171. The Marquis Wins (The Eternal Collection) Page 12

  “I would hope that Your Excellency will visit us on another occasion,” the Kommissar replied.

  “I shall certainly consider it,” the Marquis answered.

  There was more bowing and clicking of heels and the Police left the Saloon.

  The Marquis could only be thankful that The Sea Horse could now be once again on her way to England.

  He was, however, too experienced to do anything too quickly.

  He felt quite sure that he was being watched and so he therefore went out on deck and stood where anyone watching from the shore could see him.

  Soon they had left Cologne.

  Only when he could no longer see the tower of the Cathedral and on either side of him now were the magical cliffs and Castles that Daniela loved, did he go below.

  He closed his cabin door and because it was hot pulled off his yachting jacket.

  Then he manipulated the spring that opened the door to the secret hiding place.

  For a moment all he could see was darkness and nothing moved inside.

  “Daniela!” he called out softly.

  It was then that she came out, not slowly or hesitatingly, but swiftly.

  She was like a child coming from a dark place into the light and she flung herself against him holding onto him frantically.

  “You have – saved me, you have – saved me!” she cried. “I heard their voices and I was – frightened – terribly frightened, but now once again – I am safe with you!”

  Then, as if the tension and fear that she had felt in the darkness overcame her, she burst into tears.

  The Marquis’s arms went round her as she cried helplessly.

  He could feel the softness of her body trembling against his.

  “It’s all right,” he said gently, “they have gone, they have apologised for suspecting me and once again we have defeated your stepmother!”

  “She will – try again – and again and – again!” Daniela cried. “What – can I do? Where – can I go?”

  There was no answer to this question.

  The Marquis merely held her close, feeling that the strength of his arms and the fact that he was there was more comforting than words.

  Finally she lifted her face and said a little incoherently,

  “I have – made you – w-wet!”

  She had cried against his white linen shirt and he could feel it damp on his skin.

  “It’s not important and I want you to smile. I expect too that you need your breakfast as I want mine.”

  Daniela gave a little chuckle.

  “How can – you think about – breakfast,” she asked, “when once again, with – your Shining Sword – which is your – clever mind, you have – defeated the enemy?”

  The Marquis thought as she looked up at him that with the tears on her cheeks, her shining eyes and her smiling lips nothing could be more entrancing.

  Then, as if he could not help himself, he bent his head and kissed her.

  It was something that he had not meant to do, but he had ceased to think or to reason.

  What he was feeling at the moment for Daniela could only be expressed in kisses.

  As he kissed her, he felt her stiffen with surprise.

  Then he found as he had expected that her lips were very soft beneath his, very young and very innocent.

  He knew that never in his whole life had he felt as he was feeling now.

  It was very different from what he experienced when he kissed a woman with fiery passion because he desired her.

  He had kissed Daniela because she was a child who had been frightened and whom he must protect and comfort.

  Yet, as he felt the blood throbbing in his temples, it was as though he had suddenly come alive.

  What he felt was nothing to do with her being a child, but very much a woman.

  It was impossible not to draw her closer still.

  Now, as his kisses became more demanding and more possessive, he was aware that she was feeling the same way as he was.

  For her, however, it was an ecstasy that was carrying her, as she had told him before, up to the sky.

  He was aware of her thoughts, her feelings and the rapture that emanated from her.

  He felt as if he too had stepped into the enchanted world which Daniela believed in.

  He had always doubted that it was there, but now he knew that it was real.

  In fact it was more real than the world he lived in and which had always bored him.

  Finally he raised his head and he thought as he looked down at Daniela that she was transfigured.

  She was so incredibly beautiful that he could only feel as if he was dreaming.

  Her eyes shone, then as if the wonder of him was too much for her, she hid her face against his neck.

  In a very small voice that seemed to come from far away she asked,

  “Is – is this – love?”

  “It is love, my darling,” the Marquis answered, “and I never believed that I should find it so unexpectedly, except that you are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen and I must never lose you.”

  He felt her whole body quiver and knew that it was not with fear.

  “Now I – know I am – dreaming!” Daniela whispered, “or – perhaps I – have died and – we are both in Heaven!”

  “We are alive,” the Marquis said.

  Then he was kissing her again, kissing her until he was quite sure that they had reached the Milky Way.

  They were part of the prayer of thankfulness that Daniela had sent to God.

  Chapter Seven

  “Tomorrow we will be in Rotterdam,” the Marquis remarked.

  Daniela looked up at him apprehensively.

  He sensed that she was thinking that perhaps the Police would come aboard again at the instigation of her stepmother.

  The Marquis put his arm around her.

  “You are not to be frightened, my precious and I have a plan that I hope you will agree to.”

  “I will do – anything you – want,” Daniela replied, “but I cannot help being a – little afraid – even when – I am with you.”

