Love and Lucia Read online

  “I know exactly what you are saying, Lucia,” he said. “I will be frank and say that there are plenty of people to worry themselves over the down-trodden poor, the democratic rights of the Catholics, and wrangling over the pocket-Boroughs. I, myself, am not particularly interested.”

  “But you must be,” Lucia said earnestly. “Can you not see that those people have so few spokesmen with your brains and with your influence? That is why only somebody like – you can help them.”

  The Marquis felt that ordinarily he would have laughed such a suggestion to scorn.

  Yet there was something persuasive about the way Lucia spoke, and perhaps it was because he was in Venice and was still affected by the events of the day that he found himself almost hypnotised into believing that he was neglecting his duty.

  “Why should I become the champion of the underdog?” he asked with a slightly aggressive note in his voice.

  “The answer to that is quite simple,” Lucia replied. “Because you are an ‘upper-dog’!”

  The Marquis laughed as if he could not help it.

  “I see you have an answer to everything, but when I arrive back in England I have so many things waiting for me to do that I doubt if I shall have time even to think about anything else.”

  “But you will try – please promise me – you will try.

  The word ‘promise’ made him think of how Francesca had said that Englishmen always kept their promises and he had replied to her that he always kept his.

  He had a feeling that Lucia was manoeuvring him into a corner from which it would be difficult for him to extricate himself.

  “If I once became a fanatic on the subject of reform like Corbett and Wilberforce,” he said, “you would undoubtedly find me a crashing bore.”

  Lucia laughed, and it was a very pretty sound.

  “That is something you could never be,” she said. “But the more I read about what is happening in England today, the more I feel worried and distressed that not enough great people like yourself are deeply concerned.”

  “How do you know I am a ‘great person’ in that sort of way?” the Marquis enquired.

  Lucia made a little gesture with her hands that was very expressive.

  “It is – difficult to put into words,” she said, “but – I know the sun will rise tomorrow, and the – sea will not drain away during the night.”

  “I certainly hope not!”

  Lucia was not listening.

  She had put her elbow on the table, her hand on her cheek.

  “Papa said once that we all transmit the life force, but some people, transmit more than others, who become great like Buddha or Christ or Mohammed, or in a lesser way Marco Polo and Christopher Columbus.”

  “And you think I qualify to be in such distinguished company?” the Marquis asked mockingly.

  There was a little silence. Then Lucia said in a low voice, “I knew – as soon as I saw you – that you – were different. Then when I spoke to you in the Piazza San Marco I knew that you ‘vibrated’ as Papa would say, very differently from – anybody else I had ever met.”

  “I am very flattered,” the Marquis said dryly, “but I think perhaps you are prejudiced.”

  “Perhaps I am, but at the same time you know I am speaking the truth.”

  The Marquis held up his hands in mock surrender.

  “Now you are frightening me,” he said, “and since you are also pressurising me into doing what I do not wish to do, it makes me determined to resist you.”

  Lucia shook her head.

  “You may think you will do that, but I am quite certain, because you are you, that sooner or later you will know what has to be done and you will do it!”

  “If you continue to nag me,” the Marquis replied, “I think before this voyage is over I shall throw you overboard and leave you to drown!”

  As he spoke he felt he was twisting and evading what Lucia was suggesting as if he had been caught like a fish on a hook.

  It made him remember how he had told Alastair that was how he felt when he avoided matrimony, but he had a feeling that this was even more constraining, and he said,

  “I would like to point out to you, Lucia, that when you dine alone with a man you should amuse him, make him laugh, and not force him to think about himself when he should be thinking about you.”

  He saw the colour come into her cheeks before she said in a low voice,

  “I – I am sorry – Mama always told me – a man was bored if a woman talked – too much.”

  Because he felt he had been unkind, the Marquis put out his hand.

  “I am not in the least bored,” he said. “I am only afraid that I shall be converted by a very able Missionary before I reach England.”

  He laid his hand invitingly on the table and Lucia put her fingers on his palm.

  “I will try to – amuse you,” she said, “but as you are no doubt aware, I am very – ignorant.”

  “Not intellectually.”

  “Then in how to amuse a very sophisticated gentleman.”

  His fingers closed over hers.

  “Now you are being deliberately provocative,” he said, “but let me tell you, Lucia, I have enjoyed our dinner together as I expect to enjoy a great many more.”

  He spoke seriously, and yet unaccountably she blushed again and the Marquis released her hand.

  “Now you must go to bed,” he said. “You have been through a great deal today, and I know you will not admit it, but you are tired. Run along, child, and leave me to my thoughts, which are not at all what I expected to have tonight.”

  Somewhat uncertainly, because he was talking in quite a different manner from how he had before, Lucia rose from the table.

  She stood beside his chair looking at him for a moment. Then she said,

  “Thank you for being so kind to me – and for arranging Papa’s – funeral. I shall – never forget what you have done – and I can only thank you – in my prayers.”

