This is Love Read online

  He spoke aggressively and there was silence until Athina asked,

  “When we break off our engagement, you don’t think that your position as the Master of the Horse will be taken away from you?”

  “It is what the Queen might want to do,” the Marquis replied in a serious tone. “At the same time, if I prove myself, as I intend to be, really good at my job, it will be difficult for her to find a plausible excuse for dismissing me.”

  “I am glad about that, my Lord.”

  “And of course while we are talking about it,” the Marquis said, “if the man of your dreams comes down the chimney or you meet him unexpectedly, then you must tell me immediately and we will put the wheels in motion to set you free.”

  “Meanwhile you are quite safe,” Athina commented. “Unless you have invited a number of your friends to stay, I am not likely to meet any eligible bachelors.”

  “Is that what you want?” the Marquis enquired.

  “You know it is not!” Athina replied. “I have already told you that I have no wish to be married and I would never marry anyone unless I was very much – in love.”

  “And how will you know if that is what you are feeling?”

  She looked at him in a rather startled fashion.

  “I have never thought of it,” she replied, “but I suppose one does know when one is in love. One must feel different or is that just a lot of nonsense invented by the poets?”

  The Marquis smiled.

  “I do promise you, Athina, that, when you are in love, you will be very much aware of it.”

  There was silence for a moment.

  Then she asked him,

  “Is it a very – very – wonderful feeling?”

  “So I have always been told,” the Marquis answered.

  She looked at him in astonishment.

  “You have always been told?” she repeated. “But surely you must have been in love ‒ dozens of times?”

  The Marquis seemed for the moment to be at a loss for words.

  Then he said,

  “Real love, which is what you have in mind, is what the poets write about and it is not the same as what passes for love in the Social world. It is something very different.”

  “How is that – possible?” Athina asked him with a puzzled look on her face.

  “Men and women have been physically attracted to each other since the beginning of creation,” the Marquis told her, “which is right and natural.”

  He paused as if he was choosing his words before he went on,

  “But such attraction is something very different from what we are talking about and which you are very ignorant of at the moment.”

  “How is it different?” Athina asked impulsively.

  She was enthralled by this conversation and it was something that she had never talked about with anyone before.

  Her father had once told her when she had asked him,

  “When I was very young, I fell very much in love with a beautiful girl but she married somebody else.”

  “Were you very unhappy, Papa?” Athina had asked.

  “Because I was young and impetuous,” her father replied, “I felt suicidal. But eventually there were other women about, who, although I never did feel the same again for any one of them, made me almost forget what I had suffered.”

  It was unlike her father to be so communicative about his past, but after that he had never referred to the subject again.

  She had often wondered if that was why he had never really got on with her mother.

  Her mother too had been in love and she had said that her heart had been totally broken when she could not marry the man she called ‘William’.

  The Marquis was looking at Athina while she was thinking and after a moment he said,

  “You are certainly very lovely, Athina, and altogether worthy of your Greek Goddess name. I can promise you that when you do get to London there will be many men who will lay their hearts at your feet!”

  “But – supposing,” Athina asked in a small voice, “my heart does not – respond?”

  “If you are wise,” the Marquis advised, “you will stick to your guns and refuse to marry until the right man finally comes along.”

  “That is what I want to do,” Athina murmured quietly.

  “Let me assure you that he will come along,” the Marquis said, “and then you will instinctively know what real love is and that it is exactly what you have dreamt about.”

  Athina thought that this really told her very little about what she really wanted to know.

  They then talked of other things and laughed a great deal. Yet she was still thinking of love when she walked slowly upstairs to bed.

  She went into Peter’s room and saw that he was fast asleep. The Marquis had arranged that Peter slept in the room next to hers.

  Mrs. Beckwith was some distance away and next to the delightful room that the Marquis had allotted to Peter as his schoolroom.

  His Master suite was just a little further along down the corridor.

  Athina was aware that, if things had been normal, he would have been put on the nurseries floor.

  As she went to her own room, she thought it would be impossible for anyone to get at him from outside the house.

  When she had looked into Peter’s room, she had seen Flash curled up at the bottom of his bed.

  He did not jump up and go to her as he usually did. Instead he just wagged his tail.

  She knew that with the instinct of an intelligent dog he understood that he was there to guard Peter.

  She patted him gently and looked at Peter as he slept.

  She then went from the room, carrying the candle that she had lit on her way upstairs.

  The Marquis had installed electric light in most of the bedrooms.

  But, because it was traditional, every guest was handed a candle by a footman before they went upstairs to bed.

  It was something that had always been done at Murling Park too and her father had insisted on it.

  Athina recognised that she would greatly miss the candles if they were superseded by modern appliances.