  The Marquis pulled her closer as if he was protecting her and then he said,

  “When we reach Rotterdam, we shall be out of Germany and into Holland and therefore there will be no need for you to go on hiding.”

  He had been afraid that the Police, after being hoodwinked at Cologne, might nevertheless still be watching The Sea Horse.

  Therefore, as they moved down the Rhine, he had not allowed Daniela to go on deck until it was too dark for any watcher to be able to see her.

  She sat with him in the Saloon or, which he thought was wiser, she spent quite a considerable time in her cabin.

  It was frustrating for both of them, but the Marquis was determined to take no chances.

  He knew that there was nothing more dangerous than a vengeful evil woman like Esmé.

  She would fight like a tiger to grab hold of the money to which she had schemed to be entitled.

  Daniela was so happy because the Marquis loved her that as long as they were with each other she thought that it did not matter where they were.

  She would be content if they had to sit below in the engine room or even in the dark cupboard in the Marquis’s cabin.

  At the same time, because she was so closely attuned to him, she knew, although he tried to conceal it from her that he was anxious and she felt the same.

  She knew even better than the Marquis how determined her stepmother was and how her beloved father had suffered at her hands.

  ‘She would – kill me,’ she told herself in the quietness of the night, ‘rather than – let me be – happy.’

  Then she thought she would not even mind dying herself if it prevented her stepmother from injuring the Marquis.

  She was so entirely unprincipled that Daniela was quite sure that she would never forgive the Marquis for interrupting the Marriage Service and spiriting her away out of her grasp.

&nb
sp; Daniela tossed and turned in herbed and found it impossible to sleep.

  She thought that her stepmother would not easily accept the Police report that there was no woman on board the yacht with the Marquis.

  Being a woman she would suspect that he had concealed her somewhere.

  Every time they passed a town Daniela was afraid that the Police would come aboard again.

  If they did, they would surely be more thorough in their search than they had been at Cologne.

  However, they had now reached the end of the Rhine and, as the Marquis had said, tomorrow they would be in Holland.

  Daniela knew very little about Holland. At school the teachers had always made it sound rather dull and unexciting.

  But, as she stood on deck with the Marquis and The Sea Horse moved as swiftly through the darkness as it had through the daylight, it was for the moment a Golden Land.

  It was she knew the gateway to the North Sea and after that they would be home.

  As if the Marquis knew what she was thinking, he said quietly,

  “Do you want to hear my plan, my precious one?”

  “Of course I – do,” Daniela answered. “You know I love – your plans. You are so clever – so brilliant – and no one else would think in the same way as you do.”

  The Marquis knew that was the way he wanted Daniela to think about him.

  At the same time for him it was a new experience that a woman should praise his mind rather than his body.

  Then he told himself that in every way Daniela was different from anybody he had ever known before.

  Every moment he was with her he felt himself falling more and more in love.

  It was extraordinary that he had to wait until he was as old as he was now before he realised the depth, height and strength of being in love.

  He knew that what he had thought of before as love was really lust, an entirely physical desire that could burn fiercely for a short time.

  However, it died away until there was not even a glowing ember left to make him remember what he had once felt.

  What he was feeling for Daniela was progressive.

  Every day he found new aspects of her character and personality that enthralled him.

  He found himself lying awake at night, thinking over what she had said that day.

  He realised that it was because she was so unselfconscious and so natural that they were words of wisdom.

  They came from her heart and her soul and owed nothing to artifice.

  Now he could just see her looking up at him in the light from the stars.

  He told himself that, once they were clear of the danger that menaced them from Esmé Blanc, they would grow together in nobility and understanding, which would benefit not only themselves.

  In time it would benefit their children and everybody they came into contact with.

  It was these thoughts that brought back to him the ideals of chivalry that he had had as a very young man.

  These had soon been swept away by life in the Social world.

  And by the promiscuous behaviour of the beautiful women he had spent his time with and the cynical attitude of the men who pursued them.

  To them a lovely woman was fair game.

  But the Marquis knew, although he would not admit it to himself that what he really wanted to find in his life was a woman he could not only love but worship.

  He wanted to worship her purity, because she was intrinsically good both in thought and in deed.

  This was what he had found in Daniela.

  He told himself a hundred times a day that he was the luckiest man in the world.

  Now, as he looked down at her, he knew too that she was more beautiful than any woman he had ever seen or met.

  It was not only because of her features, her hair or the clearness of her skin.

  It was because her beauty came from within and radiated, he thought, like a Divine Light.

  He realised that she was waiting for him to speak and after a moment he said,

  “My plan is, my precious, that before we return to England and face what I know will be a number of problems we should be married.”

  He saw Daniela’s eyes widen and she moved a little closer to him as if she wanted to be sure that he was there.