  As she finished speaking she bent forward and pressed her lips for a moment against the Marquis’s hand which still lay on the table.

  Before he could speak or move she had left the Saloon and he heard her footsteps running away towards her cabin.

  The Marquis listened until there was silence.

  Then he sat thinking for a long time at the table until the candles began guttering low and the stars had come out in the sky above.

  *

  In her cabin Lucia stood for a moment with her hands against her cheeks.

  She could not make up her mind whether she was blushing because she had made so many mistakes, or if it was because the Marquis’s voice had been kind when he had sent her to bed and said he had really enjoyed being with her.

  ‘He is so magnificent,’ she thought, ‘and he should be marching to victory or ruling as King over a country where there is no injustice, no starvation and no cruelty.’

  As she thought about him and all that he had done for her she felt as if he grew larger and larger until he filled the whole sky, and there was nothing else but him.

  She went to the port-hole to pull back the curtains and look out into the night.

  “Perhaps he is right and I should try to amuse him and make him laugh,” she told herself.

  Then she felt as if, despite the manner in which he had argued with her, he had in fact responded, in some way she could not put into words, to what she had said.

  “He did understand,” she told herself. “He did know it was what he should do.”

  She thought of the years when she and her mother had pored over the Reports in Parliament and the articles in the newspapers revealing the miseries of the workmen and the protests which had erupted at Peterloo – all asking for Reforms that should have been long ago initiated by Parliament.

  Yet even in Little Morden they had been aware of the apathy of the Government after the war, the terrible sufferings of the men who had been crippled and disbanded without pensions or any recompense for
the sacrifices they had made while fighting for their country.

  Apart from all these, there was always the horror of slavery, the suffering of the ‘climbing boys’ who cleaned the chimneys, the iniquities of the ‘Flesh Houses’ which were allowed to exist in London and other large cities, and the cruelty to children slaving in the coal mines.

  Because Lucia was very sensitive she found it incredible that all these things should be taking place while the wealthy aristocrats were gambling, racing their horses, and like the King, running up a mountain of debts.

  She had always been certain from the time she had seen him at the Steeple-Chase that the Marquis was different.

  Although his name seldom figured in the debates in the House of Lords, she had somehow thought that he would fight against all the injustices that she and her mother found so distressing.

  When he had come to her assistance, when he had been so understanding about her father’s pictures and so unbelievably kind to her, she had thought it impossible for him to be anything that was not great and noble.

  But today there had been first Francesca, and now when he had said at dinner that he was not interested in politics, she had felt almost as if he had dealt her a blow.

  He was not what she had thought him to be, and yet she was well aware that as a man he still had that strange irresistible vibration which she had never found in any other person she had met except her father.

  In the Marquis it was unmistakable and inescapable and she knew, as she started to undress, that although it seemed very presumptuous she must, before the end of the voyage, make him believe in himself and his destiny.

  Chapter Six

  The Marquis and Lucia went on deck after they had finished dinner.

  The sea had been rough for the first few days while they were in the Adriatic, then after they had passed Brindisi and sailed round the heel of Italy into the Mediterranean, the sea was as blue and almost as calm as the Lagoon.

  Because there was always the fear of pirates if they were anywhere near the north coast of Africa, the Marquis had given instructions that they should sail through the Strait of Messina between Italy and Sicily and up the west coast of Italy.

  Now, looking out, they could see lights in the distance which seemed to mingle with the stars coming out in the sky overhead.

  “It is so beautiful!” Lucia said after a moment.

  There was silence. Then the Marquis said, in a different voice from any she had heard before,

  “So are you, Lucia!”

  As she looked up in astonishment he put his arms round her and drew her close to him.

  Then, while she trembled because she thought she was stepping into a dream, his lips came down on hers.

  She could hardly believe it was happening.

  Yet as the Marquis kissed her she knew it was what she had been longing for, not only in the days since they had been at sea in his yacht, but almost from the first moment she had known him.

  But because he had seemed as far out of reach as the moon, or like a superhuman being who had come from the Heavens to assist her, she had never imagined that he would touch her or hold her captive as he was doing now.

  Because it was exactly as she had thought a kiss should be, she surrendered herself to his lips, feeling at the same time an ecstasy that was different from anything she had ever known before.

  It was part of the light in which her father believed, the beauty of Venice, the glory of music, and flowers. They were all there in a strange mystical rapture that carried her away into the sky so that she was no longer on earth but part of the Divine.

  As if he knew what she was feeling, the softness and innocence of her mouth excited him and the Marquis’s arms tightened, his lips became more demanding, more insistent, more possessive.

  There was a strange fire in them that made Lucia feel as if a warm wave moved through her body.

  It became more and more intense in her breasts, and in her throat until finally when it reached her lips she was joined to the Marquis with a burning flame that was, in itself, a rapture.