  In her own room she put the candle down by her bed and left it burning. There was no doubt in this magnificent State room with its four-poster bed that candlelight was far more romantic.

  There was a small candelabrum holding three lit candles on her dressing table so she ignored the new light-switch beside the door and undressed by candlelight.

  She had told the maid that she would not need her.

  She was thinking now of the strange conversation that she had had with the Marquis about love. Never had she expected him to speak out like that or to admit what he was looking for.

  It was not what was accepted by the ‘Smart Set’ who were centred round the Prince of Wales.

  ‘Supposing I never find love?’ Athina asked as she had put on her nightgown.

  Then she told herself that there was so much beauty and romance in the world and she could not be the only person to be left out.

  She longed to find the love that was very beautiful, very desirable and very inspiring.

  She went to the window to pull back the curtains.

  There was a cloud over the moon and so the lake was not turned to silver as it had been on other nights and the Park was dark and so seemed somewhat forbidding.

  Unable to find in it the message that she was seeking, she pulled the curtains to again.

  Blowing out the three candles on her dressing table, she climbed into bed.

  She lay there wondering whether she should pray that one day she would find love. It was something that she had never done before.

  Yet now, as she thought about what the Marquis had said to her, she had the strange feeling that it was love that he too was praying he would find.

  Not on his knees and not in actual words, but in his heart.

  Although it seemed to her most surprising that love had eluded him.

  ‘He is indeed a very strange
man,’ she told herself, ‘and so utterly different from what I might have expected.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Athina did not fall asleep at once.

  She was going over in her mind everything that had happened day by day.

  She felt as if they were all standing on the edge of a precipice.

  Just one puff of wind would send them hurtling down into some dreadful depths that they would never be able to escape from.

  ‘What shall – we do? What can – we do?’

  The very walls were repeating the words in her mind.

  Then at last she fell asleep.

  She was then dreaming that she was galloping with the Marquis over a field that had no end.

  They galloped and galloped side by side.

  Then she heard a little voice say,

  “Aunt – Athina! I – want – you!”

  Peter was standing by her bed,

  He had left the door open and the light coming from the sconces in the corridor silhouetted his head.

  “Peter!” Athina exclaimed, “What is the matter?”

  “I was – dreaming – of Mum-ma,” Peter said in a hesitating voice, “and she – told me to get up. I got up – Aunt Athina – and when I – then looked out of the window – I saw Step-Papa –I am sure it – was him – riding up the drive on a horse.”

  Knowing how dark it was outside now, Athina thought that this was most unlikely and part of his dream and he really could have seen nothing.

  Yet she could tell that he was feeling genuinely frightened.

  “Climb into bed with me and you can tell me what your mother said and if you could see her clearly. It must have been very exciting for you.”

  Peter scrambled onto the bed and slipped between the sheets.

  “Now – I feel – safe,” he muttered.

  “You are safe here,” Athina assured him, “and no one will harm you.”

  She drew him close to her and kissed him.

  As she did so, she realised that he was still half-asleep.

  “Close your eyes,” she said softly, “and think about your Mama. I am sure she is near you ‒ and is protecting you.”

  Peter then snuggled down against the pillows and Athina got out of bed.

  By the light coming through the door she could see her negligée on a chair.

  She put it on and then went to the window to discover if it was in fact possible that he could have seen Lord Burnham coming up the drive.

  She pulled the curtain a little way to one side and looked out.

  It was very dark with the moon still hidden behind a thick bank of cloud and the stars were barely reflected in the lake.

  As far as she could see the drive with its oak trees was empty.

  She could only just make out the outline of the ancient bridge that spanned the lake.

  Her eyes travelled from the bridge to a thick cluster of shrubs and they hid from view the stable buildings at one side of the house.

  She stared at them intently and her eyes were now growing more accustomed to the darkness.

  She thought, although it might have been part of her imagination, that she saw a movement in the shrubs.

  She could not be certain, although she leaned out of the window trying to see more clearly.

  There was not a breath of wind and everything was absolutely still.

  Then she thought, although she still could not be sure, that there really was some movement among the shrubs.

  She felt fear streak through her as if it was lightning.

  Turning from the window she moved across the room towards the bed.

  Peter was breathing rhythmically and there was no doubt that he was fast asleep.

  She looked at him for a moment.

  Then she went out into the corridor, closing the door behind her.

  She ran the short distance to the Marquis’s suit.

  The outer door opened into a small hall and she could see that there was another door into the bedroom itself.

  She did not knock, she just walked in.

  As she did so, she realised that the room was not in darkness as there was a light by the bed.

  A huge four-poster bed hung with red velvet had the family Coat of Arms embroidered above the headboard.

  The Marquis was lying in the bed propped up on several pillows.

