed, she could always blackmail the Marquis with the threat of taking her case to the House of Lords.
There she would try to prove that her son, André, was the rightful heir to the title, the estates arid everything else that the Marquis had always thought was his.
The more she thought about it, the more incredible it all seemed that his father, who had been so respectable, should have committed bigamy and had never done anything to save his son from the predicament in which he now found himself.
“Oh, darling, how can I help you?” Imeldra asked in the darkness.
She felt as if her thoughts were winging out to him and somehow he would know how much she loved him and how much she longed to see him and to comfort him.
It seemed impossible that they were in fact so close to each other and yet divided by an impassable barrier or rather a deep chasm that neither of them could cross.
Sometimes her need for him was a physical agony and she thought she must ride over to see him or write to him and ask him to meet her.
Then she knew that it would only torture him and so he would suffer even worse agonies, just as she would if it meant having to say ‘goodbye’ to each other all over again.
She did not need to be told how much he was missing her and she wondered if he talked to William Gladwin about her, thinking that he was her grandfather.
Then she decided that the Marquis would find it too painful to talk to anybody and be more likely to keep his feelings to himself.
The only thing she could do was to pray for him and she sometimes felt that her knees would be worn out by her praying and that even God was not listening to her.
If He had deserted her, so had her mother, for Imeldra was sure that wherever she might be, her mother would be thinking only about her husband and striving to bring him back to health.
After several days of the arrangement they had made with Danvers, Beryl suggested that he should have a good night’s sleep and that they should take his place at least every third or fourth night.
“Yes, of course,” Imeldra agreed. “I should have thought of it myself.”
“Your father is not as ill now as he was and, as there is a comfortable sofa in his sitting room, I am sure that whichever of us is on duty can doze there, knowing that we would wake immediately if he called.”
“I will take the first watch,” Imeldra volunteered.
“Very well,” Beryl replied, “but promise that you will wake me at two o’clock.”
“I promise,” Imeldra answered, knowing that Beryl would not allow her to argue.
Because it was so much more comfortable to lie on the sofa wearing a nightgown and negligée, Imeldra went to say ‘goodnight’ to her father with hair flowing over her shoulders.
He smiled as she went towards him and said,
“You look so like your mother when I first saw her with her hair down and I thought she was the loveliest most adorable woman I had ever seen in my entire life.”
The way he spoke made Imeldra wish she could hear the Marquis say the same thing to her.
Because he was constantly in her thoughts, she sat down on the side of her father’s bed and asked,
“Papa, in all your trips abroad, did you ever hear of a singer called ‘Madame Jolie’?”
“Of course I did,” the Earl replied, “but I cannot imagine how you have heard of her.”
“Someone was talking about her the other day,” Imeldra replied vaguely. “What do you know about her?”
“I must have been only twenty when I first saw her in Paris,” the Earl said, “and she had just sprung to fame.”
“Was she very beautiful?”
“Yes, lovely, quite captivating and she sang like a nightingale. All Paris had gone mad about her!”
“And you knew her, Papa?”
“I took her out to supper once or twice but she was already in love with an Italian Count, Antonio Cellini.”
Imeldra gave a little exclamation.
“But surely I have met him?”
“Yes, of course, you have,” the Earl agreed. “Do you not remember when we were in Rome, he painted a picture of the Villa we were living in and I bought it from him?”
“Yes, of course, I remember him well,” Imeldra said.
As she spoke, she felt that she could see the Count, a middle-aged man with greying hair and dark eloquent eyes, telling her just how pretty she was and how he would like to paint her portrait.
Although she thought him quite a good artist, she had managed to avoid the boredom of having to sit for him when she wished to spend all the time that was possible with her father.
“So Madame Jolie was in love with the Count,” she said slowly.
“She was not only in love with him, but to the horror and consternation of his family, she married him!”
Imeldra was suddenly still.
“She – married him – Papa?” she managed to say after a moment, her voice sounding strange to her ears.
“It was, of course, an absurd thing to do from his point of view,” the Earl went on, “and I have always been very sorry for him. Perhaps that was why I bought several of his pictures, which were not particularly good.”
“Are you – saying that they are – still married?” Imeldra asked.
“Of course they are,” the Earl replied, “since they are both of the Catholic faith. But Jolie soon left him as he did not have enough money to keep her in diamonds let alone in anything else.”
Imeldra did not speak and after a moment her father went on,
“Antonio has consoled himself with a variety of attractive women, but he needed money and a wife with a large dowry, which was what his family had planned for him.”
“I can hardly believe it,” Imeldra exclaimed.
“I wonder what has happened to Jolie now?” the Earl pondered. “For some time she was mistress of the King of the Netherlands and of a number of other rich men who courted her. I remember one of them, although I don’t now recall his name, telling me she was ‘one of the sights of Paris’. She certainly made sure that men paid for the privilege of seeing her.”
“And all this – time she has been – married to the – Count!” Imeldra said, as if she had to be certain of what her father had told her.
“She certainly is, unless, of course, she is dead. I have not heard of her for a long time.”
For a moment she contemplated telling her father the whole story.
Then she thought it might upset him and it was important for him to be kept as quiet as possible.
“Goodnight, Papa,” she said now bending forward to kiss his cheek. “You know if you want me you have only to call and I will come to you instantly.”
“Thank you, my darling,” the Earl replied, “and I feel so much better that I think very shortly that you and that angel Beryl will be able to leave me with just a bell that I can ring if I need Danvers.”
“We will think about it,” Imeldra said. “At the same time I like being with you. You are much better, Papa, and that makes me very very happy.”
She knew if she was honest that she was now happy for another reason as well and, when she lay down on the sofa and pulled up the blankets over her, she was saying over and over again,
“Thank You, God, thank You. You have answered my prayers and now the Marquis too can be as – happy as I am.”
When Beryl took Imeldra’s place at two o’clock, the Earl was sound asleep.
“Have a good night,” Beryl whispered as Imeldra left her.
But when she went to her own room, Imeldra sat down at the writing table and picked up a pen.
Then she hesitated, wondering how she could tell the Marquis what she had found out.
Her first impulse was to send him a letter or else ride over and then explain what had happened.
Inevitably a number of difficulties presented themselves, first that although she loved the Marquis and was sure that he loved her, it was somehow embarrassing for her to assume that the moment he was free he would wish to marry her.
Although she was sure that they were made for each other, her instinct told her that as a man he must make his own decisions without her forcing them from him.
She knew too that he would have to prove the truth of the Earl’s assertion that Madame Jolie and the Count were married, and it seemed wrong for her to be standing by him as he did so, almost as if she was trapping him into marriage.
Everything she was thinking seemed a little muddled in her mind.
At the same time her instinct, which was never wrong, told her to rush nothing, but to let the Marquis free himself in his own way, step by step.