  Only when a century seemed to have passed and the Marquis raised his head did she say, in a voice that was barely above a whisper,

  “I – I – love you! And I did not – know that a kiss could be – like that.”

  “I have been wanting to kiss you for a long time,” the Marquis said in a deep voice, “but I was afraid to frighten you.”

  “I am – not frightened,” Lucia answered. “I feel as if you have given me something so – magical – so perfect that there are – no words which I can tell you how – wonderful it was.”

  The Marquis did not answer, but merely kissed her again, and to Lucia it was as if they were both standing in a dazzling light which came not from the sky, but from within themselves.

  ‘Light is – love,’ she thought.

  Then there was nothing else in the whole world but the Marquis, his arms, his lips, and him.

  *

  Later, when it seemed as if the feelings they had evoked in each other were too intense to be borne, Lucia put her head on the Marquis’s shoulder and he knew her breath was coming quickly from between her lips.

  “Could anyone be more adorable or more entrancing?” he asked. “And so different from anyone I have ever known before.”

  “Is that – true?”

  “I will swear it to you, if you like. I have never known a kiss that was so wonderful, or felt for any woman what I feel for you.”

  Lucia drew in her breath.

  “I never – thought, I never – imagined that you would kiss me.”

  “I know that,” the Marquis smiled, “but every night when you have been arguing with me, and trying to convince me that I must become a crusader, I have been wanting to talk to you far more intimately.”

  “Did I – bore you?” she asked quickly.

  “How could you bore me?” he replied. “I can assure you of one thing, my darling, no one has ever been bored when they are in love.”

  He felt her quiver and she said,

  “I – cannot believe it – I cannot believe that – you love me – but I suppose it was – inevitable that I – should fall in love with you – although I think actually I was – worshipping you.”

  “You are making me conceited – at the same time very proud. All I can promise you, my precious, is that I will look after you, and never again will you be alone or afraid.”

  Lucia gave a sigh that seemed to come from the very depths of her being.

  “That is what I want you to say. I was so – dreading what would happen when we – arrived in England and I was wishing that the Sea Horse would go very – very slowly.”

  “We will make plans,” the Marquis said, “but for the moment I only want to kiss you.”

  His lips were on hers again and he kissed her until she was trembling with the wonder of it, and felt that he was trembling too.

  Then he said,

  “How could I know there was anybody like you in the world? And yet I suppose from the first moment I saw you standing beside me in the Piazza outside Florian’s, I should have realised, because I was so conscious of you, that I would never be able to escape.”

  “Do you – want to?”

  “You are well aware that is a very foolish question,” he replied. “We are one person, Lucia, we know what the other is thinking, and we vibrate towards one another, so that you are mine now and for ever.”

  “That is – what I want – to be.”

  “That is what you are, and I will say it again and again until you believe me, for if I cannot escape, neither can you.”

  As he spoke he moved his lips softly over her forehead down her little straight nose, and when her mouth was ready for his kiss, instead he kissed her small, pointed chin.

  His lips gave her a strange feeling, then unexpectedly the Marquis bent lower and kissed the softness of her neck.

  It was then that Lucia felt as if shafts of starlight were streaki
ng through her body.

  They gave her a sensation that was half-ecstasy, half pain, so that her breath came in little gasps and her body moved against the Marquis’s.

  “My sweet! My darling!” he exclaimed.

  Then his lips were on hers, kissing her passionately and possessively in a way he had not done before.

  Lucia knew he was right when he said they were one person and that she melted into him and had no longer any identity of her own.

  Only when she felt that no one could experience such rapture and still be alive, did the Marquis ask,

  “Why should we wait? I want you now, at this moment, but I want to tell you first of my plans.”

  Because Lucia was feeling dazed and bewildered with the emotions he had evoked in her, she found it impossible to reply and once again put her head against his shoulder.

  “You mentioned your old nanny,” the Marquis said as if he was forcing himself to speak sensibly, “but I thought, instead of your going to her as you decided to do, you could bring her to London.”

  Lucia was puzzled but she did not speak and he continued,

  “She can look after you in a house that I will buy for you as near as possible to mine, so that there will be no question of your being alone, and I will be with you every moment that I can.”

  It was difficult for Lucia to think of anything but the light that seemed to come from the Marquis and herself.

  It blinded not only her eyes, but her mind, and once again she merely gave a little murmur, finding it difficult to understand what he was saying.

  “We will be very, very happy,” the Marquis went on. “I promise – and you know I never break my promises – that if a hundred years from now we have to part from each other, I will provide for you and you will never want for anything or be poor as you have been in Venice.”

  It was then, as if trying to grasp what he was saying that Lucia came out of her trance.

  “I – I do not – understand.”

  “There is plenty of time to talk about it later,” the Marquis said, “but now, my lovely one, I only want to kiss you and teach you about love.”

  His lips were very near to hers as he said,