  He had obviously been reading a book that lay open in front of him and while reading it he had obviously fallen asleep.

  His eyes were closed and his head was against the pillows behind him.

  Frightened though she was feeling, Athina was well aware that he looked exceedingly handsome.

  Just for a moment she hesitated as to whether she ought to wake him up.

  Then she remembered that Peter said he had been woken by his mother and she knew that wherever she might be, Lady Louise was trying to protect her son.

  Athina moved closer and touched the Marquis’s hand, which lay on the book.

  “Wake up, my Lord,” she said urgently. “Wake up!”

  The Marquis, having once been a soldier, was instantly alert.

  “Athina!” he exclaimed. “What is it?”

  “I think, but it may be just ‒ my imagination,” Athina explained, “that there is – somebody moving about – in the shrubs at the side of the courtyard.”

  The Marquis did not stop to argue with her, he quickly jumped out of bed.

  Going to a chair where his valet had left his long dark robe, he put it on.

  “Is Peter asleep?” he asked.

  “He came to me,” Athina answered, “saying that he had dreamt of his mother who had told him to get up. When he then looked out of the window, he thought he saw his stepfather riding up the drive.”

  She saw the surprise on the Marquis’s face and added quickly,

  “He was half-asleep and it is so dark that I did not think he could really have seen anything – but I do think that something or someone is – moving about in the – shrubs.”

  As she spoke, she was afraid that the Marquis would think that she was just being hysterical.

  The movement, if she had seen it, had been very slight.

  At the same time she was frightened. If Lord Burnham did break into the house, he might try to kill Peter before they were even aware that he was in the house.

  The Marquis buttoned up his robe and then went to the chest of drawers.

  Athina saw that on the top of it there was lying both a rifle and a revolver.

  The Marquis picked up the revolver first and held it out to her.

  “Carry this,” he said, “and be very careful. It is loaded.”

  He then picked up the rifle and turned to Athina,

  “I was thinking before I fell asleep that, although it is difficult to believe it, Burnham undoubtedly has someone in this house who is an informer. Somebody who must have told him where we were going today.”

  Athina looked startled.

  “Do – you mean – a spy?” she questioned.

  “It may be some half-witted scullion or an odd-job man who will accept money, having no idea of the consequences of what he might be doing.”

  The Marquis almost snapped the words at her.

  Then, picking up the rifle, he walked towards the door.

  “Peter is in my bed,” she informed him.

  “I have no wish for the boy to be frightened,” the Marquis replied. “What we have to find out now is where Burnham intends to enter the house.”

  He did not say anything more but then opened the door into the corridor.

  Athina followed him and they walked along the corridor, but not towards the main staircase that led to the hall.

  Instead they went to what she knew was a secondary staircase that was seldom used.

  There was just enough light in the corridor and at the foot of the stairs for them to see their way.

  They reached the ground floor and the Marquis went quickly to the first of the rooms facing onto the courtyard and open
ed the door.

  For a moment Athina did not know what he was looking for.

  Then as he shut the door and went on to the next, she understood.

  When the Adam brothers had practically rebuilt the whole house in about 1760, they had put on a new facade.

  It made Rock Park look extremely impressive and very beautiful.

  The ground floor had tall Georgian windows rising from only a few feet above ground level.

  In consequence for safety they had strong wooden shutters inside and these were closed at night by one of the footman.

  The Marquis hurried from room to room.

  Athina realised that what he was expecting to find was that Lord Burnham’s accomplice had left the shutters open in one of the rooms.

  In which case, if the window was not fastened, he had only to push it up and he could then enter the room without any difficulty.

  The Marquis opened door after door.

  Athina began to think that he was mistaken and Lord Burnham was planning to enter the house by some other means.

  At last in a sitting room next to the library the Marquis found just what he was seeking.

  As he opened the door, Athina could see at first glance a glimpse of shining glass and this meant that the shutters were open.

  The Marquis went into the room.

  When Athina followed him, he did not walk towards the window.

  Instead he moved to one side and stood behind an armchair.

  Now Athina could see that the window was already raised.

  There was just room enough for a man to put his leg over the sill and climb in.

  She was wondering who among the Marquis’s staff could have behaved so treacherously and she hoped that it was not someone who had been at Rock Park for a long time.

  She recognised that she must not speak or move.

  She was aware that the Marquis was standing motionless with his rifle at the ready.

  He was staring intently at the window, but there was no sound from outside.

  Athina began to wonder if perhaps Lord Burnham had not in fact come down the drive as Peter had dreamed he had done.

  Perhaps he had changed his mind and gone away.

  As her eyes became more accustomed to the darkness, she could see the stars. The clouds were moving away from the moon and the night air coming into the room was cool.