  “Married?” she whispered. “Is that – possible?”

  “I know you may feel that things are moving too quickly,” he said, “after your father died such a short time ago, but I have been thinking that even in England, unless you are with me both by day and by night, it will be difficult for me to protect you and make sure that you are safe.”

  Daniela knew that he was thinking about her stepmother.

  Impulsively she put out her hand to hold onto him.

  “Please – please. I-I want to be – with you. I shall be – very frightened if I am – alone and – you are not there to save me.”

  “I should be afraid too,” the Marquis said in his deep voice. “If I lost you now, my darling, I should have lost everything that matters to me in life.”

  “Do you – mean that, do you – really mean it?” Daniela asked.

  “I love you so overwhelmingly,” the Marquis said, “that I cannot put it into words. It is something that I will be able to express better, and very much more eloquently, once you are my wife.”

  “Then please – let’s be – married,” Daniela pleaded, “although I am – afraid people – may be shocked.”

  She thought that he did not understand and added,

  “I am not – thinking of myself – I am not important – but you are of – such consequence – and Queen Victoria might be – angry with you!”

  “I am not concerned with Her Majesty or anyone except you. The only thing that matters, my precious little love, is that you should be married to me, so that I can fight your battles, as you want me to do.”

  She smiled.

  He knew that she was thinking of him once again as a Knight in Shining Armour.

  He was setting out to destroy the dragon or any enemy that threatened her.

  “When we reach Rotterdam,” the Marquis said, “I am going to tell the Captain to dock in the Harbour and we will go to the British Consulate.”

  There was a pause and then Daniela asked.

  “Did – you say – ‘we’? You are – not going to – leave me aboard The Sea Horse?”

  “No, of course not,” the Marquis replied. “We will go together. I am certain that once we are there I can make the arrangements I want, especially as I happen to know the Consul personally.”

  Daniela hid her face against his shoulder.

  “You – are quite – sure,” she stammered in a very low voice, “that you will – never regret – marrying me?”

  The Marquis’s arms tightened and she went on,

  “I-I know your family would – expect you to have a – very grand Wedding at – St. George’s Church in Hanover Square, with the – Prince of Wales present and – all your other – important friends.”

  “I am telling you the truth,” the Marquis answered, “when I say that I would much rather be married very quietly with no one in the Church but us.”

  “That is – what I would – like too. But we will not be – alone because – Mama and Papa will be – watching over us and I know that God will bless us – as He has already in – letting us find each other.”

  “That is exactly what I want,” the Marquis insisted and it was the truth.

  *

  The Sea Horse reached Rotterdam early in the morning and docked when the Port was just beginning to become busy.

  Because the Marquis was half-afraid that the River Police might come aboard as they had at Cologne, he ordered Daniela’s breakfast to be taken to her cabin.

  He ate alone in the Saloon.

  A seaman was sent ashore to find the nearest livery stable and procure a comfortable carriage preferably drawn by two horses.

  As the sun rose over the town, the Marquis took Daniela do
wn the gangplank to where the carriage was waiting.

  As he had ordered, there was a coachman and a footman on the box and the carriage was indeed a very comfortable one.

  He thought that it must have once belonged to a Nobleman before it had ended up in the livery stable.

  The horses set off.

  As Daniela slipped her hand into his, he thought that she was looking particularly lovely.

  She was wearing one of the very expensive white gowns that her stepmother had insisted on her buying in Paris.

  With it was an attractive bonnet trimmed with white flowers.

  She looked like a flower herself, he thought.

  He knew that, while he had encountered many lovely women in his life, Daniela was by far the loveliest and the most precious.

  He felt her fingers quiver in his and he asked,

  “You are not frightened, my darling?”

  “A little,” she answered, “but so far – there are no Police – and no one – threatening us.”

  Her voice quivered on the last two words.

  The Marquis raised her hand to his lips and kissed her fingers one after the other.

  “You have to trust me,” he said, “and I swear to you that no one shall take you from me! Once you are my wife, it will be impossible for anyone to do so.”

  Daniela’s smile was part of the sunshine as they drove on in silence.

  The British Consulate was, the Marquis thought, exactly like every British Consulate in every part of the world.

  It was a large and imposing white building with the Union Jack flying from a flagstaff outside.

  Smart sentries were standing in their boxes on either side of the porticoed front door.

  Through the wrought-iron gateway there was a formal garden with flowerbeds planted with red geraniums surrounded by blue and white lobelia.

  They stepped out of the carriage and the Marquis asked to see the Consul, Sir Robert Fraser Turing.

  After a short wait in an anteroom, they were taken to the Consul’s private study.

  A tall elegant man rose when they were announced and held out his hand.

  “My dear Crowle,” he exclaimed in surprise. “You are the last person I expected to see in Holland.”